A Weighty Problem

I went to see my cardiologist the end of March. I was weighed in as usual, and the scale read 225. I was shocked.

I stand 6 feet 1 inch tall—my wife says that I cheat an inch and am only 6 feet—and my ideal body weight is between 170-180 pounds. I have noticed lately that a lot of the clothes in my closet seem to be shrinking, and I keep telling Judy to stop using the hot water when she washes them.

When I finally saw the doctor, I noticed that he looked a lot slimmer than the last time I had an appointment. It turns out he’s been on a diet and has shed about 40 pounds in the six months since my last visit.

I decided right then and there, even without the doctor’s advice, that I had two alternative and demanding choices to choose between: Either I have to lose around 40-50 pounds, or I have to grow 10 inches.

Seriously, I asked the doctor what kind of diet he would recommend. He said that Weight Watchers had helped him, and it would benefit me to join if only to get the instructions and not necessarily the food they sell. He advised that I join for at least two months and see how it goes.

Well, I am a cheapskate! When I got home and went online, I found that I could join Weight Watchers for three months for a total cost of $65. Nah! That was more than I wanted to pay.

I determined that I could make my own diet with some online aids that are free, and I found one that seemed to fill the bill, CalorieConnect. I logged in and started keeping a daily journal of my food consumption and exercise.

I started my new regimen on April Fools Day (is that prophetic?) and it has now been a month, and I am proud to say that I’ve lost 14 pounds. I still cannot fit into those clothes, and as far as I can tell, my waist hasn’t shrunk along with my weight. However, I feel a lot better, and I know I’m eating healthier foods in lesser quantities.

My goal now is to get down to 200 pounds by the time I go on my late-June road trip. I’d also like to be able to fit into a pair of pants with a 36-inch waist again. I have a lot of those hanging in the closet that I haven’t worn in over a year.

Oh, that website that I was using was okay, but too hard to work with. It is British, after all, and all the measures were metric. Besides that, a lot of the foods I eat, simple and healthy as they may be, are not even listed there. I gave up keeping the journal last week, but I still weigh myself every day and I do keep track of the caloric content of whatever I eat.

One nice side benefit of my new regimen is that I no longer drive all the way to the mall to walk. Instead, I walk my neighborhood and up in the very peaceful cemetery across from our housing subdivision. You may recall that the cemetery is the very one I wrote about a couple of months ago in my column, “Finding My Niche.” Well, now I can look for what might be my final resting place there. There seems to be plenty of niches left.