justifiably worried

I was very worried about my weigh-in this last Sunday.

And I think that worry was entirely justified, though in the end it came to nothing. Well, I say that, there's the distinct possibility that there may be a delayed effect that shows up next weekend, but certainly my weigh in was good news, as I'd lost another two pounds.

It's weird - last week I was terribly disappointed at a loss of two pounds and this week I am hugely pleased at exactly the same weight loss.

The reason is that this last week was a bad week. And it essentially comes back to the snow again.

As mentioned yesterday, I was snowed in on Thursday and that meant I did nothing - I mustn't have walked more than a couple of hundred steps, if that. In Friday I suppose looking back on it I did have the exertion of digging myself out in the morning, but at the time it really didn't seem like that. At the time it again felt like I didn't really do anything.

But also, because I was stuck in and how I discovered the cock-up I'd made I was feeling a little depressed. I think this was made worse by my having got up really early to try to fix the error and therefore being tired. Anyway, the point is that when I did hat bit of shopping on Friday I picked up a pack of cookies (we're talking the ones baked in-store by Sainsbury's.

Now cookies and other baked goods of a similar ilk have been one of my particular weaknesses over the years, so this was definitely me giving into temptation. I've no idea how many calories each cookie has, but we must be talking in the ballpark of 200 each, and there were five of them. So, in other words they were a huge calorie boost during a time when I wasn't really able to do my normal exercise.

Now if I'd not been in the frame of mind I was, then maybe I would have tried to compensate. I could have the cookies, say, if I had them as replacements for other things. But I didn't do that - I ate what I normally would, and also had the cookies.

To compound the problems, while the snow did clear throughout Saturday it wasn't really until the afternoon that it was really noticeable. I therefore didn't go for my usual morning walk and my afternoon walk was much shorter than I usually do.

To be fair it was also a little scary as the footpaths were among the last to clear. Indeed, even on Sunday there were still big patches of ice that made walking a bit dodgy. I did do a fairly reasonable walk on Sunday afternoon, and did walk in the morning, but both were shorter than I'd usually do. And all the walking involved bits of taking it steady or otherwise trying to avoid slippy conditions where I usually try to walk at a decent pace.

So yeah, I was fully expecting that come Sunday morning I would discover I'd not lost anything or - even worse - put weight on. I think it would have been a blow, but not a catastrophic one, as there were understandable problems.

What this does do is put into doubt whether I'll hit my target for the end of the year. Not because I'm deliberately going to abandon my diet or stop walking altogether, but certainly if the snow returns I may find circumstances overtake me.

If this does happen I'm not too concerned and won't be disappointed, it was more of a realisation that this could happen and I therefore shouldn't worry if it does. After all, I've so much to loose that I'm probably going to be dieting for all of next year, so I'll have plenty of time to make up any shortfall.