222.75 = FINAL!!!

Huzzah!

Of course, Diana continues to outshine me: she's lost 20 lbs since June. :o)

Brian was also down 2.5 (!!!) this week. So a big week for all 3 of us! And meanwhile Brian's grown 3/4 inches and Diana 1/4 inches based on today's measurement. A good week. :o)

224.0 @ 6:55pm

Not bad! No more eating.

225.75 @ 2:35pm

Bacon happens. But that's my only food so far. But the salt will pass by tonight (I think!) and I'm still below last week's weight even now.

224.75 @ 10:30am

I'm only up a quarter-pounder after 2 (3?) large cups of coffee. Goes right thru ya.

still optimistically projecting 224.5 tonite

I may be wildly wrong about where my weight will end up if (when?) I fast today, but undoubtedly it would mean down for the week, which is the main thing.

When I've fasted of late it's typically meant a 1-day loss of 4-5 lbs, much of which I assume is water-weight shed based on less salt in my body. So that more or less works out. My "nibbling" probably had me in the 229-lb range by the time I went to bed last night, so 224.5 ex-post-fasto seems to add up.

224.5 @ 8:27am

I'm surprised my waking weight was only 2.25 lbs lower than last night. Then again, I guess I ate a bit after last night's weigh-in, so that explains that.

If I fast today, which would appear to be a good option, I wonder where my weight ends up tonight? I'm guessing pretty similar to right now (224.5), unless I watch my water intake (which would be rather pointless).

224.5 would mean I'd lost 4.25 lbs in 3 weeks since Nov 9, and 2 weeks in a row of losing 2.25/week. I would take that.

Let's see if I can execute.

4-week streak?

Tomorrow's weigh-in could mark my 4th week in a row* of decreasing weight**, so the stakes are high. My G/I illness should make it a shoe-in, however I just cheated and did a check-in, and my weight is right at last week's, so could go either weigh. ;o) Let the betting begin.


*Ok, technically this will only be a 3-week streak of increases, using 4 data points. (4 weeks ago my weight went up, but since then it's been going down -- pending tomorrow's reading. Yikes.)

**Pathetically, this awesome streak has got me "down" to 226.75 lbs.

reply to Dad

[Replying to this post.]

Dad,

We're on the same page on all fronts. My goal on paper is 161 lbs, about 65-70 away from where I sit today. I want to lose about 30% of my body weight.

Fasting has been one of my more successful techniques, so maybe I will give that a shot. I find it easier to eat nothing for a day than to eat half of normal. And my weight tends to go down when I skip lunch (and I always skip breakfast), though I'm sure skipping dinner would be best of all. And not snacking more important still.

I exercised Sunday (soccer with whole family) and yesterday (elliptical machine). Today could make it a 3-day streak, certainly my record in the last 3 YEARS or more. We're not talking about a lot of calorie-burning, though the elliptical could get intense, but it burns TIME, and it reinforces a mindset. (I just worked hard to burn 300 calories. Am I really going to eat a brownie after that?)

But I am so very far away from where I should be that I really do need to make a huge change of some kind. Turning 40 was a bit of a wakeup call, and I lost weight that year by cutting out less-healthy foods. But after 11 months I fell off the wagon and reversed my 18 pounds of progress in under two months!

I'm trying to shake up my schedule, and exercise is part of that. My heel is still a pretty big problem, but the soccer didn't cause too much of an issue, and the elliptical seems not to bother it much at all. I just don't seem able to play basketball, or run, right now. Of course losing 50-60 pounds would help that for sure.

I will try more experimenting!

email from Dad

[Dad, I'm assuming reprinting here is ok. No one reads this anyhow. I didn't even think you still did! -mns]

Dear Mike,

I see from your recent note that you haven't been doing well with your weight.

hardly know what to say ...... but feel close to certain that if you were ever able to get your BMI down to 22, your outlook on life, vitality, sense of control, ball-playing, etc would all show such benefit that you would find ways to keep there.

But how to get there?

For me it was easy because I became so scared and depressed when my heart rhythm went haywire ..... I zoomed down to 107 by Jan 2008, folloing the CR-ON guidelines at a loss of about 2 lbs a week.

Since then I have "rippled" but never a real yo-yo. I have gone to 115, never higher, and for many weeks seem to have a comfy plateau at 112,. Not that I don't get hungry, I'm often ravenous at night.

But when in my early 50's, and ample data showed that if I could have got my body fat down to 10% I could have comfortably reached my ultimate goal ..... a marathon in less than 3 hours ....... I could never make it. My best marathon was 3:11 in 1978. So just being old may make it a lot easier to get rid of pounds. My appetite and/or poor self control absolutely dominated me in mid-life.

At one point my ease of shedding pounds raised the possibility that I had an occult cancer somewhere, but now many months later and no symptoms I believe I am healthier than I have been in many a year.

How about experimenting with fasts of 12-18 hours with zero calorie intake, only green tea or black coffee, then when you break your fast focus on your achievement and don't go anywhere near overboard on that meal but try to find the time to savor every mouthful in a slow relaxed manner, perhaps with family around. Whatever EXPERIMENT!!!!

BTW if you are 6' tall you would have to reach 162 lbs to have a BMI of 22 ..... that must seem impossible ..... but if you continued being physically active you could do that without losing much if any muscle mass and become a real lean mean efficient machine.

No News is ... ?

Bad News. Always.

So I haven't been blogging. And I have been eating. And I haven't been ketotic.

But I'm writing now, so that has to be good. Right?