A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 417
Week Ending May 13, 2009
Weight Watchers Goal
(the top of my normal weight range)
200.0 pounds
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Week 417 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 05/13/2009 |
| Weight: | 211.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 26.37 |
| Average Daily Points: | 32.64 |
| Average Weight for week: | 213.29 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 2.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 50.77 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | -2.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 28.5 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +26.0 |
RESTART!
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DATE
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WEIGHT
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April 21, 2009
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219.5
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Week's Data
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
05/06/09 |
05/07/09 |
05/08/09 |
05/09/09 |
05/10/09 |
05/11/09 |
05/12/09 |
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213.0 lbs
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212.5 lbs
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214.5 lbs
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212.0 lbs
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215.0 lbs
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215.0 lbs
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213.0 lbs
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24.5 pts
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31.0 pts
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31.0 pts
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37.0 pts
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56.0 pts
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23.0 pts
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26.0 pts
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CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
GRAPH |
60-DAY
GRAPH |
90-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
GRAPH |
601-DAY
GRAPH |
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It was 5:15 AM when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "211.0 pounds!"
I can tell you that the reason I am down 2 pounds this week is because I was about there last week and I jumped up on weigh-in day. This week I jumped the other direction. The loss looks good, but the week was really a maintain, and I went over on points thanks mostly to a one day blunder.
One lesson that I clearly understand, but never seem to learn, is that when I cut loose and stop writing things down, I gain weight. Sometimes it is slowly that I gain, and sometimes it is quickly, but it always happens. Always.
The real point is that it is a forever thing, this course of maintenance, and I will never, ever be free of it. So, I must embrace it and make it comfortable and mine.
My Weight Commander Control Panel Graph for this week, which actually shows my daily weigh-ins for the entire last month, has my daily numbers (hollow squares) moving back and forth a lot, but the trend (solid squares) has been moving fairly consistently downward since the last week of April.
However, if you drew a line from the trend block for last Wednesday through the one for today, you would see that it is flat: a pure maintain. It is because, though my weekly weigh-in today was down 2 pounds, the week was not a stellar one. I ate too many points and exercised too little.
Another lesson that I completely understand but somehow have trouble learning, is that my weight is entirely in my hands. I can move the scale up or down with my actions. If I eat less and exercise more the scale goes down. If I eat more, the scale goes up. If I don't exercise, the amount I can eat and still lose goes down. This isn't magic, it is science. But here I am, after a week where I forgot all that I knew and went nowhere as a result.
My Weight Commander Future Graph picked up on what I did this week! Last week, my future graph showed me down around 203 pounds in 90 days, but this week it is around 209. Still dropping, fortunately, but this week really slowed me down to a crawl. I can either wake up and smell the coffee, or this will be a very slow return to goal.
My Weight Commander 60-Day Graph looks like I just went over a mountain range and returned to where I was two months ago. (The Control Panel Graph showed that I weight less today than I did 30 days ago, and one half pound less than I did 60 days ago, making the last 2 months a washout. However, 90 days ago I was 6 pounds down from where I am now, and that means I have undone some of the damage, but have more to do.)
I have farther to go in order to get back where I was 90 days ago as is seen on my Weight Commander 90-Day Graph. From mid February up to the first week in April, I was in a fairly steady climb. It was truly one of the most stressful times of my life, but eating didn't really make it any better. It just added one more problem to the list that was becoming evermore unbearable.
Even worse, I was having trouble walking past cigar and pipe shops, and thinking about starting up something that I quit 11 years ago this very month. Fortunately, I did NOT do that, but I was sorely tempted in my despondency. I reached my 11th anniversary of the last time I had a smoke, and now I am starting on my 12th year as a non-smoker. Its a day at a time.
My Weight Commander 1-Year Graph reminds me a lot of my old graph over a five year period of dieting:
That is my natural trend when I don't pay attention. Things are never going to stabilize where I want them to be unless I pay attention like I did in 2001-2005.
My Weight Commander 601-Day Graph reminds me of the noise I used to see on an oscilloscope that had a bad ground. Random fluctuations in the static levels of a powered piece of equipment could look just like that. It makes sense, because that is my problem as well; I am ungrounded in my journey these days. I have been floating around, moving whichever way life's wind pushed me.
I will be very honest here and say that I haven't found the answer to that yet. Before Dotti hurt her knee and quit smoking, it was frankly very easy to remain on program around our house. Dotti's enthusiasm is contagious and she was an incredible example of how to do a fun and effective journey. It was truly no strain at all to maintain my weight during that time.
When Dotti quit smoking, we both expected Dotti to gain about 20 or 30 pounds and then after a couple of years, she would pull it back down to goal. But the winds of life grabbed both of us and sent us into uncharted waters. Dotti has made several runs at returning to goal, but she was up as close to her original weight, as she ever has been since 1998, a couple of months ago. It has not been easy for her, and I seem to have followed her lead, even without wanting to.
I have been very excited about the past few weeks, because Dotti has returned to WW meetings and is exercising every week. She is eating much better, and is nearly 10 pounds down from where her weight peaked. She had a break in her meeting attendance when we moved, but when she went back, she was within a pound or two of where she was before the break. So, now she is back to exercising and eating right, and (aside from Mother's Day  ) she has been OP. She is doing just what she needs to do to return to goal, as long as she keeps doing it.
The reason this is exciting to me is that in the past, when she made a run at goal and fell off the wagon, she didn't get back up on it right away. She let things drift and she undid all the good she had done during her run, and moved even higher on the scale. This time, she has returned to her program aggressively after two major interruptions, which would have been show stoppers in the past. Her car accident really slowed her down for many weeks, due to her injuries. Then the problems we had with Mom and the move up here, disrupted our routine completely, naturally. But now, even though we are still unpacking and getting settled in, Dotti is going to meetings each week and getting to the gym 3 or 4 times each week and working out with a trainer. (And with her "bestest" friend Tammy—and that is very motivating you can be sure!)
Of course, we never know what the future will bring, but right now, it looks very bright for Dotti and her journey. That is good for me as well, because when she is doing well, I seem to do better also.
At the same time, I want to make it clear that my journey is my own, and none of my failings have been anyone else's fault, especially not Dotti's. I would never have gotten down to goal and remained there for any real length of time without Dotti's great example, and I knew what I was doing the entire time, when I was at goal and when I wasn't. Dotti never did anything to sabotage my Journey, and she has been wonderfully supportive, no matter what has been going on with her Journey at the time. Dotti has been a wonderful positive influence on me, and never the reverse. It is just when she is sailing along at goal, it merely adds additional wind to my sails.
Another area where Dotti has helped me greatly is with the smoking. I have had some weak moments and Dotti has always come out strongly against my thoughts about crossing that line again. Her support pulled me past a couple points where I am not sure I would have made it without her help. I have now gone 11 years without a single lapse, and Dotti has to be given an official "assist" on the score sheet for that. (I should add that Karen on the message board, our dear friend from Fairbanks, added some timely support in that area as well!)
Wednesday— I weighed 213.0 pounds.
Dotti goes to her WW meeting on Wednesday, and then she spends some time with Tammy, so I am on my own for lunch. I cooked up a couple of omelets, using egg beaters and 1 point slices of cheese. Two omelets: 5 points. (I developed the taste for cheese omelets in the Navy. It was one meal that they always did right onboard ship.)
I ended up eating 24.5 points, and I was left a bit hungry at the end of the day, which is not usually the case.
Thursday— I weighed 212.5 pounds.
Dotti and I ran some errands on Thursday, and we ended up stopping at Jim and Tammy's for a quick visit, and we got to say hi to our grandson Hunter! Dotti sure looks happy holding him, doesn't she?
It is amazing how fast he is growing up!
I had garbanzo beans, green beans, and potatoes for dinner—low points, but high volume, which always tends to stay with me on the scale the next day. But it is only temporary, usually. I ate right at the top of my limit, with 31.0 points.
Friday— I weighed 214.5 pounds.
Sure enough, the scale popped up a couple of pounds. But I knew it was not anything to worry about, because I was still inside my points range.
Dotti and I decided to drive over to Riverside State Park and visit the Bowl and Pitcher rock formation. (Jim and I took pictures there in April of 2007.)
With the most beautiful woman I have ever known gracing the foreground,
this picture has beauty and history saturating the background.
Just slightly upwards and to the right of Dotti is the “Bowl and Pitcher” rock formation that this part of Riverside State Park is named for. To Dotti's right runs the Spokane River on its way, from Spokane to the Columbia River, where it will one day flow past our old home in Vancouver, Washington. The bridge that crosses the Spokane River is a foot bridge and we will see more of that in later pictures.
The rocks behind Dotti are basalt formations. They all were transported here as liquid, extremely hot rock, and cooled. Weathering and the river have shaped them over a very long period of time (these were laid down 12-15 million years ago geologists tell us, well before Mount St. Helens burped its first plume, a mere 40,000 years ago), leaving behind the rocks as you see them.
Basalt cools in a very striking way. It doesn't pull together like granite, or cement does. It tends to segment itself into clumps or columns, which can be broken apart far easier that granite will crumble. The rock immediately behind Dotti shows this pattern of cooling, as do all the exposed rocks behind here.
These rocks are part of one of the most awesome geological stories of all time, because they are part of the second largest flow of lava in the history of the planet. (The Deccan Traps flow in India is the only one larger.) From the eastern border of Idaho, to the Pacific Ocean, thousands of feet of lave poured over the land, covering the entire Columbia Plateau, and even running over the top of what is now Portland and Vancouver. The basalt deposits extend to the top of the Columbia Gorge and in places was thicker than 6,000 feet.
To put that into perspective, the tallest mountain in the Northeastern US, Mount Washington, is only 6,288 feet tall. Thousands of square miles were buried to that thickness, in what are now Washington and Oregon, and the weight was so great that the entire crust of the earth sank, and created the depression now known as the Columbia Plateau. The area where Spokane now sits was covered by lava during this time, and wherever the bedrock is exposed the basalt appears.
As if that were not exciting enough, much later in geologic history, around 13,000 years ago, the last ice age produced a huge flood that was backed by 500 cubic miles of water, and it poured right over the ground you see in this picture, after having covered the area where Spokane is now located with over 500 feet of water. (Farther along its chaotic route, it buried the area where Portland now sits with 400 feet of water and filled the entire Willamette Valley covering the land where Eugene is today.)
It may be an old story, but it is an incredibly exciting one! Fire and ice shaped this land and left behind some wonderfully beautiful terrain in their wake.
My lovely Dotti and I swapped places, and now we are looking upriver towards Spokane.
Water and pine trees are our companions whether we live in Southern Oregon, Southwestern Washington, or the Northeast corner of the state as we do today, where our latitude is farther north than that of Montreal, Canada.
Dotti snuck up on me and called my name. Click!
As you probably know already, if you are a regular reader of my journal, I love bridges. This footbridge is designed along the same lines as the Golden Gate bridge. It has two towers with a double cable running over them. Each cable is anchored at both ends, with the actual span of the bridge being supported by numerous cables running up from the span to one or the other of the two main support cables. It is a very stable bridge vertically, but while we walked across it, it did sway a lot from side to side. Unlike the Golden Gate, this bridge is built of much lighter, and far more pliable wood rather than steel.
Well, here I am, standing at the parking lot end of the bridge, about 15 pounds overweight officially. Still, it is good to be smiling again!
The anchors for the support cables are stuck in concrete slabs. They seem to be pretty solid to me.
We had a sky that was constantly changing during our visit. Clouds would block out the sun and then blue sky would appear. Here Dotti is standing on the bridge and shooting up at something in the trees. (I'll bet it was a bird. )
Looking downriver from the bridge at the “Bowl and Pitcher.” The “Bowl” is the rock behind, that appears to be a bowl or platter standing on its edge. The “Pitcher” looks like two separate rocks, with the smaller one representing the handle of the pitcher, and the larger one being the container part.
Here's a closer view of the “Bowl and Pitcher” that Dotti took with her zoom lens. The odd cooling shapes that the basalt fell into are quite clear in this photograph.
We did a lot of walking around the area, going well up river of the bridge for the pictures you saw of Dotti, and then we went all the way down past the “Bowl and Pitcher” formations. I worked my way all the way down to the water and then back up a steep rock slide, carefully watching my footing. Dotti took some pictures of two osprey in their nests.
While I have been doing some walking of late, there was no real elevation change, so going up and down the trails around Riverside Park gave me a workout.
We stopped at Subway for dinner, and I added a few snacks to get my points up to 31.0 for the day.
Saturday— I was happy to see that I had dropped down to 212.0 pounds in the morning.
Dotti spent the day working like the “Tasmanian Devil” on getting the garage in order. When we moved in, an awful lot of our stuff was piled into the garage from the truck. We have been moving stuff bit by bit out of the garage and into place in the house, but much was left to be done, at least until Dotti turned her focus onto the task with a vengeance.
While the garage is not 100% finished, we were able to pull the car into the garage for the night for the first time since moving in. Yeah, Dotti!
I took this picture of Dotti showing her handiwork, because it was so like another picture I took of her 10 years ago.
In 1999, my mother and her husband Jim were being overwhelmed a bit by the cares of life. Their garage, pantry, and upstairs "Great Room" were all jammed with boxes and other items that were out of place. The garage was the worst, both because it was a larger space, and because it was nearly filled up from wall to wall. Dotti tackled the garage first and when she got it all cleared up and organized, and Mom could pull her huge Cadillac into it for the first time in years, I had to take a picture to celebrate.
Dotti then went on and did the other rooms of Mom's house and left all of them in great shape. Even though, over the period of time, the Cadillac was swapped for a Lincoln, for nearly 10 years Mom was able to pull her car into that garage, and I always thought that was wonderful.
Dotti said that getting the garage done on Saturday was a "Mother's Day present to herself.
I had some popcorn and a WW desert that pushed my points up to 37.0 unfortunately. That was too bad, since I had done well the day before and got the scale to drop.
Sunday— I weighed 215.0 pounds. The sodium in the popcorn and the added points sent the scale the in wrong direction today. But I was only getting warmed up it appears, as I had my first real blowout since I restarted my journey.
Things started off innocently enough. I woke up earlier than Dotti, and I used the time to make her Mother's Day card. ( Throughout our marriage, Dotti has felt that she is being ripped off if I buy her a card for an occasion like this. I always hand-make her cards because she likes them better than anything I could buy. I actually like it better too, because I can put my own words and thoughts into the card, and sometimes I put in photos or drawings that I have done, and it just seems more like it came from me directly. Anyway, it works for us. )
Next I created a “treasure hunt” for her, writing clues that would send her in search of the next one, until she got to the card that I made for her. Dotti always loves to do that, and I love to watch that look of glee she gets when she finds the next clue. I think holding onto the childlike side is the key to feeling young and to having fun as the years go by. Anyway, I love seeing Dotti so happy as she gets with these hunts.
It was a very strong indication of how far down the road to depression Dotti had gone when we were living in Tiller and I put a lot of time into creating a “treasure hunt” that normally Dotti would have loved. Dotti liked doing it, but there was no glee. I had never seen her like that before. Never. So, it was wonderful seeing my old Dotti back, and having fun on her Mother's Day “treasure hunt.”
We stopped by LeRoy's job to say hi to him and he said it was close to lunch and wanted to go somewhere with us. We were planning to have dinner with him and figured this was instead of that. But as it turned out, he wanted to do both.
Well, I really did try to the right thing at this point. Dotti loves Red Robin and so we went there for lunch. We got in quickly and seated, in spite of the fact it was Mother's Day. (We had tried Tomato Street first, but it had a line backed up all the way into the parking lot. LeRoy had to get back to work!) I ordered a Hawaiian Heartthrob Smoothie for 4.0 points, so I would have some points left over for whatever problems dinner might pose.
For meals up to this point, I only had 11.0 points. For snacks for the entire day, I ended up with 8 points. That left me 12.0 more points to use for dinner. That should have been plenty and I should have been home free. Alas…
I did something else right on Sunday as well: I filled up the base on my basketball hoop stand, and for the first time since we left Vancouver, I shot baskets. In fact it was really the first time since our Coon Family Reunion last summer that I did it.
The nicest part of shooting baskets was the fact that LeRoy showed up just as I was finishing up filling the support base with water. So, he and I got to shoot baskets together.
When the 3 of us finally went out for dinner it was late, around 8 PM. I very seldom eat so late. (I eat dinner around 5 PM or on a late day, 6 PM.) This time when we got to Tomato Street, there was no line outside and we didn't even have to wait when we got inside; a table was open immediately.
Our Waiter came up to the table and he wrote “Arthur”, upside down and backwards. Since he used a crayon and wrote on the paper covering the tabletop, it was right side up and forwards to we who were sitting at the table. This is a standard trick that all the waiters and waitresses use at Tomato Street. Some of them are quite creative in the flashy way they sign their names.
From here, things went south for me. There was nothing on the menu that I would consider to be both good and OP. So, I ordered lasagna, for 15.0 points. Wonderful. I already used up my 11.0 points that I had left, plus 4 more.
But it didn't stop there. The waiter brought us some bread. It was very tasty, partly because it was dripping with oil. I went through half a loaf. (They brought us 3 half-loaves, which conveniently divided evenly into 3 for the number of people eating.)
Well, the food didn't come quickly, and before long the bread was gone. More bread was soon laid on the table, and I was into my second half loaf, which I finished by the time food started arriving. So, I wasted another 12.0 points on bread. Now, I was over by 16.0 points.
But still I was not finished. Suddenly a big ice cream cookie dish was in the middle of the table with 3 spoons. Having zero resistance to ice cream I soon had consumed my 10.0 points of the dessert and was wondering what was wrong with me.
I wasn't very hungry when we arrived at the restaurant. I could have settled for something really light, or even skipped the meal without suffering. Instead, I did that. It is easy to try and blame others or the situation, but it was I who put the food in my mouth. There were choices I could have made that did not include going off program, even in these circumstances. I will just have to remember this and be prepared next time.
LeRoy and Dotti at Tomato Street, on Mother's Day. LeRoy is holding the little tomato plant that Tomato Street gave to Dotti for her special day.
Dotti received flowers from LeRoy, our niece Misty, and Tomato Street, and you can tell from this picture that she really liked them!
When all was said and done, the final damages for the day were 56.0 points.
Monday— I still weighed 215.0 pounds. Part of that was due to the fact that I was artificially up on the scale on Sunday morning, and my body corrected for that, while adding in the damages from Sunday. It came out as no change for the day.
I was naturally unhappy with what had happened on Sunday, and so I was motivated to undo the damage as quickly as possible. I ate very light for the day, holding my points down to 23.0.
At one point in the day I turned around and I noticed that Frostbyte was relaxing in a very funny way. He had his leg up over his head and he was sound asleep. So, I took my camera and shot a picture.
Well, apparently the flash bothered the little guy because he brought is paw down to cover up his eyes and went back to sleep. Two hours later he was still asleep in the very same spot!
Tuesday— I weighed 213.0 pounds. I was happy to be rewarded for the good day, especially after going over on my points two days in a row before, and really over on one of the days. I wanted to continue that trend and make sure I didn't mess up my weigh-in for the week. I wasn't sure what to expect on the scale for the weekly weigh-in, but I wanted to give it the best shot of being a good number. Dotti said I was being "nit-picky about what I was eating on Tuesday, and she was right. I held my points down to 26.0 for the day.
Tuesday was the eighth Anniversary of the start of my Journey! In some ways it seems a lifetime ago that we had our First DWLZ Conference which led to the start of my own Journey. In other ways it seems like such a short time ago. It was almost exactly 3 years after I quit smoking in May of 1998, and I have to say that these past 8 years have definitely been eventful ones. I could never have predicted the twists and turns that Fate as sent my way. I have certainly lived in "interesting times."
Dotti and I have struggled with life often during these years, and who knows what the coming years will bring? We will do our best to hang in there, and hopefully we have a few more successes tucked away in our future. It is that hope that keeps us trudging along towards our goal.
A new Journey year has begun, and I am still plugging away. I will try to make this a better year than I have seen in some time. Wish me luck!
8 years, 1 day on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/211.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:26.37/WK-417
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
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