This Week

I'm trying to decide if I sabotaged myself this weekend or actually did something good. Let me explain.

Things have been crazy at work. I've been putting in long hours, and haven't really had time to stop for lunch or snacks. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted, eat just a bit for dinner then crash so I can repeat the next day.

So here is a day-by-day (almost) record of my weight this week.

Monday: 249.6
Tuesday: 248.2
Wednesday: 247.4
Thursday: 246.5
Friday: 246.0

By Friday morning, I had lost 3.6 lbs, averaging .7 lbs per day. This means that, had the trend continued, I would have ended up with a 5 pound loss this week. Now if I had been on Biggest Loser, and had been exercising incessantly over the week, I wouldn't have worried about it. But I hadn't even done so much as walk all the way around the block. I was concerned that I had just been undereating terrifically, and that if I kept the very low calorie diet going, it would come back to bite me in the butt.

With that thought in mind, I actually made a conscious decision on Friday and Saturday to eat -- a lot. So much that when I got on the scale this morning, I hit 247.8. I don't feel bad about that number, because it represents nearly 2 lbs lost over this week, which is generally considered a safe amount of weight to lose.

So here's the question I posed earlier. Did I shoot myself in the foot, or was pigging out for a couple of days the smart thing to do? I guess we'll see.

This coming week promises to be very busy, as well. I expect to work long days every day, but I will also be away from the office for most of the week, as well. I think this poses some significant challenges. The biggest one is that when you don't have a refrigerator next to your desk to heat up the healthy meals you already prepared, it's much more convenient to eat out. And when you eat out, it's that much harder to eat healthy -- especially when you're on a military base, where most of the population runs 20 miles each week and actually needs extra calories just to maintain their weight.

Wish me luck.

Just a Couple Of Things...

Very short, to the point, boring post.

Thursday, I officially reached my lowest weight since mid-September: 248.9. I'm pretty happy about that.

So what do I do? Blow it on Friday. I did well until dinner, when I had a slice of pizza (only one, though!), a Domino's Chicken Parmesan sandwich (not my favorite sandwich, but still decent) and a couple of blueberry/lemon poppy seed muffins (MB was feeling adventurous). I had another one this morning, but other than that, I've been good.

Tomorrow is my official weigh-in, so we'll see how it goes.

Research

I'm going to throw something "out there" right now. This may shock those of you that have been following this blog, and have seen my sparkling personality shining through my prose, but I'm not a terribly popular person. I have two personal email accounts. One I use for subscriptions (it's the older of the two accounts), and the other I use for actual correspondence. The second receives only about three emails each week, mostly from old friends who don't really want to touch base with me as much as they want to spread the latest virus alert (don't open any more emails ever again or you will DIE!!!) or the oldest email petition out there (sign this and send it to all of your friends, or CBS will CANCEL TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL!). I don't even know when the last time was that my Yahoo account actually was used by someone who wanted me to reply to them. Well, besides the horde of Nigerian millionaire widows who need me to help get their fortunes out of the Bank Swiss Accounts and will "reward my generosity to the amount of $2m (dollars) for my help in this regard."

But just because it doesn't come from an actual person I know doesn't mean it's entirely worthless. I get almost weekly newsletters from Scientific American, and I found two articles that actually related quite well to this blog. This article discusses a study done recently by people who were on a weight loss program. Unsurprisingly, they found that those who ate healthy foods and exercised at least 30 minutes daily had lost at least 9 lbs at the end of six months. The interesting thing here (no sarcasm this time) was that those who recorded what they ate each day lost about double the amount of those who didn't use diet journals.

Now, I don't intend to log everything I eat. Nobody wants to read that, at least not yet. I do, however, plan to use this space to confess each time I eat something I shouldn't. (Which reminds me, yesterday, I had a bowl of Ramen noodles and two granola bars. Did I mention that already? If I did, just forget this parenthetical.) Today I've been perfect. Well for carbs, at least. But that's all I'm focusing on right now.

The other article indicates one way to be motivated to lose weight. Apparently, people who receive relatively small cash prizes for their efforts lose more weight than those who don't. This article puts a slightly different spin on it. Rather than gaining cash, the subject of the story bet his friend that he would lose a certain amount of weight each week. If he didn't, he would lose $500. Each week. That would motivate me...

I don't have the cash to pull off that kind of a bet. Fortunately, I do have that contest going with Rody. Hopefully that will be enough to keep me in line.

P.S. Speaking of staying in line, I want you all to know that when I left the convenience store next to my office today, I had NOT purchased chocolate chip cookies, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or pecan pies. Thanks, I'm proud of myself, too.

Resolutions

If you are one of the three people in this world who read (or pretend to read) this blog, I have some an announcement. Even though I hate goals (because I'm too lazy to follow through on most of them), I've made one of those "...every day" types of resolutions.

I've decided to write something -- anything -- every day. At least 500 words. I'm going to divide those words somehow between this blog, my other family blog and my own laptop. I'm thinking that if it has anything remotely to do with weight loss, I'll put it here. If it's anything else, I'll put it over on the other blog. And if all I can come up with is 500 random words, I'll keep those on my laptop, sparing you at least a bit of idiocy.

However, to spare you readers from what could end up being a very boring blog (and already has, at least a couple of times), I will do my best to keep the stuff posted here (and over there) relevant or clever (or both, if I can swing it).

And for what may end up being the other 300 days this year, let me apologize in advance. Thanks for your patience.

I'm Back... sort of

The holidays are usually pretty tough for people who are trying to watch their weight. In fact, most people I know end up throwing their hands in the air after the third Christmas party they attend and just start hoping that they won't gain more than about 5 lbs by the first Monday after New Year's Day.

You know, that should be a holiday. We could call it "resolution day" because nobody actually starts trying to lose weight/get in shape until after they start work again, anyway. The logic rationalization goes like this:

Thanksgiving, 10:00 AM: "I'm only going to have one small plate of food, and most of that will be raw vegetables. I have willpower!"
Thanksgiving, 5:00 PM: "Pecan pie is OK. Look at all the protein from the nuts!"
Day-after-Thanksgiving, 12:00 PM: "I'm exhausted from standing in line at Best Buy all day. I'm sure my glycogen stores are pretty much wiped out. I wonder if we have any more chocolate mousse pie?"
December 15, after Christmas party #3: "Screw it. Maybe I just won't gain any more weight."
December 26, after standing on scale: "Honey, I think we need new batteries. This can't be right. Why does it say I gained 15 lbs this week?"
December 31: "Okay, this is my last hurrah! No more onion dip! EVER!"
January 1 (Thursday): "I heard that pretzels are good for hangovers. I can't do this yet. Besides, who starts a diet on Thursday? Sunday morning, it's on."

The strange thing is that it sort-of-almost worked for me this year. Actually, I can't really claim any impressive stores of willpower. Any weight that I've lost since my last entry has pretty much been beyond my control. We had a family reunion over Christmas, and stayed with my in-laws for nearly two weeks.

Now, before I go any further, let me make this caveat, and let me make it clear that I am not saying this just because I can't sleep on the couch. This is the honest truth: I really like MB's family. My sister-in-law (who we stayed with) was such a gracious host that as MB and I pulled into our driveway, we looked around and honestly felt like it was not our home. So, Sarah did a great job, as did MB's mom. If you are reading this, I really thank you sincerely.

Here's the problem, though. I don't like being a house guest. I always feel like I'm imposing, so I don't let people know what I really want, even though I know they would give it to me instantly. But since I don't let them know what I want, I never get what I want, so I end up feeling sort of mildly irritated. I know it's my fault, and I'm trying to deal with it. Two cases in point (that relate to this blog perfectly): Breakfast and lunch.

Like many (if not most) Americans, breakfast with my in-laws was usually cold cereal. This was a problem for me for two reasons. First, I was still trying to at least pretend that I was on South Beach, so cold cereal should have been pretty much out -- even for phase 3. Second, I'm not that big of a cold cereal fan to begin with. So on about 7 of the 10 days we were in MD, I skipped breakfast altogether.

Lunch entailed a different problem altogether. Lunchtime was usually spent not at my sister-in-law's house, but at my mother-in-law's. Not a big deal, you think? This is the part where I point out that for many of those days, there were no fewer than 34 people at said house. If you didn't move fast, everything would be gone before you even realized that anyone was even hungry. Translation: Get in there and throw some elbows, or you get cold cereal for lunch, too. If you're lucky.

So for the majority of my vacation, I only ate dinner and a few snacks. (Dinner could be sparse as well, with 34 people. But it always tasted great! Thanks, Mom!) The days I ventured into the District I made up in calories for the days I lost, though, so at the end of the trip I came away with no gain or loss, according to Sara's scale. (I don't know how it compares with my own, so all I can measure is the difference in the time I was there.)

Then came Sunday.

On Sunday, I woke up with some sort of stomach flu. I won't go into the details, but by the time I weighed in yesterday, I had managed to lose 2.2 lbs since 12/19, coming in at 249.8.
Now, before any of you decide to go drinking from cesspools, hoping to contract amoebic dysentery, let me mention that illness is NOT a good way to lose weight. Today I was up .9 lbs, most of which I attribute to the fact that once my appetite came back, it came back with a vengeance. I've eaten quite a few things today that I shouldn't have (to include my late-night snack of a very large bowl of Chocolate Chex, and two granola bars). Besides that, I still feel a bit off. So, hopefully my digestive tract will come back online in the next couple of days, and I'll be able to get back to business.
Until then, though, I'm sure we still have a bit of pie in the fridge...