Week 196 Update

I woke Mr. Scale up at 04:55 when I stepped up on him, and he said, "183.5 pounds!"

I slept very well last night for a couple of reasons. One of which was that I weighed 187.0 pounds with my pajamas on before I went to sleep. I knew that there was no chance of my being high on the scale this morning, and I was able to sleep the sleep of total confidence. J The second reason for my sleeping well was the walk Dotti and I took yesterday, but more on that later.

Here is how the week went...

Saturday - I weighed in at 184.5 pounds, and did my online update first thing in the morning. We spent much of the day getting ready for our trip. I normally keep my tools in the clean room at my customer's site, and it is a bit of work to get them out and into my car. So, I decided this time that I would buy the few tools that I needed for the trip, so I could just leave my toolbox alone at work. We picked up what I needed at a new Home Depot that has opened not too far from our house. We also got a few other items for the trip and then stopped by Red Robin for lunch. I got a Monster Burger, but I only ate half of it, and got out the door after only eating 16.0 points.

When we got home, we soon started packing. Since the car was inside the garage, we could safely load nearly everything, including the laptop computers, the night before the trip, and then just get up and start driving in the morning. We especially wanted to make sure that we had plenty of warm clothes, since we had run into such cold weather in Pocatello in late November and early December.

I was still thinking about the struggle that I had had the previous week with the scale, and I knew that the next day could be a high-point day on the road, so I held my points down to 34.5 for the day.

Sunday - Dotti and I were up early and we had everything ready to go, including the hot drinks for the road, in short order. We stopped to get gas, and were still on the freeway heading out by 6:00 AM.

The roads were dry most of the way, and what moisture we did see on the highway was all liquid water. J There was one point along the road, somewhere between La Grande, and Baker City where a few very small frozen ice crystals were falling right through the bright sunlight. It looked like someone had opened up a jar of silver glitter and had dumped it out right over our heads. It was beautiful! Soon, even they were gone and we were left without any other precipitation.

At one place along the road I saw a prairie dog standing up on his haunches beside the road. We also saw some very beautiful birds that neither one of us remembered seeing before. They looked like they were somewhere between the size of a blackbird and a crow. They looked as if someone had taken a pure black bird and painted its wings and back white, just leaving an outline of black in each section. We saw them at various times along the way, and they were usually right on, or right beside the road; at least until we got close to them, and they took off.

The temperature did fall below freezing along the stretch of road through the Blue Mountains, because of the increased elevation, but even in that mountainous area, it only stayed below freezing for short periods. Most of the time it was 33° or higher. Once we cleared the mountains, the temperature climbed up into the upper 30s right up until we got close to Pocatello. The sun had just set, and about 40 miles out of town the temperature dropped to 29°, and then climbed back up to 30° as we pulled into the hotel parking lot.

After unloading the car, we decided to walk down to the mini-mart on the corner and pick up some milk for the next morning's breakfast. We bundled up, but felt a little too warm on the walk. It was a half-mile round trip, and it felt good to stretch our legs after driving 11 hours. (I didn't include this half-mile in my walking totals, because I didn't get a time for the walk.)

I had been right to guess that my points would be up on the driving day. I had breakfast at home before we left (6.0 points), and then we stopped twice for lunch. The first stop was at Sharis, where we were hoping to get a nice hot meal. However, we only got a Cappuccino (2.0 points for Dotti, but 4.0 points for me, because I got the whipped cream on top). After quite a long wait, we decided we needed to get on the road. They were too understaffed to handle the crowd they had in the restaurant. We paid for the hot drinks and left. A couple of hours later, we stopped at a Subway and got some sub sandwiches. I also got a couple of cookies, and left after eating 17.0 points.

The rest of the day was just snacking. I had some popcorn in the hotel room after we checked in, but that was as close as I came to a hot meal. J When the points were tallied at day's end, I had eaten 65.5 points.

Monday - When I woke up, I weighed 185.5. I worked on the computer for a while and then Dotti and I decided to go and walk around the town. We parked at the shopping mall, and we walked over to the Wingers restaurant. It was 2.3 miles each way, and the temperature was 24º. We walked fairly slow on the way over with GPS in hand, and even with my gloves on, my hands were feeling cold. (I noted on the GPS that the elevation in town was very close to 4500 feet, which might explain the cold temperatures that we have seen there.)

It was a bit of an adventure for us, because we really had no idea how long a walk it was going to be. I knew it was on the same road that the mall was on, and I knew it was a ways away, but that was it.

The cold wasn’t really bad, but we could tell we were not strolling along in the summertime. Finally up ahead we spied the sign for the restaurant, and it was a welcome sight.

After a great little meal at Wingers, I put the GPS away for the return trip, since we already knew the distance. We picked up our pace on the way back, and it was much nicer, because I had Dotti on my arm nearly all the way. Now that is what I call a walk!!!! With the faster pace, the temperature felt warmer, and quite comfortable actually.

We walked around the mall for a while, and stopped at the Deseret Bookstore, where we found a couple of nice journals. We stopped by Office Max and finally headed back to the room, for some well-needed rest.

I had breakfast in the room (7.0 points), lunch at Wingers (10.0 points) and dinner at Applebees (21.0 points). So, my meals came to 38.0 points for the day, and I had 6.0 snack points, to bring my total up to 44.0 for the day. With the 4.6-mile walk thrown in, I felt that was a pretty good day.

Tuesday - I was up a half-pound to 186.0, when I woke up. However, my mind was more on what lay ahead of me. It was day-one of the PM. (Preventive Maintenance procedure.)

The first day of a PM is always busy, long (a couple of hours of overtime), and it is physically demanding. I was on my feet all day, and did a lot of lifting. I also spent many hours “scrubbing” off the baked on phosphorous and arsenic on the machine parts and insides. If you have ever had one of the regular ovens (not self-cleaning) that you had to scrub with a Brillo Pad—and a lot of elbow grease—in order to get it clean, you can begin to get a picture of what much of my day was like. Of course I did it in a full-face gas mask, just to make it even more fun.

At first the gas mask feels quite strange, pulling my air in against the resistance of the filters. But after a few minutes I forgot that I was wearing it pretty much. It just added to the heat and sweat that came along with the heavy scrubbing. The job didn’t feel very “high-tech” that day. But when we put the machine back together again, after hours of pulling it apart, and cleaning, it was nice to see that we had a good seal all over, and it showed “air-tight” when we ran a leak check all over it. We let it “pump down” over night, with high hopes that it would be in the normal operating range for the machine by morning. (It takes time for all the water, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, trapped air, and anything else that snuck into the vacuum chamber while we were cleaning, to escape from the graphite pieces or wherever else it might be hiding, and then be pulled away by the high vacuum pumps.)

Back at the room, I dropped a few kernels of popcorn on the floor under the table I was working at. I got down on my hands and knees to pick them up and I suddenly got a tremendous cramp in my hamstring muscle. I could tell that I had been doing a lot of squatting and standing up during the day! That muscle was tired.

For eating on Tuesday, I had breakfast in the room (6.0 points), ate at the customer's site cafeteria for lunch, where they had a nice salad bar (7.5 points) and then had dinner in the room (13.5 points). After snacks were added in, I consumed 38.0 points for the day.

Wednesday - I weighed 188.5 pounds. L I knew that was not related to fat gain at all. I was carrying water weight from the workout that I had the day before. I had averaged 46.5 points for the previous 7 days, and there was no way that was going to slap on 3 or 4 pounds on me. Still, I watched my points for the day, because I don't like to see a number that high on the scale.

This was day two on the PM, and it was much easier. I broke out the grease gun and hit all the zirk fittings in the "End Station," the part of the machine that moves around and controls the wafers coming into the machine to be implanted. There are lead screws and bearings that need grease. There were various other tasks to be completed. (One assembly was shorting out and we had to pull it out and fix a problem.) However, day two was far less hectic than day one, and less lengthy.

The machine came up quickly, and it passed the tests required to return it to service. They still had to do a high voltage check, to make sure that the power supplies were putting out the correct voltage, and then a radiation survey, to make sure that all the x-rays that the machine produces are fully contained within the enclosure. But those were tasks that the customer performed, and our part was pretty well done.

In the evening we got everything packed up and ready to load into the car in the morning.

I had breakfast in the room (5.0 points), Dotti and I ate a late lunch at Sizzlers, where I had a burger meal (14.0 points); and that was it for meals. I also had 7.0 points of snacks, and finished the day with 30.5 points.

Thursday - I was happy to see the scale drop back down to 185.5! J I woke up early, about a half hour before the alarm went off, and so I got my shower done, and got everything ready to go as much as possible until it was time to wake Dotti up. We set about loading the car, and then getting checked out of the hotel. We had filled the gas tank the day before, and so we were soon on the way.

While we were in Pocatello, the temperatures had been in the low twenties to high teens each morning when we got up, and this day was no exception. (During our stay, we did see it break out of the freezing zone a couple of times, although it was always in the afternoon, and didn't last for long.) It was about 19º when we set out, but it slowly climbed until it broke above the freezing point about 200 miles into the trip, just a bit before we hit Boise, and it never fell back below again, even in the Blue mountains, at over 4,100 feet. It was 57° in Vancouver when we arrived home. The roads were bone-dry all of the way, and the skies were a gorgeous blue all day long. When I got out to pump gas in Idaho, and when we stopped along the way and got out of the car to stretch our legs, I never even bothered to get my coat on. The weather we saw in the first week of December was far worse than we saw in February and we consider ourselves very lucky!

I was better on points for the drive home, than I had been on the drive out to Pocatello. I had breakfast in the room (6.0 points), lunch at Subway (6.0 points), and dinner at home (12.5 points). So, meals were 24.5 points for the day. My snacks were fairly high, as they usually are on a long road trip, and I ate 26.0 points worth. For the day, it came to 50.5 points. But we were safely home!

Friday - I weighed 184.0 pounds. J I had scheduled a vacation day, because I never know if we will have problems and day 3 of the PM become a full working day onsite, or if the driving conditions might be bad, making the drive home take a couple of days rather than just one. Also, it is nice to just get the mind back to a relaxed state after a trip like that out of town. So, I didn't have to go in for work.

We really didn't have any plans, but it turned out to be a great day! We went to Costco, and then when I got home, I remembered that I wanted to grab another one of the audio courses at Barnes and Noble, one on philosophy. Dotti suggested that we walk. I was happy to hear that suggestion, and before long we were out on the sidewalks walking.

The GPS tracked our distance for us, and when we arrived at Barnes and Noble, we had walked 7.58 miles! About a mile from the store my right lens fell out of my glasses, and I thought I had lost the screw that holds it in. After I grabbed the course at the bookstore, we walked across the parking lot to Newport Bay to eat our late lunch/late dinner. I got to looking at my glasses and I found that the screw was captive and it had not been lost. However, without my glasses, I couldn't see anything that small well enough to work with it. Using her fingernail, Dotti was able to get the screw started for me, and popped the lens back into place. When they served our bread, it came with a knife that was sharp enough to have an edge that would fit the screw, and Dotti tightened it all the way down. (When I got home I put a small screwdriver on it to test it, and it was solid and tight.) Suddenly, I could see up close again, with both eyes. J Dotti never ceases to find new ways to demonstrate that she is irreplaceable!!!

We had taken a detour around some construction on the way over, but we decided to walk through the construction on the way back. The road construction left the sidewalk in very bad condition—dirt, rock, and even mud in places—but we made it through okay and it cut just over a mile off our return trip. I was watching the route map on our GPS as we were going through that part of our walk, and I could see the place where we had earlier detoured coming up on the little map as we approached it. Soon, we were retracing our steps, and back on good sidewalks.

It was getting late and the sun was rapidly dropping in the west when we started, and it was really dark by the time we got home. The stars were beautiful, but the road was very dark in spots. (I had planned to bring my flashing red warning light, and my flashlight, but we ended up rushing out the door when we first set out, and I forgot to bring them.)

When we arrived home, the GPS said that we had gone another 6.52 miles, for a total of 14.10 miles for the day. We were both feeling pretty tired after that walk!

For eating, I had breakfast at home (6.0 points), lunch/dinner at Newport Bay (19.0 points) and I had 20.0 points worth of snacks for the day. That brought my total points to 45.0, which gave me a weigh-in this morning of 183.5 pounds.

It wasn't a perfect week, but it was a good week:

• I got my water in every day but one. (Sunday I didn't drink anything I could count. I had sodas, coffees, and apple cider but no water.) I averaged 46.86 ounces (5.9 cups) of water per day. That is just below the 6 to 8 cups minimum that I am shooting for. So, while I was low, I was still pretty close.
  
  
• I had one weigh-in that was over my target range upper limit, but I averaged 185.29 pounds for all my weigh-ins, which is only 0.29 pounds over my target weight. That is fine.
  
  
• My points averaged 46.86, and that is very close to my maintenance level of 45-46 points, even when I am not exercising. So, I did not eat excessively high this week.
  
  
• For exercise, I was a bit low on my miles for the week. On the other hand, I was ready to accept a much lower number, because of our road trip. As it turned out, I got in 18.70 miles, which is 6.3 miles below my goal. During the past 2 weeks, I went more than 9 miles over my goal, and that offsets this deficit. In fact if I had walked zero miles this week, would still be ahead of the projected goal line on for reaching 1300 miles for the year. I am now averaging 4.28 miles-per-day for the year, and I am happy with that.

3 years, 277 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/183.5/180±2/BMI:22.94/WK-196

GRAPHS:

Weight Loss Maintenance Year 1 Maintenance Year 2 Maintenance Year 3 Maintenance Year 4 2005 Walking 2005 Walking Data

2004 Walking Data