Weight Loss Goals 2009

2009-01-06

That new year creeps around again and everyone makes his or her new plans. Many people make resolutions about health, weight loss in particular. I decided it is time to reevaluate my own weight situation.

My Internist set my goal for me. He and his people determined that I would be better off at about 175 pounds. The assertion is that this amount of weight loss would greatly reduce the effect of my diabetes. Currently I am at 195 pounds.

If I want to lose the remaining twenty pounds by the end of the year, I need to lose about five pounds every three months. That is good because it gives me short-term goals of only about five pounds each. Losing five pounds in three months doesn't sound as bad; that's only one and two-thirds pounds a month. How hard can it be to lose one and two-thirds pounds a month?

For this I will have to take a two-pronged attack. The first prong is exercise. Fortunately, my Cardiologist says I can start building muscles again. For the first years of my heart recovery, he recommended that I avoid building too much musculature because of the extra strain it put on my cardiovascular system, even when at rest. Now all of that has changed and I can almost do a push up or two. (I'm actually up to about ten push ups per session at this point. It's pull ups that are still limited to one or two.)

Diet is the second prong of this attack. My Internist changed my diet on my first visit. The dieticians had me trying to eat more carbohydrates than I would usually eat because they were trying to move me toward the normal, recommended target. Well, the Internist quashed that and said that if I wanted to eat less I was welcome to do so. That was good, because eating that much food took effort.

My great fondness for vegetables and low-fat, low-sodium food contrasts with my equal fondness for Bavarian Cream filled donuts. If I could figure out a way to make highly-nutritious, low-calorie Bavarian Cream filled donuts, I would be in paradise. The courts say I'm not allowed to genetically engineer my own food sources anymore, so the donuts will have to wait. In general, an occasional donut is not a bad thing, as long as I measure the distance between occasions in weeks and not seconds.

It is fully possible for me to drop the remaining weight over the course of the next year. It won't disappoint me too much if I don't make it exactly to 175, as long as I get reasonably close. Progress is progress. More importantly, if weight loss is a relatively easy goal, then I can concentrate on my other goal of becoming king of the world.