I had a little bit of a scratchy throat on Sunday, but I didn't think much of it, and went ahead and went to swim practice. Monday I woke up with an even worse sore throat. I took it easy all day Monday and most of Tuesday because I don't get sick days -- I have to teach if I possibly can, and I have 4-hour classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and then was supposed to guest-star in a friend's class on Thursday night.

I had signed up for a Lose It! challenge to exercise every day in January for 30 minutes, so I did try to stick with it by taking a walk Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was feeling even worse and was facing another night of teaching so I decided to give up on the challenge -- 29/31 days isn't bad, especially considering that I exercised for more than 30 minutes most of those days.

Lose It uses a bank-account method -- it gives you credit for the calories you burn, but it keeps the baseline low enough that I should lose even if I don't exercise if I stay in the green zone. According to Russ and Jeff, my calorie goals should be higher but I shouldn't eat exercise calories. It works out about the same on weeks when I am exercising regularly -- I suppose I could mess around with the settings on Lose It, but I haven't bothered. This week looks worse than it really is as a result. It doesn't matter. I don't expect to lose this week, and because I have been drinking so much water, I have also been eating foods that are a little higher in salt. I weighed in this morning and was up about a pound from Monday. Not surprising, considering how congested I am and how much I feel off my game.

If I were on a diet, or had a weight-loss resolution, I might feel like I had blown my good record. What I really think is that things like this are going to happen, and once I am feeling better, I am looking forward to getting back to my new normal lifestyle, and I expect that I will go back to losing regularly. As Jeff would say (and I was thrilled to see that Russ had posted a new podcast), "You can fail a diet but you can't fail a lifestyle."

I have been feeling a little better the last couple of days. I even shoveled my sidewalk and driveway yesterday, which took about 45 minutes, and went out and swept and salted this morning. I am going to skip swimming tonight and hope that I wake up feeling better tomorrow and can start a healthier week.