Tag: winter weight

Feeling Fabulously Fat For February

~ Jim Flanigan ~ Leave a comment

I’m overweight in February and am thrilled. Why? Certainly not because I gained 5 pounds in December which was the maximum I was allowing myself for the whole winter.

They may have gotten the pronoun wrong in that gif, but that’s me they are talking about. As I reported in my last weighty post, my goal for January was to simply hold the line and not gain any more weight in January. Unlikely? Yes. Who wants to exercise and watch what you eat in the dead of winter? Not me. I want to sit, eat, and watch television while my wife, kids, and neighbors shovel my snow. But it somehow happened. I gave it a week into February to make 100% sure, but I continue to hang in at 5 pounds max gained and may even be heading back down just a bit. I’m thrilled!

Against all odds, my steps actually trended up a bit in January. Take a look.

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I Was Wary of my Winter Weightloss Wish Working

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 2 Comments

And it didn’t, but I still succeeded … sort of. As I have explained in prior posts, I was pretty sure I would gain weight over the winter. The key for me was to try and limit that weight gain. By late summer of 2020, I had lost 17 pounds through spring and summer. As soon as cooler weather in early fall arrived and I took our pool down, I almost immediately added back 2 pounds. I went into the winter months of December through February hoping to minimize my weight gain. I wanted to show some progress from 2020 to 2021. It didn’t help that I could not bring myself to go to the health club all winter while a pandemic raged out of control in the US.

I was limited to walking outside, our treadmill, and our elliptical machine. I never got around to setting up a bike on a stationary trainer like I wanted. Mild winter weather allowed me to still walk outside in December and most of January, but then winter hit here with a vengance in February. We had about 3 weeks straight of incessant snow and frigid temps. I was relegated to shoveling/snowblowing outdoors when necessary (which seemed to be daily) and walking/ellipsing indoors. Take a look at how my steps in February shrank for the third month in a row …

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My Plan to Lose Weight by Gaining Weight is Working!

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 1 Comment

When we last left our plucky dieter (me!), my diet plan for January & February was for me to gain 2 pounds each month in order to lose weight. You can read and try and make sense of that logic in the complete post HERE, but the gist is that it is inevitable that I will gain weight in the winter, so I need to control my weight gain, unlike in years past when I have inflated like a balloon at a kid’s birthday party by the end of winter.

That is me after most winters. Oh, but not this one. I planned to limit my weight gain which would allow me to start Spring weighing less than a year ago. After only gaining a pound in December, I planned to add 2 pounds each month in January and February. Then I could start March at 9 pounds less than last year. I lost 17 pounds in 2020 before the cold weather hit, so if I could lose just 15 additional pounds this year, I would be very happy at being down 24 total pounds from my peak in early 2020. Whew, I did not realize there would be math required with this post.

So, what did I do to only gain 2 pounds in January? Well, I exercised less. Take a look …

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Hoping 2021 is Worth the Weight

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 1 Comment

Happy New Year to you all as I wrap up my Twelve Days of Blogging. When last I checked my weight in an act of public self-shaming, I had gained 2 pounds back from my summer & fall 17 pound weight loss. I hatched a crazy plan to gain less than 5 pounds per month during the 3 winter months, and I would then start Spring 2021 weighing less than last year. Even nuttier is that’s the plan I’ve decided to follow – weight gain. It’s the only plan I have. Winter weight gain is inevitable for me. The best I can do is minimize it.

I knew December would be hard. By the end of the month, my diet had turned almost exclusively to a focus on the 4 holiday food groups of cookies, chocolate, caramel, and eggnog. My workouts had faded as Christmas activities and a bathroom renovation took precedence over self-care. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie …

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Weighting Out Winter

~ Jim Flanigan ~ 1 Comment

The last time I updated you on my efforts to reach my weight loss goal of 20 pounds (for those of you still living in medieval times, that comes out to 1.43 stones), I had fallen short in September. I was stuck at 17 pounds at the end of September after really working out hard that month. With cooler weather coming, I faced the prospect of no more swimming workouts in the convenience of our backyard pool. I am simply not up for a nice winter swim as some are.

Canadians, eh? And I cannot handle this exercise below freezing …

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Live & Let Diet

~ Jim Flanigan

I was really moving in a positive direction with losing my excess winter weight. Now I could focus on losing my normal winter weight. That is, until my wife declared that she was ordering this …

Pizza Malnoti.jpg

Except, she wasn’t just ordering 3 deep dish slices of deliciosity. She ordered a full deep dish pie and also ordered a thin crust. Oh, and a huge salad. We do have a large family. All that food was problem enough for my dieting, but there was a larger problem. No, not my waistline. That was a low blow of you to think that. The problem was …

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The Weight Wait

~ Jim Flanigan

Love the song …

Hate the actual weight …

Simpson fat

But there it is, around my midsection after every winter. I even set a new record high for winter weight this year. Yay? I rely on a warm Spring to melt those pounds away, but we didn’t have one this year. It was cold and wet. And so I waited as I jiggled through April and May.

But then, last weekend happened.

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