I had one of those dramatic first weeks where the scale dropped 4.6 pounds in six days. I told myself it was all fat and started planning a monthly pace that was never realistic.
Then the next three weeks were a slow crawl, and now I've been in a flat stretch for almost two months, bouncing between 214 and 217. Looking back, that first dip was mostly water, lower sodium, and the fact that I stopped grazing after dinner.
The actual fat loss was probably a pound or two at most. I'm not mad at the number, exactly.
It gave me momentum when I needed it, but it also made every normal week after feel like failure. These days I'm trying to care more about my waist measurement, my twice-a-week lifting, and whether I hit protein before 8 p.m.
I'd like to hear how other people handled that early drop. Did it motivate you, or did it quietly warp your expectations for the next month?