Week 383 Update

It was 5:09 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "203.5 pounds!"

Isn't interesting how a number can be good or bad, not simply because of the value of the number itself, but solely upon its context? There have been many times in my life when I would have looked at the number 203.5 as being a great weight, when taken in the context of my weight at the time being much higher than that. At other times, it would have been a terrible number; when I was in the Navy, it would have put me outside of the required weight standards I had to meet, and remedial action would have been required because of it. It is above the top of my normal range, and therefore means that I am overweight. In that context, it is a bad number for me.

In spite of that, today 203.5 is a good number, because it means that I am 3.0 pounds down from where I was a week ago!

My Weight Commander graph shows the solid, average-indicating squares, heading down over all for the last month, although there is a bit of a valley and hills at the beginning of September, giving the slope of the line a bit of a guitar body appearance in that area. Still, the line continues to meander on downward towards my goal, as a river always moves towards the sea, no matter how many twists or turns it may find along the way.

MyWeight Commander Future Graph says that I should be just inside the 190s by Thanksgiving. Although that wouldn't be putting me at my goal yet, it would place me in the "Normal Weight" range, and that is always better than being outside of it.

TheWeight Commander 90-day Graph could easily show the path of a river, as it climbs and drops over and over again over the past 3 months. In early August I really left the path for awhile. Fortunately, since then I have been much more on track and the scale is moving downward with time, with some bumps, but nothing very major.

I only have enough data inside the Weight Commander for a maximum of 359 days for a long-term graph. Going back for 359 days, which is almost a whole year, I am just about where I was a year ago. The ups and downs have canceled each other out and here I am, "right back where I started from." Along about Christmas last year, the graph dropped into the mid-190s and things looked like they could be good for the upcoming 2008. Unfortunately, I blew it badly, and now will have to try and pull things back to where they were last Christmas, in oder to try and make 2009 a good year.

When I first started using the Weight Commander program, I was able to go back and put in about 90 days of earlier data into the program, and so I am coming up on a year's worth of data on file in the program. But this Time Capsule shows that my actual start date for using the Weight Commander was December 19, 2007, just a bit before Christmas last year. I weigh 5.5 pounds more than I did on that day, and I am informed that I have been eating about 72 calories per day too much for the year, on average. (That is just about 1.5 points worth of food each day.) Even a point and a half can add up over a year.

I really enjoy using the Weight Commander, because it comes up with stuff I would have probably missed otherwise. It spots trends and lets me know when a trend is causing negative results. Recently I have changed a long-term bad trend: I have been showing a loss on Sunday, the day after my weigh-in each week. For many months after I started using Weight Commander, it always gave me a warning on my weekly weigh-in day, that the following day was one where I was consistently showing a gain. But for the last 10 Sundays, I have now shown a loss! The reason for that is less that I have changed my ways on Saturdays—although I have a bit—than it is that I have not done so much on Fridays to make sure that Saturday was as low as it could be. Playing scale games to make Saturday look good, puts pressure on Sunday to make it look bad.

What I am doing now is actually more consistent and I work all week towards my goal and don't worry so much about what the number is on Saturday. I think that using Weight Commander has been helpful in that regard, because those average lines really show up any scale tricks I might do, and the average is all that counts, not the day-to-day changes. Just like the business that stupidly only focuses upon this quarter's profits, and ignores the long-term health of the organization, focusing only upon a single day of the week to do things right then, while relaxing the rest of the week from doing it right, will have long-term negative ramifications.

We should be able to relax every day of the year. We should have a program in place that is as comfortable as an old pair of slippers, or a pair of old blue jeans that feel like you are not even wearing them. If you are comfortable each day, you don't have to fret about weigh-in day. You just live your comfortable, OP life and take what comes, because if you are OP, what comes is success. I have not perfected this, and probably never will, but it is the ideal that I strive for, and I think I am at least doing better at it thanks in part to Weight Commander!

My 14-day based projection in my Excel spreadsheet shows me weighing 200.57 90 days from now. I hope to do better than that, but that is still getting close to my "Normal Range" about Thanksgiving time. The project based upon the change in my 14-day running average puts me at 200.38 for the same period. When those two numbers match so closely, it means that my average weight and my dynamic weight values are very close to the same. Checking my graph above it shows that the solid and hollow squares are closely together. The solid squares are moving less of course, and the hollow squares are jumping around, but they are jumping over the black squares, back and forth. When they do that, their average differs little from the actual values from day-to-day. The highs cancel out the lows, and the balance between them will be very close to the black solid squares.

This week wasn't planned to be anything special for us. Was on track with the gym, going 4 or 5 times a week, and doing well on program. We hoped to be able to stay at home, with no interruptions of consequence for the week, and hopefully string several weeks like that in a row. It didn't quite work out that way.

One of the things we were aiming for this week was to get walking more. If we are going to tackle a major hiking challenge in 2010, we will need to get going and to start building up our cardiovascular system, our muscles and skeletal strength. It will take a long sustained effort to get in shape. With that in mind we did a couple of hikes.

In that vein, on Saturday, we went into the Columbia Gorge and tackled one of our favorite short hikes: Pool of Winds. The trail was dry and the water level in the creek was very low. Even the falls was so light that the log that has been placed in its path to shape the flow was clearly visible. In the wetter months, the water is crashing down so fiercely that one can hardly keep his lenses clear long enough to see the waterfall, let alone the log behind it.

Then on Monday Dotti's brother Rip joined us for a new hike that we have never tried before, and I put a new hike on our Coon Family Hiking Club page with pictures we took that day: Gillette Lake. It was a warm day, and we got a late start, so we were pretty tired by the time we were finished, but we were glad to get the exercise in, and it is alway great hiking with Rip!

Dotti went to the gym on Tuesday and did her session with the trainer, and then on Wednesday, after her workout at the gym, she was planning to stop by the store on the way home. She was going along at the speed limit of 40 mph when she passed through an intersection where she had a green light. Then a lady, who was coming from the opposite direction turned right in front of her. The fact that the other driver was at fault didn't make it any less painful for Dotti.