Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Do I look 8 pounds lighter?

I pose this as a serious question.  I have been running more and snacking less, but since I see myself in the mirror every day it's a bit hard for me to decide if I really look any different.  My clothes do fit better and the scale says it's true, but I am hard to convince.  Husbands are also not reliable because they will always tell you that you look perfect (which is wonderful to hear :-) ) but it would also be nice to know the truth!  :-P

I think perhaps in my face I've lost a little weight?  But maybe that is just the place where I add and lose weight first.  Either way, I think I should be on track to hit my next milestone weight before we go to Hilton Head for the weekend with Keegan's family in mid-April.  I began keeping track of my weight starting January 14 (144.1) and yesterday (March 22) I was at 135.6, but I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate reading.  I had been hovering around 137 (+/- 0.5 pounds) in the days leading up to our trip (February 20) and for the week after we got back also because it took awhile to get back in the swing of things.  But for the past 2 weeks I've been between 135.5 and 136.5 all the times I've weighed in.  I don't know if that's due to water weight or because my weight is actually changing a little bit every day.  But anyway, I don't have a picture from when I officially started keeping track of my weight, so Christmas is the close I can get to that date.  And then I have a picture from John's defense celebration on Friday.

Alice (and sibs) on December 25, 2010

Alice on March 18, 2011
I tried to at least get images where I have a similar pose but it's still a bit hard to tell.  I guess I'll just have to believe the scale!  I seriously doubt that much weight could be water weight (especially since I drink about 2.5L of water every day anyway) so I could at least be content knowing I've lost some actual weight in there somewhere.

In other news, I have submitted my thesis and now I'm working on preparing my presentation!  It's going slowly because although Monty said to treat it like a lab meeting, the structure of a defense is different.  Should I be presenting the work in terms of the different aims I achieved?  I don't really have a lot of aims exactly because what I've done for the MS is essentially the first 1.5-2 of the 4 aims I have for my Ph.D. and it seems stupid to break the aims down further just for the sake of presenting them.  Things are progressing but I know I'm going to have a lot of challenges ahead this summer to keep up my current pace and to (hopefully) be prepared to prelim by the end of 2011 (or at least before the end of my fourth year).  I'm actually a little scared when I think about how much I have left to do and all the problems I'm sure to face before the end of all this.  But oh well, I guess that's what grad school is about.

1 comment:

smartypants728 said...

It's too hard to tell! If anything I would have said your chest/waist looked a bit smaller but I can't be sure. It could just be the difference in your clothes. I would believe the scale, how clothes fit, and measurements if you take them. And how you feel, of course!

I also had a really tough time when I was trying to look back for some before and after pics. I noticed that even how big I'm smiling will affect how fat/thin I think my face looks. I think you really need to be wearing the same (form-fitting) clothes and be in the exact same pose to be able to tell for such a small change. (I'm not trying to say it's not a great accomplishment, just that you are getting quite close to or are at goal!) When I put up pics for my 15-20 lb loss even wearing the same clothes I couldn't really see a difference.

In any case, keep up the great work!!