Week 15 Progress Report: A Diet Holiday

Let’s begin with yesterday’s numbers:

Starting Weight:	259.4
Original Target*:	275.6
Adjusted Target:	257.6
Actual Weight:	257.2
Loss/Gain:	– 2.2
Total Loss:	45.4
% of Goal:	32.8%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 3.0
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, of course, so taking care of my usual chores plus preparing for the evening’s feasting meant little time for writing. But, as I posted on Facebook, I’d mentally prepared for the day by declaring a “diet holiday” (see Rule #11 of the weight-loss plan).

The whole point of the “diet holiday” is to allow an occasional day of splurging without guilt. Holidays like Memorial Day, when we Americans traditionally overindulge in food and drink, are good days for this sort of thing because they’re few and far between. Big family get-togethers, too. Birthday parties, meh, not so much — it depends on how many parties you really attend; otherwise, you could probably pass on the cake they brought to your office. Unless it’s your birthday.

Week 14 Progress Report: A Couple of Observations

This will be a short report:

Starting Weight:	262.4
Original Target*:	277.4
Adjusted Target:	260.6
Actual Weight:	259.4
Loss/Gain:	– 3.0
Total Loss:	43.2
% of Goal:	31.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 3.1
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As I was logging my weekly weigh-in, I noticed that on the spreadsheet I created to track my weekly progress, I had originally stated my first goal to be at or under 250 lbs. by Sept. 1. At the time, it seemed reasonable because I’d only planned to lose 1.8 lbs./week. Besides, the last time I ran this program, it had taken me from Valentine’s Day to September 1, 2009 to lose 47 pounds. Fifty-three pound in roughly the same amount of time seemed optimistic but not unrealistic.

Now I’m on track to pass that goal by mid-June, a full two and a half months ahead of schedule. This also implies that I’ll meet my second original major goal, ≤ 225 by Jan. 1, about the beginning of October.

Week 13 Progress Report: Settling Down for the Long Haul

I’m only a little overdue for the weekly report:

Starting Weight:	264.2
Original Target*:	279.2
Adjusted Target:	262.4
Actual Weight:	262.4
Loss/Gain:	– 1.8
Total Loss:	40.2
% of Goal:	29.0%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 3.1
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

It’s also past time for the monthly report, which is graphed in the upper left. On the monthly charts, the target weight is calculated from the first day of the month, while the master chart is calculated from the starting weight. Unlike last month, in which the “actual” line was far more often above the “target” line than below it, this month the “actual” was consistently below the “target”, though not always as far below it as I would have liked. This next month is already off to a rocky start, as I’m almost a pound over where I should be. However, since the target drops a little less than 0.3 lbs./day and my weight can fluctuate as much as 1 lb./day, I can get back on track pretty rapidly.

To date, I’ve lost 40 pounds in three months, or about 13.3 pounds a month. Not bad when you only plan to lose about 7.7 – 8 pounds a month. I now have about 98 pounds to lose in order to achieve a BMI of 24.9, which would be in the “healthy” range. However, as I’ve noted before, the rate has slowed down; I can’t plan on big drops now any more than I planned on the big drops in the first six weeks. This is where patience and determination have to take over and get me through the long haul because at just under 2 pounds a week, it’s going to take a bit more than a year to shed all that weight. Probably longer, because I fully expect the rate to slow more once I pass the halfway point.

And that’s not thinking about any plateaus.

Week 12 Progress Report: No Longer Morbid

First, apologies for missing Week 11; it was another hectic week. So let’s give the numbers for Week 12:

Starting Weight:	265.0
Original Target*:	281.0
Adjusted Target:	263.2
Actual Weight:	264.2
Loss/Gain:	– 0.8
Total Loss:	38.4
% of Goal:	27.7%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 3.2
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

It was a weird week. There were no days of egregious overeating; yet for a few days, I was going backward, gaining about half a pound a day. Contrast this with Monday, when I blew the calorie budget out of the water with a slice of a humongous deep-dish Dutch apple pie baked by a local chain called Emporium Pies and named “Lord of the Pies”, yet managed to lose a pound. (To account for this on Lose It!, I counted it as two slices of an ordinary Dutch apple pie — it really is that big!) As I’ve said before, we who count calories work with all sorts of uncertain numbers, so there’s nothing for it but to trust the process.

But even more pleasing than having lost the pound after the Epicurean delight of the pie was stepping on the scale this morning: 262.4! In two days, not only have I lost almost 2 pounds, but I had also achieved the first of my secondary goals — a BMI of 39.9, which takes me out of the “morbidly obese” category. I still have 66 pounds (plus or minus) to go before I’m merely overweight, but I’m about 38% of the way there. It also means I’ve lost just over 40 pounds in less than three months, which is a significant accomplishment.