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I’ve been doing what I like to refer to as the “Badd Weight Watcher thing” for a while now, and have just exited a rather long period of not caring. Well, that’s not exactly true. It’s not that I haven’t cared, (I still went to work out semi-regularly, didn’t take every chance I could to binge on the naughty food, and every now and then my goal would cross my mind). I did, however, not exactly make it a point to jump on the scale weekly like I had been doing for a while.

So when I stepped on the scale Friday, expecting the worst, or at least a few extra pounds, I was pleasantly surprised.

I am now only fifteen pounds away from my goal. Fifteen! It’s taken me a long time to get here, but I’m almost to the point of maintaining instead of losing. This, of course, makes me very happy.

I’m no longer a Weight Watchers member. I couldn’t justify paying $40 or more a month just to weigh in every week. And the Weight Watchers data really isn’t easily comparable with normal data, like calorie intake and calorie burn. I have a fitbit, and I have the Aria scale, so once I got the scale, I canceled my membership.

I briefly wondered if I could keep this thing up without the weekly weigh-ins, but I’ve managed, sort of. I definitely don’t regret the decision. I loved my meeting leader, but not enough to pay that extra monetary cost.

I’m looking forward to continuing the countdown, and being able to write the “ground zero” post.

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When it comes to spoken conversation, I swear. A lot.

Sometimes, people tell me I use the word “fuck” too much.

Well, next time that happens, I’m backing that shit up with science.

Swearing can be cathartic, which can help us cope with “intolerable periods of inner conflict, repression and readjustment”.
Swearing can also help us deal with physical pain, believe it or not. One study6 tested how long participants could hold their hand in a bucket of icy water. In the first round, participants were allowed to say a neutral word. In the second round, they repeated a swear word instead. The study found that swearing helped:
Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophize.

You can read the full article here, complete with all kinds of references, and enough history and linguistics to make any nerd’s little heart skip a beat. It even contains everyone’s favorite video Well, OK, maybe it’s just mine.

But the takeaway is this: Swear early, and swear often, because fucking science.