Hi everyone!
I happen to post my "official" weight based on my adjusted 14-day running weight average. And as of this morning, that number read 178.8 pounds, which means
I am officially NO LONGER OVERWEIGHT!!!
You can check what category you are currently in by using this
BMI calculator. Since I am 5 foot 11 inches, if I enter my weight as 179.0 pounds, I get a BMI reading of 25.0. But when I put in 178.9 pounds, the BMI reading is 24.9, and that's the official high end of the "normal" weight category.
Now, that is the "high" end. The low end for me would put me at 133 pounds, which I
CANNOT imagine would be at all healthy for me, but perhaps it could be for some people.
Here's my weight plot for the last six months. The 14-day running average is in pink. Normally, a running average has a lag, which would cause the pink line to be a little higher, but I adjust it down so that the trend lines for both my regular weight numbers and the running average numbers coincide.
The slope of my trend line indicates I'm losing 0.18 pounds a day on average, or on average 1.25 pounds every week for the last six months. For the first twenty months of my diet, I lost at a higher rate (2.2 lbs per week), so my rate has slowed down.
You can even see where it stalled out about three times. To break these stalls, you not only have to keep at this thing and never give up, but you also have to keep making changes. As you lose weight, you're body requires fewer calories to maintain itself, so to lose weight, you HAVE to keep cutting back.
The last several stalls for me were caused by eating too much in restaurants, eating too much lc chocolate, and eating too many nuts. My current swoosh is due largely to giving all three of those things up!
Now, a plot like mine may look good, but there's a lot to those numbers. Each day my weight went down was because I stuck to my WOE. Each stall that I broke happened because I did something to break it (or at least remained consistent).
While our bodies are complex and water levels will make the day-to-day weight readings go up and down, or exercise may increase muscle mass (and women's cycles add even more complexity), there is still a basic truth. Calories do matter. In the end, we have to learn to control how many calories we eat.
I do that by eating not only low-carb, but also eating "light" when I can. For me, this means I use the Kraft low-carb
Light Ranch dressing, and I eat the Breyers low-carb
Light ice cream. I haven't put cheese on my salads in a long time and I can't afford to eat nuts.
On my steak fajitas that I eat for lunch, I have an electronic scale in my car, and I have gradually cut back the number of ounces I eat. I started eating about 28 ounces, and after many months, I am now down to 10. If I could, I would switch to a leaner steak, but the fajitas I get are very cheap, and anything leaner would be considerably more expensive.
I hope that more and more of us will find what really works for us, and then keep to it until time makes all our fat literally disappear. My fat has been going and it will continue to go. My plots clearly show it. My milestones (like today's) show it. But more, I know it will continue because I've decided to keep working at this.
And you can too!
No longer "Overweight"!!
Congratulations Dean! 
very inspirational, indeed.
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