Richard Ha wrote:

Today’s weight: 197.1 lbs. This week’s target weight was 193 lbs. I am 4.1 lbs. behind schedule. This week I lost 1.2 lbs., instead of gaining 2.6 lbs. as I did last week.

When I started losing weight on May 23rd of this year, I weighed 214.6 lbs. I have lost 17.5 lbs. since then.

I must admit that I was worried I had lost control, as my weight fluctuated wildly for a week after Thanksgiving. At one point I had gained more than 4 lbs. I think it has finally settled down. I have had to admit that I was not going to continue losing weight just by exercising. So now I am trying to devise a new plan I can follow without too much effort.

The thing that causes me the most problems is being too hungry in the evenings. This seems to mostly happen when I miss meals or if I don’t eat enough earlier in the day. When it happens, I tend to overcompensate and eat too much at night. I’ll need to devise a plan to control this tendency.

But all is not lost. My resting heart rate is down to 54 beats per minute. I increased the intensity of my exercise in the last two weeks so that every other day I do short intervals where I raise my training heart rate to over 150 beats per minute for a few minutes. I do this at least three times during a 40-minute session. One of those days I’ll just take it easy and go for more than 90 minutes. The other three days I try to maintain 125 to 130 beats per minutes for 30 minutes or so.

I know I’m in better shape now because I can walk up inclines much faster and longer than I could just a few months ago. If I exert myself, my heart rate returns to normal much faster than it used to. These are all good signs that the extra training intensity is working.

Last week Rodrigo and I rode our mountain bikes up Banana Hill for the first time in a month or so. This time I was able to carry on more than a two-word conversation during the early part of the ride. So I improved from last time.

Rodrigo coasted down Banana Hill, and got to the bottom, much sooner than me. I thought that since I’m heavier than Rodrigo I should roll faster. This time I tried to coast as fast as I could. But still he got to the bottom much quicker than I did.

Christmas and New Year’s will be challenging in terms of weight control. But I feel I know what to expect now and just need to do a bit of planning so I don’t lose control. I’m a lot more confident that I can maintain, or even loose, weight during the holidays now, having just gone through Thanksgiving.