Week 68 Update

I woke up early this morning. I tried to get back to sleep and finally gave up and got up at 4:30 AM. I checked the temperature outside and it was 57°. I figured if I'm up, Mr. Scale should be up too, so I stepped up on him and he said, "184.5 pounds!" I was quite happy with that, since my weight was bouncing around a bit this week.

For the first part of the week things were not too bad. I ate 38.5 points on Saturday and my weight dropped to 184.0 which is what I would expect. I then ate 44.0 points and it jumped up more than I expected to 186.0 on Monday. I had done some late eating and it was no big deal. I ate 43.0 points on Monday, and my weight came back down to 185.0. I was happy with that. I did 44.0 points again, held steady at 185.0. So far so good. On Wednesday I had a meal that was high in fiber and calories, including vegetarian baked beans. It was 12.0 points in all but it stayed with me for 2 days on the scale. On Thursday I was up to 186.5. I cut back to 28.0 points for that day, but I still was up to 187.0 on Friday. (In fact on Thursday night when I went to bed, after drinking a lot of water, I was up to about 194.) I ate 34.5 points on Friday, and by the evening I could see that the pressure was already off. I was down to 187.5 when I went to bed, and I nearly always drop a couple of pounds at least over night. From now on I am going to go a bit lighter on the high fiber, high calorie stuff. Anytime I get to thinking that "this game is easy" I receive a quick reminder that "paying attention is a part of the game," and always will be.

At the Oregon State Fair last week, Dotti and I walked around for about 3 hours. For most of the time, Dotti's knee held up pretty good. For the last hour or so, she pulled her cane out of my back pack and used it to take some of the load off. It was a fun trip. They had a memorial to the WTC there, with a piece of a metal girder from one of the buildings that collapsed on 9-11, and a piece of the concrete from the Pentagon. It also had a listing of the names of all the Firemen and Policemen who lost their lives in the collapse. It was a grim reminder that the world we live in can provide very serious challenges to civilization as well as personal survival.

We have been excited all week about the visit we are expecting from our friends, Jim and Tammy. They were scheduled in last night, but were held up, and decided to leave early this morning instead. We expect them to arrive sometime before noon today. It should be a fun weekend for us!

We are also excited about our upcoming move. It will be so nice to get back into a house again instead of an apartment!

On Thursday morning, when I got out of my van at work, I noticed that my right heel was hurting, as if I had bruised it by stepping barefooted on something hard. I don't recall stepping on anything like that, but it has continued to hurt ever since whenever I step down on it. It makes standing around on my feet for the day a little painful. Hopefully it will heal (not heel ) up soon. This weekend we plan to do some walking, and I will just live with the pain as required, because I am set on doing the walking.

Right now I am coming to the end of my third journal book for my journey. The first one that I used I had purchased, and it was good for 90 days. Before that one ran out, I designed my own journal sheets in Excel and printed out a single sheet for the book, and took it to Office Max. They made a number of copies, cut them down and bound them for a few dollars and I had two new journals that each was good for 200 days. I finished the first one of them on February 26, 2002, and I will be finishing the second in September this year.

So, before it ran out, I made a couple of changes to the design of the page in Excel, printed it, and took it back to Office Max. Due to a misunderstanding of instructions, the books he made ended up being double the number of pages that I had requested. I figured I would give the larger book a shot, and went ahead and purchased them. I now have two journals waiting to be used that each will hold over a year and a month of data, and I will begin using the first one on day 492 of my journey.

This morning I was looking back through my old journal books, and I notice that one year ago I was on day 112 of my journey, weighed 205 pounds, and was 3 weeks and one day away from reaching my first goal of 200 pounds (which, when I reached it, would put me into the WW range for my height, and the "Normal" category for BMI). Just to show what a difference a year can make, I then weighed 20.5 pounds more than I do today, but I only averaged eating 24.71 points per day that week, just over half of what I averaged eating last week, and less than 63% of what I ate this week -- which was a low week for me now. At that time I was not clear on what my target weight would be, and had no idea of where I would be a year from then, and certainly no idea how many points I would be eating now, to maintain my weight.

Looking at my maintenance graph, the time that I have spent at or below the top of my target range has grown to 8 months now (starting with the weigh-in just before Christmas when I first hit 187.0), and I have stayed within my range for my weekly weigh-in since April 27. (There have only been 3 weekly weigh-ins since Christmas where I was below my target range; one each in February, March, and April.)

I am now about 3 weeks away from being "at goal" for a year, and less than 4 months from being at my personal goal for a year. I am often reminded of Tracy's signature line, "A year from now, you'll wish you started today!" What a piece of wisdom that is! When I started my journey on May 12, 2001 I had no way of knowing where I would be one year later: already having been 3.5 months below the upper limit of my personal goal range of 185.0 ± 2 pounds. Two years ago I weighed 240 pounds or so, and had no real idea of when I would weigh significantly less than that. Today, it is growing harder to clearly remember what it was like being 240 pounds. I just remember how tired I always was. Now, 185 has become "normal" for me. It feels less and less strange to be here. And I think that is a good thing!

This Week In Books

I jumped back into the audio book Battlefield Earth for something to listen to on the road this week. I finished up part one of that yesterday.

I have been reading a little every day in Officer-Cadet by Rick Shelley. It is a bit like reading a military fiction that is set today, but with a few added gadgets and an off-world setting. The battle tactics and so forth are pretty much the same as you would expect from an army today. The army is entirely male, and functions very much as the military did that I remember before the Jimmy Carter era. The gadgets include a very efficient medical package in which a wounded soldier can be placed, and receive instant care, with a 98% survival rate once entered, and nearly 100% survival rate after 3 minutes had past once he had entered. In the several centuries that have past, they have progressed very far in the area of regenerating tissue, including growing new limbs, and repairing spinal, and even brain injuries completely. Also, naturally, the travel between star systems is futuristic, but much of the story could be set today. I have enjoyed reading it so far.

In the evenings, I finished The Case of the Sunbather's Diary. There was one point in the story where Perry Mason and Paul Drake were sitting in a doctor's office, and Paul Drake set his camera down on the table. As it turned out, the nurse didn't want the film to be developed and so she turned an x-ray machine, located on the other side of the wall, towards the camera and "fogged the film." I was thinking about having an x-ray machine located in a room whose walls were not not shielded, and then having the characters in the story only worrying about the film when x-rays were radiating the area they were sitting in. Fortunately, fictional characters do not accumulate radiation exposure over a lifetime unless the author wants to use it as a plot factor.

I have now started The Case of the Demure Defendant, which is the third and final book in a three book "Omnibus" volume by Erle Stanley Gardner.

1 year, 111 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6'3" 239.5/184.5/185±2/BMI:23.0/WK-68
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story