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 22 Progress Report … and Nothing Else

I’m on time for once! Here are the box scores for this last week:

Starting Weight:	248.8
Original Target*:	263.0
Adjusted Target:	247.0
Actual Weight:	244.8
Loss/Gain:	– 4.0
Total Loss:	57.8
% of Goal:	41.7%
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.

It seems that over the last month or so, I’ve been trading weeks of good drops with weeks of marginal losses: 0.8, 2.4, 1.0, 2.6, 0.8, 4.0. But then, the low-drop weeks had special events which involved a feast of some sort. From Memorial Day through today, I’ve been averaging about a 1.8 lbs./week loss rate, which is what I’d planned for all along, so the fluctuations even out. I don’t expect another family feast episode until mid-August when some family comes in from Arizona. Even then, I’ve got so many delicious recipes with low calorie counts that I can keep everyone happy while still managing my plan.

On the clothes front: The khakis I bought three months ago are now a tad bit loose. The belt I bought to go with them is now on the fourth notch. My closet-dive didn’t produce much in the way of pants with smaller waists, and all but two of my slacks are now way too big for me. So I figure by the end of August, I’ll have to buy not only a couple more pairs of khakis but also some slacks and a pair of jeans—with 40" waists. (I do have shorts—which I can fit into now—but I haven’t been keen on shorts since the year I burnt the hell out of the backs of my knees working a pushcart in Gene Leahy Mall. Some things just stay with you, like crabgrass.)

I’m sorry I have no deeper thoughts or interesting stories to share this time. But hopefully, I’ll have a couple of recipes posted later this week. Until then, feel free to share your own successes and concerns, or to write to me with questions. Have a great week!

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.

Week 21 Progress Report: Some Episodes of Gluttony

This week, I purposely delayed the report so I could include the month-end report. Here are the numbers from Monday:

Starting Weight:	249.6
Original Target*:	264.8
Adjusted Target:	247.8
Actual Weight:	248.8
Loss/Gain:	– 0.8
Total Loss:	53.8
% of Goal:	38.8%
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.

And now, here are the month-end numbers:

Starting Weight:	253.8
Target Weight:	246.1
Actual Weight:	247.0
Loss/Gain:	– 6.8
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.6

As you can tell from the chart at top left, I spent most of the month above the targets, with spikes on June 22 (family in from out of town that weekend) and the Independence Day holiday weekend. Nevertheless, after five months, I’m still about 17 pounds ahead of where I originally planned to be at this point.

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.

Week 17 Progress Report: Should I Keep Cutting My Calorie Budget?

Sorry I’m late again; I’ve overslept the last couple of days. First, the weekly progress report:

Starting Weight:	256.4
Original Target*:	272.0
Adjusted Target:	254.6
Actual Weight:	254.0
Loss/Gain:	– 2.4
Total Loss:	48.6
% of Goal:	35.1%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.9
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

As you can tell from the monthly progress chart, the scale says I went backward near the end of the week, but I still ended up doing better than my planned loss rate.

Yesterday was the end of the plan month. Here are the numbers:

Starting Weight:	262.4
Target Weight:	254.4
Actual Weight:	253.8
Loss/Gain:	– 8.6
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.0

Overall, I think I’m doing better. Yes, I still tend to take advantage of my daily steps and weekly bowling because subtracting the calories burned gives me leeway on the budget. But the most that gives me is about 240 extra calories on a busy day (about 400 on a busy Sunday).

Last night, for instance, I overdid it a bit on dinner — at least, as close as I could estimate it — so I ended the day without my usual bedtime snack to keep the numbers in the green. (Besides, I still felt full by bedtime, so it was no hardship.) When I weighed in this morning, I’d lost 0.8 pounds, so I figure my estimate was a little high but good.

Week 16 Progress Report: Plateaus Aren’t Really Flat

Here are today’s numbers:

Starting Weight:	257.2
Original Target*:	273.8
Adjusted Target:	255.4
Actual Weight:	256.4
Loss/Gain:	– 0.8
Total Loss:	46.2
% of Goal:	33.3%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.9
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

This last week is hard to describe. There wasn’t a day since Tuesday that I went over-budget; yet on Wednesday, my weight shot up a discouraging 2.6 pounds, wrecking my effort to achieve the May challenge goal of 3% loss.

I’m almost certain that much of the fluctuation depends on how much sleep I’ve gotten when I weigh in, as well as the vagaries of estimating some portions and the calories I’ve consumed. For instance, yesterday I got up at 3:30 am to pick my cousin up from DFW International Airport, so I weighed in shortly thereafter. After taking him to Gainesville, a 1½-hour trip with a 45-minute stop at Cracker Barrel for a 500-calorie breakfast, having consumed my normal travel mug full of coffee (with a little extra at Cracker Barrel), I weighed again for the heck of it when I got back home. The scale told me I had neither lost nor gained anything. I should have expected at least a fractional difference because I was wearing street clothes rather than pajamas. Weird.

(How do you get a 500-calorie breakfast at Cracker Barrel, where carbs and fat abound? Simple: A side of two eggs — I prefer “over medium” — and a side of their Loaded Hashbrown Casserole. A lot of their breakfast entrees are under 550 calories, so long as you don’t get “All the Fixin’s.”)

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.