Anticipation. An tiss ih pay yay shun

Is making me wait.

On another biz trip, but so far I'm knocking this diet out of the park. I can't wait to get home and find a scale so I can see the result of how well I've done.

My numbers have been screwed up for a couple weeks now. Partly because my diet has been not as good as it should, but mostly because there was someone tinkering with the scale at the gym and I decided to switch my daily weigh-ins to Wii Fit.

I predict that when I weigh myself on Sunday, I'm going to see a big drop down below that blue line on my progress chart.  Here's to hoping!

At the airport again

I thought I'd do the right thing and pack some protein powder to "eat" for meals where there aren't good choices - airports, continental breakfasts, etc. And for my good deed, I managed to get stopped by security for having a prodigious pack of peculiar powder.  They didn't seem to care about the substantial traces of pool chemicals all on my person

Before & After - 2 months

The pic below is actually 3 months apart, but I all I did was eat from August through September.

BTW... You know what's nasty?

Adding protein powder to oatmeal.  Blech.  As if oatmeal weren't texturally unappealing enough, this was like someone sprinkled an ultra-fine grain of sand into it.  Not pleasing in any way.

Regaining Control

I've lost control of my diet.  Between the wedding and the business travel, I've set myself up poorly for Thanksgiving (and more business travel the week after).  I let that loss of control lead me to the Halloween candy trough where I buried my snout and stuffed my face.  The more I write on this blog, the more I wonder if I've got an eating disorder.

Still, I'm back on track today.  One day at a time and all that stuff.  I make the best choices when I plan them out in advance.  I really need to develop a strategy for what to do when I'm hungry, and I need to do that when I'm not hungry.  I know the drill... "keep healthy snacks handy" but I just lost the will power for a bit to even be able to follow that advice.

I figure giving myself a more tangible short-term goal might motivate me to do well, so I've made a mini-goal for myself of losing another 10 pounds by my birthday - exactly 30 days from today.  To do this I'll be hitting the gym every day again and I'll need to stop eating all the additional calories I expend there. <crosses fingers>

Flying Blind

I'm out in California for work.  No scale.  Dinner out at a restaurant every night.  I have no diet measurement for my meals.  I'm making sensible choices, but I have no idea what a plate of chicken fajitas is in terms of calories.  I figure it can't be that bad.  No cheese, grilled white meat & vegetables, some rice, and a side of beans (not refried beans).  It seemed pretty healthy, but I don't know if I should call it 1500 calories (like fajitas at Applebee's) or 800 calories (like fajitas at Chevy's).  I'm just flying blind.

Sweet Jesus, I will never drink again

I went to Staten Island.  I tested all the vodka.  All of it.  I used it to preserve some olives.  Probably close to 24 olives... I lost count.

Drinking that much ruined my progress for days.  First, there are the calories in the alcohol.  Then there's the hangover and the food you eat to help you feel better.  No significant exercise during that time either.  Even two days later I still felt like crap and my workout was seriously compromised.

I won't even tell you what the scale said when I got on Monday morning.  Seriously, it was so bad that I'm convinced the scale was broken and if not, then it was just violating the laws of physics.

Don't drink and diet.  Just don't do it.  A beer that's planned and accounted for on the weekend?  Fine.  One. Beer. Just don't get smashed.  It's hardly worth it in "normal" life, but just forget about it if you're losing weight; well, that or forget about losing weight.

Going to a wedding

I'm going to a wedding tomorrow.  I'm not sure if I want to stick to my diet while I'm there or if I just want to let loose.  I'm sure I can eat reasonably well, but the open bar is going to kill me.  Maybe I can offset it with some exercise.

Angry Eating

I'm pissed at something that was beyond the control of all involved, and since it's dinnertime, I'm hungry.  REALLY hungry.  And I'm brooding.  Anger is one of my big food-binge triggers.  I get so angry that I start eating whatever I want and no one will tell me otherwise.  I get angry at myself for eating like that and I just eat some more.  I'm scowling right now.  If I weren't home alone with the kids, I'd take some of this negative energy to the gym and just work it out.  Instead, I'm posting here and getting angrier at little stuff.  I'm angry that there aren't a lot of good food choices in the house right now (there probably are, but I'm blinding myself).  I'm angry that I'm going to have to drink protein shakes to reach my calorie goal instead of a beer.  I'm angry that I'm on a diet because I haven't had the self-control to eat normal portion sizes my whole life.  I'm just angry.  And hungry.  Go piss off while I drink this gritty, artificially sweetened, excessively saccharine chocolate peanut butter drink that's nothing more than powdered Ensure.

Not quite as menacing as I feel.  Channeling 70's TV, I think to myself, "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Plateau. There. I said it.

I've avoided saying it thus far.  I don't like to think that I'm on some sort of diet plateau, but take a look at the chart.  In the last 2 weeks (since 10/22), my weight pretty much hasn't changed.  What gives?  Well, for starters I changed my diet.  I'm eating tons more protein.  But I might also be slacking a little.  If you look at the calorie chart, I've been eating a little more.  Also, I think I'm not coming back from my workouts as sweaty as I did in the beginning.  The exercises seem to be getting easier... at least the cardio.  Tonight I decided to push it a bit more.  I bumped up the resistance on the elliptical, so we'll see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Trash Pickin'

A fat man I once knew told me a story.  His wife forbid him from eating the fat and gristle from the steaks they ate all too often.  On steak nights he'd throw a piece of foil into the trash.  Then he'd clean off the table and cast all those scraps onto the conveniently top-foiled garbage.  He'd give the appearance of smushing down the garbage and clandestinely wrap the beefy bits in the heavy duty foil.  He'd take the garbage out and I'm sure you've figured out the rest - he'd stand outside in the dark and wolf down the greasy "garbage" out of sight from his wife's watchful eyes.  He told the story to me and another gentleman of size expecting empathy.  He got none.

All I asked him was, "Was it worth it?"

Whenever I'm having trouble with my diet or don't feel like going to the gym, I think of the garbage picker.  If I decide to binge eat; if I decide to laze about on the couch; if I decide that I just can't do it anymore, I ask myself that simple question - if I choose gluttony; if I choose sloth; if I choose acedia, is it worth it?

I so want to eat this right now

And it's kinda gross because my son ate the other 80% and this is all slobbery and melty.

Stuff Fat Guys Can't Do #2 - Sit in rows B or E when flying

I have to fly next week.  I'm stuck with a middle seat.  Hopefully Barbara Billingsley* has the aisle.  The seats on airplanes are notoriously small.  I can fit between the armrests, but when I'm in the middle, I occupy both of them.  It's not pleasant for anyone involved.  If I kept going along my previous trajectory, I wouldn't have fit for much longer.

I'm in 21B. You can send flowers to 21A & 21 C.

When my wife travels with me, it's not a problem.  As long as we're sitting together, she sits in the middle and I spill over into the window area or the aisle.  Monday is going to be uncomfortable.  I can't imagine the people sitting next to me are going to have much sympathy if I were to explain to them that I'm trying not to be a fat-ass.  I'll just have to put a couple good movies on my tablet and try to ignore the embarrassment.

When you can't (or barely) fit in the seat, the seat belt is another problem.  There's the fear and anxiety that you're going to have to press the call button and ask for an extender.  So far, I haven't reached that level, but I swear every time I go on a plane, I think that they might shorten the belts to save a buck.  The extender isn't the only problem.  When you hit the seat's upper (outer?) limits, you have to plan carefully how you sit, lest you sit on the belt.  Airplanes are so full of shame - and jive-talking grandmothers.


* Shit, she's dead.

Donuts, Donuts Everywhere

There have been an excessive number of donuts in my house in the last 3 days.  I think it's over 2 dozen.

F*** THIS F***ING PROTEIN DIET

Folks, there's a reason for carbohydrates.  A reason that goes beyond calories.  It's poop; and I haven't had a significant movement since Wednesday.  Also since Wednesday my diet has been heavily weighted towards protein.  I can't blame my weight gain / no loss entirely on the protein, but it's been a significant factor in both poop retention and in leading me to eat too many calories.

I know I'm biased towards my pre-determined conclusion, but my colon tells it true.  This is bullshit.

Stuff Fat Guys Can't Do #1 - Ride Rollercoasters

Want to strike fear into the heart of a fat man?  Buy him a ticket to an amusement park.  I guarantee that he'll claim that he doesn't like rides anymore.  An amusement park is the #1 most embarrassing place to go.  We've gotten to a point that there are actually test seats in front of the queues so you can see if you'll fit.  It's a size-wise for your ass.  But you'll almost never see a big dude try one.  Most of the time the seats are occupied by children who are too short or scared for the ride posing for pictures.  The fat man knows that if he scares off the kids to test the seat out that everyone nearby has cameras and once he sits, he's there for all to see.  He's featured front-and-center, right below the big "ENTER HERE (estimated wait 120 minutes)" sign.  So he'll make a choice:  Lie to his friends about a newly acquired motion sickness, or wait the two hours and pray that he'll make it on without being publicly and (un-?)ceremoniously ejected from the ride as hundreds of onlookers gawk and point.

Depending on how fat you are and where you carry that weight, you might not be excluded from every ride.  How will you explain your sudden fear of coasters after you've made it onto the steel looper, but don't want to try the old wooden out-n-back racer?  Who'll believe your affinity for the sea lion show as you skulk away from the inverted coaster?  You see, there are a small number of restraint types each with different body restrictions.  Just ask your sumo-sized buddies - none of the seats are comfortable and all of them are embarrassing.

Take the classic wooden racer - Cyclone (Coney Island), Rolling Thunder (Six Flags Great Adventure), Comet (Hersheypark) or any other wooden coaster made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company.  They all use the same seat.  It's 15" wide, pad-to-pad.  Even for the newly obese this is tough to fit in.  Assuming you can squeeze your posterior into the compartment, you've still got the nipple-high lap bar to contend with.  And speaking of lap bars, they're almost always set with 1 bar for 2 people.  Two of us fatties can't fit in the same car shoulder-to-shoulder.  That means our svelte companion rides without adequate restraints.

(Dutch Wonderland - August 2012)
My daughter and I in a PTC train car.
I'm not sitting sideways for the picture - it's the only way my dumper fits.

(Also, I had to actually lift my belly over the lap bar so it would
close below my nipples and my daughter's head.)

Then there are the over-the-shoulder (OTS) restraints.  For a fat guy the bottom doesn't reach his belly button.  It looks and feels more like a horizontal, horseshoe-shaped dog collar.  With the inverted coasters, the OTS restraints need to be buckled between your legs.  The first time I experienced theme park anxiety is when the belt didn't reach.  It took 2 grown men to bounce into the restraint as I exhaled to get the belt clipped in.

And once you experience that, the entire park becomes off-limits.  Too fat for the coasters.  Too ashamed to even try the carnival rides.  But hey, the concession stand is always open.  You guys go ride.  I'm too motion sick from the carousel.  Is that the Manfred Mann Earth Band tribute band I hear playing?  I'll check them out and go get us some funnel cakes for when you're off the ride.  No really, I don't mind waiting a couple hours while you have fun.  Go on, get going.  I'll hold your stuff!