Week One Results

"Today is your victory over yourself of yesterday.  Tomorrow is your victory over lesser men." --Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

Last week's number: 350.6 pounds
This week's number: 339.6 pounds
Week-to-week loss: 11 pounds
Net loss: 11 pounds

I'm not proud of these numbers.  But that was the old me.  I am winning the victory over myself of yesterday.  Tomorrow I will win the victory over myself of today.

I am very, very encouraged by these numbers, but also a little cautious.  As much as 70% of this figure could be water weight.  However, I have been keeping myself hydrated above and beyond what the program calls for.  I've also been exercising more: I did my walk around the block the other night, and I've been climbing stairs just for the exercise.  I have a weekly goal of climbing all three staircases at work three times during the day--that's eighteen flights of stairs, up and down, every day.  And this week I'm making it a point to clear the garage so I can set up my exercise equipment.  I don't want rain or cold weather to stop me from getting in a workout.

I haven't talked a lot about this on this blog, but I'm also working on another challenge: after a 15-year absence, I have returned to graduate school starting last September.  The units I had before are no longer good, so I have to restart my degree program from scratch.  Back then, I weighed at least 80 pounds less, I was single, and had fairly low-level job responsibilities, so pouring all of myself into my classes was easier.  Now I'm older, married with two kids, and have much greater responsibilities at work.  It's already hard enough.  I'm hoping this diet doesn't interfere with my classes, because I really do want to finish my MS by next year!  I'm told it won't, but I've had such poor luck with both losing weight and finishing graduate school that combining the two doesn't seem like the best prospect.  But then again, maybe the challenges will cancel each other out. ;-)

My degree will be in quality assurance--appropriately enough, since that's also my job.  A lot of the principles of the quality profession also apply to weight loss.  Kaizen, the notion of making gradual but continuous improvements as the most surefire way to permanent change applies for most people, just as it does for most organizations.  Unfortunately in my case I don't have the luxury of making gradual changes.  My weight is dangerously high, and I put myself and my family at risk by not taking drastic action.  I am at severe danger for a heart attack, stroke, or even a catastrophic injury to my back, knees, or hips.  So I'm reengineering my life.  I'm paying attention to what I eat, how I behave during the day, and what I'm thinking.   I find myself getting so absorbed in tasks that I forget to get up and move--a dangerous thing now that I'm in an office job.  I now make it a point to get up and move, just to clear my head and get the blood moving.

More to the point, I have trouble maintaining focus sometimes.  I get easily distracted, which makes it very hard to concentrate on complex assignments.  I would love to put on earphones and tune out the world so I can work, but I also don't want to be hung with an antisocial label (I struggle with that one as it is).  I'll talk about that particular battle more in a later post.

This isn't the end.  It's the beginning.  One week down, 15 to go!