A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 310
Week Ending April 21, 2007
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*** Weigh-in for WEEK 310 ***
04/21/2007
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| Week Completed: | ___310___ |
| Weigh-In Weight: | 203.5 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.44 |
| Average Weight for week: | 204.64 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 6.5 |
| Miles Walked in 2007: | 50.00 |
| Aerobic Points for week: | 0 |
| Week’s Average Points/Day: | 38.29 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -2.5 |
| Pounds lost total: | 36 |
| Made GOAL: 9/22/2001 † | |
* Made 10% at 215.5 pounds on 7/14/01
† Goal is 200 pounds.
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Week’s Data
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Day |
Date |
Weight |
Points |
Water |
Miles
Walked |
| Saturday |
04/14/2007
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206.0
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36.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Sunday |
04/15/2007
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205.5
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29.0
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10 cups (80 oz)
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1.50
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| Monday |
04/16/2007
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205.5
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44.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Tuesday |
04/17/2007
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206.0
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47.0
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8 cups (64 oz)
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0.00
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| Wednesday |
04/18/2007
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205.0
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37.0
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.50
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| Thursday |
04/19/2007
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204.5
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30.0
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6 cups (48 oz)
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1.5
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| Friday |
04/20/2007
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202.5
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44.0
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12 cups (96 oz)
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3.00
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Week 310 Update
I have been having a lot of trouble with my neck this week, and getting a good night's sleep has been impossible. The best I have been able to do is to get a few hours sleep, and then get up and work for a few hours until my neck feels better, and I grow exhausted, and then I can crawl back into bed for a couple of more hours of sleep. That way I accumulate 5 or 6 hours of sleep over a day. Last night was worse than usual, and I struggled to get 3 hours of sleep before finally giving up and crawling out of bed. In a couple of days we will be sleeping in our own bed again, and I am hopeful that will help get my sleeping back to normal. I may need to see a chiropractor or something to try and get things back to normal. Something is clearly not right, and over time it seems to be getting worse.
So, it was 3:30 a.m. when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "203.5 pounds!" With the early rising, that is really quite as good as I could expect. It is a pound higher than yesterday, but I was drinking water right up until I went to bed, and I am sure not all of that had a chance to leave my system.
I am 2.5 pounds down from last week. Even my average weight is down almost 2 pounds (1.93 pounds) and I am very happy to see that. I started journaling religiously again on March 31, and since then I have lost 5.0 pounds.
I am targeting a loose limit of 40 points, and try to keep under it if it isn't too difficult. I have secondary target of 46.0 points that I take far more seriously, because I feel that is the dividing line between good results and bad. Over the past 3 weeks I have never had a 7-day average above 46 points (my worst 7 days came to 44.79 points-per-day) and I have only gone past my upper limit 3 times. Once by one point, once by 2.5 points and on my worst day, I went over by 7 points. However, on the day I went over by one point, I was under by 10 points the next day. When I went over by 2.5 points, I was under by 9.5 points the next day, and when I went over by 7 points, I was under by 15.5 points the next day. So, in each case the two day average was well below 46 points. This week I averaged 38.29 points-per-day and that is why I had good results on the scale.
Walking this week wasn't too bad. I got in a couple of very good walks, including a vigorous 1.5 miles on Sunday at the Bowl and Pitcher park with Jim. I also walked 3 miles around Jim and Tammy's neighborhood yesterday and did quite a lot of walking with Dotti and LeRoy in the Spokane downtown area on Thursday. I walked at least 6.5 miles this week and probably more.
All and all, I consider this a good week and I have been heading in the right direction. I still have a few pounds to go to get my weight under 200 pounds, and into the "Normal" range (BMI under 25) for my height. But if I continue doing what I have done this week, I should be there before too long.
Saturday I weighed in at 206.0 pounds. I ended up holding my points down but I didn't eat too well that day. I had a couple of apples, and that goes in the plus column, but I didn't really have a meal all day; cereal and milk was the closest that I came.
Dotti and Tammy had fun spending the day together and one thing they did was to take Jamie with them for a pedicure.
Jim and I drove around town, and even out of it a bit, in his new truck, and we also visited a guitar store where I played an electric classical guitar that I really liked. (I went back and purchased it later in the week. It was not only an instrument that I liked a great deal, but it was half price as well.)
Sunday I was 205.5 pounds, and I did better on my eating, and even held my points below 30!
The sun was out, and that was very nice after all the rain we had on Saturday. So, Jim and I headed out to the Bowl and Pitcher, part of the Riverside State Park just outside of Spokane.
Jim parked his truck and we walked over to a suspension footbridge and I took this picture from that bridge. The rock formations you see are called the "Bowl and Pitcher." The pitcher is in front and is pretty easy to visualize. I believe the bowl is the vertical rock behind the pitcher. It is as if there were a bowl standing on its side behind the pitcher, like you might see on a shelf in a cupboard.
Here we have crossed over the bridge and set off on our walk. We found this view point and looked back at the bridge. The Bowl and Pitcher are standing behind the rocks on the left and not visible from this location.
We have walked a ways farther along the trail now. The trail was rocky in spots, but it was pretty dry considering the rain we had the day before. The suspension bridge is looking smaller and the Pitcher and Bowl, also appearing smaller, have come back into view once more. The heavy forest and the beautiful Spokane River show some of the very best features of the Pacific Northwest. You can see why I spent so many years wishing that I was back in this area, until 1995 when we finally were able to move back.
Jim took this picture of me, while looking back towards the bridge. Blue skies, lofty pines, a river, a hiking trail, and your best friend for over 28years: what a great way to spend the day.
Looking up at the sun pushing its way through the pine giants is always a sight that I love. This was a great day for a walk!
We have doubled back now, and here is Jim with his back against the "Bowl," and enjoying a seat he found in the rock. When we finished taking pictures at this spot, we cut up the bank of rock just beyond the Bowl, and it was during that climb that I was once again reminded that I have not been walking as much as I should have been over the last few month. I was completely winded when I reached the top and puffing like a tuba player trying to catch my breath. This hike turned out to be a great exercise session as well as a really fun time.
Now we are on the other side of the bridge, and at river level with the Spokane River. The river was high, and it was flowing by rapidly.
The rocks here are all basalt, laid down long ago when volcanism ruled this area. However, Spokane has not had any eruptions for a very long time, far longer than it has been for most of the volcanoes in the Cascade Range. When basalt cools, it tends to segment into sections that are held together weakly. The rock wears with weathering far more than granite does. Chucks of basalt give way routinely from rock walls and tumble down below.
Also, though the water is high right now, you can see that the logs around my feet indicate that the water has been higher still in order to have deposited this chaotic arrangement.
Feeling a bit like Big John of Jimmy Dean fame, Jim said, "Okay, I don't know how long I can hold this up, so you better hurry by." He did great, because we both made it by this section of the "Bowl" safely. 
This is looking up river from beneath the rock lip at the base of the "Bowl."
After walking for over a mile and a half, with a lot of elevation changes, we made it back to the starting point across the bridge.
The basic design of this bridge is closely related to the way the Golden Gate Bridge is put together, but it feels a lot less bouncy driving across the Golden Gate than it did walking across this bridge. This one swayed and your feet didn't feel like they were stepping on solid ground. Looking through the cracks in the bridge floor added a little extra thrill while walking across the madly rushing water. (Just look at the wave ripples that are several feet high in the surface of the river behind me.)
Later in the day we joined up with Tammy and Dotti, and then LeRoy came by as well. LeRoy offered to drive Dotti and me over to Jim and Tammy's daughter Misty's apartment that she had recently moved into. We are really proud of her getting her own place and doing so well with it!
Here are Dotti and Misty sharing a warm hug in Misty's front room.
Can you tell that I feel like she is my daughter? We have always been very close to Misty ever since she was a baby. She is so full of life, and is active enough to make the rest of us feel like loafers. We love her dearly!
Misty, Dotti, and LeRoy in a picture we grabbed just before we had to leave after our visit.
Finally, I have not had the chance to get too many pictures of Tammy so far but I had to take this shot with our two dear friends in a tender moment. Can you see why they have been happily married 30 years?
I also got to see Tammy's mom and visit with her. She was smiling and talked with me for quite a while. It cheered me up to see her up and feeling a bit better. She has had to face a lot of medical issues and sometimes that makes it very hard to keep a positive attitude, but she is doing her best to do just that.
As you can see, we are getting our grandson Hunter ready to join in at DWLZ.
Tuesday I had a big challenge. Jim and Tammy joined Dotti and me for dinner at Azteca, a Mexican food restaurant. It was very late for me to eat dinner—at some point during the meal I looked at my watch and it said 8:00 p.m. I normally like to have dinner at 5 or 6 o'clock at the latest. When we headed to dinner, I had already eaten 29.5 points for the day. That only left me 16 points total to work with for dinner, if I wanted to remain below 46 points for the day.
Okay, what to do? My "normal meal" would include 2 or 3 cheese enchiladas, which are around 10 points each. This always comes with beans and rice which add in another 7.5 points. (Thank goodness they have a lot of fiber!) If I have the 3 enchilada meal, I have blown 37.5 points in one sitting, and that is if I don't have any chips and salsa before, or any fried ice cream for desert afterwards. At one meal at a Mexican food restaurant, I can clear out a whole day's worth of eating, and then make a pretty good dent in the points for the next day. And I had already eaten 64% of my max points for the day before I even arrived.
When we got to the restaurant I actually had some help on the chips. I really didn't care for the salsa that much. It wasn't all that hot, and it had a funny under taste that I didn't like. So, I only had a few chips, and that only cost me 5.0 points instead of the normal 10 or 15 I blow. When I looked over the menu I found that they offered a one enchilada meal! That was new. I ordered that and found that it was more than enough to fill me up!
It is funny how having less food to look at on my plate often makes the "I'm satisfied" indicator flash on earlier. In this case they spread the food out over the entire plate anyway, but it was the high fiber, low-point food that was enhanced, while the high-point items were diminished. I tackled the beans and rice first. This worked out well too, because I was full by the time I had eaten only half of the enchilada! I walked out of the restaurant that normally blows me completely out of the water, only one point over where I would consider to be okay. I ate a total of 47.0 points for the day, and I view that as a great success!
After Tuesday's challenge was hardly finished, I had another one on Wednesday. We went to Prospectors for dinner. This restaurant prides itself on "large servings" and non-point friendly food. I hunted around on the menu and found a "Cobb" turkey sandwich that looked fairly safe in the menu description. I got a salad at first that was very small, and I was wondering about the "large serving size" they normally have. However, when my sandwich showed up I was very surprised at how well it lived up to the serving size reputation.
The sandwich came on a very oversized elliptically shaped plate, and it filled that large plate up entirely, almost hanging over the edges on all sides. I was much better off for points before I arrived for my meal than I had been on the day before, but this could have been a problem even so. The bread was covered with melted cheese, and looked very high in points. So, what I ended up doing was to disassemble the sandwich and eat the turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato inside, and I only took a few small bites of the bread. When I was finished, 11 points later, the plate still looked full with the bread still covering it.
They had a nice assortment of desserts, but I took a pass and considered myself lucky to have escaped so cheaply.
For the day I ended up eating 37.0 points total, and I was very happy with that.
I can say for a certainty that journaling every day has really helped get me to get back to being OP the way I want to be. I don't know what I was thinking when I tried to go without journaling, but it clearly didn't work.
Thursday was a low day on points at 30.5. After two challenging days in a row, I had a very easy one, which was a nice change of pace. ☺
Dotti and I spent the afternoon with our son LeRoy in the downtown area of Spokane.
 We started in the River Park Square mall. It is located right downtown, and is many stories tall.
It seems like an outdoor structure was enclosed in glass, and made into an indoor mall.
There are escalators running all the way to the top and a food court was located on the third floor. We stopped there just before heading home, after we has seen the sights, because we were tired and thirsty by that time and we grabbed something to drink.
There were many stores and then when you had visited them there were enclosed walkways that connected the buildings across the street.
We walked over the road without having to worry at all about traffic. Here are Dotti and LeRoy as we were standing out over the road.
Dotti joining the "runners" and remembering 2004 and 2006 when she and I did the Bloomsday race. These sculptures represent the runners in that annual race.
 I haven't finished my coffee yet, and so I'm just watching the action from the sidelines. ☺
 Our next stop would be the "Spokane Falls Skyride Gondola" where we would be carried out over the Spokane Falls for a great view.
After being warned to not throw anything from the cars, including each other ☺, we were on our way. LeRoy was sitting across from us and ready for the trip.
 He was nice enough to take a picture of his folks as well. We really hadn't started to move yet, but it was getting close. Once we started, our car would be the last one of the string of 3 cars. We would be carried up the hill that you can see behind us, and then down into the canyon that the Spokane River flows through, and where the falls are located.
This one was actually taken on the way back, but it shows the hill we had to go down in order to reach the river level. I had stuck my hand out of the car and pointed the camera forward and clicked the shutter, hoping for the best. ☺
 This view gives you a clear idea of our course of travel and what the gondola ride was constructed to show its passengers. We were looking backwards on our return trip. On our trip down we road on the left set of cables and went all the way across the river to the turn around point. Then we continued on around and headed back across the river and then up the hill. There were open windows only on the side of the car that is now facing the falls. So, on the way down we had to do all of our picture taking through glass. On the return trip, we could shoot without that handicap.
 This picture was taken on the way down, and looking past some cars that were on their way back up. Soon after our gondola ride we would be walking on the stairs and sidewalk below. You can see the force the water is carrying as it shoots high into the air after traveling over the falls.
 Out over the water, and looking up the falls, the view is spectacular. The water level is highest at this time of year and so we are seeing this when it is about as good as it gets!
 Dotti grabbed another picture of LeRoy about this time, in between clicking away at the falls.
 Looking down the hill once more, and on the side you can see Dotti's hand as she is holding her camera. In just a little while, we would be down all the way to the circular concrete structure that you can see below.
 Back on foot, we are passing along the Spokane River above the falls. The tower in the background is all that is left of the old train station. The clock in the tower is still wound by hand every week.
 Here's my lovely Dotti in front of the fountain in Riverfront Park.
 And here she took a picture of me, after we swapped places.
 On our trip down to the falls we passed by this tree and Dotti and LeRoy posed for a picture.
 We are now down on the sidewalk that we saw earlier from the gondola. Look at the way the water is jumping up, and creating a heavy mist in the air.
 Looking downstream we can see the gondolas in the air and the way the water starts to settle down in the distance to much quieter state.
 Looking upriver to the Middle Falls and the bridge that goes over them.
 Dotti took these next two shot of the river filling the air with mist. The sun was cutting through the mist and bringing it to life.
 The water was dancing into the air in large droplets at the bottom of this picture as the smaller droplets lifted much higher. The gondola cable is visible as it runs under the bridge, and the water below ripples white at first and then settles down a lot as it moves further along its route that will ultimately run it into the Columbia River, and send it right past our home in of Vancouver, Washington.
 The gondolas appear to be hanging by a thread out over the churning water, but they are perfectly safe as they run along.
 We had a beautiful day with perfect weather for our visit to the Spokane Downtown area. Look at the blue sky!
When we got home, Tammy made up a very tasty taco salad and it only cost me 5.0 points. ☺ LeRoy stayed and had dinner with us and so we got to visit some more with him before he headed home.
Friday morning I weighed a mere 202.5 pounds. ☺ It was nice to see that on the scale. That is the lowest I have been since March 2nd. It has been since November since I have been in the 190's, so I am looking forward to getting back down there again.
At 44.0 points, I ate a bit more on Friday, but I had some good food "at home" and it was a good day in that regard. I didn't feel too well most of the day, with my neck being in pain most of the day, but I did get some reading in and finished a book I had been working on. I then took a 3-mile walk before dinner. By the end of it I was really tired. I could tell that I have not been getting enough sleep. Hopefully next week that will improve.
Today, Dotti and I have some fun things planned to do with Jim and Tammy and so it should be a fun time for us.
5 years, 345 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/203.5/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.44/WK- 310
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs
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