Meet Me Halfway (307#)

On September 1, 2005, I weighed 378#. My goal is to get down to about 240#, which is pretty reasonable considering my height and build; that makes the midpoint of my weight loss journey 309#. In August, considering the successes I generally hadn't experienced in my previous weight loss endeavours, I'd have settled for midpoint in mid-2006. Hell, I'd have settled for midpoint sometime this lifetime. Like most morbidly obese people, I simply hadn't been conditioned to expect results, because I wasn't willing to put in the work to get there.

Most of August was spent in the similar limbo period where I was for the previous year or so. I was exercising a lot more than is normal for me and getting in better and better shape, which is a good thing, but I wasn't being careful enough about what I ate to lose weight. Call it maintenance mode about 140# early.

Here's a recap of what has transpired since September 1, which is about when I decided to quit fucking around:

• 137 days have passed.
  
• I've lost 71#.
  
• That's .51#/day.
  

Last week, I was pretty sick with the flu bug that was going around--the first time I've been sick since this process started. My energy level was down, I missed several workouts, and I ate some stuff I normally wouldn't (I ordered a large pizza and some fried potato appetizer thingies on Tuesday and ate that through Wednesday, for example). Despite that, I've continued losing weight, and this morning when I stepped on the scale I saw that for the first time I was below midpoint of my goal.

Part of the definition of any good system is productivity under adversity, and with the holiday parties and Christmas dinners of December and the sickness so far in January, conditions for weight loss don't get much more adverse. But where normally I might be mired in the very dangerous "oh, this month doesn't really matter; I'll get back on the horse when things are normal again", which is lazy thinking that can easily extend for months or years into the future, I did lose in that time period. Since November 29, I've lost 20# in 47 days. That's weight loss at a slower rate than I was experiencing previously, but it's weight loss all the same. Now that I'm feeling better and the holiday season is past, I fully anticipate at least another month at my early-winter weight loss rate before I start to run into a problem I hear about from fit people who just want to lose 5-10# or go down one pants size: it's harder to lose weight when you don't have as much to lose.

If you are in anything near the situation I was about 150# ago, I can say this: it's actually a lot of fun being hungry a lot of the time. You'll find that you feel agile and in control and that your body is much more able to engage in any sort of physical activity without a full gut and intestinal tract anchoring you to the earth. I don't mean to sound like I've got an eating disorder or anything like that, because I can still put away more food than anyone I know in a state of nature. Rather, both from a physical activity and energy level standpoint, mild hunger pangs are a tangible physical representation of the change you are making to your lifestyle, and you can be assured that you'll be the better for them.

71# down, 67# to go. I'll be close enough for government work well before August 1, 2006.

I was 307# this morning.