Stalled weight loss
I don't talk about weight loss on the blog a lot, because I don't want the topic to consume my posts. I spend a lot of time working on my health and I feel like I would post about it all the time if I'm not careful. That said, sometimes I need to work some things out.
Exercise
It's summertime, which means that three nights out of seven my wife and I play softball. Depending on how the game goes (and the weather) this can mean some pretty intense cardio workout and stretches, or it might mean the equivalent of a long walk. But it keeps us busy, and consequently away from the gym - we see our personal trainer only once a week during the summer.
I have yet to take my bike out for a ride, but my goal is to ride to work on Thursday. I think that means I'll have to get it out tomorrow night (Wednesday) for a test run to make sure nothing is broken. Last year I got my bike out to ride to work one morning only to discover the tire was flat - it was a whole thing. Anyway.
From the movement perspective, I feel I'm doing okay. I also walk a lot during the week. My dog goes out for a walk for at least 10 minutes twice a day (I go with her :P) and I try to sprinkle in more walking throughout the week where I can.
I'm happy where things are on this front.
Healthy eating
Eating is where I struggle. I do my best to track my food intake, using Cronometer. I have a daily calorie goal (about 1980, without taking exercise into consideration - about 13,860 a week). This is meant to be a slower deficit, which is fine because I find it incredibly difficult to be too far below that number.
It's hard though. In theory I shouldn't be including my exercise calories at all. Eating back your calories is not a good idea because measuring calories burned by exercise is not an exact science (unless you're wearing a specialized monitor - which smart watches are not). Maybe my watch tells me I burned 100 calories, but if I eat that back, maybe I only burned 25 calories - meaning I'm over by 75. Still, it makes it easier for me to meet my calorie goals...so I continue.
The other problem is habit. I frequently break away from daily logging which makes it difficult to stay on top of my calorie intake. The weekend, for example - I didn't log a single thing. Yesterday, yes I did. But today? My back has been hurting all day and I don't have the patience for food logging (I didn't even have the patience to wait in line to order food, so I grabbed something "passable" from the drug store). So I've got nothing for today.
I know what I need to do to keep the daily habit going, I just don't do it. So this is something I need to work on. Perhaps I need something like Jedda's 75 Hard program to get me going.
Weighty results
Numbers don't really mean very much in the grand scheme of things. I know objectively I look better than I have in a long time, and I can easily compare to older pictures and see the progress in the mirror. But the scale presents a number that's hard to ignore.
To avoid getting too hung up with numbers I don't pay much attention to the daily number (I weigh daily). I've long realized that the daily number is not important - it's noise, because of how easily it fluctuates. So I plug in my numbers and consult the app Libra on Android (you can get the same thing on iOS called Happy Scale - same concept, different app).
These weight smoothing apps do a good job of filtering out the noise and showing you your overall progress, and estimate when you might reach your stated goal. Right now that estimate sits at January 2026 - and I can see that my overall trend is downward. But not long ago it trended up, and took a couple of months' work to go back the other way.
But as I type this, I think I need to adjust my goal to make it seem more attainable. It's currently 240 pounds - I'm going to bring it back a little bit and set it to 245. Doing this, now my goal date is back to October 2025. Nice!
Wrapping up
Bottom line, I need to step up my efforts. It is far too easy to blow out my calorie goal and just give up. In the next few days I'm going to take another big picture look at my calories and see what I need to do to meet my new weight loss goal.
From there, I'll draw up a bigger plan to make sure I get there - by October 2025, since that's the estimate as of today. Seems like a reasonable goal to me.
I'll report back once I have a plan put together.
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