Day 4 - 1/15/08

Not such a good day for the diet, alas.  It started out with such promise though!  I got out of bed a little after 5:00 - not early enough to hit the gym, but plenty early enough to get lunch together and a nice breakfast.  I forgot that I had off-site training at work today that went through lunch though, so I wasn’t able to eat what I’d packed.  I was going to be good though and get a salad where we were at, but one of the guys from the office said that he was going to go to Schlotzky’s and that was it.  Sure, they have salads there too, but dude - Schlotzky’s!!  I know that eating a salad there isn’t technically a crime, but it should be.  Anyway, here’s today’s menu:

• Breakfast:  Sourdough toast, 3 oz. lean ham, scrambled fat free egg substitute with bell pepper, mushrooms & salsa topped with melted soy cheese.
• Lunch:  Regular Original sandwich, small Wisconsin cheese soup, potato chips and tea.
• Dinner:  A few tortilla chips and salsa.

I’m not really hungry tonight, so I’m hoping the mostly non-dinner helps make up for the lunch.

Day 3 - 1/14/08

Nope - I didn’t up this morning early enough to get to the gym.  I stayed up too late.  I did bring my gym clothes though, and there’s a branch of my gym right in the building where I work.  I got the fixin’s for lunch mostly prepared so all I had to do was toss the stuff into my lunchbox and go. 

• Breakfast: one bowl of raisen bran with fat-free milk, an apple and a large tomato juice. 
• Lunch:  A can of gumbo soup (low sodium), 1/2 chicken sandwich with light mayo, lettuce, onion, tomato & soy cheese on sourdough, 1/4 cup cottage cheese and some celery with roasted red pepper hummus.  Oh, and the remainder of the tomato.
• Dinner 1/2 sandwich with chicken salad, hummus, lettuce and tomato on sourdough.  1 dill pickle.  The chicken salad was made with light mayo & miracle whip, celery, bell pepper and green onion.

There, I like that format better.  Plus, if you don’t feel like reading the daily menu it’s easy to skip past it. 

One of my problems is that I don’t particularly like to cook.  This means I rarely have any leftovers for a quick grab and go lunch.  I don’t mind breakfast cooking - eggs, ham & toast, easy peasy stuff, but only if I get up early enough.  More often than not I don’t so I’m rushing around just trying to get out the door.  This almost always means a stop at Burger King,  Jack in the Box, or even (God help me) Del Taco on the way to work.  This morning was a bit like that, but the raisen bran and apple were almost as fast and definitely healthier.  Hmm.  That gives me an idea - emergency grab ‘n dash cereal rations.  YES!  Two bottles - one milk, one cereal, and one large coffee type travel mug with a sealed lid.  Mix up the cereal & milk in the coffee mug at the first stop light, seal it up, and by the next stop light it should be a nice, thick slurry that’s safe to consume whilst negotiating the morning traffic.  I should get some dried apples and other fruit to go with it.  Brilliant!  Friends, that’s a hell of a lot healthier breakfast than any breakfast combo meal you’re likely get anywhere.  No doubt some of you are thinking “Why doesn’t he just get up earlier?”  You should probably just keep such thoughts to yourself.

Day 2 - 1/13/08

I got up at the crack of 7:30 this morning and got down to the gym sometime after 8:00.  All the treadmills were taken again so I hit the same kind of elliptical trainer I did yesterday.  It has various preset programs you can run and yesterday I went with “Fat Burning”.  That’s where you exercise at lower intensity to keep your heart rate below a certain threshold, above which you start doing anaerobic exercise.  It was okay, but I felt I could put it up another notch this morning and went with “Manual” mode.  I put it into level 1 resistence (yesterday was mostly level 0) and tried to go a bit faster and not care about heart rate thresholds.  Today I went 35 minutes for 2.49 elliptical trainer units (whatever they are) for 516 calories.  I got some rest and a small V-8 juice while typing this up and now it’s time to get the rest of the day going.   CUl8er!

These posts are gonna get kinda long - Sunday brunch menu below the fold.

Day 1 - 1/12/08

I got off to a late start this morning, but I did pretty good so far.  I actually got myself into the gym today.  Woo-hoo! 

Exercise:  35 minutes on an elliptical trainer,  distance = 2.41 (miles?  I dunno, it doesn’t say) 484 calories.  I don’t like the elliptical things as much as I do the treadmill, but those were all taken. 

Diet:  1 small can of spicy V-8 juice, and one bowl of oatmeal flavored with a teaspoon of trans fat free Healthy Choice margarine and some honey.  Not so much to make it super sweet, but enough to cut the blandness of oatmeal - about what you’d expect in a regular bowl of raisen bran.

I know it’s a bit unusual to start a new diet and exercise program and on the first day to go to a restaurant, but we’ve been planning on this for a while now.  The restaurant is Red Lobster, so fish is on the menu.  Fish is actually very healthy as long as it’s not drowned in tartar sauce.  More lemon and less sauce!  I plan on having a salad with dressing on the side and whatever veggies they have instead of a big ol’ baked potato.  My enemy are the cheese biscuits they automatically bring out.

I’m back!  We ate at Red Lobster around 3:30 so it was a late lunch / early dinner.  I ordered the grilled tilapia, with broccoli and rice pilaf.  I asked for italian dressing for the salad.  I did push the cheese biscuits away and didn’t have any tartar sauce at all.  I did take one grilled shrimp from my mother’s plate.  I’ve only drank herbal and regular iced tea today.  We went to a show on the Strip and I just got back around 10:30.  I was a little hungry so I had a small bowl of teriyaki chicken and a few spoonfuls of cottage cheese.  That should keep me until tomorrow.  Thus ends day 1! 

348.6

348.6  As you might suspect on a blog titled “Fat Man Blogging” that number is in pounds.  And yes - that is my weight as of this morning when I finally dragged my considerable sized butt out of bed.  I’ve decided that it is time to do something about it and this site is where I’ll chronicle my struggles to shed this crushing blubber and turn my life around.  Every day I’ll record what I eat and drink as well as any exercise I do.  I started down this path a few years ago when I was at 300 pounds and kept it up for a good while - from September 04 to June 05 and lost about 85 pounds in the process.  I kept very detailed information about my exercise regimen and daily weight measurments in a spreadsheet and had a nice graph showing my downward trend.  It was all very gratifying and fun.  Alas, I fell off the wagon and cratered.  I had a long way to go then, and now it’s 50 pounds longer, but I have to get started.

The goal is the same now as it was then - the neighborhood of 172 pounds.  That’s my ideal weight according to the BMI calculations.  Yes, I know some people have a problem with using the BMI system because really fit people with a lot of muscle mass can be categorized as “obese”.  I’m not looking to be super fit, I just want to be in the realm of normal and healthy and so it’s a good target to shoot for me I think.  Doing the math shows that this means I’m going to try and lose 176.6 pounds.  Holy cow - over half of me is useless blubber!  It’s high time I get started on it then.