The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: personal

Stuff about me (Bernard HP Gilroy), instead of or in addition to stuff about education.

  • Week 23 in the Program

    Wow, it’s been a while since I updated this. No particular reason — I guess I just got distracted.

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    277.2 | -1.4 | -91.2

    It’s more than a little odd, as my numbers don’t seem to be tied to what I actually do during a week.  Weeks where I hew closely to the plan and work out and such can be low weight-loss weeks.  Weeks where I fall off the wagon a little can be high weight-loss weeks.  All I know is, things haven’t stabilized enough for me to consider Maintenance seriously.  Anyway, I’m excited to be closing in on 100 pounds.  I might just get there by six months, and if not, then soon after.

    Class has been a mixed bag.  Kristi is great and works hard to keep people motivated.  But I feel like I do best just plugging away — the variety and hoopla doesn’t really do it for me.  I know that that’s different than for most people but then, I’m different too.  In any event the accountability of a weekly meeting and a weekly call have been very helpful, and the other stuff is certainly not horrible, so I’ll keep on with it.

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  • The Start of Summer

    Everyone has their own unique signs that summer is upon us, the signature sound that signals the academic year is winding down. For me, it’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears.

    More below the fold.
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  • Week 19 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    284.8 | -8.0 | -83.6

    A pretty good week for me… which is baffling, as I have not (as far as I know) done anything materially different in any of the past three weeks, but my weight loss has fluctuated wildly.  Odd.   It’s also odd that my weight loss has been an integer in each of those weeks as well, but I have to believe that has no deep meaning.

    Today I got two 10-lb. hand weights and I intend to start using them a little every night … not so much for the calories it’ll count towards but because I want to balance with a little upper-body stuff.  I should probably also start stretching and doing those sorts of things, but I don’t see that in the foreseeable future.  🙂

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  • Week 18 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    292.8 | -2.0 | -75.6

    After a couple of see-saw weeks, I’m back at a usual weight loss number.  Most likely this reflects a return to “established” weight — the weight so easily put on over Spring Break came off relatively easily but now it’s work again.  It’s a little frustrating in that I’m not making much change in what I eat or how I work out, but I’m not settling down to a reliable number.  At least it keeps me vigilant.

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  • Week 17 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    294.8 | -9.2 | -73.6
    Blood Pressure | Systolic | Diastolic
    * | 130 | 90

    From a weight-loss perspective, this was a very good week: nearly ten pounds. But of course, given the spike upward last week, that just about puts me where I should be anyway. That’s somewhat frustrating and will, I suspect, be a good goad not to go out-of-box in the future. More reassuringly, I didn’t have to change all that much to achieve the higher number; I just had to stick to the program.

    More disturbingly, my blood pressure crept back up a bit. It’s not any cause for worry as of yet. Part of the issue might just be that I got checked at a later time than usual; BP is known to be somewhat dependent to time-of-day and such. (I attended a later class than usual due to a school commitment.) The doctor doesn’t seem worried and he didn’t put me back on ramipril, so it’s probably not an extremely bad development, but it warrants keeping an eye out.

    As mentioned I attended a different class. For the past month or so I’ve been going to a “maintenance” class (even though I’m still in weight loss) because Tuesdays work much better than any other night and there wasn’t any Tuesday night weight loss. As of last night, there is — a new cycle is beginning with four new people. PWMC gave me the option of choosing which session I attend from now on. I’m probably going to stick with Maintenance, in part because it’s a more convenient time. But also, I’ve seen a lot of the weight-loss stuff and what is informative the first time becomes tedious on repetition. Also, I predict that I am going to have more difficulty with maintenance than I am with weight loss, so it probably make sense to put the extra edge there.
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  • Week 16 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    304.0 | +4 | -64.4

    This is the first week in which I’ve gained, rather than lost weight, and it’s a simple morality tale: It’s also the first week in which I went “out of the box” a significant amount. While at Lunacon, I wasn’t able to have the HMR entrees because the Hilton Rye Town doesn’t have microwaves available to the customers (or hot water boilers, either). While I could have enough shakes to get the nutritional requirement in, there’s a psychological component to going several days without the act of eating that I wasn’t entirely prepared for.

    In the end I wound up having one meal a day in the restaurant. Combined with a slight fall-off in physical activity (I met the prescribed minimum, but sitting in a con is a lot less active than even teaching), it reversed my previous trend. In essence I’ve lost two weeks (the weight I gained and now one more to get back to where I was). In return I’ve gained a valuable lesson, which is that things turn around darn fast when you stop paying attention to them. *sigh*

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  • Lunacon 2009 (4): Sunday

    After the hectic pace on Saturday, the con wound down somewhat before concluding on Sunday. I attended a panel on Galileo, another one on world building, and one on World Domination. Then I attended the dead dog filk and went home. Along the way I finally met up with someone I’d been on the lookout for all con.
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  • Lunacon 2009 (3): Saturday

    Today was the busiest of the convention. I gave blood; saw Mercedes Lackey and others hold forth on building fantasy worlds; participated in a discussion on financial crises in sci fi; participated (sort of) in the Masquerade after all; caught about half of a surprisingly good 1940 adventure film; and caught all of a not-at-all surprisingly bad 1979 space adventure film.
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  • Lunacon 2009 (0): Arrival

    Well, here I am at the Hilton Rye Town for my third Lunacon. Apparently during the past year the Lunacon people changed their versioning system from counting from the first Lunacon (making this the 52nd) to simply attaching the year. I sort of miss the old way.

    I’m actually quite a bit early, as registration doesn’t even start until 5 PM tomorrow afternoon. In principle this means I could have probably skipped being here tonight and just come up tomorrow, and from a fiscal perspective I probably should have. But I hate travel and like having the time to recoup. Also I keep telling myself I will use this time to read and to write and generally attend to the personal activities I’ve been neglecting so far this year. We’ll see.

    Friday is a somewhat light day, as is Sunday, but Saturday is chock full of things and in fact (as usual) I have far too many things to attend that all occur at the same time. I’ll probably end up just going to whatever is closest to where I am at the time-changes. 🙂

  • Week 15 in the Program

    There’s no Week 14 not because I’m a time traveler who skipped forward 7 days but because I went off to Chicago and didn’t get around to an update. 🙂

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    300.0 | -2.6 | -68.4

    The past couple of weeks have been good ones. I’m actually a little surprised at that, because being in Chicago meant having an entirely different schedule. I wasn’t sure I could get my physical activity in and I distrust my estimate for “casual PA”. But in fact even off-schedule I did lose over two pounds.

    I haven’t published my blood pressure for a while because I haven’t to see the doctor in a few weeks, which is a good thing. But I’ve been off the ramipril for two weeks now and feel no different. In fact I am once again heart-med free. (I still take urso forte, which is a gallstone preventative.) Being close to 70 lbs total loss is a great feeling, too, and has started me thinking on choosing a goal weight. For the moment, I’m going to head for 100 lbs, and then see how things are going. I think, ideally, I’d like to lose 150 pounds, but that might be an unreasonable expectation to set and I don’t want to obsess on it right now.

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