I not only put Mr. Scale into a new location, I woke him up nice and early to boot. Perhaps he likes abuse because when I stepped on him at 4:41 AM, he said, “188.0 pounds!” I thought maybe he was kidding and so I asked him again, and he said the same thing. I guess he meant it.

I also got reacquainted with Tammy’s professional scale, which said that I weighed 186.5 pounds. Well, jumping Jiminy this is what I have been shooting for all along! I am there. Wow, that leaves me, if not speechless, at least taken back a few steps. After holding solid all week last week, right up until weigh-in yesterday, I suddenly dropped 3 pounds right into the middle of my goal range. It wasn’t due to eating light yesterday either. For the second day in a row, I ate right at the top of my range at 29.0 points. The only thing that I didn’t do yesterday was to eat a lot of free food. Everything that I ate had points attached to it. Maybe my system cleared out the roughage and left me a bit lighter. Who knows?

I know that I don’t want to drop any lower at this time. So, I am moving my points up to a 31 limit immediately, and see what happens. I think I am going to have to move up to 35 before I am done, or maybe higher, but I will take it in stages. To start out, I am going to try to eat very close to 31 points for several days in a row and watch what my weight does. Since daily fluctuations can be deceiving, I will watch for several days and look for a trend. The one thing I do not want to do is to continue to drop much lower than where I am at. I still have a small layer of fat across my stomach, but I think with exercise, I can get rid of that, and still maintain my weight in this range by building up a bit of muscle mass. Here begins a life long project of fine tuning my system. A continuing path of improvement, without perfection. This is going to be fun!

If my weight should jump up to over 190 tomorrow, I am going to stay on my routine of 31 points, because I feel that I am going to need to eat at least 31 points to maintain my weight in my desired range. Also, having dropped down into my target range today, I know that my body is pretty well geared to be at this weight. I don’t want it to get any ideas about going below my range.

Yesterday, after I finished my weigh-in and I had updated all my info for my journal, we loaded up the car for our trip. Now, Dotti was a “bad girl” and carried a heavy suitcase down to the car before I saw what she was doing. I carried the rest of the stuff down (we tend to take a lot of stuff when we visit Jim and Tammy) and she organized it in the car. However, the damage may have been done already because her trapezius muscle, that runs up her back and behind her ear, was bothering her again last night. She is so industrious I have to keep a close eye on her when there is heavy lifting to be done. Her bowling has been keeping that injury aggravated just a bit too, so that it never quite heals up all the way. (I did the same type of thing with a serious ankle sprain back in the early 1980s. I stepped on first base in an Electronics School softball game, catching just the outside edge of my right foot on the bag. When I put my weight down, it twisted the foot upwards on the outer edge and downwards on the inner, and left me hobbling. Every time it would almost heal up and start to feeling a bit better, I would go and play racquetball, and the next day I would be hobbling again. It took an entire year for that ankle to finally heal, because I was playing racquetball several times a week.) I hope that Dotti’s neck and back heal up faster than that!

Next we hit the road about 10:00 AM, for the 6 hour trip. Dotti worked on the DWLZ web page all the way, using her Palm-Top computer to calculate points for list of restaurants she is going to be putting up soon. She didn’t stop, except for rest area breaks, and when stopped for gas and for Subway, until we reached Spokane. The sun was just down behind the horizon by that time and she had to turn on the back-light on her Palm so she could still see it, and she finished up the last item just as we got into the city limits.

During the morning yesterday, as I was going through my weigh-in routine, and then as we were getting ready to go, I recorded some Christmas CDs, that we picked up at Costco a few weeks back, onto cassette tape. I listened to that tape off and on during the trip. It has some old recordings of Christmas songs from artists that I remember hearing on the radio ever since I was a child. I really enjoyed the music.

The ice dam across the Clark Fork River was showing signs of instability. The sounds of cracking had been exploding up the canyon for weeks. Suddenly with an tremendous roar it failed. Backed by hundreds of cubic miles of water, from the mighty Lake Missoula, the pieces of the dam were carried along, and trapped within those huge broken chunks of ice, there were rocks that had been transported down from Canada, by glacier flow, to their temporary resting place in the dam, some of them were huge. The rocks, floating inside their frozen packages, the ice, and the water began a rapid and destructive trek that was to last for half a thousand miles. The water poured 500 feet deep over where the city of Spokane now rests, and continued southwest across the central section of Washington State, ripping huge channels called coulees, out of the flatlands east of the Cascade Mountains. The largest of these channels is the Grand Coulee, where now a very large dam across the Columbia River has that name. At one point the water tore the land aside and exposed rock that was strong enough to fight it for a while, and there a falls was created that was 3 times as wide as the Niagara falls and about three times as tall. The volume of water that passed over it, made Niagara look like a water faucet. Today, that falls is dry and that is its name: The Dry Falls.

The water finally hit a barrier as it headed south, an increase in elevation, which no doubt had influenced the Columbia River itself long before to turn west and cut its path through the Cascade Mountains, creating the Columbia Gorge. The torrent backed up and then poured through the gorge, ripping at the walls, filling it to overflowing in places, actually jumping across rock walls many hundreds of feet tall. All along the gorge volcanic rock was exposed, and the flood continued on its way. Pouring out of the western end of the gorge, the water hit the Willamette Valley. Rocky Butte, an ancient volcanic mountain, standing several hundred feet tall, parted the water’s rushing torrent, and trailing behind both sides of that hill there still remains a tall deposit track that was laid down by the flow.

As water continued west it hit a bottle neck in the Columbia River’s path that caused a back up. This allowed the flood to cover the area where Portland now resides to a depth of 400 feet, and then the entire Willamette Valley for over 100 miles south was flooded, clear to where Eugene stands today. The blocks of ice, containing the Canadian rocks were deposited all over the valley, including one stone that was larger than a railroad boxcar.

Finally, the water was allowed to escape to the sea and the first Spokane Flood was over. However, the ice dam reformed, Lake Missoula refilled and the whole thing happened again and again, perhaps as many as 50 times before the ice age was finally over, and the ice backed off for good.

Every time we make the drive to Spokane I am reminded of the Spokane Floods by the terrain we are passing. The western end of the Columbia Gorge is covered with lush growth, including pine trees and other vegetation, completely covering the rock beneath. So, there is little indication of what happened. But as we hit midpoint through the Gorge, the annual rainfall drops off significantly, since the western slopes of the Cascades greedily suck the moisture out of the clouds heading in from the sea. Here the rock walls are exposed the water lines are clearly visible. Looking up hundreds and hundreds of feet and seeing where water exposed the volcanic deposits is something that awes me every time. To think of that much water passing right over where we are driving at this moment in time stirs emotions that are hard to describe. As we exit the Gorge and turn north, everywhere the coulees testify to the water’s destructive power, as well as exposing below, the results of a force that is even older than the floods. For everywhere that the water cut its channels, there can be seen volcanic rock. The amount of lava that has been deposited in Washington and Oregon, is impossible to fathom. The only lava plains that are larger in the entire world are found in India, which were created at the time the dinosaurs became extinct.

The Pacific Northwest is very beautiful, but it has had a very interesting geological history, and each time we drive to Spokane, it is like opening up a history book and refreshing my memory on the amazing floods that left such a mark on the lands, and yesterday was no exception.

We pulled into Jim and Tammy’s place about 4:30 PM and it was getting dark outside. (Since Spokane is in the same time zone as Vancouver, and it lies well east, that means the sun will set earlier, and will rise earlier for us.) With the help of Jim and his son-in-law Trevor, we got the car unloaded, and we all settled in for some serious visiting. Tammy cooked up some great spaghetti and we caught up on what had gone on since our visit in July.

I was pretty tired by the early evening, and finally hit the bed about 9:00 PM or so. This morning I was up a bit after 4:00, and laid back down, but finally realized that I was not going to get any more sleep and got up at 4:40 and did my weigh-in for today.

I am not sure what we will be doing today, but being Sunday, Jim is off from work, and we should have a great time of it. Every time we arrive, Jim and Tammy make us feel as at home as if we had never left. I for one, really enjoy these get-togethers!

For my eating yesterday, I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had a 6” turkey breast Subway sandwich. (6.0 pt.) and a diet soda. For dinner I had some of Tammy’s delicious spaghetti (6.0 pt.). That brought my meal total to 17.0 points. For snacks I had 16 cough drops (5.0 pt.), 10 Smart Body Chews (2.0 pt.), and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.). That brought my snack points to 12.0, and finished my day at 29.0 points total.

For water I drank 15 cups, or 120 ounces.

190 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

Since Mr. Scale was so nice to me yesterday, I decided to let him sleep in a bit, and didn’t disturb him until 6:00 AM, at which time he said, “187.0 pounds.” (Tammy’s scale said 185.5 pounds. :) )

My intention was to eat 31 points yesterday, but after dinner, and as the evening was wearing on, I realized that I was sitting low, at 21.5 points. I grabbed a Kashi bar and boosted my points up to 26.5, but then I realized that I had not drunk any water yet for the day. It was bedtime, after 10:00 PM and I drank three 24 ounce glasses of water in about 20 minutes. My stomach was bursting, and since the water was cold coming out of the tap, my body temperature fell in a hurry. I was shivering to beat the band when I went to bed. Fortunately, Dotti had turned my heating pad on before she went to bed, and that brought my body temperature back to normal in just a few minutes and then I was toasty warm again. However, I was up and down all night getting rid of those 4 and half pounds of water I drank just before lying down.

Yesterday I spent visiting with Jim mostly. He is an awesome mechanic and was kind enough to listen to a noise our van had developed on the trip up and give his advice on what needs to be done. We headed over to his mother’s house to say hi, and to look at her computer, to see if I could do something with a problem it is having. (I was not able to fix it on the spot, and it will take another visit later.) We also got to see Tammy’s mother and stepfather on the way back home. Jim and Tammy, as well as their extended family over the years have been wonderful to Dotti and I, accepting us into the familial group as if we were regular members. We feel very much at home, even when the whole family comes to visit for Thanksgiving dinner each year.

Weight loss is a funny business. The human body is so terribly complex that many variables will interact with each other to produce sometimes surprising results. In the long run, things stabilize out to where (Total Calories In –Total Calories Out) / 3500 = Change in Total Fat Pounds. Here the variables appear to be only two: Calories Out and In. With a bit of effort you can easily track the number of Calories that you consume. However, the number of Calories that you actually use in your system can vary with the amount of fiber you eat, and with other things that affect how fast the food passes through your digestive track. If it passes through before being absorbed, you essentially did not eat it. That is why the WW formula subtracts points for fiber content. The point of having a fiber cap is that there is only so much that fiber can actually do towards speeding up your digestive track, and beyond that point, eating more fiber will have no additional affect.

The second variable lives up to its name in every way. Calories Out are much more difficult to calculate. Of course there are formulas for tracking how many Calories are burned for a “normal” metabolism for various levels of activities. For most people that will give a pretty good indication of what the Calories Out are. However, there are things can impact that. Medication, smoking and level of health can impact how effective your body is in using Calories. The thyroid gland can drive your metabolism into high gear, and put you in a constant state of hunger and thinness, or it can slow everything down to a crawl, causing your body to hang onto every Calorie for as long as it can, using much less than the normal metabolism will. The level of exercise that you get will directly impact on the number of Calories that your body burns during the day. It is one of the non-medication things that you can directly control with conscious effort to alter your metabolism’s caloric burn rate.

Another, and sometimes quite frusterating factor is the “starvation compensation reaction” of the body. If the number of Calories coming in drops below a certain level, the body does something designed to save your life in case of starvation conditions. It slows your metabolism down, makes you less energetic, and forces you to conserve your fat, burning Calories at the slowest possible rate. By eating less at this point, while you have indeed lowered one variable (Calories In), you will inadvertantly also alter the other variable by a similar amount! You eat less, but you burn less. Net result: no weight loss!

In all cases, each individual will have to check his own Calories Out value through trial and error to find what the actual level is.

Once you have determined Calories In and Calories Out, at least to a fairly close approximation, you can then use the formula to determine weight loss. One pound of fat is created by 3500 excess Calories. One pound of fat is consumed by 3500 deficit Calories.

What drives some people crazy in their weight loss attempt, is their inability to accurately judge either their Calories In, or their Calories Out, or both. A slow metabolism may have a very small threshold window for eating at a weight loss level. If a bit too much is eaten, weight is gained. If too little is eaten the “starvation compensation reaction” kicks in and weight loss is halted. This can be very frustrating! Sometimes using a professional nutritionist, working hand in hand with your doctor is the only sure way to overcome such circumstances, and even then it is not easy.

Others don’t like measuring cups and food scales. They like to estimate what they are eating and don’t always get it right. I remember in high school chemistry class when we weighed a small piece of paper on a very accurate scale, and then put a one inch pencil mark on the paper and then weighed it again, and could actually weight the difference the graphite mark created. The human mind is a very versatile tool, and you can train your eye to make accurate estimates, but one thing remains true: if you weigh and measure, you always know what you are eating, otherwise there is always some doubt. (This is the very thing that makes restaurant eating a bit like walking through a gastronomical mine field.)

My point in all of this is that last week I was struggling to just hang on to where I was at, and to not show a weight gain for the week. This week, at least for the last two days, the weight is falling off like autumn leaves from a tree in a wind storm. Now I am actually beginning to worry about not falling below my personal goal range. I have lost over 50 pounds now (52.5 as of this morning) and I am ready to level off where I am at. It is time to kick my points up.

The WW “Staying the Course” booklet says that at this point it is time to add 4 points to both ends of my points range and monitor the results for a week. That would put my new points range (123 Success Plan) at 22+4 to 29+4 or 26 to 33. If I stay where I am at, then great, I will continue at that points range and monitor what happens for several weeks. If I gain weight, then I move the range back down 2 points on each end and try again. If I lose a pound or more, I would add 2 more points. I have been saying that this was what I have been waiting for. Well, here it is. :)

For my eating yesterday, I had my my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had a 6” turkey breast Subway sandwich. (6.0 pt.) and a diet soda. For dinner I had some of Tammy’s very tasty Shepherd’s Pie (7.5 pt.). That brought my meal total to 18.5 points. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), 6 cough drops (2.0 pt.), and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.). That brought my snack points to 8.0, and brought the total for the day to 26.5 points.

For water I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces.

191 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I got up an hour earlier today because I have an early appointment at a local Les Schwabs to hopefully deal with the noise and vibration that our van was demonstrating during our drive up to Spokane. When I stepped on Mr. Scale he said, “188.5 pounds.”

The last few days my weight has dropped suddenly, dropped a bit more, and now moved back up a bit. Here is where taking the long view is far more difficult, because I have raised my point range to a higher value. The question is each day, did my weight change as only a normal fluctuation, or is it starting a new trend in either an up or down direction? From yesterday, I am up a pound an a half, but from the day before yesterday, only a half pound. This sort of movement during the week is always normal. If I waited an hour and weighed again, I might drop a half pound or even a whole pound. So, there is nothing to sink my teeth into as hard data yet. I need more time at the new point range to determine what “effect” is going to be actually produced from the “cause” of eating in my new point range.

Yesterday, despite the fact that it was his birthday, unfortunately Jim had to work. So, I spent the morning working on the computer, which included writing my online journal, and putting up some new pictures on the web site. (Click here for photo thread.) The kids started showing up from school in the early afternoon, and I spent some fun time playing like a kid with two wonderful blonde-haired, blue eyed little ones: one of my “nieces” and one of my “grandnephews.” There is just something about the unlimited energy, and the eagerness to be amazed by anything new in life that children naturally radiate, that makes it contagious. They are not only the future, but they are such a big part of the present as well. If I had three wishes, I would use them to make the world a better place for them.

When Jim got home, he and I got on the computer for a while, and then watched an old western on TV. Before we knew it, it was time for bed. I think we all made it to bed fairly early last night. Tammy and Dotti were joking about how we must be getting old, because we didn’t used to get to bed so early.

Tammy had noticed, in reading my journal that I was not eating much fat. The Kashi bars have 5 grams of fat, and the bread in my sandwiches has just a bit, but I was not getting 2 to 3 points of fat each day, which is what WW recommends. So, I have been trying to increase that just a bit. It would be easy to increase it too much. The vast majority of Americans get way too much fat in their diet, and our extremely high rate of heart problems testifies to that. So, while I am trying to get the fat level up to where it belongs, I am even more concerned that I do not go above the healthy level.

I remember my grandfather dropping dead in his mid-fifties from a heart attack, and I have at least the same basic body build as he did. So, as my own mortality became more clearly visible to my awareness, I have been more and more concerned about heart health. That concern helped motivate me to quit smoking, to lose weight, and it still helps motivate me to exercise.

My grandfather never smoked a day in his life, but he did have a weight problem. I am not sure how much exercise he got, but I do not think it was a great deal. (He was a jeweler, which was not a physical occupation. He did work around the house and property that he and my grandmother owned, but I don’t think it would be considered a good exercise regime.)

I can still remember, as a very young child, knocking and then waiting at the door at Grandpa’s house on Christmas Eve and looking way up at the 6 foot, 2 inch giant opening the door and looking down at me with a smile. When I visited him at his Jeweler’s shop, the thing I remember most was that he always had a stick of Black Jack chewing gum for me, with the flavor of black licorice. And I also remember my mother getting the news that her father was struck down with a heart attack.

When I passed the age of 45, and reached my 46th birthday, it created a very strange feeling for me, because I knew my father never made it to that birthday. He died in a terrible accident a few months before his birthday. Now, I am approaching the age where my grandfather died, but he died of natural causes. I have ancestors who lived well over 100 as well, and others who were pushing 90 when they died. So, genetically all is not against my having at least a normal life span, but it very much helps keep me focused, knowing that the rest of the path that I will walk, is one that must be buttressed with healthy choices, or else it could easily be washed away.

I ran my points clear to the top of my new point range yesterday. It was a strange feeling to eat that much, because for my entire journey I never ate more than 31 points, while staying in range, and only once did I make the mistake of accidentally eating out of range up to 32 points. Eating 33 points felt rather strange. But of course I can get used to it. Before I started this journey, a trip to McDonalds would often push me to 34 points or more for a single meal!

There is no doubt that I can get used to eating more. The main thing is to continue to track what I am eating, and to eat in control. Then maintenance will be a success for a lifetime. Otherwise, I will find myself right back to where I will be fighting to stay below 240 again. I feel very confident that I will not be doing that. I know a great deal more about it today than I did then, and as the old adage goes, “Knowledge is POWER!” The tools are in place, and the path lies out before me, clearly marked, and well lighted. Now it is up to me to walk it. With my wonderful life’s partner walking beside me, I expect it to be a fun and successful trip indeed.

For my eating yesterday, working with my new 26-33 point range, I started off with my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had two turkey sandwiches, with pepper-jack cheese. (5.0 pt.) For dinner I had some more of Tammy’s excellent Shepherd’s Pie, and two pieces of bread (8.0 pt.). That brought my meal total to 18.5 points. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), 6 cough drops (2.0 pt.), and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.). That brought my snack points to 8.0, and brought my total for the day to 26.5 points.

For water I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces, and I got the water in by the early evening this time. (My sleeping was far less interrupted last night. :) )

192 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I woke up this morning a bit later than I have been doing, but I had gotten to bed later too. I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 6:15 AM and he said, “187.5 pounds.” That is my target weight exactly, midway through my goal range. Looking back in my journal, I find that I have been within a pound of that weight every day since Sunday.

Yesterday, Jim and I went over to Les Schwab and dropped my van off around 8:00 AM. As it turned out, it was a bit costly, but at least the problems that I have been concerned about have been solved. (New brakes, 2 new tires, new struts, and an alignment.) I will feel much safer driving home in that van than I did driving up. It was vibrating some above 55 miles per hour, and just a bit before reaching Spokane, it developed a squeal in one of the wheels. Now it runs smooth and quiet. One of my tires looked perfectly normal most of the way around, but as you rolled it around, it had a spot along one edge that was worn down so much that the steel belt was separating from the rubber. (That was from the struts and alignment being out.) All and all, I am just glad that the tire didn’t blow on the road, and the sources for all the problems were discovered at a more convenient time than having a tow truck save me in the middle of rush out traffic, or having a blowout, possibly causing an accident.

As it turned out, we had to leave the van at Les Schwab for them to do all the work, and Tammy and Dot were busy elsewhere. So Jim and I walked back to his house. It was a nice walk, maybe a mile or so in length, and I enjoyed the exercise.

When we picked the van up about 2:00 in the afternoon, Jim drove us over in his truck, and I got to watch them do the alignment on the car. They have a computer system that gives a read out on several separate parameters of the tire alignment. The mechanic would loosen up the lockdown bolts, physically adjust one of the parameters, and lock it down. Then he would move to the next one. It was clear that he had done this many times before because there was no hesitation, or fumbling around. He just looked at the screen and dialed in the tire’s position.

Later in the afternoon, Tammy and Dotti got back from their errands, and Dotti had a new hairdo. I took some pictures of her, and created a 60x60 image and uploaded it for the message board.

Trevor, Jim’s son-in-law, dropped by and invited Jim and I to go to the gym with him and play some racquetball. We couldn’t get a court until 9:00 PM, and the gym closed at 10:00 PM. So, we had about an hour to play, and that was just about right for me. (I used a few minutes to warm up, and so I counted 50 minutes of actual racquetball time, for my aerobic points calculation.) I played a singles game with Jim and then a singles game with Trevor, and then we all played a game of cutthroat, where all three of us played at once, each man for himself. It was a lot of fun and I got a good workout. Both Jim and Trevor get better each time I come up. This time I had gotten a little better too, since I dropped my weight, and have been playing more often back home, but we had some great volleys, and a good time was had by all. Both of my opponents are gentlemen, and it is always fun to play against them.

When we got back, I decided to put up three larger pictures of Dotti with her new hairdo, that you can see on the photo thread. (Click here.) After that it was time for bed, as it was approaching the pumpkin hour of midnight.

For my eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had two turkey sandwiches, with pepper-jack cheese. (5.0 pt.) Tammy cooked up another great dinner for us. There was some roast, potatoes and gravy, with two pieces of bread (7.0 pt.). So for meals, I had 17.0 points. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), 9 cough drops (3.0 pt.), 10 Smart Body Chews (2.0 pt.), and a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.). That brought my snack points to 11.0, and brought my total for the day to 28.0 points.

For water I drank 12 cups, or 96 ounces.

For exercise I walked about a mile (It was not timed, and so no Aerobic points can be calculated.), and I played 50 minutes of racquetball for 7.5 Aerobic Points.

193 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped on Mr. Scale at 5:00 AM, and he said, “188.5 pounds,” -- still within a pound of my target weight, and well within my personal goal range. Also, when I stepped on Tammy’s nice scale, it said 186.5 pounds. Averaging the two together is 187.5 pounds, my target weight. So far, I am sticking right where I want to be. Of course it has only been 5 regular morning weigh-ins that I have been in my range, and within a pound of my target weight, but it is great seeing what Mr. Scale has been saying for those days.

Jim had the day off yesterday, and so we headed off into The Valley to check out the Spokane Valley Mall. We wandered around, looking at the stores, and even saw Santa Claus waiting for some kids to come along to get their pictures taken. We stopped by the Sportsman’s Warehouse on the way out. It is a very large hunting and fishing store (on the same physical scale as a Kmart or Target store), that sells everything from sleeping bags to hand guns. We headed back home after that because his daughter (and my “niece”) was getting out of school soon and Tammy and Dotti were running errands. We spent the rest of the day visiting, watching old John Wayne movies and even an old Gene Autry show that was made in 1950, the year before I was born, followed by a Lone Ranger show that was made the same year that I was born.

Tammy’s "candle" light that she is keeping in the window until LeRoy’s safe return, suddenly stopped working. So, Jim and I ripped it apart and fixed it. The hardest part was getting the plastic structure disassembled without destroying it. As it turned out, we got it fixed and back together and it is shining in the window even as I am typing this.

Last night Dotti and Tammy were busying with getting Tammy’s palm top, set up, and then fixing some goodies for Thanksgiving dinner, which we will get to enjoy later today. Jim and I visited and even had a couple of drinks, which I haven’t done in quite a while. I had enough points left to have two 1.5 ounce drinks of Crown Royal, mixed with diet cream soda and ice.

As I get older, the hour that I turn into a pumpkin gets earlier and earlier. It was about 10:30 PM when my eyes started drooping and I had to “hit the rack.”

I sure wish that Jim and Tammy lived down in the Vancouver area, or that we lived in Spokane, because I miss being able to see them as often as we used to do. We have gone through many periods of our friendship when we saw them everyday. But living in different towns, limits the amount of time that we can spend together. It is not feasible for us to move up here, because Spokane has no jobs for my particular skills, but it is the place that Jim and Tammy grew up in and it is their permanent home. So, the fates have decreed that we settle for our two visits a year, and enjoy them to the fullest. We certainly do that! Of course the the telephone keeps us all up to date on what is happening the rest of the year.

Today is Thanksgiving, and Jim and Tammy’s family usually drop in for dinner and visiting. We see them each year, and it is fun visiting with them, and noting how much the children have grown up since last time. Jim and I break out the guitars, microphone and amp and sing some songs, after everyone has a full stomach and is too tired to avoid being a captive audience. :) Things get hectic for a few hours, but it is a special time for all of us.

For my eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch I had two turkey sandwiches, with pepper-jack cheese. (5.0 pt.) For dinner Dotti cooked me a couple of fried egg sandwiches (2.5 pt.), and I had a bowl of cereal and 2% milk (5.0 pt.), adding up to 7.5 points. That gave me 17.5 points for meals. For snacks I had 12 cough drops (3.5 pt.), a bag of Jolly Time Healthy Pop popcorn (2.0 pt.), a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.), and 3 ounces of Crown Royal (4.0 pt.). That brought my snack points to 14.5, and brought my total for the day to 32.0 points.

For water I drank 9 cups, or 72 ounces.

194 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

I let Mr. Scale sleep in all the way to 5:49 AM before I woke him up today. I stepped up and he said, “186.5 pounds.” (Tammy's nice scale said 185.0 pounds. :) ) I didn’t expect to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner, and a two pound loss the next morning. This Weight Watcher’s system works very well.

Tammy and Dotti worked hard yesterday on getting things ready for the dinner during the morning. The house was in order, the dinner ready to go, and smelling like heaven by the early afternoon. The family started dropping in about that time, and we had loaded up on turkey and the trimmings and had already started digesting it before 3:00 PM.

Of course with Tammy at the cooking helm, there was no doubt that the meal was going to be a treat. Turkey and yams, stuffing and gravy. Absolutely delicious. Dotti handled the auxiliary kitchen duties, and the two of them worked together like a fine drilled team. One of the really cool things to watch was that even with all the stress of trying to make things ready for the big event, and with the kids finding things to get their tempers up over, Dotti and Tammy don’t snap at each other or step on each other’s toes at all. Their personalities mesh like a two parts of a finely crafted machine.

Here we are, two visitors living in their house for an entire week, and we are having just as much fun at the end of the week as we did at the beginning. Of course I can’t speak for Jim and Tammy, but I know that Dotti and I feel right at home when we come to visit, and always feel like the week has evaporated far too quickly when it comes time to leave. It is rare indeed when two couples can hit it off so well. (I think that Dotti and Jim have certain personality traits that are similar, and Tammy and I have certain other personality traits that are similar. Since Dotti and I have always had a great relationship, and Jim and Tammy, who are coming up on their 25th anniversary, have also, the dynamics work for Dotti and Tammy to be best friends, and for Jim and I to also be best friends. For whatever reason, it certainly works!) After 23 years of friendship, Jim and Tammy are part of our family, as close as anyone can be to us. Even their extended families have accepted us as part of their group.

After dinner, Jim and I broke out the guitars and we started singing. We sang the favorite songs that different family members have -- two or more songs in most cases. Jim’s and Tammy’s 4 girls, our "nieces," have been listening to us sing for many years and they have each picked out their favorite songs from the songs that I have in my book. In some cases they had a favorite song already and so I learned to play and sing it, and added it to my book for these times. In other cases they just picked up a liking for one of the songs that I was singing already. In between the requests we slipped in several songs that we like ourselves. For humor, we did Cat’s in the Kettle which got a good laugh. Of course we had to do How Do You Like Dot Now?, and I did the two love songs I wrote for Dotti. (Barb heard me sing those to Dotti in our living room, when she came to visit us.) I am not sure how long we sang, it was well over an hour and working up close to two. Anyway, I was exhausted when we finished. It is amazing how much energy lively singing can use up. We closed with the song Honey, an old Bobby Goldsboro hit, and then we relaxed.

Tammy found a Christmas music channel on her satellite dish, and that made a nice quiet background sound to visit by. Jim broke out a yo-yo he found and we were trying to remember all the tricks we used to do when we were kids. Unfortunately it was not built to be a “sleeper” yo-yo and so the number of tricks we could do were very limited, but it was fun nonetheless.

After all the family visitors had left, we visited for a few more minutes, Tammy’s show “Survivors” came on, and so I headed down and played a game of Snood. I hung on, with drooping eyes, until I broke 120,000 but I was fading fast. I ended up going to bed shortly after 10:00 PM, and nearly slept in until 6:00 AM.

Unfortunately, Jim had to go to work this morning, and after he headed out I came down to Tammy’s computer to write my journal. I have a number of things I want to get done on the computer today, so I will probably be busy on those for most of the time that Jim is at work. We are planning to get some racquetball in this evening, for one last session before Dot and I head back home tomorrow.

So much of life is lived in order to enjoy the rest of it. I work all week in order to enjoy the weekend. I work all year to enjoy my vacations. I love to write, and that is often how I spend my leisure time. I look forward to the time I spend writing my journal each day. The time in July and November, when Dotti and I get to visit with Jim and Tammy, are always out there as something to look forward to, when things are tough at work, and I am struggling with something that is stressing me out. There is always that light at the end of the tunnel. When I drove up to Spokane last Saturday, I could feel many symptoms of stress bearing down on me. Today, I feel stress-free and perfectly at ease. That happens every time we come up here. As I said, that is something very nice to have to look forward to. I consider myself singularly blessed to have my wonderful Dotti as my wife, and Jim and Tammy as my friends.

Still, there are a few clouds on the horizon it appears. The local weatherman predicts Snow for Spokane tomorrow, just in time for our drive. Fortunately, I do have chains, and I have quite a bit of experience driving in the snow, so as long as they don’t close any of the highways, we will be okay. I just checked the Weather Channel web site, and they had the following warning:

Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service ...

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPOKANE WA 350 AM PST FRI NOV 23 2001

...WINTER WEATHER RETURNS THIS WEEKEND...

A WINTER STORM SYSTEM WILL MOVE INTO EASTERN WASHINGTON AND NORTHERN IDAHO SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY. ADDITIONALLY...BRISK NORTHERLY WINDS WILL PULL COOLER AIR INTO THE AREA AND ALLOW FOR SNOW TO FALL AT LOWER ELEVATIONS.

IT IS TOO EARLY TO PINPOINT SNOW AMOUNTS...BUT THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR HEAVY MOUNTAIN SNOWFALL...AS WELL AS FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS IN THE VALLEYS.

ALL PERSONS TRAVELING SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY SHOULD BE ALERT AND PREPARED FOR HAZARDOUS WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS...ESPECIALLY OVER MOUNTAIN PASSES.

However, it looks like it will be just fine for the drive. For Spokane the low tonight should be 33, and the high tomorrow 39. The snow showers are not scheduled until the evening tomorrow, when we should be already home. At close to the midway point of our trip is Kennewick, WA where it is supposed to have a low tonight of 33, and the high tomorrow will be around 46, and there is supposed to be a mix of sun and clouds. Halfway through the Columbia Gorge, is The Dalles, OR, where we got snowed in for 3 days a few years ago, but the low tonight is only going to be 37, and the high tomorrow will be 45. They should be having some scattered showers, but they are rain showers not snow showers. Finally, in Vancouver, WA, our home, the low tonight will be around 40, with the high tomorrow all the way up to 47. While there will be scattered showers there, they will be RAIN showers, and so I don’t foresee any major weather problems for our trip home. If we were leaving on Sunday, it might be a different story, but we are getting out ahead of the weather. (Of course that is what Phil the weatherman thought in Ground Hog’s Day. :) )

For my Thanksgiving Day eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.), but that is where “standard” ended. I ate one additional meal, Thanksgiving Day dinner, sort of midway between where lunch and dinner normally reside. I finished the main meal just before 3:00 PM. I had a bit of everything, including turkey, dressing, yams, and some fresh vegetables: celery, cauliflower and broccoli. It added up to 12.0 points. Then after I finished singing, and a couple of hours had passed, I had some pumpkin pudding (1.5 pt.) and then some apple pie, with cool whip topping (6.0 pt.) MMM-MMM good. That added up to a total of 19.5 points for my entire Thanksgiving Day dinner. (We are talking about only around half the points of a super-sized Big Mac, fries and a shake meal, and this meal was 10 times better than that!) That brought my total points for meals to 24.5 points. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), and 6 cough drops (2.0 pt. -- I had 3 of those cough drops while I was singing to keep my throat clear from my sinuses. They work well for that.) That added up to 3.0 points for snacks, and brought my total for the day to 27.5 points. I still had 5.5 points to spare, and I can’t remember anytime when I enjoyed eating in the past anymore than I enjoyed this meal. No suffering, and no deprivation. I was full, satisfied and content. I keep asking myself, “Why did you wait so long to get going on your weight loss journey?” I am actually enjoying eating more, and I feel better. And, though I am not a terribly vain man, I am very happy with the change in my appearance as well. All of this was just sitting there waiting for me. Like El Dorado, some things you just have to stumble across before you realize they are there. Then you can celebrate!

For water I drank 12 cups, or 96 ounces.

195 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/191.0/200/BMI:23.9/WK-27/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph

*** Weigh-in for WEEK 28 ***

Week Completed:	___28___
Weigh-In Weight:	188.5
Body Mass Index:	23.6
Aerobic Points for week:	20.0
Week’s Average Points/Day:	29.3
Pounds +/- for this week:	-2.5
Pounds lost total:	51.0
Pounds to go to 10%:	0.0*
Pounds to go to goal:	0.0**
Pounds to go to 20%:	0.0***
Made PERSONAL GOAL: 11/23/2001 †
* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01 ** Made Goal at 200.0 pounds on 9/22/01 *** Made 20% at 191.5 pounds on 11/3/01 † Personal Goal is 190 pounds.

___________________________

I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 5:40 AM, and he said, “188.5 pounds.” (Tammy’s scale said, 187.0 pounds.) Considering that I ate my evening meal, and it was a fairly heavy one, about 10:00 PM, and I drank at least 7 of my cups of water after that, I think that is really good. I didn’t do anything to limit my food or water because of weigh-in, and I didn’t wait around to get rid of excess water before weighing. I just jumped up on the scale and took the reading. That is what has been my goal all along. To be able to live my life without any strain as to what the scale will say.

Now it is official: I am within my goal range! The weight loss portion of my journey is officially over. From this point on I am working on remaining right where I am.

The last few days I could tell that I was right where I wanted to be. I could eat late in the day, or eat right at the top of my points, and still weigh within a pound of my target weight of 187.5. I am still writing everything down that I eat, and all the water that I drink, but it feels like the pressure is off for what the scale is going to say. I am in the 180s, and I feel like it is a solid position I am standing on. I have lost 51 pounds, and I feel confident that it really has been done on a permanent basis. Never in my life have I altered my eating, in order to lose weight, and then once I lost it, felt like I was standing on solid ground. It was more like trying to maintain my footing on a steep grade of loose shale, where one false step would send me cascading back down the hill to where I was before.

I remember one time back in Massachusetts, when I had fought my weight down to around 200. I was hanging on somewhere between there and 210 when my mom and her husband Jim came out for a visit. It was a great visit, but after we went to Dairy Queen with them a few times, my weight shot up and I was out of control. I found myself moving on up into the 220s before long and that diet cycle was over. At the time I figured it was the Dairy Queen, which has never been a place that I frequented on my own. But now I know that it was not the Dairy Queen. If Mom and Jim had not come out to visit, I still would have lost my footing in time. It was not their fault, or even my fault for being weak when temptation was placed before me. It was my inability to work the tools that I have at my disposal today.

It is so easy to blame others for our own inability to cope with life. What could be simpler than telling yourself that if only this or that had not happened, I would not have failed? The fact is “this and that” happens to everybody sooner or later. Life is change, and at least part of that is stressful. There will always be Dairy Queens, and situations where I have to make the choice between staying on the path or walking through the enchanted forest where pitfalls abound. By doing a mental walk through of a tough and tempting situation (e.g. party, dinner, or office meeting with doughnuts) beforehand, I can have a solution readymade for whatever might come up. By setting certain ground rules for myself, I always will have a protecting fence up to keep me from straying too far off the path.

One of my ground rules is that if I do not have a really good idea what the points are for something, I do not put it in my mouth. The motivator for me in this case is the fact that I am keeping a written journal of what I am eating, and I can’t write it down if I don’t know what it is. So, if someone offers me something to eat that I am unsure of, I say, “No thanks.” If I can find the point value for the item, then I may have it later, if it fits into my points for the day. (This happened yesterday, when Jim asked me if I wanted a deviled egg. I did, but I was unsure of the points involved at the time. So, I waited until later when I asked my walking points encyclopaedia Dotti about the eggs that they had made up for Thanksgiving dinner. As it turned out, the eggs were one point apiece. So, I had two of them.)

I fill different today than I did last week at this time. I now have more potential points to eat each day, with the higher maintenance points range, which gives me even more freedom to enjoy foods on occasion that are a bit higher in points. Having extra points to work with makes the whole day easier to organize and it opens doors to food choices that I felt were closed on the weight loss part of my journey. I did not want to eat anything with high points in it when I knew later in the day I would be out of points because of it, when I just might be hungry for a snack. I was very protective of my evening points. Now I do not have to be as protective. I am still in control of my eating, but my horizon of choices has been extended.

Yesterday, Jim had to work, and so I spent the day doing things like getting pictures transferred from my camera to the computer, and then burning CDs with the pictures on them, and then doing other things to get everything set for our departure today. I was the only one in the house for part of the time, as the ladies were out shopping, and our “nieces” were with friends for part or all of the day.

When Jim got home we visited for a while and then his son-in-law Trevor called up to see if we wanted to play racquetball, because he had a court reserved from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the gym. I was not sure if I really was up to it at first, but I knew that I would not have another chance to play racquetball with them for a number of months, and so I agreed right away.

Jim and I ended up eating some deviled eggs before going (I had 2) for a little something in the stomach for energy. I was a bit tired at first, when Jim and I got to the gym early and started warming up. We knocked the ball around from 6:30 PM to 7:00 PM loosening up our muscles and getting ready to play. At 7:00 we just got ready to start a game, when Trevor showed up. So, we started a game of “cut throat” where every man plays for himself, and the two who are not serving, play against the one who is serving, until he loses a volley, and then we all rotate to put a new server in.

Jim and Trevor came to play last night. For the first two games, Jim was playing exceptionally well, and in the third game Trevor was coming on like gang busters. That was the hardest that I have played, since when I played against my dentist many months ago before I started my journey. It took all that I could do to catch Jim in the first game, and they didn’t let me loaf a bit all night. I definitely earned my aerobic points during that match. The fact that it took just over an hour and a half to play 3 games shows that they were hard fought matches, with a lot of change of serves going on without a lot of points being scored. (Only the server can score a point in racquetball.)

In my reading on exercise, I have come across the advice that when you are my age, it is very wise to monitor what your body is doing during exercise, and if you feel like you are overdoing it you should stop. Right at the end of the third game, that is exactly how I felt, and so I told them I was done for the night. They played another game with each other, as I did a cool down walk, and then sat down to enjoy watching the game. They are both getting better every time that I come up, and so I am going to have to make sure that I keep working hard so they don’t pass me up. Of course, given time, Trevor will no doubt catch me, because he is 26 years younger, and getting better all the time. As the years go by, I am slowing down, and that is a fact of life. But I am putting that off for as long as I can.

One the things that I am looking forward to when LeRoy transfers to the ship in Washington is playing racquetball with him again. The last time he came home and we played he was playing pretty well. It is just a matter of time before he passes me up too. But as sure as that is, it just as sure that I am going to fight to push that day off as far into the future as I can. :)

After the racquetball games, when we got back, I noticed that I had only eaten 19 points so far during the day. So, I had a 10 point dinner and finished drinking my water for the day, even though it was late. Jim and I watched the movie Galaxy Quest, and then I went to bed a bit after midnight.

This morning we will head for home. It was a very nice visit for us, and we are sad that it is over already. The next time that we will get together will probably be for the DWLZ Conference. Dotti and I will be eagerly looking forward to that.

For eating yesterday I had my Standard Breakfast (5.0 pt.). For lunch, Dotti made up two turkey sandwiches, with pepper jack cheese (5.0 pt.), which I ate, along with a diet cream soda (0.0 pt.). For dinner, I had a plate of Thanksgiving Day leftovers, including potatoes and gravy, turkey stuffing, turkey, and a deviled egg, adding up 5.0 points. I also had a nice piece of apple pie with Cool Whip, for another 5.0 points, giving me a total point count of 10 for dinner. That brought my total points for meals to 20.5 points. For snacks I had a cup of decaf (1.0 pt.), a Kashi bar (5.0 pt.), 2 deviled eggs (2.0 pt.) and 3 cough drops (1.0 pt.) That added up to 9.0 points for snacks, and brought my total for the day to 29.0 points.

For water I drank 11 cups, or 88 ounces.

For exercise, I played racquetball for a solid 1.5 hours, for 13.5 aerobic points.

195 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/188.5/200/BMI:23.6/WK-28/Maintenance Graph/Weight Loss Graph