Week 361 Update

It was 6:40 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "203.0 pounds!"

I am getting pretty used to that number right now because this was the fourth day in a row I saw it when I weighed in the morning. The fifth day was 203.5, so you could say I was very slowly trending downward.

I have really grown attached to the Weight Commander graphs each week, because they give me a very clear picture of how I am doing. When the dark black squares are moving upwards I know that I am on the wrong track, and when they level off and start to drop, I know things are going better.

Last week, as you might recall, those solid squares were going up and up. This week, they finally leveled off and stabilized. The last month appears to be a great sand dune course for a dune buggy, but it is almost all happening above my upper limit of 200 pounds. I am torn between joy that I am not fighting to hold it below 240 pounds, and frustration because I can't seem to get it down below 200 and keep it there.

The future graph doesn't make things look bright, but they are looking far less dim than last week. If you remember, I was scheduled to reach 215 pounds by America's birthday, but this week I am moving only to 209 pounds. While I am not interested in doing that either, it is a 6-pound virtual loss, and it shows that somewhere in the mess, I did better this week than I did last.

What I am hoping for is that this week will be better still and the future will start to resemble something that I can be proud of, rather than something I have to fight to change.

To start with, I ate a lot less this week! I not only averaged below 50 points-per-day (where I was at last week) but below 40 points-per-day! In fact I ate almost 10 points-per-day below my target maintenance level of 46 points. If I could do that well from here on out, I would be back in my range in no time and stay there.

Saturday, Dotti and I had a little date where we had a romantic dinner at a restaurant that we had not been to in years. We split a dessert and my points for the meal topped out at 22.0, and that pushed me up over my limit slightly for the day to 47.5 points. But that was in a good cause! Also, it was my highest points day for the week.

Sunday I did really well on my points, only eating 31.0 of them. The scale jumped up from 203.0 to 204.0 from Saturday to Sunday, but that was from a combination of the salty food I ate and the high points day last Friday (64.0 points). Monday the scale moved up another half-pound despite the low points on Sunday, but it was not totally unexpected. When you go way over on your points sometimes the scale takes a couple of days to respond. I kept my points down to 43.5 on Monday, so it was another good day.

I had a routine follow-up visit with my doctor and it went well except for my blood pressure. It seems that ever since they went over to the automatic cuff at that office my pressure reads high. Last time I went right home after getting it checked at the office, and took my reading again and it read normal. On the day that I was having my sinus lift procedures I was extremely stressed and my pressure only went up to 140/90 but this time it read 159 on the high end. I will have to start reading it at home now to make sure that something isn't going on beside faulty readings with an automatic cuff.

Tuesday, Dotti and I drove out to Multnomah Falls to take a few pictures and visit the gift shop. After my doctor's appointment on Monday we met a lady who had a nice Multnomah Falls coat, and we thought when we had a chance, we would run out and get one. While we were there we decided to take advantage of the nice fireplace in the restaurant dining room. It was a fairly cold day, with the sun weakening fast, and the fire felt delightful. We had a great meal and it pushed me just over my limit to 47.0 points for the day.

Wednesday, I was back down to 203.0 pounds, and I only ate 34.0 points. I even had a Subway sandwich for lunch. (I have done well on not going to Taco Bell! It has been a few weeks and I am happy about that.)

Thursday I weighed 203.0 pounds once more as I did for the remainder of the week, including this morning. I only ate 34.0 points and Dotti and I walked 2.2 miles over to Red Robin for dinner and on to Borders for some time away from our computers at home. As it turned out, we still had our computers with us, and I continued to work on my Al's Corner page (http://www.dwlz.com/alscornerTOC.html) to make it more user friendly and easier to navigate. I was happy with the way it turned out, but it took a lot of time to get it to where I was happy with it. I did a couple of new pages along with that main one for my songs and stories.

Friday, as I noted the scale held steady, and for once I didn't go over points on the day before my weigh-in. That is a good sign in itself. I just held my points in the 30's, at 39.5. So the week was very good for my points, and the scale stopped going up, and I am in good shape to make a move downward on the scale for the upcoming week, if I can eat as well as I did for this week.

6 years, 337 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/203.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.37/WK- 361

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