I've failed to accomplish too many prior resolutions to bother with making them anymore, but I would like to drop the 18 lbs I gained over the holidays. I weighed 232.5 this morning, and I'm not comfortable in my Steelcase Amia office chair when I'm over 230 lbs.
That much over 200 lbs probably sounds very fat to most of you, but I weighed up to 280 five years ago. I feel better keeping my weight under the level of "morbid" obesity. Obesity is OK for me. I've been obese most of my adult life, but the "morbid" part is scary.
I've never had any serious medical problems from being obese or even "morbidly" obese, but 25 years ago when I weighed 300 lbs I fell off a curb and injured my knee. I was walking around with a cane and finally decided I had to drop some weight or I could wind up in a wheelchair.
I lost 150 lbs over a two year period and kept it off for five years. I gradually gained most of it back, but I never went all the up to 300 lbs again. I stopped just under 280.
In 2008 I signed up with Fitness 19 in the Marketplace. They were having one of their $12 a month specials. It was cheap and convenient and offered a lot of exercise options. There were other fat people and old people there and no one gave me dirty looks like I got at a gym I joined 30 years earlier where everyone looked like a supermodel and anyone who didn't wasn't fit to be fit.
I surprised myself by going the Fitness 19 twice a week for three months. I even had a trainer who coached me on low impact exercises. But even with all that exercising I wasn't losing weight. So I got bored with it and stopped going.
I wrote a blog about my Progresso Soup diet in 2010. I kept a spreadsheet of everything I ate each day and the calorie count. I tried to maintain an average of 1600 calories a day. If I ate 2400 calories one day, I'd eat 800 the next to average out to 1600. I kept a monthly average, so I didn't have to stick to a daily caloric level. "Feast and fast" is now considered the best way to maintain weight.
I don't eat as much as I used to and I haven't eaten junk food in over 20 years. I don't crave burgers and fries or milk shakes made with mystery mix. Instead I take two tablespoons of Ovaltine Malt in a large glass of 1% milk.
I still eat a lot, but I've switched my "a lot" from meat, potatoes, and desserts to fruits and vegetables. Last night I ate a tray full of roasted vegetables. It was a lot, and there were some small potatoes in the batch, but mostly carrots, onions, zucchini, and bell peppers. I've always liked vegetables, but I don't like all the pealing and chopping involved in making them. Now supermarkets sell them already chopped up so it's just a matter of putting them in a pan or tray with olive oil and seasoning. Easy!
For breakfast I usually make a sausage-egg-and-cheese muffin or biscuit. It's like what McDonalds and Carl's Jr. advertise, but I prefer to make my own. I was eating two of those in the morning and that's probably why I gained weight, but I'm going to cut that down to one or even omit the biscuit. Today I had two slices of bacon and a very large egg and two cups of coffee. I could lose weight on that.
I'm not giving diet advice to anyone else. I do my own thing my own way. Nobody is the same. For me keeping under 230 is good. If I can do that I will try to drop under 220 and maybe even under 200, but at this point I'm not making any resolutions that are too difficult for me to keep.
My mother keeps her weight between 140 and 180. She's yo-yo'd those 40 lbs up and down for the last 50 years. It's worked for her. She'll be 98 next week.
