Week 198 Update I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 10:05 AM, and he said, "187.0 pounds!" It was a struggle this week, and it ended on that note. Friday night I was up late because we drove down to Tiller, Oregon after work, and before the day was over I had eaten 56.0 points. Even rising later than normal this morning didn't make it easy for my weigh-in. Here is how the week went...

Saturday - We were at LeRoy's apartment in Olympia, Washington. I woke up early and at 5:50 AM I weighed-in at 186.0 pounds.

After doing my update on the message board, it was time to wake up the others so we could get over to Costco ahead of the crowds. J We headed out for Tumwater, Washington, just a short run up the freeway, and went to Costco. We had fun browsing the aisles, and I picked up a couple of books. (One of them was a book of "logic puzzles." One particular puzzle had caught my eye, and when I got home I started working it out. I was not able to find a solution. In fact I eliminated all possible solutions, as was left quite puzzled (if you will excuse the pun). As it turned out there was an error in the book, and the solution they suggested wouldn't work, due to a typo in the puzzle data. In spite of that, I have found several of the puzzles to be quite fun to solve.) Before leaving Costco, we had our traditional Very Berry Sundae.

Next, for lunch, we went to Outback. I made it out with having only eaten 17.0 points, with some bread, a salad, half-burger and only a couple of fries. It filled me up so I didn't have an evening meal. However, I did have few snacks, and my total points for the day came to 46.5.

In the evening, while Dotti and LeRoy were playing a game, I checked in on the message board and found an interesting thread in the Lifetimer's forum. The subject was "What keeps you going?" It was a query posed by a lifetimer who was feeling a bit dissatisfied with how maintenance had settled into a status quo, without the joy of seeing the scale drop a pound or two, like it did during the losing phase. It got me thinking about what it was that keeps me going on maintenance, and made the following post:

Sunday - I weighed 184.5 pounds. We all went to the mall, near LeRoy's place and did some shopping, before having lunch at Red Robin, (only 10.0 points). Dotti and I then headed for home.

When we arrived, we unpacked the car and then headed off on a walk. We walked to Sharis (2.76 miles) and had dinner. (29 points for me.) We then walked home (1.9 miles), completing our normal loop, plus a little addition for the Shari's side trip, totaling 4.66 miles.

I ended up eating 54.5 points for the day.

Monday - President's Day. (I remember when we used to have Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays competing for attention, and "the solution" was to squash them both into one holiday, and then include all the presidents, heroes and scoundrels—without getting into who was which—all together in one holiday.)

I was up to 185.5 pounds.

I didn't feel like walking when I arrived at work. The day was fairly quiet, since it was a holiday for my customer site, and just the working crew was there, and none of the office staff.

At lunch I took a nice long walk of 4.07 miles, and got it in, in just under one hour. J The weather this week was absolutely outstanding for walking. Blue skies and bright sunshine were with us every day, and that is really out of the ordinary for February.

My drive home was absolutely abominable on Monday. In the morning the roads were nearly empty on the way in to work. So, I was lulled into thinking that it would be safe to take the freeways home in the evening. It took me nearly 2 hours to get home, and worst of all was the stop-and-go, jammed up traffic. I hadn't been that stressed by a drive home in quite some time. Will I never learn?

I had a nice dinner with Dotti's tortellini soup topping the menu. At the end of the day I had eaten 44.0 points.

Tuesday - I weighed 186.0 pounds.

In the morning I walked 3.17 miles in 43:45. My car thermometer said it was 36° before I started. Since I arrived a bit late, I started out behind where I wanted to be for time.

When I came out of the first tunnel, the sun was up as high off the horizon as it was last week when I was just passing the point where I had 1.5 miles left for my walk. The sun was shining right through the top of the water spray from the fountain and the pond looked like a graphical animator’s perfect creation, with ripples reflecting bright yellows and oranges, separated by dark greens and browns.

As I cleared the little hill bringing me back up to street level it felt like I was standing in front of an open refrigerator. My front side was suddenly chilled. Even the fronts of my hands, which were inside my skier’s gloves, were feeling cold. Although it didn’t really feel windy, there certainly was a breeze bringing in cold air from across the airport’s runways.

When I hit the bottom of the main hill, I could see that I was not ahead on my time. I would need to walk a bit faster. When I hit the 1.5 miles-to-go point I was nearly 2 minutes off my normal time. I picked up my speed. When I had walked 2 miles, I looked to be about a minute off pace. By the one mile mark I was just about on track, and at the end I finished with a minute and 15 seconds to spare.

With the increased speed, on the last three-quarters of a mile I progressively: pushed my hood back from my coat; removed my gloves; removed my knit cap; removed my neck scarf; and finally unzipped my coat.

The time for my entire walk was 43:45, which averaged 13:48 per mile, or 4.35 mph.

It was back to work with the full working staff at my customer's site, and things were a bit busier on Tuesday. A friend of mine put in his 2-weeks notice with his company. I was saddened to hear it, because I will miss him. We had taken a lot of walks together at lunch, and he and his wife have visited DWLZ in the past. (They had thought it was really cool when they found out it was my wife who had created the site. J)

At lunch I took another 3.17 mile walk. It was slower than the one in the morning (46:34), but it was a nice walk in the sunshine.

Dotti had struggled with our van during the day. The battery had gone out, and left her and her twin sister stranded for a while. Finally AAA came and gave her a jump to get the car started, and then she drove over to Dodge where she had it checked out. They pinpointed a bad battery (which AAA had claimed was good) and replaced it. (It has worked well ever since. J)

In the evening, Dotti and I walked to Red Robin for dinner (only 5.0 points for me!), then on to Target, and finishing off the loop home, for a total of 3.28 miles. I had walked 9.62 miles that day, and my points total was 45.0.

Wednesday - I weighed 185.5. I got in a 3.17-mile walk in the morning. The sun was just up at one point where I was walking along beside a double-lane, divided road, and my shadow ran all the way across the road for at least 50 feet. It was 31°, and it may have been one of the last subfreezing temperatures that we see this winter. We are already starting to see some of the flowering trees start to explode into flowery colors.

I ended up not walking for lunch or in the evening, but I did well in keeping my points at 38.0 for the day.

Thursday - My weight crept up to 186.5. I did not feel at all like walking when I got to work, even though I got there early enough to do my normal walk. I didn't walk at lunch either.

Dotti wasn't feeling too well when I got home, and went to bed early. I had a quiet evening of reading. I ended up eating 46.0 points for the day.

Friday -I weighed 187.0 pounds. My weight had been bouncing between 185.5 and 186.0 for several days, and now it moved up even more. Not only that, but Dotti and I were heading down to my Mom's house right after I got home from work. That meant another 4 hours on the road, where I have some trouble with nervous eating.

I did a 3.17-mile walk in the morning, and then had a long busy day at work. (No time was available for a lunchtime walk.) When I got home I grabbed a quick and relatively light dinner, before we got on the road.

We reached a point, on the drive to Mom's place, where we stopped to grab a snack and I ended up eating 2 McDonalds hamburgers. This was fairly late in the day also. (I refrained from French fries because of the sodium.) On the day before weigh-in it was quite out of character for me, especially since I had been so high on the scale reading in the morning.

By the end of the day I had eaten 56.0 points. I stepped on the scale before going to bed and I was around 191.5 pounds. Things did not look good for my weigh-in today, but I squeaked by.

I hope this is a wakeup call for me, to make sure that I don't come so close to blowing my streak of consecutive weigh-ins at or below 187.0 pounds.

Mom is doing well, and it is great seeing her again! We are looking forward to a very happy visit with her!

For the week, I came up just short on my miles. My goal was to walk 25 miles, and I got in 24.69. It was close. For water I had a couple days where I was under 6, and even my average was only 40 ounces (5 cups) per day. That was lower than I like to see. My average points were close to where they were the week before, so I was not too far off there. My average weight was 185.93, about 1 pound over my target. I guess the worst thing was how close I came to blowing my weigh-in.

3 years, 291 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/187.0/180±2/BMI:23.37/WK-198

GRAPHS:

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

2004 Walking Data