Day 7

I am so lazy.  But, I did lose a bit more weight somehow.  I’m at 338.7 so that’s 3.5 pounds less than last time.  Not great, but in the right direction anyway.

• Breakfast:  Up late, so I hit Burger King for the ham croissanwich and tatertots and orange juice.  I also had some tomato juice.
• Lunch - minestrone soup with a chicken breast cut up and added to the soup.  It was good!  And filling.  I had a cup of non-fat yogurt and I was done.
• Afternoon snack - grapefruit.
• Dinner - I haven’t had it yet but I’m having a crazy craving for a grilled cheese sandwich.

Weight Loss Regime Reloaded - Day 1

Slacking.  Mucho slacking since last post.  These ruts we wear down in our lives can get really deep and are very difficult to climb out of.  Still, it can be done if you want it enough.

I’m off today for the holiday and slept in, but I did get out to the gym this morning, so that’s for the good.  My new weekly weigh in time is Monday morning.  Today it was 242.2 342.2.  Yea, though I have been slacking, I have not erased all my earlier progress.  I started off on the treadmill but it cut out on me twice so I switched to the elliptical and did that for 25 minutes.  I need to start working in strength training and calisthenics if I’m ever going to get anywhere though.

Meals

• Breakfast:  Oatmeal with some margarine & molasses, grapfruit and two small glasses of tomato juice.  During my workouts and throughout the day I drink a variety of herbal iced teas (no sugar added) that I brew up and put into those small water bottles that come with pop-tops.  I used to like Arrowhead bottles for this, but they switched to flip tops that don’t do as well.
• Lunch:  Turkey and ham sandwich with lowfat cheese, light Miracle Whip, lettuce, onion, bell pepper and tomato.  I also had some cottage cheese and drank the last bit of buttermilk that I had.  I also went to Costco and had a few bites of thisnthat.
• Dinner:  During my trip to Costco I picked up a big bag of frozen berry mix.  It had a little recipe for a smoothie on the side and I decided to make it tonight.  To that end I also picked up a bunch of bananas, and some non-fat yogurt.  I didn’t read the whole recipe though and neglected to pick up any orange juice.  Oh well.  I subsituted 1% milk instead.  So, 1 cup of frozen berries, 1 banana, 1/2 small container of vanilla yogurt, and a cup of milk blended together for 30 seconds yeilded about 3 cups of smoothie.  Man was that thick!  The recipie indicated that this was 2 servings.  I poured half of it into a glass and the rest into a class that has a convenient snap on lid.  It was very good, and kinda filling.  I had a few bites of a NY steak left in the fridge, so I had that a few minutes later and I’m fine. 

Day 12ish

Bah.  Bad start to the day.

• Breakfast: Up late so I did Jack in the Box sourdough breakfast jack combo.  It’s a fried egg and cheese sandwich with hashbrowns and orange juice. 
• Lunch: Minestrone soup with chicken, cottage cheese, turkey sandwich with a big tomato, and a fruit coctail cup.  I should have waited a bit after the sandwich and tomato - I felt full before I finished the fruit cup.
• Dinner:  Toasted ham & swiss on rye - lotsa mustard and a few spoonfuls of cottage cheese to empty out the container.   I also had a few rice puff snacks and tortilla chips with salsa.

Day 11?

Off to a pretty good start I’d say:

• Breakfast:  one orange, one bowl of Raisen Colon Blow and an apple.
• Lunch: one bowl of chicken noodle soup, some cottage cheese, a salad with Italian dressing, re-fried beans with salsa, and a little cup of leftover canned tuna.  I’m still a little hungry though.  I have a big ol’ tomato sitting here and I’ll have that in a little while, plus I think I have another apple lurking in the fridge here at work.
• Dinner:  a deli meat sliced sandwich on sourdough with chicken, turkey, ham and soy cheese.  Toasted!  Oh, and light Miracle Whip. 

Light Miracle Whip is lighter in calories and sat fats than light mayo.  When I was a kid growing up we only had MW in the house and I often wondered why sandwiches we got elsewhere tasted funny.  Nowadays I like them both of course but my brother detests MW.  One of his greatest gripes about his childhood was having to use MW instead of mayo on his sandwiches.  The funny thing is our parents had no particular objection to mayo, it’s just that they always bought what they had grown up with.  It had never even occurred to them to buy mayo.

Why Don’t We Have This?

Purina Bachelor Chow.  It’s so simple - we do this for our pets, why can’t we do this for ourselves - a tasty, nutritionally and calorically balanced instafood?  Have you ever really looked at the amazing qualities and capabilities of pet food?  It can be both crunchy and chewy.  Just add water and it makes it’s own gravy!  Just the variety of flavors I can enjoy in one dry meal blow me away:  salmon, beef, and chicken…all at once!  I can’t do that in most restaurants today.

Breakfast cereal is the closest sort of thing we get with this concept, but it hasn’t been extended to the next logical step.  Yah we have frozen entrees and stuff, but that isn’t the same or as good as Bachelor Chow.  This is a multi-billion dollar a year industry that could exist.  Think of it!  Soylent green doesn’t have to be made of people.

1/21/08

Sorry, I’ve been slacking this weekend.  I’ve got today off so this is still “weekend” for me.  Anyway, let’s get back to posting diet stuff.

• Breakfast:  Veggie omelet with the last of my real cheddar cheese, sourdough toast, and a small portion of ham and tomato juice. 
• Lunch: A small roast beef and soycheese sandwich, a simple lettuce salad with some sort of dressing I found lurking in my fridge and a nice, crisp green apple. 
• Dinner:  Ham and swiss on rye with mustard and cottage cheese.  Sargento does make a decent reduced-fat swiss cheese so I use that instead of the veggie slices version.

Speaking of grocery stores - I only shop for myself and the cat.  I can never seem to get out of there without paying a hundred bucks.  When I was young and poor twenty bucks usually got me by.  Hmm.  Of course I also usually worked at food service places so I had at least one meal covered most days of the week.  And I used to eat a lot of burritos.  You can get a lot of bean and cheese burritos for not very much.  Oh well.  It’s not like I can’t afford it. ***Update*** Yeesh! $140 this time. 

Today’s Product Endorsement

I am a cheese fiend.  I LOVE cheese.  I have beheld the POWER of cheese and I have found it to be awesome in all it’s varieties and flavors.  I could go on (and on), but you get the picture - cheese & me are best buds.  Alas - cheeses are generally loaded with calories and saturated fats, and so doesn’t really fit in with my overall plan.  Yes, I’ve tried a lot of the low/non-fat stuff and have found them to be mostly terrible.  There is one alternative out there that I’ve actually come to enjoy - and it has nothing to do with any dairy animal:  Veggie Slices.  They come in a variety of flavors:  Cheddar, American, Pepperjack, Mozzarella and Smoked Provolone.  Do they actually taste like those flavors?  Not really - they’re more like Velveeta with different flavorings that sorta mimic those flavors.  Except for the American - which is a pretty tame cheese anyway.  What I like best about them is that they are very melty and they do really well when mixed in with other things, like an omelet.  They are pretty good on sandwiches too.  My favorites are the cheddar and American, the mozzarella is kinda bland.  Oh, and if you hit that link above you’ll see they have other products too - veggie shreds and whatnot.  Those are crap - well, the shreds and brick versions anyway.  Stick with the slices.

Saturday Weigh-in

My plan is to take my “official” weight on Saturday mornings and to track it on a weekly basis.  I was up late last night and so I slept in this morning past 8:00.  I stepped on the scale and I’m at 338.8.  I didn’t think that could be right so I did it again, but the results were the same - I lost 9.8 pounds in one week.  That’s not typical, and I don’t really expect to keep doing that every week.  I must have been retaining water or something last Saturday.  Still, pretty cool! 

Day 6 - 1/17/08

Quick post and I’ve got to go:

• Breakfast - a bowl of raisen bran, an apple and a large V-8 juice.
• Lunch - Turkey noodle soup, tuna fish sandwich on sourdough with lettuce, tomato and onion, cottage cheese.
• Dinner - I finished the day off with a pan fried chicken breast in olive oil, garlic and spices and a green salad with spinach, lettuce, green onion and celery and the basalmic vinigrette dressing. 

Oh, and I took a peek at the scale this morning - I’m not supposed to because the Official Weigh-in Day of the Week is Saturday morning but I couldn’t help myself.  So far it’s looking good!

Day 5 - 1/15/08

Sorry for the no update yesterday, I just didn’t get around to it.  Excellent day for the diet though! Here’s the scoop:

• Breakfast:  Egg substitute scramble with salsa and mushrooms, sourdough toast and 2 oz. of ham and a small V-8 juice.
• Lunch:  Italian vegtable soup, 1/2 cup cottage cheese, celery and hummus and a salad with basalmic vinegrette dressing.  An almost entirely vegetarian meal and very satisfying too.  Oh, and probably about a cup of lowfat refried beans.
• Dinner:  Chicken salad sandwich on sourdough with lettuce, tomato and onion and a small bowl of tomato bisque soup.

I had a little pre-lunch snack of a few bites of tuna fish left over from a previous sandwich that needed to be eaten.  Aside from sunflower seeds I’ve been pretty good about avoiding snacks for the most part.

No, I haven’t been back to the gym yet.  I just can’t drag myself out of bed early enough, and I never feel like it after work.  Ugh.  I talked to my boss about maybe moving my start time up a half-hour and he wasn’t opposed to it.  I might just do that - we’ll see.