Finally: A Long-Awaited Whoosh

I'm now at my lowest since I started my WV job in late 2013. I remember charting my weight at the time; I had been regularly walking around the Maryland apartment complex and maintaining my diet. I had to live in a hotel (my expense) for a week before moving in. I had finally stopped Nutrisystem some time earlier and brought some food with me for the small hotel refrigerator, but I abandoned the idea. I recall eating lunch across the street from the federal facility with my boss who was escorting me my first day; it wasn't an all-you-care-to-eat spot, but it was a carby comfort food type of place. It was particularly cold and windy that winter, and I remember frequenting a Subway shop and a diner in a mall just up the street from the hotel for dinner the rest of the week. My new work colleagues used to eat lunch at a sports bar a couple of blocks around the corner, and I joined them. I quickly signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment but had to wait a week before the cable company would start my service. The small apartment complex really didn't have any flat, walking surface, and I quickly dropped the idea of maintaining my walking regimen in sub-zero, snowy, icy weather. It wasn't so much that I exploded in size, but I steadily gained about a dozen pounds, then more, and I've been fighting ever since then to lose it.

So in the 3 days since my last post, I've had about a 3.5 lb whoosh through a weeks-long floor. It wouldn't surprise me if I bounced off today's low, but there are a number of signs when you're on a whoosh: for example, I make notably more frequent trips to the bathroom to pee.

I'm just a few pounds away from a symbolic weight target. I'm probably 15 pounds away from where I bottomed during my Nutrisystem days and 35 pounds away from some BMI heuristic that health insurers would stipulate as a cutoff for underwriting purposes. (I was unemployed for some time during the recession and mostly wanted to insure for catastrophic health risks; they told me I could join the assigned risk market, but I couldn't afford the $600-800/month cost.) So I'm fully aware that losing 35 pounds is easier said than done, at least months away. But it would bring me to a range I had been in for years while working out regularly at a health club, which stopped when Bally's sold their local location in the Baltimore suburbs. (I think LA Fitness bought it but stupidly would not grandfather in existing members. My fitness club costs would spike dramatically, and I was in a strict budget at the time.) I think I bottomed out in the 2000's during my low-carb phase shortly before my folks' milestone anniversary. I remember finding my suit tight going to a job interview ironically to Baltimore in 2003 (I was living in the Chicago suburbs at the time).  I think I dropped something like 90 pounds over the coming year, and it amazed me that I was dropping 3 lbs. and change a week without breaking a sweat or feeling hungry all the time. I never got back to that point, in part because my weight seemed to plateau at that point and the monotony of the diet had gotten to me. I wouldn't say that I went on a feeding frenzy but I abandoned the diet for the family celebration and the rest of the holidays. I think my regular gym workouts kept me within a 20 lb range of that low. So, revisiting that 2004 low is my real objective over the coming year.

I have to study for an important industry certification, which is delaying plans to join a local fitness club, but I'm getting good exercise at work going up and down stairwells.