Diet Update - The last

I started my diet on April 1, 2012. For almost eight months I've been dieting, discussing the results here on occasion and listing my current weight on the sidebar. Posting my weight here in a (small) public forum helped me to focus and gave me a big incentive not to eat more than I should. It worked like gangbusters for me.

As you can see, I haven't updated the sidebar text in a few weeks.

As of today, I'm taking the sidebar weight listing down as it has served its purpose. I still maintain my "diet" in that I'm restricting what I eat, but now I'm doing it more to maintain my weight.

At the moment, I do have a few final pounds to lose. Over the past eight months, I've confirmed time and again that when I go out to eat at a restaurant and when I game, I add the pounds. It's very difficult to resist eating everything I order when we go out to eat and when I play games, I snack. The combination of Thanksgiving last week, going out to eat while Rachel was home, and gaming last night resulted in my heaviest recorded weight in three months this morning, 158.5 pounds. But I'll lose it quickly over the next week as I go back to my usual routine.

At my lightest, I weighed 151 pounds, 23.5 pounds from where I started on April 1, and 30 pounds lighter than the heaviest I've ever been. I hope to quickly get back down to 151 on my way to 150. But for the past couple of months, I've hovered around 153 which is an excellent weight. Considering my original goal was 158, I can't complain.

I've also tracked my weight in a spreadsheet. The image below is a bit out of date, but as you can see, I dropped the weight pretty quickly. You can also see some of the important events that have occurred and how they relate to weight gain.  Click to enlarge.

So that's it. I feel healthier, I find it easier to move around, I get less winded and I feel bloated far less often.  My blood pressure is still a little high, so I think my next step will have to be to increase my level of physical activity. I'll probably start jogging again in the spring or take up something else.  But the weight will stay off and I'll never see 160 pounds again. Of that, I'm sure.

I would also like to mention and congratulate my good friend, ahtitan, who often comments here.  He recently dropped below 300 pounds for the first time in 19 years, an incredible achievement. He's lost more than 80 pounds and is still going. Kind of puts everything in perspective.