The Dining Out Test

I'm making a real effort to get back into the daily posting habit, so while I'm still lacking in the muse factor, these may be boring or brief. Or both! Either way, I really believe this blogging thing helps me stay on track, so I'm gonna try.

Yesterday was a pretty bittersweet half-day of work. I finished up all my notes, reports and binders and handed those to my supervisor. I showed one of the associates where all my cold stores, frozen stocks and cultures were. I handed in my badge and I left. It's sad knowing that after 7 months of interning they have no positions available, but I gained a lot of valuable experience there and I will come away with two really good letters of recommendation. I'll put those to use over the coming weeks as I search for employment.

I had my standard breakfast of cereal and a FiberOne muffin, I didn't have my usual mid-morning snack as we were out of bananas, and before I left the lab, I heated up some leftover chicken marsala and whole wheat couscous and had those with a light yogurt, an orange and some baby carrots for lunch. Once I got home, I just kind of vegged out for a while. I can definitely tell I'm going to get very bored of unemployment very quickly. Around 4 or so, I grabbed some hummus, an ounce of pita chips, 2 green onions and some more baby carrots for a quick and easy snack to tide me over until dinner at 7.

Dinner was planned about a week ago when we invited another couple to go to a cajun restaurant with us. Dining out is frequently a challenge for me, especially when it's a social occasion with friends. I've remarked before that my family and friends have no idea how healthy I eat because whenever I'm with them I revert to poor choices and bigger portions than normal. Seeing as I've only been on the wagon for a week, though, I really wanted to stay within reason. I left myself with 17 points, so it's not like I had no room to enjoy myself, but I could easily eat double that with just a po' boy. Instead, I only had one of the gator bites we ordered for the table and one slice of bread from the basket and for my entree, instead of getting something fried like I normally would have, I got a bowl of gumbo. It was really tasty and filling, but best of all, I felt rather accomplished to have passed this little field test for myself.

We had discussed the possibility of hitting up the drive-in after dinner because both features were flicks I wanted to see (Halloween 2 and Inglourious Basterds), but everyone was too tired. I think the little lady and I will be going tonight instead. Maybe I'll bring some microwaved popcorn. Have a good Saturday.

Time and dedication

So I've been pretty busy since I last checked in. I started going back to meetings. My first was last week, Thursday evening. What used to be my fall back, "gonna be out of town this weekend" meeting has quickly become my favorite meeting (and not just because it means I can sleep in on Saturday mornings now, but that is a nice perk). The leader there is closer to my age (come to think of it, so is the entirety of that meeting's attendees) and the meetings in general seem to have a more driven vibe. While there aren't as many life-timers at this meeting, I think this is the one for me now.

So I walked in, unprepared for the bad weigh-in, but willing to accept what it said. I say unprepared because I didn't have my weigh-in clothes and had to hop on the scale in my street clothes. There's an instant +1 or 2 pounds right there. Add to that I usually weigh in the mornings and my weight can fluctuate by 3 or 4 pounds from morning to evening and also water retention from the weeks of bad eating and blah blah blah....

It was bad, OK? Worse than I thought, but at least I stopped it before I gained it all back. So +40.2 was a bit devastating, but again, very artificially high. Cest la vie. I'm back on the wagon, there's nowhere to go from here but down.

As it turned out, I picked a very appropriate week to get back at it. The topic of conversation was dealing with failures and slipups in one's weight loss journey. A bit apropos, eh?

I had intended to get back into the swing of things with some aggressive workouts, but alas my internship was not as finished as I'd expected. I spent this entire week coming in and making revisions to my submission for the assay I've been designing in order to get it up to presentation state and to get my assay approved for commercial use. So I didn't get any workouts in this last week. What I did manage to do was track. Militantly. Without forgiveness. Everything I ate.

The weight gain gave me 4 extra points per day and I managed to eat all of them several of the days. I even used a few weeklies. I felt very solid all week and expected it to show on the scale.

It did. Last night, I came in at 268.8 (in my usual weigh-in clothes), down 13.2 from the "reset" point. I've still got a lot of ground to cover before I'm back to where I was before, but at least I've got myself to a state where I know this is what I weigh and I don't have to wonder how accurate that number is.

So now I'm officially +27 from my lowest weight. That's still pretty painful to see, but I am confident I'll get that all off and continue on from there. It'll just take time and dedication. Two things I should have in abundance as I finish my internship today (for real) and proceed into the ruthless job hunt market. Monday, I'll be back to working out. Until then, I will continue to track and make sure I'm following the program.

I think I'll feel a lot better when I'm down to 258.2 again. I don't feel right having less than triple digits lost up there.

Hitting the reset button

It's been a month since I went to a weigh-in. It's been more than that since I worked out. I haven't just fallen off the wagon, I've failed myself bigtime. I've backslided. A lot. I ate some ridiculous stuff from day to day. I didn't even dare to track that garbage, but rest assured I had a few 100-150 point days in the past 31 days.

So great, I've erased a ton of progress. I don't have an official weigh-in and I really hope this looks worse than it is, but this morning, the home scale said somewhere in the range of +30. A pound a day. I've really shot myself in the foot here, but whatever, I caught it, I've recognized that I'm nowhere near ready to do this on my own and I'm ready to get back on track.

I have today and 2 more days left on my internship, then I'm unemployed (and yes, I realize that reality may have contributed to my backsliding). I still have a membership at 24hour fitness and I'm obviously going to have a lot of free time on my hands while I continue the job hunt. I think I'm going to get back to the workout routine slowly and begin incorporating some weights, core training and group-x classes as I ease myself into 3-hour-a-day workouts.

Today, I'm back to tracking 101 (a bit apropos, this is my 101st post). I even measured my cereal and milk. Tonight, I'll read through my week 1 material and tomorrow, I'm going back to meetings. I'll go Saturday morning as well for my official morning weigh-in. I keep telling myself I can't do this without meetings and without blogging, so I really can't blame anyone but myself for failing so hard when I stopped doing both. I don't know if I've rediscovered my motivation or not, but we'll see.

It took me a month to put all this on, it'll take me probably 3 to get it back off, but I'm going to try as hard as I can.

The power of determination

I'm kinda misfiring a lot here on the workouts. I didn't do yoga last night. I worked right through it. I got to bed and fast asleep by 10 last night, but I still couldn't get out of bed for my morning workout. I'm having some severe sleep issues. I should not be needing as much sleep as I'm getting and it still feels like not enough. I really can't imagine I'm still knocked back from the strep seeing as I've been symptom free for almost a week and on antibiotics for more than that.

Regardless, I'm determined to have a good weigh-in as evidenced by my extremely disciplined tracking, planning and follow-through on eating. I've been on point with that all week and feel absolutely no inkling that cart will sway me this evening. I will not be denied. Will I work out tonight? I don't know. I really want to, but given my track record this week I honestly don't know. I owe it to myself, though because it's just retarded to be working so hard on the nutrition side and be so neglectful on the activity side. So, here's to getting back on the horse. Er... elliptical.

...or not

Hopped on the elliptical and plugged away for about twenty minutes before I was feeling some serious burning in my throat that I'm not used to. I really wanted to press through it, but coming off strep, I managed to convince myself that it may be something I shouldn't ignore. I probably could have, but oh well. What's done is done. I still had the morning workout to look forward to, right? Nope! Slept in. I got in bed by 9.30 last night, probably fell asleep around 10.30 and still didn't manage to wake up refreshed and ready to go at 6.00 like I'd hoped. Lame.

Tonight is yoga, I know I'll be able to get through that no problem and it's a pretty decent workout. Tomorrow morning will be my next attempt at restarting my 30-day EA Sports Active challenge. I'm hoping a nice solid 90+ minutes of exercise tonight will help me get some rest and help me wake up early enough to get on it tomorrow.

In other news, I forgot to mention that I've finally built up enough of a well-fitting wardrobe to finally toss every single remnant of my 3X life out of the rotation. I now have a lot of stuff that needs to be donated or sold at garage sale. It's so nice to never have to wear clothes that big again. It feels incredible to wear clothing that actually fits and I'm getting used to being in a more snug top. Today, I'm rockin the argyle T. I'm also down to a size 36 pants, which is just phenomenal considering I started in a tight pair of 48s. That belt I bought in April is now either on the 4th or the 5th hole depending on what pants I'm in. *flex*

Back to working out

So the strep diet is over (I'll be done with my antibiotics on Thursday) and I'm ready to get back to working out. Last night didn't happen. I was in the lab till 7pm, so no elliptical for me. Last night I got to sleep by 10, but I still didn't manage to drag ass out of bed early enough to get back on the EA Sports Active morning workouts that I was doing so well on before. I really need to get this early-morning lack of energy thing nipped in the bud.

So, I'm committing myself to getting in an hour on the elliptical tonight. Tomorrow, I really want to get back on the 30-day challenge, so I'm going to do my best to be in bed and asleep by 10 tonight, preferably settled by 9.30 so I have some time to fall asleep. Tomorrow is also yoga, so I'm going to try my hardest to be done with work by 4.30 so I can get in half an hour on the elliptical before that.

Aside from (or in spite of) the lack of workouts, I feel like my progress from Saturday's weigh-in is pretty solid. I know it's awfully early to be making a prediction, but I think this week is going to be another big loss. With 3½ days to go, that remains to be seen. I have cart to contend with still and my track record of late isn't too hot with that. For the past 6 weeks, I've either worked through it, been home sick, or indulged very heavily in its snacky goodness. Worse than that, I've developed a habit of grabbing extra bars of chocolate and bags of reese's pieces to bring home and either devour myself or tempt my girlfriend. That has got to stop.

So here goes. I have 3 hours of work to get through, then it's time to hit the elliptical, a friend I haven't seen in a week and a half.

Back on the tracks

Quick flyby here. I have a lot of nothin to do today and I wanna get an early start. The little lady and I are taking a break after too many busy weekends in a row, so we've made plans to cook a nice little finger-food dinner for ourselves, lay around, play some games and watch some movies. I started the day with a nice meeting and WI. I lost 9.6 since that 7.0 gain 2 weeks ago. A large part of that can be attributed to the strep, but I'll take it. I'm keeping the points reasonable today (rather than my usual 15-20 weeklies in addition to my daily allotment), I'll carry this energy forward through the week, get back on the old workout wagon and ride the wave of recovery through the rest of the summer and hopefully to that 225 goal.

Good to be back. Good to see some movement on the scale in the right direction. Good to be not sick. Good to be alive.

Progress so far: 113.8 pounds