I have decided to be accountable to you for my weight loss journey. On the 1st of every month, I will post a photo of the scale showing what my current weight is. For the time being I will be working towards a goal of getting down to 110 pounds. This is the weight I was at when the COVID-19 lock down began in 2020. When I get down to that point I will assess whether I should continue on down to 100 pounds, which is the weight I was at before I hurt my back & started my uncontrolled weight gain. I am designating June 21st (the summer solstice) as the starting date for this weight loss journey; the weight recorded on the Samsung Health app was 132.2. My weight this morning was 129.8. I am amazed that I have lost 2.4 pounds since I started this journey 10 days ago! That would be about 1.6 pounds per week; I am OK with that rate. If I maintain this rate I should be able to reach 110 by mid-October. If I decide to return to 100 & maintain this rate, that would be about mid-November ... just in time to gain some back over the holidays!
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| Yay! No boiled vegetables! |
The alternative that I threatened myself with was having to bite the bullet & follow Zhang Linghe's only-boiled-vegetables diet if I was not able to lose any weight with my anything-but-boiled-vegetables diet. In general my day starts with at least 1 glass of water, followed by my morning dog & yard routine of feeding Moʻo & watering the plants that I have had in the ground or growing bed for less than a year. (I try to avoid annuals; if it can't survive on its own after a year it is allowed to quietly compost in place.) Then I do whatever else is planned for the day & allow myself to drink as much water as I want throughout the day. Around noon I make a protein smoothie that includes a scoop of collagen powder or if I am lazy I just put the protein & collagen powders into a cup of soy milk & mix it up. If I have any, I also drink 1/2 cup of my homemade sports drink of Meyer lemonade mixed with Pedialyte to ensure I am replacing at least some of the electrolytes I have lost during whatever activity I am doing that day; I prefer not to drink the Pedialyte on its own but I will if I have to.😝 And I prefer to avoid the dyes & other weird stuff they put in store-bought sports drinks; besides, an ER doctor said Pedialyte was just as good for less the cost & less weird additives. Around 5:30 pm I prep Moʻo's dinner & mine. I usually have 1 serving of tofu or other good quality protein with a couple tablespoons of fermented vegetables, & a boiled egg. If I have a craving for more food I will have some dried aku or pipikaula. I try to complete all my eating by 8 pm; basically it is a 16:8 intermittent fasting regimen. Of course, there are days when I don't stick to this because of meetings, invitations to share a meal, etc., but I don't let that bother me because it is usually only once a week that this might happen.
When I left Hawaiʻi for graduate school at University of Washington I weighed around 80 pounds. I felt it was a good weight, I did not need to watch what I ate, I just naturally kept at that weight due to all the diving & bicycling I was doing. I did not have my fat content measured but I am pretty sure I had less than what women usually had because of factors such as well-defined leg muscles, a 6-pack, & an irregular period. When I 1st arrived in Seattle, it felt really cold to me. I did not care how much I ate; I just needed the extra calories to stay warm! Besides I had my bike which was how I got around campus & the city; my weight increased to around 90 pounds but that was OK with me because I was able to keep warm at that weight. My normal pattern was to allow my body to self-regulate, eating tons of food when the temperature dropped below about 65 degrees to stay warm & then naturally backing off as the weather warmed up. When I got pregnant, I gained over 40 pounds! My doctor was OK with that since I was underweight to begin with; initially he had concerns because he did not think I had enough body fat to maintain a healthy pregnancy. And since I planned to breastfeed, I needed more fat anyway. I lost all except 10 of those pounds & was now hovering around 100 pounds as my new normal weight. Although I ate more during the winter, even eating as much as my boss who was 6'2" & about 250 pounds, I didn't gain any weight; I just burned it up & stunned people with my ability to eat so much. Life was that way for years until I herniated a disc in my lower back; the limitations on my activities caused me to gain about 20 pounds. And that was what I was working on losing when COVID hit.
Along this journey I have found that it is harder for short people to lose weight than tall people IF all other factors are equal. That is a big IF. Because I generally had a higher lean body mass percentage than most tall people I was around, I could eat tons of food & burn it off easier than they could. But since I herniated the disc in my lower back & gained that excess 20 pounds, I lost that advantage. So I am pleased at how much weight I have lost since I started this journey 10 days ago.
At sunrise it was a little drizzly & not looking promising in terms of mowing. But about mid-morning it began to dry out & the sun started to peek through the clouds. By mid-day it was getting drier.
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| Sunrise. |
So today Emily came to mow the lawn; she was supposed to come on Monday but it was pouring rain. Then Tuesday was also fairly wet; this afternoon was somewhat dry so she came to mow the lawn. To prevent Moʻo from escaping & raising Emily's anxiety level, I locked Moʻo in the outside shower. It worked! She was not able to get out & Emily had a stress-free mowing experience! I will be training Moʻo to go in to the shower on voice command (ʻaoʻao) so when I am off island & it is a mowing day Emily or one of the neighbors can more easily move Moʻo into the outside shower.
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| Not looking too happy. But better than running loose out on the road! |
Today is one of those days where I did not keep to my usual eating plan; the Kohala Night Market was tonight. I met hoa hānau Fran & her boyfriend Billy there & we had dinner from the food trucks. Fran had Korean fried chicken, Billy had chicken katsu, & I had golden bao bun with smoked meat. For this week this is the 2nd time I am not following the usual eating plan; the 1st time was at the special planning commission meeting yesterday where they provide the lunch & I had a meal replacement smoothie for breakfast. Over the remainder of the month any excess I gained because of these extra meal days should work itself out; I guess we will all see whether that is true on August 1st! But I think next time I will go with something that has less carbs & more protein & vegetables.
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| Need more protein & less carbs. |
There was a screening of the independent film Kealoha Disappears as part of the Night Market tonight. It is a work-in-progress so there was really no end; we have to wait & see what Lucas brings back next year! All of the scenes were shot in North Kohala & I recognized many places. Writer/director Lucas moderated a short panel discussion with some of the local actors after the screening. Lucas & his mother Jocelyn also directed & produced This is Kohala a few years ago; it aired on PBS in 2025. I know about a dozen of the people interviewed in the film.
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| Panel (L to R) Keala, Uncle Jeff, Lucas, Aunty Sarah, & Keanu. |
For the Hanzi practice on Duolingo you trace the characters on the phone screen. In the word below for "gym", it is the 1st radical jiàn (highlighted in blue) that is the subject of the lesson. One of the things I have not been able to figure out is what is the stroke order. Earlier it looked like from top to bottom & more or less left to right. But for jiàn you start with the middle part that looks like a 3 with a tail, then the left side, then the right side. "Relatively" bǐjiào is a lot easier to write, especially the left radical bǐ.
I've decided to take a look at the stats once a month near the end of the month so I should have done this yesterday. I'll try to remember this for next month.
The next episode of the eruption at Kīlauea has been moved back a little. It is now likely to occur sometime between the 7th & the 14th.
Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Sandy & Brad!
