Week 130 Update

At 05:00 I stepped on Mr. Scale and he said, "Ouch!" At least he should have, since his numerical readout showed, "187.0" pounds. Just under the wire this week.

It is sort of funny too, since the last time that I ate fewer points for a week than I did this week, was the week ended on 10/04/2003, and I weighed 187.0 on that week too! My average weight for that week (186.79) was almost as high as the one for this week (187.0) but this week was definitely my highest average weight for a week since I hit maintenance. (The last day marking a higher average weight for the previous 7 days was Christmas Day 2001, where my average weight for the previous week was 187.07.) Fortunately, I was able to stay within my target range with my average, and my weekly weigh-in for today.

The one bright spot for the week is that I have found an alternative to the prescription anti-inflammatory medications that I have been taking for my back, and I am hoping that will take me off of this roller coater ride on the scale each day due to water retention. We will have to wait and see if it will work out that way.

Eating and Weight – Saturday the first of November, I weighed in at 185.5, very close to my target weight. So, I felt comfortable with eating the 54.05 points I had that day. Dinner was at a restaurant where Dotti, LeRoy and I had a nice meal. This restaurant specializes in seafood, which I don't eat, but which Dotti finds really helpful in keeping her OP. For my meal, I had half of an avocado, turkey and bacon sandwich (made with bread that was cut from a loaf with one of the largest cross sectional area I have ever seen), some fries, and a nice dinner salad. I also had some sourdough bread (my absolute favorite type of bread!) while I was waiting for my meal. The entire meal came to 19.5 points, and fit easily into my points window for the day. On Sunday, after weighing in at 186.5 pounds, I had a busy day. LeRoy was in the process of moving, and we were going to help him. On the way over, Dotti and I stopped at Subway for lunch (6.0 points for a turkey sub with cheese), and just before we got there, my pager went off. After dropping Dotti off so she could help LeRoy, I ended up spending the next 5 hours shipping a part to San Jose. (It is kind of funny that it took so long, especially when you consider the fact that I have driven to San Jose in 11 hours before!) While I was waiting for over an hour at the office for the courier to arrive, I had a bag of peanut M&Ms (5.5 points). When I got finished, I headed over and picked up Dotti and LeRoy from the mall, where they had walked after dropping off the rental truck. We all had an All American Ice Cream (2.0 pts), and then headed home. I had 11.0 points for dinner and 55.0 points for the day.

On Monday, the scale said 186.0 pounds. At work I was busy all week, with at least one time-consuming problem occurring on the machines each day. So, I was not sitting around much this week.

I ate 45.0 points on Monday, but I did take some pain medications. I had lifted a part that was fairly heavy and my back was not really happy about it. It wasn't terribly bad, but just uncomfortable. Naturally on Tuesday the scale jumped up to 187.5. I knew it was the medications, and so I didn't worry too much about it. I ate 55.5 points that day. On Wednesday, my weight came back down to 186.0. I ate 53.0 points. After Wednesday's medications, on Thursday the scale jumped up to 188.5. I then started working in earnest towards getting my weigh-in weight for today back on track. I first off tried some Excedrin for my pain symptoms, which is not an anti-inflammatory medication. It seemed to work pretty well. Secondly, I held my points down to 41.0. On Friday, the scale fell back most of the way to my range when it read 187.5 pounds. I stayed low on my points yesterday and ate 41.5. This morning I squeaked in at 187.0 pounds.

The reason that I originally picked 185.0 as my target weight was so that when I had weeks like this, and the scale jumped up, even on high days like Thursday, where I was 3.5 pounds over my target, I still would remain under my personal goal of 190. That is my real goal: to never again weigh more than 190 for my morning weigh-in. So far that has worked! Since hitting maintenance, even with the medications, the only time that I have weighed over 190 is in the evening after consuming a large quantity of water. So far the system has worked for me.

Exercise – This was a pretty bad week for exercise, at least for exercise that I could count. I was definitely active all week at work, but I only made it to the gym once all week and didn’t get in any additional walking at all.

Saturday Dotti and I went to the gym and I did my normal arm bike and weight routine. I then tackled a "Multnomah Falls" walk on the treadmill, consisting of 1 mile at 15% incline in 17:47, and then finishing off the 1.2 miles on the level in 20:23. I then continued to complete 1.93 miles in 30:00 minutes and 2.0 miles in 31:00 minutes. The entire visit to the gym I counted as 10.0 aerobic points.

Dotti has started using a personal trainer at the gym, and the lady has really been putting Dot through a workout. The only downside of that is that her workouts are during the day when I am working, so I can't go at the same time. I am still determining whether or not I want to get back to the 04:30 schedule again, or try something else. Maybe taking my gym bag with me and just stopping at the gym on the way home from work a couple of nights a week will have be my solution.

Water – I didn't do as well on water this week. Last weekend I did pretty badly, with only 3 cups each day. For the week I average 61.71 ounces (7.7 cups) of water each day, which is near the top of my minimum target range of 6 to 8 cups per day.

Week's Evaluation – While I came close to going out of my weight target range today, I managed to hold on and bring it back in. I averaged 49.36 points-per-day, which is just below my maintenance level of 50.0, so I am happy with that. I did get to the gym once this week, which is not good but it is better than not going at all. I hope that I can do better during this upcoming week. I got my water in for the week, and so I am satisfied with the results for the last 7 days. It wasn't perfect, but it was acceptable, and I will take that any time.

2 years, 180 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/187.0/180±2/BMI:23.37/WK-130
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story