Week 67 Update

Although I was up a bit later than usual last night, I was up at 5:00 AM, because we have big day ahead of us. I stepped up on Mr. Scale and he said, "185.0 pounds!" Right on my target weight!

The only big swing in my points this week was on Thursday, when I weighed in at 184.0 in the morning, and pushed my points to 57.0 in compensation. For my birthday yesterday, I ate 45.5 points, which was under my average points for the week, or even the last 4 weeks for that matter. Dotti and I were going to go to a movie last night, but we instead stumbled across a really good deal on a house to rent, and did the paperwork on that instead. We will be moving in a month or so, and are looking forward to having a garage, a yard, and all the other things that come with a house. Dotti will be able to move her "DWLZ Central" into a study instead of the dining room area. It is a really nice neighborhood, not terribly far from where we are now. It is actually closer to a number of businesses that we use frequently. We are pretty excited about it, although after years in the Navy, we have done more than our share of moving and are not looking forward to yet another one.

Today we will be going to the Oregon State Fair, which will probably be a much higher point day than my birthday was. But we will have to see. The main thing is that Dotti and I will be watching her knee and seeing how that holds up with all the walking we will be doing.

Looking at the name of the fair, I am reminded of a bumper sticker that gets a lot of laughs around here. It says: ORYGUN, lampooning the way many people from other areas pronounce the name of the state. It is correctly pronounced much closer to the word organ, with just lightest touch of the "uh" sound between the first and last syllables. If you leave off the "uh" completely it will not raise any eyebrows, but OR –Y- GUN gets a laugh, overtly or covertly. Of course it is nothing compared to the names we had to learn in Massachusetts. The name of the town we lived in was Peabody. Now 99% of the American population would naturally pronounce that Pea – body'. But we quickly learned that it was Pea'—buddy. The first syllable was accented, and the last was nearly suppressed. Worchester and other names are even more interesting in their pronunciation. Returning to Oregon, we have another transplant catcher in a little town west of Portland called Aloha, but it is pronounced Uh-Low-Ah.

After having our transmission go out on our van last Sunday, it was nice to be driving it again on Tuesday, with a new transmission. We will see how well the new transmission works out. For the price it had better be great!

For the last few weeks, it looks like I am settling in to the mid to upper 40s for my daily average on points. My average weight has been staying between 184 and 185 each week with that. That eating range is starting to feel normal for me, and I don’t have to hold back much, or grab extra points at the end of the day to bring my total very often either. Just eating in a way that just feels normal for me now usually gives me no problems with staying around my desired points target. I still journal everything, and I do check to see how I am doing for points before I grab a snack, but it hardly takes any effort at all anymore.

The only time of day that I really dedicate to the program directly is when I get home from work. Before I eat dinner, I make sure my journal is completely up to date, noting any snacks or coffee that I might have eaten out of the ordinary, as well as making sure that I have everything documented that I ate for breakfast, lunch, and on my drive home. Then I usually write down what I am having for dinner before I eat it. For the rest of the evening, I write down anything that I eat before I consume it, running up my total points at the time, so I know right where I stand. After 469 days of this, it is all pretty much habit, requiring very little thought or effort on my part. Where do I go from here? Does this get put on autopilot and I move on to something else? I certainly need to find some sort of exercise that I can do regularly. I hope that Dotti and I can begin to take regular walks together. She may start up with a gym again, once her knee is 100%, so that she can start her post-quit-smoking/post-surgery return to normal. There are plenty of areas open for improvement for me, but it is about time to select one.

This Week In Books

I still haven't gotten back into the audio book mode on my drive to and from work. The stories of forest fires, and the beating of the war drums by the government, have had me worried. A few other topics have caught my attention on the talk radio area as well. I will get back on track pretty soon I think.

I read a bit on Aristotle in Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy, before I got caught up in a new book that I picked up the other day when Dotti and I were out shopping: Officer-Cadet by Rick Shelley. So far this book has captivated my attention completely. It is a book written in 1998, but without so much of the nonsense that I so often see in the new Sci-fi books. It captures the feel of military life, and moves right along. It very much reminds me of the books I have read by earlier SF writers of the 1950s and before. I am only about a third of the way through it, but so far it looks really good. The nice thing is that there are several more books in the series, which I plan to grab if the book continues as it has started. There is a certain resemblance to the Hornblower series of books in this one. I will have to see if it continues as it started.

I am still working on The Case of the Sunbather's Diary, and I should almost certainly finish it up this week sometime.

1 year, 104 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6'3" 239.5/185.0/185±2/BMI:23.1/WK-67
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story