Back On Time for Dinner

I'm back on track with the diet, and to ease my way back into it, I decided to consume my one remaining frozen dinner this evening.

Chicken Alfredo was the meal I had remaining, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For sides, I had celery (unlimited veg), a piece of wheat toast (carbohydrate), some bleau cheese dressing (fat) and a juice box (fruit). My dessert was a Fudge Brownie.

It was a good meal, and I feel quite full, so I didn't overdue it to such an extent as to re-stretch my stomach this weekend. The chicken is quite good, though the sauce is on the low end of the fat scale, so that left something to be desired.

My dessert was great, with only one problem. You remember from when you were a kid how if you put the straw in the juice box, and it was too full, just the tiniest touch would cause it to squirt out all over you? Well, that happened to my poor innocent brownie. Elmo juice all over it, making a filthy sight that I still fully consumed.

An Egg is Fine, Too

GOOD MORNING! I was not terribly hungry this morning, but I forced myself to eat some breakfast, because it helps to get the metabolism going.

I had not previously tried the "Whole Grain O's Cereal" and I'm now thanking God I've only got a few of them left.

This is possibly the blandest cereal I have ever consumed. The one advantage it has over the other cereals is that it has the highest volume of cereal in a serving, which doesn't really get me hard, at this point. For sides, I had a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate) a 1oz piece of leftover Easter ham heated in a pan (protein) and a juice box (fruit). I'm going to miss the leftover Easter ham when it is no more, it really brightens up my breakfast. Of course, an egg is fine, too.

So I'm going slightly insane as a result of Pizza Hut's recent campaign advertising their wings. Now, their wings are kind of terrible, but they remind me that I have access to excellent wings where I live, now.

http://www.wingstogo.com/menu.php

Beer and wings, of course, is one of my favorite "this is absolutely terrible for me" meals, and possibly what will be used to celebrate the 100 lbs benchmark. I am, needless to say, cycling through various cravings. One week, I'm obsessed with wings, the next week, I'll be thinking about how much I'd love to shove a Baconator down my tubby gullet. None of these are good things to eat, of course, but they have two things in common:

1) They're fucking delicious.

2) They're highly accessible.

The combination of the two is deadly. Fortunately, I have my rules, and they're easy enough to obey. There is no room in the Protein, Carbohydrate, Vegetable, Fruit, and Fat paradigm for any of these terrible-for-me foods. Wings would have too much fat to count for a protein. Any cheeseburger worth eating would contain far too many carbs, too much fat, and too much protein to be edible. Pizza that's worth eating would violate nearly every tenet of the diet.

So I either eat the pale comparisons that the diet offers, or I just eat what's available that tastes most decent. For the most part, I avoid direct comparisons between the foods I'm eating and the "real world" versions of them. Pizza made from packets and cooked in a microwave could never even possibly compare to a real pizza, but it tastes pretty good, and I don't think of it as pizza. Good smoked BBQ that takes hours or days to smoke properly will always win over the BBQ pork wrap or BBQ beef and beans, but I enjoy them, because they taste good and I can eat them.

Mostly, I try to put "real food" out of my mind, and focus on enjoying what I'm allowed to eat. When I can't stop thinking about what I'd rather be eating, I think, "How nice will that be to eat when you weigh 180 lbs and are running 10 miles a day? Just think, if you drop a wing at that weight, it won't land on the shelf of your tubby belly and roll down your front, leaving a sauce treasure trail to where your gut mostly obscures your penis."

And that's a fucking motivator, right there.

Health Food, In MY French Toast?

It's more likely than you think.

This morning, I decided to try an experiment, and that experiment involved starting with one of my frozen foods, Golden French Toast. This is one of the ones that can be (and is best) prepared in either a toaster or a toaster oven. I don't have a toaster oven, so I use a toaster (not a great logical leap there).

The second part of the experiment involved an egg (protein) and a piece of multigrain bread (carbohydrate).

I made french toast using these ingredients, because I wanted to eat fresh french toast and compare it to the stuff from the package side-by-side. The only additional ingredients in my home-made french toast were Pam in the pan and a bit of cinnamon, at the urging of every single goddamned person I mentioned this idea to. The only difference was that one tried to get me to use Splenda, too. Yes, asshats, the cinnamon was a good call. As to Splenda, well, I don't put sugar in my normal french toast, so I wasn't about to throw fake sugar into the mix right away.

Having addressed all that, we can move on to how it fucking tasted: pretty fucking good. The Nutrisystem french toast is alright, a bit dry, and light on the "egg" or whatever they actually use to produce this food. My french toast tastes like... my french toast. I cook it the way I like it. Come to think of it, it's a ridiculous goddamned comparison. OF COURSE I like the french toast I make better. The fact that there was a little bit of egg left over so I got a mouthfull of scrambled doesn't hurt anything. Oh, I also had a juice box for my fruit.

Let me also say that if I were working, I doubt I'd be eating this. I generally skip breakfast, and frequently lunch, when I'm working, so the idea of making myself french toast in the morning is laughable. Most of the meals I'm eating on this diet, I could and would eat while working, but the trend would be towards more sides that don't require any cooking or prep work. I'd be more likely to buy bag lettuce than head lettuce (which is a shared commodity, thankfully), and it's doubtful that I would ever eat an egg in the morning. I'd be much more likely to have the 8oz of nonfat milk that is one of the alternatives.

Apparently, for an in-state move I can change my address and vehicle registration online, and thank god for that. Any chance to avoid dealing with bureaucrats in person is one that should be taking.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST iTUNES! Being unemployed is depressing enough, you've gotta throw Gilbert O'Sullivan - Alone Again (Naturally) at me before I've even properly built up a head of rage? Well, actually, that did it, and iTunes redeemed itself by bringing on the Norman Greenbaum - Spirit in the Sky.

Dinner

Food has happened, let's look at it.

Tonight, I enjoyed some Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies for dessert, and powered through a Meatloaf and Tomato Sauce with Mashed Potatoes for dinner.

I had a romaine lettuce salad, with lite ranch, some cauliflower (vegetable) and 5 green olives (fat), along with a slice of multigrain bread for my carbohydrate. Of course, there's the requisite diet soda: Coke Zero. Nutrisystem manufactures a couple of kinds of meatloaf, and I've got it in my head that I like at least one of them, but I'm not sure which one or if they still make it. This was not it.

The meatloaf itself is all right, although I've never been a fan of tomatoes being involved in my meatloaf preparation. Where it really falls apart is at the mixture of tomatoes and mashed potatoes. I ate the meatloaf, but I couldn't get the taters down. Fortunately, Dessert happened.

These are my favorite cookies. They're crispier than the other cookies from Nutrisystem, and they taste pretty much like standard cookies. The fact that there are a bunch of them in a serving, so it makes you feel like you're eating more, doesn't hurt.

Tried to do my taxes today, and realized I was missing the only one of my many tax forms that could not be obtained online. My previous state of residence is backward in the strangest ways. Fortunately, I've got two weeks, so I should be able to call Monday and get a new one on time. Well, this means I need to get to sleep on time tonight, so I can begin the ritual of calling and being disconnected until they finally give me the privilege to sit on hold to wait to talk to them.

This is the great thing about that state's unemployment system. Once they get a certain number of people on hold, they just drop your call and tell you to call back later. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the part where it takes about 5 minutes to get through all the menus to get to the point where it either puts you on hold or drops you. So I expect to spend about 3 hours doing this tomorrow morning.

His Tubbiness

348.4 lbs

A successful day, and a successful game night, where there was much Halo 3 with the typical crew. We kept playing with this one racist guy who wouldn't stop shouting the N word, and some other guy who was playing out his God delusions and pedophilia fantasies via game chat. Pretty creepy people on Live.

Men Who Stare At Goats was good, watch it.

That's the news, I'm the Fatass Engineer, and you're not, so why don't you cry about it?

Dinner of MEAT

So, following the afternoon revelation, I decided to go whole hog on dinner, and eat the Lasagna with MEAT sauce for dinner.

followed by the Double Chocolate Almond Cookie for dessert. As far as microwave lasagnas go, it's pretty decent. A bit light on the cheese, but there's sufficient meat sauce to make it tasty. A bit more kidney beans and peas than I'm used to in Lasagna, though:

Yeah, one of the fun things with this food, is that you'll occasionally encounter these healthy "filler foods" that round out protein and whatnot without increasing the fat and calorie count to an undue amount.

So, as sides, I once again decided on kalamata olives as a fat, romaine lettuce with a lite ranch as a unlimited vegetable, a piece of wheat bread as a carbohydrate, and some strawberries for my fruit.

Dessert was enjoyable. Chocolate and strawberries have certainly come in better forms, but rarely in diet food.

So I know that I said I wasn't going to go the non-fat dressing route... and I fucking haven't. I decided to try a "lite" dressing as a compromise between non-fat and tubby style, and this one's been pretty tasty. I'ts T. Marzetti's Light Classic Ranch (seen here: http://www.marzetti.com/products/marzetti/detail.php?bc=32&cid=1&pid=115 ). It's not super light, but it's better than going all the way with a sweet tub of Marzetti's Bleau Cheese dressing. Allowing it to slowly and deliciously caress your tongue, sliding down the back of your throa...

Moving on, it's pretty good shit, I'd recommend any of the Marzetti dressings that apply to your diet situation. As a salad topper or vegetable dip, they're pretty sweet. As for it's uses as a lube product, however, I anticipate reviews pouring into the email account: fatassengineer@gmail.com .

Following this meal, I am full, and prepared to watch GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (because the internet has taught me to ENJOY watching my childhood be penetrated over and over again like a 15 cent hooker in a freshman dorm), prior to the weekend's gaming festivities, where either aliens or zombies will be slaughtered in bulk.