A Journey through Weight and Thyme

no, wait, that applies to one of my other activities up at Maricopa Live Steamers. It’s Saturday, a week has passed, and it’s time to get on the scale. Well, actually, I already did this morning. The scale showed 363.4. For those of you keeping track, that’s a loss of 1.6 pounds. Take that you ugly yellow fat cells. It’s a good start, and I am going to keep building on it. Mental note: DO NOT drink a can of soda the night before getting on the scale. All that salt makes you retain a bunch of water. I know I would have been over two pounds otherwise. Oh well, live and learn.

…and a little more. Today was a little mile stone. I am into the double digits. That’s right, 11 pounds and counting. Down to 354 pounds. I used to be embarrassed to tell people my weight, my drivers and pilots license both say 320 pounds, not very honest, but it worked. I always carried my weight well, people always guessed low, or maybe they were just being nice.

This morning getting on the scale felt good. Eleven pounds is an achievement, in four weeks. I like this progress. In weight watchers they use lots of tools to help you loose weight. One of those is to take your weight loss and make it tangible. So, eleven pounds is two five pound bags of flour, plus a little one pounder. That’s a lot of flour, a.k.a. fat cells. Begone, yee fat cells. I do notice that some stuff is starting to fit better. For instance, on Saturdays I usually head to the train park to help maintain the park, and get some exercise as well. Getting dressed this morning I realized that the pants I normally wear there were not as tight, as in I didn’t have to suck in my gut to get the button closed. I also noticed that driving the train, I can move around a little better on the trains, my gut is not getting in the way so much. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

Recently several people have told me that I have inspired them to do things they want, such as eating better like me, or training for a half marathon. It’s inspiring to me to know I have inspired you, and all your comments mean a lot to me. Writing these entries is therapeutic in a way, but knowing that others are reading them, that is inspiring to me, and I thank you. I have some tough times coming up food wise, and it’s going to be a challenge making good choices, but I will do my best.

Breakfast at Mimi’s

Posted on September 19, 2010 by John

This morning we went to brunch with my mom at Mimi’s Cafe. Anyone who has been there knows their servings are big, and their muffins are to die for. I looked for something with lots of protein, ended up having a breakfast ciabatta breakfast sandwich, thinking that was probably a pretty good choice, with egg, bacon, ham, spinach, tomato. I even skipped the included muffin. I was pretty darn proud of myself.

Later tonight, while typing this post, I went back to the menu to see how to spell ciabatta, and happened to see the nutrition information, and nearly felt my arteries constrict. It had 53 grams of fat, and 944 calories. HOLY MOLY! that works out to 23 points. Good thing I skipped the muffin. SO the lesson here is, watch out, those fat grams can sneak up on you pretty darn fast!

A word to my facebook friends. I love the comments there, but please feel free to comment here as well, since I have some non-facebook readers as well. Thanks.

Another week has gone by, and my highlight was trying to find out how many weeks I am going to spending in NYC in October. Right now, it’s looking like 3 out 4. This will be a serious test of my commitment, as anyone who has been to NYC can tell you. Food a plenty. My biggest problem when I travel is drinking enough water. When I am home, I drink over a half gallon a day, probably closer to three quarter gallon.

I wasn’t so careful this week in my choices, and it shows. But still, a pound is a pound, so keep going, right. I am averaging 2.3 pounds a week, a pretty healthy rate so far. I am sure this will go down to closer to one pound per week over time. My total loss, 9.2 pounds, almost 2 bags of flour. It helps to put things in perspective like that, to know what you really have lost. I feel my clothes starting to fit a little better, so that is some encouragement too. I have a whole slew of clothes hanging in the closet, still with tags on, waiting to be worn.

Tomorrow I go out to the train park again, to be an engineer. I didn’t go today to do maintenance work, and I really missed being out there, in the fresh air, getting some exercise and moving around. So I am looking forward to tomorrow. Those of you in the Phoenix area, come on out between 12 and 4:30, it’s a lot of fun.

After last weeks party, I wasn’t to sure how my weigh in this weekend was going to go. I must admit, I was a it apprehensive that I may have had an increase. I am happy to report that I was down 1.6 pounds, for a total of 8.2 pounds in three weeks. I know I won’t be able to maintain this acreage of over 2.5 pounds forever, but for now I’ll take it.

I have to admit, I had another post already posted, celebrating a 5 percent loss, but then suddenly I realized something wasn’t adding up right,so I am saving that one for later.

It’s Tuesday after Labor day, and going back to work this morning was sure a drag. My Facebook status this morning was taken from a recently released country song:”#?*!”. Yeah, I know, it says it all. I hopped on the scale yesterday morning to see how much damage I did on our labor day BBQ, and I did more than I hoped. But I was also doing a lot of work outside this weekend at the train park, so who knows how much of that was just water I was carrying from drinking probably 5 or so gallons over three days. Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but just remember, you sweat a lot of it out here in AZ.

Anyway, tonight for dinner, I cooked up some chicken breasts, along with yellow, red, and green peppers, and some onions and spices in a pan. Add to that some jasmine rice laced with cilantro and some lime juice, and a nice side salad, and we had a scrumptious dinner. I am being careful the rest of is week, so I can at least maintain my weight from last week, maybe have a little decrease.

Well, Saturday has come and gone, and this morning, before heading to the train park, it was time to get on the scale. I actually look forward to it, I don’t dread it like I used too. I knew that I wasn’t going to be at my mid week weight, for two reasons: I always seem to weigh more on weekends, and there was the buffet dinner on Wednesday night.

Part of learning to control your eating is knowing your pit falls. My pitfalls are buffets and pizza. If you put a 36 inch pizza in front of me, I will eat it. And I mean all of it. I just can’t stop when it comes to pizza. My other pitfall is a buffet. I mean, with so m any options, how can you not go back. And so I knew that my midweek weight was not going to stand, but still, I was hoping for a loss.

I am happy to report that I weighed in at 358.4, for a total loss of 6.6 pounds. I got my little 5 pound star in my weight watchers online tracker So, since I like to put things in context, I am now less then a complete circle. My next big goal is to be less then two people, which is less than 340, since the friendly folks at the FAA consider 170 pounds to be an average adult. I think they need to revisit that measurement some time.

I also now have a tape measure for taking this scary body measurements. This ought to be interesting, but I will save that for another entry.

Oh my god, what happened to June, July, and August? Seriously, where did they go? Anyway, it’s been interesting the last two days. It’s been cool enough in the morning (high 70′s) to take the dogs running. Yeah, in PHX, at the end of August, in the high 70′s at 5 AM. Unheard of. But it’s a good thing. Means I got my butt back on the bicycle. I found out that the seat has gotten a little loose over the summer (must be due to heat expansion) so I need to fix that before I go riding much more. The dogs loved it though, and so did I. It felt good to be getting a little exercise again. After we got home, I hopped on the scale. Since it’s midweek, it’s not an official weigh in, but…hold on to your shorts…the scale sale 353.4!!! That is 11.6 pounds down from my starting weight. Lets holpe I can carry this through to Saturday morning, but honestly, I will be happy with any loss, great or small. Have a great day.

Without going into lots of details, a recent change to take up a new role at work, which I was supposed to start at the end of this month, just evaporated faster than the rain on the streets in the hottest Phoenix summer. Normally, this would be a serious Pizza binge moment. I think, instead I’ll go eat some carrots. I have to redefine my comfort foods; this is going to be fun.