318.5
So another 1/2 pound lost yesterday. Despite eating 10 . . . yes 10 . . . Gorton's breaded fish fillets for dinner last night. Of course the fish part isn't all that bad, it's just the breading. And that being the only thing I had for dinner, probably saved the day for me. Now 318.5 is somewhat a milestone for me. I have weighed this much once this year, back in April when I was sick for two weeks. This time, I'm completely healthy and got here by sheer will power and working at it. I have another milestone coming up. 317.0. It might sound like a funny number to be a milestone, but back in 2001 (I think?) my friend Jerry and I were working at Adobe. We had both decided we wanted to lose weight and conveniently there was a weight watchers group forming at work. So every Wednesday (I think?) at noon, a bunch of us Adobe-ites would meet in a conference room, weigh in and talk about weight loss. The key to Weight Watchers I'm convinced is the meetings. If you don't go, it basically doesn't work. The thought of getting up on a scale in front of everyone (although your weight is kept private) and admitting failure or victory is quite a bit of motivation. Anyway, on our first weigh in there, I weighed 317.0. I went on over the course of the next 8 months to lose 51 pounds and declare that I wanted to attempt Mount Rainier in July of the following year. It was an AWESOME time for me.By the time I started training for Rainier, I could run 5+ miles on the treadmill, I was skiing every Thursday evening at the Summit and I felt better than I had in years. When I saw a TWO as the first digit in my weight, I made a vow to never see a three again. Well between not summiting Rainier and getting laid off in October of 2002, my weight ballooned up to a high in November of 2005 to 352. I'm happy to have lost 33.5 of those pounds . . . at 317, I will have accomplished two milestones . . . 1) gotten back to my original weight of 317 when I started WW with Jerry and 2) have lost 10% of my overall weight. A mark that many doctors and nutritionists agree significantly lowers your chances of life threatening events (heart attack, stroke, etc).
So 317.0, here I come. With luck, I'll make it before the end of the year. But what I've learned over the past month is that if I don't make it by 12/31/07, it's not the end of the world. Keep making more positive decisions than negative ones and eventually you'll win. Afterall, it's a marathon, not a sprint. You're in it for the long haul and if you don't make changes you can stick to, you'll be right back where you started wondering as David Byrne did "How Did I Get Here?"