Week 21 Day 1

Seven weeks down and life to go.

The mantra is "one week, one pound."

Last week was 323.0 and Monday morning's was 321.4, that is -1.6 if I did the math right. So next week's minimum is 319.2.

So I missed the goal for the second time and it still sucks. I am still tracking as if I lost the one pound for two weeks hence the minimum of 319.2 instead of 320.4.

Obviously I have no one to blame but myself. Maybe that is why people get married, so they have someone else to blame when they get fatter. What sucks is that while I still enjoyed a nice dinner on Friday night and Saturday night I didn't eat a lot of food during the day. The burger and chili cheese fries at the Mac on Sunday night might have been a tipping point. Really the issue is the lack of aerobic activity and the portion sizes of my meals. Low calorie and high volume is great, but especially when eating out I have trouble getting the low calorie part while still desiring high volume. So my brother is right I have to wean down my meals to shrink down the capacity of the old stomach. It probably helps him that he has undiagnosed stomach cancer or a tapeworm or something.

So now this week is hell, again, because the penalty clause remains and I took the Healthe Trim this morning. That means NO caffeine this week and drinking water all morning and waiting three hours before breakfast. If I miss again next week, I think the clause is removal of a limb, but I'll just be back to tracking calories and taking food pictures again. Good times. (edit) I think the second week penalty will be walking to and from the mail box at home and/or sitting on the exercise bike for 15 minutes. We'll see how it goes.

The second goal? The second goal is getting better.

I did my seven minute morning perk up five times last week. It's not bad and I am still trying out different exercises. Still looking to add an evening seven minute workout before going to bed or a bit earlier. Now that the weather went from way too hot to way too cold I am still dubious about walking outside. Plus the whole swine flu thing has me leery of people and the outdoors in general.

Took the clothes to Goodwill and now I am cleaning up the stacks of bills to be filed and generally getting the office in shape again. I got a wireless printer/scanner/copier so I could move some furniture around and remove the old scanner. Now I really can launch a space shuttle with 2 Desktops and a Laptop running at the same time. After getting the bills and my checkbook for 2009 straightened out I have to work on cleaning out the office closet. Probably time to dump the old comic books. Anyone want 20,000 or so comics? Cheap. Plus I have assorted collectable, that term is used loosely, cards.

Still have way too many books filled with way too much crap too. CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, action figures and the like are also taking up too much space in my place. I'll be happy if I don't have to move all that stuff in the next transition.

'til then I will keep on keeping on.

Later.

Week 14 Day 1

Alright back from vacation and back to the regularly scheduled life.

Meals are back on track and things and settling down.

The holiday weekend wasn't bad eating wise despite my better efforts and I look forward to making good food choices this week.

Let's go back and reset the numbers. When this whole thing started fourteen short weeks ago I was at three hundred and fifty pounds. Now that is nowhere near my all time scale tipping of a verified three hundred and seventy, but it was pretty bad. I did not feel well and my body was giving clear indications that what I was doing to it was not making it happy in other ways.

My lowest weight so far has been three hundred twenty one and a decimal or two and this morning was at three hundred thirty one and a half. My specific goal is one pound a week and that resets every week. Read a different way on week 66 day 1 I will be no less than 52 pounds lighter than I am today and that fits nicely with a two year goal of being around 220 pounds, but that's week 118 and who can plan that far in advance. A key to goal setting is to come up with big goals, but create small action steps that get you through each day.

On that front my action steps are no longer picture taking of food because I eat pretty much the same thing every day and it gets boring. I also won't be detailing the calorie counts anymore as I am getting well versed in the counts of each item of food I eat regularly and I cannot find counts on some irregular items. But we'll have the numbers here.

Action step one: daily exercise.

I have dumbbells and an exercise bike. I have a relatively safe walking area for a middle aged white dude. My body is stable and healthy enough for sustained movements. Now I have to get my mind in shape to do this starting today. I think the health wackos are trying to get people up to 30 minutes a day and like seven days a week. Right now I hope to get up to 30 minutes a week and move up from there.

Action step two: lower blood pressure.

I can track my BP at home so we'll follow this progress as the weight goes down and the exercise time goes up. I also will be avoiding salt even though I never use table salt already. I eyeball most food sodium content and stay away from 20% per servings or more items. Yes, I haven't had hamburger helper in months and I mostly avoid fast food and French fries both are loaded in salt. The trick is catching the low calorie, low fat foods that make up taste in salt content and I am getting better at catching those too, mostly frozen prepared meals where the sodium content isn't advertised.

Action step three: clean up my life.

To the extent that eating is emotional and comforting I will endeavor to make my life less emotionally tumultuous and more stable. I already started on this with an easy step of cleaning out my closet of old clothes and some junk. Next is cleaning out old books, then comic books and finally old furniture and crap I just don't throw away. I am also in the process of cleaning up my credit which for many reasons, none of them smart or logical, is terrible. I will put up a running total of debt as I already track this. The reward once I straighten that all out is either a house or a car. The time line matches up too as I figure this to take two years to put right.

So that is it for the serious portion of this run.

How about those Miss State Bulldogs? Forget that it was Jackson State University and School for the Blind. "We" won 45-7. When was the last time MSU put that number on any opponent? Not once under former head coach Croomer, not once. Even better the scoring happened in the second half, which indicates actual coaching is going on and schemes can be adjusted during halftime. At Auburn this Saturday night and they are a team in turn around too. We did well there two years ago and lost at home last year, but both teams have first year head coaches and more questions than answers and maybe we'll see a great game.

And fall television starts this week, technically. CW and FOX are rolling out some shows about a week ahead of everyone else, so catch the top rated, for one week, all new "Melrose Place". I'll be watching it for Katie Cassidy.

Later.

Week 12 Day 2

Monday was a mellow day. Late morning, some coffee and then we visited Uncle George and Aunt Audrey. I also got a lotto ticket so maybe 45 million reasons to come back soon.

Food wise wasn't too crazy, went to Alcapulco for Mexican food. I had the enchilada and a taco, both beef, along with rice and beans. Also a bit of cheese dip and salsa and chips. All very nice. Then for dessert we went to an awesome pie place called Betty's Pies where I had banana cream pie and strawberry-rhubarb pie, also had a bit of 5 layer chocolate pie and a taste of lemony heaven pie or some such name.

Dinner was a great grilled steak, microwave mashed potato stuff, and a really fantastic salad. I made the salad. Dessert was the last of the chocolate ice cream and the last of the vanilla ice cream.

I barely fit into the same shorts I wore on the way to Minnesota last week. I think they were shrunk in the wash.

I am debating a weigh in tomorrow morning versus the weigh in on Monday next week when I am back in the swing of things.

I got errands to run when I get back tomorrow. Oil change, emissions tests, hair cut, groceries and the like will fill up my Wednesday before returning for two long days of work before the holiday.

Should be able to post this tonight and I doubt I can ignore my scale in the morning so I've post them numbers in the am.

Later taters.