Endgame: The Last Four Months

Another check-in. (Sorry, this is of absorbing interest to me. Feel free to wander off while I'm obsessed with this project.) I've been at this for nine months, now, and here's what the next four months should look like. I've solidified my next, and last, goal: to get my waist measurement to be 90% or less of my hip measurement.

When I began, last May, I would have thought such a goal absurd -- grandiose -- in fact a plan for failure. How could such a thing even be? And of course it still may be unattainable. But I have yet to encounter real sustained resistance to my new diet, real stubborn hunger. I have no illusions about being able to bull my way through that, and I don't plan to try. But this is what I'm aiming for. If I need to pull up, I'll pull up.

Weight -- the first chart below -- is now second fiddle. I don't really care what I weigh anymore. The blue line is the projection of a pound-per-week loss, all the way from last May, and the red is where I actually am. The current trajectory takes me to the neighborhood of 160 lbs by early June (the exact number, I note with some annoyance, that the insurance charts I have heaped scorn upon suggest for me. Hmph.) But really, now that I'm under 180, the weight ceases to be a very interesting marker. I'm far more interested in the girth.

Weight: The Last Four Months

So below is projected girth. My hips currently measure 37.5", and I don't expect that to change much, if at all -- I'm pretty damn lean there, at this point. So 90% of that will be a waist measurement of 33.75", and I should hit that in the first couple weeks of June.

Girth: The Last Four Months

And what then? What's my maintenance plan?

I don't actually have one. I don't plan to change much at all: I'll go along as I have, eating precisely the same thing every day. I'll nudge amounts up slightly so as to level off. In the long term I have notions of trading in more veggies and olive oil and trading out the red meat: but all in good time. Or never, if never works better. I'm happy with this.

A few weeks ago I stopped eating out, so this is no longer the Tom's Diner and Burgerville diet (on which, be it remembered, I did most of the weight loss: I did not do this by "eating healthier," I did it by eating less.) My diet now looks a bit more like what most people would call a real diet, especially at breakfast -- broccoli and oatmeal with chopped nuts and boiled eggs, rather than the Tom's Spanish omelet with sour cream. But that's mostly a matter of not wanting to put time and energy into food prep. Dinner is hamburger patty and microwaved potatoes and a cup of ice cream, now. Marginally healthier, maybe, than the Burgerville cheeseburger and 1/2 milkshake, but not enough so to fuss about. Mostly, it's just a damn sight cheaper.