Week 48 Progress Report: Start Your Day Right

Greetings! First, the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	216.0
Original Target*:	216.2
Adjusted Target:	214.2
Actual Weight:	212.0
Loss/Gain:	– 4.0
Total Loss:	90.6
% of Goal:	65.4%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.9
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

And now for the Month 11 ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	212.8
Target Weight:	202.0
Actual Weight:	212.4
Loss/Gain:	– 0.4
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 0.1

Essentially, then, Month 11 was a wash. However, it could have been much worse: I could still be hovering around 215 – 216. That it ended a wash was because I got back on the program last week. As of this morning, I weighed 211.6, despite a large dinner and forgetting to log my bedtime snacks. The way my weigh-ins fluctuate, it’s not inconceivable for me to weigh in at 209 or slightly less by Monday, which would put me under the monthly curve and undo the last of the holiday excess.

An Episode of Weight-Loss Infidelity

Happy New Year! — as belated as this is.

The good news is, if I stay on top of things from here on out, I’ll still be able to make 164 by August 1, my original goal date. The bad news is, I won’t hit 196 by my birthday, and probably not by Feb. 11 … just not enough time left.

Yeah, I put on weight for Christmas.

I stopped tracking my intake. And I found it hard to start again. I lost some of it after Christmas morning, only to put it back on for the new year. Since New Year’s Eve, I’ve been hovering between 215 and 216.4. Three weeks ago, I was 13.8 pounds ahead of my original plan. As of Monday, I was only two pounds ahead. As of this morning, I’m 12.8 pounds over the monthly goal line.

Yesterday was the last straw: For reasons I can’t quite remember, I made a ham and cheese omelet sandwich. Seven hundred and ten calories, which I didn’t think about until I got around to logging my intake. When I finally crunched the numbers and saw the result, I said, “Okay, that’s enough! Get back to your program, Layne!” Sometimes, you just have to get mad at yourself to get over yourself.

Week 42 Progress Update: The Unexpected Milestone

Photos © 2019 Anthony S. Layne.
All rights reserved.

For once, I may be on time! Woo-hoo! So let’s start off as usual with the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	214.6
Original Target*:	227.0
Adjusted Target:	212.3
Actual Weight:	211.8
Loss/Gain:	– 2.8
Total Loss:	90.8
% of Goal:	65.5%
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.

Considering that this last week included Thanksgiving (and the thickest, densest, and most sugary slice of pumpkin pie I’ve ever had in my life), a 2.8-pound drop is fantastic. It also included a four-hour stint collecting for my Knights of Columbus Council’s charity fund, which according to my Samsung Health app meant about 9 miles’ worth of walking back and forth along a highway island. (Nevertheless, I still managed to get a slight uptick on the scale the next day, possibly due to finishing off that slice of pie.)

I started off the day a little depressed. I’d made the difficult decision to send an email to my lead agent resigning my appointment as an insurance agent and start looking for another job. It was at about 8:45 a.m. when I finally got around to logging my weight. After I’d posted it to the ticker (to your right, if you haven’t noticed it before), I looked at it and realized something I hadn’t thought of:

I have 47.8 pounds to go to reach my primary goal of 164. Less than 50 pounds.

Week 41 Progress Report: Giving Thanks On Thanksgiving

© 2019 Bitmoji.

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 36 Progress Report: An Epic of Excess

Image source: Flickr

So I’m a couple of days late. My sister’s family was in town for the inurning of my mother’s ashes. More on that in a bit; first, the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	222.6
Original Target*:	237.8
Adjusted Target:	220.3
Actual Weight:	220.6
Loss/Gain:	– 2.0
Total Loss:	82.0
% of Goal:	59.2%
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.

I knew that at least Saturday would be a “diet holiday” because Peggy, my sister, had found a “Tacos and Margaritas Tour” of downtown Dallas for us to try. You see, the last few trips she’s made out here, we were constrained to a very small radius of travel due to Mom’s health issues. Now that Mom, for better or worse, is not a limiting factor, she wanted to do something fun that wouldn’t require us to stay within five miles of Denton, which for all its charms is not especially noted for visitor-attracting entertainment.

And so, the Tacos and Margaritas Tour. Because tacos and margaritas.

Week 35 Progress Report: Sleep and Cookies

Image Source: Flickr

Let’s first look at the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	226.0
Original Target*:	239.6
Adjusted Target:	223.7
Actual Weight:	222.6
Loss/Gain:	– 3.4
Total Loss:	80.0
% of Goal:	57.7%
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.

Note first that the adjusted target reflects a 2.3-lbs./week loss rate rather than the 1.8 lbs./week I originally planned on. As I discussed in the month-end report, I’m shooting for less than 200 lbs. by January 1 as part of a 90-Day Challenge, so the adjusted target reflects the rate at which I need to drop to make that goal. It’s early days yet, but so far, the 166-kcal cut I had to take in my calorie budget has only slightly inconvenienced me. In fact, I’d say that as well as I’ve done over the last eight months, I’ve probably hindered myself more by not sleeping enough than by overeating.

For most if not all of my adult life, I’ve been a night owl, going to bed in the wee hours of the morning without even the bare excuse of partying all night. When I was younger, this was because I most often worked night shifts, whether it was at fast-food restaurants or call centers. More and more as I got older, though, either the nature of the business I was in or pressing financial concerns demanded varying shifts, extra hours, twice a second job. At the same time, my friends and family all eventually had regular day jobs with regular hours, so my social life often demanded that I wake up after minimal sleep, often as little as 3½ hours. Not surprisingly, this meant I occasionally overslept when my overtaxed body and mind demanded it.

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 33 Progress Report: Medical Matters and Not Too Much Information

So here are the weekly numbers, and we have a bit to talk about:

Starting Weight:	230.0
Original Target*:	243.2
Adjusted Target:	228.2
Actual Weight:	231.2
Loss/Gain:	+ 1.2
Total Loss:	71.4
% of Goal:	51.5%
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.

Thursday, I weighed in at 227.2, which took me past the 75-lb. loss mark. Yay me, right? Except that I noticed the right side of my face had swollen to the point that it was starting to creep into my visual range. I had had a little swelling for a few days, but I had thought it was an impacted sinus, which I’d had before. So I called Teladoc and paid $45 dollars for the doctor to tell me to go to the ER.

The ER doctor treated the swelling, which was cellulitis, as almost a side issue — he was much more concerned about the polyp in my right nostril which I’d had for several years. The doctor was concerned because my blood oxygen was down to 88%. So he ordered a CT scan and called in a local ENT to consult on the case. Turns out the polyp was only “benign” so far as cancer goes. Over the last 5½ years, it had been slowly growing inside my face. So the ENT ended up removing the mass in an endoscopic examination.

When I was discharged, my blood oxygen was at 98%, my BP at 112/72, and my pulse a slow but healthy 48 bpm. Amazing what having two working nostrils can do, huh? Ah, lovely oxygen! Two morals from this: 1) Never let financial concerns keep you from taking care of a health issue; and 2) No matter how smart you are — if you’re not a doctor, you shouldn’t try to guess which health issues are serious and which aren’t. Being smart is not the same thing as being wise.

While I was there, I began to notice that something else was wrong ….

Week 32 Progress Report: Dealing with Skin Sag; or, Rewriting the Food Script

I broke away in the middle of writing this report to empty out, clean, and spray down the pantry with bug spray, a task that took a little longer than I expected … like 11 hours. Anyway, here are the box scores from yesterday’s weigh-in:

Starting Weight:	233.0
Original Target*:	245.0
Adjusted Target:	231.2
Actual Weight:	230.0
Loss/Gain:	– 3.0
Total Loss:	72.6
% of Goal:	52.4%
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.

Although I finished slightly above the plan month target line, when you plan for only slightly less than two pounds a week, a three-pound drop is nothing to sneer at. In fact, the number reflects a bounce up from Sunday (229.4 lbs.), which was significantly below the line. The chicken parmesan, made by Your Humble Writer, was worth it. And today, yesterday’s hard work resulted in a 0.8-lb. drop, even after finishing the day with a bag of popcorn with some nutritionally horrific butter oil added to it. Je ne regrette rien.

Of course, having lost so much weight in a comparatively little time — about 7½ months to lose what I gained over about seven years — I notice that some areas, particularly around my torso, are “sagging, bagging, and dragging,” as I heard Dolly Parton once put it. Your skin isn’t like a rubber band to begin with. And years of processed foods, smoking, and not drinking enough water, not to mention the slow surrender of a middle-aged body to Time, have reduced my skin’s elasticity.

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.

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.