Week 61 Update

It was 68°, which is very warm for this part of the country at 5:30 in the morning, two minutes before the official sunrise, which is when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, for my 61st weekly weigh-in, and he said, "184.5 pounds!"

That makes 12 weeks in a row where I was within my goal range of 185 ± 2 pounds, and it has been 29 weeks in a row where I weighed under 187 pounds, which is the top of my target range. I have had a number of people mention to me that they were worried that I was in a downward spiral on my weight and I better watch out that I didn't lose any more. It is fun to tell them that I have not lost anything in over 6 months, and my BMI is 23, which is one OVER the projected optimum of 22. I also point out that for my skeletal size, my optimum weight is about 185, which just happens to be what I weigh now, and what I have weighed for over half a year.

I am sure the move from a 44-inch waist to a 34-inch waist, along with moving down in all the other associated measurements makes for a big change in appearance, and people often fear that you are ill when you drop that much weight. But when I explain that I have been holding steady for 6 months, and sitting right at where I want to be, it usually puts their concerns to rest.

I am happy to report that I was able to not only continue the exercise this week that I started last week, but I actually increased the number of aerobic points! It was interesting seeing the number of aerobic points I earned finally bump up against the number of points per day that I consumed.

I didn't get in all the water that I should have. During the week, things were busy at work, and I did not drink as much water as I had been drinking before. Then, when I got home at night, I didn't drink enough to compensate on several days. It is something I will try and work on this coming week.

For eating this week, I moved down from the 46.86 points per day last week, to 45.71 points per day this week. Still that is holding above my old 43.0 target point level. Perhaps now that I am walking regularly, I will have to bump it up again. My highest day for the week was actually yesterday, the day before weigh-in, with 55.0 points. (I would have never done that during the losing phase. :^) )

The weather was a factor in my journey this week, because the temperature climbed into the 90s on several days in the area near Portland where I was working. (Jul 9: 91°; Jul 10: 98.1°; Jul 11: 90.0°; Jul 12: 91.2°) That meant that lunchtime would be hotter than I like it to exercise in. So, I tried something different. I found that by leaving a half hour early for work, I can arrive as much as 45 or 50 minutes early on the other end. Not only do I have a less hectic drive, but it is a much shorter drive (for time) as well. Sort of like creating extra time in the day for free. That allowed me to do my walk in the cool of the morning before work, and miss all that heat.

Walking this week:

I can tell day to day how I felt on my walk by checking the minutes per mile. When I was feeling energetic my time for each mile would drop. As I get used to walking again, if my knees hold up, I hope to get my times down into the 12 minutes per mile area, which is where I used to walk years ago.

We had our son LeRoy down this week a couple of times from Everett. His ship will be leaving on its cruise soon, and we said our goodbyes just in case we don't get to see him again before he gets underway. This will be the last one for him, and then he gets out, and returns to the civilian community. He is really looking forward to that.

This Week in Books

This week I reached a good stopping place in the audio book Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 and I started The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad. I am about one third of the way done with it so far. It seems to have a different flavor to it than the Odyssey did, but I have enjoyed both of the books of Homer. I should have little trouble finishing this one this upcoming week.

I did not get back into The Wonder Book of the World's Progress vol. 2 this week because I purchased a book called CALENDAR Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year by David Ewing Duncan from Barnes and Noble, and have been reading that in my spare moments. It is funny that I didn't even get the book out of the store before I found a mistake in it. Dotti and went into the B&N coffee shop to have a mocha while looking at our books. I opened up to a page that says at the top, "The Year 2000 Will Be:" It lists several items including that fact that Y2K was the year 6236 according to the oldest calendar mentioned (Egyptian). The mistake was in the first item listed. It said that our year 2000 was the year 1997 according to the actual birth of Christ in 4 BC. The author made the mistake of subtracting the extra years instead of adding them. (Obviously if Christ were born before the year 1 it would merely add more years to the date, not subtract them from it.) In spite of this unfortunate start to the book, I have enjoyed it very much. I am about a fourth of the way through it so far.

The Greeks, the Egyptians (who were relying heavily on the Greeks by that time), and the Romans were zeroing in on the actual length of the year, but the attempt to come up with a calendar, that would be accurate for centuries, was a tough nut to crack. Julius Caesar make an excellent attempt. The actual year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds long. (Or 365.2421875 days) Caesar set his calendar to the length of 365 days 6 hours. (365.25 days) That created an error of 11 minutes and 15 seconds each year. However it was a big improvement on what they had before, which had wandered some 80 days out of line with the seasons. (46 BC, called the Year of Confusion, was made to be 445 days long in order to bring 45 BC back in line with reality.)

By 1582 when Pope Gregory amended the calendar, the error created by the Julian calendar had introduced a shift of 11 days in the calendar, relative to the seasons. Gregory made the change to the calendar, and juggled the 11 days, and now the calendar is set to a year length of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 20 seconds, which has put our own calendar off by nearly 3 hours since 1582. In AD 4909 it will have shifted one day ahead of the true solar year. That is far enough in the future to where I am sure we will not be troubled by it ourselves. :^) I imagine the people alive then, if any, will find a solution to that extra day.

Since I have been getting my walk in before work, I was able to use my lunch hour to make some additional progress on The Anything Tree this week. I am at page 84 and the book is 114 pages long. I am still reserving judgment as to whether or not I actually like the book. It is moving along okay, and when I reach the end I will be able to make a final evaluation. There are really only two main characters, and I don't feel like either has been developed very well, but the final pages of the book may fill in some details lacking so far.

This week I did a small amount of additional reading in The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner. It is one that I read before years ago, but it is worth a second read.

1 year, 62 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6'3" 239.5/184.5/185 ±2/BMI:23.0/WK-61
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story