Any student knows the real New Year begins in the fall. What better time to refocus and reaffirm your goals in life? With a fresh year of academia ahead of me, I've rededicated my efforts to my diet, and I'm starting to see results once again.

As of today, my diet stands at 245/223.7/185. An overall loss of 21.3 pounds over 7 months, leaving 38.7 to go.

No gimmicks, no weird diet, just controlling portions and staying aware of my caloric intake.

Nothing too interesting to share, other than the fact that the wraps from the Commons Marketplace are delicious and weigh in in the neighborhood of 500-600 calories. They also come in a variety of ever-changing flavors (including greek turkey w/ feta, egg salad, and even buffalo chicken one particular day). And they're very filling. My only qualm is that the new Spot never has them in the evening.

Oh, and I've seen Diet Lipton Lemon Iced Tea on sale at every grocery store I've been to lately. Something around $6 for a 12-pack of pretty big bottles. It's a tasty change-up from Diet Coke.

It's been quite a month for me, as far as diet is concerned. I think I'm finally stabilizing, though. Yesterday, I hit a new personal low (since the beginning of the diet, that is), 20 pounds under my starting weight! Yahoo!

Obviously, the reason I wasn't losing was because I was really cheating myself. I slowly kept sneaking little 'rewards' for myself, and eventually some hi-calorie foods found their way into my daily intake, bringing my trend line to a screeching stand-still. So, all I had to do to resume losing was kick myself back down to the reduced intake.

The trick that really did it was reallocating some calories from one of my larger meals (lunch, in this case) to a night-time snack. I found my single biggest problem area was 2 or 3 hours after dinner. So now, every night, I enjoy a yogurt with granola mixed in, about 100 calories worth (or something else in the neighborhood of 100 calories). This seemingly insignificant snack really goes a long way to keep my focused.


I've still got quite a way to go until I reach my goal, but I've come away from the long several-week suffering with a refreshed sense of purpose and vigor with respect to my weight.

I can't be stopped!

After an absolutely miserable two weeks, my weight seems to have finally stabilized and my downward trend has resumed it's decline.

I'm still on an "excess" for the past while, but as my weight begins to trend downwards again (towards the underside of 220, which I haven't seen for around 5 years), that should rectify itself.

My weight could (and probably will) bounce up from 227, but I don't seem to retain water very much at all, so this bounce is usually very small (on the order of a few tenths of a pound).

Exciting!

Oh, and you may notice I've added a little bar to the top of the blog for navigation. Nothing special, just the normal ho-hum evolution of this system.

Ok, so just last night, I replaced my spring scale with a weight watchers scale by ConAir. The one I had from Taylor USA mysteriously broke a few weeks ago, and began showing overload errors when any weight was put on it. The customer service claimed this is a symptom of it being dropped, and I know for a fact that it never experienced anything more than a minor shock while riding in my car (not like falling off the seat).


But anyway, I've got the new scale now, and it's quite nice. The downside, however, is that there's a HUGE discrepancy between this scale and the spring-loaded one I was just using, something on the order of 5 pounds. However, I also measured my percent body fat on this scale today, because I knew that would be a slightly more accurate measure of my change in fat content. My last measurement, several weeks ago, was 32.4%, and today I clocked in at 31.8%, a loss of 0.6%.


I'm pretty much going to just completely ignore my charts on the Hacker's Diet that came BEFORE this time, and restart my diet goal calculation (the yellow line) for -1000calories/day for TODAY.

Things are looking up, and it's a great day. I'm going to go do some stuff.

For the past week or so, I've been hitting a wall with my diet. My weight hasn't really fluctuated much beyond a pound, and my chart is starting to level out some (but is still a confident down-marching trend):





One thing I've learned over the course of this diet so far is that sometimes, you come up against an obstacle and it seems entirely impossible. When you lose weight, your body naturally stops and plateaus sometimes, and your weight doesn't really fluctuate while your body readjusts some stuff internally and gets ready to move on. But psychologically, living the diet day by day, and watching the trend line start to run from your goal projection, the process is excruciating and dreadful.

But I'm picking myself up from the woe of seeing the same two numbers on the scale every day, and throwing myself relentlessly at the diet. I've even started using the calorie spreadsheet again today, to really help me nail my shortfall every day. Hopefully, within a week, the trend will resume its free-fall and dip back down.

And while I'm on the subject of diet...

Today at the Commons they had a Health Fair or something along those lines, with lots of little booths and a whole lot of stuff I wasn't that interested in (although they were giving away hand sanitizer at one booth, and that stuff is a gift from God in the eyes of a messy college student).

One of the booths had a little hand weight analyzer, or whatever they're called, and I assume they were trying to sell these. It's got two little handles with metallic contacts, and you grip them with both hands after turning the device on. A few seconds pass, and it tells you your percent body fat and a few other tidbits of information. I was actually kinda surprised how little people knew anything about this process, so here's a little rundown.

The process is called Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA), and it's being used more and more by everyday citizens. In short, the device runs a small current through your body, and determines the electrical impedance. Water and fat react to current in different and well-established ways, and by inputting your height and age (on most BIA tests I've used anyway), you can get a very reasonable estimate of percent body fat and percent body water (Most tests seem to be within +/- 2% or so).

I really like the convenience of BIA (and avoiding the embarrassing process of having all the fat on my body pinched between calipers) , and I really appreciate the ability to measure my percent body fat, because Body Mass Index (BMI) is a rather inelegant way to estimate fitness, and was never intended as a numeric measure of health. A lot of bathroom scales (mine included) include this functionality right in the scale, so you can step on, get your weight AND your percent body fat, and get on with your day. I find I like to take my percent body fat about every 5 pounds I lose, which is something on the order of 2 1/2 weeks. My scale's busted and being RMA-ed right now, but when I get the new one back under warranty, I'll resume measuring my body fat as well as my weight for a good idea of my progress.


Wish me luck on breaking my temporary difficulties, and keep checking back for my progress!

Some of you already know, some of you don't: I'm dieting. It's a dreadfully simple diet, and after 1 month, and 19 days, I've lost somewhere around 15 pounds (today, I weighed in 17 pounds under my starting goal, but that weight fluctuates a lot). I'll try to post periodic updates here from time to time from here on in, and you can always check back on this page to see my progress (the badge at the top will show my daily weight, as well as my weekly trend information). That's pretty much it.