Week 251 Update

It was a nice warm winter's morning of 40 °F, when I woke up at 04:38 and stepped up on Mr. Scale. He replied, "189.0 pounds!" It is interesting how relative a number on the scale can be. A few weeks ago, I would have been very upset with that number for being unacceptably high on a weekly weigh-in. This week, I am very happy to see that number, because it is 4.5 pounds lower than my weigh-in last week!

It has been an interesting week for me. My company had a layoff, and I thought I might be involved, but, at least for now, that does not seem to be the case. My weight had climbed to a height that, though I would have gladly accepted as a good weight for most of my life, was the highest that I have seen since 2001. The winds of change are forever blowing, and the surprises they bring make sure that we remain neither complacent nor bored for long.

I learned a few things this week about my journey. The most important thing I learned is that I had been getting very sloppy in what I was doing. I wasn't measuring what I ate, and I was eating too often at restaurants where I could only estimate the points, and where my estimates were perhaps wrong. (The Mexican food restaurants are the most striking example of this.) I ate at my maintenance level regardless of what the scale said, assuming that my points counting was accurate. This left no room for error, and clearly I was making some errors in my estimation of points values.

This week I disassembled what I was doing and reassembled it with new parts. I changed my morning breakfast to a lower point cereal, and measured my milk. I found that I had been pouring more milk in than I had estimated before. This mistake, with skim milk, was not a large error, but it was indicative of what was going on all day long for me. Uncounted points were apparently slipping in, and when I was eating at my limit already, that was disastrous.

This week all of that changed. I put my upper limit, not at my maintenance level, but rather at 40.0 points, six points lower. That would give me some room for error, and make me pay attention all day long, in order to avoid going over my new limit. This worked pretty well. The only day that I broke 40.0 points was Friday, and I only went a half-point over on that day. My average for points-per-day dropped from 42.36 down to 36.00. While that appeared to be only 6.36 points-per-day less, and only a total of 44.5 points less for the week, I believe that it was even more of a drop as I sharpened my focus on making sure I counted everything that I ate correctly.

One last adjustment: I went back to writing the food down BEFORE I ate it, whenever possible. I had slipped into the practice of eating things and then catching my journal up after the fact. My fear was that I was missing things occasionally. I wanted to close that gap so nothing would be getting through to sabotage my efforts.

I did not lower my sodium content in my eating during the week. For instance I did not shun popcorn, or soups, both which contain a lot of salt. I didn't avoid Ibuprofen, which always makes me retain water in my system. One would think that I would not see much of a drop on the scale because of this, but there was a consistent drop through the week.

My conclusion from this week long experiment is this: my execution of the program was what had changed for me when I got into difficulty, and that is what caused my gain in weight since November. I lost "sight of the ball" and was off stride, putting me into a "slump." Or to change analogies, it was "pilot error" not "mechanical failure" that was at the heart of the "crash." As always, it was in my own hands to fix this problem, and I just had to get my head into the game in order to make it happen.

My task now is to keep my head in the game, so I won't have a repeat of this unfortunate exertion out of bounds.

Dotti did awesome on program again, and she dropped another pound! J If you take her lowest weight this week and my highest weight this week, they were the same! She has nearly caught me and soon she will be waving as she passes me by.

You can follow her progress at her Dotti's Return to Goal page.

Saturday - I weighed in at 193.5 pounds. The moment of truth! I was disgusted with what I saw on the scale. For years I had been able to bring in a weigh-in of 187.0 or less, and now I am not even able to keep it below 190.0. I decided to put my focus back into my journey starting today, making it my #1 priority once more, until I got back on track.

Normally, I tend to snack a lot on the weekends, and my points climb high as a result. This time I was set on not letting that happen. We did make a run to Costco, and I did have a Very Berry Sundae (6.0 points), but at the end of the day, I had only eaten 35.0 points!

On top of that, Dotti and I took a walk to a store and back again. It came to a total of 3.54 miles of walking and it was very nice! The temperature was in the 40s, and the wind was blowing, but we were bundled up and felt comfortable all the way.

I also drank quite a lot of water Saturday: 14 cups!

Sunday - I weighed in at 195.0 pounds. Since I was already "on top of it," the nasty reading on the scale did not bother me much. I just continued with what I had started.

Dotti and I also picked this weekend to kick off our 2006 hiking season, and did our first Coon Family Hiking Club hike of the year: Triple Falls. Dotti's younger brother Rip joined us for the hike and it was a lot of fun!

Later we relaxed and had a great dinner that Dotti prepared for us. Once again I kept my points below my limit as I ate only 37.0 points for the day, and drank 11 cups of water.

Monday - I weighed in at 192.0 pounds. That was better to see than Sunday's reading on the scale. J That was in spite of the Ibuprofen and sodium I had taken in over the weekend.

It was back to work and things were busy, but not hard on my back at all. The day went by quickly and soon I was home with Dotti, enjoying some chili and other goodies. I ended up eating only 33.0 points for the day, and settled back down to only 6 cups of water.

Tuesday - I weighed in at 192.5 pounds. Once again, I was focused on my points intake, and I knew that I had done well all week so far. A half-pound up was nothing to worry about.

Another good day at work, and we were having dinner once more. It is great having Dotti as my chef, because she is great at coming up with low point dinners. J

I ate 33.5 points for the day on Tuesday, and I drank 12 cups of water.

Wednesday - I weighed in at 190.5 pounds. The drop was expected, but it was still nice to see!

Things got a bit complicated at work towards the end of the week. I ended up bouncing around between 3 different customer sites, we had a layoff, and one of our guys, a good friend of mine, who was not laid off, gave his 2-week's notice anyway, so he could move to another job. I will miss working with him!

At home the good evening meals continued, and I had 35.0 points for the day. Water consumption remained good, as I drank 8 cups.

Thursday - I weighed in at 190.5 pounds. That showed that my weight on Wednesday was not a fluke and I was actually dropping. Good!

I started out on the west side of town, the farthest away from home that I normally work, but I ended up moving over to a customer site on the east side after a couple of hours, and then in the afternoon I had a doctor's appointment to follow up on my back issues. The result was that I had my day end a bit early, and I was left with a great drive home, instead of my normal nightmare. And if that wasn't good enough, Dotti had met me at the doctor's office for moral support, and we followed each other home at the end of the day. J It is really cool being married to my best friend!!!

We had Dotti's tortellini soup for dinner and it was excellent as always! The sodium in it usually moves the scale up the next day, but the points are low, and the scale always moves back down after that, so it is not a problem. The great tasting soup is worth it!

I also had some rye mini toast snacks and some pretzels, just to make sure my sodium level was up. J However, I kept my points down to 38.0, and it was a good day! I also drank 11 cups of water, continuing my trend of better water consumption.

Friday - I weighed in at 191.0 pounds. That was no surprise at all.

From one point of view, I was doing all the wrong things: eating high-sodium foods; and taking Ibuprofen. This would normally drive the scale upwards. From another point of view, and the one that I was taking for this week, I was doing just great: I was eating below 40.0 points-per-day; and drinking lots of water.

What was being demonstrated, at least to my mind, is that points will beat sodium and medication for me, if I am careful to count them correctly, and keep them below a reasonable upper limit. Instead of gaining 2 to 4 pounds because of the ibuprofen, like has happened to me in the past, the scale had dropped 2.5 pounds since Saturday, and 4 pounds since Sunday!

I was on the east side of town all day this time, and that is just the way I like it on a Friday. J The day was a very good one, as work days go. I even had lunch with Dotti at Sweet Tomatoes!

I did have my plans thrown off just a bit on two counts. First, eating at Sweet Tomatoes brought my lunch points up to 13.0, about 5.5 points more than I would normally have for lunch. Then, I ended up eating the lunch, which I would have eaten at lunchtime, for dinner. We didn't have turkey available in the morning when Dotti made my lunch, and that meant she had to use peanut butter for my sandwiches instead. So, I had 11.0 points for dinner, which was another 5 or 6 points higher than I had been having. I did hold my snacks down, but at the end of the day I had broken through the 40.0 point barrier by half a point. Still, eating 40.5 points for the day was not bad, and I am very happy with the overall week as far as eating is concerned. I drank 8 cups of water and that was good too.

How do I rate this week?

Excellent! Yes, I know my weight was too high, but I was on track like I haven't been for many a month. I felt very good about my journey all week long. I am very optimistic about the future, and I am very hopeful that on next week's weigh-in I will be back in my target range, or very close to it.

I felt I was doing all the right things this week, by drinking my water and watching my points. I didn't worry about the distracting side issues, and only focused on the program. In the long run—the scale will follow the program: always!

Eating – I am very happy with how this part of my journey went this week. My highest point day was only 40.5 points, and that was just a half-point over my upper limit. (If it weren't for that, I would have given this area an A+ rating.) My average points-per-day was a mere 36.00, which was a drop of 6.36 points-per-day, on paper, and, since I was relying on measuring and paying attention more this week, I believe it was an even larger drop in reality.

A case in point: Espresso Beans from Trader Joe's. For a long time, I have been counting these as 6 beans for a point. The past few weeks, I had been eating quite a few of them. Well, I revisited the nutritional label this week. It was given by weight, rather than number of beans. So, I weighed out 6 beans and found that it was half a serving. One serving was 4.88 points, and that meant 6 beans would round off to being 2.5 points. I had been undercounting them by a factor of 2.5! This is what happens when I stay on "autopilot" too long. From time to time, I must come back to basics and clean up the process and make it 100% again.

Weight – Looking only at my weekly weigh-ins, I dropped a whopping 4.5 pounds this week! Since Sunday, I dropped an incredible 6 pounds…one pound-per-day. J Those numbers don't really mean much, since I had moved up 3.5 pounds on my weekly weigh-in the previous week, and I jumped up another pound and a half on Sunday after my weekly weigh-in. So, for two weeks, I have dropped only one pound. But I am still very happy with that!

I averaged 191.5 pounds this week, which is down a half-pound from last week's average weight. This would probably be a closer indication of my actual progress than the weekly weigh-ins themselves.

Water – Excellent! I normally shoot for 6-8 cups per day. My low day this week was Monday where I only drank 6 cups, but even that was good. I averaged 10.7 cups (85.71 oz.) per day! That was lots of water.

Exercise – I did a little better this week: eight miles of walking, and 4.5 of those on a hiking trail that had a fair elevation change. I was very gratified to find that I was not terribly sore after all of that walking. That means that I have not lost all of my conditioning from the previous exercise that I did. I need to start building upon that in the future.

4 years, 297 days OP; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

6 '3"/239.5/189.0/180±2/BMI:23.62/WK-251