Week 382 Update

It was 5:33 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "206.5 pounds!"

My Weight Commander graph shows that I am still trending downward, despite the unfortunate weight on the scale I produced the last two days. Yes the solid black squares moved slightly up because of those aberrant numbers but not by very much, and the overall trend is still good. Notice that the numbers on the right show that I weigh less than I did 30, 60, and 90 days ago. When you total the results shown on the left side of the graph, the past two weeks cancel out, and the preceding two weeks then are the what the last month's work has led to: a 4-pound loss.

I was high every day this week on points, over my limit of 31.0. but I only ate a total of 9 points over my total limit. That shouldn't be enough to increase my weight by even half a pound, even if my upper limit were my maintenance level, but it is not! Eating 31.0 points should still generate a loss for me at my current weight. So, while I did not do as well as I should have with my eating, I also didn't eat enough to cause a 2-pound gain. I had Chinese vegetables over rice, during the week, which were very high in sodium, and might have triggered weight retention. I had some bananas on the day before my weigh-in and they may have hung around to be counted this morning. As near as I can tell from the data, this has to be water retention and not fat accumulation pushing me up on the scale. If I am correct, I should see things turn around and start to drop next week, assuming I eat correctly.

MyWeight Commander Future Graph isn't looking very promising at the moment. It shows me dropping only a pound and a half or so over the next 3 months. The only positive thing is that it is showing a loss and not a gain! In the past months, when I had a bad week the future graph would indicate that I was going to be showing a gain over the next 90 days. Not gaining is great in and of itself, because it means that I do not have lose weight that I had already lost, all over again.

My Excel spreadsheet projection based upon the change during my last 14-days indicates that I will weigh 207.00 pounds in 90 days. That is a very slight increase (0.5-pound) over today's weight. That is very close to a maintain of my weight. I find the project based upon the change in my 14-day running average to be much more optimistic, showing me down to 196.65 in three months. I think an almost 10 pound loss is much better than a half-pound gain! The good news here is that the average is harder to bump around when you have an artificially high weigh-in, and so I feel that it is more accurate. Of the two numbers it is more important, and if one of them has to show a gain, I am very glad that it was the first one!

Our good friend Vikki headed back to Canada on Sunday, after she had spent Saturday shopping at our area's largest shopping center, the Clackamas Town Center, and other areas. We had a good time during Vikki's visit and she will be missed!

The Clackamas Town Center always reminds me of when we first moved back to this area, in 1995, and I saw Dotti and her twin sister ice skating arm in arm around the mall rink (which has since been removed for more shops). They had lived in Vermont as teenagers and did a lot of ice skating back then, and although they were not overly thin at the time, they could both skate circles around me, literally, and with me skating as fast as I could manage.

On Monday, Dotti and I took a 3.2-mile walk, stopping at Subway for lunch, before a longer stop at Border's Books Coffee Shop with our laptops where we could do some work in a place we both enjoy.

Tuesday, Dotti had her session at the gym with her trainer. We were so busy trying to catch up on what we needed to do, as we got back into our normal routine that we missed an appointment at the vet's for Frostbyte. I only remembered it 5 minutes after we were supposed to already be there. I called the office up immediately, and the lady was very good about it and pleasantly scheduled us for Thursday afternoon instead. This one I got into my electronic calendar, as well as my paper calendar, to make sure that we didn't miss it again.

At the vet, Frostbyte was checked over again, and he was judged to be in great shape, and growing like a tom cat should be growing. We decided that he was going to be neutered, and declawed at the earliest possible moment, and perhaps thereby saving some of our furniture for future use. So, we set the date for his next, and more intrusive visit to the office for Tuesday, the 16th. We were requested to drop him off the afternoon before to get him settled in, and so he would be ready early for the procedure on Tuesday. The we wouldn't be able to pick him up again until Wednesday, because they wanted to observe him after the procedure and make sure all was well. Poor Frostbyte has no idea of what is to come, and that is probably just as well.

We worked hard on the getting Dotti's Newsletter #55 ready to go on Thursday the 4th and it was close. I had little to do on Friday morning to get it finished up and shipped it out at 7:09 AM to our 70,868 subscribers.

Frankly, I am always completely drained after the newsletter goes out. For a couple of days I am totally focused on formatting and proofreading, and on the first issue each month, I also have my article to write and polish up for publication. So, on Friday, I was ready to relax a bit. I took Dotti out to go miniature golfing at an indoor facility at our local mall, called Glow in the Dark Golf.

Glow in the Dark Golf is played in relative darkness, which explains the "dark" part of the name. The 54-hole miniature golf course is laid out on the floor stretching over the area previously taken by stores in the mall. The windows are blacked out, and once you move away from the entrance door, it gets pretty dark in there. The "glow" part of the name comes from the fact that the only interior lighting is provided by black-lights. (Dotti and I both noticed how our normally white smiles really jumped out in purple while we were playing. ) The golf balls were phosphorescent, and they have little light boxes along the way where you can drop your golf ball into the top, and it run through the interior, where it is exposed to intense light, and upon exiting out the side,it really is glowing brightly. You can still see the ball without doing that, but it adds some fun when you see it really bright on the course after being "juiced up" like that.

All around the course they have a water motif, with poster paints that respond well to black light. (Sort of the sixties revisited.) I asked my lovely Dotti to pose next to one of them. Of course you lose the black light effect in the camera flash, but you can see the idea, and the yellow ball that glowed in the dark.

With the dim lighting, and the black-light glimmer, it almost looks like you are under water at times. Little frog and turtle figures were placed here and there around the course, sometimes becoming an internal part of the putting green, and an official obstacle to overcome. And everything is colored to show up well in the black light. Of course there was the obligatory windmill, and a few additional motorized fun challenges were at a few of the holes as well, providing either and assist or a blockage to your way to the hole, depending the timing of the ball's arrival.

The 54-holes were broken up into two courses really. One course, the one that wondered around the floor-space to the right, was only 18 holes, while off to the left was a 36-hole course. However, we just went through the whole thing as if it were a single course.

After golf, we walked down the mall a bit to Starbucks and had a coffee while relaxing a bit together. Dotti is my best friend, and there is nothing I enjoy more than spending time with her. She is a lot of fun, intelligent, and witty, with so many cool attributes I could never list them here. I couldn't begin to explain how lucky I feel being married to this wonderful lady!

This week's weigh-in was not stellar, but I feel like I didn't do too badly. I didn't just throw caution to the wind, and I didn't have a single "blow out" day. While I was higher than I should have been, it was only slightly higher, and no real damage could have been done by it. I am in a great position to turn things around next week and show a good loss, if I pay attention. I need to lower what I am eating just slightly to be right on program.

7 years, 117 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/206.5/185.0±2.5/BMI:25.81/WK-382

Starting weight: 239.5       New (returning to my original) Target Weight Range: 183.0 lbs to 187.0 lbs