midweek 19

So I didn't do a end of the week 18 to let my announcement stay at the top of the page for a few days, but now I need to get back to writing.


I was at 360.5 this morning, for whatever that's worth.


More tomorrow when I'm not so tired :)

A delayed christmas present, some assembly required

So now that Christmas is over and the family's been told... Liz and I gave each other a christmas present that we can't unwrap until next June.

Liz is just over three months pregnant! All is going well so far ... That's all we really know at this stage, but details to be posted when we know them.

To answer the first questions that people always ask.... yes, this is our first child and no, we don't know the gender yet.

As to names, the front runners right now are Timothy Michael and either Abigail Elizabeth or Sarah Elizabeth.

How's that for a 100th post :)

middle of week 18

So I've made some progress, so now I just need to hold steady through the holiday.


Today: 360.3

Down for week: 1.7

Down overall: 32.5

middling fair

Some days I log in because I have something I want to say, something I want to talk about. I log in, type in a title, and go for it. Other days I just start writing for the sake of writing, and see where it takes me, and then force some sort of title at the end.

Guess which type of day this is :)

Today did not go as well as I would have liked. A coworker brought a bunch of baked sweets to work this morning, and I foolishly allowed myself a pumpkin doughnut. It was very good, but then again so not worth it. Then dinner tonight ended up being at Golden Corral as the new Olive Garden had a hour long wait (an Appalachian style buffet for those of you not familiar with it). On the bright side, I am mostly proud of the choices I made there.

My standard approach to buffets is to start with a big salad if there are any greens worth mentioning. Fortunately they had fresh spinach and spring mix, so that was a treat. The salad dressings left much to be desired, but I went with Italian which usually has more good fats and fewer additives than most. I really prefer a light (and no HFCS) catolina, but that's hard to find when you're out places. Then I had some corn, baked fish, and roasted turkey breast.

The bad - way too much food in total. The good - at least almost everything I had was a "power food" in abs diet parlance.

In the end, I guess I'd say today was an "off plan" day, but no worse than a middling day overall. I may not have met my ideals, but I didn't give up on them altogether as I have so many days in the past. And I was conscious of my decisions and their ramifications, an important step in retraining my mind and appetite.

Tomorrow I'm off to mom's family.

Oh, and if you're a sporadic reader, be sure to check back next Wednesday for big news.

christmas plans

So today was a solid day, I've recorded everything and got out of the day with 2 points to spare.

Tomorrow starts the Christmas hurtles. Tomorrow my parents are coming down to Chilli, and we'll probably go out to the Olive Garden (just opened last weekend). Olive garden is one place where the food is generally less point friendly than I realize, so I will have to be careful.

Then Saturday is dinner with my mom's family. I probably will only try to roughly estimate calories at best on that day... everything home made the way grandma used to do it (because grandma is the one actually doing it in this case).

Sunday is just a normal day, and Monday should be fairly straight forward, food wise, though we're doing gift exchange with my parents.

Tuesday has at least two Christmas family meals, so another write off. But since everybody knows we'll be going to everybody else's thing, we may be able to get out somewhat less stuffed than normal. Then again, its Christmas... nobody has that much will power :)

I will try to post as regularly as I can, though I will be on the road a lot this weekend.


Hope everyone has safe travels and a happy holiday where appropriate. If you don't have a holiday coming up, well, have a good winter solstice tomorrow :)

week 17 - first weigh in

So here it goes.

I was a little off on my estimate a couple of days ago. I've backtracked further than I could admit to myself. I'm back up to 362 even. So I'm up 19.4 from my low point on November 1, but still down 30.8 from where I started back in August. Surprisingly, I can still make my "End Obesity in 2008" goal if I get back on track at 2 lbs a week. I realize that is not very realistic, but I'm surprised that it isn't completely implausible yet.


Off to a good start today though. I did a workout on the treadmill, and now I'm off to find some breakfast (and I've already got the spreadsheet open and ready to go for week 18).


Goal for week 18: lose 1 lb despite Christmas parties, etc.

weigh in tomorrow

Tomorrow I get to do a weigh in again, for the first time in quite some time. My new scale arrived today, and its all set up and ready to go.

I fully expect to be disappointed in myself tomorrow. What I hope to do is to see it as a motivator, not have a "ok, well this is just a big waste of time" type of response.

Week 17 is almost done.


So, in anticipation of a horrible weigh in tomorrow, what have I learned so far on this journey?

I've learned that I have to stay with it every single day. If I have to stray from the straight and narrow, I have to accept that, and go back to being good the very next meal. I can't allow myself to say, oh, I had a bad day yesterday, I'll just make it a whole weekend off, then I'll go back to being on plan.

I've learned that I need to keep posting, even when the news can only be bad. It is so much more fun to post positive results! It is fun to come on here when the number is trending down, down, down each week. But if I don't post bad weeks, how is the blog ever going to help?

I've learned that I need to be honest with myself. When the scale stopped working, I assumed I was more or less staying the same. Until that went on for a couple of weeks and I noticed less room in my clothes over time. I knew I was off plan! I knew that I had my fill of pizza at that office party, that I had a HFCS laden drink with that lunch. But I convinced myself that I was doing more good than bad, more positive decisions and fewer negative.

Tomorrow is going to be rough. I may feel like I want to give up. I am going to feel ashamed and disappointed in myself, and that I have let everybody down, most importantly myself.


Several weeks ago I said I need short, small goals so I can reach them and use the pride as a motivator.

Upcoming goals:

End of 2007 - down 1 lb. With all of the family gatherings and travel over the next week, I can't realistically expect to make much progress between now and the end of the month. But I can hope not to lose any more ground. Just doing that will require me to stick pretty firmly to plan for the week and a half.

End of January 2008 - down 15 from tomorrow's weigh in. If I am on plan, this should be easy, if I'm off plan, this is impossible. Therefore this goal is basically "get and stay on plan for January."

Then we'll see where to go from there.

not so good

so today didn't go as well. Had to spend a lot longer on the road than I had expected for work, and in a higher stress situation than I had planned. Thats really no excuse, but there it is. So I ended up having a fairly not on plan lunch. I tried making up for it a bit at the gym, but such things never really equal out.

So i should get my new scale tomorrow. I'm guessing i'll weigh in at somewhere between 350 and 360, but we'll have to wait and see.

You're a mean one.....

So a friend of mine must have gotten tired of me not having weigh-ins, and is sending me a scale as a Christmas gift. It should arrive Wednesday or so. Hopefully I won't break this one quite as quickly :) I do feel a little sheepish, we've been good friends for oh, nine years or so now, and I don't think i've ever gotten him a christmas gift...

In some ways, I confess I'm actually a bit of a Grinch. I mean I love Christmas lights and flowers and carols and parties and all that. (and of course all the unhealthy foods that goes without saying ;) ) I've got at least a little of Christmas decoration in more than half of the rooms of my house ... only time of the year I do anything that could even be considered decoration... including a nine foot + Christmas tree that I went out and cut myself. I'm really into the pageantry and the festive feeling and the cheeriness of Christmas.

But on the other hand, Liz and I haven't gotten each other Christmas gifts for the past three years (counting this year), we've only managed to send out Christmas cards one Christmas out of the six we've been married (twelve if you add in years dating). I still vaguely consider myself a protestant Christian (if only loosely affiliated at best) but I haven't attended a candlelight service or even church on Christmas Sunday of my own volition in nearly a decade.

In all, you could say I celebrate a rather selfish version of Christmas... I'm happy to expend the effort to put up a tree and a few lights, maybe sing a few songs... but everything I really enjoy about the holidays are the zero effort type of stuff. Watching old Christmas cartoons [btw, the reference the other day was to Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, the old claymation cartoon special], visiting with family, sitting in front of a Christmas tree and a fireplace or waking up to open presents and have hot cocoa.

Of course, I guess that's the way little kids see Christmas... maybe some people just never grow up.

another solid day

That makes two days.

The down side to committing to writing in the blog is that I have to come up with something to say. Today was fairly non-eventful. The bad weather that seems to have hit most of the northern half of the country has missed us more or less completely... I think all of the little snow we got yesterday is gone by now.

The only really external challenge this week should be Saturday, with a Christmas gathering for my mom's side of the family. Then of course Christmas eve and Christmas day next week. But I guess the bright side of not having much time off at Christmas is not being at home for a full week with all of the Christmas leftovers. I'll go, have one meal, and get to leave everything behind, and get back to my regular schedule pretty quickly.


So today I've proven to myself I can stick to this for a weekend. Now lets see how I do with a work week.

a tower made of a million bricks...

Some victories come in the form of winner takes all, do or die. Others are simply the sum of a series of small victories. Today was a small victory for me. I've recorded all of my food for the day, stayed under on points, did not violate any of my cardinal rules, did my exercise, and even got some of the housework done. And if I do the same tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, the large victories that I need in my life are all but inevitable. I just need to stay focused on that one brick at a time, and I'll get there.

I can't say that I feel as happy or excited as I had hoped to feel after today. But I am glad that I've made this first step towards getting my goals back on track. And tomorrow will be day 2.

My goal for tomorrow, repeat today's positive steps, clean the refrigerator, and then go grocery shopping so that I have some healthy options in the house. Then its back to work on Monday.

December 15 (2) - good morning again

So the day hasn't been nearly as productive as I originally planned. I got some straightening done, but ran out of steam at around noon, so went back to sleep for a few hours.

We've had a inch or two of snow, enough that the grass is covered, but the sidewalks have already melted clean. More snow to the north though, so my parents aren't coming down after all.

Anyway, off to find myself a very late lunch before I start munching on everything in sight :(

December 15 - good morning

So the day's off to a good start. I've done my treadmill and had a light breakfast (Kashi crunch cereal... I highly recommend it).

My parents may or may not be coming down this evening, depending on the weather, so I need to do some straightening today.

Other than that, my goals for today are to finish putting up the Christmas lights, do a load of laundry, and take out the recycling. I also need to go to the kitchen supply store for a last Christmas shopping item.


And staying on plan.

week 16 report in

Harsh reality time. I still don't have a scale that works (it wants to report me at 327 lbs). Based on how my clothes are fitting and how I feel, I think a more realistic estimate is 358 or so. This is unacceptable.

I may take some time to try to figure out why this has happened. But I've been doing that now for six weeks, and I haven't found any clue. So as of right now, the last six weeks are deemed irrelevant.

Saturday, December 15th is going to be the day that I get back on track.

I've gone from frustrated to angry to self pitying to depressed over the past several weeks. Now I'm just determined. I am going to get back on track.

Step 1 - blog to excess.

I don't know why, but going easy on myself about recording and blogging always leads to being a slacker in other ways. Skipping exercise, buying a bottle of pop because I have a headache, having whatever I want at the office Christmas party because it's a Christmas party. Indulging in cravings.

I don't even know if I have any more than two readers left at this point. If I do, it is because those of you who read this are much more loyal than I deserve, and I won't forget it. Tomorrow I'm off, and I'm going to spend the day on house work. During the course of the day, I will blog, at a minimum, every time I have any food. I probably won't keep up that pace next week, but I will write once a day until I am back on pace.

Step 2 - resurect the food chart.

I haven't kept a full day on my food chart since the last day I finished a full week on plan, six weeks ago. That ends. It simply does not make sense that I am willing to lose sleep for computer games or the like, and not to take the time to better myself.

Step 3 - read blogs and post comments

Of all of the things I've done wrong over the past several weeks, the one that causes me the strongest feeling of shame is that I mostly stopped reading other blogs. I've already started the process of getting caught up with my blog-land friends, who I hope will welcome me back into the fold.




"You put one -- foot in front -- of the other and -- soon you'll be wal -- king cross the --- floororor." (major bonus points if you get the reference)

week 15 and counting

So this was a pretty good week. Scale is still acting screwy, so no weigh in. It's been a while since I've had anything that I felt noteworthy to mention here, but a lot has happened just in the last day or so....


First thing, we got our Christmas tree yesterday and got it set up. We ended up with a nine foot cannan fir, which is the largest i've ever gotten to put up. We got the lights on the tree, but no ornaments yet, and unfortunately Liz and I work fairly incompatible schedules the next couple of days, so we may not get it finished finished until Saturday. One down side was that the farm we go to raised their prices pretty significantly since last year, so that was a bit frustrating.

Yesterday was also the first snow of the winter for us. Only about ankle deep, but enough to look pretty and to be a small hassle on the roads (mostly because of other people not knowing how to handle it).

And tomorrow is my birthday :) We had a little pizza party at work today for lunch, and I over indulged a bit.

So 15 weeks into the project, what have I accomplished? I had 10 really good weeks, followed by about two miserable weeks, and 3 weeks of more or less treading water. I'm going to make another strong push on myself to really kick it back into high gear starting tomorrow, as a birthday present to myself.