I’m thinking of a number between 154 and 156. It’s been appearing each morning on my digital scale for the past two weeks. I can’t get it out of my head, and even worse, I can’t get it off of my hips!
I read an online article about the problem of plateaus with advice to re-set your metabolism by devouring lots of high-calorie, fatty foods. This was not the first time I heard this. Years ago a friend told me her personal trainer encouraged her to eat cheeseburgers and chocolates once a week to kick-start her metabolism, but I thought she just made it up as an excuse to cheat on her diet.
So, with perhaps nothing to lose, I ate a cheeseburger for lunch, along with some of my son’s and husband’s French fries. Later that afternoon, I had a cheese snack, half a Kit Kat generously offered to me by my sweet little daughter, then a small Coffee Crisp and a short chai latte for good measure.
At supper, I finished off my plate of breaded chicken, rice pilaf and buttery peas, plus my son’s chicken and rice, plus the rice left in the pot. Now I began to worry about calorie overload and hurried the kids to bed so I could spend an hour on the treadmill, start a weight-lifting program and break into a gym to find a thigh machine.
I read them a story, said prayers, gave a special tuck in, then unintentionally drifted off to the sounds of them giggling and speaking toilet talk. I awoke the next morning fully dressed, with my makeup still on and my hair nice and straight. My first thought was, “Hey, I should do this more often!” Which soon led to fearful dread of “the number” or worse, “the number” plus one or two. I raced to the scale. Lo and behold! It was one less! The man on that website is a genius. Too bad I didn’t bookmark his site or write down his name. Was this just a weird coincidence? We’ll wait until the next plateau and see if what is up, must come down.
