Week 95 Update

On this six hundred, 3 score and 6th day of my journey, I woke up and the house was quiet, with my wife and son sleeping soundly. The rain was dropping lightly on the roof and the temperature was 40° at 05:30 when I stepped up on Mr.Scale, and he said, "185.0 pounds!" Right on my target weight again finally.

This week I have worked on holding my points down to get the scale back on track, and I ended up averaging 39.43 points per day. That is down from 44.79 last week, and 47.86 two weeks ago. (In fact this week was the first time that I recall, where my aerobic points were actually higher than my average points per day!) It seems to be working.

Since my goal with the exercise was to replace fat weight with muscle weight, I think I am being at least somewhat successful. I can already see some changes in the muscles in my arms and legs from all the exercising. I can feel the abdominal muscles have definitely shaped up significantly. I still have a long ways to go, but I feel like I am on the right track.

For exercise this week I started off last Saturday with an hour and 15 minutes of basketball with my son LeRoy. That was easily the most fun I had all week for exercise! We warmed up for a while and then ended up playing 5 games of one-on-one. By the time we had finished I was exhausted. LeRoy has not had the opportunity to play basketball at sea the last 7 months, and he was rusty. With all the practicing I have been doing that gave me an advantage. He is only an inch shorter than me, and his young legs jump higher than mine do, so we were about even in that area. He is in pretty good shape from going up and down the ladders on the ship, so all in all, we matched up about even, and the games showed it. We swapped off winning the games. I won the first one, and he won the second and so on. The winning and losing was not the important part, it was finally having the opportunity to have my son on the court playing with me again. For the last game and a half, Dotti came in after her exercise on the machines, and she was rooting for us both. It was like LeRoy and I both had "home court advantage." :^)

The basketball added up to 11.25 aerobic points, and I felt like I had earned every one of them. My muscles were a bit sore the next couple of days. (If I had not been working out before, I would have been lame from soreness!)

On Sunday, I went back to the gym early in the morning, and I did an upper body workout (including abdominal) on the weight machines, and then, rather than doing my normal basketball routine, since I was still feeling the effects of playing on Saturday, I walked on the treadmill. I did 3 miles in 39:37 and I was sweating pretty good by the end of it. It added up to 9.63 aerobic points.

I took a day off from exercise on Monday, and then walked 2 miles on Tuesday at lunch. It took 25:51 and gave me 5.93 more aerobic points. Wednesday I rested again. At lunch I told myself that the weather was too bad for walking (windy as well as rainy), and so I would go to the gym in the evening. When I got home in the evening, I decided to just relax. However, Thursday morning I woke up at 04:30, and so I hopped up and went to the gym before work. I got in a lower body workout on the weight machines, and did 30 minutes of basketball. I pushed the basketball hard and was tired at the end of the workout.

Friday, I walked at lunch. The rain had been falling in the morning, but when I came out for lunch, the sun was poking its nose through the overcast. I couldn't tell if he was just taking a quick peek, and then back to the rain, or if the weather would hold off for my entire walk. So, I grabbed my umbrella and carried it with me just in case as I walked my 3 miles in 41:24. That was good for another 9.04 aerobic points, and brought my total for the week to over 40 aerobic points – 10 over my goal!

I feel like my endurance is increasing, as well as my muscles toning up. My times on my walks are improving. Some of my miles are starting to come in under 13 minutes, with no jogging. (I haven't attempted any jogging yet.) I have started pushing my speed up to 5.0 mph for short bursts on the treadmill, and I hope to reach the point where I can do an entire mile at that speed before too much longer. (That would be a 12 minute mile.) The main thing that I have noticed is that when I take a normal pace, without intentionally trying to push it, I am walking faster than a 15 minute mile, and closer to 14:30. Lastly, when I do push it, and get a time in under 13 minutes, I don't feel bad afterwards. My body recovers and I feel back to normal much faster than I used to after a 15 minute mile. The benefits are accumulating from all the exercising.

On the eating side of the equation, I held my points down this week. I started off looking really bad on the scale. On Saturday, I weighed in at 186.5. I ate 43.0 points, and Sunday my weight jumped up to 188.0. Yuk! So, I held my points down to 27.0, and on Monday my weight had dropped to 185.0. I liked that. I held my points down to 35.5 just in case, and my weight bounced up to 187.5 on Tuesday. So, I ate 31.0 points and my weight dropped Wednesday morning to 184.0. Back to 45.5 points for that day, and the scale responded with 185.0 pounds on Thursday. I ate 48.5 points (I was not tracking quite so closely that day, as I had been earlier in the week) and Friday I was up to 186.0. I ate 45.5 points yesterday, and today I was right on track with 185.0, even with all the exercise this week.

For water, I averaged 102.86 ounces a day, which rounds off to a lucky 13 cups a day. I didn't have any days where my number of cups fell below 11 all week long.

After 665 days of my journey, if you average all of the points I have eaten over all of the days, it comes to 37.3. (When I hit my goal weight of 190 pounds, I had averaged only 25.9 points per day up to that point.) That is up one full point since Christmas, when I had averaged 36.3. When you have 665 data points to work with, it takes a lot of time in order to move the average up or down significantly.

1 year, 300 days OP, a lifetime to follow

-Al-

6 '3" 239.5/185.0/185±2/BMI:23.12/WK-95
Weight Loss Graph/Year 1 Maint. Graph/Year 2 Maint. Graph/Success Story