The New Challenge

The New Challenge

The Last Ten Pounds

I have done well this year, since I began my program back in January and I weighed 204.0 lbs, then actually had a weight gain to 207.0 lbs. as I progressed, but not discouraged by the gain.  I then began a progressive and steady decrease in my weight with a goal of losing at least two ounces each day.  I achieved an average weight loss of over four ounces per day and I continued that through May.  June has been a more difficult month for me as I have been steady between 162 and 165 lbs.  My tracking program in Microsoft Excel has a conditional setting that if I exceed 164.8 lbs, the entry turns red and in bold print so that I notice it and can't deny it.  That is what I call my red flag weight and it means I have failed and it's time for new, desperate means.  That means going right back to work on a low carbohydrate diet and other desperate measures.

The main thing then is to watch my addiction to carbohydrates and make serious corrections in my program. First thing is, I weigh every day.  I have a good scale that I bought last year and then I quit weighing.  I believe that I did not need to weigh, as long as I stayed on my program but then, the truth was that I was getting off of my program.  I probably started by eating ice cream and I've always told myself that it was high in fat but low in carbohydrates so I could allow myself some.  Some turned into too much and then I was not weighing daily so I drifted into bad patterns.

I have a friend who told me that he had fallen off of the wagon, meaning he had erred and eaten too many carbohydrate heavy meals and had gained weight.  He is in the early and critical stages, meaning that he has not allowed enough time to enter ketogenic status.  My comment (to myself as much as to anyone) is that we don't fall off of the wagon; we sort of slowly and gently step down.  A fall will wake us up and scare us, stepping down softly and gently allows us to go into a half stupor.  Weighing every day so that we know our patterns is critical.  Something can't be critical without being important by definition so, yes, weighing daily is important.  My pattern is that Saturdays are always my lowest weight of the week and then I'll go up slightly by Monday.  The remainder of the week is a slow decrease until I get back into my average weight decrease again.  The graphic that I have loaded for June shows how my weight rose, then fell and rose again.  The high of 165 lbs. happened the morning after we had journeyed to eastern Oklahoma on business and having missed lunch, we stopped in a store and got water, coffee and a snack.  I got pig skins, which have zero grams of carbohydrates.  Why did my weight jump the next morning?  I have to conclude that it was likely the higher content of sodium, sitting most of the day in a car, and perhaps something else that I just don't understand.  For the time being,, I'm watching eating pig skins just in case they somehow contributed.  And, I'm still watching carbohydrate intake and keeping them low.

Once in a while, I have a yearning for yogurt and I'll add some nuts to it, cashews, Macadamia nuts, pecans, because I like the addition of a crunch to the yogurt.  I've had a couple of these yogurt treats during June.  I'm at a stable weight now and I can probably maintain that with ease; but I still want to reach my goal of 155 lbs. and I have not yet given up. I will reach it.  In fact, when I write out my goals and affirmations, I write "I weigh 155 lbs. as my permanent, healthy weight."  I was writing that when I weighed 204 lbs.  Notice that it is personal, using "I", positive (as in fait accompli), present tense.  I have reduced each of my measurements of chest, waist, hips, thigh and calf and I am now wearing a 30" waist jean with 29" length.

It has cost me a lot because I have had to replace all of my jeans and other trousers and I've given away those larger sizes that I took off.  People ask why I didn't put them in the closet.  Several reasons: I don't want to make it easy to gain weight, I don't need them, someone else does, and last and most important, it's a mind set.  My removal of all of them means I am committed to my program to weigh 155 lbs. or less in a healthy fashion; in a determined, healthy fashion.

I expect to weigh 160 lbs. by the end of July and to reach 155 lbs. by the anniversary of the date of the death of my son, September 6.  My son died ten years ago, at age 36 on that day.  He was a victim of juvenile diabetes which slowly took his life.  It is an important date to me and so I chose that date to reach my ideal weight.  

One thing I did recently, June 30, was to jump from an airplane at an altitude of 10,000 feet.  It was my first jump and I enjoyed it immensely.  I would not have jumped at a heavier weight so it was part of my reward system I set up within me for reaching one of my weight goals.

Stephen Joe Payne

Body by Payne