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*** Weigh-in for WEEK 316 ***
06/02/2007
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| Week Completed: | ___316___ |
| Weigh-In Weight: | 203.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.37 |
| Average Weight for week: | 202.43 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 2.5 |
| Miles Walked in 2007: | 78.49 |
| Aerobic Points for week: | 0 |
| Week’s Average Points/Day: | 44.64 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | +1.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 36.5 |
| 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 |
05/26/2007
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202.0
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52.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Sunday |
05/27/2007
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202.0
|
41.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Monday |
05/28/2007
|
203.0
|
47.0
|
6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Tuesday |
05/29/2007
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201.5
|
44.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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2.50
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| Wednesday |
05/30/2007
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203.0
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46.0
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Thursday |
05/31/2007
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202.5
|
37.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
|
0.00
|
| Friday |
06/01/2007
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202.0
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44.5
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7 cups (56 oz)
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0.00
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Week 316 Update
I officially stepped up on Mr. Scale for the 2213th time for my week 316 weigh-in and he said, "203.0 pounds!"
I am up one pound from last week on my weigh-in; does that make this a bad week? Well, no, my average weight is actually lower than it has been at a weekly weigh-in since November 18, 2006! Even two weeks ago when I weighed a pound and a half less than today, my average weight for the week was 0.86 pounds higher than this week's average. And my average for this week was over a half pound lower than last week's average weight. I may be moving slowly, but I am moving. ☺
If you will excuse a little mental meandering...
It is the 153rd day of the year today, which means we are over 41% done with 2007 already. It also means that there are only 206 shopping days until Christmas. ☺ I mentioned to Mom this week on the phone that we were nearly half way to Christmas, and she replied, "Oh no, don't say that!" But on June 25 we will be halfway there, and that is only a few weeks away, and only 4 days farther away than the first day of summer (which is no coincidence actually).
Memory is funny, how it is tied to things. Time is marked by events: the year you were born; the year you met the one you were to marry; the year something terrible happened; the year something wonderful happened; and so forth.
Moving back ten years: in 1997 Dotti was just getting used to having a computer to do her word processing on. We had an AOL account, but she wasn't doing much with it, even using email. It had taken a lot of arm twisting on my part to get her to even accept my hand-me-down 286 IBM compatible computer when I upgraded to a 386 processor based computer. It was running DOS at first and she hated that. Windows 3.1 finally caught her fancy along the way and she would at least use the computer a bit. By the time the 286 computer died, she had grown attached enough to it to insist on a replacement. I thought that was a very promising development.
Our life in 1997 was pretty much tied to my job, because it was pretty demanding of my time, with pager coverage blocking a lot of plans that we would have otherwise made. I was making a long commute to work and Dotti was spending a lot of time with her Mom and her twin sister. It was life as usual in many ways. Dotti had been a stay-at-home-mom for most of our marriage, and even when she worked outside of the home, she set her hours to be home whenever the boys were not in school. There was nothing about 1997 that was really different for us, right up until November. But, although I didn't realize it at the time, a seed was planted in November of 1997 that was to grow into something so large it would completely take over our lives.
Dotti planted that seed by taking a little step, just a change of point of view about her weight. I hardly noticed at all at first, because she had made similar changes in the past: weight would come, and then go, and then come back. It didn't seem likely that this time would be different.
We mark the passage of time by noting change. In fact we define time by change, and always have. It was the change of the phases of the moon, the changes of seasons, the change in the position of the sun in the sky during the day, and the changes in the world around us, that we used to identify the passage of time. Today they use the changes in a certain quantity of a radioactive material to set atomic clocks, but without change, time has not passed.
Ten years ago marked the start of a change in our lives that was nothing short of revolutionary. While these past 10 years have seemed to fly by, they have been so filled with new events and people, it seems like 10 years would not be long enough to hold them all. We've had gains and losses in so many areas of our lives that the scale is only a small part of the universe of change.
It is hard to remember the daily grind of 1997, beyond the getting up and going to customer sites, to deal with their needs and problems associated with their ion implanters. Dotti and I would find things to do, including doing some hiking, even though we were not in the best shape to do so. Daily routine, and just getting by from day to day was our world. We had moved into a tiny apartment when LeRoy went into the Navy, so that we could pay our bills off quicker, having less monthly set bills to deal with. (Dotti staying home for our kids had a price that we had to pay over the years, but we had always felt that it was worth the sacrifice, including this one.)
But life was good. Life with Dotti has always been good for me, and the only part that wasn't, was the time when my job (especially the Navy) took me away from her and the kids. We always found something fun to do to pass the time, and we were truly happy. Dotti was at her heaviest weight ever, and there was no sign that was ever going to change, but her smile brightened my world then, just like it does today. She has always had a beauty for me that outshone that of the models and the actresses of today or yesterday.
So, in November of 1997, when Dotti went through her "skinny clothes" because she "knew" she would never lose her weight and be able to wear them again, I didn't think much of it. I could tell there was sadness in her as she threw them out, but I assumed it would pass and we would simply move on.
But something about that act lit a fire inside of her, and everything changed, for her and for our world. She has told of her journey to goal over the next few months, taking her right up to when the second switch was thrown in the sequence: we discussed making a web page.
When Dotti reached her goal weight, 100 pounds down from where she had started, I had the same feeling that I got when watching a weight lifter put a large amount of weight at arm's length into the air over his head. Sure he can lift it, but you know what follows: he will have to drop the weight back onto the floor in time. Dotti had been overweight for so long, that being heavy was her "natural state" and human nature is such that it always wants to return you to your natural state. How could Dotti "keep the barbell in the air" now she finally got it there?
One of the things that I learned about quitting smoking is that when you are helping others to quit, you are far less likely to start smoking again. By helping others, you help yourself. And if there is one thing that Dotti does better than anything else it is helping others. She is a natural caregiver, and she is filled with empathy for others. She could become a Weight Watcher leader, or reach out in other ways to help others. I thought that a web page might fill the bill.
I had tried to get her to do a web page earlier, on the subject of crafts. (Her email address was craftidot@aol.com because her sister called her "crafty" since she did so many crafts so well.) That never really got off the ground, but here was something different. So many Americans need to lose weight, and the Internet could reach a significant number of them. Dotti could share what she had gone through, and give support to others who were trying to do the same thing. It seemed perfect. But there was a catch, and I probably should have seen it.
Dotti is literally the hardest worker that I have ever known. When she is driven to complete a project, she will push herself until exhaustion and keep right on going. She was like a "Tasmanian Devil" turned loose on our house every time we moved, packing everything up at an incredibly fast rate.
About the time Dotti hit goal, a situation came up that illustrates my point. My mom who is getting on in years, had a husband who was an invalid. Life was overwhelming at the time for them, and just staying afloat was a challenge, let alone tackling any big projects. They had over a decade's worth of accumulated things filing their garage to a height over my head, and quite a bit more was tucked away into the rafters. They also had a large, very nice upstairs room that Dotti called their "great room" that was loaded up with stuff, piled here and there, and an adjoining closet that was stuffed. Dotti just asked that everyone stand back and she dived into that project with gusto. When the dust cleared, the garage was so organized that they could pull their Cadillac in (and it was the old monster sized one too) and to this day, though her car is now a large Lincoln, Mom can still park in that garage. The great room was pristine and the closet was organized. Then Dotti tackled the pantry and got that it great shape as well. Her drive to complete a task is unlimited.
So, knowing this, I should have put two and two together to realize that she wasn't going to just set up a little web page that would have a few visitors that she could email back and forth with. Oh no. Dotti set her goal to the have the most restaurants of any page on the Internet, and continued on from there. Typing straight through the night, night after night, she created Dotti's Weight Loss Zone, and many of the milestones of our life have been marked by this huge project that Dotti took on.
Just keeping the web page up was more than a fulltime job, and I can remember the first time we heard about a syndicated columnist mentioning the page. We were up at Jim and Tammy's house for a visit, and we were all laughing in surprise when Dotti got an email telling her about it. Who would have thought that my Dotti would get mentioned in the newspapers? (Later when a professional photographer came to our place to take Dotti's picture for a nationally carried story we really were shocked.)
Then Dotti added a message board. I thought she was crazy! She was already working more hours on the page than I was at my fulltime job, and I knew that keeping track of people on a message board is more than a full time job too. Even tracking a guestbook can be overwhelming when trolls attack it, and a message board is like a hundred guestbooks going on at once.
I digress from my original digression. ☺ In September of 1998 Dotti created the web page. Like an acorn falling into the soil, the page grew and by 2001, the year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, the message board was all abuzz with the idea of having a "Dotti's Conference." We did in Seattle. In 2002 we had an even bigger one in St. Louis. In 2003 we brought the conference home to Vancouver. We planned to "go international" in 2004 with a conference in Edmonton, and the conference did occur, but we couldn't be there for it. That year was a dreadful one (click here for a summary of our 2004 events), and events often still jump up out of our memory collection from that year without even being asked. In 2005 we returned the conference to Vancouver, and that has been last one so far.
The birth of our grandson Hunter, and the passing of those we loved, and the problems of running a message board and web page that has had over 50 million visitors has made life feel a bit like riding in a bumper car, and never knowing when the next blindsided strike will come. Life gets so jumbled, and memories entangle with each other forming a jungle that is sometimes difficult to navigate, except where the major landmarks show, jutting up like volcanic peaks above everything else.
Ten years ago I was blissfully ignorant of what was about to happen to our lives. Dotti had not yet begun to work her magic, and there wasn't even a breath of warning in the air that she was going to. We were sitting in a car that was climbing to the starting point of the roller coaster ride of our lives and we were completely unaware of what was about to happen. What would have happened if things had not followed this course and there were no DWLZ? I have enough trouble sorting through what did happen without worrying about that. ☺
Back to my weekly update...
Saturday was fun day for us. We originally planned for a day alone with Jim and Tammy, but things got a bit more complicated than that, we ended with Hunter, Claudette, and LeRoy, as well as the originally scheduled four. We piled into the van and took a ride to Sandpoint, Idaho.
We stopped at a large antique store, and walked through its various areas, and seeing how many of the old items we remembered from our younger days. In this picture Grampy Al is holding grandson Hunter with "Grumpy Jim" in the background looking at some of the antiques. That looks a lot like my first baseball glove hanging on the wall over Jim's head.
Jim next drove us to City Beach Park in Sandpoint, with a beach at the shore of Lake Pend Oreille. (The name of the lake is pronounced just like the name of a nearby town called Poderay. There is even a Ponder Point Drive nearby, also playing off the sound of the French name of the lake.)
Here's Hunter running around on the lawn grass at the park. There was a little playground there and he had a lot of fun.
Here LeRoy was chasing Hunter around the playground equipment. LeRoy and Hunter always get along very well, and all the family call him "Uncle Billy" because when we first met Jim and Tammy we called him Billy, and they still often call him that.
Now, LeRoy wasn't the only one running around having fun with little Hunter. Here Dotti was just coming out the other end of a plastic tube on the playground set, and she had followed Hunter right on through. Later on, Dotti and I both wished she hadn't done that, because she came down too hard on her injured knee as she exited the tube and it did a little swelling.
And this is our beautiful niece Claudette with Lake Pend Oreille behind her. We were very happy with the sunny weather we had for our visit.
This picture of LeRoy and Claudette brings back the days when they were just little tots and were called "Billy" and "Caudy". Can it be that these two, who were still babies when they met now be rapidly approaching their 30th birthday? It is true but it is very hard to accept the fact. Thirty years have run by at high speed and there they are today a man and a woman all set to leave their twenties behind.
Jim was standing with arms crossed, looking very much like the retired chief petty officer that he is, with his chief's ball cap and just a touch of gray in his beard. ☺
And here is my beautiful wife Dotti, who was resting at this point, having run herself out of energy chasing Hunter. Her yellow cast was soon to be replaced, but we didn't know that for sure at this point. Even though the fiberglass cast is not as easy to write on as a plaster cast is, you can see that our Sharpie has been hard at work. There are also some invisible "virtual signatures" from Zonies, which Dotti really appreciated receiving!
Soon our visit to the lake was done and we headed into town to look around and to get something to eat. Right after parking the car we saw this store that made us think of our dear friends in Texas: Jackie and Rick! It was a great store, one that I am sure they would have enjoyed. It had a lot of novelty items and we got a lot of laughs as we browsed through the store.
Next we went over to the Cedar Street Bridge Mall, a very interesting mall that extended 400 feet across Sand Creek, and is a one of a kind shopping experience. Dotti and Hunter found a little padded bench in a cutout in the wall, where they shared a "Kodak moment" together.
I stepped out onto a walkway that ran along side of the mall and took a picture of the walkway and of Sand Creek. Northern Idaho is very beautiful as you can see.
After leaving the mall we made our way towards a restaurant that had been recommended to us by a local resident.
Beside the sidewalk was a painting of a tree with a single apple hanging from its green branches. Dotti decided (with a little encouragement☺) to try and pick the apple.
 When we arrived at the restaurant, they had menus on the wall and the food sounded great! Potato dishes and great sandwiches. Even the Butler with his nose in the air didn't put us off.
 When we were seated inside we found the menu to be excellent on the cover, but inside all of those great meal options we had seen on the wall turned out to be for lunch only. The evening meal options were not OP at all, and so we thanked them for their time and left, in search of another place to eat.
 When we arrived, Hunter looked like he was as hungry as the rest of us, and ready to eat!
 While we were waiting for our meal I took a few pictures and Grumpy Jim positioned Hunter for this cute shot with the statues.
 After dinner I worked my way around to get a group shot of everyone but yours truly.
Alas, although she didn't know it yet, somewhere along the way, Dotti had picked up food poisoning.
At the end of the day, when we got back to Spokane, we said our goodbyes, because Dotti and I were going to be leaving in the morning, and went back to our room. During the night Dotti got hit with the food poisoning in a big way. I won't go into the details (you can look up food poisoning on the Internet to read all about the symptoms she was suffering) but she was completely miserable all night and in the morning we were in a quandary about what to do. Dotti said that she had dealt with this before when I was away on a business trip, and the pharmacy had given her something that really helped.
So, we checked out of the room, after I had loaded up the car, and went next door to Walgreens Drugs and asked the pharmacist what she recommended. She suggested Emetrol, and I immediately purchased some. The directions said you can take one dose every 15 minutes up to 5 doses. Since there were only 5 doses in the bottle that was convenient. Dotti took a dose immediately, and I started driving South on Division Street heading for the freeway. Alas, road construction had the normal onramp blocked, and so I had to take a detour over to Maple Street. Before we reached the freeway, 15 minutes had passed and Dotti took her second dose. Her stomach felt a bit better and she passed on the third dose. It was a mistake, because before we reached Ritzville, a hour out of Spokane, she was grabbing for one of the plastic bags she had ready just in case.
Two doses later Dotti had things just barely under control, and she didn’t have any more "events" for the rest of the trip, until we got home, when things got worse for a bit.
I don't remember a lot of the trip, because I was worried about Dotti. I had set her up in the back seat, so she could remain horizontal for the entire drive home. When we passed through the Tri-Cities area of Washington I felt better because we were almost half way home. When we hit I-84 in Oregon, we were as close to home as we were to Spokane, and we were making very good time. Dotti sat up briefly a couple of times along the way, and I could tell by her face in the mirror that she was not feeling at all well, but we finally made it home.
Dotti had a slight fever, and I was fairly sure that it was from dehydration. She had not taken in much (if any) water during the drive home and I knew she had lost a lot more than she had gained over the past 12 hours or so. I immediately set to rehydrating her. I brought her cup of water with a straw, and had her drink a bit. A few minutes later, a bit more until she finished the glass. Repeat. I kept at it until she had quite a lot of water in her system and the fever dropped very quickly. I went to the store and got her some juice and Jell-O, and few other items that would make her misery less intense I hoped.
Monday Morning the stomach cramps were gone and I was still forcing fluids down her. She was eating a little of the Jell-o as well. She was completely worn out. The one blessing was that she was sleeping well: tucked away, wrapped safely in her monstrously large pillow, with her little yellow cast resting beside her head, and looking like she must have looked as a little girl after a very hard day of tree climbing, and getting a well earned night's sleep.
Even though her tummy was feeling much better, she still had the other major symptom to deal with. It took until Tuesday for that to settle down, and for her to feel well enough to get out of the house for a brief excursion to the store.
What we did was meet at Wall-Mart. I really needed some exercise, and so I walked to Wall-Mart, 2.5 miles away, while Dotti drove to the post office to get our mail started up again, and to a couple of other stops before heading over to Wall-Mart to meet me. I was about a half mile away from the store when Dotti drove by, and she yelled some very flattering things to me as she drove by, honking her horn. ☺ It really put a smile on my face to see my old Dotti back! She is such a free spirit, and brings so much joy into my life!
Once we met at Wall-Mart, I took over driving duties and we headed over to Costco to replenish our depleted food stores at home, after making a quick stop at Subway for lunch. (That showed how much better Dotti's tummy was feeling!) While at Costco we picked up a fresh fruit platter that we were nibbling at for the next few days. The cantaloupe was unfortunately a bit dry, but all the other items were fresh and juicy: honeydew melon, watermelon, pineapple. Excellent!
We had another outing on Wednesday. First off we had to go and get Dotti's arm checked out. They started off by cutting off the old cast, and this time we got to keep it. (They had just chucked the first white cast she had.)Then then let Dotti wash her arm under where the cast had been covering, and x-rayed the arm again. It was good news: no latent
fractures were found and the new cast should be coming off in 3 weeks! Dotti was smiling when she heard that!
When we got outside we took this picture of Dotti's new Hot Pink cast, and her old yellow one. (Note that the girls had signed it "We love you Aunt Dotti!")
Next, it was off to the mall. Before we went to Spokane, Dotti had turned in a very special necklace (a gift from Tammy) at the jewelers to have it cleaned. She had been very eager to pick it up ever since we had returned home. While at the mall we stopped at Subway again. It is really hard to beat Subway for a good healthy OP meal when you are out and about.
One other thing we picked up on Tuesday at Costco was a very large bag of dried pinto beans. I have been cooking them up in our crock pot and then freezing them in one cup and two cup containers. I am hoping that this will be an easy way of getting my protein in for meals when we are just putting together a quick meal. We have instant potatoes and lots of vegetables available that I can microwave, but finding a good protein dish that I like and that is low enough in points has been a bit of a problem. Since I love pinto beans, this should be a help. I have had some them already, without their being frozen yet, but I haven't tried cooking a frozen batch yet. We'll see how good this idea really was when I do that.
Thursday we had a stay at home day to focus on uninterrupted work and then Friday, most of the day was the same.
In the late afternoon a friend of ours arrived, one that Dotti had a great time with when they were both much younger, I was on Diego Garcia back in 1976 (yes I was much younger too ☺). Billy Jo is her name and she lives down near my Mom's house. She had done a lot over the years to look out for Mom and my stepfather when he was still alive. Dotti met Billy Jo at the airport and the two of them drove around a bit, and had dinner. They dropped by the house so I could say hi to her also.
When I think of Billy Jo, I am always reminded of the story Dotti told of a drive that the two of them took while I was on Diego Garcia. Now remember, though she was married to me at the time, she was still a teenager. ☺ They were driving on the back road that runs along the South Umpqua River and Dotti got distracted by something in the car (I think it was a dog in the back seat) and lost track of the road for a moment. A small boulder had rolled out into the road and she didn't see it in time. The car hit the rock and popped both of the tires on the right side of the car. Fortunately no one was hurt, but it was one of those things you just don't forget real soon.
The two old friends—it’s the friendship that is old, not the friends—had a very nice visit I am told and I am glad they enjoy themselves!
Now, untangling the weight loss journey aspect of this week...
Saturday I had a light breakfast, skipped lunch entirely, and had a few snacks (including a piece of taffy my niece Claudette bought for me and a chocolate drop delicacy that my lovely wife bought for me). I was not sitting badly at all for points when I encountered the menu at the Italian Restaurant. I couldn’t even read the names on the menu and I was searching for something that I could eat that wouldn't push me way past my limit. I ordered a bowl of soup that was tomato based and tasted delicious. (In fact there was nothing that I ate at the restaurant that I didn’t find delightful, other than that bite of spinach salad that Dotti gave me from her plate: that was far too oily and we think that may have been the culprit that made Dotti ill. She ate a whole bowl of the stuff and no one else took more than a sample taste of it. The rest of the food Dotti ate consisted of three food dishes, split and shared by Tammy, Dotti, and Claudette.)
In situations like this you have to do some estimating on the points. I had some hot bread that was pretty close to what I eat at Sweet Tomatoes, and so for the amount I had, I took 4.5 points. I had cups of coffee with creamer that came to 3.0 points. My soup looked to be 5.0 points. And the Tortellini Rossini (sp?) would have been 40.0 points, but I only ate half of it. So, while I did go over by eating 52 points for the day, it was not a complete bust, and my weekly points-per-day average was not pushed up above my limit of 46.
Sunday was a pretty hectic day for me. In one way, the quick drive home kept me from stopping for snacks, as sometimes happens. On the other hand, I was in a hurry and grabbed lunch at McDonalds. All I had for breakfast was coffee, and by the time I reach home I had eaten 34.0 points. I cooked up a quick meal that had 7 points for dinner and ended the day with 41.0 points. My average for the week at that point was 46.0 points-per-day. So, I was okay for the week by the time we were settled into our home again.
Monday was bad eating day for me. I didn't eat well and I ate 47.0 points, one over my limit. I was focused on Dotti and all day and I pretty much just snacked the day away for myself.
Tuesday, Dotti was bouncing back, and I ate much better food. I still was up to 44.5 points, but it was below my limit and I was pretty happy with the day.
Wednesday I hit my point limit, but I ate some really good things. The fruit platter made up a lot of my dinner, and I had some popcorn. (Popcorn is a stealth food, in that it always jacks up the short-term reading on the scale, while not causing any long term damage.) So, all in all I am happy with Wednesday.
Thursday was my best day for points, and I ate pretty well too. I finished off the fruit platter, and I had some of the beans I had been cooking up, and other good things. It all only came to 37.5 points. If I ate every day like I did on Thursday, I would never have any more trouble with the scale.
Friday I pushed my points back up to 44.5. Dotti made me a great sandwich at lunch. I had popcorn in the evening and a double helping of the beans. (It is great how pre-soaking them for a few hours before cooking really does "de-gas" them.) So, it was not surprising to me to see that I was a pound higher this morning than I had been on Friday morning.
I think I very much need to set some exercise goals. I am thinking about shooing for 300 miles of walking for the second half of the year. It is a doable goal and would get me back to walking regularly again. I really need it.
Now we are back home, we hope things will normalize again for a bit and we can settle in and get some of the big projects done that we have been planning. At the end of this month 2007 will be half over and that is simply amazing to me. Every now and then I still want to write 1997 instead of 2007. Someone hit the fast forward button I am sure.
6 years, 22 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/203.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.37/WK- 316
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs
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