Week 386 Update

Last week I saw a drop of 5.5 pounds. I was thinking that holding steady, or maybe a very small loss would be most likely this week. So, at 7:03 AM, when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "197.0 pounds!" I was quite happy with that. I didn't expect to see another 2.5 pounds fall away this week.

This week I walked nearly 30 miles, and I am sure that helped. I averaged only 28.07 points per day, and that helped as well. It is nice to see my total pounds lost back down to 42.5, and other indications that things are finally moving in the right direction.

My Weight Commander graph for today looks very promising. The past 11 daily weigh-in weights have all fallen below the solid black squares, and as a result, the black squares have been dropping very consistently. The final two-thirds of September were very good to me.

The weights on the right side of the graph show that today I weighed less than I did 30, 60 or 90 days ago, and finally, I am weighing less than I did 1 year ago! On the left side it shows that I have had fairly large losses for 3 of the past 4 weeks, and only had a relatively small gain on the remaining week. If you total them all up, I am 9.5 pounds down over those 4 weeks!

The Weight Commander Future graph is really exciting! Since my goal is 185.0 pounds, this graph shows me hitting that mark by November 2nd. By Christmas, I would be in the mid 170s. Wow! My current short-term goal is to make it to 185.0 by Christmas. If this future graph is on track, I will make my goal easily. However, I still have to actually do it.

My Excel spreadsheet projections are also very positive in what they are saying. My 90-day projection based upon my last 14-day weight loss is amazingly low: 151.57! Naturally it is overreacting to my last two really good weeks. It is unrealistic to expect me to lose 8.0 pounds every two weeks. But it looks promising anyway.

The other projection that I have programmed into Excel is for a 90-day future, based upon the change in my running 14-day averages over the past couple of weeks. That projection has my weight 3 months from now at: 177.61 pounds. Once again, the projection has me hitting my goal weight long before my short term goal date. Now, it is up to me to keep on doing what I am already doing.

The 90 days Weight Commander graph really shows the change in my attitude, based upon the results I have achieved. In mid-July, I was midway between 200 and 210 and bouncing upwards and downwards with 206 being the baseline low point. About the end of July, suddenly things got even worse, as my weight took off for the sky. At around 214 pounds, suddenly things changed drastically. While there was still lots of bouncing around, the general trend was a steep drop heading all the way back into the 190s. I am back in the "Normal Range" for my height, and that feels good!

The 1 year Weight Commander graph shows how badly most of 2008 went for me. Since before Halloween last year, my weight climbed up and up, with a drastic rise in July and August, before the sudden drop that is currently still going on.

Since I now have more than a year's worth of data available in Weight Commander, I can include this 380-day graph, just to show that my woes didn't really begin in mid-October last year. You can see that 380 days ago, I was up over 200 pounds and went through a drop to get down into the 190s before starting on the long climb. I have been stumbling around ever since the end of 2005, and those days when I seemed to be having smooth sailing seem far off now.

This is another Weight Commander graph that I haven't put up before. It is a really interesting bar graph that shows 40 weeks (one bar for each week) and the amount of weight I either gained or lost for each of those weeks. I had a lot of gains from January to early August. I had a couple of big loss weeks, and a number of very small loss weeks, but they didn't offset all the gains. The last gain in early August was a 4-pound one. But since then, I have had only 2 weeks where I gained, and 7 weeks where I have lost, and the losses have mostly been bigger than those two gains.

The synopsis on the right shows that I have had 18 weeks where I lost (remember that 7 of those 18 have come during the past 9 weeks) and 20 weeks where I showed a gain. That wouldn't be so bad if I were maintaining at my goal weight and I gained a pound here and dropped a pound there. But things were going up and up until 9 weeks ago.

The final number on the right is a telling one; I have gained one pound over the past 40 weeks. All the ups and downs have merely added one pound overall. However, when you consider that I have been losing the past few weeks, that 1 pound gain could have been much worse if I had not turned things around!

This is another interesting Weight Commander graph. It has crunched the numbers together for the past 12 weeks, and it shows how I have done each day of the week. I was frankly shocked to see the number for Sunday: -6.50. For years, Sunday was a bad day for me, where I showed a gain. The rest of the week is also interesting. Saturday used to be my low day for the week. I would work hard to make that number low for my official weekly weigh-in. Friday was also a low day, as I was gearing up for Saturday. Now, both of those of days are showing net gains, while Thursday is a big loss day. Monday is interesting, in that it is showing a huge loss, while following Sunday's sizable loss. Why does my weight go up on Tuesday and Wednesday? I guess after two days of losing, I am stabilizing on the following two days.

This kind of data could prove to be very helpful in organizing my eating approach, and could do well to warn in advance of problem areas. It is a graph that I have not been using to date, and only goes to show that there is a lot more to this program than I have been using, and what I have been using has been extremely helpful already!

One final thing from Weight Commander for this week. While I did have a low weigh-in for today, Weight Commander has looked at the progression and what might be expected, and my weight is lower than should be expected for my current trend. It warns me that I might have a correction for tomorrow and to not worry about it if I do. I still am showing a 14-day average drop and that is good.

I mentioned that I walked nearly 30 miles this week, and that is a drastic turn around in this area. I ended up walking every day this week! I decided on Saturday to get out and start to get some exercise. I have a little Coby MP3 player that easily fits in my change pocket in my jeans, and it holds (recorded at 32 bps monaural quality) the entire audio book of the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I listened to a major portion of those 3 books during my walking this week. Next week I will need to start another book. I have found that the book gives me an incentive to get out there and walk, so I can get through more of the story. Not only does it help to get me started on my walk, it makes my walk go by very quickly!

On Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday I just did our normal 3.1 mile walk around our neighborhood loop. On Monday, I walked to Wal-Mart and back, which is 5 miles. On Tuesday, I did the 3.1-mile loop and then Dotti and I walked 2 miles around the Oregon Zoo. Then on Friday, I walked the 3.1-mile loop in the morning, and then walked to and from the dentist's office for another 4.2 miles. It was fun doing the walking, and I already feel better for having done the exercise! Also, I think that my loss this week, right on the heels of my very large loss last week, was mostly due to this walking.

Here are some pictures Dotti and I took at the Zoo.

Dotti loves baby things; it doesn't matter what sort of baby, Dotti loves it. (The only exceptions are insects, arachnids, and similar buggy creatures.) So, when she found out that the Oregon Zoo was putting its new baby elephant out for viewing, she was ready to go and see it. Here it is with its mother.

The baby's name is Samudra, and I heard a zoo keeper say that he has already gained 100 pounds. When you see how small he is compared with those huge feet and legs behind him, and you think of him gaining 100 pounds to get to this miniscule size, it really puts the bigness of elephants in perspective. He sure is a cute little fellow, isn't he?

The chimps were outside and so we were able to get some pictures of them this time around. They had been given some oranges and this one was finishing off the yummy insides from his.

Hi Dotti!

And speaking of cute, this guy was sound asleep right next to the window. He was dead to the world.