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…

The Vegetti

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

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So far so good… I have stayed under my calorie goal everyday except one and that day I was only over less than 50 calories… I am staying right below that green one-pound-a-day line… 22.4 pounds in 22 days…

I notice a change already… I am more comfortable.. the bowel issues I have been having for a long time have gotten better… I see less of a massive belly (believe me, the belly is still huge, but not as massive).. stairs at work are a little easier… I am trying to remember what it was to be of a healthy weight… But it seems so long ago I don’t have a good grasp of it..

Sticking to the diet has been okay… I was able to at things I wanted to sometimes.. I had fish and chips at Red Robin for dinner one night… I had a Santa Fe Chicken sandwich at Carl’s Jr.. I had a hot dog, corn on the cob, macaroni salad and a small piece of peach cheese cake at a BBQ.. If I am looking at my daily calorie limit and contemplating going over it I think about not going backward on my weight loss journey and that keeps me in line 😉

Okay, so here is the secret.. on 8/12/14 I started dieting.. just counting calorie and using myfitnesspal app.. simple enough.. my caloric goal is 2530 calories per day… I have been at or under each day so far.. I have been calculating everything I eat…

When I want to cheat I think about a video from a guy on Facebook.. His ‘name’ is LessOfLes in 2010 he weight 511 pounds… he now weighs 185 pounds.. lost 326 pounds.. in the video he talked about cheating.. and used an analogy that if you were driving from New York to Los Angeles you wouldn’t go all the way from California and turn and go back to Colorado.. then turn around and continue to Los Angeles.. why go back and the travel through the same stuff you did before?  So my focus is why would I want to travel back up in weight and then have to lose it back again.. why not focus on the destination instead and not take detours..

I have gained and lost probably well over 1000 pounds in my life so far… up and down and up.. it’s really crazy.. Using this motivation along with wanting to show my wife and my kids that large amounts of weight can be lost and that they can do it too.. I have not really changed what I eat at all.. I have changed portion sizes and have stopped eating when that portion is gone.. I have had fast foo.. deserts, snacks.. I just am honest when calculating the calories and keeping the total daily calories under my goal..

So up until now only my wife and kids have known about this diet… I didn’t make it known mainly because I was afraid of telling everyone and failing again… but so far so good.. I started on 8/12/14 at 416.0 pounds.. Today I weigh 396.4… that’s 19.6 pounds in 17 days… I have a chart that I used back in 1982 when I lost 73 pounds in a year.. basically I chart my weight daily.. there are 3 target lines on the chart that all start on day 1 at my starting weight.. there is a green one that represents 1 pound per day lost.. a yellow one represents 1 pound lost every 2 days… and a red one that represents 1 pound lost every 3 days.. the goal of course is to stay at or below the green line.. in ’82 I wasn’t dieting smartly and if I ever got over the red line I would fast until I got below the yellow line.. in the first 30 days I fasted for a 9 day stretch to get below the yellow line.. water only fast… I got so weak and felt horrible… but I lost 31 pounds the first 30 days… I won’t fast like that again, but I will use the lines to refocus if I start to get close to yellow and red lines.. right now I am slightly under the green line 😉

So my plan is this… keep being focused and don’t go over the goal calories… At some point I plan to start juicing again for at least breakfast and see how that goes..

P.S. This diet was so stealth I forgot to post this on 8/29 when I wrote it..

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