It seems like a good moment to pause and talk about my diet and exercise program since I just passed another little landmark: Over the past week my weight loss for the year topped ninety pounds. Better, after exercise sessions --- when my weight was artificially lowered by more sweat than is decent to talk about in public --- I was able to bring my weight to within ten pounds of the upper limit of the ``normal'' weight range, as defined by the body mass index for a person who's just about as tall as me but rounded up a little bit. I'm feeling really good about this even if I'm getting to where I have to buy a new round of pants again for the third time this year. On the other hand, the outlet stores are having a sale this weekend again, but how much do I want to go trying on pants? Even if the sizes are numbers I haven't seen since seventh grade?
My wildest dreams starting out were that I might over the year get maybe halfway to normal weight. I've been fortunate to have avoided so far the ``plateau'' phenomenon where weight loss stops for weeks or months at a time, but that's probably partly good fortune and partly because I have been trying to increase my exercise load in time, as articles suggest. For the Step Aerobics --- walking onto and off of the Balance Board with my arms rising and lowering --- for example I've been getting an increasingly heavy set of dumbbells to carry with me. And recently I've been taking to the twenty- or even thirty-minute ``Free Run'' sessions where I run and sweat while watching TV. Last week I actually managed to stitch together three twenty-minute sessions and episodes of Newsradio before staggering into the shower.
Now that my normal weight is in the range of what I might achieve in a month, I need to think of just where to stop. I think anything with a bit of a buffer below the normal/overweight boundary --- say, ten pounds below the body mass index of 25.00 --- is probably a good stopping point. WiiFit feels the ideal body weight is a body mass index of 22, which would call for another ten to fifteen pounds weight loss past that. But it's also awfully nice thinking of not watching so closely just what I eat, or even skipping the exercise altogether when I don't feel like it some nights. I do need a plan for the transition into my post-Big Diet lifestyle.
Before I do, though, there'll be at least one visit to the Chinese buffet place. I know that.
Trivia: The word ``starving'' goes back to the Old English steorfan, meaning, ``to die''. Source: Semantic Antics: How And Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.
Currently Reading: Clowns, John H Towsen. You know, clowns are more interesting than I thought.