I tell ya, I was just retaining a lot of water last week. There’s no logical reason I’d lose 4 pounds one week, then a half-pound the next, then four-and-a-half pounds the week after that. There’s even no logical reason dietwise.

I’m trying to think of what I did differently in terms of eating or exercise, and it’s really not turning up a lot. The only real thing I can think of was that I ate more hot sauce this week (Mexican hot sauce with Mexican food cheat, and a few mornings I put Tabasco or Sriracha on my breakfast quesadilla) and more fruit (brought home some sliced mango and some grapes from Costco and ended up being the primary eater of the mango).

I got a little bit more exercise in the last week, getting out and walking a bit more. I weighed in at 245 yesterday morning. Then we were going to go meet up with one of my son’s little friends and his family at a park, and my wife hadn’t realized that the entire point of the park is a 1.25 mile nature walk down to the beach with an accompanying 450-foot drop in elevation that’s not gradual (there are steep parts of the trail and not-steep parts of the trail). So I ended up on an unexpected 2.5 mile hike, helping push, pull, or carry the baby stroller up and down parts of the trail. Since our friend who invited us hadn’t warned us, she helped with some of the baby transport on uphill portion of the return trip from the beach.

I also realized, that even at 245, I probably outweighed the women by 90-100 pounds or more, so even when all I had to get up the hills was me, the weight I was pushing was equal to one of the women strapping both four-year-olds and the baby to her.

My baby weighed in at 19 pounds at his recent check-up. I’ve lost twice that, and I have more than three times that to go. The weight I still have to go is just about equal to the combined weight of my children.

Think about that. I not only carry my children with me in my heart, but on my thighs, around my waist… Every step I took, every time I pushed myself up a hill, I was pushing the me that should be, plus two children worth of excess me, and that’s after losing nearly 40 pounds.

It’s amazing to me, when I pick up my boys, to realize that I’ve already lost close to one of my oldest and just slightly more than two of the baby. Carrying them around in my arms gets tiring after a while, but I was carrying that around 24/7. And I’ve still got their combined weight to go before I reach my goal.

Wow.

Only a half-pound. Small enough to be a rounding error. But my fasting blood sugar this morning was awesome, I had fun with my kids this weekend, I bought a pair of shorts with a 42-inch waist that fit beautifully (and a Cookie Monster t-shirt to go with them), and I weighed in mid-week at 247.5.

One reason for being up a bit this morning might have been that I didn’t poop yesterday. No, matter. That resolved itself this morning after breakfast.

I also made a few self-indulgent food choices this week, knowing which menu item I should pick while out at a restaurant but choosing something a bit more fatty and or carby, like having a BLT on whole wheat with a sugar crusted bacon and a few fries instead of a salad. Although, looking at that particular restaurant’s nutrition guide, their caesar salad with chicken has more calories than their “Half-Pound BLT” (as in they put a half-pound of bacon on it). Gotta love the way salad dressing can take a healthy meal of greens and lean meat and turn it into a festival of fat and calories.

When I have a little weight loss like this, the thing I feel worst about is that I’m somehow not meeting the expectations or desires of the people following my progress. Me, so long as the needle keeps moving downward and I’m not feeling starved or deprived, I’m good. So ever onward, no BLTs this coming week, and hopefully I can have a more significant number to report next week.

Four pounds in a week sounds pretty rockin’, but I’m thinking I must have broken a mini-plateau, because last week I was up a pound, wiping out the loss from the week before. Still, I officially weighed in under 250! Woo-hoo! My 250s have been the hardest 10 pounds of this process to get through so far. I’m not necessarilly expecting my 240s to be any easier, but one can always dream.

What’s fun is to look down at my cairn terrier who weighs around 14 pounds, and say “I’ve lost more than two of you.”

I wasn’t significantly better about my exercise level this week… possibly worse because the weather was gloomy. I was better about my food choices. Even when I was a little carb-heavy, it was generally minor: a bison burger on a whole-wheat bun with a handfull of french fries, some chips and guacamole with a fajita salad, some whole wheat pasta in a home-made pork chow mein with a soy-honey-ginger sauce.

One thing I did was cut back on my diet cola consumption a bit when I go out to restaurants. For example, when we go to “the peanut restaurant” (my son’s favorite restaurant that has a “kids eat free” special every Tuesday), I’ve taken to ordering water instead of soda. It’s not because I’m trying to be healthier, though. It’s because they charge $2.49 for a soda. Sure it comes with free refills, but with tax and tip that’s closing in on $3.15… to have soda… with just one meal. So that’s probably 100 mg less sodium, less aspartame, less artificial flavor, less caffeine… all because I’ve been feeling cheap.

I continued using my low-carb flatbread quesadillas as my breakfast crutch. My local Costco and my local Safeway carry low-carb flatbreads from Flat Out. Costco has the 8-gram ones with flax. Safeway has the 6-gram ones. There’s not a huge difference in flavor between the 6-grammers and 8-grammers, though the 8 grammers feel a little more whole-grain and less gummy, plus because I buy them at Costco, they’re about 30% cheaper. I cook them in a large covered skillet with a couple ounces of cheese and a little lunch meat (usually some turkey). It’s really predictable, but it works for me.

And that’s about it. I’m really happy about dropping 4 pounds this week, but I’m not expecting that pace to continue. As I’ve said before, this is about making healthier choices and building a food lifestyle I can maintain for the rest of my life, rather than being on a diet. I’ve found that when I consider a restrictive, temporary diet, I want to lose weight as fast as possible, not just because I want it off, but because slower weight loss means punishing myself with the diet longer. With the mindset that I’m not on a diet, but living healthier, I know I’m going to keep eating this way, even when I reach my goal weight. When I keep that in mind, I still want to reach my goal weight sooner rather than later, but the urgency to “finish” the diet is gone and I’m happy to lose a pound or two a week.

See ya next week.

Lots of sites are running stories about the Baylor study that suggested that drinking a glass of low sodium vegetable juice promoted weight loss in the subjects of a study.

I’m sure the sales of V8 have spiked in the last couple of weeks. But let’s dissect this…

1: The study was sponsored by Campbell’s, makers of V8 vegetable juice.

2: Campbell’s has been doing most of the media campaign to promote the study results.

3: Study participants who drank vegetable juice as part of a calorie-controlled diet for lowering blood pressure lost an average of just 4 pounds during a 12 week study, 3 pounds more than the people who didn’t drink V8 juice. Anyone who has dieted knows it’s possible for people to fluctuate nearly that much in a week (it’s less than 1.5 liters of water) and the high potassium levels in vegetable juice help you better regulate your bodily fluid levels, so a portion of that could merely be water weight from better potassium levels.

4: When I have contracted at Microsoft, they offer free V8 juice along with the free sodas. I’d drink 2-3 six-ounce cans of V8 juice a day when I’d be on contract there, but I’d still gain weight. I can probably attribute the weight gain to overall bad eating habits during those periods, but I also drank V8 five days a week during those periods too.

A problem with studies like this is that they try to make insignificant results sound significant. Three pounds over twelve weeks needs a bigger study with stricter controls and more stringent tests to prove that it’s 3 pounds of actual fat loss, not just water weight. It also needs to be studied in the context of a diet where people are trying to lose a pound a week or more, not where the “control” group’s weight loss rate averages out to four pounds a YEAR and the test group’s weight loss rate averages out to 17 pounds a YEAR.

Furthermore, unless everyone on the diet had to eat every morsel on their plate, there’s also the factor of all the diets where you drink a glass of liquid before a meal to fill up your stomach and help control your appetite. If the study group was drinking their V8 juice before a meal and then maybe not finishing the whole thing, while the control group didn’t drink a similar amount of water at the same time, that could skew results as well.

Remember when Snackwells came out? The public went nuts over fat-free chocolate cookies. People sang their praises and gained weight because they thought fat-free meant they could eat more cookies. Some people thought they could just eat a whole bag. It took people a while to realize they were still cookies, they still had lots of sugar, and they were still fattening.

My problem with this study is that people might think that vegetable juice is a magic bullet, much like “fat free” once was. IF there is a significant effect to be had from drinking vegetable juice, it’s as part of a low-calorie diet. You cannot substitute a V8 for good food choices, portion control, or exercise. If you’re doing all those things, then according to this study, you might lose another 1/4 pound a week. That could mean the difference between 52 pounds and 65 pounds over the course of a year. But you might get the same effects if you drink a glass of water before dinner or take a potassium supplement.

My view is that if you like V8 and would want to drink it anyway, go for it. But if you’ve never been a big fan, don’t go rushing out and buying a case at Costco. The study results just aren’t conclusive enough, in my opinion, to justify taking action based on a press release from Campbell’s about a study they sponsored.

Realized I forgot to post my weekly weigh-in last week. I weighed in at 252, a 1-pound loss, last week, but before I got a chance to post an update, I got some very bad news and my mind went elsewhere. I can’t discuss the details except to say none of my loved ones were hurt, there’s no police involvement, and neither I or anyone I know is in immediate danger, but it’s still very stressful, particularly because the situation is one where I’m not currently able to do anything proactive about it.

My preoccupation with it during the early part of the week, a little bit of comfort eating, and just a generally higher stress level is probably the reason why I went up a pound. I wasn’t particularly bad this past week, just far from being particularly good. I didn’t get much exercise and made more convenience-driven food choices. I actually fluctuated up to 254.5 mid-week, but I gradually came to terms with the injustice and helplessness of my situation, started making better food choices, and gave more thought to portions instead of eating on autopilot. So I’m back down to 253 by this morning, but up a pound for the week.

I’m not so much upset about having a net wash for two weeks as I am that I let last Monday’s bad news throw me like it did. But I’m getting my head back on straight and getting this back on track. If I let this bad news cause me to go into a spiral of stress and weight gain, then I lose before the matter is ever resolved. As the old saying goes, “living well is the best revenge.” The best way I can deal with this is to refocus on what’s important.

See y’all next week, hopefully with a better number.