Week 385 Update

It was 6:07 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "199.5 pounds!" It has been over SIX MONTHS since I weighed 199.5! March 22, this year was my last weigh-in, either weekly or daily, that I was this light. It was an odd week, and I ate light, and that surly helped the scale to drop. This week should be a more normal week for me, so I will see whether or not I can hold the ground I have won this week.

When I ran up Weight Commander this morning, I hadn't put in my weight for this week yet, having been away for few days. So, it always asks for your weight first thing. I put in my 199.5 and here what the graph showed…

The hollow squares are running in an absolutely straight line, sharply angling downward. Even the solid squares, which show my average weight, tumbled down nearly in a straight line. Alas, real life is not that smooth as a general rule.

Once I went in and put in the real weight values for all the days, here is what my Weight Commander graph looks like…

The hollow squares move around a lot, and then suddenly took a sharp dive. The solid squares were running alone straight ahead before finally dropping right at the end a bit. If you take away the last three daily values, there would be no downward trend at all. So, while I am happy with the weigh-in this morning, I am assuming that I am there, and going to remain below 200 now. I will need to focus hard right now to avoid having this be just a fluke drop, only to see the scale pop right back up where it was.

I do like the fact that I now have a year's worth of date in the Weight Commander, and so I don't have to manually fill in the value for my weight "1 year ago." One of the the things that I like about the numbers on the right, is that my weigh-in this morning is lower than my numbers for 30, 60, and 90 days ago, and even lower than 1 year ago today.

On the left, I show two gains and two losses over the past month, but the losses are large ones, while the gains are smaller. Two steps forward and only one step back, will get me there in time. The net change is a 5 pound loss over the month, and that is just fine with me.

When I saw how the original graph looked when I had put just my weight for today in, and Weight Commander calculated the values for the days not yet entered, I also checked to see that that did to the future graph…

The difference between that and the prediction made by the final future graph was significant. With the calculated data in place, it shows me weighing about 180 pounds by Christmas.

The realWeight Commander Future Graph, based upon the data including all my weigh-ins for the week, shows me above 192 at Christmas. The reason for the difference is that my real weight dropped suddenly at the end of the week, and I had some higher weights earlier on. That means my weight today could be a fluctuation and the general trend would appear to be a slower one.

The good news is that all the graphs show a drop, both for the recent past, and for the projected future!

Now I have the data in Weight Commander, I can have it draw a graph for my weight over the past year. Until this month, it looks like a fairly continual rise towards where I used to be, before I started my journey. The entire year is a washout, with no real progress at all, and I am very fortunate, not to be watching my weight continue on up the line.

The 90 days Weight Commander graph shows there is a mountain in the middle, but if you draw a line between my weight for July 5th and my weight for my birthday on August 23rd, it is a straight horizontal line, once again, nothing gained or lost. It is only after that point that a real trend downward is seen.

Finally things are starting to take on a very positive trend, when we get to the 60-day graph. Rising up to about 214 for a moment, my weight then began a very nice trend downward, moving nearly 15 pounds in the right direction.

It only goes to show, that if I work the program like I am supposed to, I will get good results. Otherwise, things go bad.

My Excel spreadsheet, in the column that uses my 14-day difference in weight to project where I will be in 90 days, says that I will weigh 177.29 around Christmas. The column that projects based upon the change in my 14 day average weight shows me at 187.53, very near my target weight, just in time for Santa to arrive. At the end of August, that column was saying about the same thing, so maybe there is still hope that I will reach my goal this year still.

My gums have been healing up as well as can be expected after I had my procedure done last week to insert a new implant in place of the one that failed a few months ago. Once the stitches came out, I was left with a waiting game as things toughened up again, so I can get back to eating normally. I am doing much better on that score today than I was just a few days ago.

Here are some pictures we took at the coast while visiting with Mom.

Looking out from our balcony to the north, the resort buildings and the rocks are sitting beside the pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean.

I may replace this picture, and/or the one below later with a better one. We took thousands of pictures of the water and many of them included parts of whales in them. I quickly grabbed two of the pictures because I wanted to include some whale shots. Unfortunately, the whales didn't "breach" for us, and so we never got to see the entire whale, but we did see several of them each of the days we were there.

Dotti took this shot, and you can see the spout hole in the back of the whale's head quite clearly.

With the sun shining and the wind whipping the mist from the tops of the waves, it made for a wonderful place to take pictures. Dotti caught this wave while she was waiting for another whale to blow its spout into the air.

I took this picture of the waves crashing into the rocks just north of our room. The water was just about to engulf the rock looking out from under the wave just right of center. The wave action was really complex right here, with waves running almost parallel to the shoreline, as well as in and out. The waves would meet up and cause the water to leap into the air as you see on the left of this shot. At low tide the water didn't come in this far, and the rock that is getting a complete dunking, would remain partly dry when the highest waves came in. But at high tide, green water came right over the top of it, and splashed high up the bank behind it.

I haven't canvased all the pictures yet, but I know that Dotti took a lot of whale shots. The whales would come up, blow there spouts, and then push their backs into the air a bit, and finally flip their tails as they went down again to feed. All the whales we saw were moving from south to north, and there were lots of them.

We went out to try and get some nice sunset pictures, but I can never resist taking a picture of Dotti, and she radiates her own beauty that just dazzles me!

The rest of these pictures were taken at Lincoln City along the same beach that Dotti and I walked along during our Lincoln City Shoreline hike in 2003. This time we only walked a total of 2 miles, and we started by parking in the lot where we finished the beach portion of our hike before, and then walked in the opposite direction from last time on the way out, and then retracing our steps to return to the car.

Almost immediately after leaving the parking lot, we came upon a little strip of sand across the water where seals and pelicans were having a leisurely day. With Dotti in front, the seals can be seen lying there on the beach. They acted like they all had just had a huge lunch and were sleeping it off. We saw the pelicans actually catch a number of fish and put them away.

Dotti took my picture with the same background. The pelicans had their wings up and were zeroing in on some dinner when the shutter clicked.

Farther down the beach, Dotti found some shells lying on the sand.

I wanted to pick a nice landmark to use for our turn around point, because I was planning on using Google's Pedometer to calculate our walking distance. I wanted to have something that would be visible in the satellite photo from which to mark out our distance. This rock looked like a very likely candidate for that purpose. It was located just beyond a huge hotel on the beach that, due to its design, would be very easy to spot in the photo.

I ascended on the oceanside of the rock, and though the path was not as steep as on the front, the rock was covered with barnacles on that side, and I wanted to make sure I didn't fall, because they might as well be as many razor blades if I got to sliding across them.

Here I am at the top. Dotti zoomed in to take the picture. I had gone back and forth between my knit cap and my ball cap during the walk. The sea breeze was cool, and after a time it chilled me. but it was just on the border between being too cold and just being a bit brisk.

When we got nearly back to the car, Mom took a little rest break, sitting on a log. The sun was just right and she was laughing happily when I snapped this picture. What a beautiful sight!

I fell back into the 190s this time, and my mission is to remain there, at least until I get back into the 180s. That is my goal, and time will tell if I reach it.

7 years, 138 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6 '3" 239.5/199.5/185.0±2.5/BMI:24.94/WK-385

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