Prior to surgery on my knees I would list myself as weighing 220 pounds (or 225 depending upon what the week had been like), Having undergone the trauma of bilateral knee replacement with the accompanying 15 day stay in the hospital and rehab facility--and another two weeks of appetite suppressing narcotic pain killers--my weight has dropped to 200 and sometimes 199 on a pretty damn accurate digital scale. (I checked it against the doctor's scale when I went to see him last week.)
Not that the hospital food was terrible--it was quite good, in fact--but the portion control and the lack of snack foods between meals certainly reduced my desire to eat. Even when I got home, I found myself telling Terry not to put so much on my plate during meal times because I just didn't want to eat it. The daily exercise regime, while not overly strenuous has certainly contributed. As has the fitful sleeping at night. (Just staying in one position too long can get the knees to aching no matter how recently I have taken some extra strength acetaminophen. Much better than staying on those narcotics, BTW.)
Now, I am NOT recommending either major surgery nor narcotic pain killers as a means of weight loss. But as a side affect, I'll take it!
I have had to go and buy a new belt because the old one was too large and, when next I go upstairs, I'm thinking of getting the "skinny" pants out of the closet. I think even their 36" waist may be loose, however. Which is fine by me!
Next trick will be trying to keep the weight off which means trying to get Terry to change her cooking habits a little.
Showing posts with label Diet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diet. Show all posts
Monday, August 26, 2013
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
About those New Years' Resolutions...
If they are geared toward losing weight, you might want to rethink.
All the reports of the health benefits of chocolate, caffeine, blueberries, bacon, etc. and now this:
Study: A few extra pounds may cut risk of early death
And by "A few" they mean 30 or so pounds.
Of course, at my age "early death" may have been defeated already.
All the reports of the health benefits of chocolate, caffeine, blueberries, bacon, etc. and now this:
Study: A few extra pounds may cut risk of early death
And by "A few" they mean 30 or so pounds.
People who are overweight by up to 30 or so have a slightly lower risk of early death than those at a normal weight, the government analysis finds.
Of course, at my age "early death" may have been defeated already.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Rising and Falling
Weight and snow/ice/sleet, aka weather.
Despite shoveling the drive three times last week (that's a two hour workout each time) and trying to be careful, I gained 2.1 pounds.
I find it difficult to lose when Terry gets the urge to cook. Chicken paprikash, chicken with fettucini primavera, homemade pizza, halibut with orzzo, breakfast at the fire hall, and biscuits and gravy. And Jess brought a tray of homemade chocolate fudge. Trust me, they were all good, but not exactly low cal.
Oh well. I'm still down a little under five pounds since January 4th.
******
Snow was falling heavily at 7:00 this morning but has temporarily stopped. We've go about three inches on the ground. Radar shows that the bulk of the precipitation is currently sliding to the south of us. It can stay there for all I care, but the forecasters seem to agree that it won't. We'll get more. Lots more. Late this evening and through the night. Hopefully it will be more snow but some are saying ice is on the way in at least two periods--one today and another tomorrow afternoon. At least one forecast says that sh*t will stay down around I-80.
Despite shoveling the drive three times last week (that's a two hour workout each time) and trying to be careful, I gained 2.1 pounds.
I find it difficult to lose when Terry gets the urge to cook. Chicken paprikash, chicken with fettucini primavera, homemade pizza, halibut with orzzo, breakfast at the fire hall, and biscuits and gravy. And Jess brought a tray of homemade chocolate fudge. Trust me, they were all good, but not exactly low cal.
Oh well. I'm still down a little under five pounds since January 4th.
******
Snow was falling heavily at 7:00 this morning but has temporarily stopped. We've go about three inches on the ground. Radar shows that the bulk of the precipitation is currently sliding to the south of us. It can stay there for all I care, but the forecasters seem to agree that it won't. We'll get more. Lots more. Late this evening and through the night. Hopefully it will be more snow but some are saying ice is on the way in at least two periods--one today and another tomorrow afternoon. At least one forecast says that sh*t will stay down around I-80.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Tuesday Weigh In
Currently 29 degrees outside...up from 6 degrees yesterday. The ice/snow/rain remains--for the most part--to our east with only a teensy bit of snow having fallen overnight. Just a dusting on the deck but, with the high humidity and warmer temperatures, is great packing snow if you wanted to make a snowman or have a snowball fight. There is considerable fog down in the valley and the occasional fog cloud rolls in over the ridge to our south enveloping the Aerie in cotton candy whiteness.
******
Week two of the weight loss program saw my numbers bouncing all over again so I was prepared for Mr. Scale to render bad news when I stepped on it this morning. Instead, I got the second lowest reading in two weeks: 229.1 pounds. That's down from a starting weight of 232.2 for a loss of 3.1 pounds in two weeks. Not much, but at least it is heading in the right direction while I've not been particularly careful about my exercise or food intake. Well, they do say that slow and steady is the best way to win this particular race.
******
Week two of the weight loss program saw my numbers bouncing all over again so I was prepared for Mr. Scale to render bad news when I stepped on it this morning. Instead, I got the second lowest reading in two weeks: 229.1 pounds. That's down from a starting weight of 232.2 for a loss of 3.1 pounds in two weeks. Not much, but at least it is heading in the right direction while I've not been particularly careful about my exercise or food intake. Well, they do say that slow and steady is the best way to win this particular race.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
This and That, January 11, 2011
Last Tuesday I stepped on the scale and it read 232.2. That was the beginning of a new diet...or the end of the old one. While I've not been following any particular regimen except to push the day's large meal to noon or there about and to push myself away from the table more forcefully, I managed some loss this week. Weighing myself daily produced some yo-yo activity, of course, as so much depended upon such as the level of outdoor activity (two snows needed to be shoveled), how much liquid I drank (and retained), and if I had had a BM. Still, this morning's weigh-in produced some positive results in a 1.8 pound weight loss down to 230.6 pounds.
******
Congratulations to Auburn for their 22-19 victory over the Oregon Ducks in last night's BCS Championship Game. I actually turned it off in the closing seconds when it looked like the Tigers had scored a TD to go ahead 26-19 so imagine my surprise to find out this morning that I (and Brent Musburger) were wrong and that it took a last second field goal to seal the deal. As for Michael Dyer's 37-yard run on that final drive.... How many times are players told to play until the whistle? Only the referees can end a play. And, in today's world of instant replay and challenges, they aren't going to do so if it's questionable. Good thing neither Dyer's knee nor forearm hit the turf...for both the refs and the Tigers.
******
I was impressed with the story of how they had resodded the field after last weeks bowl game. Looked real nice for the Big Game. Then they kicked off and players on both sides started to slip and slide on every play. Certainly detracted a little from the performance of both teams' offenses AND defenses.
******
On the weather front: The temperatures were up slightly this morning (17 degrees) but that hasn't precluded the moisture in the air from freezing to twigs and branches of trees. The hoar frost gives everything a nice glistening...or it would if the sun could peek out from behind the cloud cover that has moved in ahead of the snow that's coming. And that snow seems to be hurrying our way. The forecast now says it will be here around 5 this afternoon instead of 7 tonight. Should it start at that time (5 PM) I will once more have to forgo participation in the Grand Canyon Photography Club's meeting over in Wellsboro. The meeting usually ends around 9:30 PM so even if it starts snowing around 7 things could be dicey. No way I want to voluntarily be on the roads for some 25 miles of driving in a snow storm.
[UPDATE: Oooo-kay. Started snowing at 3 in the afternoon. Could be good--gets done sooner tomorrow morning, or it could be bad--gonna be more of the stuff than they at first predicted. We shall see. In any event, I guess I'll stay home to watch NCIS tonight.]
******
Congratulations to Auburn for their 22-19 victory over the Oregon Ducks in last night's BCS Championship Game. I actually turned it off in the closing seconds when it looked like the Tigers had scored a TD to go ahead 26-19 so imagine my surprise to find out this morning that I (and Brent Musburger) were wrong and that it took a last second field goal to seal the deal. As for Michael Dyer's 37-yard run on that final drive.... How many times are players told to play until the whistle? Only the referees can end a play. And, in today's world of instant replay and challenges, they aren't going to do so if it's questionable. Good thing neither Dyer's knee nor forearm hit the turf...for both the refs and the Tigers.
******
I was impressed with the story of how they had resodded the field after last weeks bowl game. Looked real nice for the Big Game. Then they kicked off and players on both sides started to slip and slide on every play. Certainly detracted a little from the performance of both teams' offenses AND defenses.
******
On the weather front: The temperatures were up slightly this morning (17 degrees) but that hasn't precluded the moisture in the air from freezing to twigs and branches of trees. The hoar frost gives everything a nice glistening...or it would if the sun could peek out from behind the cloud cover that has moved in ahead of the snow that's coming. And that snow seems to be hurrying our way. The forecast now says it will be here around 5 this afternoon instead of 7 tonight. Should it start at that time (5 PM) I will once more have to forgo participation in the Grand Canyon Photography Club's meeting over in Wellsboro. The meeting usually ends around 9:30 PM so even if it starts snowing around 7 things could be dicey. No way I want to voluntarily be on the roads for some 25 miles of driving in a snow storm.
[UPDATE: Oooo-kay. Started snowing at 3 in the afternoon. Could be good--gets done sooner tomorrow morning, or it could be bad--gonna be more of the stuff than they at first predicted. We shall see. In any event, I guess I'll stay home to watch NCIS tonight.]
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Aerie Report, January 6, 2011
I've been a bit quiet lately. Some of that's due to the annual feeling of ennui that envelopes me after the holidays have past but a good part of it has to due with an assignment I've been given by our local Audubon Chapter.
Terry and I have been tagged with making a presentation on our Alaskan trip. While many locals and members of our group have made trips to Alaska, most have done so either by flying to their appointed destination or by taking a cruise that has limited their access to the largest state in the union. Very few (and none of our acquaintance) have made the trip via the overland route. That makes us and our experience a little unique. (Gary, our webmaster, has called our presentation: "Mainesburg to the Arctic Circle or Bust!" I would have preferred, "There And Back Again!" but that's just me.)
In preparation for our big night, I've been going through all the blog posts and pictures from that 78 day Road Trip and it's been keeping me busy as I select and resize my photos. So far I've not even reached the half way point in our trek and I've already got more than enough material for a monumental travelogue let alone one that's to last a mere hour. We're going to have to do a good deal of pruning to fit our time slot but I just can't think of where that's going to happen!
On the plus side, this is the first time someone has actually asked to be bored to slumber by viewing my home slide shows.
On the negative (?) side, viewing all those pictures and thinking about the great time Terry and I had has me wanting to hit the road and do it all over again. We experienced and saw so much that we would want to do again...and there's so much we had to skip due to forest fires and road washouts, not too mention and so much we would want to explore in greater depth...that, given sufficient time and money, we could spend several summers (and maybe a winter or two) on the roads of British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska.
******
Watching the bowl games on TV I've come to dislike the Pacific Life commercials. You know the ones. They have great footage of breaching whales. Every time I see one of those ads, I'm reminded of the many short cruises we took in Alaskan waters and the excitement of viewing humpback whales rolling alongside the vessel. Or groups of sea otters, Stellar's sea lions, puffins, murrelets and more swimming in the water nearby. Like the photos I'm editing, those ads make me want to hit the road to the (far) northwest
******
Winter has returned to the Aerie. After experiencing a couple of days of well above average warmth to ring out the old year and welcome the new, we're again in the deep freeze. This morning it dropped to just 10 degrees on the porch. It was a few degrees lower in the valley. The winds out of the west northwest have brought some lake effect snow as far south as our mountain home but that's only been an inch or two. Just enough to turn the ground white again without requiring any shovel work except on the deck. I can live with that. The snow that AccuHunch is forecasting for Friday and Saturday will--according to them--miss us as the heavy accumulations will be to our east and northeast.
The Bolt Hole hasn't been as lucky. The lake effect off of Lake Ontario has stretched as far east as that little section of the southwest Adirondack Park and this weekend's storm may bring several more inches to the area. Mark's not been around to give a first hand report, but I'm assuming there's a foot or more on the ground as I write and another six inches or so on the immediate horizon.
******
Taking a clue from Wyatt at Support Your Local Gunfighter, I'm going to attempt to shed some of the weight I've been carrying around. While I was pretty good while we were on the road and gained only a pound or two, since the leaves fell my weight has gone up to 233 as of last Monday morning versus a pretrip total of around 215. Just too much inactivity and good holiday food. Now, 233 isn't a bad weight if you're a 6'2" middle linebacker ot a running back in the NFL, but for a 5'10" 61-year old retiree? Not so much. My goal is to at least return to the 215 pound level by April 1st. Then, as springtime arrives and outdoor activity can increase further, I'd like to get down to around 200 by my birthday in mid September.
I'll not be following any formal diet program but will instead just try to cut back on the snacks and portions and attempt to incorporate a bit more walking into my weekly schedule. If I was to follow a plan, it would be Weight Watchers as theirs makes the most sense.
As a start, I've eliminated ice cream from the freezer. (It never stayed there too long anyway as the 1.75 quart containers made just 3 or 4 servings.) Meal portions will be reduced. (Which makes Terry happy as the left overs will mean less cooking.) We will also move our "main meal" to the noon hour the better to not have it in our stomach as we sleep.
******
Well, time to go back to the photos and get some more ready to use in our slide show.
Later.
Terry and I have been tagged with making a presentation on our Alaskan trip. While many locals and members of our group have made trips to Alaska, most have done so either by flying to their appointed destination or by taking a cruise that has limited their access to the largest state in the union. Very few (and none of our acquaintance) have made the trip via the overland route. That makes us and our experience a little unique. (Gary, our webmaster, has called our presentation: "Mainesburg to the Arctic Circle or Bust!" I would have preferred, "There And Back Again!" but that's just me.)
In preparation for our big night, I've been going through all the blog posts and pictures from that 78 day Road Trip and it's been keeping me busy as I select and resize my photos. So far I've not even reached the half way point in our trek and I've already got more than enough material for a monumental travelogue let alone one that's to last a mere hour. We're going to have to do a good deal of pruning to fit our time slot but I just can't think of where that's going to happen!
On the plus side, this is the first time someone has actually asked to be bored to slumber by viewing my home slide shows.
On the negative (?) side, viewing all those pictures and thinking about the great time Terry and I had has me wanting to hit the road and do it all over again. We experienced and saw so much that we would want to do again...and there's so much we had to skip due to forest fires and road washouts, not too mention and so much we would want to explore in greater depth...that, given sufficient time and money, we could spend several summers (and maybe a winter or two) on the roads of British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska.
******
Watching the bowl games on TV I've come to dislike the Pacific Life commercials. You know the ones. They have great footage of breaching whales. Every time I see one of those ads, I'm reminded of the many short cruises we took in Alaskan waters and the excitement of viewing humpback whales rolling alongside the vessel. Or groups of sea otters, Stellar's sea lions, puffins, murrelets and more swimming in the water nearby. Like the photos I'm editing, those ads make me want to hit the road to the (far) northwest
******
Winter has returned to the Aerie. After experiencing a couple of days of well above average warmth to ring out the old year and welcome the new, we're again in the deep freeze. This morning it dropped to just 10 degrees on the porch. It was a few degrees lower in the valley. The winds out of the west northwest have brought some lake effect snow as far south as our mountain home but that's only been an inch or two. Just enough to turn the ground white again without requiring any shovel work except on the deck. I can live with that. The snow that AccuHunch is forecasting for Friday and Saturday will--according to them--miss us as the heavy accumulations will be to our east and northeast.
The Bolt Hole hasn't been as lucky. The lake effect off of Lake Ontario has stretched as far east as that little section of the southwest Adirondack Park and this weekend's storm may bring several more inches to the area. Mark's not been around to give a first hand report, but I'm assuming there's a foot or more on the ground as I write and another six inches or so on the immediate horizon.
******
Taking a clue from Wyatt at Support Your Local Gunfighter, I'm going to attempt to shed some of the weight I've been carrying around. While I was pretty good while we were on the road and gained only a pound or two, since the leaves fell my weight has gone up to 233 as of last Monday morning versus a pretrip total of around 215. Just too much inactivity and good holiday food. Now, 233 isn't a bad weight if you're a 6'2" middle linebacker ot a running back in the NFL, but for a 5'10" 61-year old retiree? Not so much. My goal is to at least return to the 215 pound level by April 1st. Then, as springtime arrives and outdoor activity can increase further, I'd like to get down to around 200 by my birthday in mid September.
I'll not be following any formal diet program but will instead just try to cut back on the snacks and portions and attempt to incorporate a bit more walking into my weekly schedule. If I was to follow a plan, it would be Weight Watchers as theirs makes the most sense.
As a start, I've eliminated ice cream from the freezer. (It never stayed there too long anyway as the 1.75 quart containers made just 3 or 4 servings.) Meal portions will be reduced. (Which makes Terry happy as the left overs will mean less cooking.) We will also move our "main meal" to the noon hour the better to not have it in our stomach as we sleep.
******
Well, time to go back to the photos and get some more ready to use in our slide show.
Later.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Saturday at the Aerie
It was a slow day here at the Aerie. I spent most of it around the Aerie waiting for the forecast rain that never fell here. It fell to the north in Elmira and a little fell to the south but none fell on the hill here. And the rain has been scrubbed from the forecast tomorrow as well.
Terry and I were going to go birding this morning but neither of us got to sleep easily last night so we opted to sleep in instead. Fat chance we had of that with Chester (the cat with the alarm clock for a tummy) howling for us to wake up and feed the three of them at 6 AM.
I putzed around a bit this morning trying to get my feet under me and then went out to check the one working game camera and pull the other. There were just 8 pictures of a doe on the memory card when I got back in the house. All were taken yesterday afternoon and early evening. None were outstanding photos so No pictures tonight. The second camera is acting up, as I mentioned yesterday, and, while it allowed me to make changes in all the settings, it still will not run a diagnostic test on itself nor will it turn to "Auto" so it can take pictures of anything moving. Sounds like it has gone to the great darkroom in the sky.
Terry had another sewing club picnic today (she had one yesterday too) and was gone for about three hours. During that time, I had a lovely lunch of a half dozen blueclaw crabs she brought home from Bilo yesterday. They were a manager's special at $6.99 a dozen already cooked and she couldn't pass them by. (Actually she brought home a dozen but we ate half of them for dinner.) Picking through those crabs to get the small morsels of meat reminded me of the times I used to go crabbing on Barnegat Bay. I will say, you are far more likely to enjoy the crab meat when you've spent all day catching the buggers under a hot summer sun. I would bring home a couple of dozen on a Saturday evening, steam them up with some Old Bay seasoning and then sit before the TV to watch the late college football game (crabbing was always best in the early fall when the crabs were big and full of meat prior to their burrowing into the mud for winter) and pick crabs for a couple of hours. Nearly all of the meat would go into a bowl and then get frozen or made into crab cakes. I would, of course eat one or two of the crabs but I would also have to feed the two hungry kids who hung around with their mouths open like baby birds begging for a meal.
Anyway, it took me almost two hours to eat that half dozen crabs today. I must be out of practice. And when I was done, all I wanted to do was exactly what the three cats were doing after finishing their lunch; namely curl up on the couch and nap. That's when Terry returned. And all she want to do was curl up on her couch and nap. They had a pretty good picnic I guess.
Neither of us wanted much dinner.
Back on May 29 I started to track my weight with the goal of shedding a few pounds. When at the Aerie I step on the scales every morning before getting dressed and then record my weight. Back then, I weighed in at just shy of 233. What followed were two months of roller coaster rides. With a retirement dinner in NJ, two weeks at the Bolt Hole, a trip out to San Francisco area for a wedding.... My weight would yo-yo up and down. Thinking I must e losing lots while working hard at the Bolt Hole, I would get back to the Aerie to find I had lost just half a pound. It was pretty frustrating.
Well, since returning from the Bolt Hole about two weeks ago things are looking much better. Terry's been using the Weight Watchers' cook books more and we've both been pushing away from the table after one helping. I've been doing a little more walking around the property and trying to increase my activity level. This morning I weighed just 221.5 and have lost a little more than 11 pounds. If I can continue to shed about 5 pounds a month while increasing my daily activity level, I'll feel pretty good going into the hunting season the end of September. (Of course all my hunting clothes will be too large....)
Terry and I were going to go birding this morning but neither of us got to sleep easily last night so we opted to sleep in instead. Fat chance we had of that with Chester (the cat with the alarm clock for a tummy) howling for us to wake up and feed the three of them at 6 AM.
I putzed around a bit this morning trying to get my feet under me and then went out to check the one working game camera and pull the other. There were just 8 pictures of a doe on the memory card when I got back in the house. All were taken yesterday afternoon and early evening. None were outstanding photos so No pictures tonight. The second camera is acting up, as I mentioned yesterday, and, while it allowed me to make changes in all the settings, it still will not run a diagnostic test on itself nor will it turn to "Auto" so it can take pictures of anything moving. Sounds like it has gone to the great darkroom in the sky.
Terry had another sewing club picnic today (she had one yesterday too) and was gone for about three hours. During that time, I had a lovely lunch of a half dozen blueclaw crabs she brought home from Bilo yesterday. They were a manager's special at $6.99 a dozen already cooked and she couldn't pass them by. (Actually she brought home a dozen but we ate half of them for dinner.) Picking through those crabs to get the small morsels of meat reminded me of the times I used to go crabbing on Barnegat Bay. I will say, you are far more likely to enjoy the crab meat when you've spent all day catching the buggers under a hot summer sun. I would bring home a couple of dozen on a Saturday evening, steam them up with some Old Bay seasoning and then sit before the TV to watch the late college football game (crabbing was always best in the early fall when the crabs were big and full of meat prior to their burrowing into the mud for winter) and pick crabs for a couple of hours. Nearly all of the meat would go into a bowl and then get frozen or made into crab cakes. I would, of course eat one or two of the crabs but I would also have to feed the two hungry kids who hung around with their mouths open like baby birds begging for a meal.
Anyway, it took me almost two hours to eat that half dozen crabs today. I must be out of practice. And when I was done, all I wanted to do was exactly what the three cats were doing after finishing their lunch; namely curl up on the couch and nap. That's when Terry returned. And all she want to do was curl up on her couch and nap. They had a pretty good picnic I guess.
Neither of us wanted much dinner.
Back on May 29 I started to track my weight with the goal of shedding a few pounds. When at the Aerie I step on the scales every morning before getting dressed and then record my weight. Back then, I weighed in at just shy of 233. What followed were two months of roller coaster rides. With a retirement dinner in NJ, two weeks at the Bolt Hole, a trip out to San Francisco area for a wedding.... My weight would yo-yo up and down. Thinking I must e losing lots while working hard at the Bolt Hole, I would get back to the Aerie to find I had lost just half a pound. It was pretty frustrating.
Well, since returning from the Bolt Hole about two weeks ago things are looking much better. Terry's been using the Weight Watchers' cook books more and we've both been pushing away from the table after one helping. I've been doing a little more walking around the property and trying to increase my activity level. This morning I weighed just 221.5 and have lost a little more than 11 pounds. If I can continue to shed about 5 pounds a month while increasing my daily activity level, I'll feel pretty good going into the hunting season the end of September. (Of course all my hunting clothes will be too large....)
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