I had a couple of posts a few months ago about my ongoing weight loss. Just as a recap, I was about 260lbs at my heaviest and need/want to get down to at least 180lbs. The number would put me at about a BMI of 28 which is the maximum that Dr. McGinn will perform GRS/SRS. Most other surgeons have weight limits of one sort or another, but hers seems to be the strictest in terms of weight and I want to keep all options open.
I dropped about 30lbs fairly quickly over the 8 weeks while J was out of town for her training. Over the holidays and post-orchiectomy my weight fluctuated up and down, I got as low as about 225lbs and got back up to between 235-240lbs. I basically settled in about 230lbs which was where I was months ago and was frustrated.
I finally invested in FitBit One's for J and myself (and M for that matter) and their Aria scale. I had been manually tracking my weight in Excel and had been doing a little exercise, but not a lot. Well the scale has been a huge help as it's taken the drudgery out of maintain the Excel spreadsheet. Now I do "cheat" a bit and only keep my "best" weight of the day, but I figure that day over day that's close enough for me. The other thing I like about it is that it calculates body fat. Now the accuracy of the way they calculate it isn't the best way to do it, but again day over day it gives me a frame of reference. That frame of reference is important since the value goes up the less hydrated you are and I have trouble with that because of the blood pressure medication and the Spiro. When I see the value go up by more than a couple of percent from what I consider "normal" I know I need to get more water in my system. That sounds like a simple proposition, but with the two different diuretics it's often harder than it sounds, much less adding in what I sweat out from my exercise.
That leads to the second benefit, the tracker itself. I work at a desk all day and am not very active. Based upon the tracker I seem to get between 1500 and 3000 steps a day which is far below what I need. Our treadmill tracks steps, but it's only quasi-accurate, but the FitBit One is small enough I can wear all the time (usually attached to my bra) and see exactly where I'm at. I try to hit 5 miles a day at a minimum which equates to between about 10000 and 12500 steps depending upon how much of my steps are on the treadmill since I walk much faster on that than my normal walking. The 5 miles is my minimum target, usually it's closer to 7 or so, with a high of a touch over 17 one day (nearly 39000 steps). Now there are days I don't meet that, if I don't feel well, if I'm making a dinner that takes a lot of time, or if I'm incredibly busy with work as I like to walk 20-30 minutes at a time several times per day. I try and get at least 3 of those short sessions in during the day (a morning break, lunch, and an afternoon break), but that's not always feasible. On nights that J walks we may do 20 minutes or we may go upwards of a hour depending on if she works the next day and/or when we can get downstairs. She walks to various Leslie Sansone videos which I used to make fun of, but some of hers are intense. We've also started walking the neighborhood. We live in a group of connected subdivisions, I really consider it one large one, but there are multiple builders and within that different sized houses. M found that if we walk from our house to the very back of the farthest subdivision and back it's right about 5 miles. It is funny, our trackers all measure about the same distance, but I get a good 10% more steps than J or M, apparently I have a shorter stride than they do which puzzles me since I'm taller, but whatever.
We've had the trackers for about 10 weeks now and while I'm still watching what I eat within reason, I'm not counting calories as much as I was before, but with the increased activity I'm still losing weight. I've lost 10-12lbs over that time which is only a bit over 1lb a week. I'd rather lose 2lbs per week, but I can live with the 1lb since I'm not really dieting very much. I've actually managed to be under 220lbs for 7 days straight now which is an accomplishment for me since not only have I gotten to that level I've been able to maintain it. I'm to the point now where I'm working on 5lb goals, so 215 is my next target, hopefully in a week or two since I'm around 217 now.
I guess I'll wrap it up now, I could use a quick walk since I've been lazy today and haven't been down there yet. :)
- M
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