Morning weigh-in: 356.25 pounds
Morning blood pressure: 129 / 84
Lost 2.25 pounds. Like last week, I didn't expect to lose that much. I had a bit of pizza on Wednesday and I thought that might slow the weight loss.
Also, my blood pressure is down a bit.
Friday, March 25, 2005
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Scaling Factors
To keep myself going on this epic journey of weight loss, I've started making a photographic record. I took the first set of nine photographs on January 3rd, the first day of my diet. The photo set starts with a close-up of my face and includes full-body shots from the front, back, and both sides, two closer shots of me raising my arms, a side shot of me bending over, and a shot of me in a weightlifter's muscle pose just for kicks.
I weigh myself every week, just to prove I'm still losing weight, but I didn't want to take pictures that often. First of all, taking the pictures is a lot of work. I setup the camera on a tripod and start the timer then quickly pose for the shot. After the camera snaps the picture, I check the image, figure out what went wrong and where to stand or what to do to prevent it, and go again. What with sorting through the pictures and processing them, it takes about 2 hours.
Second, weighing myself is a test I need to perform regularly to confirm that I'm continuing to lose weight. The photos, on the other hand, are intended as an illustration of weight loss rather than a test, so they only need to be taken when they will show something.
I decided, more or less arbitrarily, to photograph myself again when I dropped through 360 pounds, which would mean I'd lost 40 pounds, or 10% of my body mass. That happened officially this last Friday, March 18, when I hit 358.5 pounds. That night, I took a second set of photos.
I added one of the photos next to the original photo in the header above so you can see the change 40 pounds brings. (Yes, that's always been me in the photo.) Not that much of a difference, is there? Side-by-side, I think I can see a very slight change. I was hoping it would be more obvious, but I guess I weigh so much that it takes a lot more than 40 pounds to make a difference. The problem is that fat is three dimensional, although only two dimensions matter.
Let me explain.
If I were to suddenly double in size, my weight would far more than double. My body is 3-dimensional, so I'd be twice as big in every direction: twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as thick from front to back. That would give me (2 x 2 x 2 =) 8 times the volume and therefore 8 times the weight.
Working the math backwards, in order to double my weight, my size would have to increase by an amount that when multiplied by itself three times gives 2. That is, my body would have to be scaled to the cube root of 2, which is about 1.26.
However, my body doesn't gain wait by scaling equally in all directions. When I gain weight, it's not because I've gotten taller. I gain weight by adding to the layer of fat that's wrapped around my torso and limbs. My bones don't get any longer, they just accumulate fat around them. Seen end-on, my limbs and torso increase in cross section. I gain weight radially.
This radial expansion is essentially two dimensional, so my weight is proportional to the square of the change in the width of a part of my body. Doubling my weight would require my size to scale up by the square root of 2, which is about 1.41.
Now let's look at what's happend to me in the last two and a half months. I lost 10% of my weight, so my size must have scaled by roughly the square root of 0.9, or about 0.95. In other words, the visible width of my body is still about 95% of what it was at the beginning of the year. In concrete terms, I only lost 5% of my stomach.
That's just barely enough to be visible. Both images above are cropped from larger ones. I just cropped the first one back in January to show my torso. It's 141 pixels wide. A 5% reduction should shrink it by 7 pixels to 134.
I processed the second image this weekend, cropping it to look as much like the first one as possible. I didn't count the pixels, and it was much larger when I cropped it. I shrunk it to a vertical height of 200 pixels like the first image and posted it up there. Only then did I do the math in this post. I just went back to check and, amazingly, the width came to exactly 134 pixels.
I weigh myself every week, just to prove I'm still losing weight, but I didn't want to take pictures that often. First of all, taking the pictures is a lot of work. I setup the camera on a tripod and start the timer then quickly pose for the shot. After the camera snaps the picture, I check the image, figure out what went wrong and where to stand or what to do to prevent it, and go again. What with sorting through the pictures and processing them, it takes about 2 hours.
Second, weighing myself is a test I need to perform regularly to confirm that I'm continuing to lose weight. The photos, on the other hand, are intended as an illustration of weight loss rather than a test, so they only need to be taken when they will show something.
I decided, more or less arbitrarily, to photograph myself again when I dropped through 360 pounds, which would mean I'd lost 40 pounds, or 10% of my body mass. That happened officially this last Friday, March 18, when I hit 358.5 pounds. That night, I took a second set of photos.
I added one of the photos next to the original photo in the header above so you can see the change 40 pounds brings. (Yes, that's always been me in the photo.) Not that much of a difference, is there? Side-by-side, I think I can see a very slight change. I was hoping it would be more obvious, but I guess I weigh so much that it takes a lot more than 40 pounds to make a difference. The problem is that fat is three dimensional, although only two dimensions matter.
Let me explain.
If I were to suddenly double in size, my weight would far more than double. My body is 3-dimensional, so I'd be twice as big in every direction: twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as thick from front to back. That would give me (2 x 2 x 2 =) 8 times the volume and therefore 8 times the weight.
Working the math backwards, in order to double my weight, my size would have to increase by an amount that when multiplied by itself three times gives 2. That is, my body would have to be scaled to the cube root of 2, which is about 1.26.
However, my body doesn't gain wait by scaling equally in all directions. When I gain weight, it's not because I've gotten taller. I gain weight by adding to the layer of fat that's wrapped around my torso and limbs. My bones don't get any longer, they just accumulate fat around them. Seen end-on, my limbs and torso increase in cross section. I gain weight radially.
This radial expansion is essentially two dimensional, so my weight is proportional to the square of the change in the width of a part of my body. Doubling my weight would require my size to scale up by the square root of 2, which is about 1.41.
Now let's look at what's happend to me in the last two and a half months. I lost 10% of my weight, so my size must have scaled by roughly the square root of 0.9, or about 0.95. In other words, the visible width of my body is still about 95% of what it was at the beginning of the year. In concrete terms, I only lost 5% of my stomach.
That's just barely enough to be visible. Both images above are cropped from larger ones. I just cropped the first one back in January to show my torso. It's 141 pixels wide. A 5% reduction should shrink it by 7 pixels to 134.
I processed the second image this weekend, cropping it to look as much like the first one as possible. I didn't count the pixels, and it was much larger when I cropped it. I shrunk it to a vertical height of 200 pixels like the first image and posted it up there. Only then did I do the math in this post. I just went back to check and, amazingly, the width came to exactly 134 pixels.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Weight Check
Morning weigh-in: 358.50 pounds
Morning blood pressure: 134 / 87
Lost 2.25 pounds, which is much better than I exepected. Blood pressure is up a little bit, but still not officially high.
I've just passed the 40-pounds-lost mark. Work to do...
Morning blood pressure: 134 / 87
Lost 2.25 pounds, which is much better than I exepected. Blood pressure is up a little bit, but still not officially high.
I've just passed the 40-pounds-lost mark. Work to do...
My Favorite Food
This is going to be a tough week for the weight check, but I knew it was coming. When I first started this diet, I almost succumbed to the temptation of my favorite food, but my wife talked me out of it. Part of how we did that is that we agreed to have a special meal this week, because this week is the anniversary of our first date. So, a few days ago, I got to pig out on this:
Damn that was good.
It's a lot of calories, however, and I still haven't cut out the yogurt—although I've cut down—so I suspect I'll be overweight on the weigh-in. It was worth it.
Damn that was good.
It's a lot of calories, however, and I still haven't cut out the yogurt—although I've cut down—so I suspect I'll be overweight on the weigh-in. It was worth it.
Sunday, March 13, 2005
The Cause of All My Troubles
I believe I've identified the cause of all my dieting troubles this week.
I lost about 1.5 pounds when I would normally lose about 2.5 pounds. The 1-pound difference means I consumed about 3500 more calories this week than I should have.
That works out to about 24 of these:
Yeah, I've been eating a lot of these yogurt cups (150 calories). Not just the strawberry one pictured here, either, but also the Strawberry Banana, Blueberry, Cherry, and Peach. 24 cups in a week is only a little more than 3 per day. I've been having them for breakfast as well as for a late-night snack, and sometimes as a mid-day snack. Sometimes I eat the Light variety, which only has 90 calories, but often I have a lot more than just 3 in a day, although usually the yogurts displace something else I would have eaten. All in all, 500 calories per day (a little more than 3 yogurt cups) doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
To make matters even worse, yogurt is high in fruity carbohydrates, so they probably have been generating a blood sugar spike and crash that leaves me hungry for other things.
I like these yogurt cups a lot, and I thought I could control myself, but I think I may have to cut them out completely. Maybe I can cut back to 1 or 2 a day. If I have them in the evening, the blood sugar crash won't occur until I'm asleep, when it's kind of hard to snack.
I lost about 1.5 pounds when I would normally lose about 2.5 pounds. The 1-pound difference means I consumed about 3500 more calories this week than I should have.
That works out to about 24 of these:
Yeah, I've been eating a lot of these yogurt cups (150 calories). Not just the strawberry one pictured here, either, but also the Strawberry Banana, Blueberry, Cherry, and Peach. 24 cups in a week is only a little more than 3 per day. I've been having them for breakfast as well as for a late-night snack, and sometimes as a mid-day snack. Sometimes I eat the Light variety, which only has 90 calories, but often I have a lot more than just 3 in a day, although usually the yogurts displace something else I would have eaten. All in all, 500 calories per day (a little more than 3 yogurt cups) doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
To make matters even worse, yogurt is high in fruity carbohydrates, so they probably have been generating a blood sugar spike and crash that leaves me hungry for other things.
I like these yogurt cups a lot, and I thought I could control myself, but I think I may have to cut them out completely. Maybe I can cut back to 1 or 2 a day. If I have them in the evening, the blood sugar crash won't occur until I'm asleep, when it's kind of hard to snack.
Friday, March 11, 2005
Weight Check
Morning weigh-in: 360.75 pounds
Morning blood pressure: 132 / 85
Lost 1.5 pounds. Diastolic blood pressure up a bit.
Dammit. That's the least I've lost in any week so far.
Morning blood pressure: 132 / 85
Lost 1.5 pounds. Diastolic blood pressure up a bit.
Dammit. That's the least I've lost in any week so far.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Trial By Staircase
Here's something new. I can now walk up the stairs without support.
Ever since my knees started hurting so much, I've been helping myself up the stairs. At the very least, I've been leaning against the walls to balance myself. It's a sort of lean-with-the-elbow-and-take-a-step kind of process.
(I'm not entirely sure why it's helpful because pressing sideways against the wall can't possibly reduce the vertical load on my body, can it? I guess I could be pushing down a bit, because pressing against the wall produces some friction that would keep my hand and arm in place while I push myself up. It doesn't feel like that though. In addition, whatever sideways force I get from pushing against the wall must be matched by an equal and opposite force against my feet, otherwise I'd push myself completely away from the wall. But this force has to be transmitted through my body, so by pushing against the wall, I must be increasing the forces going through my body, not decreasing them. My best guess is that by leaning I change the way my body stabilizes my knee joints, probably by bringing the larger leg muscles to bear on the problem.)
Often, I use the hand rails to push or pull myself up the stairs, using my arms to take some of the load off my legs. Since humans stopped swinging through the trees several million years ago, this is probably not a healthy way to use my arm muscles and joints. I've been noticing some pain in my shoulders.
However, a few days ago I was coming up the front stairs and I decided to try coming up the stairs without holding on to anything. I just forced myself up the stairs to the third floor by pumping my legs—you know, like most people do—and it worked. By worked I mean that my knees didn't hurt. Not at all. Not even the next day.
I wouldn't want to start climbing a lot of stairs, because that would obviously still hurt, but this is an important change. I used to sort of save-up trips outside, to the car or the dumpster or the basement, to minimize the number of trips up and down the stairs. The question "Will I have to climb the stairs for this?" was a meaningful part of planning my day. Now, not so much.
Ever since my knees started hurting so much, I've been helping myself up the stairs. At the very least, I've been leaning against the walls to balance myself. It's a sort of lean-with-the-elbow-and-take-a-step kind of process.
(I'm not entirely sure why it's helpful because pressing sideways against the wall can't possibly reduce the vertical load on my body, can it? I guess I could be pushing down a bit, because pressing against the wall produces some friction that would keep my hand and arm in place while I push myself up. It doesn't feel like that though. In addition, whatever sideways force I get from pushing against the wall must be matched by an equal and opposite force against my feet, otherwise I'd push myself completely away from the wall. But this force has to be transmitted through my body, so by pushing against the wall, I must be increasing the forces going through my body, not decreasing them. My best guess is that by leaning I change the way my body stabilizes my knee joints, probably by bringing the larger leg muscles to bear on the problem.)
Often, I use the hand rails to push or pull myself up the stairs, using my arms to take some of the load off my legs. Since humans stopped swinging through the trees several million years ago, this is probably not a healthy way to use my arm muscles and joints. I've been noticing some pain in my shoulders.
However, a few days ago I was coming up the front stairs and I decided to try coming up the stairs without holding on to anything. I just forced myself up the stairs to the third floor by pumping my legs—you know, like most people do—and it worked. By worked I mean that my knees didn't hurt. Not at all. Not even the next day.
I wouldn't want to start climbing a lot of stairs, because that would obviously still hurt, but this is an important change. I used to sort of save-up trips outside, to the car or the dumpster or the basement, to minimize the number of trips up and down the stairs. The question "Will I have to climb the stairs for this?" was a meaningful part of planning my day. Now, not so much.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Weight Check
Morning weigh-in: 362.25 pounds
Morning blood pressure: 132 / 83
Lost 2.25 pounds. Blood pressure down a bit.
Morning blood pressure: 132 / 83
Lost 2.25 pounds. Blood pressure down a bit.
Battling "The Crave"
I went for a ride tonight. I do that sometimes late at night. I just get in the car and tool around for an hour or two on the nearly empty streets, listening to the radio.
After a busy day writing software, it helps to concentrate on something else for a while. I'll drive to an area I haven't been to lately and explore the streets. Or I'll pick a destination like a new restaurant I've heard about, just to give me somewhere to go. I'll focus on how the car steers entering the turns, and how it accelerates coming out of them. Every once in a while, I'll pick out another car on the streets and follow it for a little while, in a non-threatening manner, being careful to lose it after a few turns so the other driver doesn't start to worry.
For no particular reason, I haven't done this since before I started dieting. That's probably a good thing, since getting a bite to eat was always on the agenda. As it is, I spent the whole drive tonight convincing myself that it would be a bad idea go get a bag of slyders the night before my weekly weight check.
After a busy day writing software, it helps to concentrate on something else for a while. I'll drive to an area I haven't been to lately and explore the streets. Or I'll pick a destination like a new restaurant I've heard about, just to give me somewhere to go. I'll focus on how the car steers entering the turns, and how it accelerates coming out of them. Every once in a while, I'll pick out another car on the streets and follow it for a little while, in a non-threatening manner, being careful to lose it after a few turns so the other driver doesn't start to worry.
For no particular reason, I haven't done this since before I started dieting. That's probably a good thing, since getting a bite to eat was always on the agenda. As it is, I spent the whole drive tonight convincing myself that it would be a bad idea go get a bag of slyders the night before my weekly weight check.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Breakfast of Champions
Hyzaar, Norvasc, aspirin, a multivitamin, a calcium supplement, more of vitamins C and E, folic acid, selenium, isoflavones, beta carotene, and fish oil.
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