Australia, being a bachelor for a short time and diets

I took my wife to the airport a couple of days ago, and she left for two weeks in Australia to visit our new grandson. She was excited at the prospect of seeing both our daughter and the newest addition to the Shook clan.

I am officially a bachelor for the next two weeks and am looking forward to seeing if I can keep my routine while taking on the extra responsibilities of keeping the house in order. The biggest focus I will have is continuing to walk and go to the gym to help me lose the weight I need to lose. For those of you who have been following this blog, you saw that I have posted a number of ideas on dieting. The reason is that I came to a realization a few months ago about my health.  At the start of the summer, when I was on my golf trip with my friends I had the opportunity to weigh myself and realized that I was too heavy. I am 5' 11" and I weighed (on July 7th), 245 pounds. I thought to myself I am a stroke, or a heart attack waiting to happen unless I did something about my situation.

I had been walking every other day,  but I had not changed my diet or my lifestyle so I continued to gain weight. I talked it over with my wife and we decided to join Jenny Craig in Port Coquitlam. That was an interesting experience, the first counsellor who talked to us and signed us up said she would be working with us was no longer at the site when we returned a week later. We were assigned another counsellor who worked with us for a while and then he left as well.

My wife reached her goal weight very quickly, and I am still moving on toward mine, but I have a new counsellor. I told the new counsellor about the other two and I asked her if she would be staying, she laughed and said I have been here for seven years, I am not going anywhere I love it here.

The advice and support I received from all of the counsellors at Jenny Craig has been useful and they have been helpful and supportive. The goal of the two weight loss programs--Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig that I am familiar with is to get you to change your life style, and both work. I have friends who are on Weight Watchers and they swear by the program, I have friends who are on Jenny Craig and they swear by the program. Both work, but you have to find one that works for you and your needs, your lifestyle and your motivation.

When I started Jenny Craig, I was 239 pounds (in July 20th ) as of October 29, I am 206 pounds. My goal is to get down to 195pounds. I walk 6.4 km every day and work out for a full hour, at the Hyde Creek Recreational Center in Poco every second day. I hope to continue to with routine, while my wife is away. However, I am already off track a bit, on Sunday I am off with my friends  to watch the BC Lions play so I know I will be tempted to go off my diet.

The difficult part is to stay motivated as I fight to lose the last 11 pounds which I hope to lose by the end of November. I will let you know if I am able to stay on track, wish me luck. The motivation has been helped by two things.
First:
I saw my Dr the other day and I am now to a point where I am no longer taking my blood pressure medication. For the past three months my blood pressure has been moving into more normal ranges and I had been talking to the Dr. about stopping the medication. Over the last few years, I had been reducing the number of drugs and was on the lowest dose. So my conversation with the Dr. recently had been about going off the medication entirely. As he noted my weight, my blood pressure record on his charts and my exercise routine, we decided to stop the medication, as long as I monitor myself.
Second:
I am now able to wear pants that I have that are a 38 waist, whereas before the first of July, I was wearing size 44 pants, if I work this right by the time I get to my goal weight, I will have to buy a new set of clothes and give the other clothes to the Share Family Thrift Store :-)