There is nothing like a random, happy discovery to make your day.  Sometimes, it can truly be the little things.

I hopped on a scale this morning for the first time in a month or so.  When it comes to dieting or getting in shape or losing weight, the scale is the last thing I rely on.  I’m more of a shape and tone sort of person.  However, it is still one helpful reference, just to see where one stands on the matter.  (Oh lord, pun not intended…)

It turns out that, instead of being around 6-8 pounds up from where I was needing to at least get back to initially – as I thought was the case the other day – I am, instead, only up by 2-3 pounds.  Oh, happy day!  This means that, ultimately, if I were to gauge by weight-loss, my goal is to drop approximately 8 pounds total, instead of like, 13.  I am overjoyed.

Like I said some time ago, I’m not generally an unhealthy person.  I don’t eat poorly, but I also don’t perpetually deprive myself if I’m having a random junk-food attack, either.  As long as I’m in motion, that is.  So I was surprised by the scale’s judgement this morning, until I looked back on the past two weeks.

Two weeks ago, something clicked and my husband quit bringing home soda.  I rarely drink the stuff, but if it was at home, I would.  We haven’t had it at home.  Ergo, I have not been drinking it for about two weeks now.

Unhealthily, I then found myself walking over some emotional coals, so there were a few days in there where I had no appetite at all whatsoever, which caused me to eat fairly sparsely, if at all.  That didn’t last long, though, and having had anorexia-like issues in my youth, I was aware of it and ceased my temporary hunger strike.

Meanwhile, I was sick last week, and while I drink water and other non-soda fluids often as it is, my glugging of those substances increased exponentially in relation to how cruddy I was feeling.

But the biggest factor, I think, is the lack of alcohol.  A friend of mine and I decided to go on a booze-fast.  No, not a fast where we consume nothing but booze, but a fast where we cut it out of our consumption completely.  Right now, I am 10.5 days booze-free.  I feel totally UNbloaty.  I seem to have a little more energy.  And, as a random pleasant side-effect, my skin looks better.  I’m digging this.

So, there it is.  Good scale news and some revelations.  Tomorrow, it turns out, my husband has randomly scheduled us for post-work massages.  So the physical side is looking even better, and might help with some of that lingering mental stuff, too.