Fifty Percent Is Only Failing In School

In life, it's failure plus job loss, unless you're in a union.  At any rate, I made it 100% on my predictions for the games today, but only 50% on what I actually wanted to see.  The Bears, once again, broke the hearts of Chicagoans world-wide.  I have the unique joy of saying that both my birth-city team and my home-town team were taken out of the fucking playoffs by the biggest rival of one of the teams.  Awesome.

At any rate, I ate a ham sandwich and low-fat chips from Jimmy Johns for lunch, and a turkey-bacon sandwich with low-fat chips from the same restaurant for dinner.  In the middle somewhere, I had a bag of Nutrisystem Soy BBQ Chips.  I also had a slice of raisin bread toast for breakfast this morning.

I finished my laundry (last load is in the dryer now) but did almost none of the other cleaning I wanted to accomplish this weekend.  Maybe I'll have better success stretching it over the week this week than I did last week.  Of course, a key part of that plan involves going to bed on time, with TV and computer off at 8pm... which hasn't happened, obviously.

I also went through the shipment of food I got this week and mostly distributed it/reorganized the Nutrisystem pantry here in the Fatness Castle.  I segregated the food that's going to be traveling with me for business next month, and next weekend/this week I need to figure out if both it and my clothes can fit together in a suitcase, or if I need to ship the food or some other alternative I haven't thought of, yet.  This reorganization was accomplished in concert with a partial cleaning of the kitchen and the Doing Of The Dishes, a foul pagan rite that must be performed at least once, sometimes twice a week in the life of a bachelor (if he's stopped buying as many paper/plastic plates as he used to).



Shit.  It just occurred to me that my towels are currently in that dryer, meaning that I need to remember to pull them out before I get in the shower tomorrow.  YES I have more towels, but I like those ones, which could have something to do with why they're the ones I use.  So I'm going to sign off now, pray that I remember that in the morning, and lament the fact that I'm not allowed to get drunk on beer to forget the crushing losses both the Bears and the Eagles suffered both because I want to lose weight AND because I need to get up for work on a manufacturing schedule tomorrow.

Later, Fatheads.

"You Used To Update Your BLOG!"

Fine, shut up, here's an update.  Had a great weekend with old friends celebrating the death of someone's manhood, which was, necessarily, bad for me and the immortal souls of everyone involved.

Weight:     315 lbs
Body Fat: 44.7%
Water:      42.3%

So we find ourselves here, with a few weeks to a wedding and my "not as ludicrously fat" clothes feeling a bit tight.  I'm going off the booze until the wedding, and then continuing not drinking until New Year's.

I'm on a bad schedule right now, since I need to make up for some time I took off for weekend travel, but here's roughly what I'm thinking:

9am wakeup/breakfast
10am workout
12pm lunch/shower
2pm work
6pm dinner
11pm home
1am bed

It's a bit off, but I think I can force myself to make it work.  I'd fucking better, I got fitted for my dinner jacket 8 lbs ago.  My rough goal is to get below 295 in the next 18 days.  It's just good to be back in the space of public self-humiliation.  Well, in a more quantifiable way than I've been recently.  Here's a pretty picture:

Later, Fatheads.

Still Alive

Alright, me droogs, I think I owe you an after-action report.  Clearly, I've been off the wires for a bit, and I owe an explanation.  The epic road trip had to come to an end, because I ran out of the cash moneys, so it finished up in Indianapolis for the 4th of July weekend, with pitstops in New Albany, IN at the New Albanian Brewery and the Creation Museum on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati (which probably deserves its own entire post later).  The New Albanian Brewery had good beer, and the Creation Museum was home to the worst science I've ever seen.  I will definitely get a writeup of that together at some point.

The Fourth was pretty excellent, as it was spent with good friends, booze and explosives.  I was drinking and blowing shit up for the rest of the day after this was taken, so I have no pictures of the actual explosions, but friends do, and I may post them at a later date.  For now, enjoy the pile of explosives that was completely used that day and night.  4 cakes, 3 300-shot saturn rockets, a boatload of mortars (with custom launch rack), boxes of firecrackers, novelties, roman candles and bottle rockets.  We celebrated the fuck out of this country.

Of course, this leaves the bulk of the last week being spent back in PA unpacking and decompressing.  As of today, I'm back on Nutrisystem and prepared to begin regular blogging again.  No weigh in this morning, as I got up rather late, but I ate a Nutrisystem lunch, snack and dinner.  I've continued applying for jobs and am hopeful that someone will someday want me to engineer for them again.

I'm probably not going to weigh in for a few days, as I don't want to shock myself too much with whatever damage I've done, boozing and eating takeout for about 2 weeks, but I'm fully back on the diet, and will resume the blogging of it tomorrow.  I also intend to resume working out tomorrow or Wednesday, as it has been some time since I have, and fear the result of my laziness.

That is all!

I LIVE!

So it's been a couple of eventful, diet free days, and I've got a quick recap for you.  I drove up through Tampa Bay from Ft. Myers, FL and into Georgia, where I stopped at a Comfort Inn near the Alabama border for the evening.  I then jogged west into Alabama and Mississippi on my way to Memphis, where I intended to visit Graceland.

Upon reaching Graceland, I realized a couple of things.  First, parking was 15 bucks, and there were probably going to be more charges once I got past parking.  The area is also a complete shithole, check cashing places and pawn shops everywhere.  I also realized I don't really like Elvis all that much.  His music's great and an important part of American musical history, but I can deal without the shag carpets and purple wallpaper.

So I decided to go to the Jack Daniel's Distillery, on the east side of Tennessee.  I stayed in a nearby KOA for the night, and went to the distillery in the morning.

The tour was awesome, and there were great shops in downtown Lynchburg, all of which had the same Jack merch and gave you a free shot glass with a 10 dollar purchase.  Needless to say, I spread my shopping across all the shops.  The picture above is a bronze of Jack with the cave spring that the water comes from in the background.  While at the distillery, I bought 2 commemorative bottles of black label and a bottle of single-barrel, all of which I had signed by the "Master Taster", who happened to be in the tour area signing bottles while I was there.

I then went to the New Albanian Bank St Brewhouse [www.newalbanian.com] at the request of one of the folks I'm visiting in Indianapolis, and picked up a few growlers of beer.  He wanted the Hoptimus, and I bought the Haggis Laddie for myself (I have a weakness for the reds).

Today, I'm going to visit the Creation Museum outside of Cincinnati and then move on to Indianapolis.  I hope not to be arrested.

I've tried to get weighed at a few of the places I've stayed, but there hasn't been a decent flat surface for the purpose, so I'm probably just going to not do it again until I reach home next week.

Ah Sunday

Just woke up at about 1:30, so I'm clearly not eating breakfast or lunch, today.  I'll probably grab snack and dinner and try to get some work done on the internet machine today.

Weight:     290.2 lbs
Body Fat: 39.8%
Water:      46.1%

 I'm concerned that I'm not going to make my 100 lbs lost by the 4th of July (to be clear, today marks roughly 76 lbs lost in 83 days, with 21 days and 24 lbs remaining until the 4th).  I don't think I'm quite on track for that accomplishment.  As you all may recall, I said earlier that I would not allow myself a drink until I either lost 100 lbs or 3 months had passed.  I'm pretty clearly not going to hit the 100 lbs by the 3 month point, because I believe that comes up on the 22nd.  Ah well, I'm losing weight, and not getting to have beer on the 4th of July, while rather un-American, is not the absolute worst thing in the world.

Dinner and Temptation

So I didn't eat all day, and there were some intestinal issues that kept me from getting much done, but I did manage dinner.

The frozen Ravioli Formaggio is, as with the other frozen foods, much better than the other non-froze equivalent.

Along with the ravioli, I also had some celery (unlimited vegetable), broccoli (vegetable) and 2 tbsp of light dressing (fat).

I also had a piece of wheat toast (carbohydrate) with the entree, which is always nice to have to mop up sauce.

For dessert, I enjoyed a Double Chocolate Almond Cookie.

This is one of the better of the non-ice cream treats.

The other members of the family enjoyed the fruits of a journey to the farmer's market, after some appetizers and beer.

Some nice highly fresh turkey sausage on the grill.  This stuff smells just like regular pork Italian sausage, and was mighty tempting, so I decided to hide in another room from the delicious sausages.

We may or may not engage in the gaming this evening.  At least one member of the standard crew is out for the evening, and I'm not totally stoked about the idea, right now.  I'm in the mood for some ODST firefighting tonight, so maybe I'll try and convert some folks to the cause.  Since we don't have the achievement hanging over our heads, I think it may be amusing to go for some higher scores on other maps.  I know I need a fourth to round out the crew, at least, so maybe I'll turn to the internet for a random player.

WEEKEND UPDATE: With Fatass Engineering

As previously mentioned, I drove up to Manhattan this weekend, meaning I left Saturday morning and returned Sunday evening. This required travel food discipline, but before we get to the meal round up, let's get the weekend results, shall we?

334.6 lbs

Meaning I'm up .2 lbs over the weekend, which I don't really consider to be significant. I'm gonna go ahead and call this a win for travel weight loss, although there were some road bumps.

One of the first rules I've learned is to order off the kids menu, so for lunch I stopped at McDonald's for lunch. They allow you to substitute apples for the fries, which is convenient if you were trying not to swallow unnecessary calories.

I ordered the cheeseburger happy meal, which was not the best decision I could have made. A cheeseburger from McDonald's is 330 calories which is not a bad lunch, if you're not on a diet. Of course, I AM on a diet, and 330 is on the upper edge of what most of my meals are worth. Wait, scratch this, the goddamned Mcdonald's site contradicts the marking that was on the cheeseburger wrapper.

http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html

According to this, it's only 300 calories. Whatever, fuck it, my point's still gonna stand. The burger without cheese is 50 calories less, and I should have ordered that. I should have also ordered it without ketchup, because ketchup is a ridiculous source of sugar. Mustard is not so evil.
Most importantly, lunch came with a toy. It's a dragon thing, I think it fell out of the car later, or I'd have taken another picture.

Dinner was had rather late, as the broseph I was visiting and I spent the afternoon going to Ikea and installing his new stereo equipment. We ordered a few wings and some hot sausage pizza from some place who's name I can't remember. I enjoyed the Verizon product placement on my dinner.

The wings were more than a little disgusting. I was excited by the prospect of wings, and that was the only reason we got them. I tasted one and spat it out, broseph had a similar experience. Lesson learned for the fiftieth fucking time in my life: pizza joint wings suck.
The pizza was like an orgasm in my mouth. I had 2 pieces, which is probably one more than I should have. However, previous to diet, I could have easily eaten half of a large pizza or more at a sitting, so I'm not kicking myself too much over a third of a medium pizza.

I didn't eat breakfast the next day and, once again, I had to eat lunch on the road. I stopped on the turnpike at around 1:30pm, and chose Quizno's instead of Burger King or Pizza Hut. Recalling something I saw on the internet about 430 calories for some turkey sub regular, I ordered the only turkey thing I saw on the menu, the Turkey Ranch & Swiss. It was a delicious sandwich and according to what I'm seeing on the Quizno's website, it was 430 calories.

http://www.quiznos.com/subsandwiches/Menu/PDFs/NutritionalInfo.pdf

Now, I've seen conflicting numbers on half a dozen websites about what the damned sandwich is actually worth, but I think I have to go with what they have on their site, because I can't vouch for any of the third party ones.

I got home and ate dinner around 6, which was a turkey sandwich with celery, lettuce, tomato and mustard.

I haven't eaten at all today, so I'm going to go make a nice Nutrisystem dinner before my clock runs out.

Dinner

Tonight's dinner surprised me, in that I didn't think I had any of them left. Wedged Potatoes with Sliced Beef Steak was my entree, with a Blueberry Lemon Bar for Dessert.

I really enjoy both of these, the entree because it tastes like real food, and the Dessert because... it is tasty.


For my sides, I had a piece of multigrain toast (carbohydrate), some cucumber (unlimited vegetable), some green beans (vegetable), and some Newman's Own Caesar Dressing (fat). I like plain cucumbers, but that caesar dressing with cold green beans is fucking awesome.

The bar has a kind of puffed rice treat base, with blueberries on top, with whatever the hell kind of white chocolate it is they love to wrap diet bars in. The blueberry part is kind of moist, so that's nice.

So, it's occurred to me that this weekend is Easter, and that means extra family about, and various traditions I won't be taking part in this year related to food. We're going to have food around that I love to eat and can't eat, and there will probably be more than a few takeout meals in the mix. This will be my first great test.

There are basically three ways to approach a holiday weekend when you're on a diet:

1) You can say "fuck it" and just do whatever you want.
This is an undesirable option, because it's detrimental to work already accomplished, and it's highly likely to completely derail a diet. This is how I was sidetracked from basically the third week of December to last week. A holiday "special dispensation" led to complete fuckuppery that lasted the better part of 4 months.

2) You can say, "I'll go off diet, but I'll eat appropriate portions and not eat too many things that are awful for me."
I fully believe that there are people who can do this. However, for the reasons stated above, I don't think I can do this. Maybe if I were more than 2 weeks into the diet, I could try that, but I shan't dare to try it, yet.

3) You can say, "I'm going to enjoy the presence of family and friends, but I'm not going to eat what they're eating."
This is going to be my tack. I'm not going to eat with my family, I'll stagger my meal times so that there's not the strangeness of my Nutrisystem tray sitting on the table with the ham. I WILL sit with them for most of their meals, but I won't indulge in a glass of wine or spirits with them, because I still have at least 79 lbs to go before I get to drink again. I just need to remember my higher power: booze. Shit, that's a bad higher power... maybe "booze later" is my higher power. Yeah, that works.

I'm thinking of sitting at the Easter dinner table with some white candles singing, "We shall overcome."

Sleep Failure

Once again, I fail miserably at going to bed at a decent hour. So I bring you updates from beyond the pale!

351.2 lbs

Yes, the waterweight loss continues. I could be a fucking high school wrestler the way this shit's going.

Unfortunately, I became distracted by Mass Effect 2 this late afternoon and evening, resulting in missing the one meal I'd really hoped to eat (dinner) and this lack of sleep. Fortunately, I finished the damned game, which means that my evening/afternoon free time can now be filled with activities I'm less likely to end up marathoning. Tomorrow, I will eat more than a snack tomorrow!

That's about all I got, maybe I'll hit the breakfasts tomorrow, and you can experience the joy of a diet breakfast.

Beer Loss

Good evening, and welcome to one of the strangest phenomena of really fat people that you probably didn't know.

This evening, I took a small shit, only one since last weigh in, and hopped on the scale:

356.5 lbs

Now, for those of you keeping track at home, that's a little over 10 lbs in about 36 hours. This is part of a magical phenomenon I like to call "Beer loss". You see, as you all know, when you drink beer, you bloat up, at least a little. Now, "bloat" on a 180 lbs guy and "bloat" on a 340-370 lbs guy are two very different things.

My weight has changed, up then back down to the same thing, as much as 20 lbs over a 5 day period, before, just from drinking Friday and Saturday night. That's fucking nuts, when you think about it. I mean, even on me, that's a belt loop, right there.

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday, we received a gift basket in the mail celebrating the new house. It was a lovely monstrosity from Zingerman's (C) http://www.zingermans.com/Product.aspx?ProductID=G-ULT . Now, I love me some Zingerman's, but the timing on this was kind of awful.

After this week, this sort of thing will just be ignored, except as portions of it can fit into my Nutrisystem food schedule (which I will expound upon at a later date). These can be a horrific derailment, which would be easier to deal with if I were still working, because I'd just bring it in, rather than feel awful about wasting it. Fortunately, there's at least one member of the household who's not restricted from these things, and is working, so that person can deal with it.

Now, we decided to cut the various things down into less ridiculous sizes, and just have small samples of each thing. This seemed to work out all right for us, and was deemed acceptable, as I have not started eating my diet foods, yet.

Moving to today (Tuesday), I basically didn't eat, since I'm trying to readjust my stomach in a negative capacity kind of way. I had some of the delicious cheese and salami with a few crackers around 2pm, but that was it.

Tomorrow, I go on to my simple rule of Nutrisystem: I may eat exactly what the diet lists, but I do not have to eat everything the diet lists.

This means: I can eat Breakfast between 6am and 9am, I may eat the prescribed midmorning snack at 10:30am, Lunch between 12pm and 1:30pm, Afternoon snack between 3:30pm and 4pm, and dinner between 5pm and 7pm (includes Dessert). If I miss any of these meals, I don't eat. I'm not allowed to swap items for timeslots (i.e., "oh, I'll just have this fruit with lunch, instead, and I'll eat my carb from dinner with breakfast") and I'm not allowed to shift my times if I don't get up on time.

This is more than a matter of weight loss. When you're unemployed, there are certain temptations that are far too easy to give into. A big one is a loss of scheduled sleep. If I'm left to my own devices, my sleep schedule will slowly creep to the point where I'm getting up at Noon or later and reading or interneting until 5am. Fortunately, today, I was awoken at 9am, so I'm not in too bad a shape.

Readjusting to a normal, working adult sleep schedule is an important step towards getting myself back behind a 75lbs computer cringing at fluorescent lighting all day. It means I'm awake and ready during times when I might receive calls from recruiters and, more importantly, puts me in a work frame of mind.

Now, mind you, it's almost 1am here in the EST zone, but I will either force myself out of bed on time tomorrow, or I will be forced to go to bed at a decent hour tomorrow. Training the stomach will train the mind.

Tomorrow (today) is for victory, and the Second Circle is for Lovers!