Benefits Other Than Weight Loss

Rhonda and Bill experience many other benefits than just weight loss. Two years ago Rhonda was diagnosed with high blood pressure. Her doctor immediately put her on high blood pressure medicine. She started exercising too, and watching what she ate. A few months later, she and Bill began going to Gold's Gym five times a week for an hour. As a result of this effort, two weeks ago, the doctor told Rhonda that she only needed to take half of the pill that she has been taking. So she's making progress. On another note, Rhonda had bleeding gums at the dentist a few years ago. They were about to put little packets of medicine under the gums. But six months ago, that bleeding had stopped and the dentist's office said it was because of the reducion of high blood pressure. Bill has been on a C-PAP machine at night for the last five years. This summer, the doctor reduced the amount of air pressure that machine gives out, and then reduced it again, because Bill doesn't need as much pressure as before. Bill recently had a blood test and it is drastically improved over a test he had 5 years ago. For example, 5 years ago his triglyceride (or blood fat) level was 177 and the highest "normal" level should have been 149. Well, the recent test had the triglyceride level at 47.

Fortunately, there are these other benefits to weight loss because this week Bill and Rhonda didn't fare so well. Both Bill and Rhonda gained four pounds this week! Bill is clear up to 230 pounds and Rhonda is up to 237 pounds. Now of course, this was the day after Thanksgiving, but they had passed up a delicious-looking slush that guests had brought to the Thanksgiving meal, whole wheat rolls while everyone else ate sumptuous white rolls, their own seperate mashed potatoes without the good stuff in them, marshmellow-less yams, punpkin pie that Emily made (they settled for a no fat pumpkin pudding concoction that Bill made) -- anyway, you get the picture! And they went to the gym on Friday morning and were shocked to find they had both gained four pounds each. They even suggested that Gold's Gym recalibrate their scales!

Here are their set point scores for this week, which certainly don't reflect their weight-gains:

Rhonda: (S) 100 (S) 100 (M) 100 (T) 100 (W) 90 (T) 90 (F) on track for 100

Bill: (S) 100 (S) 100 (M) 100 (T) 100 (W) 100 (T) 90 (F) On track for 100