Category: Weight

Well, the Geek Diet is doing its thing:

1. I’m more conscious again of when I’m just noshing-to-nosh, of additional snacks, and of balancing out things.
2. I’ve dropped down to 208, which was just about where I was when I finished the last formal weight-tracking period (which started much higher then, of course).

Now the trick will be to see if I can punch past there and below 200.

Since I committed last weekend to a number of pairs of size 36 pants, I immediately began to get paranoid about my weight. I’ve eased up on the strict Geek Diet, of recording all the calories I eat. I’ve snacked. I’ve nibbled.

So, for the first time in a couple of months, I weighed myself this morning. How high would I have ballooned? How hard were the Diet Gods laughing regarding my new pants?

Continue reading “Weighty moment”

Per the mail back from the lab whilst we were away:

• Cholesterol is good (162, where the target is under 200).
• My HDL (“good” cholesterol) is at 39 (target over 40), while my LDL (“bad” cholesterol) is 98 (target under 100). So there’s a bit of room for improvement there (usual advice of diet and exercise).

• My triglycerides are back under control (somehow) from my last test, at 123 (target under 150).

And, for the record, my kidney, liver, and thyroid all seem to be doing their thang, and no hint of diabetes. Woo-hoo.

And the other good news? Despite a week of Eating, Drinking, and Being Merry, I appear, as of this morning, to have only gained one pound. Which makes me wonder whether there’s some sort of gravitational anomaly surrounding my bathroom scale, but that’s another story.

Been meaning to calculate this for a while, but …

In November 2003, my Body-Mass Index was 34, which was in the, ah, Obese range.

When I started my diet at the beginning of March 2004, it was 32.3. Still Obese.

And now? According to this calculator, It’s 29.8. Which is, just barely, only Overweight, instead of Obese.

Which doesn’t sound all that swell, but, hell, I’ll take those victories where I can get them.

(According to these tables, I’ll need to drop below 184 lbs. to get to the Normal BMI of 24.9. Which doesn’t seem likely, but, y’never know …)

BMI is by no means a perfect gauge of health, or even obesity. But it’s still kind of neat to have slipped into a not-quite-so-bad category.

UPDATE: And — huzzah! — I fit quite nicely into some size 40s that were up on my rack, as opposed to my previous size 42. Again, huzzah!

I’m watching my weight.

Three things happened to me at about the same time to make this happen.

First, Doyce wrote one of the best weight-control and fit-eating and sane-dieting posts I’ve ever read. No screeds about Donut Nazis, or how Atkins Was God, or Dammit I Like Fries, or about how Eating Grass and Rocks Will Make You Live Three Days Longer.

No, the bottom line: Pay attention to what you eat. And, well, eat reasonably. Don’t go back for seconds. Don’t gorge. But don’t starve yourself, either. Stuff like that. But most of all, be aware.

The post included this open letter:

Dear America-in-General:
What the hell are you doing?
Carb-counting bagels…
Low-carb ice cream…
Bunless burgers.
Christ on a Crutch.
Look, it’s really not that hard; order one burger, order a six-inch sub instead of a foot, replace white bread with whole wheat, consume less sugar, be aware that a regular side of fries has 100 more calories than the rest of the damn meal, combined – and stay away from fad diets. In fact, stay away from any diet and accept the fact that you need to eat well for the rest of your life instead of thinking a few weeks of ketosis starvation will make up for years of sleep-eating.
Just. Fucking. Wake-up.
And when you do buy Ben and Jerry’s, get the full-fat, high-carb variety and enjoy it. Better yet, share it with your friends. Enjoy yourself — just be… present in your own lives.

Remarkable. Inspirational, even.

(I am reminded, in Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno, how the Circle of Gluttons also included those who dieted to extreme. The sin is not over-eating per se, but the misuse of God’s bounty, and dwelling too much on food, to the exclusion of Better Things. You can do that by obsessing on diet as much as you can by neglecting it.)

Second, Margie started going to the gym. Which I think is just too swell for words. It’s not anything within my cosmos of activities to pursue at present, but I have nothing but respect and admiration for her for doing so.

Third … well, you’d think it would be something else profound. Lent, perhaps?

Well, no. I was working on the photo album, and ran across this gem. Vanity is often a better motivator than piety.

So, I’m watching things. I’m being aware. I’ve been using the little Palm program that Doyce uses, RMRDiet. I’m also playing with a program called BalanceLog, which is a scosh pricier, but has both a PC and a Palm version (that sync together).

The idea is not to micromanage, or unduly deny myself of food, glorious food. It’s not to be one of those annoying people who bug out their eyes when you order something that has fat, sugar, carbs, or taste in it. It is, as Doyce put it, to be aware. To know where I am, what I’m eating, how it compares. It’s to stop being willfully unaware of what I’m putting in my body, and how it affects my weight (and photogeneity).

I’ve actually put in a weight goal. A very, slow, modest one, but one which, if I make it, will make me a lot happier. I’m weighing in at 238 at the present — though that’s on the bathroom scale, and it implies I’ve lost 11 pounds since last November, which seems unlikely. On the other hand, it’s an index to start from.

We’ll see.

And, who knows — I might be looking at a New Year’s Resolution being actually fulfilled for once.

For those utterly uninterested in the results of my physical, such as they were, you can move on …

Continue reading “Let’s get physical …”