Week 326 Update Week 326 Update At 05:45 I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "199.0 pounds!"

Once again this week, my dental adventure has dominated the scene. I have documented that side of things in the Fourth Installment of The Tooth Fairy's Evil Twin. If you would like to keep tabs on how I am doing in this area, please feel free to drop in and read all about it. It hasn't all been fun, but I am making progress!

As for my weight loss journey, I am happy with the general flow of things today. For the 3rd week in a row all of my daily weigh-ins have been in my target range. My points have remained below my upper limit each day, and my average points-per-day came to 36.14. During my weight loss phase in 2001, my upper point limit was 31 points up until I hit my goal weight of 200 pounds. So, I am only eating a bit over that level right now to maintain inside my target range. It may be that for my current activity level and age, I may need to hold my eating down to around 36 points-per-day in order to maintain my weight. Here’s how my week went:

To start off, I will define my “Standard Breakfast” as this: 1.5 cups of Grape Nuts Flakes: 4 points 2 cups of skim milk: 4 points 1 cup of coffee with Coffeemate Creamer: 1 point Total points: 9.0

Saturday (8/4/2007), I was happy with my weigh-in because I hit my target weight right on the head: 197.5 pounds. I ate my “Standard Breakfast” in the morning, and then did another one for lunch (minus the coffee), but I added one banana and a tablespoon of peanut butter, for an additional 4.5 points. That brought my total for the day to 21.5 points.

I favor eating Grape Nuts Flakes because they taste really good, and they soften up very well if allowed to stand for a few minutes in milk, requiring no real chewing to get it down. When a banana is mashed up, it also goes down very easily without chewing much. (Again to check on how my chewing was going, see the Fourth Installment of The Tooth Fairy's Evil Twin.)

In the evening, I had a hot meal consisting of instant potatoes, hominy, beans, and for dessert, two pudding cups. The instant potatoes and the pudding cups were “Al ready” on their own, but the hominy and beans needed to be run through the blender, one at a time. It made them come out a lot like the mashed potatoes, or like baby food. They looked really odd for the flavors I was tasting, but they were filling, and they did taste good. The meal came to 10.5 points.

I skipped the snacks on Saturday, and ended up eating 32.0 points.

Sunday (8/5/2007), I weighed 199.0 pounds. I had my standard breakfast (with 0.5 point of extra milk to increase the softening of the cereal) and then Dotti and I decided to go to the Clark County Fair. We had fun walking around the fair, and we got a Smoothie snack (3.0 points) while there.

I didn’t eat lunch but for dinner I dug into a good meal. Once again, instant potatoes supplied my carbohydrates, and corn added some more. The protein was supplied by vegetarian baked beans, and a tablespoon of peanut butter, which I just ate straight. (I absolutely love peanut butter. ☺) I had some tomato juice and some V-8 juice, both are favorites of mine. For dessert I had some 0-point Jell-O. The meal came to 14.0 points, bringing my meal total to 24.5 points.

I normally aim to keep my meal total at or below 30 points if I can. That leaves me some wiggle room for snacks during the day.

For snacks on Sunday I had the aforementioned Smoothie and some ice cream (4 points) and a banana and peanut butter (4.5 points). My total points for the day therefore came to 36.0 points. Quite satisfactory.

Monday (8/6/2007) I weighed 200 pounds even. That is right at the top of my target range, but it is inside of it! (For my height, 200 pounds is still in the Normal range with a BMI of 25.0.)

When I woke up Dotti’s jump drive was sitting on my keyboard, and on it was the rough draft of the new Dotti’s Newsletter, issue #29.

Whenever I get a new computer, and this is why I hate to upgrade, and refuse to do so until absolutely necessary, I come across something I have to reconstruct or reinstall, each time I perform a serious task on that computer. This time it was proofreading the newsletter. What I did with my old computer was to create a “LIT” file, with a program I downloaded from a link on the Microsoft site. The program would convert Word docs into the book form of a “LIT” file. I then would allow the Microsoft Reader to read the document to me (using the “Microsoft SAM” voice) as I read it for myself from the HTML file. This was an invaluable tool, because your ear picks up things your eye misses when you are proofreading, and something that appears to be okay to your eye will clash with your ear and I have picked up many mistakes using this tool that I would have otherwise missed.

My woes started when I moved to Microsoft Office 2007. The program that created the “LIT” files would not run on that platform, even though I was running an XP OS. Fortunately, I still had an old computer running Microsoft Office 2003, and that would create the LIT file which I could move to my desktop and read with my Microsoft Reader. The next problem I had was with the new computer. “Microsoft SAM” was gone and he was replaced by “Microsoft Anna.” I was not at all impressed with the change. The new voice was not as clear and I was having a great deal of trouble picking up what it was saying. It was not useable for my purpose.

I hunted around the Internet to see if I could download “Microsoft SAM” for Vista, but alas it couldn’t be done. So, I purchased a software package (Natural Reader 2007) that would perform the reading task for me, and it supplied 4 voices for me to choose from. This software was far superior to the Microsoft Reader, and the voice I picked even blew away “Microsoft SAM” for an easy to understand diction. (It also allows the creation of MP3 files from text, which I may find a happy use for later in the area of audio books, and audio articles etc. for my IPOD.)

Anyway, I was finally back in business on the Newsletter, and after doing a grammar and spell check, and formatting check and making corrections, I could do the final proofread with the new software and was able to get the Newsletter on its way to its 43,000+ readers by 11:34 a.m. It was 5 and a half hours well spent I feel from jump drive to transmit. ☺

For eating, I had 3 meals for the day. I had my standard breakfast, and then repeated that for lunch. (I also added an extra 0.5 point of milk for breakfast, but not at lunch.) So, I was up to 18.5 meal points at that time.

Dotti and I took a run to Costco to pick up a couple of things we needed, and I had a Very Berry Sundae. I actually got it with the berries this time. (Last week I had one with just the ice cream because I wasn’t up to biting the berries.) This time I couldn’t quite finish it all (so I only took 7.5 points, instead of the normal 8.0 points) but I did actually bite through a couple of still frozen berries. It was quite painful, but I did it.

For dinner, I had my “ever present” instant potatoes, some blended lima beans and black-eyed peas, along with some apple juice. I have to say that the blended dishes are weird to eat, but they taste good, and they fill me up. I am getting the nutrition I need to get me by this healing, learning and toughening up process. I had 11.0 points for dinner, and so it was 29.5 points for meals on that day. I had some coffee for a couple of extra points, and that brought my snacks to 9.5 points. Total points for the day: 39.0.

Tuesday (8/7/2007) I weighed 198.5 pounds. I had my standard breakfast (once more with 0.5 point of extra milk), no lunch and another blended dinner. The dinner included cottage cheese “Doubles”, which has cottage cheese and a fruit that can be mixed in with it. I had to pick out the pineapple fruit this time, because it hurt too much to chew it. I also had some blended garbanzo beans and stew, and some “unblended” grape juice. ☺ The meal came to 9.5 points, bringing my meal total for the day to 19.0 points. Dotti made a WW Smoothie for me for a snack, which included a can of Slim Fast, and that moved the points up to 6.0 for the smoothie. My points for the day only came to 25.0.

Wednesday (8/8/2007) I weighed 198.5 pounds. I had three meals, which included my standard breakfast. For lunch, I had two tablespoons of peanut butter. One of them I mixed in with a mashed banana, and the other I mixed in with my Cream of Wheat. My lunch therefore came to 11.0 very tasty points.

For dinner I had my normal potatoes, blended hominy and I tried to get down some blended chili. The chili was way too stout in that form and after eating about half of it, I had to give it up for a lost cause. (In fact the next morning I was still suffering with an upset stomach from the part I did eat.) I had some ice cream and 1/3 of a candy bar that I had tried to eat earlier as a snack, right after my dental adjustment. However, it was impossible to bite through it with my gums hurting so badly. Dotti mashed it up for me and I was able to eat it with the ice cream. My meal came to 17 points, and that brought my meal total for the day to 37.0 points, a little higher than I normally like to see. However, my snacks really only came to some coffee for 2 points, and my total for the day was only 39.0 points.

Thursday (8/9/2007) I weighed 199.0 pounds. As I said before, I woke up with a stomach in rebellion with what I had done to it with the chili for dinner. Fortunately, after an hour or so after breakfast that settled down.

Dotti and I needed a break from the house, and so we took a little trip out into the Columbia River Gorge. We stopped at set of Outlet Stores on the way out, and walked around a few of the stores. We then drove up the Columbia Gorge Scenic Highway, by driving up along the Sandy River and then left onto the highway that led us through Corbett and on to the turn off for the top of Larch Mountain. We went to the top and hiked a quarter-mile to the viewpoint. It was a great day for it. And the temperature had dropped from somewhere in the 70’s down to 58° by climbing up 4,000 feet.

For eating, I had 3 meals. I had my standard breakfast, and then had a less than perfect assortment of food and junk for lunch. There was a can of Slim Fast and a Jamba Juice. Both of those were pretty good for me as well as good tasting. They added up to 7.0 points. Then I went the other way and had a container of Dreyer’s Dibs. I was looking for something soft enough to eat with my sore gums, and they did work into that category, but they were 11.0 points of sweets. I also had ½ of a Caramello Bar, for another 4.5 points. All of that came to 22.5 points for lunch.

For dinner I mashed up a banana, and mixed in a tablespoon of peanut butter. I had blended baby corn, and white beans. I also had my now traditional instant potatoes. That all came to 9.5 points, which brought my meal total for the day to 41.0 points. That was pretty high, but I only had 2.0 points of coffee for additional snacks, and my total for the day was still okay, at 43.0 points.

Friday (8/10/2007) I weighed 198.0 pounds. The big deal for the day was getting rid of a nasty bone chip in my gums, which had been making chewing impossible. That expanded my eating possibilities a bit.

I had my standard breakfast. For lunch I had Cream of Wheat and a tablespoon of peanut butter, for 4.5 total points.

For dinner I finally was able to do some chewing. I ate a Cottage Cheese Double, fruit and all, some chocolate Special K (we just got it that day and I had to test it out☺), beans, and a low point chocolate moose, along with a bowl of low point ice cream. Dinner came to 15.5 points. With the low point count for lunch I was only up to 31.0 points for meals—one point higher than my desired upper limit. For snacks I had a Weight Watcher™ snack cake (1 point), Smith’s Moose (2.0 points) and two servings of Triscuit crackers which I was able to chew. (My gums were rebelling at the end, but I was excited to finally be able to do it!)

My total points for the day was 39.0. And that led to my weigh-in of 199.0 pounds this morning.



More pictures will be forthcoming soon!

At the Clark County Fair, Dotti and I only took one ride, the Giant Wheel. I remember on the day we were married (June 10, 1976) in Vancouver, Washington, we drove up to Seattle and visited the carnival they had running perpetually near the Space Needle. We rode their roller coaster and rides that spun and whirled. But that was over 31 years ago, and we have slowed down just a bit. ☺

While we were waiting to climb aboard, Dotti took this photo of me standing in line. I was trying to work myself up to being able to smile with abandon once more. I was almost halfway there.

I was wearing the mermaid shirt that Dotti bought for me when we were at the coast with Vikki and Joan. Since I collect mermaids, the ladies were kindly keeping their eyes open for anything with mermaids on it, and I came home with several mermaid treasures from that trip. This shirt caught all of our eyes when we walked into that shop in Newport. Yep, I was spoiled.☺

From high up on the ride the carnival portion of the fair could be seen below us. The sky was overcast and it made for nice cool day. We were thankful for that, because last year we nearly baked in hot sunny weather. It was much nicer this year.

Thursday we made a trip to the Columbia River Gorge. We stopped off at the Portland Women's Forum State Scenic Viewpoint, as we have done many times before. The view of the Columbia River Gorge from here is beautiful. On the right Crown Point, with its Vista House stands proudly at the mouth of the channel cut through the Cascade Mountain Range by the Columbia River. What a sight!

Here are two pictures of me, taken from this same Scenic Viewpoint. On the left is what I look like in August 2007, and on the right is the way I looked last century. ☺ (It was taken in the summer of 1999.)

And of course on the right is how I look today in 2007. As you can see over the 8 years that have passed between these pictures, I haven't changed at all. ☺ Okay, maybe a little...



That day in 1999 I took some of my favorite pictures of Dotti as well. Here are 3 of them I took from the same Gorge viewpoint.

6 years, 92 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/199.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:24.87/WK- 326

Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs