Day 43

Where to begin?

Well, I think I have a pretty well defined philosophy for my continuing diet. I've talked about this with my folks and with Christine, so it's not news, but I think it makes sense: I stay very tight to a very stringent diet during the week, and on the weekend, I do the best that I can.

Admittedly I came out of the gates very strong and stuck to a very tight diet on the weekends, and I'll do that when I can - but I had a lot of weekends to start the year where I didn't have much going on. When there's not much going on, you can pretty easily control your meals. But starting last weekend, here's my schedule:

Feb 5th - Super Bowl
Feb 11th and 12th - Atlantic city
Feb 19th - My birthday dinner
Feb 25th and 26th - Christine's parents are in town
March 3rd and 4th - The guys are in town

So it's just not practical to eat my standard meal on every weekend day for that whole period. Not only is it not practical, I just know that it's not going to happen, so if I get wrapped up in it and get mad at myself for 'cheating' I'm going to do myself more harm than good. So during the week, I can be a Food Nazi. It's not even that hard. During the weekend, I can control most of it, and just do my best when we go out to eat. And not snack. No snacking!

This past weekend was a bit of a mess. We had an amazing dinner Saturday night which certainly wasn't low-cal, and then had Panda Express, a caramel apple, a piece of peanut butter bark, and fried chicken yesterday. That looks so much worse when I write it down than it felt going into my body. Yikes.

The one thing I've been really bad at with diets in the past is letting myself make mistakes and then just getting on with it - so that's what I'm trying to do here. I was totally OK with having the big dinner on Saturday, but yesterday got a little bit out of control. Nothing for it except to get back to basics this week.

Protein shake and a 90 calorie Special-K bar for breakfast, Potbelly Big Wreck on Thin-cut wheat for lunch. I'll have another shake this afternoon and probably a Lean Cuisine or something for dinner, and just get back after it. I'd like to cross that 30lb mark sooner, rather than later.