Week Seven - Milestone #1 Accomplished

My first milestone was to return to the weight at which I began my successful weight loss journey in October 2001. I accomplished that on Thursday, June 19, when I weighed in at 194.8 lbs. at my WW meeting. This is actually .6 lbs. higher than my weight in Fall 2001, but since my current meeting is in the evening while I'd previously been attending meetings during the day, I think I can appropriately claim this success. My next milestone will be when my home scale reads 185 lbs. This is what I weighed when I began this blog on 9/29/05. This morning my home scale said 188 lbs.

I am doing something that I'd advised against, behaving somewhat differently during this weight loss period than I intend to behave once I reach my goal weight. I'd written against doing so when one of my on-line friends discussed being stricter with his food choices while "dieting" than he intended to be once he'd gotten rid of the lbs. I'm currently eating pretty much as I intend to eat for the rest of my life, but I've become an exercise maniac and have no intention of continuing at this level once the flab is gone. I'm on my elliptical cross trainer virtually every day for a total of 81 minutes. This includes a 75 minute work out, a 3 minute warm up, and a 3 minute cool down. I try to keep my heart rate at 136 - 137 beats per minute. This is slightly above the 134 beats per minute recommended by the manufacturer of my elliptical for someone my age. I frequently find myself above this rate and have to slow down. Once I've gotten rid of the lbs. I will continue to use the elliptical as an important component of my over-all health. I'll just be a little more moderate in its use.

My "official" weight loss for the week, that which showed up at my WW meeting, is 2.4 lbs. This morning's weight of 188 lbs. puts me 16 lbs. below the 204 lbs. that I was maintaining for a while.
I remain focused and strong and very optimistic that I am firmly on the path to my goal weight.

Week Six - Burning The Blubber

I did a little dance with the binge monkey on Sunday and let him step on my toes, not in a grand way, but enough to get so far beyond my daily point allocation that I gave up counting. My son and his family had come for a barbecue and, at some point when I was already pretty close to points' poverty, I decided to free myself from the distraction of accountability. This decision was both a cause and an effect of my wandering into the land of excess. It started with my nibbling 2 or 3 almonds and the same amount of corn chips. That was my first non-points-counting transgression. For lunch we had burgers (a vegetarian one for me) and cole slaw with watermelon for dessert. After Ben and his family left, I felt deprived because of the absence of a more desserty dessert. I have half cup servings of gelato in my freezer which I can usually indulge in and still stay "on program." The vanilla, which tastes like coconut, has 140 calories and the chocolate hazelnut, which tastes amazing, has 200. I grabbed one of the chocolate hazelnuts even though I knew that I couldn't eat it and still have a satisfying dinner without going over my daily points. The obvious solution was to give up on counting points for the day. This gave me a free pass to cruise up and down consumption alley. In the course of the evening I ate both a vanilla and a chocolate hazelnut gelatto, as well as a large bowl of cereal and more. Earlier, when I gave myself leeway with the almonds and chips, I had convinced myself that I could eat reasonably without having to count each and every point. Once again, I proved that I need the structure that points provide. And once again I was reminded that eating is not the appropriate response to fatigue and that the family room couch is the site of much self delusion.

But . . . I've got a huge whip that sent the monkey racing back to the jungle the next day. My elliptical cross trainer is the whip. It has turned me into a raging exercise machine. Every day, except for Sunday, I have been putting in a minimum of one hour on the elliptical. My average heartbeat for a session is 135 beats per minute (bpm). This includes the 3 minute warm up and 3 minute cool down parts of the session. Once I'm in the groove, I have to keep myself from getting into dangerous cardiac territory. I try to keep a 134 to 136 bpm range; I get scared when the read-out is 141 bpm.

The Weight Watcher scale this evening validated my hard work. And ignored my Sunday missteps. Well maybe not entirely. Maybe I'd have gotten rid of a few more ounces had I stayed on track Sunday. Even so, I'm delighted to report that I've dumped another 2 lbs. The reading on the WW scale was 197.2 lbs., a total of 10.4 lbs. down the drain and out of my life since I rejoined WW on May 1. I am within 3 lbs. of reaching a significant milestone, the weight that I was when I began my successful journey to my goal weight on 10/22/01. As to my home scale, this morning it read 194. This is 2 lbs. above the reading of my home scale when I began that successful journey. I am 10.4 lbs. into another (and final) successful journey to my goal weight. And this time, I will successfully maintain that goal weight once I reach it.

Week 5 - The Perversity of the Scale

Even though I'm on to it, I still allow the number on the scale to make me do foolish things.

The WW scale last night showed that I'd gotten rid of a whooping .4 lbs. This was after a week that included a walk from one end to the other of the 5000 acre state park that borders my neighborhood as well as 4 days of one hour workouts on my elliptical cross trainer. It was also a week in which I stayed within or below my alloted points each day. As I did two weeks ago when the numbers on the scale also disappointed me, I went on a miny bingelet last night. My extra weekly points kept me "on program." This is both a rather stupid use of points as well as a really brilliant one. I deprived myself of getting rid of up to a tenth of a pound on the one hand, while also enjoying a relatively safe food temper tantrum on the other. It was and is very important for me to stay "on program."

This morning, the number on my home scale was a full pound less than yesterday. My weight is the lowest that it has been in too long of a time, 194.5 lbs. this morning; 199.2 lbs. at WW last night. I know that the day to day numbers are of no real importance, that it is the generally downward trend that matters most, that my job is to "follow the program" and the weight will take care of itself. Even so, I am experiencing a softening in my determination today. I have too many things to do to make the time to work out on the elliptical. Having written this out, I have just decided to get on the damn thing anyway. By doing so, I will be allowing the stronger part of myself to speak to me.