Slowly creeping downwards

The relatively strict no-carbs approach of the last days seems to start to pay off.
I´m down over a pound from Monday, which is a lot for my messed-up metabolism.
But then again, I have been doing my power walk every morning before breakfast, and I have been avoiding carbs with the exception of that croissant on Tuesday.
It´s good to see that pay off at least a bit.
I hope that I have managed to switch my body back into losing mode.
Per today: 19.4 kgs lost off my top weight, 20.6 to go to goal weight.
So, not yet halfway there.
I have to remind myself that it did take time to gain that much weight, too, and that even steps of just one pound off, if repeated often, will move me to goal.
It´s akin to the compound interest thing where you take some small-seeming amount of money and let it gather interest for a longer period of time.
When you see that calculated for the first time, it´s surprising because for most of us ordinary humans, the mind isn´t very good at estimating the sum total of something that comes in many seemingly small increments.

Let´s just imagine a few scenarios (I´ll use kilos, for the metrically challenged: multiply by 2.2 for an approximate value in pounds).
Losing 0.2 kilos a week for a year? 0.2 kgs times 52 makes 10.4 kilos.
Losing 25 grams of fat a day? (That equals a deficit of just 225 calories)? 9.125 kilos in a year.

Of course, the shoe fits on the other foot, too. You can gain those same nine kilos (or twenty pounds) in a year by overeating by just 225 calories a day on average.

Do that for ten years and  you get to  morbid obesity stage three, all the while claiming that you "barely ate anything".
It´s pure mathematics, and it´s in my opinion putting an end to the claims of morbid obesity always being the result of grossly overeating. Of course, it´s another thing if someone gains very quickly, say, two hundred pounds in a single year. As fat doesn´t grow from thin air, that makes it quite possible that the person overate big time. Perhaps not even noticing the too-big portions. Been there, done that. I was just lucky to stop at just an 88 pound gain.
But for those who find the extra pounds creeping up in small increments, there may even be some solace in those calculations, namely, that it is but a small deviation from the equilibrium between input and output that must be corrected to stop gaining further, and an additional correction by the same amount will make the pounds melt off as fast (literally) as they had come.
Actually, there´s even some helpful science behind that. The human body being very adaptable to changes in the environment, it is possible to reduce intake by about two hundred calories a day and not at all notice it. Add to that another two hundred used exercising, and you may just be starting to lose weight, without having to castigate yourself unduly. Slowly but certainly.
Even if your metabolism fights back at first, as does mine.



Julia