Weight Stasis

Oh dear, it's June 13th and I'm still a little above or a little below 74 kg. There's been no substantial change in over two weeks. I've been diligent in my walking by going for a 30 minute brisk walk each day while trying to avoid snacking between meals. I stopped entering the weights in the spreadsheet because clearly the average was around 74 kg. I would still like to get down to 72 kg but clearly it will be a gradual and lengthy process.

The key is to increase the amount of exercise that I do while eating normally. Apart from the daily walk, I'm largely sedentary. Fortunately, the house that I'm living in has lots of stairs so there's energy spent there just moving around inside. The opportunity for step-up exercises is thus ubiquitous and I really should make more use of this. Every minute of every day is an opportunity to exercise and by exercise I mean something as simple of neck rotations to ward off the ravages of calcification as I age.

Scandalous Scales and Chilly Winds

Scandalous Scales: it came as something of a shock to find that I weighed in at 74.3 kg, wearing T-shirt and shorts on the evening of Sunday, February 13th 2022. As I said in a previous post, it's probably best to weigh myself of a morning. I went to the bathroom, stripped-off and weighed myself again. This time I was 73.5 kg which is still disturbingly high. 

For the past week or more, my exercise routine has been disrupted but things have now returned to normal. Today I resumed my morning walk and tomorrow I plan to spend some time on the mini-trampoline as well as practising some shuffle moves, as outlined in my previous post titled The Septuagenarian Shuffle. I'm determined to get my weight back down to about 71 kg. At the moment, I'm heavier than I've been since heading to Australia in July of 2015. 

Chilly Winds: recently the family visited the mountains at the back of Jakarta and the temperature in the evening was around 13°C, drastically lower than the balmy temperatures in the lowlands from where I had just come. There was also a light drizzle and gusts of wind that added to my discomfort. We were staying in one of the chalets that were dotted around the resort and separate from the main building where we had just finished dining.

As we headed out into the freezing weather toward our accommodation, a particularly nasty gust of wind cut right through me and a wave of nausea swept over me. My legs almost buckled and I needed assistance to get to our accommodation. When I did arrive I was shaking uncontrollably and went straight to bed where my condition slowly stabilised. For me, this was an unprecedented and fairly shocking event.

I can't help feeling that the reaction was the result of my thymoma not responding well to the sudden drop in temperature that my body had experienced because of the wind blast. This then affected the surrounding organs and destabilised the mechanism that controls my body's core temperature. The lesson learned is that I need to wear proper clothing before exposing myself to cold temperatures, especially where a wind chill factor is involved.

I'm now back in the tropics at sea level and all is well. There's no doubt my thymoma has grown but, whether it's self-limiting or becomes more invasive, only time will tell. As I approach my 73rd birthday, I'm certainly not the man I once was. I'm diminished in many ways but I'm still breathing and ostensibly still healthy and active. However, I need to remain aware of my vulnerability and not impose unnecessary stress on my body.