Week 102 Update

It was 44° at 04:44, when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, “180.0 pounds!” Oh my, that was a surprise! Hitting my new goal already was not expected. The lowest I had seen all week before was 182.5. So, that was a nice little pre-conference present from Mr. Scale.

My average weight for the week was nearly 182.86. That is outside of the ±2 pound window, but it is close. I will be careful this week, and hopefully it will pull the average down to my new goal. With a 2.5 pound drop in 24 hours, it is likely that I will have a bump up again before it comes down for good. It should be an interesting week, especially with the conference starting this week, and my next weigh-in actually being at the conference.

When I my average weight comes down to 180.0, I will take my waist measurement and see what I have lost there as a result of the dropped weight.

There is no doubt that I held my points down this week. Last August I had one week where I averaged less than 40 points per day. I also had one week below 40 in September. Then I went all the way up until March before I had another week where I averaged less than 40 points per day. And this week is the only other time in 2003 where I ate that few points for a week.

Playing with the numbers a bit, I find that up until I started working towards my new goal, I had averaged 185.6 pounds since the start of the year, and that I averaged eating 46.1 points per day. Figuring 50 calories per point that comes to 2305 calories per day. According to my calorie calculator, that would put me in the LIGHT ACTIVITY category. For that same category, 180.0 pounds should require 40.5 calories less to maintain. That is about one point per day. Therefore, I should be able to maintain my new weight of 180.0 by averaging 45 points per day. If it works out that way in reality, I can’t see that I will be able to tell the difference between the two eating levels. It should be fairly transparent to my hunger level, and eating routine.

Back to my update. For eating this week, I knew that I would have to hold it down in order to continue to lose towards my goal. So, I never ate over 44.0 points on any day, and I ate below 40 points on three of the days. On Saturday, after my 184.0 pound weigh-in, I ate 34.0 points. On Sunday the scale moved up to 184.5. I ate 35.0 points and found that the scale dropped on Monday to 182.5. I ate 43.5, and Tuesday the scale moved up a half pound. I ate 43.5 once more, feeling confident that I was eating low enough to at least drop something for the week. The scale took a 1.5 pound jump up on Wednesday. However, I was not deterred, and I ate 44.0 points, my highest level for the entire week that day. Thursday morning I had dropped back down to 183.0. I ate 42.5 points, and the scale dropped again to 182.5 on Friday morning. Friday I only ate 1 point’s worth of food in the car during my drive, and when I got home, I was very busy working on conference related activities. Before I knew it, the night was gone, and I had only eaten 33.0 points. This morning, the scale dropped 2.5 pounds and showed me at my goal.

One pound should be about 70 points. In order to lose one pound, I should have to eat about 70 points less than I actually burn up. So for this week, assuming that I need between 45 and 46 points per day to maintain, that means I averaged eating about 6 points per day less than I was burning. That should translate to about a one-half pound loss. My best guess as to why I had the sudden larger drop was that I had been taking Advil earlier in the week, and I didn’t take any yesterday. Also, last week, I may have had an artificially high weigh-in because of the extra sodium I had the night before, and I probably got that loss back this week, which I didn’t get credit for last week. It wasn’t a drop in 4 pounds of fat this week, I am sure. I am going to monitor closely what the scale is doing the next few days. Hopefully, it won’t take a big jump up.

I was terrible on my exercise this week. I only earned 17 of the 30 aerobic points that my goal requires. I didn’t make it to the gym at all this week. I did do some weight training at home. We purchased some dumbbells and I used them to get a workout in the morning a couple of times. I only walked twice this week, 3 miles on Tuesday, and 3 miles on Friday. The Friday walk was something new I tried. I got in to work early enough to where I could take a one mile walk before starting time for work. It took me 14:01 to walk the mile. (2.28 aerobic points) I didn’t push it too hard. Then at lunch, I walked another 2 miles in 26:29. (6.48 aerobic points) That added up to 8.76 aerobic points for the day, and didn’t take my whole lunch hour up for walking. I may be doing more of that split walking in the future. I definitely will be doing more walking in the morning as the summer heat starts to increase in another month or so.

For water this week, I averaged 83.43 ounces (10.4 cups) per day for the week. That is well above my goal of 6-8 cups per day. I had at least 6 cups each day of the week too.

This time next week we will be in the morning session of the second day of the conference. I am going to be very busy for the next few days getting ready. The Zonies will start arriving in just a few days. It is going to be fun!!!

1 year, 349 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/180.0/180±2/BMI:22.50/WK-102
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story