Did I mean weightless? I wish

Friday June 14, 2019 | By Hieronymus Hawkes | Blogging

Weight Loss actually.

At the beginning of June, I went to my family doctor to set up for a colonoscopy. That’s right, I’m talking about colonoscopies. It will be okay. I promise.

50 is the magic number. So not only do you get to hit a demoralizing milestone, you also get to be probed. Yay.

I’m 54 and should have done this a few years ago. I wasn’t actively avoiding it, just busy with other . . . stuff. It wasn’t high on my priority list, but I knew it needed to be done. I finally got around to it. My wife actually beat me to the punch and got it knocked out a few weeks before me in her usual style.

I weighed in at 200 pounds. Keep in mind that I graduated college at 142 (a long time ago.) I was lean. I didn’t have a lot of upper body mass back then. Over the years I put on another twenty pounds to my “adult” weight. (I like to think it was mostly muscle. LOL.) For my height, 165 is the ideal body weight, and I kept that for about fifteen years and then slowly augmented my mass up to the mid 180s. I held that until a year or so before I retired from the military. I nearly stopped doing any physical fitness over this past winter and I got bigger and bigger. And you know how writers are known for their active lifestyle.

I had been slightly over 200 before and it bothered me. This time I decided to do something about it.

A friend of mine at work was using an app called Noom. He had lost twenty pounds pretty fast without much fuss. He recommended it. So, I talked it over with my wife and decided to give it a try. It’s not free. Their philosophy is all about calorie density and encouragement. You can select how fast you want to lose, which sets your calorie limit for the day. You can eat pretty much whatever you want, but portion sizes vary for the calorie density of the food you pick.

Now, my body was a little off kilter from the colonoscopy, and when I weighed in after the “cleanse” I was already down eight pounds. How about that? We don’t need to talk about what that represents.

I officially started at 192, even though I’m still not really sure where it would have been if I had waited a few days for “things” to settle back to normal.

After five days on the plan I was down to 186! In two weeks I was down 14 pounds. That was amazing. It felt too good to be true. And it was. I went back up to 191. And I had been running (slowly and not very far) and staying below my calorie count. This was my body realigning after the colonoscopy, I’m sure. So, I don’t really know what the weight number should have been at the beginning, but probably closer to 197 or 198.

I don’t need to be pedantic about it. I know I was at 200 at the beginning of the month. I’m down to 187 now. I’m happy with that. My target is 165. If I get close, I’ll be happy. I’m planning on running a mini-marathon on my birthday in the fall. Losing weight will be a big help.

BTW, the colonoscopy turned out well. I’m good for another ten years.