It’s been pretty exactly two months that Amy and I have been on the South Beach Diet. At the beginning. I weighed in at almost 178 lbs. I joked that it’d be nice if I could reach my “goth weight” of 155 — the weight I remembered being when I was 20 and trying to emulate the look of gaunt, vampiric Peter Murphy of Bauhuas. I had no intention of going that far, nor did I think it would be possible.
This morning, the scale read 155.4.
A few caveats need to be applied, however:
- Throughout the diet, my weight has fluctuated up and down by as many as 5 lbs. Last night, for example, I weighed in at 162, but I was fully clothed and had just eaten dinner. This morning, I was in my underwear only and had not yet had breakfast. My “official” weight is probably around 160.
- The original weight of 178 was registered after several days of pre-diet binging, so it was probably a bit inflated. My clothed weight from previous years’ doctor’s appointments, however, was around 175, so low- to mid-170’s is probably a fair estimate of my “normal” weight prior to the diet.
- Amy observed that I’m not really all that gaunt, and that 155 for someone my height (5’ 10”) isn’t that far from “normal.” In all liklihood, my “goth weight” was probably lower. I am, after all, relying on my admittedly faulty memory of something 15 years ago.
So, rather than claim I have lost 23 pounds in 2 months, it’s probably more like 15.
Nevertheless, my size 34 and 35 pants no longer fit; in fact, the 35’s fall right off my body to the floor. I bought a pair of 32’s from Value Village the oher day, and even they were a bit too loose. I haven’t worn a 32-inch waist since my mid-20’s, and I haven’t been a size 31 since those halcyion black-hair, eye-liner-wearing days of my late teens and early 20’s.
