You probably think a little less of me... (Project 190 Day Nine)

... because there's less of me to think of!

When I weighed myself this morning, pre-workout, I weighed 253 pounds!  So I've LOST A POUND AND THIS WHOLE THING IS WORKING.

That's always a nerve-wracking moment, honestly, in trying to lose weight: the weigh-in, especially that first one in the program.  What most people would think, when they go to weigh themselves for the first time after working out for a week-plus, would be "What if I didn't lose weight?"

That's not what I was thinking.

What I thought, as I approached the scale this morning, was: What if I GAINED weight?

That is how my mind works -- possibly in an attempt to trick me into not working out at all this morning, or ever, since my mind isn't always at war with my body. 

My mind usually is at war with my body, because my mind is the part of me that thinks stuff like "It would be a good idea to get up every day at 5:45 a.m. and exercise," or stuff like "That exercise should include swimming even though there's a very real possibility that when you go into the pool to swim, today, there will be two old ladies in there, doing that walking-around-the-pool thing that you hate, and those old ladies will be talking about the weather, but as if that's boring enough, they will be having THIS EXACT CONVERSATION:

Old Lady 1:  They said it might rain.

Old Lady 2:  I thought they said it was a 30% chance of rain.

Old Lady 1:  Thirty? I thought they said forty.

Old 2:  No, I'm pretty sure that yesterday they said it was forty and today it's only a 30% chance of rain.

Old 1:  Are you sure? Because today I thought they said it was a 40% chance of rain.

[ME: NOTE THAT AT THIS POINT OLD LADY ONE IS SIMPLY REITERATING WHAT SHE SAID A MOMENT BEFORE SO IN WHAT WORLD IS THIS CONSIDERED A CONVERSATION?]

Old 2:  Maybe they did say forty.

[ME: SO OLD LADY 1'S INEXORABLE LOGIC HAS WON THE DAY...*wishes desperately he did not have this memory*]

Old 1:  Well, forty is more than 30.

That is a real conversation that I actually heard as I swam today and so my brain must continuously oppose my body to convince it to exercise, especially when that kind of thing is involved, and my brain must do other stuff like convince my body that three scoops of ice cream is probably enough.

My brain, I think, sometimes gets tired of always opposing the body, or maybe my body sometimes gets its act together enough to send a counter-thought to my brain, using that part of the nervous system that they say can make you pull your hand off a hot surface before you realize it's hot, and my body will then convince my brain to think stuff like:

What if even though we've been working out all week, what if we gained weight? Wouldn't that suck? We probably shouldn't weigh ourselves and should probably go back home and go to bed, and sleep until it's time to have way more than three scoops of ice cream... yummy delicious ice cream...

And today my brain almost fell for it, but I weighed myself (taking care to set down my car keys and take off my Crocs first because everyone knows how heavy those are) and I lost a pound, so my brain won out again.

Today's workout:  Swimming 22 laps while wishing my ears did not work.
Latest Weight: 253!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today's song that I wished I'd had in my head while I swam instead of 'Thirty is more than forty':

Counting in C, by Jad Abumrad.

There is a fascinating Radiolab podcast that you can hear that on (a better version, even) and it explains, a bit, what "In C" is all about, plus you get to hear Zoe Keating play cello and she's just about one of my favorite things right now.