Week 121 Update

I got up at 05:11 and stepped on Mr. Scale, who promptly said, "183.5 pounds!" Well, at least that is in my range, and it is what I should have expected after where I was yesterday, and the fact that I only ate 47.0 points.

This past week I averaged eating 49.71 points per day, and still I dropped a pound and a half. I don't think that is too important since my average weight was only down by 0.07 pounds, which is far smaller than the smallest real difference that my scale can read on any given day. (Technically I should just ignore that second digit to the right of the decimal point since my scale is only good for half-pound increments but I can't help myself. ) In other words, for the week, I maintained my weight at the same level by eating about 50 points a day. This falls in line with the data I have been collecting for several weeks now.

My back has been going from feeling a lot like it did before I hurt it, to feeling as bad as it did when I hurt it. When I am active, it usually feels pretty good. Most of the time that I feel pain I am either standing for a prolonged period of time, or I am sitting. I feel that I am making progress, but I am coming to doubt that I will ever be all the way back to a totally pain free condition.

Eating and weight – My weight tailed off a bit at the end of the week, but overall it was pretty consistent. The first few days I stayed within one pound of my target weight. It wasn't until Thursday that I fell to two pounds below my target.

Saturday I weighed in at my target weight of 185.0. I only ate 41.0 points. The scale dropped a pound on Sunday, and I ate 53.5 points. Monday I was back at 185.0. I ate 55.5 points, but the scale still dropped to 184.0 Tuesday morning. I ate 44.5 points, because I felt that something caused a false drop on the scale. On Wednesday my weight moved up to 184.5 pounds. Since that is very close to where I want to be, I ate 50.0 points to hold it there. On Thursday the scale surprised me by dropping to 183.0. I ate 56.5 points to compensate. On Friday I was back up to 184.5. I planned to eat more, but when it came time for bed, I had only eaten 47.0 points. My evening weight was up high enough to where I felt confident that I would at least remain in my target range in the morning, so I didn't eat any more before going to bed. This morning my weight had dropped to 183.5, but it did stay in my target range.

Physical Therapy – I had two sessions this week. At the end of the sessions my back usually feels pretty good. I am not having any more of the electrical stimulation, but I am still getting 10 minutes of ice on my back each session. (Both days this week I had a Perry Mason novel that I was reading for the ice session to make the time go by quicker.) There are days when I think I am fine, and then others when I don't think I will ever be fine. I am pretty sure that it will be an ongoing issue from now on and I will have to be proactive about keeping the muscles in my back strong and supportive for my ailing spine.

Exercise – I really goofed off last weekend. No exercise at all. And it was a 3 day weekend! It wasn't until Tuesday that I finally got moving and took a walk. It turned out to be a 3-mile walk. (And I think I strained a muscle in my left hip because it has been hurting some ever since. But it is not too bad.) I walked the three miles in 41:06, or 13:42 per mile (4.38 mph). Each of the three miles was pretty close to the same speed as the others. It was good for 9.13 aerobic points. Unfortunately, the week was a hot one for the weather, and I had to do my walking in the morning if I was going to do it at all. Wednesday I just didn't feel up to walking in the morning, because my hip was hurting enough to keep me from trying. On Thursday I only walked one mile and it took 14:15 to complete it. On Friday I was feeling a bit better and so I walked 2 miles in the morning, and it took 28:29 to complete them. That was 14:14.5 per mile (4.21 mph). That added up to another 5.42 aerobic points and left me well shy of my goal for the week. I earned 16.76 aerobic points of the 30 I needed. Hopefully this week I will do better.

Water this week - I drank at least 6 cups on every day except Saturday, when I only drank 4. I did average 48 ounces (6 cups) per day, which is just at the lower end of my goal. I think the fact that I am not relying so much on water to curb my appetite, since I am eating about all I can handle right now on most days, is holding me back on my water drinking. I am going to have to force myself to drink more water each day.

A Few Thoughts - I have completed 121 weeks of my journey so far. That is 11 x 11 weeks, or 77 x 11 days. It is amazing how the time accumulates. It seems like only a short time ago when I set off on the path, looking to achieve weight loss, and yet 847 days have gone by. The one thing that I really couldn't predict when I started was what my enthusiasm level for the journey would be at this point. At the start, it was impossible to say where I would be 2.3 years into my journey. Was I going to be destined to fall by the wayside as I tried to lose my weight, as had happened so many times before? Was I going to lose the weight but then put it right back on, after growing weary of the process? Would I succeed for a while and then lose interest, allowing my weight to creep back on again?

Fortunately, the answer to all of those questions is no. But the future is still out there and the journey has only just begun. I like what this journey has done for me, and I am still excited by the challenges it presents. It has managed to remain in an position of importance in my daily life, but it has moved from being a struggle to being more or less a routine. I know what I can eat and what I have to do to keep my weight where I want it. I find what I have to do at this point to be relatively easy, and the rewards have been fantastic.

When I set out on this journey, I could not have asked for more than I have actually received in return for my efforts. The big adjustments came for me at only a few places.

At first, I was hungry, eating less food, but I found that drinking water would curb my hunger. I found out from my lovely wife's example and counsel that I could eat many wonderful types of foods, treats, and snacks throughout the day and still remain within my range of points.

I had to make an adjustment when my range changed. When my weight fell below 225 pounds, I lost 2 of the points that I had been allowed to eat. I felt that. I had to break out the water in real earnest on some days to get past that bump in the road of my journey. But it passed.

The next 2-point drop came when I hit 200 pounds, my official goal. I was excited about making goal, but I still felt the momentary restriction upon what I was used to eating. But it too passed, and by that time I was actually averaging low enough to be within my points range anyway, even before the drop. But I had set as one of my primary goals at the start of my journey that I would not intentionally go over my points on any single day. Some days I ate right at the top of my range. Those days now were held down to 2 points less than they were before. My 24 ounce drinking glass got more of workout as a result.

Then came the day that I hit my personal goal of 190. I started to pull in the reins and work towards maintenance. It was not long before I realized that it was going to be impossible to maintain exactly at 190, and I felt strongly that I did not want to ever be over 190 pounds. So, I then created my target weight goal. I tried 187.5 but that was still too close to 190. So, I dropped it down to 185.0 and have been relatively safe from going over 190 ever since.

The struggle then began in earnest to establish my maintenance program. I tried to find a range of points to eat. But that was impossible. You don't maintain within a range of points. When you burn X number of calories, you don't need to eat X ± Y calories, you need to eat X calories. Losing is far more flexible in what you can do, because you are only interested in moving the scale in one direction. Maintenance was going to be a bit trickier.

In any case, I seem to have found something that has worked fairly well, and now it is not very much of a struggle at all to continue it. I honestly believe that I could do this at 30 points-per-day with nearly the same level of difficulty (or ease, depending on your point of view) as I am doing it at 50 points. If I were not beefing up my points during lunch, I would immediately drop my points-per-day by 10 points. If I ate smaller evening meals, which would be no problem, I could take out the rest of the excess points and still be left with plenty of snacking points for the evening. There are some other painless adjustments I could make (in the area of food and snack selection) to lower my points even more.

I am still very excited by the control this has introduced into my life. I don't have to fight to keep my pants from getting too tight any more, and forcing me to move up to a larger size. I don't have to watch my belt move out notch after notch and reach the point where I have to cut new holes in it so I can buckle it. This is a big deal to me. These things were things that I had to deal with for years. They were part of my everyday life. My weight control in those days was panic driven. Even the use of the word "control" was more in the sense of "damage control" rather than "being in charge" of a process. I felt my pants growing too tight, so I would attempt to go on a diet. Sooner or later I would finally give up and move to the next size of pants. Some particular weight on the scale would scare me into pulling back. The final weight where I was bumping up against was 240 but I think it would have just kept going higher if I had not started my journey.

Today, I wear the same size pair of pants that I did last year. I wear the same sized shirts. My pants always fit very close to exactly how they did yesterday, last week, last month and last year. This is exciting! And it is simple. As long as I pay attention each day to what I am doing, things sort themselves out with very little fuss.

There are still two hurdles that are visible on the horizon. What if something upsets my applecart? Sickness, an extremely stressful event, or whatever else could jumble up my life for me, might leave this calm scenario in a mess. What will I do? How can I answer that before it happens? I can't. I can only set my mind into the track of attempting to do my best in the face of adversity and leave it at that.

A second possible hurdle is attention deficit. What if my attention drifts? What if I lose interest, or for some reason stop doing what I am doing today to maintain? Although that does not look imminent today, forever is long time, and so the potential problem must be faced. What I am doing now is journaling every day, which keeps me on track and accountable, and I post my weekly updates on the web page. That also keeps me accountable and motivated to avoid having to post how I wandered off the track so far that I am completely in the wrong state or country. In fact it is hard to overestimate the value of having a place where you must come and show yourself as satisfactory or unsatisfactory in your week's work. It is in a sense like having your homework and tests graded. (How focused would students be if they never received grades for their work?) I may not get an "A," but I want to make sure and avoid that "F." Motivation is everything, and each person has to find his own wherever he can. At this point in my journey I have found mine.

I felt really happy when I hit my official goal weight, happier still when I hit my personal goal, and then when I hit my target weight I felt very happy. Each of these things was an event, something that could be put on a calendar, with anniversaries to come. (For example I am now 3 weeks and 1 day from the second anniversary of reaching my official goal of 200 pounds.) But the joy I get from remaining in place, within my target weight range, exceeds those other clearly demarcated events, by leaps and bounds. This was what I wanted when I started my journey. Losing weight is useless without maintenance. Maintenance is the goal, and it is a lifelong journey. No matter what it costs, it is really worth it!

That is not to say that life will not take charge and push me away from where I want to be. There is nothing set in concrete, except my commitment. As long as I remain committed to the journey, in time I will succeed. If medications should force my weight up, even for extended periods of time, I will still be on the journey and I will be successful. If a medical or psychological condition, or other factor makes my weight increase when I am doing my best to maintain it where it is, I will still be successful. It is not the weight on the scale today that determines our success, but rather it is the commitment to the journey that makes that determination. There are no doubt people who are at their goal weight today, who do not have that commitment, and there are those who are not (or perhaps who have never been) at their goal weight, but who do have that commitment. Success is owned by the latter, not the former.

I will never be a "normally thin person." But I am committed to being a person who is, from this point forward, normally thin. (The distinction between the two will be clear to anyone like myself who has a built in weight control problem.)

And now for week 122…

2 years, 117 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/183.5/180±2/BMI:22.94/WK-121
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story