Day 89

Forty.

Day 88

Ahhhh Thursday - the day where I always think far too much about what I'm eating, because I know I have to weigh in the next day. It's not as if I'm attempting to cut weight so I can wrestle in a lower weight class, so there's no reason I should be a lunatic on Thursdays (more than any other day, anyway) but I am.

Today has been my usual Chobani, Chick-fil-a, and Quest Bars, provided by my cousin Jason and his lovely fiancee Katie. Those two decided that they wanted to help me along in my journey, so they bought me a couple boxes of my adored Quest bars, which was so incredibly thoughtful. Thank you both very much.

We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Day 87

So the last couple of days have been good, very low calorie experiences. I feel like I made some progress for sure, but last weekend was still a carnival of calories, so we'll see what Friday brings.

Shake for breakfast, protein bar for pre-lunch snack, and lunch will probably be Chick-fil-a or something of that ilk. Who knows what mysteries dinner holds, assuming dad doesn't eat some bad cooked carrots again, and train night goes off without a hitch.

My dear father, by the way, is down 26lbs himself. Here here, pop! I know that Kung Pao Chicken reward will be a good one. I don't know how many lbs my mother has taken off, but I know she's working her butt off, too. The whole family is really making some changes, which is really cool.

Day 85

Well, my plan to eat well this weekend didn't reaaaaallly work. We ended up going to Uncle Julio's on Friday and I did ok, but beer will eat up a lot of calories on the sly. Saturday night, we had our friends Amelia and Alex over for fondue and blueberry mojitos. So, not great.

But as usual, back on it today. Chobani for breakfast, kabobs for lunch, maybe a Lean Cuisine for dinner. Still hoping I can close the gap on that 40lb mark this week. We'll see.

Day 82

Down 1lb in a week where I had chicken wings, fries, three beers, three ciders, pizza bagels, corned beef, soda bread and banoffi pie over the weekend? I'll take that every. single. time.

Now let's see if I can get through this weekend without another pigfest and hit that 40lb mark next week.

Day 81

Pop's illness saved me from corned beef last night, although the trade-off was not altogether worth it. Protein bar and my last Chobani for breakfast (gasp!!) and I'm meeting mom at Clyde's for lunch. Cross your fingers for my weigh-in tomorrow. If I avoid a significant gain, I'll be happy with it.

81 days isn't a long time, but it IS time, and I got to thinking about all the things that I haven't had at all since I started my diet. One that stuck out to me is ye olde candye bare. That's not to say that I haven't had candy since I started - I've definitely had a few Lindor truffles and a Reese's egg in the last few months, but I haven't had a candy bar. I used to really enjoy the not-so-occasional candy bar, but it's something I haven't missed in the least in the past few months. Weird. That brought me to my next feature..

Case Studies in Shit I Don't Need to Eat Ever Again!


Exhibit A: 
271 calories
- 122 from fat
13.6g fat
- 5.2g saturated fat
34.5g carbohydrates (32.7g effective)
- 1.3g dietary fiber
- 28.8g sugar
4.3g protein

Exhibit B:
210 calories
- 90 from fat
10g fat
- 1.5g saturated fat
21g carbohydrates (4g effective)
- 17g dietary fiber
- 2g sugar
20g protein

Exhibit A is the ubiquitous Snickers Bar. Exhibit B is a Quest Peanut Butter and Jelly Bar. My point is certainly not that they taste the same, nor that the Quest bar truly measures up in deliciousness. But I'll say this - these bars are damn tasty, and they DO taste like peanut butter and strawberry jelly on wheat bread, which happens to be one of my absolute favorites. My real point here is that I know I've bought into the 'Hungry? Why wait?' bullshit before, and eaten a Snickers bar as an attempt to get me through to my next meal. Candy is candy for a reason, and it can be delicious as a treat, but I don't ever want to go back to thinking of it as anything more than that.

Day 80

Christine officially began going back to the gym and working with a trainer yesterday. I'm so proud of her for getting off her butt and back to work - that's a part of this equation that I haven't solved yet. I met her after her work out for dinner at Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which I almost had again for lunch today. Obsess much?

Instead I had Potbelly for lunch, with Chobani and a protein bar to take me through the morning. I may have another protein bar this afternoon if I need it and I know there's a corned beef sandwich (ruh roh) in my future for dinner. I'm drinking enough water to float the Titanic right now, which is good but inconvenient at the same time. I'm still not expecting particularly good things on Friday, but if I can limit the damage, I ought to be able to  close the gap on 40lbs next week.

Day 79

The Lean Cuisine I had last night was a) delicious, and b) possibly poison. It's not that I feel particularly bad, but I've brushed my teeth three times since eating it, and I can still taste it on my breath. That's not exactly what I look for in 280 calories worth of Thai-style chicken and vegetables. Also, how amazing is it that for 280 calories, I can either have a bowl of the aforementioned, OR a Snickers bar? These are things you don't really think about when you're busily binge eating yourself into an early grave.

Chobani for breakfast, Potbelly for lunch, and a protein bar for a snack since the Potbelly didn't quite fill me up.

I'm working on hydrating like a boss, because I know how much salt there is in my system right now. I'm betting that my weight will be up this Friday, but I'm hoping for another big drop next week with a combination of water weight and accumulated weight loss. We shall see.

Day 78

Had my usual Chobani for breakfast, along with a protein bar shortly after I woke up. I was insanely hungry - the downside of eating a big meal on Sunday night and stretching out my stomach in the process.

I also hopped on the scale this morning just to see how bad the carnage was for this weekend, and I'm only up about 2lbs. That sounds awful, but is actually a good thing, because I expected worse. I need to drink a LOT of water to flush this salt from my body, and hopefully I won't see an increase on Friday. That will put me back on target to be down 40lbs by the end of March, which is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Chick-fil-a for lunch, probably a lean cuisine for dinner. This whole 'getting back on the wagon' thing is getting easier and easier.

Day 77

Having just stuffed my face for St. Patrick's day and destroying all the progress that I made last week, I'll take solace in posting the comparative pictures from the day I started and this past Friday when I hit the 37lb mark. Pictures are after the break, because nobody really wants to see this stuff without preparing themselves, including me.

Day 75

Read it and weep, haters.

Ok, to my knowledge there are actually no haters here, but OH MY GOD, what a rush it was to see that number come up. For those of you playing the home game, that's 6.2lbs this week, for a total of 37lbs even.

So the good news is that I've lost 37lbs in 75 days. The bad news (which isn't really all that bad) is that I need to buy two more new belts. I just bought a new brown belt maybe a month and a half ago, and I'm down to the next to last notch on that one. My black belt, which I haven't yet replaced, is now inappropriately long.

Christine and I had dinner at Bertucci's again last night, and I'm pleasantly surprised each time we do. I had a chicken caesar salad and a plat of roasted tuscan vegetables (zucchini, broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes) and it was a wonderful meal for very few calories indeed.

For dessert I did something really tasty - I cut up a big banana, put it in a bowl, and then spooned a big hunk of fat free Cool Whip on top of it. The bananas and the Cool Whip together very nearly tasted like a banana cream pie, which is one of my favorite things. And it was roughly no calories.

One of the things I said I'd do at the beginning of this exercise was take more of the front/side pictures of myself, so as to reinforce the progress I'm making. I've been putting it off, because I've got so much weight to lose that I'm actually afraid they'll discourage me. After looking at those first pictures of me, how different could I possibly look, ten pounds lighter?

This morning, though, I decided that 37lbs was almost 10% of my body weight, so I'd go ahead and snap a few new photos for comparison. I'll upload them this weekend. Not earth shattering, but there's definitely a difference, which feels pretty damn good.

Day 74

Last week's weigh in really sucked ass. I was up 2lbs, back to 380lbs on the dot. Proof that my body can handle a lot, but a full blown weekend with the guys was just too much.

When I last wrote, I was proud that I'd been able to go nuts with my friends and then get back on my diet when they left. The next test came when my weigh in was bad - another thing that could have made me lose my way. Well I didn't, so just deal with it.

Admittedly, last Friday we went bowling with our friends Alex and Amelia, and I had two mozzarella sticks, a modest portion of a shared plate of cheesy fries, and later three or four slices of Domino's pizza (medium, so they were little slices) and about seven bottles of Bud Light. That was delicious, if not a particularly good idea, but then starting again on Saturday, we got back on it and have been since.

The usual barrage of Chobani, protein bars, and protein shakes have made up most of my food this week, though I have to give a shout out to Tropical Smoothie Cafe, with which I am obsessed. The Buffalo Chicken Wrap (a bit of a splurge at 600 calories) is consistently amazing, and their big fruit smoothies, if you order them with Splenda rather than Turbinado, often clock in under 200 calories. Try the Jetty Punch!

I didn't get paid for that, I swear.

Day 67

So here we are, hurdling toward yet another weigh-in day.

I didn't talk about it in my last entry, but my weigh in from last week was a real revelation for me. My eating habits during the weekend prior to my most recent weigh-in were not so good. On Saturday, I ate a pizza. It was phenomenal. And I drank for the first time this year - I had plenty of wine at dinner with Christine's folks, and a little more when I got home. Given all of that stuff, I still managed to lose 2.5lbs last week.

That's just an illustration for me of how aggressively I was eating for years. If I can have a weekend where I eat a pizza, drink wine, and munch on cheeses and other assorted whatsit, and still lose a significant amount of weight, that's pretty impressive. Gaining weight at my size requires significant punishment on a regular and sustained basis. Judging by the fact that I've been in the 350-400 range for probably six or seven years, apparently I've been up to the challenge.

Having the guys in town this past weekend led to more excess, which I've mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I've eaten much worse, but this past weekend was absolutely the worst I've eaten since January 2nd when I started this little enterprise. But (and yeah, I'm a little proud of myself) I got back on the wagon on Monday and have been eating well since then.

Tomorrow morning's test will be how my body responds to the whole thing. If I was to express a hope, I'd hope I was still down about 1lb. But we'll just have to wait and see. No more big special events coming up for a few weeks, so Christine and I agreed to try to eat reasonably this weekend. It would be nice to put up a big number next week.

Day 65

Ok, so it's been a while. Again. Even though I haven't been writing, I've still been doing the underlying work.

I did weigh in on Friday and it was more good news - 378lbs on the mark, for a total loss of 32.8lbs. Of course, the downside was that my friends were in town from New York this weekend, and we ate in a fashion that would have made Attila the Hun tear up with pride.

I've spent the past few weeks fortifying my healthy food reserves. After my friend Chad gave me the protein shakes for my birthday, I went out and bought a different flavor of that brand (cookies and cream) for some contrast. Both of them taste great, and 500 calorie, 50g protein shake in the morning has been holding me until lunch. Don't cry for my Chobani stockpile, though, they just get rolled into Lunch or an afternoon snack.

I also got some different protein bars which, while expensive, are amazing. They're peanut butter and jelly flavored, which is pretty outrageous, and they have enough dietary fiber to unclog a shower drain. Or whatever.

After this past weekend, though, we don't have any more special events for a few weeks. I should be able to buckle down on the weekends and really make some headway. 32lbs in 65 days is a pretty good mark, and I'm excited to keep it going.

I'm trying to cook a bit more - Christine does a great job, but I haven't been contributing much. I made Slow Cooker Hawaiian Chicken last week (link) and proceeded to eat it for lunch five days in a row. That would bore a lot of people, but I was happy as a clam. Apparently this is an attribute that I share with my father.