Day 145 - This is why you don't freak out

I had a stretch of something like five or six days when my weight didn't change. When you lose five pounds a week, going five days without loss is noteworthy, but I kept trying to remind myself that there are a lot of reasons for even weekly variation.

In the last three days, I've lost six pounds. Now, I clearly haven't lost six pounds of fat in three days, even on my diet. What I have been doing is drinking in excess of a gallon of fluids a day, which leads to over eight pounds of mass flowing through me daily. Yesterday alone, I drank three two liters of diet Coke while playing Warhammer in a store without air conditioning. I'm still not sure how exactly I came out of that two pounds lighter this morning than I was before the tournament.

In terms of awareness, I'm in a sweet spot for people noticing my weight loss. Acquaintances I haven't seen for a month now notice that I'm losing weight, as 20lbs is pretty dramatic on a person my size. When I was losing weight faster, it was less noticeable, but in the future, I'll be losing weight more slowly, so it will take longer to be visible. Although I suppose on most people even 10lbs shows up pretty well.

With the last few days, I'm back on track to hit 310 by the end of the month. I have an official weigh-in at my doctors appointment wednesday, so I'll be able to calibrate back to what I weigh on my own scale. This is my first check up medically since mid may, and the first visit with the doctor since April. I've obviously made a lot of progress since then, and I'm curious as to his reaction. I also need to ask what the lower weight limit for my diet is. I'm sure I'm nowhere near it, but I currently plan on staying on the diet until the end of the year, cycling off in January and February, and thus starting my "phase two" Mediterranean diet roughly in March. According to one calculation, at my current pace I'll be down to roughly 250lbs by the beginning of November. Assuming my pace slows to 3lbs a week at that point, I'll by 226lbs by the end of the year, and so nearly 200lbs by next march, which will be a year. I don't know how long they'll keep my on the PSMF diet though, which is why I need to talk with the doctor.

In many ways, I'm less certain about my "goal" weight than I was when I started. I never really had one, I just wanted to lose weight. In many ways, I've surpassed my expectations. I had never really had luck with weight loss, and honestly I figured I'd be lucky to lose 40lbs, and get stuck. I had put 250lbs as a goal that would be very tough to reach, and 200lbs was a dream target. As of today, while I'm still 60lbs away from 250, I'm essentially 2/3 of the way there. I'm in the home stretch. I should be under 300lbs for the first time in roughly 7 years by mid august, and 250 by Halloween. I'm wondering if I'm doing the right thing by just focusing on staying on the diet, and not worrying about my "goal," or if having a hard target would motivate me more.

I think the reason I'm less worried about a specific weight is that all of my goals, while still tangible, aren't directly linked to a specific weight number. The biggest mass based goal I have right now is to get under 287lbs, which is the upper limit for morbid obesity for my height. It's an arbitrary line in the sand, but it's a reasonable measure. In more of a "reach" goal, getting under 215lbs makes me no longer clinically obese at all. For everything else, my goals are more volume based: buying clothes normally, fitting into roller coasters, etc. I'm now adding more fitness based goals, which I think is helping. Weight is just a number, an important number, but while I fixate on it for evidence of progress in how much weight I've lost, I'm not too concerned about where I end up, as long as I'm healthy and happy.