Weight Loss

Ok, let's face it, I'm overweight. Not just slightly overweight, but severely overweight. I'm 5 feet 11 inches tall, and at the beginning of December 2002, I was almost 260 pounds. By anyone's measure, that's just Not Healthy.

Weight Loss
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Body Mass Index
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Points
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I've tried various diets in the past, but never stuck with any of them, usually due to too much effort. However, even I realized that something needed to be done, or I was likely going to meet an early death. Enter E-bay.

My girlfriend, who had previously had good results with Weight Watchers, had purchased some WW books on E-bay last year, in an attempt to help me lose weight. At the time, I didn't really put much of any effort into it, and kept saying, "We'll start it next month." Next month really became "next year", but I finally started.

As you can see from the graphs, I've been losing weight since I started, with only one real setback in January 2003. I've been keeping up with the program fairly faithfully, even when I've gotten depressed that "I can't eat anything anymore!" Part of this is true. I can no longer routinely stuff my face, eat fast food every day, or just munch on anything I feel like when I feel like it.

Instead, I've had to learn moderation. I need to decide what I'm going to eat based on nutritional content, and thanks to WW's "points" system, I can trade back and forth between "good" foods and "bad". If I absolutely must have that 7 point Krispy Kreme doughnut, I know that I'll need to counter it with basically just a large salad for dinner.

All in all, I think I'm fairly happy with the way things are progressing, even if I'm now to the point where 1 fast food meal translates into essentially strictly veggies for the rest of the day. I'm looking and feeling a lot better, and people who've known me for a while, who didn't know I was on a diet, have asked me, since they've noticed a marked weight loss (currently over 35 pounds in a little under 4 months). I still haven't reached the "halfway" point yet to what I'm told is my "ideal" weight, but I expect I'll be able to get there soon.

One other thing I should note, for those who are skeptical. I don't attend meetings. I don't like attending meetings, so I don't. I just have the books, the funky patented slide-rule thing for calculating points, and use my Palm to keep track of what I've been eating. I also don't tend to exercise much. I mean, I'll walk around a store, take a few strolls around the office, but I'm not out there exercising like a madman. I'm sure if I did, I'd likely see a more pronounced weight loss (or at least, be able to eat more, since activity gives you more points based on the strenuousness and duration), but I'm happy with my results.

All in all, I'm currently averaging something around 2.5 pounds a week, which if I'm understanding correctly, is a "healthy" amount of weight loss. At my current rate, I'm estimating that I'll be reaching my "ideal" weight sometime around August 2003, at which point I should be able to go on "maintenance", which just means points are increased slightly, and I more or less stay there "forever", or until I start gaining weight again. Check back regularly, to see how it's going.

Update 2003/08/19

Well, obviously, I haven't gotten into the "ideal" range yet. In fact, I'm still in the "overweight" BMI range. As I lose more weight, it seems to get more difficult to keep the rate of weight loss as high as it was. In fact, back in May, I seemed to have plateaued for a while right around 210 pounds. I've also slacked off on following the WW diet closely of late, preferring to "guesstimate" my points usage for each day instead of recording what the actual points are. I've made a resolution to get back with following everything strictly, especially since I'm so close to breaking that 200 pound barrier. We'll see what happens...

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