Mikey's Weight Loss Story
In an effort to reach my goal of being skinny my fiancée has convinced me to join Weight Watchers with her. The last time I had a decent waist size I had just finished my undergrad work and was playing tennis two nights a week on my way home from down town. Shortly after that time I changed jobs and worked no where close to the tennis club so that activity went away. In addition to that, my job required more time designing and implementing so I was spending more time behind the desk and less time out doing fun stuff. When Dave and I were developing SecretAgent 5 we put in some late hours and were taking dinner breaks when we did. Long story short I successfully managed to increase my calorie input without doing much to burn it off.
If you want to know some embarrassing numbers, the last time I weighed myself at the tennis club I was 140 lbs. Of course I was 22 at the time and it was shortly thereafter that I had that growth spurt were you go from being a lengthy teenager to an adult with broad shoulders and a filled out chest. So I added the weight from the increased body mass and then a whole lot more. Well the kid who always was a 32" waist was now a 36" and early in the spring when I started riding my bike I would get tired out easily. So exercise wasn't helping, hiring a personal trainer and doing some muscle toning wasn't helping, and long walks and cardio wasn't doing it.
So in early may when Stacy moved from her weight watchers meetings by work to the one by the house I went with. Of course I was learning a new diet moments before needing to meet Randy for breakfast before he skipped town back to Tampa so I really started the following day. This ended up working out well because I am on the diet from Sunday through Friday. Weigh in is first thing Saturday morning so Saturday is my free day to go off the diet and just enjoy myself without point counting.
How it works is there are two plans, the one that I started with is the flex point plan. Each food item is assigned a value of points and you are allowed a certain amount of points per day. You are only allowed to go over by 35 points in any given week so you have to choose your meals wisely. After a while you get an understating of how much food "costs". A half bowl of cereal is 2 points, 2 waffles are 5 points, a 10 piece chicken McNugget from McD's is 10 points, etc... Of course the point values they select for you are the right amount of points to keep the body metabolism high while not giving yourself too much food so you body is forced to burn off the fat.
| Body Weight (lbs) | Daily Point Allowance |
| 213 - 200 | 26 |
| 175 - 199 | 24 |
| 167 - 174 | 22 |
Sounds easy, right? Well I thought so. Most people think so. Yet while I'm trying to go meet Randy there is this one woman who just could not comprehend basic math. She was really pissing me off. I guess basic arithmetic was really that complex because she never returned to the meetings.
Now that you are watching what you eat, making sure you drink the right amount of water and getting exercise, you need some goals. Well I'm one of those people that require goals. The goals serve a two fold purpose. The obvious goal is to slim down to something medically considered healthy. The other goal is to make sure that you re-learn how to feed yourself and how much food is required. You need to know this because once you take the weight off you have to keep it off.
The program is divided into four phases. The first is to take off 10% of you starting body weight. Once you do that you need to determine what your life time weight should be. At that point you now have your second goal. When you reach the life time weight you move onto a six week maintenance phase in which you are not to gain or lose any more weight. After successfully getting through that six week period you earn lifetime membership and no longer need to pay dues to maintain you new physic.
| Phase | Requirements | Status |
| 1: Lose 10% | Get from 213 to 192 lbs. | Complete |
| 2. Reach Lifetime | Reach the 167 lbs target | Complete |
| 3. Maintain Lifetime | Stay at 167 for 6 weeks | Complete |
| 4. Complete Program | Stay below 169 for good | In Progress |
Reaching the 10% target was easy. It took about a good 8 weeks to take of 21 pounds but I managed. That began the fun part, trying to figure out what my life time weight is suppose to be. Weight Watchers is so geared towards women that it isn't even funny. They range they gave me was 135-167 and that doesn't consider BMI, body fat measurements, body structure, or muscle toning. So I knew right off the bat I would need to do some investigation because at 180 I'm looking a bit on the skinny side, Weight Watchers targets would have me look like death warn over.
From my days with a personal trainer I still have my gym membership so after reaching my ten percent goal I went in to have a body fat test done. I also had to research what the proper amount of body fat is to have to be considered healthy. All bodies need 4% body fat but medical professionals recommend athletes should have 4 to 8 percent body fat. While I'm not an athlete. That moves me into the category "average male". Joy! Well an average male is suppose to have between 8% and 19% body fat. Move the scale up 5% for women. I am now armed with information and it's time to take the body fat test. Shortly after reaching my ten percent goal weight I was 190 lbs. So that was my eight when the test was done. My body fat was 19.6% and my BMI was 26. The high range of healthy is 19% and 25 so I am so close to being normal weight.
The first thing this reading did was tell me how much weight I really needed to lose on the program. When I started I figured I needed to lose 50 lbs. However after doing the body fat calculations that would have been too much. I would have liked to stay around a 14% body fat, right in the middle of the range but Weight Watchers wouldn't hear of it. Remember their scales are for women and men must conform to the women's recommended weight. So to compromise I went down to 12% body fat which means my overall weight should be between 165 and 170. In the middle of that range is the 167 which is the highest weight allowed for a woman of my height (bleh!, damn single sex diet programs!) While I'm loosing fat I suspended any muscle toning because that would add a few pounds on to my weight and I really want to deal with only one factor at a time. So lose fat first, then tone up what's left.
Because I went to DePaul I'm use to dividing everything up into ten week periods. This actually works out well because if you want to pre-pay you are buying ten weeks of weight loss support. In the first ten weeks I took off 27 pounds. Two weeks into my second group of ten weeks I lost another 4 to bring me up to 31. My friend Randy was back in town and last time he saw me was a day before I started. He was impressed by the difference. In the end 47 pounds were shed and I dropped two sizes in all my clothes. Now I get to update my images on the website.
Period 1:
| Week | Weight | Change | Total | Notes: |
| 1. May 7 | 213.2 | n/a | 0 | |
| 2. May 14 | 208.6 | -4.6 | -4.6 | |
| 3. May 21 | 204.0 | -4.6 | -9.2 | |
| 4. May 28 | 201.0 | -3 | -12.2 | mom's surgery |
| 5. June 4 | 199.6 | -1.4 | -13.6 | point drop |
| 6. June 10 | 197.4 | -2.2 | -15.8 | |
| 7. June 17 | 192.8 | -4.6 | -20.4 | |
| 8. June 24 | 190.8 | -2 | -22.4 | first goal made |
| 9. June 31 | 186.8 | -4 | -26.4 | |
| 10. July 7 | 186.4 | -0.4 | -26.8 | 4th of July bbq |
Period 2:
| Week | Weight | Change | Total | Notes: |
| 1. July 14 | 182.6 | -3.8 | -30.6 | |
| 2. July 21 | 181.6 | -1 | -31.6 | 18 points missed |
| 3. July 30 | 179.4 | -2.2 | -33.8 | |
| 4. Aug 6 | 177.6 | -1.8 | -35.6 | |
| 5. Aug 13 | 177.0 | -0.6 | -36.2 | |
| 6. Aug 20 | 173.4 | -3.6 | -40.2 | |
| 7. Aug 27 | 170.2 | -3.2 | -43.4 | |
| 8. Sept 3 | 168.8 | -1.4 | -44.8 | |
| 9. Sept 10 | 166.8 | -2.0 | -46.8 | second goal made |
| 10. Sept 17 | 167.4 | +0.6 | -46.2 | week 1 of 6 |
Period 3:
| Week | Weight | Change | Total | Notes: |
| 1. Sept 24 | 166.2 | -1.2 | -47.4 | week 2 of 6 |
| 2. Oct 1 | 167.0 | +0.8 | -46.6 | week 3 of 6 |
| 3. Oct 6 | 165.8 | -1.2 | -47.8 | week 4 of 6 |
| 4. Oct 15 | 166.6 | +0.8 | -47.0 | week 5 of 6 |
| 5. Oct 22 | 166.2 | -0.4 | -47.4 | week 6 of 6 |
| end of program | ||||
