Pillar of salt

That´s what I turned into (well, almost) when I stepped on the scales this morning.
Up four pounds in two days.
No, I didn´t overeat. I didn´t have bread or pasta. The chocolate boxes stayed closed, thank you.
But.
It´s been svelteringly hot hereabouts for several days. So, I´ve been sweating. A lot. Which in turn made me crave salt. And gave me the usual-for-that-kind-of-weather swollen legs.
So, what I saw on the scale this morning... is water retention.Not fat.
A look at my weight curve for the last two years pretty much confirmed the pattern. Whenever outside temperature goes beyond, say, twenty-six degrees centigrade, my weight will plateau or even go up, by around said four to six pounds. Which means weight loss just doesn´t happen in summer, even though I eat less than when it´s cooler. As I do not drink soda at all, and summer dishes at our place are mostly vegetables, that darned water retention is the only explanation for that.
Still, it´s vexing. And scary because that four-pound jump brought me back up above the limit of morbid obesity, which is a place I never wanted to go back to.
The only thing I can do now is keep away from salt, stick to my calories, and wait for the water to go away. Oh, and wear compression stockings. I did that all the time when I was at my top weight, and obviously the edema isn´t going to leave along with the extra weight, so I had hoped for too much when I believed I wouldn´t need the compression any more.
Why I tell you this? Many of us seem to be having similar problems, and put them down to failing at weight loss. Witness the lowering frequency of blog postings of some of us. They regain weight, and hide their bloggy heads in shame.
To avoid despairing,
-journal what you eat. If you ate just 2000 calories on a given day, there´s no way on earth you coukl gain four pounds of fat on that day.
-weigh yourself, before breakfast, after potty and in the nude, daily.
-watch external factors, too. How long did you sleep, was your job especially stressing, did you sit more than usual, or work out more than usual, that kind of thing.

And, most importantly, keep records of your observations. Sometimes, it takes several years of records to discern a pattern.
Like for me today.
The good thing about having discovered that pattern is that now I can stop beating myself up over it, return to my normal (less salted) eating habits, and wait for cooler weather to return along with a visit by the whooosh fairy.
No reason to retreat to the fridge, no reason to give up.

But proof, again, that losing the weight and keeping it off requires watchfulness.


Julia