crazy crazy weekend

Ok, so I hardly know where to begin. This has been an excessively up and down weekend. I've been all over the place mentally, nutrition-ally, and even physically.

The short version - since my last post I've [in no particular order and no implications should be read into the order that anything appears] ....

had two flat tires in my car (the second one while I still had the spare on, forcing me to have the car towed across town to the tire store), been away for my office's semi-annual retreat, had my 6th anniversary, found out that someone I care about has cancer, got drunk for the first time in at least a year, went to a play at the Z-ville Community Theater, finished preparing the garden bed, started reading a fairly exciting new novel, said goodbye to a coworker who left us for another office, gotten sick, learned a couple of excellent new recipes, tried to help console a friend who was going through a relationship issue, visited with my parents and my in-laws, had dinner at the restaurant my in-laws have just opened in my home town, and generally have been running myself ragged.


Some of these require stories, and we'll get to them when I have time to do them justice.

I won't post any details on the person with cancer, because its not my story to share... I will only say it isn't me or Liz. I only mention it at all because the news itself has had a substantial impact on my mental state this weekend. I haven't really processed exactly how this news has or will continue to impact me, and am wholly unprepared to even attempt to put it into words at this stage. I guess I'm still somewhat in shock over the whole thing.



For now, I'm here, I survived my weekend, and I'm still on plan. I haven't done a very good job of recording (bad), but I think I've stayed under on points all but one day. The dozen or so drinks I had Friday clearly count as the worst thing I had to "eat" for the weekend, though the blizzard I split (different day) with a coworker is a close second. Beyond those two things I am proud of how closely I followed my plan and how well I chose foods.


One thing I had that was new to me and I will definitely try to replicate was a squash and zucchini salad. It was basically slices of raw (very young) yellow squash and zucchini with red onions, tomato wedges, and apple slices with a sweet, lemony, and herb-y vinaigrette. Think pasta salad only replacing the pasta with squash and zucchini, making it lower calorie and higher protein. And very tasty too.


Monday evening I tried my hand at homemade fajitas, which were quite tasty. I'd never tried doing them at home... but they turned out a lot healthier than going out because 1) I controlled what went in them, and limited the oils (and only used good oils at that) and cut out the salt altogether. I also did not sit and have a basket of chips and salsa waiting for my meal to come to the table either.



The other thing I did this weekend was to come up with my new longer term goal. Programwide (aka office retreat) happens every six months. When I started this blog I only had about six weeks before Programwide, and therefore hadn't made much progress yet. Then I completely fell apart and went to the Spring programwide heavier than I was at the one last Fall. So this Fall my goal is to show up noticeably slimmer er, make that less fat. To that end, I figure I need to aim to lose an average of 10 pounds a month, counting from the 15th of May.


So, I'll weigh in again tomorrow morning, and set my individual month goals accordingly.

the never ending cycle of mowing

So I've kept my food log for a week, and stayed under point limits for each day this week!

Tonight I had to mow, a job that I tend to put off as long as I think I can get away with before one of my neighbors decides to burn down my yard and be done with it.

It seems like everyone on the street has a different attitude towards mowing. My neighbor to one side has about as much grass in their entire lot as we have in our front yard, and they tend to mow at least three times for every one time that we do. Sometimes I'll see him out mowing literally two days in a row. Then our neighbors on the other side hire their mowing done by some guy who looks to be about undergrad age, and he does a very meticulous job, but only about as often as Liz and I do ours. Some people trim their sidewalks, others don't, there's one guy I frequently see out sweeping the street in front of their house.... which may be commendable except he just sweeps everything one house up or down the street.

Growing up in the boonies, and then college and lawschool in housing that came with other people to do the yard work, these past two years have been the first time in my life that my community at large has an interest in what yard work I do and how I do it. Sometimes I think I'm over sensitive to this... like I'm paranoid that all my neighbors are going to hate me if I don't mow as often as they do, or if I plant the wrong kind of flowers. Either way... all will be forgiven in a few months... we have the best tomato garden on the block.

mmmm breakfast

So I met with a client yesterday who insisted that the hotel she had stayed in the previous weekend had the most wonderful "incontinental" breakfast. ewww.


Another day under points yesterday, almost to a full week in a row :)

By far the worst thing I had yesterday was the Olive Garden breadsticks. I really intended not to have any, but they kept putting the dang things right in front of me. And once I had a taste of one it was down hill from there. Anyway, a breadstick is 3 points by itself, and I ended up having 3 of them. The meal I had was only 7 points! (apricot chicken with broccoli and asparagus, very tasty though the apricot was a little overly strong)

The other issue at lunch was that there was a small child who was absolutely screaming their head off the entire time we were there. I seemed to be the only person in the office (or in the restaurant for that matter) to be willing to just ignore it and enjoy my lunch. Everyone was talking about how stressful it made the meal and complaining, and other people (not in my group) applauded when the child's party left at the end of their meal (which was just rude, imho). Yes, the parents probably should have gotten a babysitter before going out to a nice restaurant with a child at that age, and yes, they probably should have given up and left more quickly... but it's a baby, babies cry, get over yourselves. Especially I thought it was odd the amount of whining done by those I know to be parents themselves. Shouldn't they be more or less used to baby screaming by now?

Though I guess the better way to look at it is that its a good sign that I will be able to keep calm when the baby inevitably throws a tantrum. Now, all I need to learn is how to make the child happy and stop crying :)

post weekend update

At work, so have to make this short for now, just didn't want anyone thinking I'd disappeared again :)

So I made it through the weekend on plan as far as I can tell. Saturday I had about 5 points left over. Sunday I didn't count actual points, but did keep a list of what we had to eat and I'd say I was about 8 points under give or take.

My mom apparently didn't believe me that everybody would be busy for mother's day brunch, so when we got to the restaurant she was very surprised at the crowd, and decided we would go home for lunch instead. This worked out well for me because I've gotten pretty good at fixing healthy stuff at home, less so at ordering it out. So we got some deli stuff and veggies and fairly healthy sub buns (Whole wheat, no HFCS, no Trans) and salad stuff. Then we spent the rainy mother's day playing on my parent's new wii (I suck at the bowling, but did quite well on the golf and ok on the tennis).

My worst item for the weekend was a diet coke cupcake (chocolate cake mix and cherry coke zero), because I also gave in to the temptation of the pre-packaged cream cheese frosting to put on top, which is just about the worst substance on earth. (and one of the best, taste-wise)

Today's biggest challenge is the office trip out to Olive Garden for lunch. OG's website really needs to have more nutritional info ;(

eventful week

I've managed to avoid any overwhelming hunger cravings this evening, and now it's past the time when I allow myself to eat anyway (I try not to eat within a couple of hours before sleep), so I think i managed to make it through the day with points left over again. I don't like it when I have to make such rough estimates, but you'll have that sometimes. All in all I'd say a B- on the day.

This coming week is going to be jammed packed for me. I'm off to my parents tomorrow for mother's day weekend. Then Thursday and Friday I'm off to my office's retreat (we do two days at a state park twice a year, I generally refer to it as programwide because all the offices in SEOLS attend). Programwide presents an interesting challenge in that there is generally very little by way of choice at meals, and Thursday evening is generally punctuated with excessive drinking. I am pretty sure I haven't had more than a single drink at a time since last August (alcohol is a killer when you're counting points, and I was never much of a drinker to begin with so that didn't go by the wayside when everything else did over the winter) but I may decide to relax that rule for a change, since it is a fairly unique event. And then Liz's parents are down from Toronto Saturday and Sunday, so we'll probably spend some time with them.

Then the big event coming up is Sunday, which is my sixth anniversary. Nothing really special planned, since most of our energy and time is devoted to getting ready for the baby right now, but hopefully we'll find something fun to do.

Liz and I have been fairly non-traditional when it comes to major gift giving couple events... we pretty much just get things for each other and ourselves as a couple when we want them, so getting a specific gift often seems somewhat anticlimactic. Of course, we've always been somewhat that way... Liz picked out her own engagement ring and we bought it together too. In part, Liz really doesn't like surprises, (woe to anyone who ever plans a surprise party for her and doesn't tell her in advance) and I'm never patient enough to actually bring a gift home, hide it for however long, and then give it to her on the day it was supposed to be given. Plus, when we bought the house we kind of decided it was our present to each other for the next thirty Christmases or so. I admit it does make me feel a little weird when friends ask me "so, what are you getting Liz for her birthday?" or the like. But for whatever reason it just sort of makes sense for us.

I guess this is the long way of saying that I won't be posting what we got for each other for our anniversary, because we probably won't.

my first slip up (this time around)

Well two almost perfect days then a half perfect day, not a bad start all in all, right?

Ok, first the bad... I let a friend talk me into a fried fish dinner. It was for a good cause (a church youth group wanting to help make repairs to their church), and good company, but really bad food. I had fried fish and onion rings and baked beans. All was tasty, but not tasty enough to justify itself to me as anything but a bad idea.

The good news is that after some internet searching for as best I could estimate recipes and nutritional facts, I ended up with a couple of points left for the day, even including that meal. Now, it's not anywhere near bedtime yet, but I have six points yet to work with. So one one hand the food was really bad quality (like high sat/trans fats, sodium, etc), but on the other hand it shouldn't set the weight loss portion of my health improvement goals that far back, so long as I am really careful this evening. Of course, I couldn't measure the food served nor do I have exact numbers, so I'll just try to leave as many points on the table tonight as I can.


The other good side of this (at least for me) is that I came home and recorded it, I didn't just go back to ignoring my diet and my goals like I've done so many times the past few months. That's progress.

So, Tim, today I do have a clear cut "worst thing" for the day.

Anyway, off to wash wallpaper glue off the halway walls (I really wanted to work on the garden, but it's raining again... I think it's rained every single day this week... quite frustrating because I have plants I want to get into the ground.

learning all over again

Another gold star day today, I've recorded everything and have 6.5 points left over.

I really don't know how I managed to keep to this restricted calorie intake and manage to find the energy to do two workouts a day before. Today I've barely had the energy to keep my eyes open. Granted, that's mostly lack of sleep more than lack of food, and it was a particularly long day at work, so that adds its little bit too. I really needed to get some housework done tonight, but it just didn't happen.

Things are still all "green light" for the baby to be born the end of June. We've got a little more than half the remodeling done that we need to complete, and I can see how that may be possible to finish, if I can find the energy to keep at it. I hope to get a lot done this Saturday. I did run into one wall that I can't do myself and I'm having to have a contractor come in to work on it, which kind of sucks due to timing, but can't be helped. Basically there's a brick wall in the room that will be the baby's room that needs rebuilt because the bricks got exposed to moisture sometime in the past (the roof has since been replaced) and are all crumbling apart. The biggest challenge at this point is finding a time when Liz or I can be home to let the guys in to work on it.


As for me I'm feeling completely freaked out about the whole having a child thing, and a little overwhelmed at work, but I think the decision to rededicate myself to my weight loss goals is helping alleviate some of my stress.

It's far too late for me to be able to catch up with the original "end obesity in 2008 plan." Basically i've gained almost every pound back that I lost before. I haven't decided on a long range goal now, but my short term goal will be just to get through the month still on plan, regardless of results, and then to add in returning to the gym in June.

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My official "restart" weight is 387.3

I'm down a grand total of 5.3 lbs since August 23, 2007. Which is just pathetic... I lost more than 12 lbs the first week on this diet, and was down more than 25 within the first month.

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Anyway, so a long way to go.

and 4 to spare

First day counting points in a while, ended up with 4 left over for the day. That's really good for me, because usually when I rededicate myself to keeping tabs I go crazy and leave 10 or 15 points on the table, which inevitably leads me to rebelling as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I had a few moments today that were pretty hard, but for the most part I think I've set a sustainable pace.

Tonight was also the first completely home cooked meal I've found time to make in at least a month or more. I did grilled chicken (boneless skinless breast) with a pseudo-greek yogurt/garlic sauce (plain yogurt, garlic, sugar... cucumber is generally included, but I can't stand cucumber, so mine is without), corn on the cob, and a salad with lettuce, tomato, onion, yellow pepper and homemade greek salad dressing (olive oil, fresh oregano, lemon juice, garlic, sugar). I really enjoy cooking, and when I do cook my meals tend to be much more healthy and satisfying, it's just finding the time to do it that's the issue.

While I feel a sense of accomplishment for staying on plan for a day, this feels different than the times I've done the "good for a single day then back off the wagon" routine lately. I had fun with it today, and I haven't felt that since last October. Maybe it bodes well, maybe not, but my spirits are definitely lifted, and I'm more optimistic than I've been for a long time.

in denial

I got a wake up call this morning from an unusual source... my credit card company. Aparantly my card got cloned or copied or something, because someone has been making charges that I know weren't either me or Liz. Fortunately the card company recognized the odd behavior and contacted me to confirm it (a lot of really big purchases at gas stations i've never used, is how I think they caught it).

Anyway, this led me to checking out both my cards for fraudulent transactions. And while the other card appears to be safe, I found myself forced to face my own bad behavior over the past month or so. So many fast food and other restaurants that I've just convinced myself - it's ok, you're having a rotten day, you deserve to be pampered. Its disgusting. No wonder I've put on so much weight. Why my clothes don't fit any more the way they did at the high point of this blog. Why am I still in denial about this??

And, in the off chance anybody still checks in here... I know i've promised time and time again "ok, this is it, I'm starting over today." So I won't waste my type.

I don't know what to think. Am I just a lost cause? Am I really this pathetic little boy who can't control his urges? Who wastes the money I don't have buying food I don't really want and really really don't need just because it is convenient or because I can get away with it? Don't I owe it to Liz and to my unborn child to spend the money on things that matter instead? To eat healthy options that I make at home which are more satisfying in the long term?

Is this finally rock bottom, or will I sink even lower? I want to bounce back, but sometimes wanting isn't enough.


I did make one small good step today.... I cleaned out the fridge of all the expired yogurt and lettuce and vegetables that I let rot, so now I can find the acutal food, so I have one fewer reason to cheat.

The other thing i've been doing well the past week or so is exercising, but really only because my housework has required it. Basically I'm creating a garden out of a stretch of the back yard that was a mix of grass and weeds, and I'm pulling up the weeds using a hand tool, so I really work up quite a sweat. And it feels good, which is surprising to me. I've never gotten a workout "high" before, but something about yard work is just fun.

The cynic in me says don't hold your breath, but I really will try to be back tomorrow.