Unusual 3-step whoosh to a new low

So almost immediately after publishing my last update where I described nearing a 50-lb. range I had been in for several years since the 80's,  I dropped in (barely) with the third of 3-lb whooshes finally taking out my prior multi-year low for months. I've been enduing the usual 2-3 lb bounce back since then, but if you told me 2 months ago I would be where I am today, I would have been thrilled.

It's still not that much noticeable in the clothes I wear, other than I'm having to tighten up my belt a loop or two. I'm cautiously ordering new clothes/underwear down an even waist size.

As  I mentioned in my recent main blog, I made a first visit to my local Sam's Club  (more like 20-odd miles away). My shopping list has changed given my going back to Nutrisystem (although I made an exception for a rotisserie chicken for this holiday weekend). They've reorganized  the store since my last visit months ago, including a cooled separate produce section.  I didn't really do much grocery shopping, but I did notice for the first time they were carrying a mixed-flavor Quest protein bar pack and Bumble Bee flavored tuna pouch packs.

A New Multi-Year Low and a Zigzag Double Whoosh

For a few months now I've mostly been cycling above my existing multi-year low, rather annoying to say the least. Finally, two weekends ago I finally broke through with a 3-lb loss, to set a new low, just to "gain it all back" last week. And then a new a renewed whoosh that had me down another net 3-lb. loss. I haven't seen that happen since my 2003-2004 initial low-carb diet. So now I'm slightly above the BMI max for my height used by individual health insurance plans. Ir's also the top of a 50-lb. range or so I cycled between as a young to early middle age adult. So it's been a longstanding objective to get to that range. I don't know if the current whoosh has legs or whether it'll be another 1 or 2 week bounce back from here.

Where I had gone over that specified range was when I accepted my "job offer extortion" from California, a big mistake. I had been happily commuting from Chicago on weekends for over 3 months when my client boss told me either I accept his job offer or I don't come back Monday as I was getting to head back to SFO. I've always hated California, bur I hated being unemployed more, and I wasn't in the market. God knows how long it would have taken for me to find a new job. It turned out my fitness club at the time (Bally's) didn't have a location near San Jose, I was working 70-hour weeks as a perm employee, and I probably stress-ate my way to record weight; I still remember the utter shock when I randomly weighed myself and found myself at 300 lbs. So most of the last 20 years I've been fighting to get back to my original range.

The next objective? The low of my 2003-2004 diet was just before going to my folk's golden anniversary, about 15 pounds more. The weight plateaued and the diet was monotonous. It's not like I went nuts on carbs, but relaxing the diet led to stealth weight gain.

I decided to return to Nutrisystem for a while. I was shocked when I discovered the default option included frozen foods; I have problem getting my apartment managers to replace a broken refrigerator. I think Nutrisystem had been floating the idea of frozen food around the time I had left. Anyway I called and got my order switched to a more economical shelf-stable "core" system. One of the reasons I decided to go back was given my refrigerator issues I had basically gone to shelf-stable already.

Still maintaining my weight loss

It's been some time since my last post; the good news is that I'm still pretty much near my multi-year low; in fact, there has been exasperating vacillation. When I had eye surgery in early May, I weighed 20 pounds over this morning's weigh-in. In part, I'm back to doing the protein bar thing since  my return to work, but that 20 pounds was mostly, if not all, temporary water gain, not a rebound weight gain. I had to do another weigh-in as my doctor seemed to balk at extending my 3 prescriptions without more blood tests. They had replaced the traditional physician scale (you know, where you manual raise or drop notches and then adjust the amount between notches until the scale balances) with an oversize digital type that seems to take 40 seconds to warm up. This one resulted in a weight about 3 lbs more than my weight-in this morning.

I shattered my last home Taylor scale (mostly glass) and being cheap, replaced it with an old-fashioned scale which is hard to read. So I recently bought a Taylor digital scale replacement. The only issue with the Taylor scale is that it is highly sensitive to placement. I normally weigh in in the hallway, but it seemed to indicate I dropped 15 pounds out of sync with the manual scale. So I put it on my kitchen floor (more level) and got an expected weight. It always annoyed me in the past because if I merely bumped into the scale in the hallway, it would throw off the scale validity--did I really lose 5 pounds or is the scale out of balance?

Still, I'm worried I'm not drinking enough during these hot summer months (in which case weight loss is somewhat misleading and may indicate poor health). In part, I've had an issue with my apartment refrigerator, and my landlord has not replaced it. My freezer is somewhat functional, but I haven't had a cold drink for months, nor salads, etc. I'm close to buying a compact refrigerator.

I have since the surgery relied more on shelf-stable (e.g., Hormel Compleats (e.g., turkey or chicken breast, meatloaf, etc.) entrees), canned meat/fish, canned soup/chili, etc. I think I've kept carbs in check, although no doubt I should be worried about sodium, processed meat, etc.

I may soon reinstate my Nutrisystem subscription, if I'm going to resort to eating shelf-stable food. Nutrisystem's food items are generally healthier alternatives.

I did get involved on a food topic, introduced on a tweet from Congressman Massie. Familiar readers to my foundation political blog know I'm a libertarian. Massie was responding to a Democrat senator's reflection on a recent ICE bust of meat packing plants, suggesting legislation which provides liberalization of USDA inspection rules which make it hard for smaller farms and ranches to compete. (I'm in favor of this deregulation.) My first brother-in-law's father owns a ranch where he owns a few head of cattle. I remember visiting them early in their marriage, and my sister served a cut from "Blue Eyes".

So I remember maybe 10-15 years back my brother-in-law was looking at selling grass-fed beef and the family had set up a website, with my sister providing cooking tips for grass-fed meats, when all of a sudden things changed. He repackaged a business reselling premium steaks from presumably conventionally finished cattle. To this day my brother-in-law and sister don't talk about what happened (I think they basically shut down their new business years later, basically breaking even but no profits), but they were implying itt's almost impossible for smaller operations to comply with USDA operations. Of course, Walmart sells grass-fed roasts at just over $6/lb, and ShopRite also sells Australian ground beef for about $4/lb. Butcher Box still wants me to reinstate my monthly subscription, but it made more sense when I didn't have any options in Arizona.