Yes, it looks bad, like I’ve been secretly eating donuts. But I have remained donut-free.
What happened is: Bodies are weird, and I gained two pounds in the last two days. Has my diet (as in eating regime, not a fad diet) gone off the rails? No, but these things happen, anyway.
Bad: Body fat is over 25% again (I have not remained 100% snack-free)
Good: Muscle mass is up! Probably entirely in my calves, my very sexy calves.
I think I can still get below 160 pounds before the end of the year. I won’t have long to find out!
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 165.8 pounds Year to date: Down 1.0 pounds
October 1: 162.7 pounds October 31: 165.8 pounds (up 3.1 pounds)
Body fat: October 1: 24.5% October 31: 25.3% (up 0.8%)
Skeletal muscle mass: October 1: 29.2 kg October 31: 29.5 kg (up 0.3 kg)
Except for muscle mass, which has dipped slightly, all the stats are improved this month, yay, with my weight dropping a nice 2.1 pounds. I was down to as low as 162.9 at one point, but alas, ran out of days before I could get back there.
September was easily one of my most active months of the year, with only a few runs missed, and plenty of walking. I think the exercise helped, if not in terms of actually losing weight, then perhaps in terms of keeping from gaining. I did snack a bit (including cursed Pop Tarts) but never strayed far off the track when it came to the occasional indulgence.
I feel like I am in a good position to finally get below 160 pounds in October, and officially be less than 10 pounds from my intended goal of 150. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, no donuts!
(I did have one donut this year.)
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 163.4 pounds Year to date: Down 3.4 pounds
September 1: 165.5 pounds September 30: 163.4 pounds (down 2.1 pounds)
Body fat: September 1: 24.9% September 30: 24.6% (down 0.3%)
Skeletal muscle mass: September 1: 29.5 kg September 30: 29.3 kg (down 0.2 kg)
BMI: September 1: 23.7 September 30: 23.4 (down 0.3)
Yes, I was actually kind of good this month, food-wise! I was also very active, running and walking all hither and yon.
I may have sweated off some weight due to the humidity, too. In any event, I am down 1.8 pounds for the month, and the same amount for the year, too, which looks worse that way, but I’m down, so it’s a win as per me.
Onward from here!
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 165.0 pounds Year to date: Down 1.8 pounds
August 1: 166.8 pounds August 31: 165.0 pounds (down 1.8 pounds)
Body fat: August 1: 25.1% August 31: 24.8% (down 0.3%)
Skeletal muscle mass: August 1: 29.7 kg August 31: 29.5 kg (down 0.2 kg)
The good news is 1.1 pounds is probably too high to be a rounding error. The other good news is down is better than up. The less good news is 1.1 pounds is not a lot. But bonus adjacent-to-good news is I was down more and then toward the end of the month hit a five-day skid in which I gained, gained, gained. Maybe it was all muscle? Let’s find out!
(BTW, the low this month was 165.9 pounds, which would have put me down for the year. But alas.)
As you can see, there was little movement across any of the stats, which makes sense with the modest weight loss.
Halfway through the year, it’s becoming clear to me that my body is not shedding weight because I am taking in too many calories. This likely means (apart from snacking) that I am underestimating my calories, so I may try to be more precise on some of the usual stuff I eat and see what happens.
And less snacking, of course.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 167.3 pounds Year to date: Up 0.5 pounds
June 1: 168.4 pounds June 30: 167.3 pounds (down 1.1 pounds)
Body fat: June 1: 25.8% June 30: 25.6% (down 0.2%)
Skeletal muscle mass: June 1: 29.8 kg June 30: 29.7 (down 0.1 kg)
After gaining a whopping 4.6 pounds last month, this month I am happy to report a loss of an even greater 6.0 pounds even!
Now, it’s true there were extenuating circumstances, namely the evening of May 20, when I got a stomach bug that caused me to violently eject everything from my stomach. I dropped 4.9 pounds overnight as a result.
But I ended up gaining back only 0.1 pounds over the next 11 days, which is not how these situations typically go. What was different this time?
It took multiple days for my appetite to come back
I resisted buying a lot of heavily processed snacks, for fear of heaving them
The above reinforced my reduced snacking for the month
I ran as regularly this month as I could, before and after The Heaving
Basically, I behaved.
Now, extrapolating from even a month is tricky. My body fat percentage is allegedly only down 0.1%–pretty much the same–despite losing six pounds. But my muscle mass is up 0.5% from the running and whatever, and muscle is heavier than fat. So…I dunno!
The important thing is all the bad stats are down, the good stats are up, and I’m heading in the right direction. After suddenly being way up for the year to date, I am now up a mere 0.2 pounds, an amount I shed just last night.
Here’s to June being all slim ‘n sexy.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 167.0 pounds Year to date: Up 0.2 pounds
May1: 173.0 pounds May 31: 167.0 pounds (down 6.0 pounds)
Body fat: May 1: 26.1% May 31: 26.0% (down 0.1%)
Skeletal muscle mass: May 1: 29.9 kg May 31: 30.4 kg (up 0.5 kg)
April, particularly the first two-thirds of the month, was very stressful. I started out with modest weight loss that would have continued through the month if my eating habits had remained unchanged. They obviously did not, as I ate food to cope with stress. I ate all the food.
By the end of the month, things had settled down, but my weight didn’t, it was still tracking a couple of pounds up. In the final week, I decided I had to change my eating habits and do so in a drastic way.
That starts tomorrow, on May 1st.
But rather than ease my way into this new snack-free regime by cutting back, I did the opposite. I ate snacks. I ate a lot of snacks. I wanted to make myself sick of snacks.
Example: Yesterday I ate three candy bars (and more). The calorie total was more than double my entire breakfast.
I gained another half-pound overnight, to finish the month up a whopping 4.6 pounds. I broke the 173 pound mark for the first time this year. (Almost) all the stats are going in the wrong direction (see below for more, including the exception). I’ll likely be up again tomorrow.
But tomorrow, May 1st, is when the new plan begins. No snacks, unless it’s fruit or veggies. Calorie-rich dinners like pizza will be exceptions. Salads? More.
But we’ll see. In the meantime: FatVille, Population: Me. But hopefully the road leads to SlimVille or at least NormalWeightVille.
One plus side: Probably thanks to the running, I added 0.5 kg of muscle (about 1.1 pounds) this month, so woo on that. My total body fat only increased 0.2% as well. Maybe I’m just big-boned1lolz.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 173.2 pounds Year to date: Up 6.4 pounds
April 1: 168.6 pounds April 30: 173.2 pounds (up 4.6 pounds)
Body fat: April 1: 26.5% April 30: 26.7% (up 0.2%)
Skeletal muscle mass: April 1: 29.9 kg April 30: 30.4 kg (up 0.5 kg)
But what I am planing on doing is what I did way back in June 2008 when I stepped on my scale and, over its piercing screams of horror, saw that I weighed 187.5 pounds (it could only show half pound increments, which seems like an odd limitation for something that only does one thing).
Today I weighed in at 171.9 pounds (thanks, modern-day precision!), which even a non-math expert like me can see is only about 16ish pounds short of my roly-poly former self.
(At this point I was going to share a screenshot taken on my iPhone 5 in 2012 showing my weight in MyFitnessPal as being something like 143 pounds, except I cannot find the shot now. So just imagine it here.)
The point here is my approach to getting to my desired goal of 150 pounds is not working.
It didn’t work in the early 2000s, either. In order to actually lose weight back in 2008, I had to redo my entire food plan and stick to it. I did and lost over 40 pounds. I don’t need to lose 40 pounds this time, so I already have a head start!
Here is my plan, which I will start on May 1, 2025:
No snacks, except for fruit or veggies. And no cheating by counting something like “strawberry shortcake” as fruit.
I will wean myself off non-sugar soda over the space of a month or so. This is to avoid nasty caffeine headaches from withdrawal, which has happened before.
February was the month I spent recovering from battling a kidney infection for much of December and January and I clearly sought solace in food, specifically:
Frosted Strawberry Pop Tarts
Cookies, cookies, cookies
Potato chips
Crackers
Cheese
Crackers with cheese
Anything with cheese
Basically, if it was edible and tasty, I ate it
This resulted in a rapid gaining of weight, which I could not shed. I course-corrected near the end of the month, steering my metaphorical ship about from the fatberg, but it was too late to make a difference. It didn’t help that I also jumped up another 0.5 pounds on the final day of the month (today). I started the month at 167.3 pounds, which should have been an easy target to beat, and instead ended at 170.7 pounds. Sigh.
Despite this setback, I do think I will begin losing weight again. I am back to running and my health seems at least OK for the moment. Also, my muscle mass increased by 0.4 kg (0.88 pounds), so it wasn’t ALL fat. Just mostly fat.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 170.7 pounds Year to date: Up 3.9 pounds
February 1: 167.3 pounds February 28: 170.7 pounds (up 3.4 pounds)
Body fat: February 1: 25.8% February 28: 26.3% (up 0.5%)
Skeletal muscle mass: February 1: 29.8 kg February 28: 30.2 kg (up 0.4 kg)
It was close, but in the end, I was up a bit this month–0.4 pounds, thanks to a whole lot of comfort food indulgence as January was a very bad month (see previous post) and I sought refuge in yummy food when I had an actual appetite.
The one concerning stat is body fat, which climbed a full 0.7% over the course of the month–not a good trend.
I make no predictions for February, but barring calamity (and this year, calamity always seems like a possibility), I expect these stats to all start improving as I resume some exercise and eating better, healthier food.
Stats:
January 1, 2025: 166.8 pounds
Current: 167.2 pounds Year to date: Up 0.4 pounds
January 1: 166.8 pounds January 31: 167.2 pounds (up 0.4 pounds)
Body fat: January 1: 25.3% January 31: 26.0% (up 0.7%)
Skeletal muscle mass: January 1: 29.8.0% January 31: 29.8% (unchanged)
The best news is I’m down for the month and also down for the year. Hooray!
The not-as-good news is I was close to being down a decent bit more, as three times during the month I hit 165.2 or 165.3 pounds, including just a few days ago. In these past few days, despite no drastic changes in eating, my body weight suddenly started swinging wildly up and down. But even though I gained 0.6 pounds this morning, it couldn’t erase the rest of the month’s weight loss, meaning I am still down 2.2 pounds for the month and 5.7 pounds for the year.
These are pretty small numbers and I remain, as of today, some 16+ pounds short of my goal, but at least I am moving in the right direction.
December complications:
In the first week, I developed a bacteria infection, which kept me from running for four weeks. This is probably why I suffered the slight shrinkage of muscle mass. It did lead to a massive 3.1 pound overnight weight loss in that first week, and by the end of the month, I’d kept about two-thirds of it off, which is pretty good!
That second run–yesterday–resulted in me tripping and hitting the sidewalk hard, so I’m unsure how soon I’ll be running again. We’ll see.
The general lack of activity, associated stress, and discomfort did subdue my appetite for large periods, but once it improved, I came close to using food as comfort again. Bad!
In terms of stats, for the month, they have mostly improved. For the entire year of 2024:
Body fat went from 25.2% to 25.3% (neutral)
Muscle mass went from 30.5% to 29.7% (bad)
BMI went from 24.7 to 23.8 (good)
A mixed bag.
2024 was a mixed bag, indeed. Here’s to 2025 being a nice lean bag.
Stats:
January 1, 2024: 172.3 pounds
Current: 166.6 pounds Year to date: Down 5.7 pounds
December 1: 168.8 pounds December 31: 166.6 pounds (down 2.2 pounds)
Body fat: December 1: 25.9% December 31: 25.3% (down 0.6%)
Skeletal muscle mass: December 1: 30.0% December 31: 29.7% (down 0.3%)
BMI: December 1: 24.2 December 31: 23.8 (down 0.4%)
