Losing a part of me

I had not expected to set out on a jog yesterday afternoon, but it was sunny and comparatively warm, and I had little else on my schedule. It was not that I decided to try to repeat my best outing from a week ago, I just really wanted to get out. Forgetful soul that I can be, I actually set out twice, having gotten a couple hundred steps up Walker’s Line, only to realize I had left my gloves at home. I might not need them… but I likely would.

I was not going to push myself too hard. I knew that I had it in me, but I do not want to go too hard too fast. When I passed the 3 km mark I stopped running, having achieved several personal bests.

Jogging

• Distance: 6.3 km (3.5 km)
• Duration: 51:52 (29:02)
• pb Average Pace (Min/km): 8.14s (8m17s)
• Steps: 7,900
• Calories burned: 800
• Elevation gain: 84m (27m)
• pb Average cadence (steps per minute): 153 (152)

Walking

• Distance: 5.2 km
• Duration: 54:38
• Average Pace (Min/km): 10m34s
• Steps: 6,273
• Calories burned: 610
• Elevation gain: 20m
• Average cadence (steps per minute): 115

I should also point out that these numbers are counting the two jogs together. The first jog shattered my personal bests… 7m44s average pace per kilometre. No matter, I am extremely happy with it. More importantly, all told I was out for nearly two hours and covered 11.5 kilometres. That is a huge win for me. Yes, I was exhausted from it, and in a little bit of pain… but as someone once said, the harder the struggle, the sweeter the victory. I could easily have stayed home and sat on the computer for the afternoon. Instead, I got out there and absolutely killed it on the roads! Yes, I was on the roads for a lot of it… not all of the sidewalks have been plowed yet.

It means nothing of course, but before I hopped into the shower, I first hopped onto the bathroom scale. I was 1.6 lbs. down from the morning, which would have been much more in line with where I would have hoped I would be when the week began. It had me about half a pound over that 270 lbs. goal for my trip to Dallas on Wednesday. It is this morning’s weigh-in that means something, and my bathroom scale (along with the unstable floors beneath it) were maddeningly frustrating this morning. I stepped onto the scale seven times, getting six different readings. There was only one positive thing I could say about this frustration… all but one of them had me under 270 lbs.! The one exception had me at 270.2, but that was just after getting a reading of 266.4. In the end I accepted the only repeat number, 269.6 lbs. After a maddening week of plateau, I find myself 3.4 lbs. lighter than I was last Sunday. I am back on track… although if the past is any indicator of the future, it is possible and even likely that tomorrow morning my weight will be slightly higher. The frustration is real, but the trend is what matters.

I should never get on the scale after I weigh myself in the morning. This past week I have done so twice, once weighing 275 lbs. (nearly three pounds more that I had weighed that morning), and once weighing 270.6 lbs. (which was 1.6 lbs. less than I had weighed that morning). As Leslie pointed out recently, when I come in from exercising, I have sweat off a lot of water, so of course the scale will be down. As I have known for most of my adult life, body weight fluctuates throughout the day, and the only way to be sure of an accurate trend is to weigh yourself at the same time every day. I know, yesterday’s post-workout drop turned out to be a preview for what I saw this morning, but it is still not a good idea… it will always be deceptive and can cause a sense of failure.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I was still losing ground on my comparative chart to 2020. This will continue for a few days because between Day 366 and Day 370 (the corresponding days from yesterday through Thursday) I dropped nearly five pounds… it will be hard to keep up at the rate that I’m going. Of course, if I keep jogging, maybe I will… we’ll see. A week ago, the comparative number had me 6.4 lbs. ahead of the 2020 attempt. Today that number is 3.8 lbs., and unless I drop a pound and a half over the next three days, that number will shrink somewhat. Of course, it is the trend that matters, right? I can see that in 2020 my weight fluctuated a lot on the graph and would not drop below 270 lbs. for the final time until a month later. Even if my weight straddles that line for the next few days, I am on a much better trajectory today than I was 2.5 years ago. Even if I were to gain a couple of ounces tomorrow, and then average a .4 lb. drop per day (less than a 3 lb. drop per week) then I will meet my best weight from 2020 on the 30^th of this month… and best it the following day. Whatever day that happens, I will delete that spreadsheet… and I will focus on my next goal: best post-Army weight ever!

Thinking about it, and there really is no way to know for sure, I am not sure that in this millennium I have weighed less than 255 lbs. I have no recollection of (and probably did not take notice) when my weight first popped above that mark. Aside from my yearly check-ups with the doctor, the first time I weighed myself would have been when I started at Weight Watchers, which would have been in 2003 or 2004. In that time, I know I dropped from somewhere around 295 to (according to an article that I wrote on my blog in 2014) 255 lbs. When I drop below that number it is entirely possible that it will be the first time since Y2K that I am below that. The enormity of that is astounding to me. I have spent nearly a quarter of a century weighing more than I do today. How different would my life be had I not wasted so much time as obese and morbidly obese?

This morning I weigh 9.2 lbs. more than my best weight from 2020. In that year, between September 3 and October 7 I would register below this morning’s weight 30 days. On October 8 I snuck back above today’s weight for the last time. My goal looking forward is for today’s weight to be the heaviest I will be for the rest of my life… and to be able to say the same about what I will weigh a month from today, and six months from today. I never did like roller coasters, and it is time for me to get off it. This should be my last trip down, and with the knowledge and wisdom that I have gained from so much experience, I hope that I now know what I will need to do to make that a reality.

Her Floofness and I are heading to Cambridge today to smoke cigars with friends. She likes it there, knows that everyone will dote on her, and might even give her some treats. As for me, I am on the fence between going out for a jog for the next hour or getting back into bed for that hour. I did not sleep very well last night but know that I will be able to make it through the day either way. It would just be nice to not be so tired!

My goal for today is to smoke my cigars and stay true to the program in the face of myriad temptations that are everywhere at my buddy’s house. I have to look those snacks in the eye (jar, bag, container) and say that my weight loss journey is more satisfying than anything you would do for me. There was a time when I thought of this as a long-term satisfaction, but I now look at it as a short-term goal. Tomorrow morning my weight might be up a couple of ounces, but it would be worse if I succumbed to temptation. I was originally supposed to go yesterday, but my buddy and I decided that today would be a better idea (we were not sure what the roads would look like after the snow). Had I gone yesterday, knowing that I was on that plateau, I might not have been so strong. This morning, with my weight dropping below 270 lbs. for the first time since October 8, 2020, I know my resolve will be much stronger. I will bring a meal replacement shake and my shaker bottle with me… along with a couple of really good cigars to make sure I have the tools that I need to combat the negative desires.

Have a great day folks!