I am told, that this is when Weight Watchers go into a six week period of maintenance, before reaching Lifetime status. Well, the first day of that for me started off with a hiccup. Mr. Scale woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and said, “201.0 pounds.” I suppose it is to be expected after having a such nice day yesterday. That’s okay, I am fairly sure I will be seeing the 190s on that scale this week sometime, even if it is only 199.5.

Yesterday Dotti and I went to the mall and, after having an All American Ice Cream Cone, to celebrate making goal, we walked around for a while, getting a bit of exercise. We also took our air conditioners out of the windows, and ran them to the storage shed, in celebration of the arrival of Autumn. Autumn responded by driving the temperature up over 80 and making us miserable for a couple of hours. The weather report says that we can expect more of the same today. (The High is supposed to be 84.) :( Fortunately the extended forecast is for high seventies tomorrow and then falling down into the sixties on the days after. If it follows our normal pattern of weather for this time of year, we will see no more temperatures in the 80s after today, until next June or July.

I always find Sundays to be a day of mixed feelings. The weekend is coming to a close, but it is still a day off. It is a lousy day for shopping, because the stores are either closed altogether, or are only opened on a shortened schedule. When 5:00 PM hits I consider the weekend officially over. But that means we still have several hours to go! :)

For eating yesterday, I had my standard breakfast (5.0 pt.), and for lunch a 6” Subway Sub (6 pt.) with a diet soda (0.0 pt.). Dot and I usually share a soft drink when we go to Subway, but I think I ended up with more than my share this time. :) For dinner I had a 3 tostados (6.0 pt.) and another diet soda. That brought my points for meals to 17.0. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1 pt.), 2 cough drops (0.5 pt.), a celebratory All American Ice Cream Cone (4 pt.), one-half of a Peanut Butter Kashi Bar (2.5 pt.), and a Mr. Cookie Face ice cream sandwich (3 pt.), for a total of 11 snack points. That brought my total points for the day to 28.0.

For water yesterday, I drank 9 cups or 72 ounces.

I am off to enjoy my Sunday!

134 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I climbed out of bed on this warm, Monday morning, feeling tired, sore and wishing it were still the weekend. But nonetheless I resolutely stood up on Mr. Scale, and he said, “201.0 pounds.” Oh well, I have a few days still to get his attitude right before next weigh-in.

Yesterday I took a pretty good walk on the track near our house. I did 2 miles in 28 minutes. When I was all done, my legs were tired but I felt pretty good. (This morning my lower back, and legs are a bit sore but not too bad.) I dug out my old walking log and found that the last entry was for August 1, 1999. And the one before that was May 14, 1995. There were only 4 entries for 1995, 3 of which were in early January. In 1994 there quite a few entries, especially for the last 4 months of the year. I was walking pretty regularly then, but that was 7 years ago, and we were living in Massachusetts then, where we lived very close to a gym with an indoor track. (I quite surprised that we don't have a lot of gyms around here with indoor tracks, with the amount of rain we get during the winter.) I am going to try to get a regular schedule going on my walking now.

To judge and track my fitness journey, I am using the Aerobic points system -- if it uses points it can’t be too bad:). (For my walk yesterday I earned 5.6 points.) I have set up a spreadsheet as an aerobics points calculator, and walking log, where I can record my distance walked, and the time it took to walk it, and it will return the number of Aerobic Points earned. My ultimate goal is to earn 30 points a week, which is supposed to put me in the “fit” category. The only potential roadblock I see to this program is the condition of my knees. In the past, when I began to approach 30 points, they begin to give me a lot of grief. If they hold up, now that my weight is down, then I should be able to work up to a 30-point week by walking. If not, then I am going to have to find other forms of exercise to work with. I will find some method of exercising, but walking is one of my favorites.

Of course racquetball is going to be part of my exercise regime also. For racquetball, you earn 9.0 points for an hour. (Breaks and timeouts do not count as part of the 60 minutes.) For 1 hour and 10 minutes of play, you earn 10 points. So that means three sessions of racquetball a week, 1 hour and 10 minutes long, would take care of all my Aerobic needs. If my knees act up from the walking, I will probably next gear up for more racquetball as a replacement exercise. I am sure in the end it will be a mix between the two anyway, and with that I should be able to get what I need for aerobic exercise.

Having my weight down will make exercising so much easier for me. The strain on all of the joints of my legs and feet will be far less now. I am hopeful that I can work into being physically fit in a matter of a few weeks, or months. It will be one more area that I will feel very positive about, once I have accomplished it. No more cigarettes. No longer being overweight, and soon to be toned up and fit. It was not all that long ago when all of this would have seemed far, far out of reach. It is a great feeling!

To back track just for a moment: when getting dressed for my walk, I put on my 38-inch waist jeans and a black tee shirt that was my favorite tee shirt for exercise before I started my journey. I found that my 38s were going to fall down, even if I pulled my belt into the next to last notch. I actually had to pull it all the way in as far as it would go. And the tee shirt felt like a tent on me. Now the tee shirt was something that I wore when I was 240 pounds, but not the pants. I couldn’t have even gotten those pants buttoned up when I started, let alone wear them. It was one of those moments that just shouted, “You are no longer the same size! You have shrunk!” And it said it louder than any words could have. Of course everyone who loses weight goes through these kind of moments, but it is profoundly different when it happens to you, than reading about it, or even seeing it with someone else. I pulled my tee shirt away from my stomach, out to where it used to be, and just shook my head. I went ahead and did the walk swimming in my clothes and enjoyed the feeling all the way. It may have looked funny (or with today’s teen styles it may have fit in. :) ) but it felt great. The change in clothes size is not the huge change that Dotti went through, but I think it is pretty cool anyway. It was just one of those moments, and then it was gone, but the memory isn’t going anywhere. That is a keeper!

For eating yesterday, I had my standard breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had 3 tomato sandwiches (2 pt.), 1 peeled cucumber (0 pt.) and a large dill pickle (0 pt.). For supper I had a cup and a half of Life cereal (4 pt.) and a cup of skim milk (2 pt.). That was a total of 15 meal points. For snacks, I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), a Mr. Cookie Face (3 pt.), half of a Kashi bar (2.5 pt.), a bag of popcorn, and 2 servings of yogurt (4 pt.). My snack points totaled 12.5. That brought my total points for the day to 27.5.

For water yesterday I drank 15 cups, or 120 ounces.

For exercise, I walked 2 miles in 28 minutes.

135 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale this morning at 5:00 AM and he said, “202.5 pounds.” Thank you sir can I have another. This is the kind of treatment I get for giving him a nice warm place to sleep, and plenty of good batteries. I am even working hard to try and lighten the load he has to bear, and he turns on me like that. :) It is for days like this that we only have an official weigh-in once a week rather than every day.

Actually I am not surprised at all. Anytime I have a really big exercise day, I retain water the next day. I think that the muscles, which are sore and repairing themselves, making themselves stronger, probably use a certain amount of water in the process. At the very least I can tell that my hands are holding onto some water, and that is probably going on all over my body.

All this because yesterday was a physically active day. I was at another customer’s site, whose site just happens to be right up against the same park that I have normally been walking in. So, I took my lunchtime walk in the park again. I walked 2 miles in 28 minutes once more. Anytime that I walk at a hard pace like that, I do a 5 minute cool down walk afterwards, where I walk at a much slower pace for at least 5 minutes to get my body back to normal before sitting down for lunch. Dr. Kenneth Cooper wrote that most heart problems that occur from exercise happen during the recovery period immediately after the exercise, rather than during the exercise itself. A cool down is more than a nice thing to do, it is very important for health reasons. And the older you get, the more important it becomes. During the walk, the temperature was up a bit in the high 70s. I still felt pretty good all the way on the walk. When I was all finished, and I sat down, I recovered back to normal pretty quickly.

After the walk, I spent the afternoon working on a machine taking things a apart and putting them back together; lifting, squatting, standing and on my feet and active the whole time. When I got home last night I was very tired, but at work it was the best I had felt in years doing that much work. It wasn’t until the very end before I was hit with any of my old tired feelings, but this time they were well earned! This morning my entire body is a bit sore, and my hands are puffy from all the work they did, turning screw drivers and Allen wrenches, and other fun things. When we rip into the machine like that, I feel more like a mechanic than an electronics technician. But I get plenty of exercise.

In the evening yesterday, I had very little energy left. I did a lot of resting and it seemed like the whole evening was gone much faster than usual. Now it is nearly time to go back to work. We put the vacuum system together last night before leaving work an hour late, and turned the pumps on, pulling it down to high vacuum. Whenever we do this kind of work the vacuum chamber takes hours to pump all the way down, because of the atmosphere that is trapped in the new pieces of graphite we installed, in the screw holes, and merely trapped in the pores of any material in the chamber. It takes time for all that trapped air to escape. So, this morning we will see if it pumped all the way down, or if not, we can start leak checking and find if we ended up with a leak somewhere. Hopefully, when we get to work, the vacuum chamber will be all pumped down. And then, hopefully, the machine will fire right up with no problems, and we will be done. If not, it will be more tearing apart, and putting back together today.

For eating yesterday, I had my standard breakfast (5.0 pt.), and my standard lunch (6 pt. – minus the fruit.). For Dinner I had half of a Heaven’s Bistro Pizza (4.5 pt.). That made 15.5 meal points. For snacks I had 11 cough drops (3 pt.), a Kashi bar (5 pt.), and a cup of decaf (1 pt.). That came to 9.0 snack points, and brought my total points for the day to 24.5.

For my water yesterday, I drank one cup at work, and then 2 cups from my mug in my car. When I got home I didn’t even think of water until well after 9:00 PM. I ended up quickly drinking down 5 cups of water just before bed. If it was the weekend, that would be no problem because I could get rid of all the water by sleeping in a bit and letting it all pass through before weighing. But today I got up early and I think some if it is still with me. My total water for the day was 8 cups, or 64 ounces.

For exercise yesterday, I walked 2 miles in 28 minutes. That is good for another 5.6 Aerobic points, which brings me to 11.2 points so far this week.

136 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

This morning at 5:15 AM, I climbed up on Mr. Scale to see what sort of abuse he had planned for me for Wednesday. He said, “201.5.” Well at least I didn’t gain again. I was beginning to tire of that trend already. Now I am heading back in the right direction.

The exercise program I have begun has thrown an extra variable into the mix that could of made things confusing. Fortunately, I have enough time OP under my (much shorter) belt to know that everything is okay, and that I am not gaining fat, when I am eating within my points, and the scale suddenly shoots up. It then just becomes a waiting game, where patience is rewarded when things stabilize and then return to normal.

At work it was a fairly quiet day, and not much physical to do. All the work we had done the day before turned out to be okay, and the vacuum chamber, that we had worked on, had pumped down to 4.5 E-7 Torr overnight, which is very good vacuum. No leaks, another words. So, we turned the machine over to the customer for his use, and headed out of the clean room. The rest of the day was spent on rebuilding some spare assemblies that had been pulled out of the machine earlier and disassembled and cleaned. When I get into the mechanical side of the job, I am reminded that I joined the Navy back in 1973, to get away from the mechanical oriented job that I was in, and to get training in electronics so I could work with meters, and oscilloscopes, and soldiering irons instead of wrenches and screwdrivers. While I do get a lot of electronics work in my job, I have not left the wrenches behind.

Instead of walking yesterday, I was able to talk a coworker into going to a gym and playing racquetball with me at lunch. We ended up playing for 50 minutes, and I had had a good workout. I worked up a good sweat, and I could tell that I had worked out all the rest of the day. My shoulder is a bit sore this morning but not too bad. My back and leg muscles are just a touch sore as well. Overall I feel pretty good, considering the amount of exercise that I have had this week compared with what I was doing before.

Today is going to be an off day for exercise. I think a break is in order, to let my body catch its breath, and heal up.

For eating yesterday, I had standard breakfast (5.0 pt.), and my standard lunch (7 pt.). For dinner I had 3 fried egg sandwiches (4.5 pt.) and some instant potatoes (3 pt.). That totaled 18.0 points for meals. For snacks I had 16 cough drops (5.0 pt.) and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.), for 10.0 snack points, bringing my total points for the day to 28.0 points.

For water yesterday I drank 14 cups, or 112 ounces.

For exercise I played 50 minutes of racquetball, for 7.5 Aerobic points, bringing my total for the week so far to 18.7 Aerobic points.

137 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

After being up nearly all night, Mr. Scale said, “203.0 pounds,” at 4:00 AM. I had been drinking water with my pain medication and there was no way I could have a normal weigh-in this morning. I am feeling very bad, and am surprised I am even writing this today.

Yesterday, I had a day off from work, and I used that day to get my teeth looked at, because one of my two remaining molars was loose, and hurting just a bit. It was not serious pain, but it was getting to be tiresome, since it kept flaring up and becoming uncomfortable. At the dentist’s office I find that I have an abscessed tooth. It was one that had work done on it not too long ago (less than a year) and underneath the new filling was a cavity, and the root had died. Between the bone and the tooth an infection was brewing. Wonderful. So, the dentist suggests that I have “nerve therapy” done on the tooth, which turned out to mean that he drilled away all the filling, and the cavity under the filling, and then cleaned out the root channel, and then drained the infected area some. Lastly he put a temporary filling in to cover things up while we waited for the infection to go down. He loaded me up with antibiotics, and some pain medication.

Well, as the evening progressed, I found that the pain in that tooth was worse than the pain I normally feel from an extraction. The Vicodin was not very helpful. I would take one as prescribed and then I was pretty much okay for about an hour, and then the pain came back full force. Well, I couldn’t take another dose for 3 more hours at least. So, I took one before going to bed, and slept for an hour. I was up for three hours, and then took another one. I slept another hour, and have been up ever since. I had the work done yesterday because it meant that I would not have to use vacation time to go to the dentist. Now, I am not sure if I will be up to going to work today, and may have to burn a day of vacation anyway. I had no idea that the work was going to be so debilitating. The tooth is aching, and it is very tender to the touch. I am exhausted and about out of patience with the pain.

For eating yesterday, I had my standard breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch Dotti and I took Tracy to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes. My teeth and right side lower of my lips were numb and so I could only nibble at the salad. (0.0 pt). I did have a small ice cream cone (2.0 pt.). For dinner, I had a bowl of nice soft cream of wheat (2.0 pt.) and a yogurt (2.0 pt.). That brought my meals to 9.0 points. For snacks, before the dentist abused me, I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), a Kashi bar (5.0 pt). Afterwards, at Costco, I had a frozen yogurt (4.0 pt.), and later at home I had a Mr. Cookie Face. (3.0 pt.). That came to 13.0 snack points and 22.0 total points for the day.

The only exercise I had was squirming about in the dentist chair.

138 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 12:40 AM, and he said, “199.0 pounds.” Since I was in pain at the time and would be taking more medication, plus the associated food and water, I decided to take my weigh-in early today. (Also, I have an hour before I can take my next pain pill, which gives me an opportunity to write this.) Finally, the 190s!

My temperature, at weigh-in, is still 99.0 degrees F, and my cheek is slightly swollen where the bad tooth is located. The tooth itself is still painful to the touch, though perhaps not as much so as before. I am in pain at the moment, but not as intense pain as I was going through early yesterday morning. I am hopeful that I am finally located on the downhill side of this thing, heading towards the happy ending. (Update -- At 4:30 AM, 9/28/01, I woke up with minimal pain, the swelling was about the same, my temperature had fallen to 98.8 and my weight had fallen to 198.5, in spite of the 24 ounces of water and the yogurt I had at 1:00 AM.)

Welcome to my nightmare! Yesterday morning was straight out of a Stephen King novel. The pain was never gone completely, and I felt too bad to do anything of consequence. I did get authorization from the dentist to do what I was already doing anyway -- taking my medication every 4 hours -- and to do what I was not yet doing -- taking 2 pills at a time. With the two pills I was good for an hour and a half to two hours of sleep before the pain woke me up. I spent the morning in a haze, wandering between medication time, sleep and waiting for medication time.

It became clear to me in the afternoon that, at my current pace, I was going to run out of Vicodin in the middle of the night, and that is a no-no. (The one thing that I learned from smoking, is to plan your drugs ahead of time. Never run out! The smoking is gone but the lesson is not.) I got the dentist to call in a refill on my prescription, and Dotti and I went down to K-mart and picked it up just before 5:00 PM.

When we got home Dotti said that she would make some more Cream of Wheat for me, and so I laid down waiting for the nice soft food she was preparing. It had been 4 hours since my last pain medication and I actually did not hurt horribly bad at that time. That was a change. A good change! (On the down side, my stomach was feeling very bad though. I was not eating enough food with the pills or something. I had started eating two yogurts with each dose, and that had helped some, but obviously not enough.) So, I tried cutting back and only took one pain pill with my dinner, along with another antibiotic capsule. I laid down and slept an hour, but I did not wake up then because I was hurting too bad, I just had to use the rest room. So, I got up visited the rest room, and went back to bed. An hour and a half later I was still in bed and had slept most of the time. This was another improvement. No, I was not well, but I was crawling my way back out of the land of fire and brimstone.

At 7:30 PM I got up and stepped on the scale, just to see where my nightmare of the last couple of days had taken me. (I must be getting better, I am going back to my old ways. :) ) Mr. Scale said, “198.5 pounds.”

"Oh my!" I thought to myself. "Pain be dashed, I actually saw a reading in the 190s this week! Who knows what Saturday’s weigh-in will be, but I saw the 190s this week!!!! YES!!! Okay, enough of that, jumping up and down still hurts. :( "

At 8:00 PM I was feeling a little warm to the touch, and so I took my temperature. It was up to 99 degrees F. I take that as a good sign that my body is fighting the infection, and at least for now is not doing too badly (it isn’t over 100 degrees). I decided to take another pain pill, eating with it a slice of bread and two yogurts to protect my stomach.

At 10:00 PM I took my last antibiotic capsule for the day, and I took two pain pills, hoping to get some good sleep before needing anything more. I had 2 yogurts and a slice of bread with the pills. I also drank 24 ounces of water with it.

This past weekend I was looking at a book in a book store. It was about the mummies of Egypt, and one of them, I believe she was a queen, had died of a ruptured dental cyst. The author described the horrible pain that she must have gone through before the cyst burst into her bloodstream, putting her out of her misery. I sure can empathize where her right now. I have often thought how lucky I was, having been born into this time in human history. Barring a war crashing us back into the dark ages, I am sure that the future will be even brighter in the medical and dental fields for our children and grandchildren, but it is not too bad right now, compared with what was available in the past.

The book said that in Egypt there was a huge dental problem, because the millers mixed sand in with their grain, so when they ground it, it would produce a finer grind. However all that sand also ground the Egyptian teeth down and many of them died from dental problems. In passing, it said that people very rarely die from dental issues today, because of antibiotics, and sophisticated dental techniques (You know, where they strap you down and use drills and files and pliers. Sometimes I think it would be more appropriate to be done in a dungeon. :) ). As bad as it sometimes is today, it was far worse before.

For eating yesterday, I ate my standard breakfast -- minus the coffee, which I could not get down (4 pt.). For lunch I had 2 yogurts (4.0 pt.). For Dinner, I had a bowl of Cream of Wheat (2.0 pt.). That brought my meal points to 10.0 points. For snacks, along with the zero point pain, I had 7 more yogurts, while taking pills (14.0 pt.), and 4 pieces of bread, also with the pills (1.0 pt.). That added up to 15 snack points, and brought my total points for the day to 25.0.

For my water yesterday, I drank 12 cups, or 96 ounces. I drank almost all of that with the pills that I was taking, and I don’t think that I actually counted all the water that I drank early on.

For exercise, I probably paced several miles, but I couldn’t get the pedometer to work on my pajamas to actually track it (I did try though :) ). When I have unbearable pain, I have found that pacing helps a lot. (I learned this technique from 30 years of gall bladder attacks before I finally got rid of the stupid thing.) Over the last year, I have about worn a track down in our rug in our apartment from walking off toothaches.

139 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/200.0/200/BMI:25.0/WK-19/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

*** Weigh-in for WEEK 20 ***

Week Completed:	___20___
Weigh-In Weight:	197.5
Body Mass Index:	24.7
Week’s Average Points/Day:	25.8
Pounds +/- for this week:	-2.5
Pounds lost total:	42.0
Pounds to go to 10%:	0.0*
Pounds to go to goal:	0.0**
* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01 ** Made Goal at 200.0 pounds on 9/22/01

___________________________

For the one bright spot in my week, I stepped up on Mr. Scale this morning and he said, “197.5 pounds.”

When I woke up this morning, the swelling on my jaw appeared to be a bit less than when I went to bed. However when I went to eat something I realized that things did not feel right under my jaw and I went to look in the mirror, and sure enough it is swelling some underneath my jaw on my upper neck. The total amount of swelling is actually a bit more than when I went to bed. It seems that things are not set for a speedy recovery from this little dental procedure.

My dentist decided that new antibiotics (Clindamycin H) were in order yesterday, and so he called in a prescription for me. Dotti dropped by and picked the prescription up for me, and drove it over to my office. We had lunch together which was definitely the high point of my day.

My pain level is significantly reduced. I am taking Advil for pain, but not an excessive amount, and I am not waking up in pain at night. So, I feel better, but that swelling is something that has got to be stopped soon. I hope these new antibiotics will do the trick.

Dotti and I had planned to go down this weekend and visit my Mother and her husband Jim. Jim has been going through some medical procedures in California and they have been away for months. So, we were eager to visit with them and catch up on all that had been going on. However it was not to be. This infection in my face made me unfit for travel, especially to an out of the way place like where Mom lives. My energy is down and I am not sure if and when I am going to have to make a run for emergency medical treatment. Then, as if to slam a lid on the decision, my car had its “Service Engine Soon” light come on, just as I got home from work last night. This week has been cursed.

For eating yesterday, I had my standard breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had a yogurt (2.0 pt.), applesauce (1.0 pt.), an ice cream cone (3.0 pt.) at McDonalds with Dotti., and a V8 juice (0.5 pt.). For dinner I had some nice soft instant potatoes (3.0 pt.). That brought my meal points to 14.5 points. For snacks I had 3 yogurts with my medications (6.0 pt.), 4 pieces of bread (1.0 pt.), 3 cough drops (1.0 pt.) and a Mr. Cookie Face (3.0 pt.). So, for snack points I had 11.0. Total points for the day was: 25.5 points.

For water, I drank 14 cups, or 112 ounces.

140 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/197.5/200/BMI:24.7/WK-20/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph