Milestone: Down 175 to 275
By tomorrow I won’t be happy weighing just under 275 pounds, but today it’s a milestone that feels worth celebrating. I’ll celebrate a milestone with every 25 pound loss, which means I have about three major weight milestones left (maybe four if I count my “ideal weight”). After that I’ll have to set new fitness goals to make the most of my new body, like running a marathon, climbing a mountain, etc.
Of course, there are some BMI range and personal history milestones left to come:
- 262.5 pounds – 3/4 of the way down from my starting weight of 451+ pounds
- 250 pounds – over 200 pounds lost, and a nice round number
- 240 pounds – dropping from “obese” to merely “overweight” on the BMI scale
- 200 pounds – my base goal for now – will need to re-evaluate once I reach it – but also moves me into the upper range of “normal weight” based on BMI
Getting my weight down to below 275 feels almost as significant to me as being below 300, but maybe only because it’s been so long in the making. I reached my previous weight-loss milestone post a little over two years ago, although what really happened is that I maintained a weight of around 300 pounds for two years, and then gained 15 pounds back, and now have lost 40 pounds in the past four months. So here I am 27 months after my previous milestone celebrating another 25 pounds lost.
A Little Perspective
According to Wikipedia, a Scottish caber weighs about 175 pounds. While I’ve never picked up a caber, they sure do look heavy. I suppose that from now on whenever I reach a milestone and say I’ve lost the equivalent of [blank] that most people will have no real idea of how much that is exactly.
Since people rarely lift things that weight more than just a few pounds I’ve run out of reasonable comparisons. I know that 175 pounds is more weight than most whole persons, so maybe I should just pose for photos with people weighing what I’ve lost so I can point to them and say “There. See this guy? I’ve lost this much.”
What’s Next?
Weighing under 275 pounds was my goal for Labor Day so now that I’ve reached it five weeks early, I’m re-setting my weight loss goal to 262.5, which is 3/4ths of the way to my overall weight goal. It’s a little ambitious, but even if I miss it, at this rate it won’t be by much. I’m losing about ten pounds a month, so losing 12.5 pounds in five weeks isn’t that unreasonable.
Because everyone loves before & after photos, here’s one of me playing pool (badly) about a month into my Clean Livin’, back in July 2008:
And then to contrast and/or compare, here’s one from July 2012 (last week):
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July 25th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Congratulations, son!
August 5th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Congratulations! That is awesome. It is good to celebrate your milestones and keep yourself on track.
Reading your blog has been beneficial for me, and I really appreciate reading about your hard work and experience in this endeavor. Overall, I have been having a hard time lately. In addition to clinical depression that is difficult to treat, my BMI is the highest it’s ever been, 38.6. The thought of having to figure out how to drop 83 pounds is just…overwhelming.
Of course, you have discussed the psychology of weight loss quite extensively on your blog. It has been incredibly helpful and centering to read your thoughts on how to change one’s psychology, in addition to the other spheres of life that need to grow and adapt to help meet your health, fitness, and weight loss goals. It’s obvious that I need to reframe how I am looking at those 83 pounds. There’s no way I could lose it all in a day, so I have to rework my focus to examine each choice I make. Meal by meal, day by day, one day at a time.
In the past I had success with losing 60+ pounds over the course of a year using the principles outlined in the Hacker’s Diet, an engineer’s approach from one of the founders of Autodesk. To get back on track, I just installed the Libra app for my Android phone. It would be even easier if I had a Withings wifi scale but I can track it myself just fine, of course.
I have a huge mental block when it comes to logging my food. The stubbornness just feels insurmountable. I hate writing it down in a notebook, and I don’t know why. You have probably already addressed these in blog posts, but do you use an iPhone app to track your food intake? Do you plan meals in advance, or just decide on a calorie budget and plan each meal as you go?