I was thinking today that the recent vacation to Hershey Park and the bookending weekends has a bit more content with my weight than I’ve been for a while. I’m satisfied to see consistency over a steady drop.

Considering that I started this journey just trying to get down to a size 36 pant, I should be!

But I had gotten addicted to seeing a drop in weight when I hopped on the scale, and was concerned if I gained, or in some cases, didn’t lose after trying.

It’s not to say that I don’t celebrate for a quiet second when I get back down a half pound or so after a weekend of relative gluttony. But this is more of a control issue–that I can bend it back the other way, still bend it back–than a sheer loss issue. That’s because anyone who has lost weight with some effort fears that it will come back. Like all of it. Over night.

Anyway: I’m kind of bouncing along the bottom of my loss. The line has flattened.

It took 18 months. A year and a half.

A Few Observations

• You Realize You’ll Have to be This Vigilant for the Rest of Your Life: Maybe I’m overstating the case, but you realize that your current level of output (exercise and movement) and careful eating (and logging of said eating) is both necessary and sufficient to maintenance. Your engagement matters.
• Logging Your Food Can Get Cumbersome: The upshot of measuring your food is that you’re better at guesstimating when you’re in situations when you can’t (or won’t) measure: out for dinner, at a party, etc. I know about how much steak is 120 grams, and likewise with chicken. I’m pretty sure I know how much salad I ate when I can’t measure. A half of a medium baked potato is around 80 grams. But measuring half a dozen pieces of salami and some bits of brie can get downright fiddly.
• Logging Your Food Enables You to Eat and Drink Everything: You don’t have to avoid entire food groups because it’s an unknown evil; you can have a cocktail and account for it in your intake. (Maybe not tonight, but you can make up for it later.) You can still have cheese; just have less of it. You can have wine with dinner; measure it and count it against your daily balance. I think some partial bans or restrictions can be helpful: booze, candy, soda, that kind of thing. It’s necessarily that you can’t ever have them, but you can limit them to certain situations or events.
• Move More: On some days, like Sundays, I can bury the needle and burn 500+ calories in a rowing session. But most weekday mornings, I can only get in around 200 calories before it’s into the breach once again. But you can burn a lot more calories just walking around at work or doing work in the yard. Obviously combining exercise and active movement during the day is the smart move.
• Eat the Same Thing a Lot: Having a similar salad, with minor tweaks, for lunch eat day takes the guesswork out of your intake when you’re busy. This has helped me discern a workable pattern for myself: about 250 calories for breakfast, 250 for lunch (more accurately, 500 calories before dinner), and leave 1000 in the bank for dinner and a drink. I can usually have some fruit or pistacios for dessert, too.
• Don’t Eat After Dinner: This is really only when you’re starting out, but try not to eat after dinner. Once you get pro with counting calories, you can adjust against your calorie balance.
• Eat Fruit and Vegetables: You can eat a bowl of watermelon and not touch the calorie content of a cookie. (But you should have a cookie once in a while, too.)
• Eat Nuts…but Measure Them: Nuts are a great source of energy and will keep you feeling full, but you have to measure them, as they’re calorically dense. Housing fistfuls of peanuts while you’re having a cocktail with someone special will surprise you, energy-wise.
• Technology is a Fantastic Tool for Health: From tracking workouts to movement, and for logging your food, there has never been a better time. I get a lot of data from my Apple Watch and PM5 erg computer every day that informs how much I eat. And all of the other health data: resting heart rate, walking heart rate, and more, are all great metrics to track while you’re getting–and staying–healthy

All of this is on the eve of our annual vacation to Ocean City. I hope the pool is warm! ¹

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¹ Last year, I was worried about not being able to row on vacation. I learned, though, that just casually swimming around in the pool, treading water and swimming around, as I do, can burn 100 calories in about 10 minutes. So an hour of that a day? Lots of calories burned, leaving room for pizza, a beer on the deck, and even some Kohr Bros.