Week 80 Update

Another early start this morning as I stepped up on Mr. Scale at 0445, and he said, "184.5 pounds!"

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary!!! It will be one whole year since I hit my personal goal of 190. The last weekly weigh-in that I weighed more than 190 was on November 17, 2001, the weigh-in before Thanksgiving. (I made my personal goal on my last weigh-in Spokane for 2001, on 11/24/01, after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner two days before!) I have not weighed more than 190 on a weekly weigh-in since then. I did have several daily weigh-ins where I was slightly over 190, until I figured out that I would not have that struggle going on if I just lowered my target goal far enough below my personal goal. After I did that, I never came close to going over 190 again. The last time I weighed-in on a daily weigh-in over 190 was on 12/12/01. I played around with trying to maintain at 187.5 for a short time, but due to fluctuations in the scale reading, I finally dropped my target weight to 185.0, which I hit on December 29, 2001. That has kept me well below 190.0 ever since. I am very happy to have remained below my target weight every WEEK for an entire year! (After December 12, I hope to be able to say that I will be very happy to have been below my personal goal weight every DAY for an entire year! But, let's focus on one mile-marker at time. :) )

This week has been a bit different for me, since I was notified at work that I needed to take a couple extra days off soon, or I would be losing some vacation time when the new year began. So, I took Thursday and Friday off, and put them to some good use, catching up on a few things that I had been putting off.

My average points per day went up nearly 2 points this week, while my average weight for the week only went up 0.14 pounds. I did get more exercise at work for the first two days but other than that, it has been pretty quiet physically for me this week.

I started out with my week 79 weigh-in at 184.0. I ate high last Saturday (68.0 points) to try and recover from a low point streak on the previous days, but my weight still dropped on Sunday to 183.5. From then on, I ate pretty close to my target points until yesterday. For 3 days I ate 2 points high and that brought me back up to 185.5. I ate a half point low the next day, when my weight came down to 185.0 exactly. The next day, Thursday, I wasn't paying close attention apparently, because my weight dropped a pound to 184.0, but I only ate 41.0 points. Not surprisingly, my weight dropped yesterday to 182.5. So, I ate 49.0 points yesterday. I was monitoring my weight in the evening, and if it had been reading lower, I would have eaten more, but it looked pretty good when I stopped at 49.0 points. This morning I was back to 184.5 and I am satisfied with that. :)

My water consumption this past week was not good at all. I averaged 44.5 ounces per day, less than 6 cups per day. I must do better on that. And exercise was really bad. I had planned walks for both Thursday and Friday but they were OBE (overcome by events). I am hopeful that I can do better in Spokane. Tammy has a nice 3 mile walk measured out from her house that I like to take, and I hope to get several of them in during next week.

Today we are going to hit the road again, but this time it is to go and visit Jim and Tammy in Spokane! It is hard to believe that we first met them in 1978, over 24 years ago. We were all in our twenties then, and our kids were 1 year old and 6 months old. Now those kids are both older than Jim, Tammy and Dotti were in 1978, and they are nearly as old as I was then. Where does the time go? (By, it goes by, and far too quickly!)

It should be a fun week, with good food (Tammy is a great cook!!!), good companionship, and some fun guitar playing. These visits feel like an oasis in the desert, where the stresses of life have piled up, like too much sunshine and too little water on the burning sand, and then comes our visit to Spokane, where the stress is wiped away, and things are reset back to a relaxed state. The water is cool, and the palms are green, and life is good. Dotti and I feel singularly lucky to have such wonderful friends.

This Week in Books That Hideous Strength is coming to the end, but since I only worked 3 days this week, I did not quite finish it.

Major which I read during lunch, didn't fair much better. And I did no reading at night at all, other than on the internet.

1 year, 195 days OP, a lifetime to follow!

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/184.5/185±2/BMI:23.06/WK-80
Weight Loss Graph/Maintenance Graph/Success Story