Week 43 Update

I woke up early this morning in Everett, Washington, in LeRoy's apartment, and with the temperature sitting at 34°F, and the clock saying 4:30 AM, I stepped up on Mr. Scale. He said, “183.5 pounds!”

I was very interested in seeing what Mr. Scale would say today. Last night Dotti and I took our son LeRoy out to dinner at the Outback restaurant. I ate a 12 ounce sirloin steak, a baked potato, a couple of small pieces of bread with margarine, and a salad with the dressing on the side. It added up to 21.0 points for the meal. When added together with the other things that I ate during the day, I finished up with a total of 48.5 points for the day. The things that I was most concerned with were:

1. I had a heavy meal, with steak and potato, and a fairly large number of points.

2. I ate late. We didn't get there until nearly 7:00 PM and then there was a half hour wait to get to our table. There was more waiting after we ordered, and that meant that it was well after 8:00 PM when the last forkful of steak made its way into my stomach.

3. I woke up early this morning and weighed-in at 4:30 AM. That sometimes can mean the difference of more than a pound in my weigh in weight. (I did drink 24 ounces of water last night after we got back to the apartment, but most of my water consumption for the day was much earlier on. So, that might have helped avoid the extra weight I might have seen with an early weigh-in.)

As it turned out, the Seattle area was good to me once again on my weigh-in. Dotti was joking last night that since we were up here, and I was having a big meal I would be down to 165 this morning. :^)

For exercise this week I made it to the gym a couple of times. I got in some basketball and some walking on the track. It added up to 11.6 Aerobic points, which is certainly better than zero! On Tuesday, I got a major workout on my job. We were lifting some heavy pumps out of place and then back into place and working in some difficult positions while doing it. It took all day, and I was bone tired when I got home from work that night and I was sore on Wednesday. (I got some bad news that one of the two guys that I was working with that day had a heart attack two days later and is in the hospital. I think he is going to make it, but it will be a long-term recovery process for him. He is a few years younger than I am, and it came as a real shock to hear that it happened to him.)

I was scheduled to go to the gym on Thursday, but Dotti and I didn't feel up to going, and we decided to reschedule to Friday night. Then, we had a sudden change of plans and came up to Everett on the spur of the moment to visit LeRoy. (We sure didn't get the chance to do that when he was in Japan!) So, the gym fell through for Friday also. I am not sure if I will get a chance to go and shoot some baskets with LeRoy today or not. (His apartment complex has an indoor basketball court for the tenants.) If not, I will try and make it to the gym tomorrow after we get back home.

I bumped my eating up again this week, and ended up averaging 46.1 points per day, which is nearly 6 points per day more than last week. Still, I dropped half a pound this week. I think it was the added exercise that made that happen. If I get to where I am exercising like I should, I may end averaging close to, or even over, 50 points per day. Only time will tell.

Splurges for the week included one White Chocolate Mocha, 3 rice cakes with a tablespoon of regular peanut butter on each (I had this two times, 10.5 points each), one Dairy Queen banana split (10.0 pt.), three small McDonalds Butterfinger McFlurrys (14.5 points each), and the dinner at Outback (21 points). So far, on any given day, I have not eaten 52 or more points. If I continue to drop weight due to the exercising, I may have to cross that threshold in the future, but for now I consider 51.5 my upper limit for a single day.

I must say that I thought by this point in my maintenance I would have my points range locked in and I would be just keeping my eating within that range. I never expected to see it continue to shift as it is doing. I have no way of knowing how much longer this will go on. Where will my ultimate points range end up? I don't know. My average for points per day is moving upwards towards 50. Where it will stop I have no way of knowing.

I want to continue with my exercise in the upcoming week. I feel like it was benificial what little I did this past week, and I want to build on that. My friend (who is the one who loaned me the Lord of the Rings tapes) getting hit with a heart attack was yet another wake up call that our health is never assured, and we must continually be on the offensive to try improve our chances for a healthy future. Jim Fixx showed that no matter what you do, you may die younger than you should, but there are thousands and thousands of people who are living healthy and active lives far into their later years, because of the positive changes they made in their lives earlier on. I find that very motivational.

On the drive up to Everett yesterday, Dotti and I took the I-405 Seattle bypass and it took us right by the hotel where we had the first DWLZ conference last year. It triggered some very happy memories of that occasion, and reminded us that Dotti's II is not far away. It won't be long and we will be packing up and heading out to St. Louis for the conference. We are really looking forward to another fun time this year!

This week in books

I finished A Case of Conscience by James Blish. It was an unusual book, especially for a sci-fi one. At the root of the story was the turmoil of a Catholic priest who was struggling with a case of heresy, based upon a planet that appeared to him to be create by the evil one, in order to make salvation appear to be non-essential. I am not sure that the character reached a final decision in his mind on the subject before the planet was blown into its molecular parts by a huge fusion reaction. A scientist said that it was a fault in "equation 16" concerning an experimental process that another scientist was performing on the doomed planet, but the priest thought its cause was out of the hands of science. It was a well-written book and held my attention throughout. I am glad that I read it once, but I doubt I will read it again.

I have completed The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien, and now have finished the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy via audio books, and I guarantee that I will be both listening to it again, and reading it in the printed format as well. It was definitely time well spent listening to the stories, and the ending was upbeat, which is something I usually like in a book. In the end I felt like Samwise Gamgee was the hero rather than Frodo Baggins, but it was hard to evaluate what the mild mannered Frodo suffered, with his meek and quiet ways. He had a very rough time of it throughout the story. I think one of the greatest morals of the entire trilogy is summed up in the Thomas Jefferson quote: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." When the citizens of Middle Earth weren't looking the bad guys grew strong. Or as my old Senior Chief used to say, "Paying attention is a part of the game."

The attention to detail that Tolkien put into these books is unbelievable. There is also an appendix to the trilogy, which has a great deal of additional information on the history of Middle Earth. I am most of the way finished with listening to that as well. It fills in the time leading up to the era when The Hobbit and the LOTRtrilogy were set. If it were not for the mention of elves and such, I might think that I was listening to some nonfictional description of early European history.

I did finally hear a poem in the book that made me laugh. It was about the elephant. Sam had never seen one, but he knew a poem about one. After he recited the poem, a bit later he actually got to see one. It was pretty funny the way he reacted. I have to admit that Samwise Gamgee was my favorite of all the characters, although many of them seemed to come to life, and they were quite enjoyable.

One of the things that I liked about The Return of the King was that even after the main climax was reached, and the primary danger was over, JRR Tolkien took the time to tie up most of the loose ends. Unlike most authors, who seem to be in a screaming hurry to end their stories after the climax is reached, Tolkien followed the main characters on past the "end of the story," to the real end of the story. That was a nice touch. I would highly recommend the trilogy for anyone who ever liked fairy tales.

301 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/183.5/200/BMI:22.9/WK-43
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story