Pressing on

Just finished my delicious and reasonable spaghetti and meatballs dinner and it's time to share my weekly reflection. I didn't indulge at the wedding, just as planned, but I slept in the following morning and skipped breakfast (something I never do). I was so hungry by lunch-time that I talked myself into going to the Chinese buffet.

I knew I was walking into danger territory, but it has been a long time since I've had Chinese and I personally think the buffet there has the best chicken teriyaki and spare ribs of any other place I've been. I kept my head, ate slowly and listened to my hunger signals. When I decided I was satisfied, I stopped. I didn't go back and get some donuts, cream puffs and ice cream like I previously had so many times. I just put down my fork, paid my bill and left. In fact, I only had one plate of a small portion of each of my favorite dishes. I didn't go back 4 times or fill up the plate to overflowing proportions. My body knew it, too.

Whereas I normally would have walked away stuffed to the gills, almost feeling sick to my stomach and sluggish for the remainder of the day, I just felt like I'd satisfied a craving without overdoing it. I was really happy with that experience. I did my best to track my points for the day and determined that I didn't have more than 30 points (1500 Calories) at that meal. Awesome.

After the weekend, I got back to the gym. I won't lie, it was ridiculously challenging after being out of it for so long. I had a stitch in my side and a pain in my shoulder that were very distracting, but I pressed on and did a full hour on the elliptical, burning about 1000 Calories. Then, I climbed on the recumbent bike for an additional 30 minutes. The next day, things got easier, but by no means back to the level I was out say... 4 months ago. Wednesday, I couldn't find the motivation to go and today I rationalized that working out would have negatively influenced weigh-in. Altogether, I am nowhere near where I need to be with the exercise, but my food continues to be very solid, enough so to pick up the slack.

The scale was kind, showing 3.8 for the week, bringing me to 99.8 overall. Just shy of that hundie I fought so hard to get last spring. I'm now 23.6 down since the big gain. Just 16.6 to go before I'm back in the black.

This week: continue rocking the food choices and put in no less than 6 hours at the gym. Starting tomorrow.

Climbing out of the muck

Weigh-in last night was solid. I felt really good all week and the scale actually followed through on that feeling. After losing 13.2 a couple of weeks ago, I still had 27 to go to break even with where I was in July before my massive wipeout. Now, I'm down another 6.6, leaving me with 20.4 to go. I'm halfway back to where I should never have left. Yeah, I've lost a lot of ground and wasted a lot of time. I probably should have been down to 225 and below by now, but what's done is done. All I can do is claw my way back.

Now, I don't expect the other half of this added weight to just drop off like the first 20 did. That said, I managed to drop that much without getting back on the workout bus, something I am determined to do starting today and carrying on through to goal.

Speaking of goals, gaining all this weight was particularly painful to me because it erased my triple digit accomplishment I was so proud to hit last May. Now, I'm just 4 pounds from hitting that goal again. How fitting, I lost my 100 pound charm sometime in the last 3 weeks, so when I get it back at my meeting where I weigh in below 258.2 again. That's just a little bit more motivation that I need.

Checking in

Hey guys. I obviously failed another week of posting, but I'm still here and I'm still going to try my hardest not to fall back into a habit of not posting. So today, I'm going to give some much needed updates.

I've been a little remiss in not telling yall what's been happening since August 29th, but I just realized I never told ya a big piece of news that also came while I was off the wagon. On Tuesday, July 28th, I popped the question to my girlfriend of 2 years. We're still reeling in that reality and just getting started on the wedding planning. It's going to be December, 2010, so we've got plenty of time to plan and save, but that also gives us 16 months to get into the best shape of our lives. Hot-ass bride and groom incoming!

So I missed weigh-in last Thursday. I have no excuse. We just didn't go. Fear not. I'll have an update tomorrow evening. Promise. I have been really failing the workouts. I still don't have the motivation to get there. I did mow the lawn on Labor day, which is a pretty serious workout with the size of lot I have, but I just haven't found the urge to march my ass into the gym. That's pretty sad considering A) I have a metric shitton of free time seeing as I've been unemployed for a week and a half and B) I seriously need to work all this gained weight back off so I can be back to where I was just 2 months ago. That said, I've been rocking the OP-osity on tracking, and that feels really good. I know I won't work out today and I don't want to mess up myself with some water-retention before weigh-in so I won't tomorrow either. I'm going to really try to motivate myself to go Friday and M-W of next week.

This weekend, I visit my old home-town to attend a wedding. Those are always fun eat-and-drink-a-thons. I think I'll set a precedent for myself to the contrary.