Each time I’ve sat down to write this post, the focus has changed.

• At first, I wanted to discuss how I achieved my first official (since January 2010) 10% weight loss.  Yahoo!!  I passed the blue line on the chart below.
• Then I wanted to talk about how treatment for my RA, including a couple doses of IV steroids, caused water weight gain.  However, that excess weight dissipated in just a few short days.
• At my house we had a very, VERY long Memorial Day weekend complete with ER visits and lots of comfort meals at home.  Strangely enough it was in the middle of that weekend that I touched down below that 10% weight loss line.
• The week following that accomplishment has been full of even more roller coasters, landing me exactly where I was two weeks ago.

So where do I start?

Weight loss is never a straight line journey.  There are going to be ups and downs (see my 2-pound chocolate cake story).  I have been anxiously awaiting the time I could announce that I finally lost that first 10%.    Crossing the next line has been a huge motivation for me in recent months. 

Like many patients, I want to lose 20-30 percent of my initial body weight (from January 2010) which would put me around the same weight I was at age 20.  However, losing just 5-10 percent is medically significant and I have already achieved that.  Big kudos to me.

Why do I feel so temporarily discouraged?

I could be that while my mother was home during the days over the Memorial Day weekend, I ate everything right alongside her.  However, she doesn’t need to lose weight and has a stomach which gets hungry after only a few short hours from her previous meal.  In contrast, I might eat 2 cups of carrots with a low-calorie salad dressing for lunch if I feel like it when I’m home alone.

On the days that I was in the hospital outpatient infusion center, I had some tough experiences and found myself ordering comfort food for my meals.  That first day, I was there so long as to have two complete hospital meals but in the process I did discover a great chicken caesar salad entree.  That’s what I had the second of infusions and I felt good about it.  

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I went down to North Carolina to visit some friends.  These couples are very active and have highly active children.  Food was a huge focus of the time we spent together and I ate right alongside the other parents.  Between that and a dose of steroids last week, I come home and found that I was 9 pounds heavier than the week before.

Nine pounds!!  Not the direction I wanted to see the scale move.  However, I had weighed at night which was not part of my routine; and I knew it was primarily water weight as I felt it throughout my body.  

The next morning I weighed again - four pounds less than the night before.  During that entire morning, my kidneys and bladder were working overtime and I literally peed away another two pounds by 2:30 pm in the afternoon.