In my post about building a better me, I was a bit cagey about my weight loss. I’m going to keep some info secret still, but I thought I’d flesh (see what I did there?) it out a bit more here.

Again, I had not taken a formal baseline after the first of the year as a starting point; I regret doing this, but I was skeptical of my ability to hold fast to anything for a period of time and quite frankly didn’t want to see the number.

After a month of restriction and additional exercies, I was happy to find that I was slipping into some older pants and jeans. For example, I was taking my son to a robotics event in nearby Camden County, and I tried on a pair of black jeans I hadn’t worn in forever.

And they fit.

So I hopped on the scale.

Since that day, I have lost an additional 21 pounds. I have read that it takes about 15 pounds to drop a pants size, so I’m gonna hazzard a guess that I lost between 15 to 20 in January, and then, as you’ll see below, an additional 21. So that’s 36 to 41 pounds total. It’s a good amount to lose, I figured.

But it’s also a safe amount, really; it’s about two pounds a week. Between 4/6/2023 and 4/18/2023, I dropped four pounds, so that’s the deal.

date Week Pounds Lost
01/28/2023 Week 04 ?
02/30/2023 Week 05 .5
02/07/2023 Week 06 1
02/10/2023 Week 06 1.5
02/17/2023 Week 07 1
02/24/2023 Week 08 1
03/08/2023 Week 10 5
03/15/2023 Week 11 2
03/27/2023 Week 13 1.5
04/06/2023 Week 14 3
04/18/2023 Week 16 4

Daryl Austin, Writing for The Atlantic:

Although a perpetrator might use the silent treatment in many different scenarios, this is what every scenario has in common: “People use the silent treatment because they can get away with it without looking abusive to others,” Williams explained, “and because it’s highly effective in making the targeted individual feel bad.”

The silent treatment is a particularly insidious form of abuse because it might force the victim to reconcile with the perpetrator in an effort to end the behavior, even if the victim doesn’t know why they’re apologizing. “It’s especially controlling because it deprives both sides from weighing in,” Williams said. “One person does it to the other person, and that person can’t do anything about it.”

What You’re Saying When You Give Someone the Silent Treatment

Following up on my article about health metrics, the New York Times has an article about some details you can pay attention to instead of weight. Included were some of the metrics the Apple Watch reports.

One measure is resting heart rate:

Resting heart rate refers to the number of times your heart beats in a minute while you’re not exerting yourself. The better your cardiovascular fitness, the lower your resting heart rate is likely to be because the heart can pump more blood with every beat. Fewer beats mean the heart is working more efficiently, pushing the same amount of blood through the body with less effort.

A normal resting heart rate for healthy adults is between 60 and 80 beats per minute. Athletes commonly have a lower resting heart rate, sometimes dropping below 60 beats per minute. If your resting heart rate is above 80, regular aerobic exercise could help you lower it over time.

The mysterious heart rate variability is also mentioned, and while the explanation is interesting, there’s no discussion of a healthy score or range.

While we often think of the heart as a metronome, beating at a steady pace, there are actually small variations in the length of each beat and the time between them. “At rest, very low heart rate variability shows that the heart is just doing all it can to keep up,” Dr. Lundstrom said. “The more fit you are, the more your heart has the ability to adapt and adjust really quickly to changing demands.”

3 Ways to Measure How Fit You Are, Without Focusing on Weight