The Diary of A Simple Man

I just had my annual physical, and the news is all good - I'm doing great. My doctor's very pleased about the weight loss, my blood pressure and everything else are wonderful, and all's well. I'll go in for a fasting blood test soon, but other than that, all tests are completed.

I asked my doctor what my target weight should be, and she looked it up for me. According to the charts I'd be officially overweight even at 188 (!), but she said I should aim for 200 pounds and see if I could maintain that weight for a year. I asked if I'd been losing weight too fast, and she said no; at my weight it would be expected to take pounds off relatively quickly. But she did say that it would get harder as I got closer to my goal weight.

258.2. I've broken 260 after 72 days on the diet; that comes to about half a pound a day. Less than 60 pounds to go.

I am happy.

260.2.

I'd been hideously tempted by the smell of coffee this morning, and was teetering on the edge (coffee and a muffin, mmmm), but 260.2? That's a new low, even though I was a bit bad last night and ate 4 lamejhuns for dinner AND one of Sebastian's little cinnamon-stick cookies.

So I didn't get the coffee and muffin after all. With any luck, tomorrow I'll go under 260 for the first time - and you have no idea how exciting that feels!

Hah! I'm using the "Hot day" userpic for this post. It's already way out of date - that was 32.2 pounds ago! :D

You have no idea how bad I've been about the diet for the past two weeks. NO IDEA. Ice cream, cake, french fries, hot dogs, burgers, chocolate chip pancakes smothered with whipped cream, buttermilk biscuits with butter, sausages, doughnuts, cookies, more ice cream, chocolate...it's simply astonishing.

Sebastian had a box of miniature cinnamon sugar donuts. I ate all but three of them; it must have been twenty of them or more. When Sebastian found out, he cried and said we didn't have enough money to buy more.

Part of the problem is that I've been staying up late, almost always well past midnight. And that means I've been giving in to temptation and eating an entire extra meal late at night, including a sumptuous dessert.

Incidentally, a lot of this is probably due to that damned pipe; Teri and I weren't doing that well with the diet before then, but after the cellar flooded, we went to hell in a handbasket.

Work has been insanely busy, so I didn't get a chance to work out even ONCE last week; I took one walk with my co-workers, and that was it.

I didn't dare weigh myself this past week.

But yesterday I got back on the wagon, and managed to resist temptation. I was incredibly tired, and so managed to get to sleep before 10PM both nights (and had some weird dreams, but I'll write about those later, maybe).

I planned to be really good this week, and to not weigh in until Friday. I hoped that by that point I might be back down under 270; if I weighed myself earlier and saw that I'd undone all my hard work, I'd have probably snapped completely and gone on an ice-cream rampage.

Just to recap the situation, I started dieting on July 10th. My weight then was 292.4. Within two months I was down to 262.4. I'd lost 30 pounds.

I walked near the scale today, and found myself getting on; I was quite worried, but figured that it was time to know the worst and hope that I wouldn't get too depressed.

The result? 262 pounds.

I'm honestly very surprised.

Just in case anyone was wondering, Teri and I have been pretty bad about the diet for the last month or so. But tomorrow will mark the end of our second month on the diet, and I have lost - wait for it - thirty pounds.

I haven't been this light in about ten years. My clothes don't fit me any more, but I'm not buying new ones because I'm only about 1/3 of the way to my goal. I did have to buy a new belt, because my old one didn't have any holes left. Unfortunately I bought a really crappy one which was terribly designed, and the damned thing kept unhitching itself. So I found a very old belt - there are advantages to being a pack rat - and it's just fine. Although I'm already on the next-to-tightest hole.

I just need to get back on the wagon and stay there for a while. But so far, this diet has worked incredibly well. It's like magic.

I haven't been talking about the diet much lately, because Teri and I have fallen off the wagon, seriously and often, lately.

This weekend, for example, we went to IHOP and I once again had chocolate chip pancakes with extra whipped cream, plus coffee with a lot of sugar and cream. For lunch I had weiners, onion rings, french fries, and Coke; I don't remember what I had for dinner that day, but on Sunday my dinner was six pigs in blankets (hot dog halves wrapped in crescent rolls) plus tater tots and chocolate milk. Oh, and lots of Ben & Jerrys vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup.

As a result I was fairly sick for a couple of days while my system purged itself. But on Monday I went back faithfully to the diet, and the pounds immediately started to melt away again. I don't seem to have gained much from my weekend binge - I just didn't lose any - and I've been losing pretty dramatically since. So here's the score:

Starting date: 7/10/2006
Original weight: 292.4
Goal weight: 199
Current weight: 264.2
Weight lost to date: 28.2

And all in less than two months, mind you! Of course, I've also been working out almost every day, except on weekends.

My old belt is now too big for me, so over the weekend we bought a cheap new belt. Almost all of my pants are also too big for me now, but since I plan to lose a lot more weight, there's no point in buying new ones yet - even if we had the money.

But yesterday I stood up and walked towards the kitchen at work...and my pants dropped.

That damn belt is poorly designed, and I should have realized that to begin with. It can let go at any time, and does.

Fortunately I don't think anyone saw me, and I caught them pretty quickly and yanked them back up...but it was a little embarassing. And funny, of course. Once my belt was safely re-fastened, I have to admit that I laughed my brains out.

All while keeping one hand on my waistband, of course. :D

Maybe I'd lost weight, or size, or something. I don't know. But the two belts that I use most had somehow become too large for me. Even on the tightest settings, they were just too loose. It was getting embarrassing.

So I took them both up to Maine to have them worked on by the guy who made one of them, a belt that fastens through a double ring instead of a buckle (I think he custom-made that one at my request, since it's not something he normally stocks). The other was just a normal belt I'd picked up somewhere.

But I'd forgotten that when he was a kid my father used to be the chemical expert at his father's leather factory in Istanbul. No sooner had I mentioned what I planned to do then he whipped out some sort of drill-auger (or something), and drilled/burned perfect holes as needed. I wish I was half as handy as he is.

But I'd also planned to ask the leather guy to do something about the color of the ring-belt; over the last fifteen years much of the black stain on the leather had leeched away, leaving large faded areas. It looked pretty bad.

Trust my Dad to have a simple solution: liquid shoe polish. He was positive it would work. A week later Teri was cleaning up in the basement in preparation for the big yard sale she's doing tomorrow, and we found an old bottle of black liquid shoe polish (and when I say old, I mean at least fifteen years old). So we polished the belt and left it to dry overnight.

The next day I rubbed the belt down with dry paper towels, and to my amazement the belt looked practically new - and the remaining color didn't run or stain at all.

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Incidentally, I've done a few posts which are viewable by friends only (and a few just for me, if you were wondering). Unfortunately one or two of the people who sometimes read this aren't LJ members. Just a reminder that the accounts are free and invitations are no longer needed. And as far as I can tell, LJ never sends out spam.