Weight Check

Morning weigh-in: 364.50 pounds

Morning blood pressure: 134 / 85

Lost 2.5 pounds. Blood pressure up a bit but still controlled.

I'm going to try reporting my weight to the nearest 1/4 pound from now on. It's what the scale reads. I'm not entirely sure that this isn't just a random number, but we'll see what happens.

Advice Anyone?

I've got another fan who just emailed me out of the blue. She's offered to help me out if she can. I really appreciate that. It's just amazing to me that people on the net will offer to help like this.

The problem is, I'm not sure what kind of help I can use.

I guess my biggest weight loss problem is simply controlling my eating habits. For example, one of the foods in the refrigerator is these little cups of Dannon yogurt. They're only 150 calories and make a great snack. Of course, I should limit myself to just 1 or 2 a day, but as long as they're in there, it's easy to say that one more won't hurt. After all, it's only 150 calories. Of course, if I keep using that rationale for yogurt and other foods, I can end up eating a lot more than I planned. That sort of self-control is not one of my strengths.

I've generally found that this sort of self-control problem is not the kind of thing other people can help me with, but if anyone out there has any good suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Weight Check

Morning weigh-in: 367 pounds

Morning blood pressure: 127 / 82

With a margin of error of I'm using a new scale this time.

Lost another 2 pounds (maybe) and my blood pressure is down a bit. It was a good week.

Adjustment and Estimation

I lost five pounds in one minute today.

No, I didn't amputate anything.

My new balance-beam scale arrived today. I thought I had ordered the HealthOMeter 402LB, but what showed up is a 402KL. The only difference is that the KL has a dual scale for pounds and kilograms, so this is fine. Took about 10 minutes to assemble, most of which I spent looking for the right nut driver because I didn't want to use the stamped metal wrench that came with it.

I weighed myself on the old scale and got 375 pounds. Then I stepped over to the new scale and got 369+1/4 pounds (+/- 1/4 pound). So then I took a leak and came back. The old scale now said 373.5 (it reads in 0.5 pound increments, which I've been rounding up in my measurements) and the new one balanced dead-on at 369. I've decided to assume that all the old readings are 5 pounds high.

UPDATE: I've adjusted all previous Weight Check posts to read five pounds lower, as an estimate of my true weight at the time.

Ordered a New Scale

I decided to replace my scale. I had thought it would be good enough, but this last week has been very frustrating. It turns out I can get a pretty decent scale at reasonable prices if I shop around (and if I don't mind it being big and heavy). Instead of another digital scale, I went with a HealthOMeter 402LB balance beam scale, just like in a doctor's office. It should be here in about 2 weeks.

Weight Check

Morning weigh-in: 369 pounds (estimated)

Morning blood pressure: 132 / 85

Maybe.

I thought I had a pretty good diet week, so out of curiosity, I weighed myself last night. 379. Gained 3 pounds.

No way. I know I had a good week. The only risk is that I've had a few more Dannon yogurt cups than I should. But those things only have 150 calories each, 90 if they're low fat, so to gain 3 pounds I would need to consume (3*3500)/150 = 70 cups of yogurt. That's ridiculous.

Anyway, this morning I weigh myself for the official way in and I've lost 5 pounds overnight. As I've mentioned, my scale is not the highest quality, because those are too expensive for my weight class. I have to step on with a consistent pattern every time, and I have to weigh myself several times and pick the one that seems to show up the most. Today, for example, I had one reading at 372 which I ignored.

Maybe I should look into a better scale...

I've Got Fans!

I've got fans! Well, a fan. Okay, someone stumbled onto this during a search for Hope & Tim's soup and wrote me a nice email.

This blog is mostly just my personal journal. When I was starting the diet, I had all these ideas, and I thought, "I should write this down." I was going to just start a Word document for gathering stuff, when it occurred to me that I could use Blogger to manage the whole thing. Then, finally, I realized that if I did it all anonymously, someone might read it. Besides, writing for an audience gives me a reason to try to keep it organized and keep it going.

Of course, now that I know someone might actually read it, I'm going to make an effort to post more often. Really I am.

Phase 2 Diet Plan: Motivation

I wrote this a few weeks ago, before I started to notice that I was feeling a little better.

Not much going on right now, so I think I'll document a little of my weight loss plan.

Phase 1, which is now complete, was a short fast to create a psychological break between the old way and the new way. It was only a couple of days and was really pretty easy.

In addition to losing weight in the coming months, I also want to improve my aerobic health and my heart. That means I'm going to have to exercise. I can't do that right now.

The main problem, as I have mentioned before, is my knees. If you've ever wondered what it's like to weigh 400 pounds, the answer is that it's painful. My knees hurt all the time. If I make several trips up and down the stairs, or if I spend an hour or two wandering around the Home Depot, I'll feel it in my knees the next day. I tried taking a few brisk walks to exercise my heart (it doesn't take much to hit my target pulse rate) and my legs hurt for days.

Now you might think that my knees probably hurt a lot back when I weighed 300 pounds too, but they didn't, not like this. Oh, I could make them hurt if I overworked them, but climbing stairs didn't hurt. A brisk walk didn't hurt. Standing didn't hurt.

I need to make that pain go away.

Phase 2 of my diet plan, currently underway, is a crash diet to lose weight very quickly. The goal is to lose enough weight that the joint pain stops. Then I can gradually start to exercise.

I'm guessing that this will happen when my weight is down below 350 pounds, although it wouldn't surprise me if I have to get down to 300 to undo the damage. That's not running weight, or even jogging weight. Brisk walks, swimming, and treadmill maybe. Running will probably not be reasonable possible until I'm down below 250.

In any case, the real end of phase 2 is not when I hit some target weight, but when I can exercise. That's the sort of thing where I have to keep trying now and then until it feels right. Once I can exercise every day without joint pain, phase 2 will be over.

Weight Check

Morning weigh-in: 371 pounds (estimated)

Blood pressure: 133 / 87

Down three more pounds. Cool.

Blood pressure is up slightly, but some variance is expected in BP measurements.

Slipping Away

It's not been a real good week for the diet. I had popcorn at the movies on Sunday. I had another Wendy's Combo meal on Tuesday. Yesterday I kept snacking on things like low-fat yogurt which, while not quite unhealthy, probably put me over my calorie target.

The fact that I can't give a rough estimate of yesterday's calories is a sign that I'm starting to drift out of the mental diet mode. Another sign is the very low rate at which I'm posting new entries here. I need to get back in the groove. To that end, I didn't eat anything during the day today. For dinner I'm having a salad and later a broiled hamburger, probably with a low-fat yogurt for desert.

I'm also going to start reading this giant diet book published by the American Dietetic Association. I think it will help me to keep thinking about the diet more, which I hope will discourage snacking.