Okay.  Ruth’s weight this morning is 64.8 kg., or 142.9 pounds, down another kg from her last weigh in.  Eat your heart out, Elaine.

Her starting weight was 75.9 so she’s lost a total of 9.1 kg. = 20.0 lbs.

Watching Ruth on the elliptical this morning I commented that her tummy now has definition.  There’s a line on each side that wasn’t there before.  She’s getting the body of one of those young pole dancers.  “Not bad for 47,” she said.  Couldn’t agree more.

My weight this morning is 97.3kg., 214.5 pounds, so I’m also down another kg.

My starting weight was 109.6 so I’ve lost a total of 12.3kg. = 27.1 lbs.

Very encouraging results.  Pictures at eleven.

And tomorrow is a cheater day.  I’m ready for it.  I don’t want to go quite as crazy on the ice cream and sugar this week, but I am ready for my vente latte.  Increasingly my thoughts are turning to keeping this weight off once I’ve lost it.  Obviously we know how I put it on.  I’m not interested in making this program an annual event.  More interested in finding a program that simply stabilizes my weight at the idea and doesn’t make me feel like I’m spending too much consciousness on my weight.

Ruth has commented several times on the value of the cheater day.  It takes the curse off deprivation.  We know we have one day when we can have that forbidden food, the comfort food that makes us fat.  Also, with regular diets, if you break your diet you feel like a loser and a failure.  But with this program, you have permission and an instruction to break the regimen.  So the cheater day is one thing that makes staying on the program very easy.

I have mixed feelings about the cheater day.  I would rather I adjusted my thinking so that I only want to eat the things I should eat, and, like my friend Goody, don’t even see the bad stuff as something edible.  But since I’m not there yet, the cheater day is a good stop gap.  I just don’t want to get into a cycle of restraint and binging.  That seems dangerous.

Pictures have been taken, but it’s eleven thirty at night and I’m too tired to process them.  So tomorrow I’ll get the comparisons up.