Haven't we covered this already?

I got my butt kicked at the gym this morning. Jackie book-ended our workout with six minutes on the stair-climber machine. This is the first time this particular machine has made its way into my workouts, and let me now say, it has replaced Jackie's BOSU torture as my most hated gym experience. After an hour of pouring sweat -- doing such crazy activities as stepping sideways across a two-foot stool and doing lunges and squats off the BOSU -- the very last thing I wanted to do, like the LAST THING, was another six minutes on the stair climber. But I did it. And then, just for fun, when I was ready to collapse, we did abs.

When I got home, my T-shirt was clinging to my body. And even after my shower, my face was apple red. I could barely lift my arms to shampoo myself.

Here's the thing about today's workout, though: I deserved every torturous minute of it.

You may have seen my column that came out in today's Health & Fitness section. It proclaimed my 42-pound weigh loss and 23-inch loss. And it made a point at the end to say that, by the time the column was put on the page, I was on track to lose another 5 pounds by today.

Yeah, well, Ms. Cocky got served by the scale this morning. I didn't lose a single ounce this week. Wanna know why? It actually took me a minute to realize why, but then I remembered, "Oh yeah, you ate and drank stuff you weren't supposed to."

That's why today's column is going to sound quite repetative. You're going to think, "Amanda, didn't you write something similar to this a few weeks ago? Didn't you learn your lesson? That you can't eat crap and think you're still going to lose weight?" Simply put, people, no. No, I have not learned my lesson, and I will never learn this particular lesson. Eating right and exercising is such a delicate balance, and I will ALWAYS have to reteach myself how to do it right.

Let's take this week for example. Last Monday I'm riding high on my 42-pound weight loss, so what do I do? Hit the gym even harder the next morning? No. I take my sister to Number 4 and have blue corn nachos and red, red wine. It flowwwwed, that red wine. Delicious. ... Then I had a couple of good days, and then, because I had a couple of good days, I decide to have more wine and a piece or two of pizza. Then I had a couple of more good days, and on Sunday night I thought, "I had more good days than bad this week, so I think I'll finish that bottle of red wine in the kitchen, and I'll go get Cold Stone with my sis." Granted, I had the sinless sweet cream, but it was extra calories I didn't need.

So after I stepped on the scale this morning and saw I hadn't lost a single pound, the week's activities came flooding back, and I re-realized that weight loss doesn't just happen. Every single day I have to be aware of what I'm eating. My body doesn't ignore bad eating days, even if my mind chooses to.

I always do that. I always achieve something great and then get comfortable and reward myself way too much. I wish my reaction to good news was to push myself even more, but unfortunately, only bad news seems to drive me like that.

Well, the zero-pound loss this week was certainly bad news. So consider me fired up again, people. (But I'm sure you'll be reading a post like this again in the future.)