Forty-ninth weight progress report

This post is yet another weight progress report, continuing the previous one, part of a long series since I started in January 2015.

I have continued to put on weight and have been staying in the “overweight” range. This is most definitely not where I want to be, but I’ve been having a hard time motivating myself to do any exercise.

I had a couple of months when I was much heavier than I wanted to be, but holding steady, but now I’m off in a range I never expected to be.

My self-image was formed in my early years as a very skinny kid—always the smallest and skinniest boy in my classes. I weighed only 85 pounds going into high school, and only 115 when I graduated at 16. I got up to 135 pounds by the time I got my bachelor’s degree, and only put on a little weight in grad school. So up until I was 30 or so, I was extremely thin. I could eat large quantities of high-fat food (like premium ice cream) and not put on weight. My concern in my early years was being able to get enough calories to keep my inefficient metabolism fueled.

It has been very difficult to adjust both my view of myself and my behavior to match the new reality—now I have to watch how much I eat and make extreme effort to lose weight. Sitting around all day on my computer with snacks just a couple of steps away has not been a healthy lifestyle this past year.

I got a new bicycle computer 37 days ago, but I’ve only put 14 miles on the odometer: 0.38 miles/day.  I probably need to average 5 miles a day to stop gaining weight, and 10 miles a day to start losing weight (along with better control of my eating). I’ve been finding it very difficult to motivate myself to do anything physical (about the most strenuous thing I do is mow the lawn every 2–3 weeks with an electric mower).

I need to find something to motivate myself to exercise again.

Forty-eighth weight progress report

This post is yet another weight progress report, continuing the previous one, part of a long series since I started in January 2015.

I’ve poked into the “overweight” territory for the first time in my life—it is not where I want to be.

 

There is a clear pattern of New Year’s resolutions over the past few years, but this year there was not a big dip.

My exercise has been very limited, but I don’t know how limited, as my bicycle computer failed—even replacing the battery did not revive it.  I’m going to have to buy a new bike computer, I guess.

I got my lawn mowed today—well, almost.  The lawn mower failed just before I finished.  It’s different from the failures I’ve reported on before (and here and here) in that this time it tripped the circuit breaker every time I tried to restart it.  So I’ll have to take the mower apart to find the short circuit.

Forty-seventh weight progress report and 2020 year-end report

This post is yet another weight progress report, continuing the previous one, part of a long series since I started in January 2015.

I’ve been putting on weight since my big diet of 2015, with occasional attempts to correct course.

This year has been a particularly bad one, with my weight reaching the highest value ever—touching the “overweight” range. I was doing ok in the first quarter—gradually dropping towards my desired weight, but once the pandemic started and I was staying home snacking instead of bike commuting up the hill to my office, I packed on the pounds at an alarming rate.

It probably did not help that I spent a good chunk of the summer and fall experimenting with bread recipes. A few of the experiments are recorded on this blog, but a lot of the more recent baking has not involved any recipes to post to the blog (making whole-wheat sourdough using minor variants of the bread-machine recipe), and I’ve been too lazy to photograph.

My exercise has been very limited—I averaged only 0.85 miles a day of bicycling in November and December and probably not much more in walking (about 80–87k steps per month—way down from 230k in January). Because bike commuting was my main source of exercise, I remain concerned about how I’m going to get fit again—exercising at home does not seem to happen, even when I promise myself that I’ll do some today.

I did get in some recreational bicycling today—bicycling up Empire Grade to see the dozer line at the top of campus (not really very visible any more, as the grass has sprouted) and even higher up to see the edges of the CZU burn.  I’m out of shape enough that I turned around after only 7 miles and 1150 feet of climbing.  There was not much to see—if I want to see the burned areas, I’ll either have to go further up Empire Grade or choose a different part of the burn to look at—perhaps taking a flatter, but longer, route up Highway 1.

Other milestones for the year: I got all the videos done and the closed captions edited for BME 51B, and I’m almost finished with the videos for BME 51A for Winter (only 10–12 more to go, or about 3 hours worth of videos), though the caption editing has barely started.  The videos are available on YouTube as two playlists: Part A (for BME 51A, 108 videos totalling 24 hours so far) and Part B (for BME 51B, 49 videos totalling almost 12 hours). I did get a new release of the textbook out on December 28th, in time for the new class that starts on Jan 4.  The book is available (as always) from https://leanpub.com/applied_analog_electronics, and anyone who has bought it in the past (even with a free coupon) can get the latest edition free by logging in with their LeanPub account.

I’ve also managed to keep my backyard mowed this summer (it used to always be a jungle of head-high weeds). I’ve almost finished clearing the ivy and blackberries from the area behind the garage—I’ve only got about 25 square feet left to clear—about one more week’s greenwaste can, though the rain may bring back a lot of the blackberries, as I can’t remove the roots from under the concrete. In March, I didn’t think I’d be able to get this far. 

My son and I acted together for the first time, doing a short promo video for Santa Cruz Shakespeare.  I’ll post a link to it when they finish adding the title and donation info at either end.

When compared to my to-do list from September 2019, my accomplishments for 2020 don’t seem so great—a lot of the stuff on that list is still not done.  Oh, well—something to do after I retire in June.

Forty-sixth weight progress report

This post is yet another weight progress report, continuing the previous one, part of a long series since I started in January 2015.

My weight has not stabilized as I thought in August, but has continued to go up.

I’m now at the heaviest weight I’ve ever been, getting dangerously close to a BMI of 25 (the threshold for being overweight).

My exercise has been very limited—I averaged only 0.79 miles a day of bicycling in September and October and probably not much more in walking (about 90k steps per month—way down from the 150k in July). I think I’ve only cycled up the hill to campus twice all summer—I haven’t even ridden the newly repaved bike path. Because bike commuting was my main source of exercise, I remain concerned about how I’m going to get fit again—exercising at home does not seem to happen, even when I promise myself that I’ll do some today.

Forty-fifth weight progress report

This post is yet another weight progress report, continuing the previous one, part of a long series since I started in January 2015.

My weight has finally stabilized—I’m not packing on the pounds like I did in March, April, and May.

I’m not quite at my highest weight ever, but I’m about 15 pounds heavier than I want to be.

My exercise has been very limited—I averaged only 0.97 miles a day of bicycling in June (slightly better than the 0.75 miles/day for April and May, but less than a fifth of January), and probably not much more in walking (about 115k steps for the month—again, slightly better than the two previous months, but less than half of January). I have not cycled up the hill to my office for several months now—and bike commuting was my main source of exercise!