Week 3 Day 3

Seventeen days of tracking and following and marking and the results? Down eleven pounds so far and feeling pretty good.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090701/ap_on_he_me/us_med_obesity_rankings

Just read the above story and that writer is a genius. No idea how well researched but the opening paragraph with "ominous tide is rolling toward…Alabama" is awesome.

And now that smoking is all but completely illegal across the country I fully expect the drums to start beating for the attack on fatties. This article whines about the rising medical costs related to the care of obese people. Though it fails to mention that fat people die younger and so spend much less time draining Medicare and Social Security than those granola eating old people.

Even though the research regarding health problems and obesity seem more realistic than the dangers of second hand smoke from cigarettes, it still sounds more like propaganda than real research. They probably got the 'global warming' nerds in to draw baseless conclusions from a shallow fact pool.

Georgia ranks 3^rd in obese children. Third? Come on parents! Just start feeding them straight lard mixed with sugar. My own informal research does agree that kids are much fatter today than they were thirty years ago. Maybe parents hope by making their kids morbidly obese they will be less likely to be targeted by child molesters? Hook up the TV or video game's power supply to the exercise bike or the treadmill! At the very least they can get fat while reading books then.

Most depressing is that Colorado is the least obese state. No idea why, it just is depressing.

http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/

For the other side of the debate is the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Maybe the saddest name for an organization ever and the acronym sounds like a fat person trying to get up out of a chair. They have a book advertised "Healthy At Every Size" and it is written by Linda Bacon…BACON? Ouch.

They are on myspace and while they don't really have marches per se, they do occasionally have sit-ins. And when NAAFA sits in they REALLY fill up a space.

I am definitely having more fun this week than last. Probably more to do with our Friday holiday for Independence Day. I even enjoy getting up a little earlier to make breakfast and lunch for work. The calorie counting has become a game of doing math in my head and the frozen dinner with add-ons at night is making the evenings less stressful.

Refer to http://crobin11.blogspot.com/2009/06/finishing-week-one.html to see the uncanny self-portrait used for measurements.

I got a new and improved measuring tape so these should be more accurate going forward but here are the supposed changes a week and a half later:

Left Ankle: -0.5"

Left Thigh: -1.0"

Hips: -0.5"

Middle: -2.0"

Chest: -2.0"

Neck: -0.5"

Left Bicep: -0.25" (done in a curl flex position)

Left Wrist: 0"

It makes sense that the most change would happen where I am carrying the most weight, but between first measure and this is only 3.4 pounds difference so I am dubious about the total accuracy. That and the loss of thigh makes me a little worried that muscle atrophy is playing a part in total lost weight so far too.

We'll see how the rest of the week goes. I'll be using part of the vacation to clean my apartment for the first time in a year and a half. No, not that it hasn't been cleaned, I just paid someone else to do it for a long time. Housework does count as exercise, right?