The one in which we see a smidge of progress

Yes, a smidge. After 2 straight weeks of the scale numbers climbing instead of dropping, I finally had a week where I lost weight! Ahh, but what, exactly, is a smidge? In this case, a pathetic 0.2 lbs. Yes, on 1/23 my weigh-in was 288.8 lbs, and this morning it had dropped all the way down to 288.6 lbs. Granted, yesterday's weigh-in was a flab-tastic 290.0 lbs, so being somewhat careful on Thursday along with getting a quick gym workout in melted off 1.4 lbs. But all things being equal, this ain't working for me.

When I started the latest round of weight-loss efforts on January 2, the scale rung up 289.0 lbs. After the first week's loss took me down to 286.4 lbs, the scale has been going in the wrong direction. I have nobody to blame but myself. Really. I may claim torpedoes here and there, brought on by my father, DAPGF, or coworkers, but I'm the one opening my mouth and shoveling food into it. So I'm going to take the nuclear approach. Starting on Monday (because the weekends with DAPGF and others are too hard to control to the level I'm aiming for), I'm actually going to set up a meal plan ahead of time. I'm not sure where I'll find the time, but each night I'm going to attempt to blog what I actually consumed, and lay out what I'm going to consume on the following day. So each day I'm forced to not only admit to what I'm going to eat, but admit to what I ate in addition to what I said I was going to eat. Hopefully the structure alone will motivate me to comply, but the shame of admitting that I swung through the Burger King drive-through for 2 cheesy bacon wraps on my way to Wildomar will hopefully prevent a large-scale pile of fail. I don't want to be sadistic to myself, and I am a realist with how much I have a compulsion to snack. So here's a rough outline of what I expect to consume on a random weekday (calories are estimated based on data I found in My Fitness Pal and Calorie King):

Breakfast: Bagel with fat free cream cheese - 290 calories
Morning snack: reduced fat wheat thins - 130 calories
Lunch: Assorted Healthy Choice/Lean Cuisine/Smart ones - 300 calories
Lunch: Campbells Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup - 180 calories
Lunch: 6 Hershey's caramel kisses (lowest calorie ones) - 135 calories
Afternoon snack (for gym energy): assorted 100 calorie snack pouch/granola bar - 100 calories
Dinner: 2 assorted Healthy Choice, etc. meals - 600 calories
Dessert: Weight watchers Giant Chocolate Cookies & Cream ice cream bar - 140 calories

This generic meal plan rings in at 1875 calories. That may seem like a lot, and it is. However, looking over My Fitness Pal, my daily food intake has been ranging from 2300 to 3300 calories (which explains my weight!), so if I can even come down to a steady 2000 per day and get a decent workout in, I should start making some downward progress. It will be difficult...I know how much I like to snack, especially while sitting at the computer, so I'll make efforts to control things. I've got a 32 ounce sport bottle that I fill up from our water purifier (our coffee maker is pretty bitchin', including giving us a separate tap for ice cold filtered water), so I'll start there. I'll also get back to keeping gum at my desk. It's never the same, but if I can chew on something in between meals, I might be able to avoid unauthorized snacking. And as I noted previously, the weekends are hard to control. I'm out with DAPGF, and occasionally others, and we're at nice restaurants where they serve booze, crab and mushroom potstickers, and other assorted goodies. We attempt to select meals on the healthier side of things (split a salad with the vinaigrette dressing on the side, and split the ahi tuna sandwich), but portions being what they are, I'm still consuming waaay too much food. I'm going to try to minimize the damage (not eating so much bread would be a start), but I offer no guarantees on weekend food consumption.

So there we go. All in black and white (so to speak). My weigh-ins are going to remain on Friday mornings, but I'm not going to kick this off in earnest until Monday the 2nd. Granted, I may get torpedoed on the first day if I have to go to a jobsite with my boss and he treats for lunch. Last time we wound up at Rubios and had a couple of beers, so who knows what might happen. But be that as it may, I should be able to guarantee at least 3 days during the week on my program completely, with the other days at least partially complying. Combine that with a renewed effort to work out (go to sleep earlier so that I'm able to get up and run in the morning, and suck it up and go to the gym after work, regardless of how late I get out of work), and I should start seeing some major progress. Thanks to the explosion of Facebook, Hoff is approaching his 20 year high school reunion. I'm not entirely sure how much I weighed when I graduated from high school, but it was somewhere around 210. If I could get remotely close to that, I'll be happy. Beyond that, the goal is still to get down to 240, by the end of June. I want to get back to surfing regularly, and having a more beach-friendly bod wouldn't hurt. 22 weeks to drop 48 pounds. That's 2.2 pounds per week. Not sure I can pull that off, but I'm going to try. Wish me luck!