Weight Loss Update -- New Low 206 lbs!

Background

When I stepped on the scale over Christmas holidays in 2007 I weighed 240 pounds. I decided that I wanted to get to a healthy weight. BMI charts indicate that 200 lbs. is the very top of 'Normal Weight' for my height. My goal is to reach 200 lbs. by New Years Eve, 2008.

206 Pounds!

On both Thursday and Friday last week the scale said '206' when I woke up. During the day I've gone up to about 209 or so with eating (yeah, I still do that) and drinking lots of water (it's been hot).

Squashing my Weight

I attribute the last few pounds I've lost to us having a garden. Not due to me weeding it -- I haven't stuck with my 3 x weekly goal at all -- but because the crook-necked squashes are out of control.

Every 3 or 4 days we can go pick four or five more foot long squashes that are ready to eat. Now, we have absolutely no intentions of becoming vegetarians, but we feel bad letting food go to waste. As a result, we leave the pork chops and burgers in the fridge and have been having squash everything.

In the last two of weeks we've had :

Squash and veggies with noodles (2x)
Squash with rice and beans (2x)
Veggie noodle soup, staring Squash (2x, plus lunches)
Tin foil dinners, staring Squash (ok, there was some meat in this one)
Veggie stir fry, staring squash (2x)

That's nine of our dinners in the last two weeks. Good news though, we've got four and a half more squashes on the counter! If we're lucky, we'll get to pick some more squash by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Our garden hasn't been making just squash of course, tomatoes are starting to come in, green beans are on their second bloom, cucumbers, peppers and corn have also started to make a showing.

Weight Loss Tip : Brush your teeth?

I'm not quite ready to chalk this one up as a fact, but the timing is interesting at least.

This week I had some cavities filled, and the and the week before I had a dental checkup. In the 10 or so days leading up to the checkup I kept my teeth extra clean and flossed almost daily. Between the checkup and getting the cavities filled I did the same thing, and now since Tuesday when I had them filled I've been brushing more often to keep food from getting stuck on the new fillings.

During this same time period I finally broke through the 215 pounds barrier, which I posted about last Friday, and as of this very moment I weigh 211 pounds.

If the two are by chance related then this is how I would explain it :

I am too lazy to brush my teeth; I would 
rather not eat than eat and then brush.

Are they related? I don't know, probably not. Still, I'm going to try to keep brushing.

-----

Side note:

I hadn't been to the dentist since either 2000 or 2003. I know I went before my mission, because I remember having my wisdom teeth out at that time. I don't remember if I went after my mission, but before I got married...I may have. I know I haven't been since we were married.

I had two small cavities (didn't even need Novocain for them). My wife had one big cavity (almost a root canal, but not quite!) and two small ones.

We went to the dentist mostly because my new employer doesn't have dental insurance, but my old job does. Since the 18th is my last day we figured we might as well use it while we've got it. Talk about good timing!

Weight Wait : Slow Progress, but Progress None the Less

Getting below 215 pounds has been a drudgefully slow experience like trudging through deep snow made ofmolasses. I would get down to 215, then bounce around between the 215 and 220 marks on the scale for a few days, then back down to 215. This has been going on basically for the last month.

It didn't help that we went to visit grandpa-inlaw or that my dad and siblings came into town (and treated us to dinner several times). It didn't help that the frozen lunches I had made to bring to lunch were meat-and-potatoes type meals. And it certainly didn't help that I was doing consulting instead of exercising in the evenings.

Hooray!

That's behind me now though! (I hope!). For the last four or five days I've now been bouncing between 214 and 217. My spreadsheet says that I need to lose 0.5297 pounds per week for the rest of the year to reach my goal. I would rather do better than that so that in November and December I'm not trying to lose weight over the holidays (just trying to maintain it).

Plan : Eat Less, Garden More

Being a highly environmentally conscious person (joke), I've been known to eat the remaining four pieces of sausage just so we don't use a ziplock and put them in the fridge. After I've already had breakfast. Including three pieces of sausage.

My new plan is the same as the old plan. Eat less, exercise more. Here are the specifics:

1) I'll leave half of my lunch in my scooter's trunk. If I really get hungry or stay late, I can go get it. If I don't use it for lunch it I can eat it for dinner.

2) I'll go weed the garden like I should be doing anyways. I should probably weed for 30 minutes two or three times a week to keep them under control. That's more exercise than I'm getting now and as long as I do it near dusk I enjoy being outside.

Weighing Less Is Nice

Weighing about 215 is a nice feeling. I have more energy, my clothes fit better, I probably even get better gas mileage on my scooter. The best thing for me so far though was that when some friends invited us to go to the pool last week I didn't feel embarrassed when I took off my shirt.

Wii Fit, Gym Membership, Stroller or Something else?

Weight Weight, Don't Tell Me

I've hit a weight floor it seems. I've gotten down to 215 pounds (From a new-years weight of 240) three times now, and each time I'm back at 220 a few days later. I realize that I should expect fluctuations, but this has been over a three week period, so I'm starting to worry that I'm going to have to change my methods a bit more.

My weight loss plan thus far has mainly been eating less and eating more responsible foods. I have been playing more sports than I did last year, but no one would ever call twice a month a workout plan.

Added to the mix is the fact that my wife is now fully recovered from the baby we had two months ago, and is also wanting to lose weight. We've both agreed that we need to be more active to achieve our goals, the question now is : What form of activity would fit our lifestyles the best?

What would you get?

In an ideal world an exercise purchase would :

• Cost very little


• Be usable any time day or night


• Be something we could do no matter the weather


• Be fun


• Would let us work around the kids


• Help us lose weight


• Be something we could do together


• Be something we could do outside

The current candidates are : A Wii Fit, A gym membership or a double stroller.

The Wii Fit fits most of those options, but we're afraid we'd get bored, we're not sure if it would actually burn enough calories to make a difference,

A double stroller would let us go running / walking outside, but winter here involves snow and ice, and it rains from time to time too. We're not entirely comfortable walking around our neighborhood at 1:00 AM when we're done with projects either.

A gym membership would be fun, and they'd watch the kids, but a family pass at the local rec. center is $30/month, more than we'd like to be paying.

Compromises

I don't think there is anything that will perfectly fit our needs, and we're ready to compromise. The question is where to compromise. Do we compromise on cost with a gym membershipt? Do we decide we'll get a stroller and use it now through October (when it will get too cold)? Do we get a Wii Fit with the risk that we won't like it or that it won't be effective enough?

What would you do in our situation?

---

Image from Prognatis' Flickr photo stream

The Belt :: Visualizing Weight Loss

I wear the same belt every single day. It's a dark brown belt, and it goes well with jeans and matches my Sunday shoes well enough that my wife doesn't complain. I've been wearing this belt for the past two or three years. Last week when I had to punch a new hole in it, I realized that it tells the story of my weight loss pretty well.


You can see indentations in the belt right before six of the holes. The left most hole is the one I punched last week. That's the under 215 pounds hole. It's the first time I've needed a hole there since I got the belt.

Six holes to the right you can see a faint indentation. That's from when I weighted 240 pounds.

If you were to plot the depth of the indentations, it seems that it would create a bell curve representing my efforts (and lack thereof!) over the years to lose weight. It seems that no matter what I try I always end up back in the 225-230 pound weight range, as witnessed by the two deep middle grooves.

The newest hole is actually a little more snug than I would like it to be. It's not painful and doesn't cut of my circulation, but if I start eating it's tight enough to trigger the loosen-your-belt signals in my brain.

This is intentional in my part of course. My stomach doesn't want to cooperate and tell me when I've had enough until I'm about ready to heave; my waist and belt are more willing to tell me when to quit.

I realize that this isn't a conventional or normal way to help limit eating, but I'm willing to do whatever works to get down to a healthy weight. 200 here I come!