Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet*

When I dragged myself out of bed to go to the ballet at Covent Garden tonight – I missed it two years ago when I got sent to cover the Madrid bombings and I refuse to miss it again – a friend told me my face already looks thinner.

She’s the world’s most polite human being, and among the most supportive (and is one of the few who knows I'm on WW), but maybe it’s true.

I lost seven pounds this week.

Yep. It’s true. How can you, too, replicate this feat? Only flu and inability to keep down even a little fruit juice required.

Stay tuned for next week, when we learn how to gain 10 pounds in a week. Oh, wait. I could write that right now.

Weight loss in England seems almost like a game. Not because it’s been easy – but because the measurements on the WW scale are imperial. (Translation: They’re in stone, and there’s 14 pounds to a stone.) Because the numbers are so completely unfamiliar to me, I stand on the scale and it’s like I’m playing a slot machine, wondering what pieces of fruit are going to pop up and whether it’s going to start ringing and dumping out nickels.

Except here I’m not even sure what fruit to hope for. Because the measurements are so unfamiliar, I literally have to pause to remember whether I should be doing little dances of soon-to-be-skinny glee, or merely shuffle my lardy self off the scale to pay my five pounds – ha, sucker! (And don’t think how often I think about the irony of handing over five pounds. “Here, take it!”)

So in British terms, I’ve lost 1 stone 3.5 lbs. In American terms, that’s 17.5 lbs. In real useful terms, about zero, as literally all of my clothes fit the same way. (Is it possible to lose 17.5 pounds entirely from one's ankles, toes, elbows, and earlobes?)

Forty-nine pounds to go.

*(Sorry! Sorry! I used to love A Chorus Line -- the film -- when I was a kid.)