Week 364 Update

It was 6:04 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "203.0 pounds!"

"What?" says I.

"203.0 Pounds!" was the reply.

"But I did better than that!" says I.

"203.0 Pounds!" was the reply.

With a surly squint in my eye, I finally accepted the inevitable and wrote 203.0 pounds down in my journal for my official weigh-in this week. After 364 weeks, nearly "a year of Sundays," the scale still has surprises for me.

The reason this was surprising to me was that I had real hopes of being back in my target range this time, or at least really close to it.

I had a third week in a row where I didn't go over my points limit even once, and the last time I did that began on September 22, 2007, and went through the week ending on October 20. I walked over 14 miles and I had high hopes for a strong move on the scale down towards my target range. Instead I gained a half pound.

I was surprised, but not dissuaded at all from what I am doing. Okay, it wasn't to be this week, but that merely leaves the door wide open next week for another good run at my goal. It will help keep me from easing up.

Over the past few months I have noted a tendency to ease up anytime I get things going in the right direction. This needs to stop. It is okay to have a splurge occasionally, just to keep things happy and not feeling like I am deprived in my mind, but like a river must flow in its channel, and splash of water up onto the bank doesn't mean anything serious, it never okay to overflow the banks and go off in destructive directions. If that happens, and you don't want to do long-lasting damage, you have to toughen up your defenses against it happening again and move on.

So, my goal is to hold the course this time around, even when I do finally get back in my target range—and I will get back in my target range. As the years go by, it is more important that I treat my body better. Youth allows you a lot of leeway for doing the wrong things without making you pay dearly, at least at the time. Your immune system is stronger, and your muscles are resilient and quickly recover from abuse. Injuries heal fast, and are less likely to occur when you exercise. Sleep seems almost optional when you are young, but all of that changes as the years pile up, and all at once you find that good healthy habits are not just something nice to have; they are a necessity if you want to go on living life in a happy healthy way.

As I thought about it, the weigh-in was not a big deal. My average weight for the week, which is a better true indicator of what is going on, was down to 202.07, from 203.21, over a full pound. So, really, I lost a pound this week, of average weight. Clearly I am moving in the right direction, despite Mr. Scale's nasty attitude this morning.

My Weight Commander graph , after a couple of Twiggy sized bumps (she is nearly 2 years older than I am, and it was forty-one years ago when she hit New York in full force and became all the rage—I can hardly believe it has been that long!), I have dropped down to a gradual decline, on a nearly level run for the solid squares. The daily, hollow square points, jump around on either side of the average like a mountain range, with its peaks and valleys. But that is what I love about these graphs. That noise of bouncing around is factored out, and the real trend, which is what is important, comes out clearly and you can see that over the past two weeks I have done pretty well, and even going back a full month, things have been fairly stable for me, with only a drift of a few pounds up and down, like sitting on the ocean where sea level is stable, but the gentle waves lift my boat and then drop it down again. My goal is to drop the overall level down and let the waves move me around inside my target range (which is why I have a target range and not just a target weight).

Moving over to the Weight Commander future graph, things are looking pretty good. It shows me walking down from where I am right into my target range by the end of the month and then on down into the heart of the range by July 4th. My trend is in the right direction right now, and so my efforts have not be for nothing, despite what the scale said today.

One trend that I bucked this week was the Sunday woes. Every Saturday morning I get a warning from Weight Commander that I have problems with gaining on Sunday, so I should watch out. This week I actually weighed a pound less on Sunday than I weighed on my Saturday weigh-in the day before. I had watched my points and held them down to 38.5 for Saturday and it paid off.

On the splurge side of things, I did have a Very Berry Sundae at Costco, but I ate light for lunch and so my points were no higher than normal because of the treat; in fact I only had 36.5 points for the day on Monday. Thursday I had another splurge when I had a cheeseburger at Red Robin, and that one did push my points up to 45.5 for the day. It may have had something to do with the bump up on the scale today, because I have often seen a day or two delay in the scale results from eating more than usual. But no real harm was done, since I didn't go over points.

Dotti and I walked to Red Robin, and then on to Borders on Sunday for a 3-mile stretch of the legs. Unfortunately, Dotti has been having some problems with a tooth connected to a bridge and so she had to go see a specialist, to see what needed to be done. We walked to that dentist's office and back home again after her examination, for nearly 4 miles of exercise, although the exam was not all that we had hoped it to be. It was recommended that she have oral surgery and the dentist would attempt to go in under the offending tooth and attempt to seal the roots where infection had been seeping in or out. It didn't sound like fun, and it also was not a guaranteed success either. She might have the procedure and then have to have the tooth removed anyway.

The pain she had been experiencing had come and gone a number of times but after the exam, things got worse. Perhaps the probing around shook something loose and the infection suddenly took off and Dotti was hurting pretty badly by Thursday.

On Wednesday, Dotti wasn't up to walking, and so I walked our 3-mile loop by myself. It is never as much fun to walk it alone, but it was good to get the exercise in.

Thursday, Dotti reached the point where she couldn't wait any longer. The procedure on her tooth wasn't schedule until the following week and it wouldn't wait. The specialist doctor was on a plane to Florida when Dotti called her office and so we called our regular dentist, and he rushed Dotti in to have a look at what was going on. He recommended that the surgery be scrapped because it had a low probability of success (if the tooth were cracked, which seemed likely, the tooth would have to be removed afterwards anyway) and that she replace the tooth with an implant. In the meantime he prescribed some more potent antibiotics for the infection which was causing her a lot of pain, and some pain meds to tide her over until the tooth could be removed next week. Well, it looks like I won't be the only one with metal roots on some of my teeth.

I was surprised afterwards when Dotti suggested that we take a walk, in spite of her pain. She has been really good about walking lately and I was happy to walk with her. We even walked to the pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions and did a total of 4.2 miles that day.

Friday, Dotti's tooth was still hurting but it had eased off a bit. Today most of the pain has moved down into the gum and area and is less than it was on Friday. The anti-biotic seems to be working well.

This week I walked 3 miles fewer than last week but I still averaged over 2 miles per day for the week and that is just fine. I am happy to be walking again!

I have really been focused (no pun intended) on Photoshop of late, and have enjoyed our classes that Dotti and I have attended together. I can see that I will be using this program for a long time to come. I did take a break from Photoshop just long enough to put together a little video of just a few of our zoo pictures from over the years. (I don't know how others will view it, but I have so many happy memories tied up with those times that I have a good time watching it each time, even after working on putting it together in the first place.)