The Journey
Weight: 370.4 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (45 days): 45.6 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 53.2 pounds
(Note: on the graph above you will see where the green, yellow and red lines jump together today.. this is when I reset them to make it more effective.. if you leave the lines the same from day one it makes it easy to slack off as there is a lot of distance to gain before you hit a line.. so resetting them lower makes it have more incentive to stick with it.)
Yesterdays food log is HERE
Been a couple of days since I wrote here… so let me review… Over the weekend I was kind of sick.. very sneeze and runny…
Friday 10/3/14
After the Simi Football game we went to Big Z Pizza… I got a salad bar and that worked well.. made it easy to not eat as much pizza…
Saturday 10/4/14
We went to Red Robin… They have a really cool app (and it’s on their website too) that allows you to build your meal down to the point where you can change each item on your burger…
I had a Jump Starter Fried Zucchini Sticks
Red Robin Zucchini is excellent! The only one I can think of that is equal or slightly better is Claim Jumper Zucchini… But it is too huge and calorie laden… I would eat it all and have 1000+ calories to log… Red Robin’s Jump Starter is a smaller portion… it’s 4 sticks and a side of ranch and is delicious… the zucchini is 205 calories… 1 oz of ranch is 112 calories… it was so good…
I also had a grilled chicken sandwich…modified it to be grilled chicken, pickles, lettuce, tomato, Heinz 57 sauce and grilled onions.. all on a regular bun… that’s 459 calories… I had it ala carte (no fries or side dish)… it was moderately satisfying…
Sunday 10/5/14
I ate too much at the end of the day… went over a little on the calories… I have recommitted to staying under from again.
Overall I still need to add to this to jump start the rate of my weight loss… Still want to start exercising… but it just hasn’t happened yet…
Weight: 373.6 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (45 days): 42.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 50.0 pounds
Yesterdays food log is HERE
Well the momentum finally slowed and my dedication to the calorie counting and staying under my limit floundered some… but I am back and ready to jump back on this and get it done… I didn’t go completely crazy…
(got busy and never completed this post.. publishing anyway)
Weight: 373.6 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (45 days): 42.4 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 50.0 pounds
Yesterdays food log is HERE
My wife outed me on Facebook 😉 That is why this is now the “Not So Stealth Diet”… I had been waiting to say anything on line until people started seeing the loss… but I never said anything to Cece or the kids so it wasn’t a big deal.. Lots of people were very positive about it and it was a really nice thing for Cece to do 😉
Yesterday I was home not feeling so well… and that turned into the first day in the last 45 that I have gone over my calorie limit… I went over by about 120 calories… I knew I was going over but I did it anyway… So I am refocusing today to avoid doing that again… I think the biggest problem yesterday was mid-day… I wanted to eat everything…
Today I am doing well.. I updated myfitnesspal and my calories got lowered again (since I weight less now than when I started)… they adjust about every 10 pounds lost… I am at work and very happy with my progress so far… today is 50 pounds since my all time high… I have not been this low since 12/07/12 so that is a good feeling.
Health is about the same… I still feel better than when I started. Tonight is the first home football game of the year for SVHS so I will there taking pictures. Not sure what dinner will be before the game.
Which brings me to TGI Fridays… On Wednesday we had dinner there.. and looking at the calorie counts on their menu’s it seems that they cannot be accurate… For example:
Fridays Shrimp
A dozen crispy, golden brown shrimp. Served with seasoned fries and cocktail sauce. – 730 calories
Seasoned Fries side shows 290 calories.. so that means the shrimp and sauce is only 440 calories.. depending on where you look online, generic fried shrimp are:
6-8 shrimp – 454 calories
12 shrimp – 314 calories (27 calories each)
I tried and tried to figure out something safe and I couldn’t… everything that were around the amount I wanted to use seemed really low for what it was… I just couldn’t trust it.. so I have a small Cesar salad with dressing on the side… not very satisfying at all… And then my stomach started hurting (it had been a little bit all day).. I guess from the lettuce… so when I got home I didn’t want to eat anything else.. that led to a day that I only had under 800 calories all day… not something I wanted to do… I guess if we want to go to Fridays again I am going to have to prepare by comparing some of their entrees with the same thing at other places and just go with the higher of the two..
Weight: 379.2 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (42 days): 36.8 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 44.4 pounds
I have been trying to find a good way to share my food diary from the day before here and I am getting nowhere… best I could do is to make a PDF out of it and post a link… not sure if this would be beneficial to any of you, but it might be to me so I am starting a new category which is My Food Diary… posts can be seen HERE
Weight: 379.0 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (42 days): 37.0 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 44.6 pounds
(Note: on the graph above you will see where the yellow and red lines jump down.. this is when I reset them to make it more effective.. if you leave the lines the same from day one it makes it easy to slack off as there is a lot of distance to gain before you hit a line.. so resetting them lower makes it have more incentive to stick with it.)
So as expected my weight loss has slowed… I was at a bad plateau for a while… oh course that makes it harder to stick to the calorie limit but I have been able to do it so far. I have been struggling eating much during the day (breakfast and lunch) and then eating a lot for dinner.. this is not the best way to do this.. am still using the MyFitnessPal app on my phone religiously and using their website as well, www.myfitnesspal.com… I track everything that I eat and drink and often plan out my meal on there first and then serve myself accordingly… This planning helps the most when eating out…
I have been trying to diversify my foods… I have added hard boiled eggs to my diet and some more fruit… but one of my downfalls has been diet sodas… I have been drinking too much of this and need to limit them to 1 a day and increase my water intake.My moods have not been good.. grumpiness from the diet and have had no motivation at all for anything. Am going to try my best to stay focused and try to not be in a bad mood.. I should be in a good mood since I am sticking to this and losing weight, right?
My health has been good.. I definitely feel an improvement overall… When I walk a flight of stairs I am not winded… It feels like my low back issue is a little better… My Peripheral Neuropathy pain in both feet is still constant and at times severe… I am hopeful that at some point the weight loss will help, but there is a good chance that it won’t help. I plan to schedule an appointment with my doctor when I hit 10% of my body weight lost (41.6 pounds will be 10%) and have a physical… when I hit 41.6 lost that will mean I have lost 21% of my goal loss of 198 pounds…
No one has said anything about me losing weight but I think it isn’t real obvious to others yet… For me my belly is MUCH smaller… it isn’t hard and protruding as much as it has.. I have been using notches in my belts that haven’t been used in awhile… I have worn a couple of shirts that were too tight to wear before.. so all in all I am happy with my progress so far.
Exercise is still something I need to dive into… there are no excuses really other than me just not doing it. I don’t need anything to go for a walk, ride the exercise bike, play the fitness games on xBox with Kinex…
No one commented after my last post asking people to let me know if they are reading this blog.. so I guess I am doing this for just me at this point… but please comment if you do read this at some point.
Weight: 384.8 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (35 days): 31.2 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 38.8 pounds
Sticking to the plan still.. monitoring every calorie I intake and staying under the calorie goal. My mood has been okay and there have been some really difficult days with cravings, mainly craving to just eat a whole bunch of anything…
Last Friday I had a big dinner.. I stayed under my calories but it was huge.. 18 oz boneless Rib-Eye, mashed potatoes, etc. but that and the weekend definitely tough… I started and eneded the weekend at 387.0 pounds.. so I need to figure out a better way to avoid food at home.
My plan this week is to stay extra focused and keep well under on the calorie limit… try to work some light exercise in at least a couple of days a week and keep pushing to that first milestone.. losing 42 pounds (10% of my starting weight).. that would put me at 374 pounds 😉 If I can get back to the green line and stay there I would hit that goal in just 8 more days!!
If you are reading this please comment.. I always feel like I am the only one reading the posts 😉 Also if you click on any ad on this site it does help me out 😉
NOTE: This post wasn’t published on 9/13/14 when it was written.. I am posting now just so it is public.
Weight: 387.0 pounds
Loss since 8/12/14 (31 days): 29.0 pounds
Loss since top weight (423.6 on 9/13/10): 36.6 pounds
Exactly 4 years ago today I was at my all time high weight of 423.6 pounds…. I am still trying to get to a healthy weight but I do see recent progress toward my goal weight of 218.0.
Yesterday went well. I stayed well under my calorie limit and lost 1.8 pounds. Could have saved more but Pineapple juice was the an issue… I wanted to drink the entire bottle. Had BBQ Chicken for breakfast Veggies/fruit and pickles for lunch/snack and hamburger patty with cheese and rice with butter and soy sauce for dinner and a Skinny cow Mint Ice Cream sandwich for desert
So day 30 arrives and I kind of lost momentum here… I am currently 388.8 pounds,, that’s a loss of 27.2 pounds… which I am really happy with… I have been staying under on my calories (sometimes too far under.. more on that later) but have seen small increases in weight the last few days.. I am 2.8 pounds above my ‘green line’ of 1 pound per day.
Since I have been doing so well and this is day 30 I have reset the red and yellow lines (see chart above) I do this because as time progresses because if I dont the yellow and red lines stop being a factor.. for example on 9/10/14 I weight 388.2… that was 1.2 pounds over the green line… but it was 13.3 pounds below the yellow line.. and 18.1 pounds below the red line… if I didn’t reset them I would have too much wiggle room before I hit one of those lines.. resetting them means that I have to be focused and continue doing what I need to do to stay under the lines.
Leaving calories on the table… there have been days this week where I ate way under my caloric goal… Tuesday I ate only 790 calories of the 2440 I am allotted (leaving 1650)… yesterday I ate 1769 calories (leaving 671) This may sound great but it really isn’t… if you don’t eat enough calories you body goes into ‘starvation mode’ and weight loss slows or stops.
Food has become a burden to me in some ways.. the cravings are horrible so I have to distance myself from food when I am craving it. I have said before that it would be much easier if you could just stop eating at all.. like quitting smoking cold turkey… I quit a 2 pack a day habit over 10 years ago cold turkey… have had even a puff since… If I smoked a cigarette today I know I would be back up to two packs a day in less than a week… Dieting is like telling a junkie “you need to kick your habit… but the catch is you have to use just a little everyday” obviously that wouldn’t be very successful… So now I sit there and instead of looking forward to dinner (for example) I loath it… Nothing sounds good to me except maybe the most fattening of junk foods. I stay away from those and then have to eat something I don’t want. last night Cece was busy and we planned for a late dinner (8:00pm) but that became 9:30 and I really didn’t want to go and I really didn’t want anything to eat at all… but I went to a Mexican place we like.. trying to find something that sounded good and was something that I could guesstimate the calories on prooved to me nearly impossible.. that and the mood I was in made it a bad situation.. Matthew ordered Fajitas… Jake ordered a huge burrito… Cece ordered a Carnitas plate… when it got to my turn I ordered a chicken Cesar salad with the dressing on the side… so not what I wanted… I made the best choice I could.. I had zero chips and salsa (the whole drug addict analogy again.. I would have been shoveling them in my mouth if I had just one chip)
The salad was fine… actually really good… but the smells from all the others food was overwhelming… this put me in a worse mood than before dinner… I know I get ‘grumpy’ when I diet for extended periods of time… and I am trying to be better this time and it is hard. watching the food network (porn for fat people) is difficult, shopping for groceries is tough. Driving past all the fast food places each day is almost impossible (I do get a Charbroiled BBQ Chicken sandwich from Carl’s Jr. most mornings as breakfast… 390 calories and very satisfying) None of this is getting easier… and I try to control my mood but I think it comes off as being distant .
Health wise I am okay. No changes to the Neuropathy (Burning sensation on the soles of my feet along with occasional sharp pain just like someone is stabbing an ice pick into my feet) stays at a constant 4 on the pain scale. At times the pain goes up to 7 or 8… I will be scheduling a physical but I want to wait until I lose 40 pounds (about 10% of my starting weight) Hoping that I may be able to get off of some of my medications at some point. Not counting the over the counter stuff for allergies and pain pills for my feet I take 5 different medications a day.. at total 13 pills a day… Add to that my vitamin, low dose aspirin, Claratin, Chlorotabs, Benedryl, Zantac… that is a total of 26 pills a day… I want to trim that down!
Yesterday I made a variation of the weight watcher zero point vegetable soup… When I was in weight watchers I made this soup often… over the years I have made it still but have of course made it not so ‘zero’ anymore… added Chorizo to it lately.. it makes it so much better 😉 So I went back to the basic recipe and added more bell peppers than usual because I like it pretty spicy… My recipe is here: Steve’s Spicy Soup Recipe
Sorry for the long rant… 😉
A couple of months ago I was in Walgreens and they have a display of all the stuff you see on TV to buy.. I glanced over and saw…
For those of you haven’t seen this tool.. you need to go here and look at it! It basically turns certain vegetables into long strings kind of like spaghetti… I bought it and since I had a bunch of reward points with Walgreens it ended up costing less than $3…
It sat on the counter for awhile.. then I opened it and read the booklet that came with it.. but then finally I was going to cook some zucchini… and I decided to try the Vegetti… Amazing… you just turn the vegetable and the Vegetti works as shown… long strands of zucchini we on the plate… I took them and cut the a couple of times so they wouldn’t bee super long and I put them in a frying pan with a little spray oil and a little crushed garlic… as it neared the end of cooking I added a small pat of butter (1/2 oz.) and a little salt and a touch of salt… AWESOME!
So I have been doing zucchini and that’s great.. I am now looking for ideas on other things to do with it. It makes veggies fun and you feel like you are eating a lot more than you are.
I suggest you pick one up and give it a try
Day 27 and I have stayed to my diet and have lost 25.2 pounds… that puts me just over the green line on my chart… The loss has slowed so I updated weight in myfitnesspal which lowered my calorie limit to 2440 per day…
I struggled over the weekend… The urge to cheat was strong… we went to Palermo’s for dinner… Italian food.. I was having difficulty calculating calories… so I went safe…half grilled chicken sandwich…
When it arrived it just didn’t look good at all.. I took the top bun off and the tomato slivers were mealy… the lettuce was chopped into little 1″ pieces like for a salad.. there was no provolone on it as the menu said but the worst part was the ‘grilled’ chicken… it was either microwaved or boiled… they was no way that chicken had even come close to a grill… it was pure white… no color at all on the outside… so I removed the tomatoes and lettuce and took a bite… it was horrible.. not only was the chicken not grilled it had been doused with a LOT of garlic powder… nothing but that taste in my mouth… so I took a second bit just to verify how bad it was and it was the same as the first bite… I decided it wasn’t worth the calories to eat it.. so I didn’t.
We cooked the rest of the weekend… Cece made her fried rice… since she was cooking I could estimate the calories for each ingredient and came up with what I believe is a pretty accurate calorie count for it… we kept 1 boneless chicken breast so I could marinate and fry it… it came out really good… I cooked some beansprouts, onions and bell pepper and had that on the side.. eating the veggies and chicken made it easier to eat only the portion of rice (1 cup)… really good dinner…
Sunday I made pork spareribs… they came out really good… Cece cooked fries… I portioned out the ribs, sauce and fries and counted everything… another good dinner…
I did snack at times but stayed with healthy choices… cantaloupe, Pickles… I made it through to another week..
Goals for the week ahead:
- Walk
- Stay on track with calories
- Drink more water
- Keep a good mind set/attitude
- Be more active in general