Too Bad Dieting Isn't This Easy

We could wipe out obesity in a hurry if this formula worked for more than one unusual day:

Day 1: Weigh in the morning and get horrified by a weight of 236 pounds.
Day 1 (cont.): Start a weight loss blog and do a fairly good job of cutting down on the food intake.
Day 2: Weigh in the morning and see 231, a 5 pound loss which equates to 35 pounds lost per week.

Upon review, maybe that 236 is partially because I spent the previous evening at a Super Bowl party (Who Dat!!!). Truthfully, the 231 is closer to what I've been seeing lately and the higher weight was more of a look into the near future unless some changes were made. It was the visual jolt needed to make me think that enough is enough on the slow rise to a blimp-like frame.

Not that 231 is any great comfort zone. It's too much weight for my frame. Getting down to 226 will be great, progress being made and all that stuff, but it will still be too much weight for my frame. This dieting thing is something where we get fixated on "how much, how fast". It really should be about "which direction, for how long". That's the key, getting our weight change going in the proper direction and then keeping it going.

The 5 pounds "lost" yesterday are a fluke. The next 5 pounds will get me down to 226 and that will be a significant weight. It's been a while since the bathroom scale has displayed that number so clearly progress will have been made. The day I see 221 pounds will be about the time that there's a noticeable difference in how my pants fit. Noticeable changes in how clothes fit is much better feedback than a number on a scale. Getting to 216 will be exciting because it is starting to close in on the weight that separates the obese and overweight categories for my height. That's actually my first goal, getting to that glorious day when I'll only be considered overweight instead of obese.

It's really sad that moving into "just overweight" territory would be considered a great occasion. Sad for me personally, and sad that it would be a big accomplishment for a third of American adults and for about one out of every five or six American kids. How did this happen to me and how did it happen to this country? That's a discussion for another day, as is a post with links to tables showing what's considered normal, overweight, and obese for each height level. We'll have time to get to all of that since the 5 pounds per day weight loss isn't going to be the norm. It took time to put this excessive weight on, and it will take time to take it off. We can accept this, we can do this, so let's all have one more good effort today on our weight loss journey.