At 5:45 AM Mr. Scale, who was back on his normal resting place again, said, “217.0 pounds.”

Yesterday, Dotti and I took about 6 hours to drive from Spokane to home, and that 350 miles covers some very diverse countryside. From the Pines of Spokane, widely spaced, with little undergrowth, we entered near desert conditions, brown and desolate spreading out for mile after mile. Here the ground was ripped and rippled by a flood that passed through the area thousands of years ago, when Lake Missoula suddenly released 100’s of cubic miles of water as a glacier ice dam suddenly gave way at the end of the ice age. Not far away from where we were, stands the great Dry Falls, which at its peak, when Lake Missoula’s water poured over its long drop, had made Niagara Falls look like a water faucet. Now it is nothing but a dead monument to that cataclysmic event, its dropping pool the only sign of water to be found for miles around.

While the Dry Falls were not close enough for us to see, many gullies and ancient islands were visible from the car, and the rock which had been exposed by the tremendous forces of the rushing water, still stands bare along the walls of water cut valleys, brown and dusty. For mile after mile we passed through this land, rolling and nearly lifeless, compared with what we left behind us. As we approached the halfway point of our trip, we passed through the Tri-Cities area of Washington, where our course joined that of the mighty Columbia river, heading south. It seems so strange seeing that huge volume of water flowing through such a dead land. But you can see its influence along the way, because farmers are using its water to irrigate, and thereby creating patches of green here and there. For the rest of the trip, the Columbia was our companion, and was visible nearly all the way.

At Kennewick, one of the Tri-Cities, we stopped to get something to eat. There is a Subway there, that we hit almost every time we pass through, and this time was no exception. We then headed south for one last time, until we crossed the Columbia River into Oregon, and along with the river, we turned west to head towards home. Off in the distance, almost immediately, we could see a mountain, snow capped and low on the horizon. I was not sure at first if it was Mt. Adams or Mt. Hood. It turned out to be Mt. Hood. In all the times I have made this drive, I had never seen Mt. Hood from so far away before. It was a beautiful clear day, and it was definitely the best conditions I have ever seen for site-seeing in this area.

We soon began to enter the Columbia Gorge, a path cut by the mighty river, that we were running beside, through the long range of the Cascade Mountains. For hundreds of miles the mountains had kept the river running south, instead of allowing access west to the Pacific Ocean, but the river found a weak spot a long time ago, and it forced its way through, cutting deeply through thousands of feet of rock and soil. At first there were only brown foothills rising up beside us, but then the walls reared up, like brown giants, and we were in the body of the Gorge. Along the rim of the walls, like grinning brown teeth, ran rows of exposed volcanic rock, laid down by eruptions long ago, and then covered for a very long time, only to be violently exposed by the Missoula flood, which filled the entire Gorge with water, cutting and tearing at the walls, on its run to the ocean.

As we penetrated deeper into the Gorge, we passed rivers that emptied into the Columbia. The John Day River, next to the John Day dam, and the Deshutes River, both cut through the brown countryside of the eastern end of the Gorge, making their rendezvous with the Columbia.

About halfway through the Gorge, quite suddenly, the scenery changed. The amount of rainwater, that was able to get passed the Cascade blockade, was no longer inadequate to sustain green life. There was an explosion of trees and bushes. The Brown walls of the Gorge were suddenly covered, and the Missoula Flood, which had temporarily made the Columbia River 10 times larger than all of the other rivers on earth combined, and forced it to carry 50 times as much water as the Amazon River did, has here left no mark visible from our car.

I have never seen the river so blue as it was yesterday. Bright sunshine and sharp shadow cut every little detail of the landscape. The trip seemed to take half as long as usual, with all of the beauty around us. Mount Hood rose up higher with every mile. By the time we reached The Dalles, it totally dominated the landscape, standing immense before us. Even our Multnomah Falls was especially beautiful yesterday. We drove out of the lush and beautiful west end of the Gorge, and immediately into the Portand metropolitan area. A few more miles found us crossing the Columbia one last time for this trip, into Vancouver.

I ate a bit more for breakfast yesterday than usual. I had 3 points worth of cereal (1.5 cups) rather than just 2 points, along with my normal 1 cup of milk. (2pts) With the two cups of coffee that I had, it brought me to 7 points for breakfast. For lunch I had a 6 inch sub (6 points) and a 2 point bag of beef jerky. We stopped at a McDonalds and got an ice cream cone (3pts) and I ate 5 regular meringues (2pts). For dinner we were too tired to worry about anything fancy, so I had another bowl of cereal (4pts) and later I had a Mr. Cookieface Ice cream (3.0 points). That brought my total for the day to 27.0 points.

For water, I drank 11 cups, or 88 ounces.

Today is the last day of my vacation, and then it is back to work tomorrow.

57 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

Mr. Scale said, “217.0” this morning at 6:00 AM.

Yesterday was a stay at home kind of day. Dot and I were doing some catching up on old email and other things that had backed up over the last week.

Looking at my logbook, my eating appeared to have been heavy on the snacks. Breakfast was back to my normal 5.0 points. Lunch was 3 points for 2 turkey sandwiches. Dinner was 3 points for 2 fried egg sandwiches. So, for meals, I only ate 11 points. However my snack section of the page is pretty much filled up. Dotti made me a WW chocolate shake (3.0 points) for the first time, and it was good. Over the entire day I ate 8 chocolate meringues. (4pts) Dotti made me a “pudding shake” later in the day. (3.0 points) I was feeling really tired in the afternoon and so I ate 6 espresso beans, (1pt) and I drank another cup of coffee. (1pt) And for the last thing I ate, Dotti and I split a Mr. Cookieface ice cream sandwich. (1.5 pts) That made a total of 13.5 points in snacks, and a total of 24.5 points for the entire day.

I must have been tired yesterday because I made an error in my total points running sum in my logbook. I added the 5 points for breakfast to the 3 points for lunch and came up with a subtotal of 8. Over in my calculation area I brought over the 5 and the 8 and added them together for 13. Then when I added in dinner, it became 16. I used that subtotal for the rest of the day to add to my snack subtotal to track my total points. So, I was figuring 5 points high all afternoon and evening. By the end of the day, I thought that I had eaten 29.5 points, when I really had only had 24.5. Fortunately, I don’t do that sort of thing too often. As it turned out, I thought I was eating on the high end of my range anyway, so the mistake didn’t put me out of range. If it had been a mistake in the other direction, it would have been quite upsetting! As it is there was no harm done.

For water yesterday, I drank 22 cups or 176 ounces (11 pounds).

Saturday and Sunday I attempted to eat a bit higher in my range. I actually felt hungry on Friday night when I went to bed and I don’t see any reason to be going to bed hungry. It is most important to create a lifestyle that I can live with for good. A fast weight loss will only mean that I get to goal sooner, but then I will have to make a quick adjustment in order to level off and not overshoot, or bounce back up. The only thing that matters really is that I develop a workable lifestyle that I can stay with for the rest of my life. As long as I am eating the right amount of food, my weight will take care of itself. So, my task is to focus on staying OP. Like a bowler, who rolls the ball over his “mark” a few feet down the lane, and knows that if he hits it his ball will end up at the pocket on the other end of the lane, I am aiming for staying OP, and knowing that if I hit my mark, the scale will respond in the end.

I am really happy to be in the 2-teens finally. After years of struggling to try and stay below 240, it is really cool to step on the scale in the afternoon and be below 220 pounds. When I drop a couple of more pounds, I will hit my 10% point. I have already crossed over half the way to goal. I don’t know how long it will take me to move on down to goal, but I do know that I have the tools to get there, and to stay there. It is up to me to only “hit my mark” each day, and stay OP.

Well it’s back to work today.At least it usually gives me some additional exercise and that pays off on my Saturday weigh in.

58 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

René Descartes a long ago said, "I think, therefore I am" (or in Latin, "cogito ergo sum"). Mr. Scale tried to draw me into a debate as to whether he really had to think in order to exist, but I resisted, and read 216.5 pounds as my weight this morning.

Today is my 60th day since starting my journey. Where has the time gone? I don’t care where the 23 pounds have gone, as long as they never come back! Today I am one pound short of my 10% loss point of 215.5 pounds.

Yesterday I had to try my 36-inch waist pants on. Okay, I am in a bit of a hurry.I got into them and pulled them up. Then I tried to button them. Well, they didn’t go easily. So, I pulled harder and they almost buttoned. I tried sucking my gut in and pulled harder, and (YES!) got them buttoned. That put a smile on my face. It has been so long since I could even imagine getting those pants up and buttoned, even with a strain. I was just able to get them zipped up with a lot of work. No way could I have sat down in them, or wear them for long even standing up, but I did get them on and that is progress.

My day at work was pretty light, and so I didn’t get much exercise beyond toting my computer bag in and out of the building.

For eating, I had my 5 point breakfast, and then a one point cup of coffee at work. For lunch I had 2 turkey sandwiches (1.0pt) 5 meringues (2pts) a pudding cup (2.0pts), 6 espresso beans (1pt) and a McDonalds Ice Cream cone (3pts). (For the pudding cup I did not have a spoon, but there is no deterring a determined Weight Watcher from getting his treat. I used the laws of physics to great advantage, by altering air pressure, distorting the shape of the container, and other techniques to acquire the tasty dessert. A video of the process might have been rather amusing to watch.) For dinner, I had a small can of V8 juice (0.5 pt) and 2 cups of the great recipe that Dotti and Tammy first tried last week: Zesty Cheese Casserole (6.0 pts). By the end of my meals, I had eaten 20.5 points. Dotti had picked up a bag of beef jerky for me yesterday afternoon, and so I measured out 1.1 ounces of it for 2 points worth. I then had a Mr. Cookieface (3.0 pts), and a cup of coffee flavored with some new 0 point hazelnut syrup Dotti bought. I used too much of it and it was very strong in flavor, but I got it down. (This morning I used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon of it and it is still a bit strong, but much better. Less is more obviously.) I finished up my snacks, and my eating for the day with a Weight Watcher Smoothie shake (3pts) that Dot made up. She adds lots of snow cone style ice to the shake and then blends it up until it makes about 5 cups (40 fluid ounces) worth of shake. It was a great way to finish up the day, in which I had consumed a total of 29.0 points.

It was funny, I drank 6 cups of water in the morning yesterday, but when 10 PM rolled around I still was sitting at 6 cups. I quickly downed the remainder of the 24 ounce cup that I had in my van all day, and that brought me up to 9 cups, or 72 ounces. I left it at that for the day. (I have to get some sleep during the night.)

59 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

Why do I want to lose weight?

Is it like the mountain climber who climbs a peak because it is there? Or is it because I am sick of looking at my reflection in glass and mirror, that shows my baggy pants and dumpy appearance? Do I want to move easier and quicker in sports? Do I just want to feel better? Yes, yes, yes, and yes!

When I get my weight down, I feel better, and I look better. That alone is enough to provide the motivation I need to lose, now. (Why not before?) For years I have been unhappy with the way my pants fit and looked. I was disgusted by the fact that I had to wear suspenders to keep my dress pants up when I was an instructor. Belts would merely hold the pants at my waist, under my stomach, which pooched way out over them. Yuk! Suspenders would hold the pants up at a higher level and not highlight my bulging stomach quite as much. But it was not because I loved suspenders that I wore them, and being able to wear a pair of pants with a belt, and not have my stomach bulging over them is something I am really looking forward to seeing again.

I remember as a kid in grade school, I caught grief for being fat. I was lucky during high school, and I grew like a weed. I was very thin by my senior year, when I played center on my school basketball team. But I was up over 200 pounds only a few months after I graduated! As soon as the school food, and the school exercise went away, my weight climbed up quickly.

My high school has an “alumni weekend” every year. I graduated in 1970. I went back in the spring of 1971, and wanted to play in the Alumni vs The School Team game. When I went to suit up, I could pull a jersey on but there were no shorts big enough for me to wear. I had to wear a pair of my blue jeans to play in.

When I joined the Navy in 1973, I went on a diet a couple of months before I went into boot camp, because I thought that their exercise routine would kill me otherwise. I lost 20 pounds (from 210 down to 190) before I went in, and while I was there, I lost another 20 pounds back down to 170. But for the 13 years I was in the Navy, it was a constant battle to keep my weight below their weight limit standards. If I went above 190 pounds, I was in trouble.

I was smoking like crazy, which helped keep my weight down some, and most commands that I was in had sports that I could participate in, like racquetball.

When I was onboard the USS John F. Kennedy, just living was exercise. My berthing compartment was 3 decks below my shop. So, just to get to work each morning, I had to go up 3 ladders. Walking down the passageway of the ship required us to step over a “knee-knocker” every so many feet, and then many of the electronic spaces were on other levels. We had equipment as many as 8 levels above our shop, and the mess decks were 3 levels down from the shop. Every day required a lot of walking and climbing just to do my job. If we were in port, the parking lot was a long way off and the ship was 1100 feet long, with the gangway and quarterdeck most of the way down the ship in order to come onboard. So, just parking my car and walking to my berthing area, changing into my uniform and then going up to my shop was a good healthy walk. Going home at night was the reverse of that.

When we pulled out on our 7 month cruise, I was more or less depressed most of the trip. I am a family man and being away from Dotti and the kids was a very unhappy experience for me. So, I didn’t eat much. My appetite just evaporated. With little in the way of calories going in, and all that walking around taking the calories out, I found that when I got back from the cruise, I was 170 pounds, skeletal and unhealthy in appearance and in the way I felt.

Each phase of my life I look at, I have an eating and weigh issue. Either I am eating too much and gaining weight, or I am eating too little and falling to an unhealthy weight. I have never before had the tools that I have right now to select a weight, move down to that weight, and then hold my body there. This is finally going to be something different. This is what I have needed all my life.

I have already proven to myself that I can eat the same amount of food today, that I will need to eat to maintain the weight level I will be stopping at, without going hungry. I have even mistakenly demonstrated that I can comfortably eat less than I will need to maintain where I want to be. For me, I am fully satisfied that this is a journey that I can comfortably remain on for life. I cannot express in words what that means to me, although many people on this message board know exactly what it means, because it is the very same thing for them. It is almost like someone walking up to me and handing me a toolbox that has every tool that I will ever need to fix any problem that will ever come up in the future. I CAN REACH MY GOAL WEIGHT, AND MAINTAIN THAT WEIGHT FOR LIFE. Never before in my life has that been possible. I have been thinner than I am today. I have been thinner than I am going to be during my lifetime of maintenance. But I have never been in control before. NEVER!

For years I was in denial. “Dotti had a weight problem, not me.” “The Navy was just giving me grief, it wasn’t really a weight issue. It was just red tape.” “My only problem was smoking, not weight.”

Even with all of my experience at fighting my weight, and all that I had to go through to keep my weight down for the Navy, I never viewed it as a bid deal. But it was, and I finally realized it. But along with the understanding of the problem, has finally come the solution to that problem. Today I stand in recovery, and in control for the very first time in my life, and it feels good! I am going the top of that mountain, and I am going stay there. I am confident of this fact, and I am happy in it, but I am calm in the assurance as well. The problem will never go away, but I have something that will deal with the problem, that will also NEVER GO AWAY!

The old phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” that was so popular in the 70s, is now a basic fact of my existence. From this point on, life will be different for me. I can see it already in my daily life, and in my weight. I like living this way. Food does fill up a certain portion of my day, but it is in a positive way. Before I ate without thinking, destructively. Now I eat, but only with forethought. I eat at least as much, and usually more in pure volume of food today than I did before. I am not hungry. I am not suffering. I actually have fewer hunger pains today than I did before I started my journey. I don’t have fantasies of running down to McDonalds and having a Super-sized Big Mac Meal with a large shake. (Are you crazy??!!) There is nothing that I sit and dream about eating that I am not eating right now. That is so cool!

When I quit smoking, I thought of nothing else, except how good a cigarette would taste right now. Day after stinking day I had to plow though those thoughts, those gut wrenching urges, just striving for the next day when the pain would be a little less. Even today, I get a momentary desire for a cigarette on occasion.

But that is nothing like my food journey. I am not suffering. I do not have urges to run to the candy machine. I do not cry out in my soul for a hamburger, fries and a shake. I am satisfied, and comfortable where I am. I am happy in my journey. I would never have dreamed it was going to be like this, or I would have done it long ago.

Vigilance is a price to be paid. It is not free, and I will never be done with this journey. But traveling this road is so wonderful, I can envision a lifetime of doing so, and visualizing a thing is the most important step of all in making it a reality.

I have been accused of being “a newbie” and of being in the honeymoon stage. Well that may be true, but I have found with my marriage, the honeymoon doesn’t ever have to end. My only real challenge for the future will be to nurture the honeymoon phase and keep it alive for good. As long as I love the journey, I cannot give it up.

-Al-

This morning Mr. Scale said, “216.5.” I didn’t bother to point out he was repeating himself.

Yesterday, I had to climb some stairs a few times, for a bit more exercise than the day before. But it was still a pretty light day for exercise.

For breakfast (5pts) and lunch (6pts) there was only one new thing: a rice cake (1pt) instead of the meringues. I did have 3 cups of coffee at work for 3 points. (I was going to have 1 cup of regular coffee and 2 of decaf. I had a cup of regular, and then a cup of decaf, but on the third cup they ran out of decaf for the moment and so I just grabbed another cup of regular coffee, rather than waiting.) For dinner we had leftovers of the Zesty Cheese casserole (6pts) from the day before, and a couple of pieces of toast (1pt), and a WW Smoothie shake(3pts). For evening snacks I had a Mr. Cookieface (3pts), and 5 regular meringues (1pt). That brought my eating to a close with a total of 28.0 points for the day.

I drank 15 cups of water for 120 ounces (7.5 pounds). That was one cup short of a gallon.

I have been feeling better with my points being up in my range a bit. I was feeling a bit weak before, and as I said, last Friday I actually went to bed feeling hungry. Since then I have not been feeling hungry and I feel healthy. It is just a question of getting the right point value dialed in and then settling down there.

Last night I got to thinking about why I was losing weight, and the whole weight loss journey, and so I wrote the preceding extra entry in my journal.

It is hard to believe that 60 days have passed since I began, but they have. I am down 23 pounds as of today, and that is very good. When I got home from work yesterday, I weighed myself while still wearing my steel toed safety shoes, and keys, and with my cell phone hanging on my belt, and with my normal assortment of stuff in the pocket of my pants. I was mumbling something to myself that it would be nice to see it under 230. Before I started my journey, I used to do that to “whip myself” with how disgusting it would appear to read 250+ on the scale. Also, when I go to the doctor’s office, that is how they always weigh me. Well this time it read 227. I don’t know why (or maybe I do) but that made me feel really good. With my 10 pounds of clothes on, I weighed 10 pounds less than I normally used to with nothing on.

60 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

I stepped up on Mr. Scale this morning and he shouted, “BIG EVENT! BIG EVENT! 10%!!!” Okay, all he really said was, “215.5.” However that is a 24.0 pound loss from when I started at 239.5, or a loss of just over 10% of my original body weight.

Before Dotti started WWs this time around I had never heard of anyone focusing on 10% before. When I first heard about people earning their 10% I thought they had lost 10% of what they had to lose to goal, or they were one tenth of the way there. But then I found that they were actually celebrating losing 10% of their original body weight. Now that is a significant loss, and I could see why they celebrated. And now that I have lost my 10%, I only have 15.5 pounds to lose to goal. If I lost another 10% of my original body weight, or another 24 pounds, that would put me at 191.5, 8.5 pounds below my original goal, and well within my normal range. Depending on how things go after I make goal, I may very well continue down to where I hit my second 10%. I will never forget that 190 pounds was my threshold in the Navy for being under their standard for men on the percent of body fat measurement. But all that is the future, which is not yet mine. Today, I have 10% and that is enough to worry about for this single moment of time.

My exercise was quite limited yesterday at work, and when I got home Dotti and I stayed home for the evening. So, it was a nothing day for exercise.

My eating was pretty standard. Breakfast (5pts). Lunch was the same (6pts), including 2 chocolate meringues rather than a rice cake. I did eat two cucumbers and a Romaine lettuce heart for a zero point snack on the road. For dinner we split a Heaven’s Bistro Pizza (4.5pts) and had a 3 point 40 fluid ounce WWs smoothie blizzard that Dotti made up. That was a total of 18.5 points for my meals. For snacks during the day I had a cup of coffee (1pt), a Mr. Cookieface ice cream (3pts), 2 more chocolate meringues (1pt) and a fruit yogurt (2pts), bringing me to a total for the day of 25.5 points.

I had 15 cups of water yesterday, or 120 ounces (7.5 pounds). I cannot rave enough on how effective water is on filling me up. If I just sip it here and there it doesn’t do much, but if my stomach is growling at me and I don’t want to eat at the moment, I just chug 24 to 32 ounces of water in a just a few seconds of time. That fills me right up and I couldn’t eat another thing for a while anyway.

Last week I was eating too low, in fact I was below my point range. I only lost half a pound. This week I am eating better, feeling better and have already dropped 2 pounds. Tammy was telling me that very thing last week, which she had learned from all the people she had weighed in, and listening to their stories. Dotti also recently received an email from someone who needed to lose quite a bit of weight and still had difficulty, but only on a week where too few points were eaten. There is a lesson to be learned here. Stay within your points Al! Too low is bad, just like too high is. (Thank you Tammy!)

Well, I am off to face day number 62. It is hard to believe it is Thursday already. The weekend is nearly here!

61 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

The formula I came up with for the calculation was this:

WTG = ((CW - GW) * WK)/(SW - CW)

Where:

CW = the number of pounds in my current weight
GW = the number of pounds in my goal weight
WK = the number of weeks from initial weigh-in to current weigh-in
SW = the number of pounds in my starting weight
WTG = the projected number of weeks to reach goal

For example, on June 30, I weighed-in at 218. Figuring from May 19 when I weighed-in at 232, my CW was 218, GW was 200, WK was 6, SW was 232. So,

WTG = ( (218 - 200) * 6 ) / ( 232 - 218 )

WTG = ( 18 * 6 ) / (14)

WTG = 108 / 14

WTG = 7.7 weeks ( 7 weeks 5 days )

I happen to like this one because 7 weeks and 5 days after June 30 is August 23. For that particular projection, I would be making goal on my birthday.In order to reach goal on that date, I have to average a loss of 2.33 pounds per week. That is pushing it, and of course, what usually happens, is that weight loss falls off as one approaches goal. Therefore, none of these projections are really valid, but I couldn't help myself.

-Al-

Mr. Scale said, “216.0 pounds,” at 5:30 this morning.

It was a quiet day at work yesterday, and when I got home I suggested that we get out of the house. We went to Subway for a 6 inch sub, and on to the mall to get a 4 point ice cream cone.

We then stopped by Office Max to print up a new journal booklet that I put together with Excel. For about $18, the clerk ran 100 copies front and back (giving me 4 days per sheet or 400 days total), cut them into two separate books (200 days -- a little over half a year -- each) and bound them, along with a plastic cover on the front and a stiff blank sheet of white paper on the back. The one I have been using is very nice, but it costs $15 and only lasts 90 days, and over half of the space on the pages is left blank every day. There are columns for Calories, Fat, and Fiber, all of which I track under a “miscellaneous column” I label Points. It also lists Carbs and Protein in their own columns, which I do not track. So, there are 5 columns on each page that I leave blank every day. By eliminating those blank columns, I could put everything I need for a day on a single half page of 8x11 paper. I am over two-thirds done with my original journal, and in just under a month I will be moving over to one of the ones I just had put together.

My breakfast and lunch are pretty standard by now. I had 5 points for breakfast, and 7 points for lunch with a chocolate rice cake and a nectarine in place of the chocolate meringues. For dinner it was a 6 inch, 6 point sub and a 0-point diet drink. That was 18.0 points. For snacks, I had a cup of coffee at work (1pt), a Mr. Cookieface (3pts) when I first got home, 5 standard meringues (2pts) spread out over the evening, and an ice cream (4pts) at the mall. That added up to 10 points in snacks, for a total of 28 points for the day.

I drank 14 cups of water yesterday ( 112 ounces or 7 pounds). The final 32 ounces I drank down just before going to bed. I must have needed it because I was not up and down all night.

Tomorrow is my weigh-in for this week, and so today is one in which I try to not to do anything to disrupt my water level in my body, or to eat anything too heavy for my evening meal or snacks. We’ll see how I do at it tomorrow morning.I hope that I can at least move back to where I was yesterday and get my 10% on my weekly weigh-in this week. (Especially after all the wonderful, and supportive responses that I received yesterday from the thoughtful Zonies!) But no matter what, I know this has been a good week for me and I have been OP. That is all that really matters, because the rest will take care of itself in the long run.

62 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/217.5/200/BMI:27.0/WK-8/Weight Loss Graph

*** Weigh-in for WEEK 9 ***

Week Completed:	__9__
Weigh-In Weight:	215.0
Body Mass Index:	26.9
Week’s Average Points/Day:	26.1
Pounds lost this week:	2.5
Pounds lost total:	24.5
Pounds to go to 10%:	0.0*
Pounds to go to goal:	15.0
* Made 10%!!!

___________________________

Mr. Scale was feeling generous this morning as I stepped up at 7:00 AM and he said, "215.0 pounds!"

Yesterday I ended up on the road a lot driving from customer to customer and crisscrossing Portland, east to west, west to east and back and forth. I even ended up at a customer site in Washington State before I was finished. I made a real dent in my audio book.(On my way into work I was saying a few choice words when, as I was changing from one tape to the next, I found that the tape was a broken one. It had come that way from the library. So, when I got to the office I opened it up, cut out the bad inches of tape, which had probably caused the break in the first place when the last guy was listening to it, and spliced the pieces together. After reassembling the package, it played fine, and I don’t think I even missed a single word of the text from the cut and splice!)

When I got home, I spent a couple of hours assembling a small new desk we bought for my study. By the time I was done, I was hot and tired, but the desk looks like it will be a very good addition, and quite useful.

Yesterday, I ate breakfast (5pts) and lunch (7pts) with no changes from the norm. However, for dinner I had a very light and late meal. (The desk ran me well past my normal meal time. Dotti made me two tomato sandwiches (1pt) and a WW Smoothie (3pts). I also had two cups of coffee (2pts) during the day at work, and a Mr. Cookieface (3pts) ice cream sandwich about 8:30 when I realized that I had only eaten 18 points for the day. That made my total points for the day 21.0, which was a little lower than I wanted.

I did pretty bad on my water during most of the day. By the time I got home from work, I had only drunk 3 cups of water while driving in my van. I didn’t have any more water until after I finished with the desk. So, around 8:00 PM I started putting cups down me. I ended up drinking 15 cups (120 ounces) of water for the day. Of course I was getting rid of all that water during the night and right up until 7:00 AM this morning.

Today is the Zonie Walk and we have to get ready to go for that.

63 days OP, a lifetime to follow.

-Al-

239.5/215.0/200/BMI:26.9/WK-9/Weight Loss Graph