Week 363 Update It was 4:30 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "202.5 pounds!"

Even though I am 2.5 pounds above my target range, I consider this past week to be a very good one. A really good thing is that I didn't go over my upper limit of 46.0 points all week. I did bump up against the limit, but I didn't go over. I was very focused upon that, and I made choices during the week to make sure that happened, when I could have easily gone over points. I felt very much like I did back in my losing phase when I had a set limit and I didn't go over that limit. It felt good to be doing that again. It has been two weeks now where I didn't go over points on any one of the days, and as I noted last week, I haven't been able to do that since before Thanksgiving! I am really set on making it three weeks in a row now. (Nothing breeds success like success itself.)

My average points-per-day did go up by a couple this week, but the average still remained below 40 points per day, and that is right on target for me.

I had some splurges this week, but they were all done in control. I ate at Red Robin several times. (But not Taco Bell! I have been doing well on that goal.) I had an ice cream cone at Baskin Robins, and it was 18.0 points. But I ate light the rest of the day and held my total down to 41.5 points for the day.

I have always felt that I must have some fun in my journey and be able to eat whatever I want from time to time, so that I never get that "on a diet" feeling where I am depriving myself. I refuse to eat less food, I just pay attention to the type of food, and on eat things that I like, and I have a splurge often enough to where I feel like I am enjoying life and not living life in a monastery.

While I am not ecstatic about my showing on the scale, I am not upset either. The main Weight Commander graph

shows my average weight holding fairly steady for the week. The last four days have eased gradually down a half pound. I had a huge bump on Monday where I jumped to 205.5 pounds and that through off the numbers for the whole week a bit. The bump was not caused by overeating, and so that means it was not a gain of fat weight, but only water weight. The fact that I dropped 3 pounds on Tuesday morning shows that it was just a fluke.

The future doesn't look awesome on my Weight Commander Future Graph. It shows me climbing up to 210 pounds by the end of July, if the past 14 days trend on the scale continue. If you have been follwing along since I started using the Weight Commander you know that this prediction varies from week to week quite a bit. Some weeks it shows me heading off towards 220 pounds, and other weeks it has me dropping down into the 180s or lower. This is to be expected when you are maintaining. My weight doesn't hold a steady course of gaining or losing, but rather is constantly being corrected by changes I apply on my journey. I am especially unconcerned about the gloomy forecast this time because I know I am doing well on my eating and because of the next area I will mention...

The best part of the week was in the area of exercise! After going some time without any serious walking, this week I finally walked over 17 miles. The two times that Dotti and I walked to Red Robin, we took the longer 3.1 mile route over the 2.2 mile route we had been using. I worked out a longer route to the dentist's office that takes me 3.25 miles on a one-way trip. I walked that 3 times, for three different trips to the office. Dotti drove me to the dentist's office twice, so I could walk home afterwards, and once she met me at the office after I walked to it. On Friday, after walking home from the dentist's I then went right back out and walked to Wall-Mart, which gave me 4.95 miles for the day.

Walking will often cause my joints to swell a bit and to cause an increase on the scale. I also took some ibuprofen early in the week which I think may have contributed to the jump on the scale. So, I am not at all worried about the scale this week. Anytime I can keep my points below my target and still get a good amount of exercise in I am going to be happy with the week for my journey. I walked nearly 26% of my entire mile total for 2008 in this one week! What I need to do is to have many more weeks like this one was.

On the way to our Photoshop course on Saturday, we stopped at Starbucks and Dotti was nice enough to give me her dazzling smile for my picture! (Thank you Dotti!!!)

I included this picture that I took on Tuesday on my walk home from the dentist. There is an airport along the way that is called Evergreen Field. We had been wondering for several years how long they could afford to hold onto that property, because there is an explosion of growth in Vancouver on this end of town and the taxes for that land had to be killing them. They finally sold the property and have knocked down the buildings. The bulldozers are out and at work. This is the west end of the field and I snapped a picture looking due north. The spring flowers on the tree were pretty and took several pictures of the field as I was walking past.

If you look all the way down at the end of the field there is a building. That building is Winco Foods, a local grocery store that we frequent. The last few pictures I have put in this week's write up were taken from the parking lot of Winco. What surprised me was that the airport is still open! While the main east-west strip is closed and being converted into some building project, the north south runway, which I never even realized existed before, is still in operation! We are looking right down that air strip off in the distance.

As I have been doing my walking this week, this is a sign that I have seen a lot of. Every time I come to a light at an intersection, one of these signs is placed over a button, and usually two of them are placed over buttons aimed 90 degrees off from each other. I took this picture on the way to Wall-Mart on Friday.

The road to Wall-Mart is lined with street lamps that look like this. It is a nice touch and I like the look they are putting on the area they are developing. The glass shape is reminiscent of the street lamps I remember in town when I was a kid shopping with Mom in San Bernardino, California, back in the days before there were indoor malls. Mom always made our shopping outtings fun, and so the memories called up by these lamps are very happy ones.

As you can see, the day was hazy gray. When I had started off from the dentist's office I had my jean jacket on with a light raincoat over that, but when I got home, I was getting too warm. So, before heading off to meet up with Dotti at Wall-Mart, I put on a backpack and put my jacket and raincoat into it, where I could grab them quickly if it cut loose with some rain. Fortunately, I was only hit with a few small drops and was able to leave the coats in the backpack, and I was just the right temperature as I walked with my flannel shirt on.

There was construction going on all the way along my walking route, and I noticed this bank that I had not seen before. I thought the name was very clever: Columbia River Bank. We were just a few miles north of the real Columbia River bank, so the name seemed very appropriate.

There were a number of these gates on both sides of the road that I was walking beside. They are locked when not in use, but can be opened to allow trucks and machinery to have access to the land beyond.

My destination was Wall-Mart, and you can see it sitting off in the distance on the hill, just to the left of the steel-framed construction climbing into the air.

It wasn't very long ago when all of this area was just vacant fields. When we used to go a gym a few blocks away, we would look over this land as they were just starting to put in some dirt roads and the dozers were starting to move some dirt around, and we wondered what they would be building down in the valley. It looked like a flood plain from where we were standing, and the construction would be taking place over terrain that was mostly down in a hole from the surrounding land. Wall-Mart is almost up to the normal level of the surrounding land, but where I was standing here is down quite a few feet from that. I have to assume that they put some very serious thought into drainage for this area for when we get really heavy rains.

That steel-framed structure turned out to be for Clark College! I had seen this sign before, but there was no work started on the building yet. Now, all at once it is leaping into the sky! Dotti and I hope to be able to take some classes here one day. It would be great to be able to walk to school again. It has been a lot of years since I could do that. And carrying Dotti's books to class will be fun!

This Wall-Mart waterfall has been a favorite of ours ever since they added water too it. Of course they have a pump and cycle the water through from the pone over and over again, but it is still enjoyable watching the water flow over the rocks. If you can't be out on the hiking trail looking at a natural waterfall, this is the next best thing. It has a very Pacific Northwest feel to it, and I have a hard time walking past it without snapping a picture of it. My favorite picture of it I have taken so far is this night shot from back in September of 2007. But day or night, I always like to see it.

Moving to the other (eastern) side of the pond and looking back in the direction I had just walked from, it is apparent that Clark College will be sitting right next to Wall-Mart and this pretty little pond and waterfall. The main campus of Clark College has some very nice landscaping, so I am expecting that the campus and this watery decoration will blend together very nicely when it is all completed. If they continue to work as aggressively on the building has they have started there should be no problem getting things going in 2009, as the sign predicted.

This one is taken from the Wall-Mart Parking lot looking down over the pond and the Clark College construction site. Off in the distance there is still lots of vacant land, but trucks and bulldozers are on most of it, and in a very short time this whole area will be jumping with new buildings. Dotti and I have fun trying to guess what will be coming next. Will it be a Barnes and Noble? A JC Penney or Sears? Housing, or another grocery store? We'll just have to wait and see. Whatever is going in here is within walking distance and that is always good too. It is nice when you can mix in some exercise with running errands!

Also taken from the Wall-Mart parking lot, but looking northeast: the sun broke through the clouds and hit the snow on the Cascade Mountain range. Winter is over, but the higher elevations haven't gotten the word yet.

Out in front of Wall-Mart they had some flowers on display, and since Dotti loves flowers so much I had to take a few pictures for her and include them here.