Weight-Loss Data

For the last 3+ years, I've been weighing nearly daily, trying to lose weight plus determine what behaviors helped or hurt. Take a look:

Look closely and some patterns appear:

• I lose weight best between the New Year and the end of the spring semester.
• Summers are flat or even a bit of gain.
• Weight creeps up in fall, and I'm lucky if I don't put on much over the Thanksgiving to Christmas holidays.

What's going on? A clue comes by looking at a couple of years of daily averages:

Daily averages for two years.

Something happens Thursday nights and over the weekend. It's really not a mystery.

• On Thursday nights, I go to Jubeck's, a microbrewery where I've been a member for over five years, since even before they opened. I typically drink two ales and snack on the free peanuts, Chex mix, and other goodies.
• Over the weekend, my wife and I often eat out, sometimes multiple times, and I don't walk to school.

In January to early May, it's typically poor weather for riding my scooter, so I walk more. I also shovel snow. And I keep myself on a regular routine. In summer and early fall, I ride my scooter, walk less, have no snow to shovel and the grass seldom needs mowing after July or so. I like to cookout, and I keep beer in stock. The extra calories add up.
Still, from when I started to the current date, I've lost about 35 pounds. My blood-test results have improved, and I feel a significant difference when I walk. Uphills are easier without the 35-pound pack I carried on my stomach and hips. So what have I learned about my body and weight loss?

• Walking helps everything---weight loss, blood work, and mental health.
• Cutting out everything white matters---no white sugar, white rice, white flour, white potatoes, white supremacy, white privilege---all of it has to go. (The latter is the hardest to get rid of.)
• I can eat as many salads and fresh vegetables as I want as long as I don't slather them or fry them in oils.
• The improved feeling that comes with weight loss is itself an incentive to continue losing.
• I need to watch the beer consumption, especially as it easily gets tied to increased snacking. That said, I'd rather die young than drink light beer. Even if I didn't live longer, it would seem that way.