Merlin of Chaos

July 15, 2015 -- 13 months ago, I posted my milestone chart. I think about the milestones a lot, they're part of my motivation. So I'm reposting the table with 2 very slight edits.

Weight	Loss	Notes
308	0	Starting weight. Ugh.
300	-8	Where I was the last time I started one of these.
290	-18	Where I was when I started Weight Watchers, 2005
285	-23	Where I was on Jul 15, 2015 when I posted this chart.
276	-32	25% of goal
270	-38	Approximate weight on my wedding day.
263	-45	The amount of weight I lost on WW, my best attempt so far (though I did well on low carb, too)
260	-48	Approximate weight when I started low carb, 1998
245	-63	Approximate weight when I fell off weight watchers, 2006
244	-64	50% of goal
242	-66	Where I am Aug 17, 2016.
230	-78	Approximate weight when I moved to CA, 1996
225	-83	Approximate weight when I fell off low-carb, 1998
220	-88	Approximate weight when I moved to NYC
212	-96	75% of goal
180	-128	Goal weight

It feels good to know that I have more milestones behind me than I have ahead of me. Though it also makes me impatient to get to the next milestone, which is quite some ways away. 2 months at least, and that's if I maintain solid discipline. I usually go in spurts and then lose focus for a bit and have to find it again.

One interesting thing about this whole journey has been watching the data I've compiled from my scale, which measures weight and automatically uploads it (really, this is a fantastic thing, even if sometimes it makes mistakes as it tries to auto detect WHO it's weighing) but also attempts to measure body fat percentage.

Now, I know these electrical body fat percentage things are pretty inaccurate, so I don't put a lot of stock into it. But knowing this, it IS a data point and it's an interesting one: With the exception of a period where it went crazy and started giving obviously out of whack numbers for a couple of months (it had my body fat percentage dropping unreasonably -- and Lynette's too) it's actually been telling me pretty consistently for several months that I have around 180 pounds of lean mass, and while I've been on this diet, I haven't lost any lean mass (nor have I gained any).

So someone of relatively average weight at my height would be expected to have more like 145 pounds of lean mass. And I do know that I run on the muscular side. So despite knowing that the measurements are not truly accurate, it doesn't seem that far off. It's probably running a little high, but for the sake of argument, let's go with that number.

If that's true, the next thing to know is that for a male of my age, 17% body fat is considered a good, healthy number for someone who is fit and active.

180 * 1.17 is 210.6 -- meaning if that number holds up, and I retain all of my existing (theoretical) lean mass, my target weight should be 210 pounds.

That's something to think about and continue to evaluate as I get down there.

Unrelated to this, but possibly why I posted on a weekend: I got my first sub-250 weigh in today.

First update: My food discipline is crap right now. Despite working out pretty regularly I'm actually a bit up from my last post. I need to find discipline but I've not yet managed it. That said, I've run quite a lot (until this week) and so I'm keeping the exercise going.

According to Walkmeter, I did my first Couch 2 5K run on July 12 of last year. I know I did a couple with at least 2 other apps before I realized Walkmeter (an app I had already been USING) had a 5K program built in (and one that was way better than apps that cost money).

So I'm going to say July 9 is probably really darn close to the 1 year anniversary. Close enough. So let's say a year.

So one year ago, I started a process that included running 7 one minute intervals with 90 seconds of walking in between and ended 10 theoretical weeks later by running a continuous 5K. It was more than 10 weeks for me because of a knee injury and a tonsillectomy, but if you've been reading my blog you already know I did eventually complete that.

Today I just finished a run that started with a .75 mile warmup walk, then 4 miles of continuous running, another quarter mile rest walk, a kind of agonizing 1 mile follow up run, and then another third of a mile walking (basically until I got home). I haven't quite managed a full 10K of running in one session yet, but if I keep on the trend I'm on, I'll be able to get there sooner or later. I'm not really concerned with when, honestly if I just keep up what I'm doing right now I'm getting plenty of good work.

While running, mostly I've just put my iPhone music on shuffle, but today I decided to try and focus on music that fills me with energy as a way to help me get through the "I don't wannas" I inevitably start getting in the last couple of miles. The theory being that I can stop thinking about how much I have left to do and try to zone out and listen to the music and get me through it. I'm not sure it really works, but whatever, it's energizing music nonetheless.

Also, I'm kind of old. Everything on here is very much from my generation.

Thunderstruck	AC-DC
Manic Monday	Bangles
Greensleeves	Blackmore's Night
Blister In The Sun	Violent Femmes
Godzilla	Blue Oyster Cult
Rasputin	Boiled In Lead
Tubthumping	Chumbawamba
Alegria	Cirque Du Soleil Alegria
Beautiful World	Colin Hay
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)	They Might Be Giants
Shout	Tears For Fears
Rio	Duran Duran
Invisible Touch	Genesis Invisible Touch
Doctorin' The Tardis	Timelords
Birdhouse In Your Soul	They Might Be Giants
Under Pressure	David Bowie & Queen
Main Title-The Ice Planet Hoth	John Williams
Lola	The Kinks
Lightning Crashes	Live
Kyrie	Mr. Mister
Rock You Like A Hurricane	Scorpions
All for you	Sister Hazel
Storybook Love	Mark Knopfler
Never Gonna Give You Up	Rick Astley YES THIS IS A RICK RUN
True Faith-94	New Order
Bury My Lovely	October Project

I think the Beautiful World doesn't quite work, it's a bit too mellow. And while Storybook Love is mellow it inspires me a lot so will probably stay. And yeah, my taste in music is probably a bit weird. It's also leaving out some obvious stuff for no reason other than this was enough to ensure it covered my runs with a little extra.

I've tried to make sure no artist gets more than 1 track, except for TMBG because their songs are very short so they get two.

Things have been extra stressful at work for the last few weeks, as there was a departmental reorg, I got a lot more responsibility and a WHOLE lot of uncertainty that I've been dealing with. The anxiety has been building up, bit by bit, and it's been wearing at me.

As a result I've been awful. On the plus side, the weight remains stable. I actually thought it'd be going up, but I weighed in at 257 this morning, so there's that. I really have to not use this as an excuse, but so far that's not working. Regroup, refocus. Somehow.

At least be happy it's stable and in the worst case, maintain that.

This week's been really really good for running. On Sunday I went out with my 8 year old daughter, and we ran together. She liked it so much, she said she wants to do it again; so I'm hoping we'll make that a regular thing.

My distance isn't want it was before I went on break, so I've been working on getting my stamina back up and today I got back up to doing a 5K. I have some soreness that I hope doesn't turn into anything, but for now I think it's just cranky muscles. Also, when I run outdoors, it's very important I don't forget the inhaler. Partly due to air quality, and partly because the terrain around here is fairly hilly and it's really easy to push myself too hard on the hill and once I pass a certain point, my lungs complain the rest of the trip. I don't really have that problem on the treadmill because of the steady pace, but outdoors I have to keep a close eye on that.

I've been less successful at curtailing my eating. Not completely unsuccessful, but work is extra stressful right now, and that's actually good for the running (I've gone on at least one run JUST to work off some stress) but really bad for the eating. When I'm cranky and grumpy I quickly go "screw it" and eat badly, because it feels good.

So as a result, the scale is steady, though it feels like the belt is a smidge looser. I guess I'll take that. In the end, my hope is that the physical activity is what makes this go long term, so I'm more focused on keeping that up anyway. I'll take it and keep working.

The astute of you will notice that this is my first post this year, and that it's been 5 weeks since I've posted. Bad me.

So I had my two week break over the Feast season, and that went okay. But after the amazing festivities of New Year's Day, I succumbed pretty hard to my regular bouts of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I completely turtled. I went back to running briefly, but my hips were still sore so I only made it 3 sessions before I decided to give it another break; it felt like I'd made some progress on them and I just didn't give them enough time. So I wasn't too fussed about that.

Then a couple weeks after that, my lower back injury acted up. Ironically, unconnected to the running. Or maybe unironically it was because I'd been taking a break? It's certainly possible. In the past, the single best therapy for my back had been the long walks, but between feeling completely out of sorts, the rain, the weather and the soreness in my hips, my physical activity really dropped.

The back is starting to feel better, but 7 weeks of letting myself go are adding up. I'm up 3-4 pounds, and my belt's a bit tighter than it was in mid-December. I'm sort of slowly working back to paying attention to what I eat again, trying to take small steps. I'm feeling less depressed than I had been, now that there's more sunlight and longer days again. The back injury is a concern--it's still very uncomfortable at night--but this week is still showing steady improvement, so right now patience and care are the order of the day. At the very least I hope to stem the weight gain, and work myself back up to exercising and better eating and go back to weight loss.

I'm still logging into MyFitnessPal every day, even if I'm not logging what i eat. It's a reminder that I need to get back to it. I'm feeling more capable of it again, but perhaps not until next week. I got a decent walk in yesterday, will do another this afternoon, and that felt good.

In the meantime, Charlotte has progressed a long way through her 5K plan, through a couple of pauses for various reasons, and her stamina has noticeably improved. Oddly not as quickly as mine did, which surprises me. At her age I'd expect her body to react quickly to that kind of practice, but either way, she IS responding and moving forward on it.

So I guess in summary, hanging in there, keeping the coals smoldering but no fire going right now, so to speak. Keeping my mind on it so that I don't just drop it completely. I still have goals to meet.

When looking at my weight loss status, the month of November looks like a plateau. It's no wonder I was getting a little down on myself. In part, the plateau was almost certainly my own doing, because I think I was expecting the running to make up a bit for being a touch more slack in my portions and counting and logging.

Well, December has been back on track! I clocked in both today and yesterday at 256.9, which is another 1.5 lb drop off from last week. This puts me right on schedule to get below 255 by the end of the year, and maybe a bit lower if I can stay really good, though 250 is almost certainly out of reach in the next 2 weeks.

This is showing up nicely in other places too. The 40" jeans that I bought last month have gone from being a little tight to a little loose in the thighs. In part they've stretched, but in part I've lost a little bit of girth there. It's hard to tell how much is which without getting a new pair. And in terms of measurements, another quarter inch has come off the waist.

When I look in the mirror, depending on the day I see two different things. On good days, I see the smaller me and I am pleased with my progress. On less good days, I see that I'm not quite halfway to my goal, and I see just how far I have to go. On the plus side, I have all this success behind me, and I can use that as motivation. I've done this before, I can do this again. It's been a mantra at times, to help keep me on track.

On the running, I'm keeping it up well. I missed last Friday's workout to let my hip rest, which had a bit of lingering soreness. That cleared up over the weekend, so I went back to it on Monday.

Right now, the plan I've created for myself for the next few weeks includes 2 sessions of running for 30 minutes, alternating between speeds that are a bit above my target pace, and at or below my regular pace to catch up. The 3rd session will add a little time at a lower pace, trying to add 5% to 10% each week until I can run 60 continuous minutes at my slow pace.

The idea here to be able to improve my general pace time, as well as my endurance, and to make sure I don't fall into any ruts of doing the same workout every day. I'm not working on any ground-breaking speed, but I do have three goals here, including the 60 minute run.

The first goal is to be able to complete a 5K in 30 minutes, which means running 6.2mph or just under a 10 minute per mile pace. My second goal is to be able to do a single 8 minute mile. The first goal I think I can manage in 3-4 weeks. The second goal I suspect will take a bit longer, as I'm not even to the point of trying that speed and I'm not being too aggressive getting there. Plus, I think that'll happen fairly naturally as I continue to lose weight and I naturally expend less energy while running. Still, it's a goal that I think is achievable and I want to work on. The 60 minute run will take even longer, since I'm only adding 3-5 minutes per week -- that's probably 8-10 weeks to get there. It's fine, it's a good thing to work toward.

In a month or two, I intend to change it up a little more and switch one of the interval runs to do inclines. So in 3 workouts, it'll be one intervals, one that does some incline and one long run. But I'm not ready to throw the incline in yet, so we'll keep that in the hip pocket for a bit.

I went ahead and bought new shoes, to see if better running shoes would help out the hips. I've only used them twice so far, so the jury's still out. Will take a few more sessions. They're definitely a lot squishier than the sandals, and I think that may be nicer on the hip, but they're a bit harder on my feet than the sandals, as I would expect, because I have sensitive skin and I blister pretty easily. I've got a couple of painful spots right now, but my runs are short and only every other day, so hopefully they'll turn into callouses and not blisters and I'll be okay. These shoes were marked Extra Wide, and while they ARE pretty wide compared to most running shoes I've tried, they're not quite wide enough. I may have to actually talk to a specialist to get properly fitted for my next pair, but I'll try to at least put 50 miles on these (and that's only 15 or so sessions) before I make any further decisions on them. Unless they cause real problems, but so far not yet.

The last bit is that I used my employee discount to pick up apple watches for esmerel and I, in part because the watch seems pretty useful exercising. It turns out it's not all that exciting on the treadmill, but when I went for an outdoor walk it's really nice to be able to flick my wrist and see my stats. However, I do have the problem that, being farsighted, while I'm outdoors and wearing my sunglasses, it's kind of hard to see. So a bit less useful there than I'd hoped. On the plus side, the main reason I've been avoiding one -- my experience hating watchbands -- seems to have been less of an issue. I picked the smallest, lightest one and a very light band, and that seems to have helped. All the watches I wore as a kid were much heavier than this, and that seems to make a real difference in my comfort level with it.

Unrelated to the exercise, it IS really cool to be able to text with it using Siri while otherwise occupied. Yay hands-free! Plus the heart rate monitor has been useful (and has also told me that I need to go very slow in pushing up my pace, as I'm pretty close to my theoretical target heart rate maximum while running at the faster pace). So it'll take me some time to push the pace up past 6.5 mph.

I decided to do a little dumpster diving of my LiveJournal. Part of this is because I got into the 250s today, and I was a bit curious where I was on some of these other plans. For example, I started Low Carb at around 265, so I've just breached the beginning of that one; but I started (officially) Weight Watchers at around 290, and ended that plan around 245. So I still have a little ways to go to get to the actual weight I was at, but I've already lost (slightly) more than I did on that plan.

So anyway, while looking for more data, I happened across a tag named "return to the wagon" which I clicked on. It's the relatively short account of one of my several weight loss attempts. I vaguely remembered that one, but it was so short I couldn't remember when it had happened or how long it had lasted, or what I had even accomplished.

After reading it, I started looking for the others that I knew about. My LiveJournal currently has four catalogued, and there's one major one I've done that isn't catalogued because I wasn't blogging in 1999. Not too many people were yet.

So, I decided to go through and add tags to all the posts so I can easily find them. If anyone wants to read me whine throughout history (seriously, the number of posts I wrote that have lead paragraphs starting with "Despite..." -- clearly I need to do that less) and see the trials and tribulations I've had in the past, feel free. Note that in 2005 I actually used friend locking, because LJ was so busy I was happy to put posts that many people wouldn't be interested in into groups so that they wouldn't have to see them. 10 years later that's laughable, LJ is pretty much the Radiator Springs of the blogging world. Still here, but it's the same 15 people, only older and rustier.

• 1999 -- the Low Carb Diet. I lost about 40 pounds on this one. Details are only from my memory and therefore sketchy, but I was down to 225 pounds, and then I met Lynette.


• 2005 -- Weight Watchers -- also includes the brief 2007 one because it has the same WW tag because it's also WW. But I don't feel like renaming it. I lost 45 pounds, and changing life circumstances caused me to lose focus and eventually drop it. If you actually want to read about this one you need to be on my friends list and in my ww group. I don't expect anyone will, but if you aren't already (honestly most people who've been reading these and responding ARE, but there's a few folks from FaceBook that weren't around me in 2005) just let me know. Obviously you'll need a LiveJournal account for that to work. I could go back and unlock them all but it's too much work when I doubt anyone but me really wants to go back and read them.


• 2007 -- Return to the Wagon A fairly lame attempt to get back on WW. It only lasted about 6 weeks, and I clearly wasn't committed. I was particularly remembering this one when I was worried about how I'd do if I wasn't fully committed.


• 2011 -- The Moderation Diet An experiment that started off with good results, but did not succeed in staying on it. My theories on my failure are a combination of lack of accountability, and an inability to cope with the pain of the back injury and the stress of going freelance contributed to an inability to remain focus. I lost 25 pounds over the course of it, and parts of it were very successful.


• 2012 -- Moderation Diet Redux. I didn't blog about this aborted attempt, but I do have some weight checkins i took from a 3 month period in the summer. I only lost about 10 pounds and I think lack of success prompted me to give up.


• 2014 -- Mixed Low Carb Experiment. This is another one I never blogged about, but Lynette and I together tried an experimental not quite low carb but lower carb balanced diet, and that experience ultimately failed but it things I learned on it did inform this year's attempt. (One thing I learned is that I *hate* those kinds of restrictions).


• 2015 -- Weight Loss VIII The current one that you've been reading about. 6 months on, not quite 50 pounds lost (but OH so close if I'm good this week I can make it). I'm stumbling a little bit, right now, but I've been pretty positive about the whole thing. It's certainly had a few downs, but oh so many more ups than any previous experience. I think I need to work on refocusing a bit soon, because I don't want to just trail off and throw away all the great progress I've made. But I don't feel like I'm in real danger of that as long as I keep myself accountable.

Interestingly, I was guessing when I named this one Weight Loss VII, but it turns out, it really is attempt #7.

There are two really important competing aphorisms here:

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

And

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Finally, I've collected every single one of them that I could find under the dieting tag.

Also. I can make 50 pounds this week if I'm really good. And the scale wasn't giving me a big fat lie today. Let's think on it positively and say YES I WILL.

This week's update is a couple days late due to the trip and the holiday. Summary: Stable.

I dinged 180 day streak on MyFitnessPal, and week 26 means I've been Doin' This Thing for half a year now. I think I've lost a bit of focus in terms of doig a good job of accurately tracking what I eat. I take a lot of shortcuts and guesses and I think the guesses are getting further and further off. With the holiday season fully in swing that probably won't get a lot better in December, but if progress remains slow this month I will try to redouble my efforts for the new year.

As one might expect, there's been no real progress this week. Running was put on hold for the trip, though I did get a whole lot of walking in. Plus, Disneyland tends to come with a fair bit of eating. I didn't really snack a lot, but many of the meals were fairly big. That said, I feel like I *should* have been a bit negative in the net; it doesn't show in the scale yet, but we will see when everything settles back into the pattern.

While I was there I did get a 260.5 weigh in, but every other weigh in was 261-263. This morning's was somewhere in the 261 range.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I didn't record what I ate at all; I had a fairly big breakfast (I made potatoes, bacon and eggs for family and visiting cousins). I managed to only eat one plate full of food, and I didn't overfill it; but I also had little bits to eat here and there while cooking, so it was a fair bit. Also samples of 3 different pies and cheesecake which probably added up to about a piece and a half of pie in normal size.

I didn't actually eat a third meal yesterday, which might've offset things a bit, but I did have a fair bit to drink which is pretty calorific. So all in all I feel like I did pretty well but not as well as I could have. That's fine, it's the holidays.

Today I got back on the horse, er, treadmill, and picked up another run. If I didn't have to stop to go to the bathroom (too much coffee) it would've been 25 continuous minutes of running. So pretty good on the restart; Monday I'll go back to week 9, I think, which is a 22 minute run, followed by a 26 minute on Weds and a 30 minute run on Friday.

In an ideal world I'll start seeing some 259 weigh ins sometime next week. I'll try to be extra good this weekend to make it happen. 258 will let me claim 50 pounds, and I'd like to make that milestone.

This is a short one today. Weight's fairly stable at 263. I posted a chart a few days ago that suggests the trend is going down at a faster pace than I thought, though still slower than before the surgery. Running is going well still, but I'm not getting a ton of steps outside of running. Haven't gotten enough sleep the last couple of weeks and that's been impacting my tendency to binge. So still truckin' along.