Sometimes I wonder why I even try. I’m doing great with my weight loss, and the journey truly is just getting started, but sometimes I face challenges that make me question the entire thing. Willpower is my biggest foe, and I’ve already succumb to temptation several times since I’ve begun going along my current path. My willpower will never be strong enough to stand up to the greatest temptations on it’s own, so I back it up by just avoiding temptation altogether. Sometimes that’s easier said than done, but for the most part, it works. This is especially good on the weekend since I just sit at home with my arsenal of healthy food and snack items. Work, on the other hand, is the biggest enemy that I face on a daily basis. There’s a constant barrage of edibles available in the break room, all easily within reach. Couple that with certain individuals that like to push buttons, and I’ve got a powder keg just looking for the right spark.

For example, we had doughnuts in the break room this morning. Sure, I would have seen them eventually, and they’re a pretty easy temptation for me to overcome. But I’ve got a coworker that comes back from the break room and tells me point blank “Hey, Luther, they’ve got doughnuts in the break room!”. I mean seriously! He knows I’m dieting, but yet he HAS to go and rub the things I cannot have right in my face! I’m sick and tired of that juvenile crap! It’s bad enough that I go to lunch and everyone is eating burgers and fries while I’m stuck eating the salad! Then they have to go and point out the fact that I’m held back from enjoying anything.

My other major foe is stress. I am classified as a stress eater. I can take a lot, but I usually deal with it by snacking, or having food I enjoy. Usually, when I’m having a bad day at work, I’ll stop and grab a burger after work and suddenly, things just feel right in the world. For me, that’s no longer an option, and it’s been one that I’ve been fighting hardest against for the last few weeks. Stress continues to mount as more and more work comes my way with less and less time to actually accomplish it in, all of it with unrealistic deadlines and expectations. I’ve fought this off by making healthier alternatives to my fast food addictions, but even those only go so far. The really bad part is this problem is definitely not going away anytime soon. I’ll continue to drive past the McDonalds and have to rely on sheer willpower alone to face and overcome the temptation that it brings. This weekend, it almost got me. Driving home Saturday night, I was pretty hungry. As I got closer to my home, the idea of stopping at McDonalds started sounding pretty good. Thankfully, I made a detour and went to the grocery. Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to grocery shop while you’re hungry, but I ended up buying some really healthy items that were needed (specifically milk and eggs).

The final issue that I’m facing is financial. Since I’ve started eating healthier, my budget has been out of control. It’s pretty much what they say – healthier food is much more expensive! Usually for lunch, I’d run out and grab a burger and fries from McDonalds which would be less than $4. Now, the cheapest thing I usually have is Subway, but there’s only so many times I can get the same $5 footlong before I get tired of it. Most of my lunches now range in the $8-$12 range – sometimes more, sometimes less. I’d eat at the office, but usually I need to step away for a while just to get my head together. Doesn’t help when you’ve also got a break room full of people chowing down on Taco Bell to face as well. Eating at home is, and always will be the cheapest way to go. It’s just not possible at work to cook the fresh items I enjoy like grilled chicken and fish. Also it takes dedication at home to pre-prepare my meals, sometimes which I just don’t have time to do. Because of this extra financial burden – it’s just driving my stress levels to even further levels – pushing the my last point even further into the forefront. One idea that I’ve begun to recently consider was going one of the bulk diet-food routes – most likely NutriSystem. That would allow me to have all of my meals, a specially prepared diet, with no need to cook or have anything ready in advance. Also, all of my meals would be rather low cost, compared to eating out nearly every day at work. Definitely something to consider. Unfortunately, the starting cost (almost $400) is near prohibitive for me to really even consider any of these options. I’d also be scared to buy $400 in food and not liking it! If it’s anywhere near the quality of most healthy frozen dinners – I can almost assuredly say that would be the case.

Somehow I need to get these aspects of my life under control, or I’m going to fall off the wagon so hard, I doubt I’ll ever get back on board.

Seems the harder I try, and the more I want to succeed, the harder my journey becomes. I faced temptations over the last week and succumbed to each and every one. I did pull myself back up each and every time, but I still am not proud of some of the things I’ve had these last few days. Most of last week went pretty well, until the weekend hit. I went out with a friend of mine on Friday. The main course was pretty good – all veggies and proteins. However, we shared a dessert and it was probably the richest, most decadent slice of cake I’ve had in years. It was absolutely fantastic! We DID share it, so I didn’t have all of the calories, but I knew it was something I shouldn’t have, and went for it anyway.

Saturday, I did great all day – eating light and keeping everything in check. Saturday evening, I went with some friends to see Iron Man. My friend recommended hitting a Bar-B-Que place before the movie and I thought it would be like Bandana’s or Super Smokers. Not the healthiest, but I could just get meats and veggies. Boy was I wrong. First, it was mostly BBQ sandwiches. Alright, so I got a bun, not TOO bad. The next problem was the “healthy” sides were unavailable – so I ended up getting mac and cheese and corn bread. Then I ate it all… every single bit. What’s worse: it didn’t taste good at all! If I was going to cheat, I sure wish I’d gotten something I actually enjoyed. Afterwards, we went to see Iron Man, and that just made the whole experience worth it! Great movie – highly recommend it to everyone.

Sunday – I’m back on track, 100%! I ate healthy, and even spread my meals out to several smaller meals. I spent most of the weekend working, so I really didn’t have time for exercise. It’s definitely something I need to work on.

So, this morning, I got on the scale, terrified at how my indiscretions were going to hurt me. I thought for sure I was going to see weight gained since my weight in last week. My estimate was about 313-314lbs, and it really scared me that I would put myself back that much. So, I stepped onto the scale, closed my eyes and didn’t want to look. Eventually I convinced myself that I would have to look, so I peered down, and saw it read 309.0! That’s a 2.8lb loss for this week!

I’m not sure how it happened, and I really don’t know how to explain it. I weighed myself last on Friday morning, and I was still plateauing right around 311.2, so I was already afraid of no loss at all. Adding on the crap I ate from over the weekend, I thought for sure I was going to gain. I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t the case at all.

So, what happened? Right now, I’ve got one theory I’m considering, but it could be completely wrong – I’m eating WAY too little. Everything I’ve read says that I should be having about 2000-2200 calories a day for safe, healthy weight loss. I’ve been aiming much lower than that – 1200-1500/day. Day’s 700-800 calories short of where everyone says I should be. So I guess the question is, should I raise my caloric intake to the recommended levels? It could be my body is in starvation mode and is fighting me left and right to hold on to whatever it gets. Giving it a little extra seems to have helped burn off a little extra. Please tell me your thoughts about this in the comments, I’m really curious to know what you all think.

Okay, not really last night but just yesterday in general. For the most part, I did pretty good. I’m not sure what lunch was, calorie-wise, but it seemed at least somewhat healthy. I started the day off with one of my smoothies. I’m not sure if I got into detail about what’s in them, but it’s 1 cup of skim milk, 1 banana, 4 strawberries, 6 peach slices, 1 Fiber One Strawberry Yogurt, and a scoop of protein powder. Great way to start the day off! For lunch, we went to Applebee’s. I got the “pick two” lunch special. I decided on the Turkey Club sandwich with a cup of Tomato soup. Mid-afternoon, I decided to have one of my apples! Dinner was two turkey burgers made with some ground turkey that I’d purchased (and was getting ready to expire). A little bit after that, I had a bowl of Cheerios with skim milk for a snack.

Once again, no additional time for exercise.

Sorry for the lack of updates last week. Things got a little out of hand, and blogging had to take a backseat to everything. I DID release my first video last week, and the reviews so far are very positive overall! I did the last one on a Sunday, and I’ll do my next one tonight. I want to post with the weigh-in updates, so either I move the weigh-in back a day, or just hold off till Monday. I’ll try getting it done tonight, but if that proves too difficult, I might consider alternative options.

So, updates! I finally broke the 20lb mark this morning, coming in at 311.8lbs! Still, progress has been MUCH slower than I want, so I need to switch things up. How I’m going to do that has yet to be decided, but something’s got to change. The one thing I will NOT be doing is DROPPING my caloric intake. I’ve had a few people say I should, but I think doing so would actually do more harm than good. I’ve also had several people say to cut back on the carbs. That, I’ve also taken strongly into consideration. In fact, that MIGHT be the one direction I actually take things. The problem with doing that is the level of carbs that I do get each day. I haven’t been tracking, but my meals have all been carb heavy. Subway is mostly bread. BreadCo is mostly bread – nearly ALL of my meals have had a major carb element to them. Could the carbs be hampering my efforts? No real way to tell, besides giving up most of my carbs. That would mean switching up meals and having more produce than bread. This COULD be a good thing, but it will definitely be a more expensive thing as well. Subway especially has helped a LOT with the budget. $5 for lunch and have water back at the office. I really can’t beat that anywhere I look! I’ll need a way to have lunch out without killing my budget. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

So, this weekend, I did some swimming! I’m not going to say I did laps or anything, but I did swim across the pool a few times. Even had a few races as well! Most of the time was spent just treading water, so nothing too heavy. However, I did spend quite a bit of time doing my own flavor or water calisthenics. What that consisted of was utilizing the resistance of the water to get in some resistance training. The primary one was getting to where my head was JUST above the water, have my arms extented out with my hands cupped so that I was like a T. I would then bring in my arms and “clap” my hands under water. I would then turn my hands the other way, and move my arms back into their original position. I would try to do this as quickly as possible so that there was QUITE a bit of resistance against my arms and hands. After about 20 reps, I could feel the burn, and it felt AWESOME! I did about 5 sets of these each day this weekend.

The other thing I did was underwater crunches. For this, I would start off in a standing position. I would then bring up my knees to my chest and bring my elbows in towards my stomach, getting as tightly into a ball as I can. This was all very low impact, but once again, I felt the burn. I did about 5 sets of 20 reps for these as well.

I was feeling awesome after accomplishing this. It’s actually gotten me considering hitting the pool at the gym again. Maybe not for the swimming in general, but if only to do those two exercises. Actually, mix those with the cardio from swimming, and I think I might have a plan for success. The one negative is there’s only 3 swimming lanes at the gym, and they’re almost always being used. :-/ Times like this, I wish I had my own private pool!

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this up for now. I’ll have the video posted later this evening. I’ll have it up online here once it becomes available.

Thanks again for all of your support and well wishes! I’m not going to let you down!

As much as I want to post – there’s just not enough “diet” news in my life to post on a semi-regular basis without getting borning and redundant. I try to find diet information out there that I find interesting, but by the same token, I don’t want to just quote and repost other blog’s diet information. So, what’s a good blogger to do?

I’ve been tempted to start up a personal blog again, just discussing everyday general things. Top 10 things I hate about X. Why Steve Jobs is right to ban flash on iDevices. Things like that. The thought then hit me that maybe I should adopt the “Fat Guy on a Diet” persona more thoroughly, and just post here as if it were just every other blog.

The last thing I want to do is alienate my readers and followers with non-diet related posts and information, especially if that’s the main reason they’re following. So, I’m going to leave it up to you, my readers and followers to decide. If you have any comments, please let me know how you feel. I’m anxious to move in one direction or the other, so I’m only leaving the poll open for a few days. Vote and make your opinion heard!

UPDATE (5/3/10): The poll is still open, and everything is running neck and neck. However, I was talking to some of my readers this weekend, and I asked about their opinion. One of them had previously voted “For” and now she’s begun to regret the descision. On that note, I think I’ll keep the blog going… business as usual for the time being. I’ll make an announcement soon about where to find my other blog.

Just got the first episode of “Fat Guy on a Diet” up on YouTube. It was a trial and error experience, but I’m still happy with how it turned out. Need to work on getting rid of the HUGE border for next week. Let me know what you all think about it!

Well, that’s not necessarily true. It’s not like I’m not tracking what it is I ate, I’m just not sure how bad / good it was for me. The meal I’m referring to is lunch. We decided to hit a local favorite Mexican restaurant, El Agave. Usually I’ll get a heart stoppingly huge (and delicious) burrito, or the Chili Colorado, but this time, I had to look for a healthier option. It came down to a taco salad or a “Mix Fajita”. I opted for what I thought was the lesser of the two evils and went for the fajitas. What arrived was both surprising and shocking. One plate had a heaping pile of meat and veggies, while another plate had rice, refried beans, lettuce and tomato. I pushed the 2nd plate away and quickly dug into the main dish (minus tortillas, of course). There was just a ton of food there. I’m not sure how much of each of the proteins there were, but my rough guess is 4oz steak, 4oz chicken, and 4oz of shrimp. I could be completely wrong on those numbers, but it was so difficult to tell since everything was just piled in together and mixed with a ton of peppers and onions. It was absolutely fabulous, but I’m still not sure how much it was, calorie-wise. For now, I’m just going to guess 800, but that could be WAY high (or way low, for that matter). Guestimates anyone?

Breakfast was a Fiber One yogurt for 50 calories. Dinner was 8oz of chicken (240 calories) and Steam Fresh Broccoli and Cauliflower (105 calories). After dinner, I had a 100 calorie Yogurt. So, all together, I’m estimating about 1295 calories for the day (give or take a few hundred….)

So, just before this weekend, I passed the one month mark of my new diet journey. I’ve had ups and downs, but so far, no serious derailments. I’ve had my cheats, though I swore I never work. I guess everyone has to cheat every so often, or a serious derailment is inevitable. This morning I weighed in at 315lbs. That’s a 3.4lb drop from last week! Still not the 5lb goals that I initially set for each week, but still very respectable. The biggest question in everyone’s mind is “Did I exercise?” Well, outside of a little walking yesterday, the answer is unfortunately no. This weekend did not work as I had originally planned, mostly due to a headache that sidelined me on Saturday. I had planned to do a ton of cleaning around the house, and ended up just doing a small fraction of my original gameplan, all of which was done Sunday morning / early afternoon. That unfortunately left little or no time for actual exercise.

When I woke up on Sunday, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was down to 314lbs. That inspired me more than anything else to really push to eat well all day Sunday. I started off with oatmeal mixed with vanilla protein powder and a cup of skim milk. A little later, I decided to have some toast with spray butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon. For my late lunch (almost 3PM), I stopped by Subway and had my usual – Foot long Oven Roasted Chicken with all the fixings. I figured eating as late as I did, I might be able to squeeze by without having dinner later in the day. I was successful in that endeavor, and that kept my total calories for the day down to under 1200. I was pretty confident that when I stepped onto the scale this morning, I would have dropped another pound, giving me my 5lb goal for the first time since the beginning. Unfortunately, I think dropping my calories SO much went against me, and my body decided to hold onto everything it got instead. So, instead of losing, I actually gained a pound. Not going to complain about it, but it was actually a bit discouraging.

So, this begins a new week, and technically the 2nd month of my new journey. I’m down 17lbs (not the 25/month I’d hoped), but still a respectable loss. And I really didn’t give up much over the last month. I cut out soda cold turkey, and just watched what I ate, avoiding as much processed food as possible. If I can pull another 17lbs the next 30 days, that would put me right about the 10% mark in the middle of May. My minimum goal is to have reached my PREVIOUS weight loss by the time my birthday rolls around. That would put me at 283lbs by early July, a total loss of 49lbs, or 32 that I have left to go. Ultimately, I’ll exceed that number, but if I can’t lose another 32 by then, I’ll be VERY disappointed!

So, it’s a new month – a fresh start once again! Goals for this month are to get the exercise program started. Can’t say I’m going to push myself to my limits, but I’ll at least make it into the gym regularly. Right now, I’m just going to be pushing cardio. I need to burn the fat, and that’s the way to do it. Maybe in a month or two, I’ll ramp up to weight training, though that most likely won’t happen until I hit about 60lbs of loss total. Other goals are to try and post more frequently. I can’t promise daily updates, but I’ll get as close as possible. I’m also looking to possibly put together a weekly podcast, probably teaming up with my old friend Fat Man on a Diet. Lots to look forward to in the upcoming weeks and months!

I was doing so good! Yesterday I had a banana for breakfast, and Applebee’s Asiago Peppercorn Steak (with extra veggies) for lunch. Then last night I had the Social Media Club event to go to. Even then I did great, avoiding the beer and having a GIANT bottle of water (in glass no less). When it became time to head out, we decided to hit Broadway Oyster Bar.

Broadway Oyster Bar should have been an immediate red flag – there was no way I was getting out of there and sticking to my diet. But immediately hearing those words, I was already salivating at the idea of having cajun cuisine. Suddenly, the diet was nothing but an afterthought, and I was ready for some food! Last time I’d gone there, I had a pound of boiled crawfish and a bowl of red beans and rice. I was dead-set on the crawfish etoufee, but when I sat down, only one thing drew my eye – the sampler. We ordered an appetizer, which was Cajun Chips (seasoned potato chips) served with remoulade sauce. I aimed to have just one or two, but immediately became enthralled with the flavor, and couldn’t stop myself. During that time, we had some interesting events happen with some of the other patrons, but everyone was just trying to have a good time. Eventually the meals arrived and I was blown away by the amount of food. There was a bowl of gumbo, and heaping piles of red beans, jambalaya, and crawfish etoufee. I gave the gumbo a try and was immediately taken back home – it was about as authentic as I’ve found so far in St. Louis. The red beans were the same as last time, very good, but still not like back home. The Jambalaya was great, but it’s really hard to mess that up. Finally, the crawfish etoufee was the best I’ve had in St. Louis – tasted just like grandma used to make. Before I knew it, I’d put away the entire platter of food! My guesstimate is that it was WELL over 2500 calories for that alone!

The thought of me losing control that much has completely frightened me. I’ve come face to face with temptation before, but have never lost this badly. This morning, I’m back on the wagon. The scale didn’t register any change (still at 317), but it might not have taken affect just yet. I was going to hit this gym last night and this morning, but ended up getting to sleep near 1PM, so I couldn’t pull myself out of bed too early. I also needed to make it into work a bit earlier to prepare for the day. My gameplan is to hit the gym tomorrow morning and get a workout before the day gets started. Spend the weekend there, and then I should have a good start for the rest of next week. I’ll let you know how that goes.