Weight Returns

Some change in shopping got my weight down 4 kg with little effort.  It's back after two years, and perhaps a little precipitous.  My exercise schedule has never been better since retirement so the villian must be what I eat, more than what goes in the grocery cart.  Consuming a little more bread and ice cream, the likely villains.  Maybe crackers too.  Spend upcoming month focusing and correcting the lapses.

Changing the Measurement

For a while now, I have been tracking my weight and waist measurements as surrogates of health, achieving progress about a year ago when I altered what I permitted in the grocery cart, then leveling off at the new level.  My weekly list of health related initiatives has become far more comprehensive.

1. Treadmill two days of three
2. Weight measurement weekly
3. Waist measurement weekly
4. Blood Pressure tracking
5. Stretch Daily
6. Upright during waking hours
7. Sleep Hygiene standards daily
8. Take medicines each evening
9. Omit snacks 8PM to 6AM daily

Health and functionality have an overriding importance, one that either enables or undermines all other activities.  As I pass the age of mandatory Social Security payments, stable health has been my good fortune though the arc of advancing years has imposed its presence.  With the New Year, I have shifted my measurement of progress from the scale and tape measure to the settings on the treadmill and the timer.  The first session went well.  An additional two minutes was added to my program, same speed, same cooldown, same tune to hum to pre-occupy me so I don't stare at the timer, which also took a new format. This being the first weight/waist day of the calendar year, there was a slight uptick just beyond the random variability of my scale and tape measure.  Took medicine.  Omitted munchies.  Payed attention to sleep.  BP, stretch, and upright all need more focus.

Not a bad start.

Didn't Last Long

Staying at home for Covid-19 safety seems to be transitioning from what we do to an analysis phase that should generate a fair number of PhDs over a number of social and biological sciences.  I still cope with boredom mode at times.  Early in the pandemic I would go to stores, not that I needed anything beyond  but at least there were people milling around and I could protect myself with recommended public isolation measures while there.  Over time I stopped, partly for waning interest, partly for shift to online shopping for the few things I really needed or wanted other than groceries, and partly for an observation that the stores had less on their shelves to look at.

But now we emerge, with a real trip planned within a few days.  What better time to visit the Dollar Store even though I really didn't need anything.  I wanted to get away prepared.  I already have enough grooming products.  Can never go wrong with another set of $1 ear buds.  I really needed another cannister of coffee creamer.  But most of my $13 total went to munchies which I hoped would last for the ride to the Poconos but didn't.

Among my great successes these past few months has been modifying my diet to promote weight reduction.  No squishy bread, potato chips, 2 liter soda bottles, or cookies, though an occasional treat of a Big Gulp from a convenience store.  These happen to be the very items that Dollar General can purchase in bulk for a song in order to retail for a dollar.  Sardines at least have protein.  Unfortunately only one brand had a kosher certification, unusually absent on canned fish, so I only got one can, which turned out a great disappointment bordering on disgust.  Then Mrs. Freshley's discounted donuts and yodels, each packaged as four reasonably generous servings per box.  The amount of fig newtons that you can get for a dollar has gone way down so I got a package.  And fruit bars and discounted cheese crackers, all kosher certified as dairy and all pretty much consumed in three sittings.  Nothing to take on the trip unless I return for a refill, which I won't.  Weigh-in weekly on Mondays.  See if lasted longer than I though at the next session before I travel.

Weight Measurably Down

Like most adults in their mature years, maintaining health has been a priority.  I take my medicines daily, though I am not shy about suspending one that may not be needed or is suspected of symptomatic adverse effects.  Missed treadmill sessions nearly alway have a valid justification.  I measure my weight, waist circumference and BP, recording them weekly.  Treadmill goals are set and usually met.  More recently I've incorporated some semblance of sleep hygiene.  All these efforts have shown benefits.  For the first time my cholesterol is on target with the LDLC declining from 188 untreated to 68 with faithfulness to rosuvastatin each evening.  By systolic BP has declined from 155 to about 130 once amlodipine was introduced as a supplement to lisinopril. Only the weight has been refractory to my best efforts, yet at the last two measurements it has declined by a kg and my waistline by about an inch.  Moreover, I no longer feel the need to be voracious.

What brought this about is uncertain.  I made a small modification to my eating, putting myself largely NPO or at least calorie free from 8PM to 6AM.  Have done this before with minimal effect, though this time I've been doing it long enough to become more habitual.  I've not had the munchies in a while.  Perhaps more significantly, as the grocery shopper, I've changed the purchases.

Manufacturers and retailers know where the big production efficiencies and consumer preferences lie.  TJ big bag of crunchy, oily ridged potato chips are a best buy, SR house brand chips are a bargain at the regular price, and my very favorite since childhood, Wise Potato Chips goes on sale every few weeks at just the price I am willing to pay.  I last put a bag of any of these in my shopping cart a month ago.  Cookies have to be cleared out.  TJ buckets of Cat Crackers or Cinnamon Letters last a long time, though I've stopped buying them.  Nabisco and Keebler have to be cleared off the SR shelves with too good to resist sales, and sometimes they make you buy two to receive the discount.  A package lasts only a few days.  While kept on the kitchen table, they are not a destination in themselves but I am at the kitchen table enough for other reasons that I will help myself to 2-3 at a time several times a day.  Not bought these in a month.  Tastykakes have been my weakness as have the more nationally distributed Drakes Cakes for most of my adult life.  They go on sale.  Drakes was easy to discontinue; the size of the Yankee Doodles or Yodels just got too small.  Tastykake is a whole other matter, especially for $1.99 a box.  Two boxes of bargain have become one box of bargain with no more than one serving a day.  And to my benefit they seem to be going on sale less.

Bread remains my biggest challenge, since I don't really have the option of not buying any.  I have shifted away from sliced bread to bagels which are never part of binges.  As commercial mass market sliced bread has gone up in price, I am now more willing to pay extra at TJ for their pumpernickel and other healthier options, though soft sliced bread has been something of a challenge not to overeat as my last comfort food.  

The scale gives me good news, though.  I probably did the right thing.

Upping the Treadmill

Each week I weigh myself first thing Monday morning.  My weight has not changed in three years.  While discarding some old papers I noted a previous weekly tracking from ten years earlier when it registered three pounds less.  My target weight would be nine pounds under current.  I came close a few years ago with severe pastry restriction.  I don't recall if I felt better or worse, but at the time I was a bit overworked professionally.  Each half year when I set my six month goals, I have included a weight target which never happens.  Short of some involuntary weight loss from illness, it probably won't, so I redirected my health goal at exercise.

For years, I have avoided having my treadmill, a significant investment at the time, from becoming one more flat surface to plant things indefinitely.  In recent years, with particular attention since retirement, I set a schedule which I have done mostly a decent job maintaining, with a few lapses for lower back pain.  When I am consistent with walking, I seem to get through the preset program each session fairly easily, legs more bothersome than breathing or anginal symptoms.  I have increased the intensity randomly over the years, only to scale back following a layoff.  This time I set a six month intensity and duration goal, which I have worked toward with very few missed days.  It came time to increase the time a bit, which I did without much difficulty.  Then increase the speed by 0.1 mph yesterday, which took its toll, more on my breathing than my legs, though I can tell the difference today.  It's a scheduled day off today.  I am still three minutes short of ultimate time goal, which I expect to be able to meet and 0.2 mph short of the speed goal which seems less certain.  However, these are each significantly above the starting levels three months ago.

My weight has not changed.

Mid-point Assessment

Since my personal goals are established semi-annually, twelve per cycle, at new year and at mid-year, the halfway point on the current twelve has arrived.  I did a little better than average.  I wanted to purchase a new mattress as the current one sags enough to impair sleep.  This calendar year I have stayed at a few hotels and can tell the difference.  I looked casually at IKEA and a few other places, priced on-line options, but have not purchased.  I will after the yom tovim.  Clearing the basement is my biggest tangible project.  I have made progress but will need to hire help with clutter removal.  It is really part of a grander aspiration to have a single storage place for our things, eventually moving items out of our rented storage unit.  My energy to this waxes and wanes.  Time needs to be scheduled as I did for creating My Space, though with far less motivation.

Financial review has gone on schedule.  My goal has been to do it with no action needed.

My children live an airplane ride away.  I plan to visit each.  St. Louis done.  California by year's end.  It's a very tangible project with clear end points and a certain pleasure to its pursuit.

My personal efforts are also mostly more tangible and measurable than they have been in advance.  I read my assigned three books and then some.  I've seen two movies on TV, one of two in the theater, leaving one more to go in the theater, which I can do after the yom tovim.  I have visited two old friends from high school, both in metro NY.  My three day trips included the Galer Winery in Pennsylvania, the Nemours Mansion in Delaware, and the Rockland Bakery in New York, none of which I had been to previously.

The remaining tasks may be harder to fulfill.  My weight would be better if about 10 pounds less.  I use weight as a measure, but it's really more of a process to promote my health.  Diet restriction has hit a lull.  I was eating breakfast every day for a while but gained a few pounds in the process.  I changed it to two meals a day which has gone better.  No snacks from 8PM to 6AM, based on research by a metabolism guru at U Colorado, has been reasonably consistent though not perfect.  Exercise was doing very well for a while, then sidelined following an appendectomy, then limited in the early morning by arthritic stiffness.  My consistency to moving it later in the day has been hampered by my OLLI schedule and I have not been able to recapture the intensity.  Still, weight remains the best objective surrogate of progress, even if the real but more difficult to measure goal is stamina and energy.

I had planned to do something beneficial for my synagogue, though I'm not convinced they want anyone other than the people already engaged to create anything new.  I asked the Rabbi in the past how I might advance the congregation.  He suggested I come to minyan more.  To be fair, I've hardly done dick, and counting in the minyan requires dick but his vision of congregational advancement seems much more shallow than mine.  I'll give it another go with the President and Rabbi and maybe some past Presidents after the yom tovim.

Then the two I probably won't do, develop a web site and write the book that makes me famous.  Writing has been on the list before in several forms.  And I do write well, but in spurts.  The web site got as far as initial inquiry.  I don't really have a good enough purpose for having one, though a more interactive blog with my own format could justify this.  Revisit by year's end.

So there's how twelve projects plod along, a little at a time.  All are doable except the Great American Novel, and even there if I believed in myself more I have the capacity to do that.  Some are done or almost done.  What interested me three months ago does not always sustain itself, so these are best approached as assignments rather than self-sustaining insatiable initiatives.  Most have a measurable end point.

As retirement makes the days more amorphous, the "should do today" list doesn't have any external imposition or any feedback other than what I offer myself.  Halfway through this cycle, doing OK.