Anyway, I've been reading online and realize I need to build more variety into my weight lifting, and have begun doing that. (For starters, for at least the past two months I've also done my bench press first, with exactly the same weight.) And I'll keep eating right and I'm sure the weight will come off.

I do wonder sometimes, though, how it works when you're trying to both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time -- exactly how much should be eaten, and is it possible that my 2200 calories/day limit isn't enough and is somehow causing both of these plateaus? Hard to say...

What I'm sure of is that I'm not at my ideal weight yet, although I'm not too far off. I still have some flabby gut to lose!

Not significant for weight loss of course -- I guess it's a testament to my busy-ness and serious lack of sleep than anything else. It's funny, though: I "feel better" that it was a promise to myself that was broken instead of one to my wife or kids.

Anyway, life goes on, and one of these days won't be so busy, surely! In the meanwhile I'm being more careful with my calorie recording. :)

11 more to reach my goal!

One time it was 110/64 and the other 112/73.

In the distant past I apparently had high blood pressure, because my body has shown some signs from it in dilated eye exams and an echo cardiogram. I actually don't know how high it got or how long it was high -- I literally went a decade without getting it checked or otherwise seeing a doctor, during a time I was quite obese -- my weight reached 326 at its max. (Not ever seeing a doctor for over a decade was a mistake, by the way, even if I felt good.)

Anyway, 20 months ago my blood pressure was in the 130s over 70 something and occasionally a bit over 140, especially in doctors' offices (white coat readings. anyone? :) I had fairly recently started eating right and losing weight. Since then I've seen it trickle down, so that now when I check it at Walmart it's typically in the one-teens over upper sixes. My pulse is often right around 50.

That's significant progress with no medication. That's another testimony to the power of PUBIMO Promises and the Promise Diet.

For further motivation, here's an entry about my significant cholesterol improvement.

Referring back to my 2200 vs. 2500 calorie ponderings, in which I mentioned how at 2500 calories I wasn't getting hungry but at 2200 I was often getting hungry, I thought it was very interesting that I didn't experience much hunger this week, eating less than 2200 calories/day. Presumably the difference in hunger this week can be attributed to the fact that my body wasn't consuming as many calories as normal since I was desk/bed/sofa ridden.

And, despite the inactivity and lack of hunger, I lost two pounds this past week, and now weight 198! I'm really curious to know what I would have weighed had I had my normal active week -- too bad we can't do true split A/B tests on such things.

Anyway, I feel my hypothesis is growing stronger: active people (or at least active people like me :) have a "sweet spot" of calorie consumption at which they lose weight, have the energy they need for their activity, but don't get hungry, or at least not that hungry. Eat more than this and weight loss slows down. Eat less than this and you go around hungry and (perhaps) weight loss slows down, or at least doesn't speed up to compensate for the decrease in calories consumed, since metabolism shifts.

This sweet spot would likely shift down over time as one loses weight, since one's basal metabolism would decrease (unless one is gaining a fair amount of muscle mass by weight lifting).

For me, then, my ideal seems to be more like 2500/day than 2200/day. Since I've promised to not eat more than 2200/day until I weight 185 I'm going to stick to that, but probably I should have stayed with 2500, at least for weeks that I'm not laim.

Too bad I can't split myself into three, with one of me eating no more than 2500/day, one 2200/day, and one 1800/day. I bet adding up weight loss, energy, and lack of hunger, 2500 would win over the course of a month.

I also weighed 200 this morning, a pound less than my pre-Christmas weight, which is great since I had two fun gluttonous free days between then and now.

After I got home from the Y I looked up a chart on the web and found http://www.new-fitness.com/body_fat_measuring.html. It showed the following for a male my age:

16.1% -- Excellent
19.4% -- Good
22.6% -- Fair
26.1% -- Poor

So, not surprisingly, I still have some weight to lose.

Taking 21.8% for calculation purposes, at 200 pounds exactly I guess this means I have about 43.6 pounds of fat on my body. (I realize the measurements these gadgets produce aren't 100% accurate.) Since I'm actively lifting weights I'm going to assume the weight I'm losing is all fat, and for purposes of math simplication I'm going to assuming I'm not going to gain any muscle mass for a while.

So, when I reach my goal weight of 185, meaning I've lost 15 more pounds of fat, that would make my percent body fat then to be (43.6-15)/185 = 15.5%, putting me into the "excellent" category then. I'm thinking this suggests that my 185 is a good "ideal body weight" for me. My BMI would then be 24.4, at the high end of "normal", but maybe the fact that that I've been lifting weights regularly for some time now means I've got a bit more muscle mass then some.

About 6 more pounds and I'll be "good" according to this chart.

Anyway, I was happy to see that I had lost a pound when I weighed this morning. 185 is on it's way...

brownie(s)
Breyer's Oreo Cookie ice cream
chocolate chips
almond slivers
Hersey's hot fudge (heated up in microwave)

Put into a big bowl and enjoy.

Repeat several times during the course of 24 hours.

-----------------------

Maybe it's because I hadn't had sweets in so long but this was really, really, really, really good. :)

Right before having the last bowl at 11:30 PM on Christmas Day, I told my wife, "I'm going to get me one more bowl, but then I'm not going to have any sweets on New Year's Day [my next free day]."

So, more more sweets until I get to 185 or until my daughter's birthday on March 26!

I've lost about one pound a week during this time -- a total of four pounds.

And I've been hungry many times, in particular I've gone to bed hungry many times, feeling that for the first time since I began all of this I've been on "a diet".

I'm really wondering what my weight loss would have been had I stayed with 2500 calories a day. The math of weight loss tells me that, since losing a pound of fat means a reduction/expenditure of an extra 3500 calories, my 300 calories/day reduction should translate into an extra 0.6 lb/week, or 2.5 pounds in four weeks. That said, I wouldn't have been surprised to lose four pounds in four weeks with 2500 calories/day plus the exercise I've been doing.

(Perhaps I've gained some muscle mass with the weight lifting I've been doing, which would affect these numbers some of course. I continue to get stronger as I continue to lift weights.)

In other words, I'm wondering if 2500/day was my personal "sweet spot" -- no hunger with fairly steady weight loss, especially with plenty of exercise. Perhaps 2200/day is too little for me, especially with the regular weight lifting I'm doing, causing me to be hungry often and causing my metabolism to slow down, thus causing my weight loss to in effect slow down as well, to what it would have been more or less had I stuck with 2500.

I'll stick with the promised 2200 and get down to 185 and then relax a bit. But I'm developing a hypothesis that many dieters, especially those who are exercising, aren't eating enough when they start eating 1800 calories/day or less (for males, I realize women's numbers are different). Perhaps maybe they'd be better off not cutting down quite so much, to instead find their own personal "sweet spot", a number definitely higher than their Basal Metabolism?

If you're going to make a promise to limit calories, be careful you don't promise too low!!

(Perhaps I should mention that I'm 37 years old, 6'1", currently weigh 201 pounds (BMI 26.5), and have pretty much been lifting weights for a year and a half (although I still have a lot of upper-body strength to build. :). Shorter, taller, stronger, weaker, older, younger, lighter, and/or heavier people (especially female) would have different caloric "sweet spots", and most likely these sweet spots would shift downward over time anyway as one loses weight.)

At this point, I'm planning to eat well, but not totally crazy. My family is planning to eat the evening meal at the local Mongolian Grill, which is going to be open, so that will help my calories out, as that place is as low-cal as it gets. (We moved into our new home two days ago and haven't unpacked the kitchen yet and thought eating out would be a nice way to celebrate as a family. We've "catered in" lasagna from A Taste of Italy for lunch as well. :)

My family's making brownies as I write this and at midnight tonight I'm going to get me a brownie and ice cream sundae!

I just can't express well the peace of mind I have knowing I can "climb down off the wagon" tomorrow, have a fun day, and then resume everything again the following day, no problem. That truly allows me to enjoy my fun days and illustrates the power of the Promise Diet to radically transform lives permanently. I am so thankful...

Merry Christmas to all!

I realize for some people other factors may come into play, and that not eating enough can mess up one's metabolism and change formulas, but for me weight loss is quite simply a matter of math: expend more calories than you consume and the weight comes off. In addition to my 2200 promise I've been able to work out more frequently than normal, so the math is working in my behalf on both sides of the equation these days.

For a long, long time this was much easier said than done though!

In fact, for what is I'm sure the first time in my life, I've gone 10 days in a row without a single sweet thing. And, not surprisingly, I'm finding that eliminating desset from my diet makes it easier to eat less than 2200 calories a day.

Even with my calorie reduction and seven days in a row of some type of exercise, I bet I still haven't made up for Thanksgiving's fun. I'm curious to see what the scale says next time I do an "official" weighing (in the morning at the Y after breakfast wearing shorts and a T-shirt).

The phrase "new reality" has been resonating with me the past couple of days as I've been surprised at how easy it has been to adhere to my new promises to not eat sweets and to eat less than 2200 calories a day.

Instead of passively undergoing a calamity, though, I'm realizing what I did was to create by fiat a new reality for myself -- I'm now a person who can't eat sweets and who consumes less than 2200 calories/day. And, at this point in my Promise Diet journey I was pretty quickly able to accept that new reality, adjust to it, and move on with my life. And voila, I'm now eating less than 2200 calories a day (where I had been eating in the 2400s almost every day) and I'm not eating sweets, and I'm definitely no worse off for it. Everything else being equal, this 300 calorie/day differential should translate into a couple extra pounds of weight loss a month until I get to my ultimate goal.

What new reality can you create for yourself today?

Good thing I have my promises to keep me in check for the long haul.

------------

Thanksgiving Day is one of a few "free days" built into my 2500 promise. (All of my other promises still apply since they didn't have any exceptions.) It was fun eating all kinds of junk (fried bologna sandwich, frozen pizza, two Hardee's biscuits, lots of yummy cake) plus a nice large Thanksgiving meal too. (Thanks Liz and Carol!) I started the day off with a midnight Wendy's run (classic double with cheese and a (fried) chicken sandwich) and then pretty much ate most of the next 24 hours -- with only slight intestinal distress today.

The obvious: I am still a glutton at heart -- I bet I ate 4 times the calories I normally do in a day these days.

Christmas is the next one... should be fun. Good thing I don't have too many of these!

2479
2477
2495
2433
2465
( promise made )
2155
2193
2197
2183

And, I had lunch at Golden Corral today, and for the first time in a very long time did not have any dessert there due to the second promise I made a few days ago.

Is it really that simple? Yes.