My first blog entry – not to be confused with the interesting, motivating, personal ones that other people do – is to be my ‘base’ page, dry as any historical document – where I started, and where I’m going, and the landmarks I’m counting on as mileposts along the way.

When I signed up on SparkPeople in April 2011, I was 58 years old, 279 pounds, and horribly out of shape. I was out-of-breath when halfway up a flight of stairs, my knees and back hurt, I couldn’t stand for very long, I had obstructive sleep apnea, high blood pressure, and my glucose levels are marginally below pre-diabetic. Housework was misery, and I kept getting further behind in everything. I was exhausted all the time, had just enough energy to get to work, then come home and flop on the couch. I kept getting little flutters of desire to do something, but they didn’t last long against the ennui. A health coach for an employee-benefit program I tried mentioned SparkPeople.

So I joined up, and set a short goal to lose a pound a week until the end of July – nothing magic about that date; it just seemed a reasonable amount of time to ‘test out’ this SparkPeople thing.

My ultimate goal was a little vague. I thought I needed to lose 120 pounds, but I didn’t know where that would put me in terms of my BMI, or what the “ideal weight” charts said for my age, etc. Also, it’s been over 30 years since I was at a ‘good’ weight, so what can I consider reasonable?

So I’ve finally had a session to dig up those numbers…
It turns out that to get into the “normal” BMI range – I need to lose precisely 120 pounds. I also found that age doesn’t really factor into the “ideal weight” or BMI charts – it’s only public perception that ‘allows’ for older people to be overweight, and still consider it acceptable. So forget age as an excuse.

It was fairly horrifying to learn that if I maintain my current lifestyle of “light activity”, it will take until early-to-mid 2013 to lose 120 pounds. The rest of 2011, ALL of 2012 and then some? Gag. I could move it up to the end of 2012 with “moderate activity”.. but “Light” is probably the best I can do until I get in better shape, so I think we’ll leave some of that more distant date-setting until later.

So – mileposts and goals

260# – July 31, 2011
255 – Aug 30, 2011 - BMI less than 40 takes me out of “morbidly obese” range to plain “obese”
251 – Sep 30, 2011 10% weight loss
229 – 50 pounds lost, a nice round number.
223 - 20% weight loss
219 – 60 pounds lost, *** halfway there ***
204 – 75 pounds lost
199.9 – Less than 200 lbs.
195 – 30% weight loss
190 - BMI less than 30, no longer “obese”, now “overweight”
189 – 90 pounds lost, ***3/4 way there ***
179 - 100 pounds lost
167 – 40 % weight loss
159 - BMI less than 25 **** 120 pounds lost, BMI says “Normal”
43% weight loss.

Ultimate goal
145-155 lbs - because I can be better than just barely normal….