Week 117 Update

It was 06:05 when I finally got up this morning, and stepped up on Mr. Scale, who said, "184.0 pounds!"

One of the fun things about this maintenance journey has been the fact that some weeks my points-per-day average goes up, while my weight goes down, and some weeks my points-per-day average goes down, while my weight goes up. This week was one of the latter. The average number of points that I ate each day this week, moved down from 50.36 to 49.64, and my weight moved up from 183.0 to 184.0. My average weight went up from 183.71 to 184.07. This is all just background noise however. The total number of points that I ate last week was 352.50, and this week it was 347.5. That is only 5 points difference or about seven one-hundredths of a pound. So, the difference in points should have been essentially a wash. The difference in average weight was only 0.36 pounds, which could fall either direction on my scale on any given day, since it only registers down to the nearest half-pound.

The one significant thing about the last two weeks of data is that I seem to have moved my maintenance points-per-day level up to about 50 now. I think that it may be time to revamp my standard eating practices for breakfast (5.0 points) and lunch (12.5 points), to help eliminate the points-boost that I find myself forced to inject into many of my lunches. First off, it will be cheaper in the long run, and secondly, it will be healthier. (Perhaps I have my priorities backwards there, but nobody's perfect, least of all me.)

If I eat a few more points at breakfast and at lunch, it will stabilize my eating from day to day, into a more uniform pattern. This past week, my eating fluctuated from 38.5 on my lowest day to 66.5 on my highest day. That is a 28-point spread! Some weeks have had a much larger spread. (E.g. last week it was 33.0 and 78.0, or a 45-point spread!)

While there are times when it is nice to be able to eat an extra snack, most days I feel more comfortable eating more or less in the same basic area in the points arena. There are two times a day where I get a little extra hungry on some days. The main one is at lunch. I complete the lunch I bring from home, and I still feel like I could use a few more points. The other time of day where I get extra hungry is late in the evening on some days. Usually when I have an exceptionally high day, I have had something big at lunch and then at night I have something beyond the normal for a late snack. (The other high point scenario usually includes a lunchtime splurge coupled with a visit to a restaurant at night for a high point meal.) I doubt that I will be able to, or necessarily would want to lock my points into a rigidly small window, but perhaps a 10 or 20 point window would be better than 38 or 45 points. More trial and error appears to be in my future.

For eating this week, I started off on Saturday weighing-in at a low 183.0, just barely inside my target range. So, I hit it hard with a 66.0 point day. On Sunday, my weight jumped up a pound to 184.5. Great. I didn't want to overshoot, so I held my points down to 40.5. That brought me a one-pound drop on the scale Monday as I weighed 183.5. Dotti and I went to the Clark County Fair in Vancouver, Washington that day and I had one treat there, one half of an "elephant ear" (fried bread, with cinnamon and sugar) which was just great. It was 8.0 points, but it had just the right mixture of tasty ingredients to totally squash my appetite for the next couple of hours while providing a great deal of enjoyment in the flavor department. It was definitely not "health food" but it was excellent! Dotti and I brought our own lunch to the fair and we went out to the car to eat it, which helped to keep my points low. In fact, my lunch, including the points for the elephant ear added in, was only 12.0 points, or half a point lower than my normal lunch. After our busy day, I was not very hungry that evening and my total points for the day dropped to 38.5. The scale rewarded this low point day by jumping up 2.5 pounds on Tuesday to 186.0 pounds. So, I held my points down to 38.5 on that day as well. On Wednesday the scale dropped 2 pounds back to 184.0. So, I ate 50.5 points, and it dropped another pound on Thursday to 183.0. In electronics we call this "hunting" when a system has a delay, overshoot, and correction loop running. My body was definitely in a "hunting" mode at this point. I ate 57.0 points on Thursday, because I didn't want to have sweat a close call on my weigh-in this week like I did last week. On Friday I was only up a half-pound to 183.5. So, I was not too concerned about controlling my points on the upper end. I had a points boost at lunch, and a slightly higher than normal dinner. I had some snacks in the evening and my points ended up being 55.5 for the day. Not terribly high, but definitely not low. And the scale responded with a half-pound bump upwards to 184.0 for this morning.

For exercise this week, I started off going great guns. Dotti and I did a hike that was 4 miles in duration, and included an 1,100 foot change in elevation upwards and then back down. It took us almost 3 hours to complete and was good for 17.7 aerobic points. Then on Sunday Dotti and I took a bike ride. We covered 13.2 miles in 1 hour and 33 minutes, which was good for 9.74 aerobic points. That brought the total for the week up to 27.44. It looked like a cinch to make my goal of 30 points. But the bike ride really did some painful things to my lower back. There was a 2 mile hill that we went up, and by the time we hit the top my right leg had shooting pains all the way down it originating from my lower back. (My recent back troubles have all been the upper back, so this is new territory for me.) Well, that has continued to bother me all week, although it appears to be slowly getting better. However, I have not done any exercise since, other than walking around the fair on Monday, which included about 3 miles of walking at a leisurely pace.

For water this week, other than last Saturday, I did pretty well. I had at least six cups on those other days, and averaged 50.29 ounces (6.28 cups) per day.

I hope to be able to get some walking in this week, and do better than last week on consistency of exercise, if not matching the intensity of last week's efforts.

2 years, 89 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.0/180±2/BMI:23.0/WK-117
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story