Month 8 Progress Report: Challenges and Milestones

This is actually the first time I’ve reported the month-end numbers separately from week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	232.8
Target Weight:	225.1
Actual Weight:	224.8
Loss/Gain:	– 8.0
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.9

A friend of mine started a private 90-Day Challenge group on Facebook to end the year strong. Members could pick their own challenge and the others would cheer them on. For my challenge, I chose what had been a “stretch goal”: under 200 lbs. by New Year’s Day.

For the purposes of the challenge, I chose Oct. 3 as the start date so Day 90 would fall on Jan. 1, 2020. But because I waited to take off the weight I gained in the hospital, I didn’t actually sit down to do the calculations for the challenge plan until Oct. 7. Achieving the goal, I found, would mean shaving another 166 kcal off my daily budget.

On paper, my budget was already close to the recommended 1,500 kcal/day minimum recommended by the NIH for men. Over the last 4 weeks, however, I’ve averaged about 1,643 kcal in my actual intake, due to my activity. The Lose It! app subtracts calories burned in activity from your intake. So long as I maintain a certain level of activity, then, I can still eat over 1,500 kcal/day and remain within my budget.

Enter Challenge #2: maintaining that “certain level of activity.”

Week 30 Progress Report: In the Backstretch

As I promised yesterday, here are the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	237.6
Original Target*:	248.6
Adjusted Target:	235.8
Actual Weight:	234.6
Loss/Gain:	– 2.2
Total Loss:	68.0
% of Goal:	49.1%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.3
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

And here are the month-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	239.2
Target Weight:	231.2
Actual Weight:	232.8
Loss/Gain:	– 6.4
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.4

As I said yesterday, I missed the month-ending goal by 1.6 lbs. However, it’s a new month with a new goal: 225.1 lbs. I’m five pounds away from completing the Halloween challenge; I should have that knocked out by the beginning of October. The next secondary goal is the 2/3rds mark, ≤ 210.2, which is only slightly above my year-end goal; more than likely, the weigh-in that achieves one will achieve the other as well. Already, I’m close to the weight range in which I spend most of my twenties and thirties — still obese, but far less so than when I was in my forties. (My ideal range is something I passed when I was a young teenager and shorter than I am now.)

By the way, I didn’t tell you I have hypothyroidism. Not taking your hypothyroid medication does make it harder to lose weight. That partially (but not sufficiently) explains the period from 8/23 to about 9/6, when my weight went back up and wouldn’t come down: I had run out of levothyroxine and put off picking up the refills. No more of that.

Just shy of 70 pounds in seven months. That’s quite a feat, no matter how you look at it. And it all began pretty much on a whim.

Week 24 Progress Report: The Forest and the Trees

So I’m late again, but it’s all for the best because I have something to add. First, Monday’s numbers:

Starting Weight:	242.6
Original Target*:	259.4
Adjusted Target:	240.8
Actual Weight:	241.6
Loss/Gain:	– 1.0
Total Loss:	61.0
% of Goal:	44.0%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.5
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As I reported last week, I “gained” about a pound from choosing a permanent spot for my scale, so I wasn’t disappointed by losing only a pound overall. However, I did entertain the hope that today, Aug. 1, would find me ≤ 240. It didn’t happen.

In laying out the Project Nemesis plan, I wrote, “One week, you’ll do everything right and gain 1.5 pounds. The next week, you’ll blow your diet big time one day and your weight at the end of the week is down 1.5 pounds.” It can happen daily, too. Tuesday was full of activity and I had plenty of calories to spare on the budget when I went to bed. When I woke up, however, my wonky scale informed me that I’d jumped from 240.8 to 243. What. The. Hell. Yesterday was full of activity as well; however, I got hit with the late-night munchies and polished off half a bag of Rold Gold pretzels “off the books.” This morning, the aforementioned wonky scale said that I was back down to 241. Fine, except the 2-pound spike had spoiled my small hope to be under 240 today.

Week 23 Progress Report: Staying Honest and Marine Fitness Goals

Late again. *sigh* Monday was a day of doctor’s office visits for my mother; Tuesday and Wednesday full of other writing obligations; Thursday was spent doing some housecleaning. So here, at last, are Monday’s numbers:

Starting Weight:	244.8
Original Target*:	261.2
Adjusted Target:	243.0
Actual Weight:	242.6
Loss/Gain:	– 2.2
Total Loss:	60.0
% of Goal:	43.3%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.6
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

That’s right—60 pounds in 23 weeks, or 18.6 pounds ahead of where I’d planned to be. There’s an oddity, though: My scale gives different weights at different places on the bathroom floor. There’s always a bit of temptation to play with the scale any way you can to eke out another couple fifths of a pound or to zero out a gain. There have been days I’ve weighed myself about a dozen times, looking for the “sweet spot” on the floor where the scale registers the lowest. And the variation is pretty wild, as much as 5.2 pounds. (No fooling—while choosing a permanent spot for the scale this morning, I registered a high of 245 and a low of 239.8.)

It’s ridiculous to game the system for a pound or two. Cui bono? If all I’ve lost is 55 pounds, that’s still far better than I’d planned to have done by now. In any event, I’ve chosen a spot where two lines intersect as a reference point; there the scale stays. It added a pound to my weigh-in, despite my activity and economies yesterday, but fluctuations are part of the game. I’m still on track for the month.

To tell the truth, if I had my druthers (and the money), I’d have a professional scale. The best one on the market offers full body composition reports. It’s also 100 times more expensive than an el-cheapo digital scale you can get at Walmart. Not having an extra $4,000 to spare, I guess I’ll stick to my spastic old model.

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.

Some Thoughts on Becoming Sexier

Image source: vectortoons.com.

The last time I successfully lost weight for any length of time was in 2009, ten years ago. From February of that year to September, I dropped from 324 lbs. to 280, a 46-lb. drop. Then I tried to quit smoking ....

On Friday, I weighed in at 278.4. This morning, the scale read 276.6.

It wasn’t part of my intermediate goals to break 280. After all, that was only a drop of 22.6 lbs. from my starting weight. Having lost 46 lbs. before, I was morally certain I could lose a mere 22. 

Thinking about it now, though, my inner smartass can’t help but quip, So okay, it took you 10 years to lose 50 pounds!

So what? It’s still 50 pounds. Another 112.6 to go. It would be nice to get there before I turn 60, though. Even better if I’m slim before my high school class’ 40th reunion. Talk about goals!

Week 5 Progress Report: The Lost Week

Sorry this is a day late!

Beginning Weight:	280.2
Original Target*:	293.6
Adjusted Target:	278.4
Actual Weight:	281.0
Gain/Loss:	+ 0.8
Total Gain/Loss:	– 21.6
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	4.3
*Original target calculated on a beginning weight 302.6 lbs. and an average loss of 1.8 lbs./wk.

The last week was filled with fluctuations, largely due to bad meal planning, from Friday night’s eggplant Parmesan to Sunday’s combination of corned beef and colcannon (not to mention a rich and fat-laden cake) to yesterday’s scrambled-egg sandwich and homemade pizza (not the same meal). Sunday was intended to be a “diet holiday”; Monday, however, was not.

Call it “the lost week.” As in, “I lost my mind.” The whole point of this program is to become more mindful of my eating habits. I tell people to trust the process; but for the process to work, you have to do your part by budgeting your intake. That means thinking ahead — planning what you eat instead of letting yourself be ruled by whim and opportunity.

So okay, I’ve got the excess out of my system, more or less, and learned how to make a loaf of tasty rye bread. As far as the pizza goes, it would have worked much better and had fewer calories with half the meat. (In fairness, I haven’t worked in a pizza restaurant for almost three decades, so I had forgotten how to portion supreme-type pizzas.) Time to get back on the wagon.

Eating the Elephant: Setting Intermediate Goals

Of course, when you’re first starting a weight-loss program, you have an ideal weight to reach as your final goal, right? Sure you do. But if you’re obese — particularly if you’re morbidly obese (BMI ≥ 40) — you also want to have smaller intermediate goals. Why? Because success leads to success. The more small goals you knock off, the closer you get to the big goal. Achieving the smaller goals gives you things to celebrate in anticipation of the ultimate success.

Here’s another consideration: Once, when I was working myself into despair over the size a project my friend Larry and I were working on, Larry asked me, “How do you eat an elephant?” Puzzled, I couldn’t reply. He quietly answered, “One bite at a time.” Big, overwhelming tasks always less daunting once you break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Losing 100 pounds or more is easier to achieve if you break it into a series of smaller goals. And each goal you achieve means less of the elephant to eat.

The Final Goal

 First, let’s talk about the big goal:

The healthy BMI range is from 18.5 to 24.9, which when translated into pounds turns out to be a big plus-or-minus — just over 20 pounds if you’re 4'10", but over 50 pounds if you’re 6'4". It’s tempting to just pick a BMI out of your hat or choose a weight within that range that sounds right.

But there really are big- and small-boned people out there: people whose skeletal and muscular mass are less or greater than average. The key is not your weight so much as it is your fat-to-muscle ratio. This ratio varies according to not only sex but also age and your general activity level, but isn’t affected by the size of your bones or the width of your skeletal frame.

Here’s my idea: Get within the healthy range now; fine-tune your fat ratio later. The graphic above left is a range of weights in pounds at various heights in inches that approximate a BMI of 24.9 or slightly less. (In case you’re a math wonk: BMI = weight in kilograms times the square of height in meters.) Pick the weight that corresponds to your height and use that as a provisional final goal. Once you get your weight below that number, then there are a few alternatives for checking your body composition which vary in cost, availability, and accuracy.