Weekly Weigh-In #12

Well, here it is, 12 weeks since I started my diet.

I've compared this Friday's weigh-in with the measurements I took on Monday, right after my vacation. My weight is down a little bit (though not as far as yesterday), but as expected my body fat percentage is up and my lean muscle mass is down. As much as I'd like to, I just can't keep up the level of activity I had while I was on vacation.

Weight       238.8 lbs (-0.6)
Body Fat      48.3 % (+0.6)
Body H20      36.7 % (-1.1)
Bone Mass      7.7 lbs (+0.3)
Muscle Mass   48.0 lbs (-2.4)

I think I'm definitely going to have to put a stop to our weekly hamburger outings. This week didn't do as much damage as other weeks have, but I think I would make more progress if I could just quit this one indulgence.

The exercise thing is a real problem, too. There's really not much I can do, other than walk around the neighborhood, or exercise on my living room floor, both of which I simply hate doing. I can't afford a gym membership, or even an exercise class. They are just too expensive. Our budget right now is stretched tighter than a drum. Our vacation wasn't particularly lavish, since we stayed with my sister and didn't eat out, but it was still expensive because we had to buy gas to drive about 2,400 miles round trip and we got stuck with four unexpected and expensive auto repairs during the trip. This falls on the heels of my SO's very costly dental problems, so we won't have money for anything extra until we dig ourselves out of this budgetary mess. In the course of one month we went from having no debt, other than our mortgage and a car payment, to owing a ton of money.

By all rights, we should have canceled our vacation. It would have been the responsible thing to do given the huge bill my SO incurred at the dentist's office. We went anyway, since I haven't taken a vacation in nine years, but in retrospect it was definitely not the responsible thing to do. Sure, there were all sorts of emotional arguments in favor of going, since it was the first time I'd visited my sister's home in nearly a decade, but from a financial standpoint it was a poor choice.

Even more foolishly, I promised my sister and The Kid that we'd go back to visit again before the end of the year (which really means before the end of October, because the roads to her home are often closed due to snow) so we are going to have to squeeze another expensive trip out of our overtaxed budget. When I made the promise, I wasn't thinking about how much gas cost, and we hadn't run up the expensive car repair bills.

So now I'm stuck with a lot of bills and an expensive promise I have to keep. I don't make promises very often, but when I do, I keep them, especially if they were made to The Kid. She's only lived with us since she was 10, and before she came to us she endured a life filled with hardships and adults who were untrustworthy and unreliable. So, if I promise something, it's gonna happen, even if I have to kill myself to get it done.

I'd love to buy a Bowflex, but they are expensive beyond my wildest dreams. Even if I had the money, I wouldn't have anywhere to put it. My tiny house barely has room for my furniture, let alone a home gym.

Back to the weight loss issue for a moment, I've lost a total of 18.2 lbs, or about 7% of my original body weight, in 11 weeks. I think if I cut out my weekly hamburger and soup, I'll lose weight a little faster. I was hoping I'd be able to sustain an average loss of 2 lbs a week.