It’s the beginning of the third week and I’m wavering between encouragement and disappointment.

• Weight: It’s all over the place between 146 and 148 – up and down and up and down and etc…..

I’m not used to this stubborn lack of downward trend – especially when I’m eating the correct input/output balance of calories that should lead to a loss. That’s discouraging – but I’m still down overall and I can’t possibly not lose a little given the way I’m eating and moving.  So I’ll plough on.

• Exercise: Yesterday I did my “accidental” 10k in 70 minutes.

Must explain the “accidental”.  I run 5k with a group of women every Sunday and the group meets around 2.5k from my house.  We are currently without a car so, if I want to run with the group, I need to cover 10k.  Last week I walked down and back.  This week I ran a bit and walked a bit down and back and ran most of the 5k in the middle.  Result: a 70 minute 10k.  I’m looking forward to improving on that next week.

So the “things to do by 50″ project moves forward.  My hair is almost all grey, I’m into the New Testament on my read through the bible and I can now cover a 10k in a respectable time.  If my weight isn’t exactly where I envisioned it, then I can hardly beat myself up.

If, on my 50th birthday, I wake up weighing 147lbs but able to run 10k in an hour, I won’t be disappointed.

But I still want to get that waist down another inch so I will keep working hard till the end of April to see if I can do it.

EDIT!  I wrote the above in my dressing gown, went upstairs, put on my jeans and did up my belt.  To the next hole.   Just the motivation to keep going and show a quick 2 fingers to the scales.

Just when the motivation is waning to the point of invisibility, we step over the threshold of our friends’ home and are greeted with a vision of two svelte men who, at our last meeting, were both on the chubby side.  They look great!

The husband and I were both, 1) jealous and 2) inspired to do something about our own chubby situations.

When I got home, I was doing a little wandering through the internet and came across some research on waist circumference and mortality.  It’s summarised in this CBC web article.

The words that grabbed me by the throat were:

Oddly, the strongest link — 25 per cent — was in women with normal BMI. People with bigger waists had a higher risk of death from causes including respiratory illnesses, heart disease and cancer.

I have fussed and fumed in previous posts about where exactly this measurement should be taken but this research seems to have encouraged a definitive answer.  This is the best description I’ve found yet – from that same CBC report.

Waist circumference is measured at a point halfway between the hip bone and lowest rib — about five centimetres above the belly button.

Many people think the hip bone they feel toward the front of the body is the top of their hips but it’s not. By following this spot upward and back toward the sides of your body you should be able to find the true top of the hip bones.

Wrap the tape measure around you in a circle, making sure it is level all the way around. The tape shouldn’t push in or indent the skin. Relax, take two normal breaths, exhale, and then take the measurement. It’s best to take the measurement on bare skin. If you wear clothes, measure it the same way each time.

A waist circumference of more than 102 centimetres (40 inches) for men and more than 88 centimetres (35 inches) for women is associated with increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and hypertension.

A healthy waistline is 94 centimetres (37 inches) for most men and 80 centimetres (31.5 inches) for women. Health Canada recommends measuring waist circumferences for adults with a BMI between 18.5 and 34.9 to prevent and manage obesity.

So – at a “healthy” BMI of 24.6, I still have a 35.5 inch abdomen – 4 inches larger than ideal.  I’m not sure I’d be able to get that low but I’d settle for half way there – say around 33 inches.

The main point is that vanity size 8 Gap jeans with their Lycra forgiveability may still fit beautifully but I have blubber inside my body that is wrapping itself around my organs and increasing my risk of an early death.

Guess it’s not yet time to give up the fight.

When I realised that I wanted to lose weight finally and forever, I had in my head the “goal” weight of 143lbs.  I think it was based on the tricky scale-insanity based mathematical formula which states that the personal goal weight plus two pounds equals the WW goal weight which is equal to or lesser than a number ending in zero or five.

Not that I thought about it much or anything.

I also picked a weight which was well away from any “wall” like the infamous 140lbs of 2001.  I remember going to WW week after week stuck at two pounds from goal and finally giving up and agreeing that I would never weigh less than 142.  That number was on a gold card in my wallet until very recently.

Fast forward a few years and we have a new generation of goal-setters.  Now, canny weight watchers set their goal at the highest possible healthy BMI so that they no longer have to pay for meetings once they’ve reached that number.  So my new gold card is going to say 10 stone 9lbs.  This is actually a pound less that my highest acceptable BMI because I have the psychological burden of being bi-cultural in the weight loss game and wanted to keep it below 150lbs.

Not that I thought about it much or anything.

So what’s my real goal -besides, obviously, getting some decent psychological help?

Last week I decided to head for 138, not because of any of the above but because my goal has been revised to include a health waist size.  I’m guessing that I’m going to have to lose that much more weight to get there because,  when I say waist size, I mean abdominal size – measured right around the navel.  That’s different from my much smaller “technical waist” where my jeans used to sit in 1979.

Of course, back in the early 90′s, before the BMI Revolution, my upper goal weight was 139lbs.  That was the weight I would have been aiming for all along.  Now I KNOW that BMI is supposed to be about health, but at the top “healthy” weight of 150lbs, my waist size puts me at risk for all sorts of things – even though I can wear Gap size 8 jeans.

The point?  The point is that I need to find a goal set by me for reasons that I can trust.  I trust the waist measurement science more than I trust BMI science.  So that’s where I’m headed. For now.  Not that I’ve thought about it much or anything.

Oh yeah – the reason I started on this topic: I hit 143lbs this morning.