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*** Weigh-in for WEEK 365 ***
05/10/2008
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| Week Completed: | ___365___ |
| Weigh-In Weight: | 201.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 25.12 |
| Average Weight for week: | 201.86 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 9.70 |
| Miles Walked in 2008: | 92.14 |
| Week’s Average Points/Day: | 35.36 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -2.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 38.5 |
| 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 |
05/03/2008
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203.0
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31.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Sunday |
05/04/2008
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202.0
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31.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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3.10
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| Monday |
05/05/2008
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201.5
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36.0
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8 cups (64 oz)
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3.50
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| Tuesday |
05/06/2008
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203.0
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34.5
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Wednesday |
05/07/2008
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201.5
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38.0
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Thursday |
05/08/2008
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202.0
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39.0
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6 cups (48 oz)
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0.00
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| Friday |
05/09/2008
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202.0
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37.0
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10 cups (80 oz)
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3.10
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Week 365 Update
It was 6:23 in the morning when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "Congratulations on completing 7 straight years of stepping on my face: 201.0 pounds!" Well, it was something like that anyway.  I would have liked to have completed my seventh year of my journey in my target range, but I am only one pound over, so I can't really complain. I actually started my journey on May 12, 2001, so I have to wait until Monday to set foot into the official start of my 8th year on my journey, but since my updates come on Saturday, we'll go with today for now.
On my very first journal entry here is what I put down:
5/12/01
*** Starting Weigh-in ***
Week Completed: __0__
Weigh-In Weight: 239.5
Body Mass Index: 30.0
Pounds to go to 10%: 24
Pounds to go to goal: 39.5
___________________________
Well it's started!
239.5/239.5/200/WK-0
"Well, it's started"...and so it had.
I had actually begun the journal in Dotti's Message Board, Men's Thread and so some of my comments that first week were related to the fact that it was in a forum and not in a stand alone journal. Soon, I moved it over to http://www.dottisweightlosszone.com, where it remains to this day. We have shortened the URL up, even though the old one still works, most people use the shorter http://www.dwlz.com, but the page is still the same one that my lovely Dotti created.
I sometimes like to go back and read the entries when I was new on the journey, because the enthusiasm I felt is a bit contagious and helps when I feel like I am losing my focus. That first week I described my feelings as being "like a kid on Christmas morning running around and telling everyone, "Look what I got for Christmas!" I am excited by the process, as well as the results so far." Just reading about my excitement, and the results I was getting, will sometimes pull me out of the doldrums and get me moving again. When I do the right things, I get the right results. This journal reminds me of that fact when my inner voice is trying to lie me into disbelieving that.
Today is not just about starting out though, it is also about continuing on, after 7 years of continuing on. If at any time I decide to stop what I am doing and just coast along, I will be back up to where I was when started those 7 years ago. And I am older today, and those pounds would be far more egregious to bear than they were then, and they were dragging me down 7 years ago. I can walk 3 or 4 miles today without giving it a thought, even with a 20-pound pack on my back.
I don't want to go back to those days of fighting to hold my weight down below 240 pounds. I have to remind myself of that from time to time. It is not logical, but it is true. It should be completely obvious that gaining a lot of weight would be a bad thing, and impact my life in a very negative way, but there are times when my mind wants to forget that and just quit doing the things my journey requires me to do. It would be so much easier to not journal everything I eat, and to not worry about counting points. But it would not be easier lugging around 40 or 50 more pounds, and I have to work to keep that up front in my personal meeting agenda list. It has to be factored in first, and then the rest will fall into place.
Another battle that is still going on, even though it doesn't get mentioned as much—this month marks 10 years since my last cigarette. I quit smoking the same year that Dotti lost over 100 pounds! For years we had a standing agreement that if Dotti lost her weight, I would quit smoking. It was not because of that agreement that I quit, but it worked out that we both had tremendous success in our own respective most difficult challenges in life. For me smoking was always a far bigger monster than weight gain was. For Dotti, weight was a far bigger problem than smoking. While we both shared each other's problems, we knew where our most difficult challenges lay. I don't know what it was about 1998, but it was a magic year in the Coon household!
Dotti quit smoking a few years after I did, and we now are both non-smokers, which is a big plus on the health front.
Dotti doesn't want a cigarette today at all. She has no desire to smoke and it is no temptation to her. But I am still challenged by that habit. I have not smoked at all since I quit in 1998, but sometimes I get a whiff of someone else's cigarette and it may smell very, very good to me. Surprisingly, it doesn't always smell the same. Most of the time it smells bad, fortunately, and have to get away from it to be comfortable. But when it smells good, I have to get away from it even faster to get my focus back on why I want to remain a nonsmoker. This habit is for life, and I am only one cigarette away from being a 3-pack-a-day smoker again.
The struggle today is lopsided in my favor. I don't want a cigarette very often, and when I do it is triggered by something that is just passing by—either an event or the physical smoke—and it is quickly put behind me. However, I can't ever just say that it is over, and from time to time I go back and read my now 20-year-old "A Letter From Smoking Al", that I wrote, back in April of 1988 (the year I got out of the Navy), to my future non-smoking self. I wrote that when I was still a very unhappy smoker. Even then I knew this was going to be a lifelong battle that I would have to hold the line against, even when the physical addiction was beaten.
The reason some people just lay cigarettes down and walk away from them, and never look back (it is amazing how condescending some of them can be about the struggles other people have), while others have to fight it for the rest of their lives, is because the psychological part is where the real demons live in the smoking process. Beating the physical addiction is easy—you only have to go a few a days without smoking, and it is done. But that psychological addiction, if you are deeply connected to smoking, is with you for life. You have to put it in a cage and check to make sure every so often that it hasn't picked the lock when you weren't watching.
So, I am very happy about reaching the milestone of 10 smoke-free years. I am still wary against a relapse, but I am confident in my resolve to remain a non-smoker. I continue to tell my inner voice, "No way!" whenever it starts offering reasons why smoking wouldn't really be so bad. That inner voice is a coward, and when it is confronted strongly, it always backs down. It is only when you try to reason with it that it is able to talk you into destructive behavior.
Dotti and I attended a quit smoking clinic in 1985, and they handed us a sheet that listed the various health benefits we would receive after we quit smoking versus time passed. We were looking mostly at the short-term benefits of non-smoking: minutes, hours and days of being smoke free. But there were a couple of longer range ones also, with the longest being 10 years. I have always had that piece of paper, with its long range goal in the back of my mind. It has yellowed a bit, but I have it still with me today. I have now hit every milestone listed there. (And Dotti has hit all but the last one already!  ) The bad news is that if I had quit when they handed me that paper in 1985, I would have reached 10 years of non-smoking last century, in 1995, which is the date it shows on the sheet for the 10 year milestone. Unfortunately, I didn't finally quit until 1998, and I had to wait until 2008 before I could finally reach my 10-year milestone. The good news is that I have reached that milestone, and here is what the sheet says about that:
- Precancerous cells replaced
- All risk rates reduced to that of non-smokers
Isn't that exciting? I think so!
For all of these years I have had this in my mind, to reach 10 contiguous years of not smoking, so that I could attain these benefits. I knew at every step along the way that if I cheated and had even one cigarette, I would be breaking this healthy chain to my 10-year milestone. But I held the course and I reached a major goal. When we were first handed that sheet, I never believed it was possible for me get to this point, no matter how hard I tried. (At that point in my life I had not been able to go 24 hours without a cigarette, so 10 years was fairy tale stuff.) Today, I have actually done what appeared to be impossible those many years ago. 
And while I am not in my goal target zone, I am only one pound above it, and that added to my smoke-free status has me feeling pretty good about things. I want to do better on my journey, and I have been doing better the last few weeks, as I have now gone 4 straight weeks without going over my upper limit of 46.0 points. I have been getting in some walking and things in general are going much better. The scale is not with the program like I would have liked it to be, but it is not far off and it will come in line, it has no choice, as long as I remain on program.
Back to this week's weight
control journey update, the solid squares on my Weight Commander graph
show that the general, and very slow decline is continuing towards my target range. The most recent of the solid squares is the lowest placed one on the entire graph, even lower than the dip in mid-April, and the trend has been consistently downward since the start of the last week in April. I'm not there yet, but I am close, and I am continuing to move in the right direction.
The 
Weight Commander future graph isn't doing anything too drastic; the trend is more linear than I have seen it in a while. It indicates that over the next few weeks I will slide down into my target range and by August I will be just in the 190's. If I do just that, I will be perfectly happy. If I watch my step, I will be able to do better than that, but we have a vacation coming up at the end of this week and I don't know how that will go. I expect to get lots and lots of exercise, but eating will be a real challenge. I will do my best to hold the eating down to a reasonable level while we are having fun, and then circle the wagons when we get back, to undo any damage, if any, that I inflict on myself over the trip. I want to enjoy myself, without becoming destructive with overeating. I don't want to be so rigid that I don't enjoy the event, but I also don't want to come back and have to undo a big weight gain either. Life at its best is always in balance, and it is a lack of balance that causes nearly all of our troubles in life. I will do my best, and see what happens. 
This week was interesting—as in the curse, May you live in interesting times—in the dental area. First off Dotti had an issue that cropped up around a bridge she had. The two teeth supporting the bridge where each having some problems and at first one of them looked like it might be saved with oral surgery but the call was made that it would be better to just yank it, and the other back tooth, which had an infection at its base as well, and just go with implants. (Dotti has this twin side of her where she likes to do things just the same as me.  )
So, on Monday afternoon, I wrote the following:
Dotti is sleeping soundly in the other room, short a couple of teeth that she had when she woke up this morning. Dotti had an early chair time at the dentist's, and I had to scramble to get Dotti's Newsletter issue #47 sent on its way to the 67,168 people eagerly waiting to receive it (at least they were kind enough to ask to have it be sent to them, which is close enough ) before I drove her to that appointment. I made the deadline, and then, as we were getting ready to get into the car to go, the dentist's assistant called up and asked if we could postpone it until this afternoon. Since Dotti was all ready to do it, this was not good news, but we understand when an emergency comes up. They have always been great at getting us in when we had anything pressing, so we didn't mind stepping aside for someone else to get treated--at least not too much.
So, we both set about finding things that we needed to do to fill the time. I had grabbed a Slim Fast for Dotti earlier, so she would have some energy for the ordeal ahead, but she found it was not as cold as it should have been. I went out and investigated what was going on in our garage mini-fridge. The ice cube tray compartment was almost completely filled with ice, and there weren't any ice cube trays in it! It obviously needed a defrost. So, I turned the unit off, cleared out the food compartment, and set up something to collect the water as the ice melted, and then...
All at once the phone rang again, and everything had fallen into place and the 9 AM appointment was on once more. Mad scramble! Fortunately I had already put my books in the car that I would be studying when Dotti was in the chair, so all I had to do was grab my coat. But Dotti was setting up to answer some emails, and do some other things on her computer, and had to back up and get her mind right for what was about to happen. So, instead of a nice leisurely drive to the dentist's office, like we would have had without the phone calls, we were hurrying to be less "late" for the appointment. (The call came just about 8:55 and we are about 10 minutes from the office by car, or 35 minutes or so by foot. We took the car.  )
Dotti said the dentist did a great job on the extractions. (Since he is the one who did all but one of my implants, I know he is excellent, and so I wasn't surprised. I had told her beforehand that all would be well.) She actually came out of the room with a smile and laughing like she had just come from a party. The dentist has a great sense of humor as well as his dental talents. Her voice was muffled though through the gauze she had clamped between her teeth and her gums.
While the dentist was at the counter with Dotti getting the paperwork straight, I came over to join the happy spirit and frivolity, and to ask the dentist what I thought would be "a quick question."
He asked me to come back and have a seat in his chair (he asked if I would mind using the same one that Dotti had just used, it was just a formality after 32 years of blissful marriage). I can't say enough good things about this dentist. He always goes way out of the way to make my life easier and to work me in whenever I have even the smallest issue. I obviously wasn't scheduled for a visit, but here I was in the chair getting examined.
One of my two sinus lift implants was giving me trouble—as it turns out, it was the only one that he himself hadn't done. Both of those two final implants, done the same day, were completely covered by gum tissue, but this one felt like it was about to erupt, like a baby's first tooth. I told him that it felt like I was "teething." He took a look and decided to expose it and put one of the "healing caps" on it like he put on all the other exposed implants a few days ago. It was pretty minor, one shot, a bit of cutting, and then unscrewing the old cap and screwing on the new one. Unfortunately, when he was screwing down the new one, the implant gave a little. It shouldn't do that. He said it wasn't "fully integrated" yet. I has surmised that much already. 
He took an x-ray and said it all looked pretty good and it maybe just needed more time. (This is one of the specialty "sinus lift" implants and did not get screwed into bone all the way like the others did. In fact it only had 3 mm of bone holding it in place when it was first set. So, this is not a horribly big deal right now, but it was not comforting to have that happen.) So, my teeth have been pushed out another month, and maybe by the end of June or early July I will be back to chomping again.
Back to the important part, Dotti is doing well, but tired. She has been doing some sleeping and there is no real bleeding going on. So far it looks great. She should be getting her repair work started in a couple of months, maybe about the time I finally get the enamel additions put in for my mastication enhancement.
For now it is just a matter of waiting for time to pass, so she can heal up and the wounds can seal up well enough to where she won't have to baby them any longer. Those first few days are quite inconvenient, and at times painful. I will do all that I can to make her life easier and give her lots of opportunity to rest.
On Tuesday, Dotti got out and about a bit. I was buried in some work, and she said she was up to just driving to Wall-Mart and back again by herself. I wasn't happy about it, but I thought it would be okay. I should have known better about the "out and back again" scenario with my little free spirit. Several hours later she came home with a trunk full of goodies from the store. You can't keep a good woman down! When she got home her jaw was hurting because she hadn't taken her meds while she was gone. But it wasn't too bad and her recovery continued right on schedule for the rest of the week.
During her shopping time, our dentist's assistant called Dotti and asked if she would relay the message that if possible my dentist and the implant specialist who had done the one implant that I had looked at on Monday would like to take a look at my implant or implants. I was immediately concerned and called up the office to speak with the dentist myself. It was a little suspicious that all at once the expert, who lives in Utah would appear on a Wednesday to look at my implant right after my visit on Monday. (He routinely flies over for Monday and Tuesday to work in this area and then flies back for the rest of the week.) I was assured that it was nothing too serious and he just wanted to have a look at it. I felt better, but I know that medical people like to put as happy a face on things as they can, so I was still concerned.
I also put in our final air conditioner for the summer season, the one that goes in the living room window. Well, I thought it would be last one, and I could be finished, but the unit failed right out of the box. The compressor wouldn't kick in at all. I even whapped it with a hammer to see if I could shake it loose. (That is the first thing every A/C expert I have seen work does to see if the compressor can be broken loose and kick in.) We made a trip on Thursday to get another one exactly like that one, with the lone difference being that the new one actually functioned like an air conditioner, rather than merely looking like one. I had the new one in, in less than an hour and the old one in the van ready to be taken back where we had bought it. (When they are exactly the same size all of the mounting hardware and panel replacement sheets fit the same way and it just a matter of pulling one out and putting the other one in its place.) The new one did work and hopefully I won't be moving any more air conditioners around this year.
I got out of chronological order for a bit to retain the continuity of the air conditioner situation, but I will now return to Wednesday and my visit with the dentists. (I really wasn't trying to upstage my poor Dotti's dental activity. I would have very much preferred to be out of the dental limelight entirely this week.)
Note: For this discussion I am going to refer to the implant specialist that came in from out of town to assist with the sinus lift procedure "the expert dentist," and my local dentist as "my dentist." I consider my own dentist to be an expert dentist as well, and far more than merely competent; he is excellent! But rather than calling them dentist A and dentist B, or some such, I will go with this naming scheme for now.
When I got in the chair on Wednesday, the expert dentist got to pushing and testing with those shiny silver tools they are so fond of, and all at once I felt a very funny thing happening at the implant that I had gotten checked on Monday. I thought that he was backing the new cap off that was on that implant, to have a look, because I could tell he was screwing something there, but then I looked up and he had the entire implant in his hand. It had failed! It was so unattached to the surrounding bone that it didn't even hurt coming out. It was like backing a wood screw out of an old rotten board.
Do I need to say that I was disappointed? I had visions of going through that whole sinus lift process again, and my heart fell into my stomach. I was very depressed all at once. But things were not as bad as I had feared.
The expert dentist explained that my denture had probably been causing the implant to move slightly over and over and that "micro-movement" had caused the bone to create a soft encapsulating sheath around the implant, isolating it from the bone and causing the implant to fail. (It has to have a very solid integration with the bone to work.) This is obviously bad news. But, all was not dark and grim. The sinus lift had worked well and there was bone forming up as it should in the area they had opened up for that purpose. The implant had failed but the lift had worked. They originally were not sure if they could place these implants right away or not anyway. It could have been that it would have had to wait a couple of months before they could put it in. It was only a bonus that he could place that implant on the day of the sinus lift procedure.
There it was: a little light at the end of the tunnel, and it was NOT 3 of them! (There is something very impressive about those 3 lights on the front of a train. They make the train look like it is really serious about coming on through.)
Next he surprised me by saying that they could place a new implant in that location in 3 weeks. Wow! It was a only a setback, not a disaster. And he seemed fairly pleased with how the rest of the implants were looking, and that is a good thing as well.
He gave me a shot and set to cleaning out the area inside where the implant had been, inspected the sinus lift, and then plugged the hole with something that would kill any bacteria inside and keep things sealed up for healing. In just a few minutes I was on my feet and, with the expert's blessing, off to have some coffee at Borders with Dotti.
In the evening we went to dinner with Kathy (Chatty on the Message Board) and her husband Jim. They have been on a road trip and have seen a lot of the country. They stopped by in Vancouver, and let us know beforehand that they were coming. So, we were able to get together and have a nice visit. They are a really nice couple, and we were so happy to see them again!
You know me, I had to snap a couple of pictures...
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Here's Kathy in 2003, the last time we saw her. This was on Mount St. Helens, right after Dotti's Conference #3
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And here is a picture of Jim taken with Dotti that same day. It is hard to believe that it was five years ago already!
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I was the "odd man out" being a California native, and the other three native to the Northeast. When Dotti gets together with someone from the northeast her own New York accent intensifies and it is fun to listen to. (Dotti said that when she first moved to the Portland area, her friends in school used to have her read from the phone book and the dictionary because they loved to hear her New York accent.)
Walking this week was not as good as last week but I did get in a couple of walks with Dotti and a 3.5 mile walk to the store to pick some things up for Dotti, on Monday after her procedure was done. It came to less than 10 miles for the week, but not much less and I was out and moving, which is important. Hopefully this week I can do better.
Well, I hit some milestones this week:
- Ten years of not smoking
- Seven years on my journey
- A year's worth of weeks (365 of them) on my journey.
I feel good about that, and my goal is to reach many more of them in the future. Wish me luck!
6 Years, 365 days (yep, it's leap year) on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/201.0/197.5±2.5/BMI:25.37/WK- 365
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 195 lbs to 200 lbs
BACK TO WEEK THREE HUNDRED SIXTY-FOUR On To WEEK THREE HUNDRED SIXTY-SIX
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