Week 232 Update It was 05:30, 54°, and clear skies outside, when I stepped on Mr. Scale, and he said, "184.5 pounds!" That makes the third week in a row that I have weighed in within one-half pound of my target weight. I hadn't done that since April, when I weighed 185.5 for three weeks running.

I am still very excited by what Dotti is doing! She has completed another awesome week on program! Seven more days of eating in her point range every day, of walking 30 minutes on the treadmill each day, and drinking her water! She even dropped another pound!!!J

You can follow her progress at her Dotti's Return to Goal page. It is super!

This week I bounced up out of my target range on one day (Friday), but that was obviously just a water adjustment, because on Thursday I was 185.5, Friday 187.5, and today I weighed 184.5. J I averaged less than a pound over my target weight. That is well within my target range of ±2 pounds from my target weight.

I only averaged 38.14 points-per-day over the week, but then I dropped a pound as well. I was eating 7.9 points-per-day less than my maintenance level of 46 points. That comes to 55.3 points total for the week that I was down. That is about 80% of one pound, and might explain the drop. On the other hand, my average weight for this week actually went up from 185.86 to 185.93. (The accuracy of my scale is too low to allow that as a significant difference. Therefore, the two numbers are essentially identical.) I seemed to be holding steady by eating around 38 points-per-day. This will bear watching.

My back has been hurting all week, and I had a very busy week at work, never giving my back a chance to catch up. It has been slowly getting better, but slowly is the operative word.

Yesterday, marked the 30th anniversary, October 21, 1975, of one of the sadder days of my life, as I kissed Dotti goodbye, and stepped onto a plane, to head all the way across the Pacific Ocean, with a stop in Hawaii to change planes, and then setting down briefly in Japan, and Okinawa, finally coming to rest for an overnight stay at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippine Islands. Then, after an afternoon and evening to relax, and a night's sleep, I was loaded onto an Air Force C-141 jet cargo plane, which was headed out into the middle of the Indian Ocean, to a very isolated Island called Diego Garcia.

There were several things that I found to be of interest on this flight. First of all, the seats in the passenger compartment were all facing towards the rear of the plane, where a large cargo net was stretched across the fuselage. The netting was of very large weave, and so it offered no barrier to our view of what lay behind it: all the cargo headed to the island. Pallets of this and that, our luggage, and various other odds and ends were all sharing the compartment with us. First class all the way for our military boys! J

Before setting out, I had asked a number of questions about Diego Garcia, and one of the things that I had heard to be true was that there were no dependants allowed on the island, and there were no women there at all. So, I was very surprised to see several extremely attractive ladies dressed nicely in civilian attire, off to my left, surround by all of the other passengers who were sailors in their dress uniforms.

As an aside--It was late enough in the year in the USA for the official uniform of the day to have changed over from dress whites, to dress blues. I was wearing my double-breasted dress blue uniform in the tropics. On top of being way overdressed for the environment, I was also very unaccustomed to humidity. The plane was nice and cool, but every time I got off the plane, I thought I was going to pass out.

My first thought concerning the young ladies was that perhaps the officers could have their wives with them on the Island. However, the truth was even more surprising to me. These were all Miss America contestants (and they looked it!), who were being flown into the Island to be part of a USO show. (The ladies were able to visit with the sailors freely on the plane, but as soon as the plane landed, they went into a near military lockdown, and were closely guarded at all times.)

My original information had been correct. There were 1,200 sailors (800 SeaBees and 400 Naval Station personnel) on the Island, and the only female mammals that I saw actually living on The Rock (our happy little name for the place, since it reminded us of the old Alcatraz movies, where the prisoners, like us, could not leave, and wore dungaree uniforms, including similar looking grey-blue shirts with their names stenciled across their chests) were donkeys—left behind and turned loose by the coconut farmers when they were forced to leave the island. The donkeys had to be chased off the runway at times, and we had them running through our antenna field at the communications station.

The first person I remember speaking with after getting through the rigid customs inspection at the little airport, was a heavyset, bearded second class electronics technician who promptly said to me with a frown, "Three hundred and sixty-five days left." He shook his head and then asked, "Do trees live that long?"

Everyone was obviously very happy to be there as a resident on this coral island surrounded by thousands of miles of water. J And this tired, lonely man was one of the unhappiest at that moment. I hadn't even put my sea bag into my room, or changed out of my heavy blue uniform yet. I turned and looked out the window at the flat, dessert-like field lying between my barracks and the next one, and I embraced some very potent self-pity for a bit.

One day I spied the following "bumper sticker" attached to a filing cabinet:

Meanwhile, back in 2005, here's my week in review:

Saturday - I weighed in at 185.5 pounds.

LeRoy was still down visiting with us. At one point during the day, all three of us were sitting in the living room with our laptops going, connected through our home network. At times you might think that we were a bunch of computer geeks. J

I was not feeling too well, with my back still in pretty unhappy shape. So, I had a very physically quiet day. However, it was very nice being able to spend some time with my son!

By the end of the day I had eaten 39.5 points.

Sunday - I weighed 185.5 pounds. I was still not moving very sprightly, but we did make it out to Sweet Tomatoes for lunch, where I ate 15.0 points.

In the evening we had some of Dotti's Tortellini soup for dinner. In the evening LeRoy returned home, and we watched the rest of the weekend quickly disappear.

I ended up eating 48.5 points.

Monday - I weighed 186.0 pounds. Monday morning brought not only the start of another week of work, but the start of another week of pager coverage. My one hope was that I would not be called in, since I was just barely in good enough shape to get into to work and get through the day. As it turned out, I got very lucky, and the pager didn't go off at all, all week. J

I was working with a friend of mine at work, and we were bringing a machine back up after a dusted wafer event. (Ugly!) Unfortunately, the machine had sat down for several weeks, and during that time, the temptation was great for the customer's technicians to raid the machine for spare parts, making our job that much tougher as we tried to bring the machine back up.

Each day we made slow progress, finding something wrong at each major step along the way. Whenever we thought we were getting close to finishing, we would find another problem. Even as we were working on it, in the evening parts disappeared off the machine on two occasions, holding us up even more.

But it was nice working with my friend rather than working all by myself. When things go slow like that, and lots of problems jump up, it makes it a lot easier to laugh about it when you are working with someone else.

When I got home, Dotti had fixed us some lasagna for dinner's main course, and it was very good!

My points totaled 35.0 points when I went to bed.

Tuesday - I weighed 186.5 pounds. At work we continued working on getting the machine back up and running.

I didn't do any walking all week long because of my back. I was happy if I could just get through the day physically.

In the evening I spent time visiting with Dotti and working on the computer.

I ate 33.5 points on Tuesday.

Wednesday - I weighed 186.0 pounds. Eating in the 30s for points, I would expect my weight to go down, but it was holding itself up above 185.0. All I can do is to watch what I eat, and monitor the results on the scale.

It was another frustrating day at work with the machine. But we continued to make slow progress towards getting it done.

Dotti called me up at work and asked if I would like to take her to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. I told her that I would just love to do that. J

I ended up eating 13.0 points at Sweet Tomatoes and had a very nice visit with Dotti. (At least it was nice for me. I don't normally bend her ear about my job, but I really went on about it that night. When Dotti was all finished with her meal, I still had a long way to go on mine, because I had been talking instead of eating. Dotti was really sweet and didn't mind at all. J )

When all my points were totaled for the day, I had eaten 37.5 points.

Thursday - I weighed 185.5 pounds. Well at least that was close to 185.0. J

At work it looked like we were almost ready to start moving wafers though the machine. However, one of the assemblies, a robot arm, was moving to slightly different places each time when it was supposed to go to the same place. This is not good. After a few adjustments, right at the end of the day, it looked like we might have a problem in the drive mechanism. The fix would have to wait until the morrow.

Dotti fixed us some nice black bean burgers for dinner, and by the end of the day I had eaten 35.0 points.

Friday - I weighed 187.5 pounds. There you go. Eat low in points and watch the scale jump up a couple of pounds. J When I get a two-pound jump on the scale, after I have been eating low for several days, I never worry too much about it. I know it isn't fat weight!

Part of the problem was that I weighed a bit earlier than normal, since I woke up around 4 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I finally just got up at 4:45 AM, and weighed.

The reason I couldn't sleep was because the problem with the machine at work was bothering me. I ended up getting to work nearly an hour early and started working on it. Alas, I found the part that I feared was bad, had failed entirely. That put the machine down until the parts arrived on Monday morning. My back rejoiced that I would not be crawling around in the machine any more that day, but my heart was sad that we didn't get it cycling wafers yet. We felt like we were oh, so close to having it finished.

When I got home, we had a light dinner, with weigh-in coming up on Saturday.

I ate 38.0 points on Friday, and finally this morning, I dropped below 185.0. J

How do I rate this week? It was a good week. The only thing I am not happy with is my exercise, but with the way I felt all week, I was just happy to be at work and not out sick.

Eating – I averaged 38.14 points-per-day. Even though that is up from last week's 37.29 points-per-day, it still makes the 5th week in a row that my average stayed below 40 points-per-day.

Weight – My weight ranged from 184.5 up to 187.5 this week.

My average weight for the week was 185.93, nearly a pound above my target weight, but well within my target range.

Water – I drank at least 7 cups every day. I averaged 68.57 ounces (8.6 cups) per day, more than a cup per day more than last week, and that exceeds my goal of 6 to 8 cups per day.

Exercise – Just getting through the days was all the exercise I could handle this week.

Onward to another week…

4 years, 164 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.5/180±2/BMI:23.06/WK-232

GRAPHS:

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

2004 Walking Data