disappointed

A former coworker swung by today. He had left our company a year or so ago to work with a startup, but that didn't pan out, so he's doing private tutoring and other odd jobs to support his wife and family. The good news: he didn't notice anything wrong with me (and I didn't mention anything), so I guess I look pretty asymptomatic to outsiders. The bad news: no remarks about my weight loss (or my beard), so as I suspected, the weight loss isn't noticeable yet. Another 20 kg, and people will see a difference. Will the Newcastle Diet take me down another 20 kg in seven weeks? We'll see. I'll be happy if I go down another 10 kg and figure out the rest on my own, but the diet is supposed to drop you 10 BMI points. Before the stroke, I was at 128 kg (282.2 lbs., 37.4 BMI). After leaving the hospital, I had dropped to 119 kg (262.4 lbs., 34.8 BMI), and as of this past Sunday, I was at 111.5 kg (245.8 lbs., 32.6 BMI). A BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese, and it appears my goal BMI is around 24 (I started the diet after leaving the hospital), although I could go lower. I know there are BMI skeptics out there (I'm one of them), but as a vague rule of thumb, BMI is a serviceable guide.

I was thinking the other day about my father. He had a minor heart attack in 2006, which means he'd have been about 64 years old. Both sides of my family have histories of heart problems, although for my mother, it was brain cancer that ultimately took her life at age 66. I consider myself something of a loser in the genetic lottery as a result, and frankly, I don't expect to live that long. Dad is still kicking (we're no longer on speaking terms, so I think of him as somewhere "out there"), and he's 79 now. Maybe he learned something from his heart attack and has put that wisdom into practice ever since. So maybe if I continue to live the healthy life I'm now living, making it beyond 60 could be possible. You never know.