A FEW MORE THINGS
YOU MIGHT ENJOY
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WEEK 449
Week Ending December 23, 2009
On day 3148 of my Journey
Weight Watchers Goal: 200.0 pounds
(the top of my normal weight range)
Personal Goal—Target Range: 185.0 ±2.5 pounds
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Week 449 Update
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| Weigh-In Date: | 12/23/2009 |
| Weight: | 197.0 |
| Body Mass Index: | 24.62 |
| Average Daily Points: | 24.93 |
| Average Weight for week: | 197.36 |
| Miles Walked for week: | 15.00 |
| Miles Walked in 2009: | 211.20 |
| Pounds +/- for this week: | ±0.0 |
| Pounds lost total: | 42.5 |
| Pounds From Personal Goal (185 lbs) | +12.0 |
Week's Data
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
Monday |
Tuesday |
12/16/09 |
12/17/09 |
12/18/09 |
12/19/09 |
12/20/09 |
12/21/09 |
12/22/09 |
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197.0 lbs
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197.5 lbs
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198.0 lbs
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196.5 lbs
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199.5 lbs
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197.5 lbs
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195.5 lbs
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22.5 pts
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27.5 pts
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23.5 pts
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22.5 pts
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29.5 pts
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24.5 pts
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24.5 pts
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It was 6:05 a.m. when I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "197.0 pounds!"
I can't say I am overjoyed with the scale this week, but it is far wiser to accept an acceptable status quo, rather than running after change itself. I prefer to wait for positive change, and so I won't complain about this maintain.
Happily, for the second week in a row, every one of my daily weigh-ins once again came in under 200 pounds! Sunday was close, but it squeaked in under the line.
I even did better on my points this week, eating an average points-per-day of 24.93, well below my upper limit of 29 points. And I walked 15 miles as well! My total miles walked for the year finally went over 200. (I was beginning to worry I wasn't going to get there, with the weather threatening to lay down ice all over the roads, but the weather has been accommodating.)
Despite these positive things, my average weight for the week was up, by just over a half-pound, to 197.36 from 196.79 last week. Admittedly, if you round those two values to the nearest half-pound, they both would end up at 197.0 pounds, but it seems unfortunate that the scale was so uncooperative this week. Nonetheless, I am very happy that I was OP all week, and I even got my exercise in. If I do that long enough, all will be well. 
WEIGHT
COMMANDER
GRAPHS
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CONTROL PANEL
GRAPH |
FUTURE
GRAPH |
60-DAY
GRAPH |
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90-DAY
GRAPH |
265-DAY
GRAPH |
1-YEAR
GRAPH |
2-YEAR
GRAPH |
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On December 10, I started a new journal book (Book #13). I weighed 195.0 pounds that day. I have not weighed that low for the 13 days which have come since that day.
The solid squares on my Weight Commander Control Panel Graph have been on the rise since that day. I have averaged eating only 26.8 points-per-day over that stretch of time. I should be losing, not gaining fat with that amount of food, so I must assume that water or muscle or something else is showing up.
Last week I was frankly eating too many fudgesicles. I think it held my points number down but didn't actually remove enough calories with the fiber. But this entire week I only had one of those fudgesicles. If they were the problem last week, you think that my weight would have dropped this week when I stopped eating them.
Perhaps it is that I have caused my body to retain water because I have started up walking again this week, and it has covered up the loss of fat that I actually had. Perhaps something else is going on. If next week doesn't do better for me, I will have to start making some adjustments. I am hoping that everything will settle in and I will get back the losses that I have been denied the past two weeks. If so, no harm done. If I have another maintain or a gain, then I will need to do something differently than I am doing.
The nice thing about this is that I am in my Normal Range, and nearly all the solid and hollow squares are also in my Normal Range on this graph. Even that nasty little errant point on Sunday, that leaped above all the rest of the points for the past 3 weeks, was a half pound below my Normal Range limit. 
The numbers for the past four weeks on the left side of the graph are still showing a loss, even though it is only 2.5 pounds. But a loss is a loss, and so, despite the gain last week, overall I have not been gaining!
The numbers on the right are also very good compared with what I was seeing a few weeks ago. Today I weigh one pound less than I did when I started using Weight Commander, and here it shows that I weigh 2.5 pounds less today than I did 30 days ago. Also, I weigh 5.5 pounds less than I did 60 days ago, and 12 pounds less than I did 90 days ago.
I even weigh 3 pounds less than I did 1 year ago. That one means the most to me, because it felt very disappointing, as I was struggling to get back down to my Normal Range, to see how I had wasted the entire year and still weighed more than I had the year before. Now, at least, I am under that point, and since we are moving into the part of the year where I gained very rapidly in 2009, I hope that it will be a long time before I see one my "Today" numbers go higher than my "1 year ago" number.
While I am confused by what the scale is doing, I am not discourage at all. However long it takes for me to get back to 185, it takes. As long as I am not gaining, I am content to continue to work the program as I have and wait confidently for the results.
It is disappointing to see the Weight Commander Future Graph showing a gain, but, notice that it a very slow gain, and as we have seen in the past, this graph can change directions in a real hurry.
My Excel spreadsheet projections, based upon the change in my weight and the change in my 14-day average weight, are quite divergent this time. The former has me at 205.4 pounds in 90 days, while the latter shows me down to 193.6 pounds in the same amount of time. The data for the past two weeks is marginal, and depending upon what happens next, all could be well, or I will have to modify what I am doing to make things work better. Predictions at this point are iffy.
The Weight Commander 60-Day Graph is not clear on what it is saying for sure. The run from first to last is definitely on a losing trend. Looking at just the past two weeks, it looks like things have leveled out and are not moving up or down. If you look at the stretch for the last part of October, it does something that is similar. So, it is just possible that a nice drop will follow this leveling off phase. Only time will tell.
My Weight Commander 90-Day Graph wouldn't shout out to you that even the past two weeks was a particularly troublesome stretch. The first part of December dropped faster than the trend would have predicted, and the next part is more where you would have expected them to be, by following the trend into the last week of November. Is there a problem, or is all as it should be? You can't tell for sure from this graph.
If you had told me in April that my Weight Commander 265-Day Graph would look like this on December 23, I would have been very happy. After months of almost uninterrupted gains, this is very nice indeed. It would be difficult to make a solid case that the last point on the graph is anything but an expected data point, even following the sharper trend from August, rather than the more gradual one from April. In fact the large drop a couple of weeks ago looks more odd than the part of the graph where I am right now.
It is always good to get a long range view of things and the longer the time period included, all the way back to 265 days ago, the better my weigh-in this week appears.
The Weight Commander 1-Year Graph shows a similar pattern. Perhaps, the drop at the start of the month was "too big" for the trend, and the gain and maintain, which followed, were merely part of a correction. (The human body is a sort of "analog computer" where eating and exercise data is accumulated over time and results are demonstrated physically rather than on a printout on paper or a computer screen.) In any case, it is nice seeing the point on the far right sitting well below the point on the far left!
A huge majority of the data points on the Weight Commander 2-Year Graph lie above where I am today! It will not take much more losing before all the points on this graph will lie above where I will be. That one spot last year where I hit 194.5 still eludes me, but I don't think it can continue to do so for too much longer.
When the day began last Wednesday, we had some snow on the ground. The temperature was climbing and got all the way up into the 40's before the day was over. Looking out our window into the back yard, the snow seems to have ripples, like a pond on a windy day. Grass was poking up through the snow, and sun, its mortal enemy was sliding towards it. Patches of blue were looking through the clouds, and snow on the roof behind us was shrinking under the sunny barrage. The weather was in the process of turning mild.
Our sidewalk was still covered out front, and so was our driveway. The Christmas decorations in our yard looked like they felt right at home in the snow.
Dotti headed off to run some errands, and I set off on a walk around my 3-mile loop. Once again I snapped a picture of the house under construction. The driveway seems like a long one, but the workers have the building approaching completion. The several inches of snow was getting slushy and soon would be running off as water.
The driveway for the construction site has a lot of slush at its entry point, but the road it connects to is looking only damp, not snowy. The sky can't decide if it wants to be clear or cloudy, and the sun came and went as the day progressed.
Looking back the other way, a set of footprints leads off straight ahead. They seem to suddenly disappear, but it is just the lighting and shadows on them as they continue all the way to the sidewalk poking through the snow ahead.
When I got back home, I decided I needed to clear off some of the snow from our driveway and sidewalk. So, I spent over and hour shoveling the stuff out of the way. It was wet and heavy, and I got a good workout.
When Dotti got home later I asked her if she saw what I had done. She hadn't noticed. She quickly looked around the living room to see what it was. I told her it was outside, but she hadn't noticed anything when she pulled up to the house.
I was curious then, and went back outside to take a look, and I found that the warm rain had returned, and it had so cleared the snow off the yard and everything generally, you could hardly tell I had done anything with the snow shovel. If it weren't for the piles of snow I had created on the side, there would have been nothing to show for it. Well, at least I got the exercise.
I have been working on a book project and it has taken up much of my time this week. On Friday we took a break in the evening and went to watch the Nutcracker with our dear friends Jim and Tammy. The music was incredibly good. I listen to the Nutcracker Suite of songs all year long as part of the assortment of background music when I am working at my computer. It was nice to finally tie in the ballet with the music.
Saturday, I worked on the design for the book-cover and I took another 3-mile walk around the loop.
This is the same road that we were looking at above with the snow on it, although this is taken from a slightly different spot. There is no snow now, and lots of fog. It was raining and so I had my raincoat on to keep me dry. It was not a problem keeping warm though, because it was 38° during my walk.
 The new construction home looked more spooky than scenic on this trip around. The formerly snow covered field surrounding it is now puddled with water.
Turning around to face the direction I was actually walking in, the stretch of sidewalk no longer has any footprints in the snow as it had on Wednesday. The buildings that were so clear before are now hidden in the fog. It is very interesting the way the very same path can look so different from day to day.
Sunday was a busy day, as we got Dotti's Newsletter ready to go, and shipped it before lunchtime.
Monday was a special day, the Winter Solstice! Here in Spokane, our day was 8 hours, 24 minutes, and 58 seconds long, and the sun sunk down beneath the horizon at exactly 4:00 p.m. That is striking, when you remember that the Summer Solstice has the sun rising at 4:51 a.m. and setting at 8:51 p.m., creating a 16-hour day nearly twice as long as this one was. And even when the sun is up at this time of year, it is always fairly low on the southern horizon anyway.
Of course the word solstice means approximately, "sun standing still," because the length of day doesn't change much from day to day at this time of year. So, we will have short days for a while yet.
Still, they would be even shorter if we lived in Fairbanks. (Because of our friend Karen in Fairbanks, I think of the conditions up where she lives quite often.) On the Winter Solstice, the sun rose at 10:58 a.m. and went right back down again at 2:39 p.m., spending only 3 hours and 41 minutes above the horizon. And in Fairbanks, the sun doesn't get much above the southern horizon at this time of year.
I took another walk on Monday, an hour and a half after the sun went down, even though it was only about 5:30 p.m. when I left home. When I got a block away from our house I took out my camera and took a picture of our house and Christmas lights. It won't be long and Christmas will be gone, and all these decorations will be just a memory for another year.
And speaking of memories, last year at this time we were loading and unloading a U-Haul truck getting our stuff down from Vancouver, Washington to Tiller, Oregon, and then scrambling back up to Vancouver to finish cleaning our house and turning in the keys. Christmas day was a cleaning day, and we slept in a hotel room. It was a white Christmas, but we couldn't enjoy it like we would wanted.
This morning was cold when I woke up, but when the sun cleared the horizon, it painted the area behind our house with a red glow. The sun hitting our thermometer warmed up the reading a bit but it is still looking chilly. There is something about sunrise that feels so right. The whole day is ahead of you, and things are just getting started. What could be better?
Christmas is only two days away, and so it is time to say,
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Here comes a new week and I hope one with better results on the scale. But the most important thing is to enjoy the wonderful Christmas holiday that is just around the corner.
8 years, 225 days on my journey; a lifetime to follow.
-Al-
6'3" 239.5/197.0/185.0±2.5/BMI:24.62/WK-449
Starting weight: 239.5
Target Weight Range: 185.0±2.5 pounds
BACK TO WEEK 448 On To WEEK 450
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