Week 197 Update

It was 05:50 this morning when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, “186.0 pounds!” I can’t complain, since yesterday included a change in my normal schedule, and an evening drive up to LeRoy’s apartment.

Here is how the week went…

Saturday - February 12 was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. (I find it interesting that the journal book I am using for jotting down daily events doesn’t have that noted. It has all sorts of what I would consider relatively unimportant things noted for many days throughout the year, but not this. On the other hand, my pocket calendar where I track my walking does list it.) February 12 was also my weigh-in day for week 196 of my journey. (That wasn’t listed either. J)

I weighed 183.5 in the morning, and spent most of the day working on my computer. It was quiet, with little physical activity. I did do some snacking while I was typing away, and my points came to 62.0 by the end of the day.

"Saturday Night what?" I was half asleep after Dotti shook me awake on Saturday night, to tell me that Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone was mentioned on Saturday Night Live. Well, it didn’t sink in too well. “That’s nice Dear,” I mumbled as I rolled over.

Sunday - In the morning, when Dotti woke up, she took me by the hand and led me into the living room, and obviously had something she wanted me to see. I had completely forgotten about the nighttime conversation by then. She popped in a VCR tape, and hit play, and sure enough, they mentioned Weight Watchers, Applebee’s, points, and one of the characters was talking about Dotti’s Weight Loss Zone (okay he mumbled the “Dotti” a bit, but you could tell what he meant). He described how it had the points listed for all the restaurants like Taco Bell. I haven’t actually watched SNL since Chevy Chase was on it, but it still seemed pretty cool to see Dotti’s page mentioned like that.

I weighed 185.0 pounds when I got up at 6:00AM on Sunday. For lunch Dotti and I walked to Sweet Tomatoes. That is always great, because we get in about 4 miles of walking, have a nice visit during the walk and the meal, and have a really great meal in the only restaurant that I know of that plays only music that I always enjoy. J I ate 20.0 points worth of very good food before we headed home.

Later in the day LeRoy came by for a visit, and he ended up spending the night. We had a great time catching up on things, and visiting with our son.

I had corn on the cob, an avocado and bacon sandwich, and baked French fries for dinner (15 points), and I ended up eating 59.0 points on Sunday.

Monday - Valentine’s Day, and even my journal book noted it. J I weighed 186.5 pounds. That was up 3 pounds from Saturday’s weigh-in. I ate a bit up in my points for the weekend, and I had a lot of salt for dinner on Sunday, so it was not very surprising.

In the morning I walked 3.17 miles before work, in the air whose temperature lay on the dividing line between freezing and not. There were some patches of heavy frost on the walking path, some that completely covered it for short stretches. It was not terribly slick, but just enough so as to hold my attention when I was on the patches.

At lunch things had warmed up and it was 42º. I did another 3.17 miles, which brought my week's total miles to 10.33, my month's total to 44.88, and my year's total to 190.00. Last year I was only up to 80 miles by this time, and so that put me 110 miles ahead of last year. In other words, I was in the position where I could only walk the same number of miles for the remainder of the year as I walked over the same period last year, and I would still achieve my goal of 1300 miles.

I got a little chuckle that evening driving home. On the back road over the summit that I take each night, there is an “Eliza Doolittle” who sells her flowers from the back of a van, parked on a what would be a vacant dirt lot in the city, but which is just an open patch of ground amidst the surrounding forest. She normally has a sign out that says, “Roses $6 a Dozen.” As it starts getting later, and she is going to have to close up shop because of the dark, the “Roses $5 a Dozen” sign appears, and then the “Roses $4 a Dozen” takes over. But Monday was Valentine’s Day, and it was “Roses $9 a Dozen.” Not only that, but instead of the one customer that she normally has when I am driving by, there were 6 or 7 guys lined up there to buy flowers. I’ll bet that she wishes that every day were Valentine’s Day!

In the evening Dotti and I watched Adam’s Rib, a 1949 movie that I hadn’t seen in decades. It was something that would have fit in very well with the 1960s, and I was surprised they had produced it in 1949. The debris of revolutions gives perspective to such things, and today that movie seems almost cliché. However one feels about it, it is clear that the groundwork for the 1960s was being laid much earlier. It didn’t just happen.

After dinner and snacks were added into my day’s total, it came to 46.0 points for the day.

Tuesday - I weighed 184.0 pounds. When I got to work, I found that conditions were simply great for walking! I arrived before 7AM and it was already starting to get very light. (Sunrise was around 7:15AM, whereas two weeks before it was 7:33, and a month before it was 10 minutes before 8AM.) The temperature was 26º, nearly as cold as it had been for the February 7th walk that Dotti and I took to Wingers in Pocatello. However, it felt great! (A few months ago 50º felt pretty cold, and 40º was seriously chilly. Now those temperatures seem a lot warmer. J)

Tuesday - The ground was completely dry Tuesday morning, and the patches of frost that had been on the path the day before were completely gone. However, the grass looked like it was generally very cold, because each blade had grabbed his individual white coat and put it on. The trees' bases were buried into circles cut in the white carpet surrounding them.

When I made it through the first tunnel, I could see that the fountain and lake there were literally steaming in the cold! There was the normal mist from the vertical shaft of water that leaped from the surface, blowing to the south, but off from that mist there was a fog escaping. Every square inch of the pond was sending off visible vapors, as if the whole thing were on the verge of jumping into a full boil; and the white-coated grass surrounded the whole active package.

Down the hill I noted the field on the left was a rolling white carpet, and the vines on the ground to the right, and the red berries they were carrying were painted with a white frost. My breath was coming out in clouds, like the steam from an old-time locomotive, but it felt great walking in the cool dry air.

I passed a lady walker whose face was completely hidden behind a scarf, and before long I was on the long leg of the walk, that starts with 1.34 miles left till the end. At about the 1-mile-to-go point, the long rays of the sun were hitting things directly. The coats that the grass blades were wearing suddenly seemed to be made entirely of sequins, as they sparkled brightly. The needles of the pine trees did not look white, but their green surfaces twinkled in the sunlight as if there were tiny diamonds embedded into them.

An apartment complex that I passed had a series of signs planted along the road, and therefore the sidewalk, and to draw attention to them, the owners had attached two large helium filled balloons each. In the cold, the helium had contracted to the point where the balloons were no longer lighter than air, and each of them was lying on the grass covered ground. (They must have been pretty tough balloons, because none of them had popped.) Two were in direct sunlight, and they had a lightly visible white coating that sparkled brightly. It would probably not be too much longer before they would warm up enough to start floating again.

The sky was a bright blue by this time, and there was not a single cloud to be seen anywhere in it. The sun was losing all its orange tint, and looking like its old yellow self. My breath was catching my eye even more now that the sun was shining on it, and the glorious new morning was couldn’t have been any more beautiful. The only thing that could have made my walk better was if my Dotti were walking beside me!

This week for work was not bad. I was busy, but not overloaded. It made the days pass quickly without putting a lot of added stress on me.

Dotti wasn’t feeling well and she went to bed early. I ended up reading all evening, which was pleasant. By the end of the day, I had eaten 39.5 points.

Wednesday - I weighed 185.0 pounds. It was a bit warmer in the morning for my 3.17-mile walk (41º instead of 26º), but it was windy, and it felt pretty cool anyway. The blue skies have been nice lately, and the sun is rising earlier each morning.

During the day I called Dotti up and asked her if she would like to walk to dinner with me, and she said that she would! So, when I got home, we set off around our normal 3.05-mile walking route, and took a detour to Red Robins when we got to that point. After 1.9 miles of walking, we arrived.

It was around 6:30PM and the restaurant was jammed with people. Instead of our normal booth, we ended up at a little table literally 2 feet from another small table that had 3 people sitting at it. In spite of all of that, it was an enjoyable meal, and the waiter did a super job keeping on top of all his multitudinous customers’ needs.

Dotti has a very OP salad that she gets at Red Robin, with chicken and other goodies. She often prefers it to Sweet Tomatoes, because the points are lower, and it is quite delicious. I was originally planning on having something along those lines, but by the time it came for me to order, I was ravenous. I ordered a Monster burger, of which I usually only consume one half. I held back from ordering a shake as well, and settled for a diet soda. When the burger arrived, I ate it all. I only ate a bit of the fries, and so the damage was 21.0 points when I was done.

Finishing off our loop back home, Dotti and I walked another 1.30 miles, for a total of 3.20 miles. The rest of the evening was quiet, and I finished off the day with 48.0 points.

Thursday - I weighed 184.0 pounds. It was clear and cold (26º) for my walk. The string of dry days seemed to have sapped the moisture out of the air, and even in the cold, there was very little frost. My breath was very easy to see as I was puffing along on my walk. I competed the 3.17 miles in 44:50, which is a 4.24 mph pace. The time seems to fly by when I am walking. I start off with around 5550 steps to go, and before long I have hit the bench that marks the point that is 1.25 miles from where I started. That is over a third of the way done. Soon I pass a metal pole sheathed in, and padlocked to, a metal pipe embedded into the middle of the wide sidewalk; the assembly is intended to keep unauthorized vehicles off the sidewalk. That pole marks the point where I only have 1.5 miles to go. Soon I hit the intersection that marks 2 miles completed, and then the sidewalk that is just under one mile from the finish. And once again my loop is completed.

At lunch I just relaxed and read. I knew that I had already cleared my 25 miles for the week that was my goal, and that I would almost certainly be walking again on Friday.

When I got home I worked on a computer program and before long it was time for bed. I ended up eating 42.0 points.

Friday - In the morning I took exactly the same amount of time to do my loop as I had on Thursday. The temperature was about 31º, so it was a bit warmer, but I really couldn’t tell the difference.

At lunch I tried something a little different for my walk. I took my GPS with me, and I mapped out many of the routes in the park, writing down the mileage for the various intersecting points along the way. I didn’t get an exhaustive list of all the little paths, but I did make large strides (no pun intended) in that direction. I have been thinking about doing that for some time, because it should open up some new possibilities for creating new routes for my morning and lunch walks. My normal 3.17-mile loop has quite a large variety of things to look at as I am walking, but after enough times walking around it, there is little variety left, other than the changes in weather, and over a long enough period of time, season.

With the new data in hand, I should be able to put together several walking packages that will yield 3 or more miles, and keep things fresh for my daily walks. Also, I can create some shorter walks if need be, if time permits me to walk only a short distance.

Besides mapping out the distances, I got in 3.05 miles of walking at the same time.J

After work I hurried home so we could get on the road, because we were going to drive up to LeRoy’s place for the weekend. The road was a little bit crowded on the way up, but we were able to hold the speed limit for most of the way.

After we arrived, Dotti and LeRoy made a run to the store and left me to enjoy the blazing fire in the fireplace in his living room. Now that was nice of them. J

I have been listening to a lecture series on Philosophy, and specifically on Plato and Aristotle, during my drives this week. I have completed nearly 12 of the 14 lectures, and it has been very exciting. One thing that was said, in one of the lectures that I heard Friday afternoon while the professor was discussing Aristotle, was that the process of taking nourishment--all that is included in the eating process--is “perfectly analogous” to perceiving. We take in food and it is digested and becomes “us,” just as that which we perceive is taken inside our minds and becomes “us.” (That sent a chill up my back when I thought about all of the hours that Americans spend in front of the television. It is no wonder that people have been so strongly affected by that, and that our society has changed so dramatically as a result.) You are what you eat, and you are what you perceive, in a “perfectly analogous” way. Wow!

Friday we started getting some clouds overhead, but they were wispy and light, and didn’t even block the moon or stars from view on the drive up. However, the skies had been completely clear for several days, so this is a change. We are really behind on our rainfall, and have been for over a year. (We were 10 inches behind last year, and already are over 3 inches behind this year.)

I ended up eating 39.0 points for the day, and that led to my weigh-in this morning of 186.0 pounds.

I think this was a good week…

• Water: I drank at least 6 cups every day. I averaged 53.71 ounces (6.7 cups) per day, which is right in my target of 6-8 cups per day minimum.
  
  
• Daily weigh-ins: I was in my target range all week long for my daily weigh-ins. That is always good to see. And my average weight for the week was 185.07, right at my target weight.
  
  
• My points-per-day average was: 47.93. That is a couple of points higher than my normal for maintenance, but it is only 13 points or so off total for the week, and shouldn’t be an issue. (It comes to about a quarter of a pound.)
  
  
• Exercise: I was very happy with how the week went. I walked 32.43 miles, well over my goal of 25. I have pushed my yearly total for miles up to 212.10, and that is pretty good with 10 days still left in February. In 2003, I had only walked 49.0 miles by this date. (I finished with 422.2 miles.) In 2004, where I finished with 1200 miles, I had only gone 92.2 miles by this date.
  
  There are 316 exercise days left in 2005. I need to average 3.44 miles per day over that time in order to reach 1300 miles by the end of the year. I have averaged 4.33 miles per day so far, so I am right on track. In fact if I should hold that average throughout the year I will reach 1579 miles.
  
  Additionally, I earned 79.18 aerobic points this week. That is well over twice as many as I need to achieve cardiovascular fitness, and while I don’t dwell on that as much as I do the number of miles walked, in reality it is what the walking is all about.
  
  So I think things are looking pretty good so far in the exercise department.

3 years, 284 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/186.0/180±2/BMI:23.25/WK-197

GRAPHS:

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

2004 Walking Data