Welcome to my experiment..

259.2

Five weeks ago, I turned 39, very much with the thought of the big four-zero coming around next year.  It’s been on my mind for a few months, actually, since my wife turned 40 last year, and my best friend turned 40 this year.  My wife wanted the milestone to pass unnoticed,  My friend wanted to do something he’d never done before.

For me, I’ve decided that I want to embrace that milestone since nothing I can do will prevent it.  So I am thinking of a big party.  Everybody I ever possibly knew at some point kind of party.  But..

That first number at the top of this entry is my weight as of this morning as measured by my newly purchased Weight Watchers Scale (along with body fat%, water %, and bone mass).  I’m 5′ 10″, and not a body builder, so it’s fair to say I’m pretty fat.  I don’t want to be the center of the party geographically, just attention-wise.

Both the good and bad news is, that’s not my top weight, two years ago, it was around 285 give or take 10 pounds (I was maxing out my old scale so it’s hard to be sure).  I’ve been eating better and working out for around two years now (not quite so much to show for it for a variety of work and illness related reasons).  I actually have belonged to a number of gyms over the years, with various success.  When I was 21, I was around 220, and I lost around 40 pounds for about three years, but then added it all back and some.  When I was 31, my wife and I wanted to go on a trip to Australia, that involved a lot of hiking, and I went from around 260 to around 220.  We had a great trip, but again, life interrupted and it all came back with some new friends.

As discouraging as that weight roller coaster might seem, right now it is a reminder that I have lost serious weight in the past.  I am also better armed knowledge wise this time.  A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a medical condition which I might go into a later time.  It’s nothing exotic, it’s nothing life threatening, nor is it the root cause of my obesity (my diet and my lack of exercise are), but it acts like icing on the cake and magnifies those other issues another 10-20%.  It explains why I continued to gain a little weight even during time periods where I ate relatively healthily and proportionately for a healthy person.

So I feel more clear on what I’m going to have to do to stay on track – much like an addict, I’m going to have to maintain zero tolerance in the future, forever.  It also means, I’ve recently changed my exercise regime to focus on longer term aides to maintaining a healthy body weight, which I’ll also talk about later.

So coming back the experiment.  I decided to see if I could healthily and sustainabily lose 52 pounds in 52 weeks, or average one pound a week til my 40th. I realize this will pretty difficult without being on a specialized program or TV show, and my new workout regime is actually somewhat contradictory to my goal, so the 52 pounds is an aspiration, but I am curious to see how close I will get.

Each week, hopefully on Sunday, I’ll post my current weight and progress to target.  Along the way I’ll talk about gyms, eating, health issues and everything else.  Welcome aboard.

Category	New Scale (lbs)	Old Scale (lbs)
Starting Weight:	267 (estimate)	273
Target Weight:	215	221
End Of Week 5 Weight:	259.2 (new scale)
Weight Loss So Far:	7.8lbs
Average Per Week So Far:	1.56 lbs/week

Advertisement