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.