« What I did today | Main | Items I removed from my purse today »

Remaining a loser

The number on the bathroom scale this morning was the same as the weight declared on my driver's license. This is good news. It has been a long time since those numbers matched up.

I am really good at losing weight. Like most weight losers, I am only so-so at keeping it off. The National Weight Control Registry says that these are some of the most common habits of people who have lost more than 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year:

- 90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
- 78% eat breakfast every day.
- 75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
- 62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.

I have three of those down. If you were to look at my weight-tracking spreadsheet, which contains six years of data*, you would notice lots of detailed downward slopes followed by big gaps implying the upward weeks and months. I tend to gain weight when I'm not weighing myself daily, or vice versa, I think it's sort of a chicken-and-egg-type thing. I have promised Dave that I will continue to weigh myself daily even after I back off from the obsessive calorie-counting I'm doing now. Poor guy suffers as much as I do when I gain weight back.

That list of weight-maintenance habits is from here, and if you're interested in this topic, click on the research link to get to lots of fascinating articles.

By the way, my goal right now is to fit comfortably into my beloved Lucky jeans by the week of IM Arizona. I'm just a few pounds (and six weeks) away.

*You've probably figured out by now that I'm a giant geek, and I don't really need to point it out.

March 2, 2008 7:34 PM