Week 122 Update

I woke Mr. Scale up at 05:45 this morning when I stepped up on him and he said, "184.0 pounds!"

My weight this week has moved nearly through my entire target range, without quite leaving it. Last Saturday I was 183.5, only a half pound above the bottom of my range, and on Monday I was up to 187.0 right at the top of it. My average weight for the week was 185.07, which is about as close as I can get to being right on my target weight. So, no complaints. My weight was impacted early on by the medications that I took for my back, and so my points per day for the week fell from 49.71 to 45.64.

I think this highlights how my maintenance system functions. My weight is held relatively constant, while my points vary as necessary to hold it that way. Once again I am reminded of electronics. There are two major types of power supplies available: current regulated, and voltage regulated.

Example:

For a computer, it is critical that you have a very tight control on the supply voltage. A change of only a small amount in voltage in the CPU will spell the difference between a one and a zero reading. It can throw bytes of data into chaos if the power supply should be varying even a volt or two, and then the computer cannot function. So, the power supply in your computer is a voltage regulated supply.

For an easy way of looking at it, Ohm's Law can tell us what is going on. For any DC circuit:

This is just how I run my maintenance. I don't care about the number of points that I eat, within the normal operating range of my physiological system, I am just regulating my weight on the scale. I supply as many points as required in order to hold my weight at 185 pounds. Some days my body seems to be loaded down and I need more fuel to keep things going. Other days, the system has slowed down and I need less fuel. It is an ongoing process of monitoring and adjustment, just like a voltage regulator uses.

Eating and weight – I started off low at 183.5 this week. Dotti and I had a nice lunch at the Multnomah Falls Lodge on Saturday, but even so my total points for the day only came to 46.5. However, the medications I took kicked in to retain water and on Sunday I was up to 185.5. I only ate 35.5 points on Sunday, but my weight jumped up to 187.0 on Monday. I was able to drop the meds and after eating 39.0 points, on Tuesday my weight dropped to 185.5 again. I ate a maintenance level of 50.0 points, and my weight dropped to 185.0 on Wednesday. I was feeling better about that. I ate 46.5 points, and then Thursday my weight dropped to 184.0. I ate 54.0 points, a bit over maintenance level and on Friday I was 184.5. I felt good about that, since I was only one day away from my weigh-in. So, I ate 48.0 points, very close to my maintenance level, and had a drop of only a half pound down to 184.0 this morning.

Physical Therapy – I had my last two sessions of Physical Therapy this week. They were good workouts and I was tired after each of them.

Overall, I think the most important thing that I got out of the PT sessions was learning the fact that slapping ice on my back makes the pain go away for a while. I think I will probably become a long-term user of ice for pain control. The exercises that I went through seemed to help while I was actually doing them, and sometimes the benefits would last through the evening but clearly the problem was not solved, and the best I could hope for was to cover up the symptoms. My doctor warned me that might be the case.

Exercise – On Saturday, Dotti and I had a great walk to the top of Multnomah Falls. In spite of taking over one hundred pictures on the way up, it only took us 34 minutes to get to the highest point. Once we got to the top of the falls, we took quite a number of pictures there as well, and had the viewing platform all to ourselves for nearly the whole time, which was a rare treat. Only one other couple came while we were there, but they left after only a moment's stop, and the rest of the time we were alone with the fabulous view. On the way down, Dotti led the way, and we went from the highest point to the bridge in about 10 minutes. The entire 2.4-mile hike, including our picture taking, and time on the viewing platform took 1 hour and 15 minutes. I counted it as 6.5 aerobic points.

On Monday, after a day of taking it easy, I got to work early enough to get a walk in. The temperature was in the high 50s and I walked 2 miles in 27:21. That came out to and average time of 13:41 or 4.39 mph, and was worth 5.77 aerobic points. At lunch I was still ready for more, and I walked another 2 miles, however I did not hold the same pace. It was warmer and I was a bit tired from the morning exercise. I took 29:25 to complete the walk. (14:43 per mile; 4.08 mph) It was good for 5.15 aerobic points and brought my total for the day to 10.92.

Tuesday I was still feeling pretty good, and so I walked 3 miles at lunch, in 42:28. That averaged out at 14:09 per mile or 4.24 mph, and counted for 8.71 aerobic points.

On Thursday, after having rested a day, I took a 1-mile walk in the morning. I really didn't feel good during the walk, and the temperature was up a bit and it felt muggy. I took 14:24 to complete the mile, which was a pace of 4.17 mph. It was only 2.16 aerobic points and that was the last of my exercising for the week. The nice cool temperatures that we had early in the week were disappearing, and my knees and hips were starting to ache. So, I relaxed for a couple of days to see if I could recover for the weekend activities.

This week I only logged 28.29 aerobic points which is just a bit under my goal of 30, but it is really close (and I am not sure that I gave myself all that I earned for the Multnomah Falls hike), and I think it was a good week. I know that the 12 minutes that I did on the arm bicycle machine, covering about a mile of distance according to the machine readout, was easily the hardest work I did for the week in that amount of time: my heart rate was up and I was breathing hard. If I had walked a mile in 12 minutes it would have been worth 3 aerobic points, and I did it twice this week, and didn't count any aerobic points for it. So, overall I think it was a good week for exercise.

Water – I averaged drinking 59.43 oz of water per day this week. That is 7.4 cups (1.75 liters) per day, and well within my target of 6-8 cups per day. Sunday was the only day where I drank less than 6, and Monday I drank 12 to compensate. Overall I am happy with my water consumption this week.

I can see that the future years are going to be a continuing challenge to deal with the pains that the added years are giving me. I can still do nearly any single thing that I could do 20 years ago for a short period of time, but there is price to be paid for it. I will be sore the next day, or my joints might swell up, or my back might give me grief. I can see the day coming when I will just not be able to do the same things I used to at all, and will have to resign myself to doing things that are less traumatic to my body. It is a lesson that is going to be hard for me to learn, because I won't just give up gracefully to the onslaught of the years. I will no doubt go through periods of injury because of my attempts to overdo things, and then have to recover in bad temper. But I am going to try and push the years of forced seriously restricted activity as far out into the future as I can. I got outside the other day and took a number of swings with the bat, left and right handed, just to see how my back would feel about it. It didn't complain. So, I will probably be going down to the batting cage again one of these days, and see if I can still hit an 85 mph fast ball. No, I am not going to give up easily.

2 years, 124 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.0/180±2/BMI:23.0/WK-122
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story