W3 D2

I skipped a few days. Blame it on depression, blame it on crazy eating over the last week or whatever, but today when I weighed in I was at the same weight I was at last time I was happy and was that almost a week ago.

W2 was marked with disappointing weigh-ins and generally lackluster eating. Also, mark the complete lack of exercise and you have a recipe for depression. No binge eating though and I powered through the whole thing by Sunday night.

I went shopping pretty much for the first time since starting with the food diary so you'll be seeing more home prepped meals at work and more low cal frozen dinners augmented with salads and fruit and the like at home for dinner. This should result in a bulking up of the wallet that hopefully coincides with a slimming of everything else.

I am still reluctant to release myself from breads and cheeses entirely. I did however invest in some G2, essentially vitamin fortified water from Gatorade, to get myself off the sodas. Supposedly any soda, diet or regular and caffeinated or not, is bad on the Healthe Trim. Either way, regular soda was between 120 and 140 calories per pop and two or three of those a day replaces an honest to goodness meal. I can still remember as a kid getting to drink Coke once or twice a week was a special occasion and now it will become so again.

I didn't think I was eating significantly less than I usually do, but that bubble was convincing burst. Maybe the claims from this diet pill about needing to eat less and feeling full are true. Anyways, making and bringing lunch should also help with another problem I have with lunch.

Every time I go out to eat I have a fear that whatever I get won't be enough food. So I get the spicy chicken sandwich and the fries and the root beer. Then I think I might still be hungry after all that so I add on the double stack (just in case) and if I am really feeling iffy I might LARGE size the whole thing to be more sure I don't starve in the 5 hours between lunch and dinner. Then I am lucky if I eat half the fries and even if I feel full after the chicken I can't let the double stack go to waste, right? And I always finish the soda and maybe get another from the vending machine downstairs. When I ate that lunch it was 1640 calories and 60 grams of fat (16 saturated). The good news I still have about 1000 calories for breakfast and dinner combined that day and 5 grams of fat. The bad news is that I can almost hear my arteries screaming for mercy.

So the grocery shopping focused on some veggie cheese substitute that I tried before and liked, bananas and salad which are meal staples and the low sugar Gatorade to help with non-soda drinking. I also got the Lean Cuisine dinners, some yogurt and some fruit cups. I should get more whole fruits and veggies but they are tricky and require slightly better meal planning than I have gotten to so far. I also didn't get any squash or zucchini so the veggie instead of noodle pasta dinner will be a few days delayed. That should be an experience.

I am hoping to add meal planning for next week and that means writing out a menu and shopping to the menu so I can make what I plan to eat and only eat what's on the meal plan. Got to talk to someone at work about a website they use for meal, menu and shopping. I think it's emealz or something like that.

Also need to focus on exercise, more the Nike tag JUST DO IT. Maybe force myself to sit on the exercise bike for 10 minutes and build it up. And if I'm already sitting there I might as well pedal it a little. It is hard to tricky myself into the whole thing.

W2 D5

No truth to the rumors that they took Michael Jackson to a children's hospital in hopes of reviving him.

Ate well yesterday and got back on track. Today starts out with a traffic accident (AGAIN) on I-85 on the southside. Let me tell you starting the day drinking 64 oz of water and getting stuck in a 2 hour traffic delay do NOT mix.

Still no exercise, I have no energy after fighting traffic home and no motivation other than not wanted to die slowly. Hopefully with the high blood pressure I'll go out like John Ritter and not drag it out like Dick Clark. Go to sleep Dick, just go to sleep. Your work on this planet is done.

Alright, two morbid celebrity death jokes in one post are enough, so like David Carradine I am out of here.

W2 D4

That sounds like a bad droid from a Star Wars movie.

Yesterday was a much better calorie intake day, but I ate dinner at about 10pm so the results are not visible on the scale.

I wonder if I ate soup and or other only liquid foods for dinner if the weigh in the next morning would be really impressive. I might need to keep that in the back pocket for W3 D1 weigh in.

The good news is that even though I had issues making dinner last night, the cheap rice cooker I bought at Kroger is a piece of shite and is now in the trash, I didn't experience any desire to just mow down food. Even after such a long wait I found myself getting full and stopping at about have way through. That also means move leftovers tonight, but no delay in eating so maybe I can go to bed before 1am.

Need to bust my ass a lot as I am falling behind in my daily goals and that could endanger the weekly goal only two weeks into this whole new lifestyle.

We'll see as I missed breakfast this morning due to late wake-up and the three hours delay so I will have a "big" lunch this afternoon and eat the leftovers early tonight. If the loss number is small or gods forbid a step backwards, then there might be some emotional gorging on whatever ice cream is on sale.

Week 2 Day 2

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crobin11/

Go see my not so secret shame. Yesterday was terrible for me. I was going to get Chick-Fil-A for breakfast and I did knowing that the cheese and the fried chicken would be a big calorie bounce. Still it was the morning and should be the more forgiving meal especially for a protein leaning meal.

Then came lunch. I was going to go to Applebee's and get a salad, however there were panhandlers at the red light so I turned in order to avoid them. Stupid car's AC isn't working so my windows are down and I'd have to talk to these seedy looking guys otherwise. So now I am going the wrong way and decide to get Chinese food. I'd done the research and figured on chicken with mixed vegetables and steamed rice for a safer meal. I got the right main course, but the rice wasn't steamed nor white. It was fried and with chicken in it. I should have just thrown it out, but I ate it and about half of the chicken with vegetables. The other major problem with this meal was the amount of sodium used in making it and in the soy sauce, so none of this meal was good for me in the end.

An easy snack later that afternoon was Jell-o pudding. I needed the snack because lunch was Chinese food and it's true, I was hungry an hour later.

Then it was dinner with the brother at La Parilla. They have really no healthy menu. Their vegetarian selections are still loaded with cheese and sour cream and guacamole. So I ordered the La Parilla dip with chunks of steak, chicken and shrimp in it for an appetizer, I ordered the big nachos for my dinner and I ordered a 32 oz. Budweiser to make it all feel better. I was disgusted with myself and I really, for the first time I can recall, did not even care that we left food on the table. It plays with my head the idea of eating everything you order and I ignored it last night. I did finish that beer though.

Finally, I had some Ben and Jerry's Fro-Yo Half Baked. The pint is supposed to be four servings. It was barely one. And so ends the worst day of eating for me in the last week and a half.

Almost 6,000 calories and I weighed 1.4 pounds more this morning than I did the day before.

I think I was lucky it was only that much. Today will be a payback day, with both food and exercise.

Week 2 Day 2

Holy smokes down a total of 9.6 pounds thus far and that is keeping me ahead of the one pound a day goal. It's really 50 in 60 days, but fractions are a nuisance.

No real issues with hunger pains or cravings. I am still pretty much eating what I want to eat (See the Mtn Dew WoW and the multiple candy bars) and my exercising is still pretty much limited to parking farther away and walking and doing some stretching and free weights. The exercise bike is getting less attention than my love life and that ain't getting any attention at all.

I wonder if the diet pills that suggest drinking 64 ounces of water or more in three hours have worked out some scheme where all that processing of water equals burning just enough calories and keeps you from eating too much too early to all but guarantee some loss.

Also another comment about why you should (or at least why I did) measure yourself at various locations on your person.

I know there is some psychology to weight gain and body image just like for anorexia but maybe reversed. I see myself today in the mirror and think "not bad" even though Chris from 1997 would puke at the same image. I also think if my chest is x inches and my waist is x – y inches than I still look, I think I'll use this word, proportional. So even though I don't know without measures that I am proportional I still see myself that way when I look in the mirror. And if I put on a t-shirt I can pretend to myself that I look fantastic.

However, once I measured the areas mentioned on Sunday of week one I could no longer pretend that what I see and reality were the same thing. While my chest was X and my hips were barely an x – y number, the "Middle" number was x + z. Easily seen, even by me, in a profile view but I was still "not sure" this was true until then. That made me crap myself a little bit. So in the measurements department I need to lose not only y, but also z to see the kind of improvements I am hoping for and get my actual body to match what I think my body should be.

For all you math guys, no cheating as all variables are real numbers with no negatives (so y can't be a -3 making is x - -3, ya know?).

I picked Chris from 1997 because that was my best year weight and image-wise, ah to be 27 and under 250 lbs again.

Slowly dropping my calories per day too, not because I am intentional skipping food, but mostly from a lack of snacking and just choosing different, healthier options. It's not easy, but so far it's been easier than I thought it would be.

Start of Week 2

The great news is I end week one down 8.5 pounds. The bad news is that the first week is always the easiest for dropping water weigh and just shifting down to smaller meals.

Sunday was terrible in theory. I didn't get up until nearly 1pm and didn't eat solid food until 8:30 pm. Went to the Taco Mac in Newnan which is a great place if you can stand the musical selections. No Braves game and they decided to show the Angels/Dodgers game with no audio. I had soup, wrap and ice cream and still managed my lowest calorie day of the week. I think I figured out the secret to losing weight. Sleep 20 hours a day.

Then I went to a movie and avoided the concession area. And that was how week one ended. Today I am back on the full pill input with the morning, noon and nighttime Healthe Trim pills.

I did the free weights yesterday and not the bike. The plan on the weights is increasing reps and sets, not on increasing the amount of weight lifted. That is at least partially due to the fact that I only have one set of dumbbells and they are of a fixed weight and partially due to the fact that I really don't need Hulk-like biceps to feel like a man. I would like to be able to lift a telephone receiver without getting winded though.

I also have to say I got more support than I was expecting when I went out to eat this weekend. Sometimes you don't remember who your friends are until they remind to take a picture of your food.

Finishing Week One

So far so good.

Without making any major changes in what I eat weighing in today I was down 7.8 pounds from Monday.

Weekends suck for breakfast which is weird since I have all the time in the world to make anything I want. Mostly, I just want to sleep in. Add that desire to the Healthe Trim no food for three hours rule and breakfast goes right out the door on Saturday and Sunday. In fact, today I didn't get up until 1pm so my first meal won't come around before 4pm.

That's all on me.

Otherwise, the exercise is coming along now. The walk yesterday wasn't too unpleasant and my heart seemed to pound slightly less in my chest for thirty minutes afterward.

So OJ, sandwiches and a nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday made for a casual Saturday of dining.

I also will incorporate measurements on a weekly basis with the same rules as the weight, no starting numbers just the change from week to week.

Those measurements will be in the following areas (please refer to the image at the top – not entirely to scale)

So the numbers will look like this

Left Ankle: 0

Left Thigh: 0

Hips: 0

Middle: 0

Chest: o

Neck: 0

Left Bicep: 0 (done in a curl flex position)

Left Wrist: 0

Besides the walking and the exercise bike which I will try to get in some time on today, I am doing very light dumbbell workouts with 6.6lb weights. I will be doing curls, presses, wrist rolls, inverse curls and lifts. If I called something by the wrong name there I apologize. Maybe I'll do a video to demonstrate them at some point. I also do calf raises and squats about every other day but I don't seem to have much of a plan. I will look at creating a spreadsheet to track the reps and sets for these exercises too. The idea isn't to add muscle but more to create tone and some sort of endurance by increasing reps and sets along the way.

Mainly, I'll want to see – numbers about except maybe bicep and thigh numbers which would hopefully stay about the same or go up slightly. I really don't expect a big change in ankle or wrist but my in depth research does indicate that weight loss can come from the farthest parts going in, so you might not see a big shrinking in the hips, but your ankles or wrists could be showing a faster improvement. I have no idea and will go with the idea that more information is better than less for now.

We'll see how it goes when week two starts tomorrow.

Daily Food diary Day 6

So yesterday was Friday and the first of the three regular going out nights of the week. It wasn't too bad. Drinking Diet Coke isn't my favorite option, but it's okay to get caffeine that late when I am planning to stay up until at least 3am.

In case you didn't know it Applebees is almost literally the worst place on Earth to eat. They refuse, actually refuse, to release nutritional information unless required by law to do so. You might have to sue the corporation to find out what you are eating. What information you can gleam from other sources leads you to believe they have good reasons to hide the truly deadly combinations of calories and fats that they perpetrate as a menu. I will say they do have a Weight Watchers points guides for some items, but that is it. The place is just terrible for someone on a diet. That said, their effing food can taste pretty damn good and you can minimize the damage if you are willing to work it. I didn't but I stayed away from fried foods and added a salad that had bacon, cheese and croutons on it. I removed the croutons myself. I got the Margherita chicken that included steamed vegetables (good) and mashed potatoes that had some kind of ham or bacon on top of it (bad). The chicken was topped with mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese and some tomatoes.

Going backwards, I polished off the pasta from Tuesday with some high caffeine Voltage. I needed the bridge from lunch at noon to the dinner at 11pm. I did skip the bread and the sugary dessert at least.

Lunch was also terrible, the so called Fresco menu at Taco Bell didn't work out for me as I wasn't familiar that they were the exact same as items already on the menu and you had to say the secret password "Fresco" to get the slightly lower calorie option. Secondly, my other big problem at lunch. I order way more food than I need, but never more than I can eat. To be fair I rarely run into the pile of food I cannot finish so the onus is on me to control my eating by under ordering. So that was just me being a poor steward to my own best interests.

Breakfast was a breeze, but now I am done with the old breakfast bars and will be looking for other and more varied food options for my morning meals.

It was a bad day in reality and I was late getting up this morning and I walked and drank some OJ before the big weigh in. I was down .2 pounds! Down! After the ridiculously huge amount of food I ate on Friday I could not have been more happy with these results.

I left the afternoon Healthe Trim pills at work. They were just the multi-vitamins and not the key thermo-energy pills that should boost metabolism so I will be alright.

Taking pictures of my food in front people was a little strange, luckily they were very supportive.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Day Five and still Alive!

Here's the link to the visual food diary.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crobin11/sets/72157619773592202/

This first week is really still more of a base line of what I eat on the regular. Next week I'll really start experimenting with newer, healthier foods and be bringing my lunch in with me more often as a cost saving measure too. Though those five dollar foot long subs are a good bargain in my book.

I can't explain my ability to eat almost anything at any time, I just can. The same dinner three nights in a row, meh. I would do really well in prison where you eat bologna sandwiches 7 days a week. Don't get me wrong, I love variety and am more than willing to try new foods and new restaurants, but give me a plate of lasagna and I am a happy camper.

Breakfast still proves to be the biggest challenge. No motivation for getting up early and making anything fancy and no desire to plan out meals. I still think it's important to load up on protein early in the day, but most quick and easy breakfasts are not protein heavy. Can you eat a workout bar for breakfast and not workout? Is the calorie count worth the lack of taste and possible lack of satisfying fullness? Definitely looking for better options at the Kroger this weekend.

Lunch is too easy. Many fast food (fat food?) options in Forest Park, and as proven they do have healthy menu items. I still don't like rocking the boat in the drive thru, so I have avoided that because I don't really like French fries and yet will eat them but I also won't try to order a side salad instead of fries in the drive thru. I really hate people who try to get complicated in the drive thru orders with special requests or multiple orders. You get one number choice and an add on and that is it. "I'll have the 6, Large size with a Coke and a double stack." Boom, done. I went thru only one drive thru so far at the BK and just got the salad (no dressing) and it was quick and easy. Anyway lunch should be easier next week when I bring in my own.

Dinner has been the best of all. Cook up a heap of pasta. Usually that is two meals but I broke it out first into four containers and thereby saved myself from trying to judge on the plate. I also cut down the bread with dinner from 4 to 2 to 0 slices by the Thursday repast. I little bit of sugar as I ate a Milky Way last night, more calories than the Snicker with Almonds (I knew that was the healthy candy bar).

Not feeling too hungry or any odd cravings and I think a big key is eating early, between 6:30-7:30pm, and not snacking afterwards. As I run out of the sodas I will replace them with non-sodas and see how I feel about that. Water, fruit juices, teas and I wonder what else? Maybe, Gatorade.

I also finally sucked it up and walked to the mailbox and back last night. It only took about ten minutes even though it felt like an hour, so I'll need to add more distance to the trip around the apartment complex. As soon as I can make it once without crying like Sally Fields at the Oscars. Only more with pain than with joy.

Lost a bit more between Thursday's weigh in and Friday, about 1.6 pounds. Still not that impressed, but when I get down 16 from where I started on Monday I will be whistling a happy tune.

Day 4 of the Food Diary…

Wow, well if I need to eat 2200 or less a day in order to lose weight it is easy to see why I am not losing any based on the first three days of this week.

Monday – 3,060 calories

Tuesday – 2,748 calories

Wednesday – 2,940 calories

Not surprising then that after the Sunday to Monday drop I have only lost one pound.

The Healthy Trim pill regimen isn't tough. I was doing the GNC heart healthy at one time and I am somewhat over the idea of taking daily vitamin supplements under the heading of "Don't know if they really help."

Yesterday's food included two servings of free office pizza that also had a ton of cheese which keeps my dairy number up higher than I want. I am also thinking of ways to eat Italian without the pasta and am wondering how gross it might be to try shredded zucchini or squash instead of pasta noodles with the sauce. That might be a Sunday experiment.

My main problem is still the exercise, always the exercise. I am too exhausted at night and I hate the idea of waking up in general so waking up earlier to exercise feels terrible. In a mind over matter battle I cannot get my mind to matter. This is definitely where having an exercise buddy would help. I wonder if there is a place to find that on the internet?

I am still eating what I want or at least not forcing myself to eat foods I don't want. Looks like breads and pastas are still not good and clearly pizza isn't an ideal food. If I don't start exercising soon, I will have to dramatically alter what I eat in order to lose any significant weight. Maybe that will be a good motivator.

Today should be fun, trying soy chocolate milk. Not as low on calories as you might want but has added vitamins. Also, going back to Subway to try a low-fat menu option hopefully with flavor. Dinner will probably be day three of the pasta.

Have a good one.

Day 3 Daily Check In

So I start today with a little bit of a disappointment. The weigh in this morning is the same number as yesterday. Now I just started taking the supposedly miraculous Healthy Trim yesterday, but I also feel as though I was eating a lot less food yesterday too so I was expecting a better result this morning.

The meals yesterday were a little better like I said. I had a bigger and more substantial breakfast. Those were the last pop tarts for me, but I like the breakfast drink in that it gives me some morning protein. I will continue to try to increase my morning protein intake and make it the high calorie meal of the day.

Lunch wasn't bad either. The Grilled Chicken salad from Burger King was a remarkable discovery. I am betting without croutons and cheese that the total calories are south of 200 on that meal. I like and am accustomed to ending meals with a dessert so the sugar free Jell-O pudding was a nice topper. It's also clear that the sodas with 120 calories a pop are a problem. I will look into more methods of flavoring water to vary my beverage choices.

Dinner was a huge surprise in that I was starving by the time I ate, but I was more than satisfied with the amount of food I had and I was glad I divided up the pasta before eating. The four pieces of Italian bread were only 90 calories a slice, but I have a strong feeling based on this morning's weigh in that I may have to be more concerned about carbohydrates than I really want to be. I love bread and pasta so cutting that out won't make me happy.

On the positive side with the Healthy Trim, their claim of cutting down on cravings for "bad foods" isn't necessarily inaccurate. Whether from the pills or the fact that I am posting everything I am eating on-line I haven't felt a strong craving for sugar and I haven't felt any hang over effects from cutting out coffee and caffeinated sodas.

The biggest negative is still the lack of exercise. This whole experience is for nothing if I don't get my lazy behind in the habit of more with a purpose for at least 30 minutes a day.

I was asleep again before 10pm and I am beginning to wonder if the evening pills don't have some kind of sleep agent in them. However, my energy levels throughout the day remained fairly consistent and a bit higher overall. No mid-afternoon doze off feelings and I wasn't as jittery as I thought I'd be either.

Plan Day Two

Day one recap.
Alright, I just want to say I had every intention of exercising yesterday. I got home around 6pm and made the lovely dinner you can see on my flickr page. Then around 7:30 I started to get very tired. I was in bed by 8:30 and didn’t wake up until this morning’s alarm at 6:20am. So no exercise, but I got a hella good night’s sleep which is also important for healthy living.

Meals were fine. I started out strong with a breakfast bar and coffee. Of course, this made me very hungry and I ran to lunch at 11:45 and got the meatball sub from Subway and wasn’t impressed with the tradeoff of flavors to calories on that meal. Dinner was simple with the PB&J sandwiches that were also loaded with calories.

I’d say my biggest challenges right now are all quantity related. I could have been fine with a 6” sub instead of the foot long. I also would have been fine eating a low-cal sub if I had even considered it. The three sandwiches for dinner could have easily been two. Still, without moderating my diet I did pretty well.

I also started Healthy Trim yesterday afternoon. So I took the two sets of pills with lunch and the one set with dinner, but I didn’t start the key thermogenic until this morning. So we’ll see how well this program works too. Plus, that crap is expensive. The full run of pills that I picked up ran me about $190 with shipping and taxes. It had a long way to go to prove that it is worth the cost.

So far I haven’t made any significant changes to my eating habits though by tracking them via pictures on the web I find myself considering what I am willing to eat based on what I want people to see me eating. It will be interesting to see how eating out will be affected later this week by this whole process.

Based on my starting weight Monday I am down 3 pounds this morning. Not putting much stock in that number because my starting weight was about 6 pounds higher than my average over the last month or so. I should get a better measure today and also get to factor in the use of the pills too.

I am also looking at Soy Milk and Soy Yougurts to replace the milk based ummm milk I use now.

New Day, New Plan

Starting today I am keeping a visual food diary of everything I eat that has any significant calorie count and will continue to do so for the next 60 days, or until I get sick of doing it.

I have in my head a plan to drop between thirty and fifty pounds by August 15 using at least the dual methods of diet and exercise. I know, I too think this is revolutionary.

I am going to run the photos to my flickr photostream. What? Where is that?

Here; http://www.flickr.com/photos/crobin11/

And I will blog about the eating and the exercising here on the regular blog.

http://crobin11.blogspot.com/

I won’t track a few items. No reason to track water or coffee drinking. I also chew a ton of Orbitz gum of any and all varieties. The calories in that gum are less than five calories per piece and the chewing probably offsets the calories.

I am also looking to reduce dairy consumption not for any particular political agenda, but just because I think I am slightly lactose intolerant.

The exercise will be mostly walking and exercise bike with some free weight and basic calisthenics to start. If I manage to not die or quit eventually I’d like to get through the basic Pilates workouts and then start going to the gym and meet with a trainer a few times a week to develop a solid foundation for healthy living.

Start simple, stay simple.

Gods help me.