Week 41 Progress Report: Giving Thanks On Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for three weeks. I recently went back to work as a health insurance agent, so getting my business off the ground has eaten more and more of my available time. During that period, I got seriously off-track for my 90-Day Challenge Goal; I may fall short by a pound or two. First, the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	216.0
Original Target*:	228.8
Adjusted Target:	213.7
Actual Weight:	214.6
Loss/Gain:	– 1.4
Total Loss:	88.0
% of Goal:	63.5%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.1
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

Next, the month-ending numbers for November 11:

Starting Weight:	224.8
Target Weight:	215.3
Actual Weight:	217.6
Loss/Gain:	– 7.2
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.6

Now, as of this morning, I weigh 212.4. That’s about 1.5 lbs. over the 90-Day Challenge target line, which (all things considered) isn’t bad. The fact remains that the general trend is still downward. Even if I miss the 90-Day Challenge goal, I can still make the goal of being at or under 196 by my 56th birthday.

I’m grateful.

Week 31 Progress Report: Loving Yourself Back to Health

So here, on time for once, are the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	234.6
Original Target*:	246.8
Adjusted Target:	232.8
Actual Weight:	233.0
Loss/Gain:	– 1.6
Total Loss:	69.6
% of Goal:	50.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.2
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As I reported yesterday, I suffered an inexplicable 2-lb. spike on Thursday which took the burnish off crossing the 50% mark on Wednesday. I lost most but not all of it on Friday and had a completely awesome dinner that night which cost me 0.4 lbs. on Saturday. Compared to the plan-month target line, I’m over by 1.5 lbs. However, considering the two upticks this week, I did pretty good and am still well ahead of where I originally planned to be. One and a half pounds down for the week is much better than a pound and a half up. Take the victories you get.

This morning, one of my Lose It! friends posted a quote from Ijeoma Oluo: “You can’t hate your body into a shape you will love.” (Ijeoma, you will remember, is the woman who lost weight only to come to resent the change in people’s attitude toward her.)

I agree you can’t hate your body into a shape you will love. But by the same token, you can’t wish away obesity’s damage to your health. Losing weight is not about hating your body. It’s about treating your body with the love and respect it deserves. (It’s about treating food with the respect it deserves, too.) My body has been trying to tell me for a long time, in ways both subtle and obvious, that it doesn’t like the way I treat it and that, if I go on abusing it, it will break down good and proper.

Weight Wackiness and Envy: Competition vs. Comparison

On Sept. 11, as I told you in the last post, my weight dipped below the 50% mark on my weight-loss plan — for the first time. Yes, you read that right. The next day, for some unfathomable reason, it shot up again a whole two pounds. I’ve said before that fluctuations like this can happen even when you do everything right. So, after screaming in my head about the unfairness of it, I shrugged and went on with my program. On Friday, it dropped back down 1.6 pounds, which was good even though it didn’t completely erase the jump up. Back a little across the halfway line.

The people on Lose It! cheer every little drop, no matter how small, and offer encouraging thoughts for holds and upticks. One friend, Marjorie, joked that she was “totally jealous” about the drop. When I said I didn’t know why she was jealous, she replied, “Because I get excited when I lose 0.5 lbs. in one day so to drop 1.6 lbs. is wishful thinking for me and totally awesome that you did!” (I have to think Marjorie is an age peer because of her use of ’80s lingo. When I’m not writing and with my friends, it all comes out: totally, fer sure, excellent, bogus, gnarly, “I’m like”, dude (regardless of sex or gender), etc. Totally for us is what literally is for young millennials — a clean all-purpose intensive.)

I reminded Marjorie, “If you lose [an average] 0.2 lbs. per day, you’re losing 1.4 lbs. a week. That’s a great, safe rate to drop. Again, I don’t know how much of the ± 1-lb. fluctuations I sometimes (SOMETIMES) get are scale wackiness and how much are body wackiness. Don’t envy me; you’re doing great!”

Wackiness … what a terrific word to describe the effect of imprecision on weight loss. It’s like playing blackjack: Even if you don’t cross the (objective) “bust” line, you still have to beat the dealer, whose hand is also variable. Nevertheless, there are winning strategies that don’t guarantee victory in every hand but can generally lead to leaving the table with more than you sat down with.

But in sensible weight loss, you’re not really competing against another person. The complete set of physical, emotional, and social or environmental challenges each person faces in weight loss is unique. Put differently, we all play against different dealers under house rules that vary slightly from table to table. That’s why, while group goals and challenges can be motivating and fun, you should never take them so seriously that you interpret someone else’s progress as an implicit reflection (and judgment) against you.

Closet-Diving and Memories

Tonight, I went closet-diving. “Closet-diving” is when you go through your clothes to check the fit of older items you put away for “when I lose a few pounds.” A female acquaintance described it as something women do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if other men besides me kept some skinnier clothes from bygone days.

It started this morning when I put on my white guayabera shirt, one piece of a huge selection of clothes that a former coworker had given me after her husband lost a lot of weight and, ignorant of this fact, I had complained to her about the bareness of my wardrobe. (It was an incredibly generous gift; the total donation was easily worth $1,000 even in 2007.) A 3XL, I noticed with some amusement that the guayabera is now beginning to fit like a muumuu. Nevertheless, I wore it all day because guayaberas and tropical prints are good shirts to wear on a north-central Texas summer day, especially on “casual Friday.”

About an hour ago, after my brother had come home from dinner with his not-quite-ex-wife (I’ll leave you to wonder about that because I wonder, too), I mentioned the capacious Cuban shirt to him. “I’ll have to check out Goodwill,” I told him, “because this is the best of my tropical shirts. The rest are looking pretty ratty.”

“Hold on a moment,” Ted replied. He dived into his walk-in closet and found an ivory guayabera and a light-blue tropical print that hadn’t been taken out of the cleaner bags for some time. The tropical print was 2XL; it fits loose but good and is attractive as well.

The guayabera is a large. Not extra-large … merely large. And it fits. Not even a slight bit of strain at the button over my belly. That’s what prompted the closet-dive.

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!