fat

Good news: I lost three pounds!

Not-as-good news: It could have been more.

Still, I’m not going to complain too much. February is a short month, so a few less days to sweat off the weight. I did some snacking, but mostly offset it with exercise. There’s snow on the ground as I type this, but I’ve been using the treadmill.

March will see the return of Daylight Saving Time, the start of spring and hopefully milder weather (you know, no snow, which would be nice). My goal for the month is extremely modest:

Get below 160 pounds and stay there.

As of today, I have 1.6 pounds to go. If I lose weight at this month’s pace, I should hit my goal in the next few weeks.

We will see.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2023: 164.2 pounds
Current: 161.6 pounds
Year to date: Down 2.6 pounds

February 1: 164.6 pounds
February 28: 161.6 pounds (down 3 pounds)

Body fat:

February 1: 23.3%
February 28: 23.4% (up 0.1%)

Historical:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds

I’m now measuring things using the Garmin Index S2 scale. I don’t have a way to convert body fat percentage to actual pounds of fat, but maybe that’s a good thing.

For the month, the news is good and bad.

Good: My weight was down!

Bad: It was down only 1.1 pounds, which is an amount I can easily swing back and forth from in 24 hours. So pretty close to just treading water (or retaining it).

Still, down is better than up. Now that I’ve done the maintenance part for a month, I need to get back to the losing part. I’m not making any predictions to start the year, except that I should be down again at the end of February. We’ll find out in just 28 days!

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2023: 164.2 pounds
Current: 163.1 pounds
Year to date: Down 1.1 pounds

January 1: 164.2 pounds
January 31: 163.1 pounds (down 1.1 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23.1%
January 31: 23.3% (up 0.2%)

Historical:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds

No miracle weight loss at the end of the month. Or year. Or at all!

Yes, December was a bad month. I snacked and snacked and even as I type this around 8 a.m. I can hear the people upstairs banging and thumping around, and I have definitely turned to snacks to help manage the stress their constant noise is causing. But I know I can do better and be more disciplined, so I remain committed to my 150 pound weight loss goal.

The good news is that I am still down a respectable amount for the year, as I started at 182.8 pounds, meaning despite the weight gain this month, I am still down 17.3 pounds for the year, which ain’t nothing.

But at one point I was at 157.3 pounds and was so close to hitting my goal. Sad trombone.

Here’s to (early) 2023 being when I actually hit that goal! Or else. Or else I won’t.

But I will!

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 165.5 pounds

Year to date: Down 17.3 pounds

December 1: 160.9 pounds
December 31: 165.5 pounds (up 4.6 pounds)

Body fat:

NOTE: The Garmin scale is calculating my body fat differently, or something, because it has it much higher than the Fitbit scale ever did. Oddly, this means for the year to date, my overall body fat is...exactly the same. Garmin also doesn't convert your body fat percentage into weight, so I had to do this myself. As a result and assuming I did the math right (always questionable), I only shed about four pounds of body fat for the entire year, despite dropping 17.3 pounds overall. Did I lose 14 pounds of muscle? Of course not. We'll see how this stat plays out in 2023 with just the Garmin scale being used for weight measurement.

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
November 30: 23% (38 pounds of fat--down 4.2 pounds)

A bag of nacho tortilla chips. And I ate the whole bag!

I weighed in at 163.8 pounds this morning. That’s almost seven pounds above my low this year and taking me further away from reaching my goal of 150 pounds, which I should have trivially reached by the end of the year. With two weeks to go, I will probably not even break 160.

But I’m going to try, so I am publicly stating this to the entire interweb to hold myself accountable (I already yelled at myself in my diary):

I vow to not purchase or consume any snacks for the rest of 2022, all 16 days of it!

Let’s see what that big mean scale says on December 31st.

Now, I’m off for some cake. KIDDING.

(I don’t have any cake. Not that I would eat it if I did. I’m pretty sure. No, I mean, I am absolutely 100% sure. Yes. RARR NO CAKE. See?)

Look at how thin and svelte this cat is:

Yeah, this month was bad, there is no other way to put it.

But it could have been worse.

I started the month at 158.7 pounds, a mere 8.7 pounds away from my goal of 150. It was within reach! However, my weight inched back up over 160 and in the final week it persistently stayed just over 160 and I ended the month at 161.3 pounds.

I now need to lose 11.3 pounds to hit my goal. If I intend to do it before the end of 2022 I would need to lose an average of 0.376 pounds per day. When I put it that way, it sounds pretty easy. It also translates to 2.82 pounds per week, which makes it sound a lot harder.

So 0.376 pounds per day it is!

The good news is that I have been running regularly, and it’s quite possible that some of the weight gain may be actual muscle mass. Maybe I’ll get a fancy™ scale that can measure that sort of thing, so I have yet another stat to track¹UPDATE: The Garmin scale coincidentally went on scale, so I have ordered it. I like stats. And lists.

Actually, looking over the Fitbit stats, there is also some good news on body fat. It was down slightly from October, from 17.5% to 17.1% and my total body fat over the year declined as a result.

Here’s to a Christmas miracle and actual weight loss resuming in the month of December. Ho ho ho!

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 161.3 pounds

Year to date: Down 21.5 pounds

November 1: 158.7 pounds
November 30: 161.3 pounds (up 2.6 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
November 30: 17.1% (27.6 pounds of fat--down 14.5 pounds)

Yes, it is sad trombone time. After steadily losing weight, I managed to gain this month, though I kept it down to a singe pound, which effectively means my weight stood still in the big picture.

In the monthly picture, what happened was I started at 157.3 pounds then due to a series of unfortunate events, found myself returning, again and again, to food as a source of comfort.

I ate cookies. I ate crackers. I ate Pop-Tarts. I ate everything.

In the last week or so I made a healthy course correction and my weight began a slow, steady decline after that (I peaked at 160.2 pounds on October 18th). The last six days of the month I’ve gone from 160.2 to 158.3, so I am pleased by that.

Since I’m eight pounds away from my goal of 150 pounds, I’m leery to say I’ll hit it in November, but it is at least theoretically possible.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 158.37 pounds

Year to date: Down 24.5 pounds

October 1: 157.3 pounds
October 31: 158.3 pounds (up 1.0 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
October 31: 17.5% (27.7 pounds of fat--down 14.4 pounds)

The good news is I finally broke out of the long plateau in my weight loss. The less-good news is it took long enough that my weight loss for the month was fairly modest.

But I ended with a flourish, coming in at my lowest weight of the month (157 pounds), with a total loss of 2.6 pounds. I am now exactly seven pounds from my stated goal of 150 pounds. Could I do it by the end of October? Possibly. But November seems more likely.

I’ve been pretty good on snacking and have maintained a regular run/exercise routine, so I am confident I’ll get there, barring a sudden and unexplained addiction to donuts.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 157 pounds

Year to date: Down 25.8 pounds

September 1: 159.6 pounds
September 30: 157 pounds (down 2.6 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
August 31: 17.4% (27.4 pounds of fat--down 14.7 pounds)

After lamenting how my weight hit 160.6 pounds in mid-August, then stubbornly refused to drop below 160 for the rest of the month, I weighed in this morning (September 1) and the scale said…

159.6 pounds

Yay. I feel like my body is pranking me. But it still means I’m now less than ten pounds from my official weight loss goal of 150 pounds. Soon I’ll be able to wear bikinis again without shame!

Or at least take my shirt off without hearing cries of, “Put it back on!” (I am the one making those cries, BTW.)

Good news: I am down again for the month, and ended on a new low for the year.

Bad news: My weight loss plateaued and stalled about halfway through the month.

Ambivalent news: These kinds of plateaus are not unexpected, so I should start dropping again soon unless I suddenly switch to bags of donuts as my primary food source.

On August 16 I hit 160.4 pounds and for the next 15 days my weight ticked up and down until today, when it was…160.4 pounds. The body fat percentage has dropped, though, so I am still shedding the padding.

Overall, I am pleased at the continued weight loss, if slightly frustrated at the last few weeks.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 160.4 pounds

Year to date: Down 22.4 pounds

August 1: 164.1 pounds
August 31: 160.4 pounds (down 3.7 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
August 31: 17.7% (28.4 pounds of fat--down 13.7 pounds)

Interestingly, I am down the exact same amount in July as I was in June–4.4 pounds, another month of notable weight loss. Yay.

Even better, I dropped more weight in the final two days after hitting a plateau that lasted a little more than a week.

The continued weight loss can be attributed to a few things:

• Lots of exercise. I am running three times a week (each run is a combined 18+ km of walking/running) and I do walks on my non-run days, too. Compulsion to close activity rings on Apple Watch fitness app: Ongoing!
• Less snacking overall. Reminding myself to not eat when not hungry (it’s surprising how often we do that.). This is known as fog eating and would go better if you ate actual fog instead of food.
• Smarter snacking. I am eating more fruit or doing things like having a serving of non-fat yogurt with blueberries or strawberries mixed in. No more cookies!
• Better meals. Saving things like pizza as occasional indulgences rather than having them regularly. I’m sorry, pizza, our torrid affair must remain part-time.

The weight loss is now enough that I can see the downward trend over shorter periods of time. I still find it darkly amusing that the biggest loss happened when I got COVID-19. But unlike other times when illness led to weight loss, I didn’t put the weight back on. Woo.

My Fitbit one-year chart is below. It is a weird coincidence that my weight peaked on January 1 of this year:

Also, looking over the chart again, I seem to have mistyped my weight from January 1, so my weight loss for the year-to-date is even better than I originally thought. I have corrected the January stats below.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 182.8 pounds
Current: 163.8 pounds

Year to date: Down 19 pounds

July 1: 168.2 pounds
July 31: 163.8 pounds (down 4.4 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23% (42.1 pounds of fat)
July 31: 18% (29.5 pounds of fat--down 12.6 pounds)

After a month of standing still, my weight was on the move again, and this time in the right direction–down!

I even had a nice bonus of dropping a little on the last day of the month after hitting a new low, so it looks even better. In June, I lost 4.4 pounds, my best results for the year to date, and Fitbit now regards my weight as “normal” instead of overweight. As of today, I have 18.2 pounds to go to reach my target of 150 pounds, which I think I can hit by the end of summer. The start of summer would have been my preference, but clearly I did not hit my groove until this month. What changed? Let’s make a list!

• Less snacking overall
• Healthier snacking. I’m eating things like bananas and grapes instead of cookies and brownies
• More exercise. I am back to running three times a week, and usually get in some exercise in my “off” days in the form of walks and such
• A few tweaks to what I eat during meals, though I’ve been trying to keep those on the leaner, healthier side for a while

Overall, I am pleased with the results. I make no prediction for July, other than being down again. It would be nice to hit 160, but that would mean about two pounds of weight loss per week. It’s theoretically possible, but I think it’s more likely to continue to be closer to one pound, meaning I should be around 164 or thereabouts on July 31. We’ll find out soon™.

Stats:

Weight:

January 1, 2022: 180.6 pounds
Current: 168.2 pounds

Year to date: Down 12.4 pounds

June 1: 172.6 pounds
June 30: 168.2 pounds (down 4.4 pounds)

Body fat:

January 1: 23.2% (42.1 pounds of fat)
June 30: 19.9% (33.7 pounds of fat--down 8.4 pounds)