Sixtieth 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.

 

 

Over the past year, I’ve lost about 7 pounds, most of it in the first half of the year. I’d like to lose another 5–10 pounds this year.

I’m still about 3 pounds above my immediately pre-pandemic weight, but I’m holding the weight more stable than I was doing then.

I’ve cycled about 1455 miles in 2023 (4 miles a day), about half of that in the past 4 months (5.84 miles/day).  My exercise has been reduced somewhat for 14 December 2023—29 January 2024, because I’m not cycling to classes at Cabrillo College during break. I will be cycling again next semester, but the new bus schedules reduce the time savings of bicycling. I might take the bus in rainy weather (though I worry a bit about picking up respiratory infections—buses tend to be full of people with coughs and sneezes in bad weather).

During break I’m taking a few short, fast walks up the Laurent St hill (Escalona to Moore—2 or 3 repetitions at a time) in preparation for a stress ECG done on a treadmill. I want to be able to walk fast enough to get my heartbeat up near my maximum heart rate during the test, but most of my aerobic exercise has been bicycling. Because bicycling exercises muscles differently than walking up an incline, I’m not sure my walking muscles can sustain maximal cardiac effort.  So far, I’ve not been able to walk fast enough to get my heart rate over 156 bpm, which I think is considerably short of my maximum heart rate.  I may have to try jogging up the hill.

Fifty-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.

 

 

My weight is about where it was a year ago—perhaps a couple of pounds lighter.

I still want to lose about 13 pounds, though I’d probably be satisfied with 10.

The very careful observer might notice that more of the weight curve has moved into the “overweight” category than in previous reports. That’s because I updated my height for the plots—I’ve shrunk about 1 cm since 2010.  I should probably change the plot scripts to use a time-dependent estimate of my height, rather than a constant, but that is too much bother for now (plus I don’t really know how my height varied over time).

Since my last report in mid-October, I’ve cycled an average of 2.23 miles/day, bringing my average over the last year up to 2.12 miles/day (a very small number).  I’ve averaged about 6.4k steps per day—down from earlier in the summer. I no longer have the Verily Study watch to keep track of my steps, but my walking was definitely reduced during the winter rains that we had, so I suspect that my exercise is way down overall.

Fifty-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’m also back to my pre-pandemic weight, after the distressing excursion into being overweight last year.

I still want to lose about 11 pounds, which would take over 2 years on my current trend.

Since mid-July, I’ve cycled an average of 2.34 miles/day, bringing my average over the last year up to 1.94 miles/day (a very small number).  I’ve averaged about 6.4k steps per day—down from earlier in the summer.  That walking has been mostly in the weekly “secret walk”  with my wife, supplemented with walks with a friend at UCSC who is trying to increase exercise.  I’ve not been blogging the secret walks much lately, as there have not been interesting routes or walks—we’ve mostly repeated walks we’ve done in the past.

I had a bunch of blood tests done last week, in preparation for my annual checkup tomorrow. Everything came out reassuringly normal. My cholesterol counts are still doing ok—the combination of rosuvastatin and ezetimibe seems to work well for me:

The only number close to a threshold is the triglycerides, but they seem to be a very noisy measurement, so I’m not concerned about it.

Fifty-seventh 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 now been at a normal weight (BMI below 25) for a full year, and my weight has dropped slightly over that year.

Even though I’ve been gradually increasing the upper end of my target range, I’m still quite a bit heavier than the top of that range, hovering just below being overweight. I’d like to get my weight down to the middle of my target range (so around 159 lbs, 13.5 lbs less than I now weigh).

For June and the first half of July 2022, my bike riding averaged only 1 mile/day—a very small amount, as I’ve not even been doing the once-a-week commute to campus. I’ve only gotten on my bike for a few shopping runs (groceries, cases of La Croix water, cat litter, … ).  I’ve averaged about 7.1k steps per day, though—so some of my bicycling has been replaced by walking.  That walking has been mostly in the weekly “secret walk”  with my wife, supplemented with walks with a friend at UCSC who is trying to increase exercise.  I have not been taking photos on all the walks, so many of them have no corresponding blog post.  I’ve also been walking downtown for the farmer’s market and to Food Bin for local grocery shopping, so some of my bicycle utility trips have also been replaced by walking. (Mowing the lawn, which I need to do about every 2 weeks, also gets my step count up.)

Fifty-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 peaked about a year ago, but I managed to get it down out of the “overweight” range fairly quickly. It has been almost constant since then, but I’m hoping that the last month represents a new downward trend.

The longer-term picture shows that the year of staying home because of pandemic restrictions was not good for my weight control. I’m back to a fairly constant weight, but I’d still like to lose at least 10 pounds and preferably 15.

 

For Feb–May 2022, my bike riding averaged 2.26 miles/day—a big improvement over January, but still way down from the days when I bike commuted every day. I rode up to campus at least once a week during Spring quarter (often twice), and I’ve been trying to do more frequent grocery shopping by bike.  Previously I would take my trailer and load up, but now I only do that when my wife needs more cases of La Croix water.  A lot of our grocery shopping is a short walk to the Food Bin, but I’m trying to remember to shop at New Leaf on Tuesdays and Thursdays (senior discount days), to use the gift card we buy to support Alternative Family Education (5% of purchase amount goes to AFE).

I’ve averaged about 5.9k steps/day, mainly from the weekly “secret walk”  with my wife. February and March were particularly low (around 150k steps each month), but in May I got in over 240k steps, second only to last October, when I had about 250k steps.

I didn’t have to give the “project watch” back to Project Baseline yet, as there is one more year of the study.  I thought that there were 4 annual visits, but there are 4 years, so 5 visits (fencepost error on my part!).  Some of the visits were a bit delayed and stripped down because of COVID protocols, but there should be a more complete one next April, to finish things off. I had to delay the Project Baseline onsite visit a bit this time, because I gave blood on Feb 22, and Project Baseline wanted at least a 6-week delay (probably because of the number of vials of blood they take each time for various tests (including undetermined future tests). 

Project Baseline did a fairly full suite of routine blood and urine tests again this April, and everything came back reassuringly (but boringly) normal.

I gave blood again in May, and probably will continue giving blood about 5 times a year.  I used to give blood frequently when I was grad student, but got out of the habit at UCSC, because the blood drives were always at inconvenient locations or times (and the appointments always take a couple hours longer than scheduled, because they are always way behind schedule).  Despite my taking a daily 81mg aspirin, my blood still clots fairly quickly, which sometimes causes problems with getting a full unit (they had to stick a small needle in my other arm this time to get enough blood for testing, as the main needle was completely clogged by the time they got a full unit out).