This is the first time in 60 years (since about 10th grade) that I have been under 200.
Now my wife and I will have a celebratory meal (and so I’ll go over briefly).
Congratulations! Wishing you continued success.
Congratulations, skinny!
Congratulations! May we see less and less of you (old Weight Watchers parting message)
Winning!
Way to go! I can’t wait to be where you are 
I remember the day that first number on the scale dropped down to a ‘1’ with great fondness. For me it had probably been around 20 years, and it felt good. I gained back a little weight since then but dropped back down below 200 again about two weeks ago. Still a bit more to go to get back to my target weight but that first number is a big one.
Congrats and continued success.
Yay! Very proud of you! Do you have a goal-weight and a plan for what to do when you get there?
When I reach my goal weight I am going to put a Sacagawea dollar on the train tracks and have it squished.
Cheers!
Congrats, now eat that meal so you can get back in the 2 Club like the rest of us.
An awesome feat for anyone. The fact that you did it at your age is even more amazing. Good job sir!
Yay! That’s so wonderful for you! I’m only 5 lbs away from getting back to Onederland myself.
Well, my BMI is just over 27 and I guess I would like to see it at 25. This would be at about 183 lb. Beyond that, I have no plans to continue.
Here’s how it worked. My wife and I started on the zone diet (recommended by our doctor as a sensible plan). I lost about 40 lb (from 281), gained back 10, then lost 20 and stuck around 240. A year and a half ago, I said to myself that in most addictive behavior, you have to stop cold turkey, but you can’t stop eating. And myself replied that yes, that’s so, but you can stop eating between meals including after dinner. We have been eating meals according, more or less, to the zone diet so they are reasonably modest. So just about 18 months, I simply cut out eating between meals. In the six ensuing months, I lost maybe 15 lb and in the following year, I lost about 25. But it is definitely slowing down. So maybe I don’t have to make any change and will level off somewhere where I want to be. Meantime, I don’t try to maintain a diet on trips (to see my children and grandchildren mainly), I don’t try when we go out to dinner (usually once a week or ten days) and I don’t eat between meals. And that is the way it is.
One other thing. I have a digital scale and weigh myself very morning and record it on my computer. And then I maintain a moving average that is redone each morning using 10% of that day’s weight and 90% of the previous day’s moving average. The day’s weight jumps about quite a bit, driven largely by how salty the meal was, but the moving average smooths things out. This reinforcement seems to me to be an important incentive since I can see it move steadily downward (sometimes upward when away from home, but that’s what I expect to see). Usually I weigh myself wearing pajamas, but the 199.0 the other night was nude. This morning my weight with PJs was 199.8 (first time that was below 200) and the moving average was 201.6, but that should dip below 200 in a couple weeks.
I like your moving average to reduce the disappointment from normal weight fluctuations. Do you use a website that calculates and keeps track of that or do you do it yourself?
Congratulations!!! I am very proud of you and happy for you
Congrats, Hari.
I am intrigued by this moving average business. I have an idea what it is, but could you share with us specifically how you calculate it every day?
Thanks,
mmm
I do the calculations myself. I read the idea about a year and a half ago from a site that someone on the boards linked to. I subtract 10% of the difference between today’s weight and yesterday’s moving average to get today’s moving average. The effect is that today’s is to add 10% of today’s weight to 90% of yesterday’s moving average. Here is a sample of the last ten days. The second column in my weight today, the third is my moving average and the last two are the same for my wife. I use two decimal places in order to control round-off errors from accumulating, but I consider only one to be significant. There might be arithmetic errors; any such errors decline with time so I don’t worry about them. I do the arithmetic in my head. Ignore the ampersands and backslashes; they are for the latex compiler I use to print them.
12-05-03 & 202.6 & 202.95 & 173.4 & 173.68 \
12-05-04 & 201.8 & 202.83 & 173.4 & 173.65 \
12-05-05 & 200.8 & 202.63 & 173.8 & 173.66 \
12-05-06 & 200.6 & 202.43 & 173.2 & 173.61 \
12-05-07 & 200.2 & 202.21 & 172.4 & 173.49 \
12-05-08 & 200.6 & 202.05 & 173.0 & 173.44 \
12-05-09 & 201.2 & 201.96 & 174.2 & 173.51 \
12-05-10 & 200.6 & 201.82 & 174.6 & 173.62 \
12-05-11 & 199.8 & 201.62 & 175.8 & 173.84 \
12-05-12 & 199.6 & 201.42 & 173.0 & 173.76 \
Interesting. So how do you get it started, since on day 2 you have no moving average from day 1 - I guess you use your actual weight from day 1?
mmm
Sounds like The Hacker’s Diet. That guy has downloadable Excel spreadsheets if anyone is interested. And, congrats Hari Seldon!
Yes, it was the Hacker’s Diet, but daily weighing and the moving average were the only things I took from it. My meals have been modest for over a decade, so that didn’t have to change. I have average walking at least an hour a day for most of my life and for 20 years, I have started each day with flexibility exercises, prescribed by a chiropracter (they really cannot burn many calories) so I didn’t change that. And I really don’t try to control my eating when eating out (usually only once a week at most) or when away from home. So far it has worked.
As far as a goal, I feel I have permanently changed my life by eliminating noshing. Period. My weight loss has already slowed a lot and I assume that at some time it will cease. I cannot really see starting up eating between meals again, since my problem has always been that once I start it is hard to stop. If I don’t stop losing, I may have to rethink that. Now, I no longer feel that hole in my stomach at 4 in the afternoon. Why wake up that sleeping tiger?
I am reminded of a friend of mine many years ago. He got a box of cookies from his mother at Christmas. Every evening around 9 he ate a few cookies and a glass of milk. The night after he had finished the cookies, come 9 O’clock and he felt a hunger pang. He got over it in a few days, but how easily these habits form!
To answer an earlier question, I just started by treating the first day’s weight as though it was the moving average. Eventually, the undue influence of that bad start falls off the graph. Much the same thing when I am away and come back. I pretend that the old moving average was still meaningful. Anyway, it helps smooth out whatever happened when I am eating away. It usually takes 3 or 4 days for the salt balance to get back.