Final thoughts on my weight goal for September-October
On September 16th I shared a post outlining my attempt hitting my weight goal by pushing for the next 30 days, aiming to reach 245.0 lbs by October 15, 2025.
I did not hit my goal. I completely forgot that the "deadline" was October 15th. Here's where I landed:
September 15: scale: 248.2; trend: 246.6
October 15: scale: 249.1 (+0.9); trend: 247.7 (+1.1)
Today: scale: 246.7 (-2.4); trend: 247.5 (-0.2)
Looking at the numbers from September 15th to today, it looks good on the scale, a drop of 1.5 pounds. Over 30-ish days that's approximately where I should be with a loss rate of 0.5 pounds per week. The trend weight doesn't look great but it takes time to filter out the noise. I could play with the smoothing settings but that would be cheating.
Some notes:
- I stopped tracking weekends altogether; ostensibly I stopped tracking to maintain my sanity. I believe this worked as intended.
- My last day of tracked calories was Thursday October 9th. I stopped ahead of the Thanksgiving long weekend for two reasons: a) it was the weekend again; b) I was travelling and tracking away from home is always difficult.
- I should have come up with a concrete plan. My method this time was "track calories and try to exercise".
I'm not sure what I'll do for the rest of the year. I would love to reach my goal weight but I'm at a point where it's difficult to maintain that level of discipline. Additionally some of the scale weight could be muscle! We've made a lot of progress at the gym with our personal trainer.
I can see physical results in the mirror and when comparing to pictures, but I haven't taken measurements. When I have taken measurements, I don't see any change; most likely I'm measuring incorrectly. These things combined leads to frustration and lack of desire to continue.
I'll try as best I can to stay the course, but I don't think I can track calories at the moment. It's too taxing mentally. Thankfully I have a rough idea of how much I eat, so avoiding foods with high calorie values (such as fast food, snacks, etc.) will help in that regard.