Something's not quite right...

So. Last Friday I managed to weigh in at 286.2 lbs. I was aiming for 285.6, so I was .6 lbs short. Still, not too bad. But I was taking off for an extended weekend Mancation, and the combination of beer, tequila, beer, bourbon, beer, vodka, beer, gin, beer, carne asada, beer, pizza, and you get the drift, was not expected to be kind to the weight. Ahh, but wait! Our Beer Belly Olympics actually involved reasonably large amounts of physical activity. Basketball, horseshoes (those things are actually heavy), bowling, golf, etc. And when I returned on Sunday evening, DAPGF and I went out to dinner to Indigo Grill for my flatiron chimichurri steak and all the fixins'. Monday morning weigh-in: 284.8! Holy crap! I wasn't expecting that!

Now my goal was to continue the excellent results. 2 things worked against me. First, DAPGF's teaching schedule changed. She used to teach Monday Tuesday Wednesday, and I would hit the gym and not go out on those days. Now she teaches on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I lose a gym day and have to wait until later in the week for them. The other bad thing was complications at work. So Monday I was reasonably good at lunch, but dinner just didn't quite work out that way. After trying several places only to discover that they were closed on Mondays (she's almost always taught on Mondays, so I would never go out on Mondays), we finally found a place. Stupid me, I ordered a milkshake to go with my monster deli sandwich. Then we had dessert at Baskin Robbins. Yeah, stupid. And the weight went up to 286.2 lbs. Tuesday I went to the driving range for some physical activity and was sorta good at lunch. Dinner was sushi, and by Wednesday the weight dropped down to 286.6 lbs. Wednesday was a road day, so I caved and got my Cheezy Bacon Wrapped goodness on the way to Riverside County. Lunch was the bad thing. Some of my coworkers from our LA and Sacramento offices were in town, so we went out to lunch. I had this awesome Kobe beef chili, and what was supposed to be a side salad. It turned out to be a monster blue cheese wedge salad with thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon. Definitely not conducive to weight loss. I did hit the gym on the way home, but the damage was done. This morning's weigh-in ballooned back up to 288.6 lbs! And due to an annoying project applicant, I had to go back to Riverside this morning. More BK, and more bad lunch. I'm going to the gym tonight, so hopefully I can undo some of the damage from this horrible week. Somehow, though, I don't think I'm going to get under where I was last Friday. Frankly, I'll be lucky to get back down to where I was last Friday. But I did make some surprising progress over last weekend. I think I can do it again. Wish me luck and willpower. Lord knows I need it!

Take what you can get!

So. Last Friday I blobbed in at 292 lbs. By Monday I was down to 289 lbs. By Thursday, I'd managed to drop all the way down to 287.4 lbs. Frankly, I attributed my progress this week to working out and generally controlling my lunch. Until Thursday. I hadn't had a chance to get to the store, so I had no breakfast-y stuff in the house. So I hit Subway for one of their Bacon Omelet flatbread sandwiches. Not bad for 500-ish calories, but more than the Jimmy Dean 250 cal Ham and Cheese Omelet that I would've otherwise had. Likewise, I didn't have any lunch-y foods around, so I ordered out. I attempted to be good, and went to a salad place called Croutons. The food is fresh, tasty, and seems pretty quality. I had their lunch combo which consisted of a small size grilled chicken breast salad and a half panini sandwich. Mine was bbq chicken. The meal was yummy, and for the quantity was probably not too bad calorically. For the quantity. But as I've proved via Souplantation, if you eat enough of anything, you'll eventually gain weight. To top it off, DAPGF won tickets to the House of Blues to see Springsteen: The Premiere Tribute Band (their name) open up for Lights: The Ultimate Tribute to Journey (again, their name). The show was good, but it involved much drinking. We didn't eat a whole lot of food, which at the time was good but by the time we got home, we were both hungry. Pringles generally are not a wholesome food...a yummy and convenient one definitely, but not a wholesome food. And I paid for it with a weigh in this morning of 288.8 lbs. So I gained 1.4 lbs from Thursday to Friday. It's not a major concern, because from Friday to Friday I dropped 3.2 lbs! Yay me!!

3.2 lbs sounds like a decent number. For next Friday, I'm going to aim for another 3.2 lb drop, which would put me at 285.6 lbs. Wish me luck and have a great weekend.

How About That!

So, umm, yeah. That wasn't exactly what I was expecting. On Friday the 10th, I weighed-in at a blob-tastic 292 lbs. And I was fully expecting to bloat up over the weekend, what with a poker night (meaning beer) on Friday, Italian for my b-day on Saturday, Easter buffet on Sunday morning, and then steak for dinner with DAPGF on Sunday night also for my b-day. Granted, I worked hard to minimize the damage. Friday night dog walk. Saturday morning dog walk. Sushi for lunch. My Italian food wasn't a very large portion and I only had one piece of bread before the meal. Dog walking Saturday night and Sunday morning. Gym and driving range after 6 a.m. Sunrise Easter Church. Knowing I was having steak for dinner, I avoided the carving stations at the buffet. Dinner I had a wicked Top Sirloin (Baseball Cut, it was phenomenal), that wasn't coated with bleu cheese or horseradish or anything weird like that, and I only had one piece of bread and minimal potatoes. Dog walk Sunday night and Monday morning. And when I jumped on the scale...289.0 lbs! 3 pounds down from Friday!

So. Having not only survived the weekend but actually made positive progress, I've got to keep the momentum going in the right direction. I've got to follow thru on the diet and exercise this week. If I can do it right, I might actually be able to make some serious progress on the weight loss. Figures it would take adding another year to the tally to make some headway. Wish me luck, peeps.

Anybody know where I can find some willpower?

I'm not sure exactly what my deal is, but it sucks. I would love to have the willpower to go into Target (or Ralphs, or Vons, or Whole Foods, or wherever) and not buy either the naughty foods, or way too large quantities of any foods. I am just horrible at that, and my pathetic efforts at losing weight reflect this. I hit 292 lbs this morning. That is without a doubt the heaviest I have ever weighed. Period. And I'd like to say that it won't go any higher, but I cannot make that guarantee...at least for this weekend. Two bad (well, good but bad food-wise) things are happening. My birthday and Easter. My birthday is bad because my dad is taking DAPGF and I out for Italian on Saturday, to one of our favorite places, Arrivederci in Hillcrest. Then Sunday morning, the three of us are going out for a champagne buffet brunch at the Prado at Balboa Park. Then, DAPGF is taking me out for steak for dinner, probably because with my advancing age it will be easier to kill me off and take my life insurance (death by prime rib?). I have no idea how in the hell I'm not going to bloat up like a dead whale after all of this. I will be hitting the gym and walking the dog at every opportunity, and I promise (cross my cholesterol-laden heart and hope to die) to try and exert some portion control. We shall see.

But back to this week. Granted, I had some help in my naughty behavior. Monday, one of my neighbors invited me to join him and a group of UNC fans at one of our local sports bars to watch the NCAA hoops finals. That involved several (some might say many) drinks and lots of bar food (wings, fries, sliders, etc.). Then when I went to the store to buy some groceries, I picked up a jar of dry-roasted peanuts. Generally, I dislike nuts. They ruin the chocolate (brownies, fudge, etc.), but plain peanuts are a nasty habit of mine. So I bought the nuts to keep at my desk (big mistake number 2!), figuring that I could munch on a handful in the middle of the afternoon, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah, not quite. I also picked up some non-Lean Cuisine type meals that were very noodle-laden and therefore not nearly as caloricly benign as the stuff I already had in the fridge. And then on Thursday DAPGF and I went out with some friends for dinner and drinks. So more drinks, appetizers (spinich dip, buffalo wings, chicken tenders, and so on), and did I mention the drinks? Not a good week, particularly after the initial progress made over last weekend.

So where does that leave me? In a word...fat. Am I happy? No. No I am not. I really have to get past this willpower thing. Let's see what happens when I make a genuine effort to not snack and to not buy extra crap at the store. I bet if I stick to my exercise regime and stick to the 1800-1900 calorie diet I laid out earlier, I can get back to losing weight. I need to. This is starting to get embarrassing.

My diet during the week will consist of (on days DAPGF teaches):

Breakfast - Bagel or breakfast omlete (Jimmy Dean) or something else similar: 250 calories
Snack - Wheat Thins or comparable: 200 calories
Lunch - Lean Cuisine/Smart Ones/Healthy Choice entree, soup, hershey's kisses: 650 calories
Snack - 100 calorie snack pack of something: 100 calories
Dinner - Lean Cuisine-type, some chips, Weight Watchers Giant Chocolate Cookies and Cream ice cream bar: 700 calories

Total: 1900 calories.

Combined with hitting the gym for an hour-ish on the weekends and on days DAPGF teaches, going to the driving range once a week, and walking the dog twice a day for approximately 60 to 90 minutes each day, I should be able to get back on track. Granted, by the beginning of July, I was hoping to be in the 230-ish range. If I can get back to my 3+ lbs per week loss, at best I'll in the 250s. Which, admittedly is better than I am now, but not anywhere near what I wanted to be. If I want to get into the 230s by the 4th of July weekend, I'll have to lose 5 lbs per week. Somehow I don't see that happening. But for now, I'm going back to a 3.3 lbs per week goal. I'm going back to the short-term goals, because it is way too easy to lose track of the goal when it is so far out there.

Happy Easter everyone!

I'm a loser, but not the right kind...

Yeahhhh, so I apparently have zero willpower and self-control. Fast food? Uh huh. Extra snacking during the day? Yup. Buying extra bad junk at the store on the way home, despite the fact that I've got perfectly good Lean Cuisine-type meals waiting in the freezer? Guilty.

Two weeks ago, I rang up at 290.8 lbs, and swore that things were gonna be different. And surprisingly, over that weekend I managed to make some significant progress. I did expect that by Monday morning there would be some slippage, and I blogged about that here, but I figured that with the weekend momentum it wouldn't be a problem to stay in the groove. And that lasted all the way to Monday evening. First of all, I wasn't able to hit the gym. Second of all, I was able to hit the Chinese buffet (which I hadn't visited in several months). Not a combo designed to aid weight loss. And because of my spectacular exhibition of Fail, I stopped logging my food intake and exercise (what exercise?) in My Fitness Pal. End result? From the low point of Sunday morning, 285.4 lbs, I'd managed to rise back up to exactly 290.8 lbs! Zero loss.

Obviously I seemed to be ready to throw up the hands in defeat, and acknowledge my fatness. Ah but wait! A wrinkle occurred literally 90 minutes after said weigh-in that, while not correcting every bit of my weakness, will certainly aid my efforts. That wrinkle is this:


Meet Champ. After months of diligently trolling the interwebs, DAPGF managed to find this year-old male Dobie at a shelter north of Los Angeles. She called me at 9:15 a.m. Friday morning and said that she'd been approved to adopt him (this is a big deal, because young Dobies in good health, particularly with the ears and tails done are rare and go quickly). So I bailed on work and we drove up to get him. So Friday consisted of fast food, but with DAPGF riding shotgun I was able to keep under control. At Carls Jr, for example, I bypassed the Western Bacon Cheeseburger combo for the BBQ Chicken sandwich combo, thus saving probably 600 calories (chicken breast, no cheese, etc.). A similar story for dinner. But where this becomes helpful is that I'm back to going on regular dog walks every day! Just like with my beloved Ginger, I get about a half-hour or so walk in the morning, and then an hour or so walk before I crash out for the night. Obviously, by virtue of the fact that my weight has barely moved, it hasn't had a huge effect. Still, my weight had been hovering in the low 289s for most of the week, so it had probably helped a bit. That and dinner on Friday involved a pretty fatty helping of Gyros, so a better dinner might have kept me at least below 290. End result: this morning's weigh-in was 290.6 lbs. A net loss of .2 lbs for the week.

So. Here we are again. A rededication. Again. But the driving factor is the fact that my 38th birthday is fast approaching. When I went thru my awesome, illness-assisted weight loss, I set a goal of being down somewhere into the 230s by summer, which required a goal of 3 lbs lost per week. Had I managed to continue on that path, by my birthday I should've been under 260 lbs. 30 pounds in 2 weeks? Don't think that's gonna happen. But there's no rational reason why I can't summon up the willpower, stick to the diet plan I've put forth here, and follow through on the exercise. Frankly, I'm getting tired of this s**t, and for those of you who watched How I Met Your Mother this past week or grew up in the 80s and watched the Lethal Weapon movies, I'm getting too old for this s**t! I've got my meals for the work day planned out and logged into My Fitness Pal. Not sure how things are going to go with dining out over the weekend, but I'm going to try and control myself no matter where we go. For what it's worth, I have been doing better at not gorging myself on the bread or chips and salsa, and I've really cut back on the Diet Coke. I'm down to 1 per day (down from 2-3 cans plus several glasses at home after work per day), and trying to drink more water, iced tea, and anything else that might be healthier than Diet Coke. Here we go again...let's see if we can make this go 'round work.