"Waisting" Away

Actually, the diet started nearly four years ago, and the deliberately "rapid" loss interval of a pound a week was way back in 2011.

Earlier this year, I visited a plastic surgeon to see about getting a Kirk Douglas chin implant... well, a Michael Douglas chin implant... make that, does Kirk have any grandkids?... and while I was there I asked him about liposuction to finish off the body shape part of the job (I might have weighed about 190 at the time); he said that I'd just wind up wiith even more loose skin because that is what my skin is like. I had fleshy skin around my midsection and thighs even when I was in high school and weighed 150 pounds. Some of us are meant to be underware models and some of us aren't.

Not like me:


More like me:

 

That was a year and a half ago. I never got back down below 195 after that, and"plateaued" at around 200, but more recently, I trended up to 210. What did me in was, I found a Dollar Store where I could buy packages of Trick-or-Treat sized snack items for... a dollar, which meant I could conveniently apportion myself diet sized servings of M&Ms, Milky Ways, and Tootsie Rolls, etc., but then, I'd eat the whole big bag instead of the rationed portion.

Two weeks ago, I committed to bending the curve in the other direction. I went to the nearby Mall where I had paid $40 a month for two years to Gold's Gym, without ever setting foot on the premises, totaling about $1,000 spent for services not rendered/utilized before it went out of business, but now, it has been replaced by a Planet Fitness, where I committed to paying just $170 a year to not set foot on their premises. And I'm eating a little less, so I've now lost 4 pounds in those two and a half weeks without even exercising. My plan is working.

 

He's up. he's down... I can't believe it has been nearly two years since I updated this thread.

My journey started in late 2010, when my weight peaked at 248 pounds. Two and a half years of eating less while not exercising at all got me to 180 by mid 2013, which was about two and half years to lose 68 pounds, but scarcely put a dent in my blood pressure readings, which were "high normal", or 130 something over upper 80s.

Over the next three years, to about mid 2016, I had drifted up to the 200-205 pound range. I mentioned at that time that I had joined Planet Fitness, but that I was not exercising vigorously there. Their free weights only go up to 60 pounds, and I was doing just a few basic exercises: overhead press, curls, squats, rowing and toe raises, but then, about a year ago, I looked into their "specialty" machines, and started using 20 of them, 10 one day, the other 10 the next, and then an off day. Nine are upper-body, seven mid-body and four lower-body. It only takes me about an hour and twenty minutes to do my daily 10 at a very leisurely pace.

I've also gotten a better handle on my diet. My daily breakfast, maybe five days a week, is TWO Egg McMuffins, but I specify "No round egg; substitute scrambled". I get the second sandwich for free because I take the "survey" that is at mcdvoice.com, and validate the slips. They try to limit customers to five a month, but by validating them at different hot spots, using Private viewing, paying cash, and NOT validating any of my slips that I had paid for with the promo, I can easily validate the 20-something slips I need each month, and so I save about $1,000 a year doing that, and there is a HUGE nutrition increase from substituting scrambled eggs for their round egg, which is about 90% egg whites. Only twice in the last half a dozen years have they upcharged me for that substitution, though occasionally they assemble my sandwiches with their folded egg, which is a scrambled egg product but only half as large as their full serving. An Egg McMuffin with a round egg or folded egg has 300 calories, whereas if they give me the big scrambled portion, it has 370 calories.

I now nibble during the rest of the day to a total of typically 1,900 to 2,000 calories. Every day I eat a banana, have 8 to 12 ounces each of low fat milk and OJ, I eat one 8 ounce serving of carrots or frozen peas, corn or green beans, and make a sandwich or two of lean hamburger, baked chicken, tuna fish or a 3 ounce flounder portion. I also take a multivitamin 4 or 5 days a week.

The results: My weight over the last year and a half has gone from 205 to 178 today, and remarkably, my blood pressure, which was often 130-something over upper 80s, measured 99/67 today, with no medication.

The life expectancy calculator I began using fairly early in this thread indicates that by going from nearly 250 pounds to under 180, and by exercising in moderation and thereby significantly reducing my blood pressure, I have added about five years to my life expectancy. The bad news is my business has slowed to a crawl, so maybe a decade from now, I'll be living in the street. Oh, well...