February 2013 - I love it when a plan comes together

Another month is in the books.  This makes a full 13 months of working out for me, or 57 weeks.  Once again I am a boring ol' consistency monster doing all of my workouts this month (40 weeks now without missing one!). 

And the results...some wins, some reverses, but mostly more wins.  All in all, my routine appears to be working, and the bullheaded consistency with which I am approaching this healthy lifestyle thing appears to be paying off. 

You know I love numbers and pretty charts.  And graphs.  OK, I'll admit it, I love quantifying the various changes to my body, because it permits me to see progress on many different metrics.  After all, the more you track, the more possibility there is that at least something will show improvement.  There is a method to my madness. Plus, how do you know you've won if you don't know what the goal looks like? 

As you can see, this month had rather more up and down than I like, driven by: i) a charming Italian man visiting and cooking; and ii) scale recalibration issues.  Essentially the week I gained was like 2 weeks lost, one for the part where I went up, and one for the part where I got back down to the place I had been.  But no one said this weight loss thing was going to be easy (well, no one who is not a complete charlatan, anyways).  Still, I consider it a moral victory if nothing else, because even when I went up I stuck to my plan.  Perhaps with a few more expletives thrown in there, but on plan nonetheless. 

And you can see from the year to date graph that this gain was just a small blip on the road, so I am not fussing about it too much:

... and overall, I am still on track to hit my weight goal on the original timing (early 2014):

For the month I ended up 6.3 pounds down, which is a little lower than I would have wished, but as it is still a loss, is a completely fine number.

Speaking of completely fine numbers, my body is doing some ridiculous changes this month:

Big inches lost everywhere except my puny Tyrannosaurus Rex arms this month, for more than 6 inches lost, or more than 42 inches lost overall.  I suspect it averages out over time, because last month I had only a small loss of inches.  But still - - 10 and a half inches gone off my bust?  That explains why my lingerie is fitting so differently. 

What's very nice about these numbers is the fact that they put me well in normal-size 20 territory, and halfway into size 18.  My lilac suit jacket that was tight last month now fits, so it's only a matter of time before all of my size 18 suits are back in rotation. 

The other nice thing about these numbers is that the smaller waist measurement leads to reduced health risks, now that it is under 38".  Sure, I am still in an elevated risk category with this result, but not the "condition critical" risk that I had been. 

This month also had the big milestone of weight goal #5 being met, as I broke the 100 pounds lost barrier.  Whoo hoo!  Better yet, it wasn't a one time fluke, as I was able to improve on the loss for the usual end of the week "official" weigh in - I am now down 101.3 pounds.  My weight of 232.6 pounds puts me in the 85th percentile, down from the 95th.  Just another way of tracking improvement. 

But not everything is unicorns and sprinkles this month.  For some reason my fasting blood sugars were higher than usual, and I had only 7 normal readings (26.9% of total readings) as compared to 9 normal readings (35.5% of readings) last month.  With the fewer normal readings, my average fasting blood sugar reading went up to 5.8 mmol/L compared to 5.6 mmol/L last month.  I have no idea why the numbers were so high this month, comparatively speaking.  With the exception of the week that our Italian visitor was here, my diet was pretty much the same as usual.  It's a puzzler, that's for sure.  But I finished the month strong, with 3 normal readings in a row, so hopefully March will be a better month, blood sugar wise.

I am not going to be too down on myself, because even though these numbers are slightly worse than January's figures, they are still way, way better than last July's numbers when I first started tracking.  I averaged around 6.3 mmol/L back then, with zero normal readings.  For me, every normal reading is a triumph.  As I continue to lose weight, these figures will, I hope, continue to improve. 

So all in all, it was a good month.  I have a whole bunch of new workout gear, just ready for my next session with the elliptical. 

"Bring it on!"