Yes, I had a few more crackers, but only a few. And a couple of small cubes of cheese. I was otherwise good.
My weight was up today, from 171.8 to 172.6, probably due to water, my irregular regularity or ALIENS.
Tomorrow I shall redouble my efforts to have no snacks at all, except for maybe a banana or some yummo sugar snap peas.
Yes, today my snacking consisted of a single chocolate-covered almond. The no-snacking thing must be working because I didn’t immediately want to scarf down the entire bag (I did not procure said almonds).
I did another good walk/run, as well, so my daily exercise is also continuing to roll along.
In neutral news, my weight remained unchanged at 171.8 pounds. I’m kind of excited to see it drop some more, because dipping below 170 will be a nice psychological boost.
Too bad work sucks corn dogs, it’s the one real blotch in my life right now. Oh well. At least I’ll be physically fit.
I cheated again a bit today, basically the same as yesterday, with a few crackers and a Clif Bar.
But I also went on my first 5K run in awhile, so I burned a few calories there. I’m calling it even because I can.
Somewhat to my surprise, my weight was down 0.3 pounds this morning. I am close once again to where I was at the start of the year, so here’s hoping tomorrow continues the downward trend.
You may have noticed that the last two days of cheating have also been the start of the work week. This is not a coincidence, as I am not particularly enjoying my work these days. I am trying to be positive and research other careers and look into other job opportunities instead of just being perpetually frustrated and enduring where I am now. Having the self-awareness that I am doing that snacking-as-comfort-food thing will hopefully make it easier to slap my hand away from the box of crackers that calls to me with its sweet and crunchy voice.
Today, I just didn’t care, so I cheated…a bit. I had some crackers. I had a Clif Bar. But I did a half hour workout on the treadmill, so it wasn’t all just indulgence. I paid for my sins in sweat.
I was down this morning by 0.3 pounds. This meant I did not end the month at a total weight loss for the year to date, but I am closer than I’ve been in a long time.
A few stats from my two-week snack-free experiment:
The bottom line is the last two weeks have kept me on a steady downward track with my weight and I’m lower in weight now than I have been in many months. It would be foolish to not continue, so starting tomorrow, I’ll begin tracking September’s 30 days and see how it goes.
This may mean I have to skip a birthday cake on my birthday. Maybe I’ll have a brownie instead and work it off on a run.
If you look at my high and low weight in August, there is a spread of 5.2 pounds, from a high of 176.5 to a low of 171.3. I ended the month this morning at 172.1, exactly two pounds lighter than when I started. This is a smaller drop than the previous month (2.6 pounds) but it does reflect a two week period in the second half of the month when I started going snack-free.
If you look at the snack-free period, my weight went from 175.8 to 172.1, a more impressive difference of 3.7 pounds.
For one day this month–August 29 when I hit that low of 171.3 pounds–Fitbit declared my weight as normal instead of overweight. Today, sitting at exactly 25 for BMI, I am once again officially in the tubby category. Alas. But if I behave, I could have my next normal day as soon as tomorrow, which would be a spiffy way to start the month. (I am aware there is controversy over using BMI as an indicator for weight/body fat.)
If I had ended the month on that 171.3 pound weight I would have seen my first loss for the year. Instead I am still up, though it is now a more modest increase of 0.3 pounds (as of last month it was 3 pounds).
Body fat has gone down for the month, which suggests I am actually starting to lose the tire.
The no snacking policy will continue!
Stats:
August 1: 174.1 pounds
August 31: 172.1 pounds (down 2 pounds)
Year to date: From 171.8 to 172.1 pounds (up 0.3 pounds)
And the body fat:
August 1: 23.1% (40.3 pounds of fat)
August 31: 22.6% (38.9 pounds of fat) down 0.4 pounds)
It was bound to happen and today my weight went up instead of down, by 1.1 pounds to 172.4 pounds. Alas. I blame water and etc.
Snacking was absent today except for a few small pieces of cheese (not the seemingly massive calorie-rich slab I had last week) and while I didn’t do one of my exercise walk/runs, I still got out for a nearly 4 km walk to burn a few.
Tomorrow morning I assess how well I’ve done with two weeks of snacking, evaluate and then make a plan for September.
Today was a day of no snacking at all. I’m not actually sure how I managed it without getting hungry. I guess I spaced the meals optimally.
I also hit a milestone this morning on the weigh-in: I dropped to 171.3 pounds, which puts me below where I was at the start of the year. As of today, at least, I have actually, officially lost weight in 2020. Fitbit also decreed that I am no longer overweight, instead I am normal. This just means my BMI dipped below 25 (to 24.9 to be exact), which is the somewhat arbitrary line where one shifts from not fat to fat.
The reality is I am still rather pudgy, but now just over 20 pounds short of my goal. That may still seem like a lot, but given the results I’ve seen in the past 12 days vs. the rest of the year to date, it seems entirely achievable.
There is a small chance I could dip below 170 pounds before the month is over, but it’s also just as likely I could gain water weight or swallow lead ingots encased in chocolate or something, and see an increase instead. I’m hoping for the former, but braced for the latter (don’t worry, I don’t have any chocolate-covered lead ingots handy).
I had a small banana after my walk/run and a few crackers before dinner because I was crazy hungry. But that was it!
I was down slightly in weight, to 172.5 pounds. Still overweight by Fitbit’s assessment, but oh so close to being merely pudgy.
* technically a few snacks
There was a tiny smattering of Goldfish crackers left, so I ate them and another temptation is no longer within easy reach. The only other snack I had today was a small banana. That’s pretty good, I’d say.
To my surprise, I was down this morning, all the way to 172.7 pounds–my lowest since February and less than a pound off where I was on January 1st (171.8). This is encouraging.
I will not celebrate by stuffing my face with candy.
You see the phrase “As long as people wear masks and don’t lick one another” in an article in The Atlantic.
I was looking through some photos today and found some from November 2019 and it felt like looking back on a different world. Not just a different time, but a different place. I don’t know how much we will return to “normal” when the pandemic ends–especially as the world is also grappling with protests over racial and class equality, climate change and its accompanying litany of freak extreme weather (California on fire, multiple storms hitting the east coast simultaneously) and probably an alien invasion if things stay on track–but we will never be the same after this, I think. The memories will linger and carry into the next generation.
On the other hand, some argue, with some validity, that the average person has a memory comparable to the lifespan of a fruit fly, so maybe things will just go right back to how they were before and lessons will not be learned, or learned minimally as we slowly careen toward our next awaiting global disaster.
I want to say we won’t forget, in part because it’s going to linger around for probably at least another year or so in some form, that we are a good ways off from being able to put it behind us.
In the meantime, The Keg is running an ad that shows one of its restaurants bursting with activity, every table packed, people everywhere. I thought this was an odd thing to show with a virus rampaging across the world, but when I saw the ad again I noticed a small disclaimer at the bottom of the screen just as the ad started: Filmed before COVID-19. Now I’m really wondering why they ran the ad when they knew it was showing something that basically doesn’t match reality. Lazy, I guess. It’s an old ad and a new, more accurate one would just be depressing–a half-filled restaurant with all the staff wearing masks.
I won’t be eating in a restaurant until we have a vaccine, some kind of on-demand testing everywhere or benevolent aliens (maybe they won’t invade) make the virus magically disappear, like a certain sociopath south of the border mused it would. And though Tenet is now playing in theaters, there’s no way in hell I’m going to risk watching it in one. I can wait four months and watch it virus-free on a 60″ TV.
This concludes another kind of depressing post about the pandemic. Maybe in a year I’ll look back on this post and shudder over how bad things were then and how great they are now.
Maybe.
Yes, I cheated in a minor way with some Goldfish crackers again. This time I stopped and let the guilt wash over me in real time. I behaved for the rest of the day.
I was up to 174 pounds even, I think that may have pushed me to the crackers. But I did work them off later in the afternoon with another run/walk.
Still, I vow to do better for the rest of this 14 day experiment. I’ve been pretty good so far, but I can be better than pretty good.
At least donuts aren’t easy and convenient.
For the second day in a row my weight was up (sob), but my body fat was very slightly lower (yay).
I stuck to meals only today with two exceptions:
And with that I am halfway through my two week experiment. So far the signs have been encouraging and I’ve stayed pretty much on track. We’ll see how things go in Week 2.