Week 20 Progress Report: Ordeal and Triumph

The last two weeks I missed my updates,  partially because I’ve been in a writing slump and partially because my mother slightly cracked her pelvic bone, the latter of which demands more physical assistance from me. But I’m happy to report some very good news:

Starting Weight:	252.2
Original Target*:	266.6
Adjusted Target:	250.4
Actual Weight:	249.6
Loss/Gain:	– 2.6
Total Loss:	53.0
% of Goal:	38.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.7
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

When I started this project, my first major goal was to get under 250 lbs. by Sept. 1. That goal has now been officially achieved—two months ahead of schedule.

Back in March, I gave a couple of examples of how being over 250 lbs. closed things off for me. “At Six Flags Dallas’ Water World in 2006, I was mortified to discover that a couple of the slides I wanted to try were closed off to people over 250 lbs. A similar maximum weight applied to the attic stairs at my last residence; every trip up those stairs to store items or change the furnace filter found me wincing at the thought of a step snapping under my foot.”

Well, I’m not about to run to Water World to hit the slides just at this moment; that’s always more fun with other people. Besides, given the hinkiness of home scales and their general inaccuracy when compared to professional doctor’s-office quality scales, I want to put a little more distance between me and 250 before I go challenging the big slides. But I’ll bet that I can ride coach on an airliner without an extension for the seat belt again.

I should also note that for a while during the silent weeks, I was starting to lose the discipline. Although I’m still far ahead of the curve I set at the beginning, I’m a pound behind for the month ending 7/11/19. June 21 was an especially weak day, as my brother made a pasta and tilapia dish from a Johnny Carino’s copycat recipe that’s full of fat from cream and butter; the next morning, my weight had shot up 3.2 lbs.! (Considering that the next morning 2.6 of those pounds had come back off, I wonder how much of that spike was general scale hinkiness.) So I missed the June Challenge goal of losing 10 pounds; to date, I’ve only successfully completed one of Lose It’s challenges.

But for now, I’ve got a major goal accomplished that offsets the minor disappointments. The next intermediate goal is < 233.3 lbs., the halfway mark between my start weight and my program goal weight of 164. At my calculated average of 1.8 lbs./week, it should take just over 9 weeks, or until about 9/3, making 9/1 a reachable goal. The next major goal is < 225 by 1/1/20; I can conceivably reach it by mid-October. But when I reach 233, I’ll have hit my minimum intake threshold of 1,500 kcal and will have to increase my activity or start intermittent fasting to compensate. That, however, is in the future.

I’ll need some more pants and a new belt very soon.