At my heaviest, I weighed in at 206 lbs. (94 kg); that was about three or four years ago. I stand at 5′ 10.5″ (roughly 179 cm), so that’s a bit on the big side. (One doctor, maybe three years ago, didn’t speak English very well, so he just looked at me and said, “obesity!” I didn’t take that too well.) Before I started my newest slimming-down drive, I was down to about 196 lbs. (89 kg), which was mostly due to mild dieting, but nothing serious.

Starting at the beginning of the year (no, it wasn’t a resolution–it was the broken foot that started all this by showing me how out of shape I was), I started on a serious health kick, pretty much eschewing beef, pork, and almost any sugar product. I started eating oatmeal in the morning (okay, that stuff has sugar in it) with berries, a 6″ sub sandwich (mostly veggies) for lunch, and chicken and salad for dinner. Along with that, I worked my way up to half an hour of Karvonen-Formula exercise most days of the week, and more general exercise-style hobbying, like my birdwatching.

Put that together, and you get weight loss. I had an initial drop to 83 kg (183 lbs.), but that seems to have been the easy part–heck, that was even before my foot healed and I could exercise. After I could start working out, I got down to 81 kg (178 lbs.) without too much trouble, but then on a visit to the doctor, I was told to drop at least three more kilos, to help get my triglycerides down (I still have a bit of a cholesterol problem, why I don’t know). So I lost the weight. From what I understand, the slow way is best–I dropped only a few pounds a week, but it worked and stayed off (except for the temporary salty weight gain, all gone now), and upon seeing the same doc a month later–today, that is–I weighed in at 78 kg (172 lbs.).

Apparently they didn’t expect me to actually do that; the nurse who weighed me (and took blood) couldn’t speak English, so after I went back to wait in the lobby, she came out with a nurse who spoke English, and they asked me if I was feeling okay–they were actually concerned that I was losing weight unhealthily fast. That was nice. But it was also based on a misunderstanding–the nurse subtracted a kilo for my clothing weight, which the nurse a month ago didn’t do, so they were under the impression that I lost a bit more than four kilos (almost 10 lbs.) in four weeks.

The preliminary blood work came in by the time I got in to see the doc just a few minutes later, and my blood levels were all within normal range. The doc even calculated my ideal body weight–at just one kilo, or a few pounds, below what I am now–how about that. I certainly am slimmer than I’ve been since my early thirties, but that’s not to say everything is perfect–still too much of that “ideal” weight on my waistline, not enough in the places where it should be. Buff I am not.

Hey, it’s something else to work on.