Week 389 Update

It was 6:10 AM when I stepped up on Mr. scale. He promptly said "197.0 pounds!"

I wrote about 3,000 words of philosophical meanderings and decided that it would not be to the point here and removed them. You can breathe a sigh of relief.

This week held many things for me. I got a book that gave me a much clearer picture, albeit a less pleasant one, of what is going on with Mom's condition. We have therefore felt great internal pressure to expedite our move down to take care of her. We suddenly are aware of a much greater problem than we first envisioned and we no longer feel very comfortable when Mom is left alone. We suddenly feel that we have to hurry.

So, we have begun to hurry. Originally we planned to be there before Christmas, but now we are aiming for as quick a move as we can arrange. We have two things that are holding us up a bit. The most important one is getting Internet installed. We cannot run our business with dialup access, espeically the 24 kbps dial up that is available at Mom's. So, we have to get that in before we can move. The second problem is one of space. We are working on that as well, with a small additional structure that we are having built on her property.

This week we remained at home, but were working through the phone to get things moving. The satillite TV installer showed up at Mom's and got her set up with her Three Angel's Broadcasting Network, which is the only station she really cares to get. (That is one more station than I care to get, but Dotti is looking for even more. ) Unfortunately, it is more complicated getting the Internet going and another company has to get involved for that one. Hopefully that will not be too far off into the future.

When we were at Mom's last week, Dotti found Mom and Dad's wedding book! Wow, I had no idea that it existed! So, I brought it home with us and scanned it on Sunday, so we could make sure nothing ever happened to what was inside of it.

We had Dotti's Newsletter Issue 58 due this week and we got it shipped off to the 73,029 subscribers on Tuesday. I always feel very drained after we ship the newsletter. There is a strain involved in getting everything just so. (I am a bit of a perfectionist anyway, and this something that I consider to be very, very important to get right.) This has Dotti's name on it, and that always makes me want to make it perfect, becaues she deserves that. Also, we have a lot of people out there who will be reading Dotti's Newsletter, and they deserve a good product as well. So, I spend a tremendous amount of energy the days before the newsletter goes out, and after I am finished I feel drained and exhausted. On occasion, I have felt downright ill. The day after the newsletter goes out, I am pretty well shot.

So, it was with great enjoyment that I took Dotti to the Oregon Zoo and we got some exercise and enjoyed the animals once again. We are going to make sure that we do make it up several times a year to Portland to see the zoo. It is one of our great enjoyments in life and we will be continuing to enjoy it for as long as we can!

I gained a pound this week. I was very happy that I didn't go over 200 pounds. Since I am officially overweight when I go over 200 pounds, it makes it doubly bad when it happens. But I certainly deserved to have bad readings on the scale the way I ate this week. I am supposed to keep my points between 22 to 29, and I was higher than that for 5 of the 7 days of the week. That is not good!

I feel like I have been blown off target by all the stuff goign on with Mom. I was fairly close to where I am supposed to be on all of the days but two, and my overall average for the week was 35.29, giving me a total of 44 extra points for the week. That comes to just over half a pound's worth of food. Since, 29 points is supposed to be a losing level of points for me now, eating 44 extra points during the week would probably not cause me to gain any fat at all anyway. Still, I am not on track and on program the way I want to be. My biggest mistake for the week was eating an elephant ear, along with an ice cream cone, at the Oregon Zoo. I can tell my heart is not in the right place entirely for this journey this week. But at least I didn't throw the whole thing out and quit.

The Weight Commander Control Panel Graph shows that the month of October has not been a great month for me. The solid squares tell a story of my losing weight rapidly right up to the start of the month, and then suddenly leveling off, as if I had run down a hill and now hit a plain that would support a corn farm. The hollow squares are up and down, and they are still mostly under the solid squares, and that is promising, despite the lack of progress this month.

On the left of the Control Panel the numbers are still okay, as they show a 1-pound gain this week and a 1.5-pound gain two weeks ago, but the other two of the past four weeks show a 5 pound loss, giving me a net loss of 2.5 pounds for the last 4 weeks. Even the past two weeks shows a 1.5-pound loss.

The numbers on the right side show that I weigh less today than I did 30 days ago, 60 days ago, and 90 days ago. Those are all positive things! I weigh exactly the same as I did one year ago, and that means I spent an entire year of going nowhere in a sense. Of course I didn't stand still all year. I went astray and have returned to the right path, and so I am back to where I was a year ago. Hopefully, I am set to make some real progress to where I will be better off than I was a year ago!

Of course that big red "TREND REVERSAL" on the bottom is not a good thing. Here's what the Weight Commander has to say about it. As always, you find support and help from Michael in his program. Yes, the trend shows that things are slightly up, but "It usually takes a couple of days to get back on track. Start right now—a little less food, a little more exercise. You can do it."

The Weight Commander Future Graph is moving in the wrong direction! However, in spite of that, it predicts that I will still be just under the upper limit of my Normal Range entering the final week of January. Hopefully, I will turn this trend around and find that I am heading the other way long before January gets here.

What about my Excel spreadsheet 90-day predictions? The column that calculates what I will weigh in 90 days, based on how I have done during the past 14 days says that I will weigh 188.86 pounds three months from now, while the column based upon the change in my average weight over the past 14 days projects my weight 90 days from now as being 195.02 pounds. They both show me losing over the upcoming weeks, which is a little better than the future graph, but I still like the graph, because it lets me know that I am on the borderline of problems and I need to pay attention!



7 years, 166 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.

-Al-
6'3" 239.5/197.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:24.62/WK-389

Starting weight: 239.5       Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds