Week 180 Update

It was 46º at 05:30 at home when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, “184.5 pounds!”

This week was definitely out of the ordinary for me. From Sunday night until Friday evening, I was on my own, as Dotti was at the coast with my mother. I normally rely heavily on Dotti for what I eat each day, and that was a big change.

On Saturday, at the coast, after weighing in at 183.0 in the morning, I did some snacking on things I normally don't each much of, including cashews and apple cobbler. LeRoy barbequed some hamburgers at lunch, and by day's end I had eaten 61.0 points.

On Sunday, I weighed 181.5. We spent the day at the coast, and then LeRoy and I headed back home. During the day we drove around Lincoln City, and did some shopping at antique stores and bookstores. I picked up something that I had been looking for, for quite some time: an encyclopedia that was printed before World War II. In this case it was printed in the 1920s. The entire set was cheaper than some single books that I have purchased in the past, and it is great shape, with some awesome foldout maps of the states, etc. We stopped by a Christmas shop to show Mom a "distortion mirror," that made us look like dwarves, and that we had discovered the day before. The shop was just closing, and we told the proprietress that we were just there for the mirror this time. She laughed and told us to enjoy ourselves. And so we did, as we were making faces and posing. It was just a fun day. We had lunch at a Mexican food restaurant, and I ate 26.0 points there. After saying goodbye to Dotti and Mom, LeRoy and I headed back to Vancouver. We had a nice visit along the way, and then LeRoy headed home to his apartment. By the end of the day I had consumed 67.0 points.

Monday morning I weighed 182.5. I pieced something together for lunch, and dinner that day, and I ended up eating 48.5 points. The house was so lonely that night, but at least Dotti and I had our cell phones, and we could talk with each other for unlimited time for free with our calling plan. So, we could at least keep in touch, and say good night when we went to bed.

Tuesday I weighed 181.0 pounds. Oops! I decided to fix that, so I didn't make a lunch that day. I ate at McDonald's and had 31.0 points for lunch, including a Butterfinger McFlurry. In the evening I opened up some cans and cooked myself some tamales and frijoles. Dinner was 17.0 points. After some extra points for breakfast as well, my total for meals was 65.0 points. For the day, I ended up eating 78.5 points. I figured that ought to impress the scale.

Wednesday I found that I was right. I was up 3 pounds to 184.0 where I belonged. The night before I had forgotten to set my alarm (I am helpless without Dotti ) and I rolled over in the morning and saw that it was 06:33. I normally am on the road close to then, and seldom leave much after 06:45. So, there was a mad scramble to get on the road, and making a lunch was not part of that package. Surprisingly, I actually made it to work with a couple of minutes to spare. However, I had to buy my lunch again that day, and, at 22.0 points, it was higher than I would normally have eaten, but not as high as the day before. In the evening I opened a can of butter beans, boiled some rice and, added a bit more, that all added up to 14.0 points. For meals I had 41.0 points, and total for the day came to 61.0. Not as high as the day before, but higher than I had originally planned for the day.

Not surprisingly, on Thursday the scale moved up again to 185.5. I made my own lunch, holding my points down to 8.5, and after a light dinner, I ended up eating 26.5 points for meals, and 40.0 points for the day. That was closer to being back to normal for me. I settled down for the last lonely night before Dotti came home.

Friday, I was very happy! The scale was right at 185.0, but that is not what I was happy about. I knew that Dotti would be driving home this day! Mom would be coming along, and it was her car that Dotti would be driving. I knew that we would be eating at Sweet Tomatoes that evening, because Mom just loves that restaurant. So, I wanted to save some points for that, with weigh-in coming the next day. I had my normal 5.0 points for breakfast, but held my lunch down to 7.0 points. Then at Sweet Tomatoes I could have pretty much whatever I wanted. I ate 20.5 points for dinner, after our happy reunion after work. (I actually got home before they did, thanks to them getting a late start and then running into heavy traffic as a result.) By day's end I had eaten 42.5 points, right where I wanted to be for the day, and that led to my weigh-in of 184.5.

For water this week, I got in at least 6 cups every day. I average drinking 58.29 ounces (7.3 cups) per day. That definitely falls in the target range of 6 to 8 cups per day.

Exercise was adequate this week. I walked a total of 23.6 miles, which is just over the amount I need to walk every week for a year in order to reach 1200 miles. So, it helped me hold my ground, so I didn't get any farther behind, but it did not help me catch up.

On Saturday, Dotti and LeRoy wanted to go to the Casino in Lincoln City for a couple of hours, and I wanted to go check out some books stores. As it turned out, the farthest bookstore was just over 4 miles away. I decided to leave the van with Dotti and LeRoy, and walk to the bookstores. Then when they were finished at the Casino, they could come pick me up. That sounded good to them as well, so as the early afternoon was just getting started, when off we went on our separate ways. I reached the first bookstore in just over 18 minutes, and my GPS told me that I had gone 1.25 miles. After looking around that store, I went on my way without buying anything. Robert's Books, the bookstore that I was really anxious to visit, is a large store, and it is loaded with a wide variety of used books. It also was the one that was the farthest away. I passed another bookstore or two along the way, but being small, did not entice me to stop. When I reached my destination, the GPS said I had gone another 3.14 miles, and my stopwatch told me it had taken 46:41 to cover the distance.

When Dotti and LeRoy arrived to pick me up, they ended up parking the car across the street at the aforementioned Christmas shop. Upon leaving the bookstore, and crossing the street (not a simple task with the amount of traffic that highway carries), we first noticed the "carnival mirror." After playing around with the mirror some, and joking with each other that it was probably a one-way mirror and they were laughing at us on the other side, we went inside, happily found that the wall behind the mirror was quite opaque, and spent a while enjoying all the beautiful Christmas stuff. That set a great mood for the rest of the day.

Sunday Mom decided to join me for a walk at about 09:00. We walked back and forth in front of the condominium buildings, until we had covered 2.69 miles, and Mom felt it was time to go back inside. I continued on, and walked a little farther down the road until I reached a place called Boiler Bay. Mom's timing was perfect, because it didn't rain the entire time that she was walking with me, but it started coming down really hard right after she went inside. Fortunately my coat kept me dry, and I had fun looking at the ocean, and seagulls. After an hour and nineteen minutes total, I completed 4.2 miles.

Monday, I arrived early at work and walked 2.5 miles. At lunch I walked a 3.17-mile loop, and before driving home to our empty house, I walked another 3.17 miles. Things were looking good for a lot of miles this week at that point.

Alas, on Tuesday and Wednesday I did not feel well. I am not sure what it was, but I certainly did not feel up to walking. I was just barely up to going to work. So, it was zero miles for those two day.

Thursday, I eased back into the walking game walking 3.17 miles at lunch, at a 4.13 mph pace.

Friday I walked 1.5 miles in the morning, and 1.5 miles at lunch. In the evening we celebrated the happy return, and that did not include walking.

So, at week's end, in addition to the 23.6 miles for the week, I had 108.4 miles completed for the month, and my total for the year was moved up to 933.6. Everything over 100 miles that I walk, in any given month, goes towards working off my deficit, and so I already have 8.4 miles to the good. Everything that I walk for the rest of the month will work towards removing more of the 74.8 miles in the hole I started the month with. I have a week and a couple of days to chip away as many of those miles as I can.

3 years, 165 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.5/180±2/BMI:23.06/WK-180
GRAPHS: Weight Loss/Year 1 Maint./Year 2 Maint./Year 3 Maint./Miles Walked
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