Exclamation point! As of today, I have reached my intermediate weight loss goal of dropping forty pounds this year! That means I also get to see a “1” as the first digit.
Let’s get some perspective here. 40 lbs. is about that same weight as: 5 gallons of water, 53 12-oz packages of cheese, 160 quarter-pound hamburger patties, a five-year-old boy, or 2.857 stone (for the British blokes in the crowd).
I have already reaped phenomenal health benefits : My blood pressures is 110 over 74, I can walk for several miles with no pain anywhere, stairs are a breeze, and I am not awakened early in the morning by pain in my hip. I can even sit at the computer and type for longer periods, should I need to—that is, were my muse find some way to resurrect.
There will be no resting on my laurels, though—I’m only halfway to my goal. I still have miles to go before I sleep… and another 53 packages of cheese to shed.
“Why so much?” you may ask. Even at less than half my current age, when I worked out regularly and appeared to be—I thought—normal-sized, I had an immersion density test done and was found to have an extremely high body fat content for a male. If you are not familiar with these tests, the subject is weighed under water and that is compared with the dry weight and calculations are made. I don’t remember my exact fat percentage, but I think it was nearly twice what it should have been. It is much higher now, I’m sure. And since I have learned that I have a thin (usually termed, “small”) frame, i.e., I’m not “big-boned,” unless I can develop very large muscles I will necessarily look thin should I ever achieve a normal body fat percentage. This is indeed challenging for a person my age, but I’ve got to get weight off my frame to make it easier to deal with my arthritis. What I have lost so far has virtually worked miracles with my pain levels, so I press onward.
“Nothing tastes so good as being thin feels.” — Unknown author
Yoisho!
