Week 94 Update

It was 05:30, and 37° when I stepped up on Mr. Scale, and he said, "186.5 pounds!"

I have found that since I have started exercising regularly my weight has been holding to the upper half of my target range, rather than the lower half. In fact I made an effort the last few days to start lowering my points to see if I could bring it down a bit; especially when I hit 187.0 on Friday, after having several days where I was 186.5 during the week. That tells me that I need to make an adjustment.

My average weight for the week was 186.36 (up from 185.79 last week), which is creeping up towards the top of my range. My average points-per-day was 44.79, down from 47.86 last week. Comparing my pounds-per-point average I went from 3.88 last week, to 4.16 this week. (Or from 0.258 points-per-pound to .240.)

So, it may be from the exercise, but my weight has been creeping up while my points have been moving downward. In any case, I will have to focus on keeping my points a little lower this week and see if I can move the scale back down to 185.0. I am still in my target range, but I am losing the flexibility of having some "wiggle room" above where I am currently located. I will see if I can get that back this week.

As for exercise, I did fairly well this week. I reached my goal of having over 30 aerobic points, for the fifth week in a row! I made it to the gym on Sunday, and Thursday, where I did my weight training for an upper and lower body workout respectively, and 30 minutes of basketball on both days. I added an optional new section of path to my walking routine at lunch that adds a mile when desired, with a little variety in scenery. It may be slightly more than a mile, but it is pretty close. On Monday and Wednesday I walked the added mile along with my normal 2 miles. On Monday I walked the three miles in 42:53. (Mile one: 15:21; mile two: 13:32; mile three: 14:00) That average 4.2 mph for the entire trip. For my fastest mile it was 4.43 mph. On Tuesday I took a rest. Then, on Wednesday I walked the three mile course again. This time it took longer (44:28) because I did not push it, and I walked at slightly slower pace. (Mile one: 15:15; mile two: 14:33; mile three: 14:40) So, I averaged 14:49 per mile (4.05 mph) and walked at 4.12 mph on my fasted mile. On Friday I walked my regular 2 mile course in 28:00. (Mile one: 13:54; Mile two: 14:06) That was a nice 4.28 mph pace, which I was happy with, considering that the weather had changed, and it was raining throughout the entire walk and I was carrying my umbrella. (The other two days I had to wear my sunglasses because the sun was blindingly bright.)

The difference in aerobic points because of adding the extra mile was between 2.5 and 3, depending on how hard I pushed the walk. On the first day, when I walked it in 42:53, it came to 8.59, which is almost the same as playing basketball for a full hour. (9.0 points) Normally my two mile walk is good for 5 or 5.5 points. The downside of doing the 3 mile walk is that it doesn't leave me much time to eat my lunch, or read my book afterwards. I am not sure if I am going to stay with the 2 mile walk, change to the 3 mile walk regularly, or just alternate between them depending on how I feel.

In any case, in spite of the two days off from exercise this week, I still met my goal of over 30 aerobic points and I am happy about that. I did miss my goal of at least 3 visits to the gym, and I will have to work on doing better on that this week.

For eating, I started off high, having 50.5 points on Saturday, and then 47.5 points on Sunday. But since my weight was staying up at 186.0 or 186.5, I started dropping my points. I had 45.5 on Monday, and then 42.0 on Tuesday. That dropped me down from 186.5 to 186.0 pounds. I had 45.5 points on Wednesday, and I fell to 185.5. I was thinking that I was right on track then, and so on Thursday I had 42.0 points just to make sure I had things under control. My weight jumped up to 187.0! So, on Friday I only ate 41.0 points, and today I came in at 186.5. It looks like I will be eating low points this week.

LeRoy made it home last night and Dotti and I are really enjoying having him here for a visit this weekend. We plan to go to the gym this morning and hopefully he and I can get in a little basketball.

Our weather has been so nice the last few weeks that it seems strange that we have actually had 3/4 of an inch more rain than normal for the year so far. February was actually drier than normal (only 2.37 inches of rain compared with 4.18 inches that we normally get) but January was wetter and so we have received 10.01 inches of rain so far compared with the 9.25 that is normal. Even though I took my walk in the rain yesterday, it is sunny today!

1 year, 293 days OP, a lifetime to follow -Al-

6 '3" 239.5/186.5/185±2/BMI:23.31/WK-94
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story