Wrapping up the weight loss
I will reach goal this month: I have 5.6 lbs to go, and I have discovered (through trial, error, and pattern recognition) some of the problems that were slowing my loss. One thing is that it takes much less food to maintain my weight than what I had been eating. (Wonder whether that might not have something to do with putting on all that surplus weight… nah, probably not.)
I’m pretty tickled about cracking this final puzzle. I was at 184.7 lbs on 4 April and at 184.1 lbs on 29 May. In between I had gone up and down, just a few pounds each way: highs around 186.7 lbs, low at 179.5 lbs. But, essentially, no loss for two months.
The good news is that it shows that I can maintain—at least for a couple of months. And now I think I have a good meal approach that will lose the last of the weight—but not too rapidly.
Now that I think about it, it has been exactly one year since I started this effort. So overall weight loss for the year was 72.4 lbs: 1.4 lbs/week, on average—not a precipitous weight loss by any means. “Slow and steady wins the race.” – Grandmother Ham.
Congratulations on your weight loss! As you say, slow yet steady.
Colline
2 June 2011 at 1:29 pm
That is fantastic, Michael. I totally agree about “slow and steady…”
Joe
4 June 2011 at 7:23 am
Thanks. Here at the end it’s going a bit faster, but only for a short duration: just to get to goal. I’m almost at 175 (original goal), but I think I’ll take it to 172 to allow for daily fluctuation up and down.
One thing that has struck me as I review my notes and look at my performance over the past couple of weeks—losing weight without effort, eating without recording, just being sensible about my food selection and amounts—that it’s very much as though maintaining a proper weight were a skill, which I have finally learned. I’m going to talk about that quite a bit in the book, because it seems to accurately reflect the process and my experience.
LeisureGuy
4 June 2011 at 7:35 am