Biffster’s WeightJournal.com

Current weight: 297
Difference from last entry: -2
Difference from 2007 starting weight (335.5): -38.5

There’s one holiday down, two more to go! I was able to get through Thanksgiving without a lot of difficulties, though I did use up almost every single weekly point I get (for those who don’t know, I am following Weight Watchers FlexPlan). There were some excellent tips given in this week’s Weight Watchers at Work (WW@W) meeting this week. Some of the tips I followed are:

• Don’t let any of the food touch. This forces one to have areas on the plate with no food, which means that one puts less food on one’s plate.
• Have larger portions of the good stuff (e.g. turkey, salad, veggies) and smaller portions of the bad stuff (sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pie).
• Don’t go to the table hungry! Have something healthy before-hand, something with a lot of protein. Being super-hungry leads directly to over-eating.
• Take time between each bite, and drink a lot of water.

All in all, I ate a lot less than I normally would for Thanksgiving dinner. And I kept track of most everything. I didn’t actually want to enter it into my online PointsTracker (at Weight Watchers website), but I eventually did. And I didn’t do bad. I came up with 62 points, which is 18 over my daily limit. But I still had 32 weekly points at the time, so I was fine. And I still have 14 or so points that I can use through Tuesday. (Note: Not that I will… I like to have 25-30 points left at the end of the week. Just ‘cuz I know that maximizes weight loss. And 44 points is a hell of a lot of points per day. I don’t really need the extra 5.)

What I am still having problems with is exercise. I still haven’t done much at all. Which is eventually going to be a problem. I know that I need to get up and move more, not just for WW, not just for losing weight, not just for gaining muscle mass, but also to help manage my diabetes. But I am so lazy! And I am so adverse to exercise. Somehow I keep talking myself out of it. Which is not good, not good at all.

So I have something to work on over the next few weeks.

Current weight: 299
Difference from last entry: -3
Difference from 2007 starting weight (335.5): -36.5

299!!!

YES! YES!! YES YES YES!!!!!

I am not too proud to admit that I cried when I saw this week’s weigh-in. Though that isn’t the first thing I did. I weighed myself, and could not believe it when the LED said 299.0. So I moved the scale a little bit to the right on the floor, then weighed myself again. I still didn’t believe the 299.0, so I reset the scale and tried again.

When the third reading also came up as 299, I realized that I wasn’t just imagining things. I realized that this was the truth. And I realized that I had met my biggest goal to date! And that’s when I went running as fast as I could up the stairs to share the news with my wife. And it was while E. was hugging me and telling me “Congratulations!” that I choked up. Big time!

And I think I earned those tears! This has been a long, hard road this year, to try and get my weight down. And more than that, to learn how to eat right, how to control portion size, how to find something else besides food to use when I am stressed or emotional. It’s hard to learn a brand new lifestyle! I’ve been trying all year, and I think I am getting a little bit better every day.

That is why this goal meant so much to me. This is why I was so emotional over this milestone. As nice as it is to no longer having to say that I weigh over 300 pounds, the moral victory is worth so much more. This is concrete reassurance, concrete proof that the changes I am making are real, they are earned, and the hard work is worth it in the end.

As I stated last week, this is the least I’ve weighed since 2001. I don’t know exactly when in 2001, though. My records have me weighing in at 295 pounds on July 30, 2001, then the next weigh-in is 310 pounds on March 3, 2002. Somewhere in that 8 month period, I gained 15 pounds. Without the data, it’s just a guess. I will no for certain by the end of the year, when I am below the 295 mark for the first time since July 2001. And I will make that mark.

I did realize that I need to set a new goal, now that I hit my last major goal faster than I expected. There are 9 more weeks in the current Weight Watchers session I am in. That’ll be January 19th or so. My new goal is:

   January 19, 2008: 285 pounds

Wish me luck!

Current weight: 302
Difference from last entry: -8.5
Difference from 2007 starting weight (335.5): -33.5

So, I think I can definitively that last week’s weigh-in was most definitely a fluke. It had to have been water weight. There’s no other way I could’ve dropped 8 pounds in a week. It is simply not possible! So this had to have had an extenuating circumstance. And the only one that really makes sense is that I gained a bunch of water weight last week, and I have shed that by drinking the correct amount of water every day since I got back from my trip.

This makes a lot more sense, though. I have been doing most excellent on Weight Watchers since I got back from my trip. I’ve been following the program religiously, making sure that I get in my 44 daily points (except for the first day back) and not really touching my weekly bonus points. I am not surprised to have lost weight. I expect to continue to do so until I get to my goal weight. I am dedicated to the plan, and I am motivated to lose weight. And it shows!

I might hit 300 pounds next week. I could conceivably be under that weight next week! Though no matter what happens next week, I am now the lightest I’ve been since the fall of 2001! It’s the healthiest I’ve been since fall of 2001. I just have to remember that in 2001, I fell off track. And I didn’t recover until this year. That was 6 years of steady weight gain. All because I refused to do what I knew I needed. I stopped being part of a support group. I stopped following the guidelines that I know work. I let myself fall back into old habits, instead of continuing with the lifestyle changes that I had learned.

As I continue to be successful, I need to keep an eye out for previous failures. I cannot fall into the same traps again. This IS a lifestyle change. I am dedicated to it now, I need to make sure that I continue to do so when my motivation is low.

If I ever needed assurance that I am actually losing weight, and not just imagining it, I can tell the difference in my clothes. I can fit into shirts that I’ve either not fit into in 5 years, or that I’ve never been able to wear. My pants are ridiculously oversized. Earlier this year, 54×30s were a bit tight around the tum. Now, my pants fall off me if I don’t keep a belt cinched tight. I tried on a pair of 50×30s that were in the back of my closet. They were too tight, but not by much. I’ve almost trimmed down two pants sizes!

And yeah, there are times when I think I am just imagining this weight loss. That I am not actually losing weight, but just have a flaky scale. The physical changes in my body, however, cannot be denied.

Current weight: 310.5
Difference from last entry: +4
Difference from 2007 starting weight (335.5): -25.5

Well, there isn’t much to say about this week. I just got back from my trip to Vancouver, and I did not eat well there at all. Well, it depends on how you define “well,” of course. I ate a lot of yummy food there. The problem is that I ate way  too much while I was there.

I actually had a good plan for how to avoid over-eating. Every night I was there, the conference organizers had planned evening sessions. These were to include hors d’ourves and drinks. So each night, I would eat dinner at my hotel before the evening sessions. And each night when I got to the session, it turned out that the supposed appetizers were actually full meals! Or at least I don’t count a pasta bar, fish’n'chips, dim sum, shrimp and rice, etc as appetizers.

One would think that I would’ve learned my lesson after the first night. But I kept doing that, every night. And my weight this week shows that. Big-time!

Actually, I get the feeling that this might be an inaccurate weight. I didn’t drink a lot of water while I was in Vancouver. I think I might’ve put on a bit of water weight. I’ll be interested to see what next week’s weigh-in looks like.

On the plus side, I did a ton of walking while in Vancouver. I put in at least a half-hour of walking every day I was there. That should’ve mitigated the effects of the over-eating. That’s why this week’s high weight baffles me so. I knew that I would be up in weight, I just didn’t expect it to be that high of a gain.

Oh, well, I am back home and on-program again. I’m not going to let a trip trip me up.