The 300

Apparently, Saturday I passed 300 posts on this ridiculous little venture.  I'm not sure how to feel about that.  OH HOLY CHRIST THE JETS ACTUALLY WON?  Now, no one likes to see any of the NY teams win (except maybe the Mets, because they're just so adorable) but I REALLY love to see New England losing.  I can't believe I didn't watch because I didn't want to see the Pats win, again.  On a side note: this makes me exactly 2-6 on my playoff predictions.

At any rate, last night I ate this.  Did you know that Papa Johns is the only one of the major pizza chains that still offers a "small" pizza?  I did not use the delicious garlic butter sauce, and the toppings were all the vegetables and sausage.

Weight:     308.4 lbs
Body Fat: 43.4%
Water:      43.3%

As I said yesterday, I was dehydrated, and now, after a day of eating largely carbs, I'm water-heavy.  At least the weekend was pretty close to net zero change.

And this morning, it's back to our regularly scheduled meals.  A frozen Nutrisystem Ham & Cheese Omelet.

And with that, I had a slice of raisin bread toast (carbohydrate), an 8oz glass of milk (dairy), and a juice box (fruit).  I'm just finishing slugging down my breakfast quart of water, then it's on to the shower and work.



Son of a bitch.  I finished writing the whole entry, and then Firefox froze up on me.  I had to reconstruct from memory, so it's a bit short today.  Stay free, Fatheads.

Sleep Problems

I was up all night dicking with something on my EEE PC last night trying to find a halfway decent solution in Linux to work with the crappy webcam I have.  I was trying to set up software to take an image every 30 seconds or so to use as a dashboard camera, but I've run into too many problems.  The cheap old usb webcam I'm using doesn't seem to like taking stills.  It just returns static-filled images whenever a still process is run, and none of the software I've found that records video rather than stills will allow for a low enough framerate (.05 or so fps) to keep the video output down to a manageable size.  I've wasted the better part of a week getting this laptop to run right and trying to learn enough to get the thing to work the way I want it to, but I think I need to concede that the hardware issues and the solutions needed to overcome them would require too much of my time to learn, at this point, to be worth the time lost preparing other things for my great journey.

Last night, I also went through my ridiculous stack of maps from AAA and put together a next stage route (with a bunch of alternates in various parts) of where I think I'm going, as well as compiling a list of states and major cities I'll be traveling in or near.  I used that list to identify Craigslist locales I should post ads in to find destination ideas, so I've now got an easier to consult list (complete with site links) to work off of as I progress across the country.

Weight:     294.8 lbs
Body Fat: 40.2%
Water:      45.8%

In related news, I ate an appropriate Nutrisystem breakfast and dinner, yesterday, but then I ended up having cupcakes and icecream for dessert, so that went all to hell.  I also ate some Triscuits and pepperoni around 1:30-2am because I was starting to get seriously on edge from the damned computer nonsense and I gave into frustration eating.

I need to make a trip to the hardware store today to grab some stuff to help the fam around the house, and then I'm going to double-check the water seal on my trunk and start a mock packing to see how well everything fits.


I applied for a few more jobs yesterday.  I swear, I wish I had the chops for a software developer job, because the demand for programmers as compared to engineers has always been ridiculous when I've been looking for work.  In related news, a slightly more stripped-down version of the EUC bill will either go in front of congress for a vote today or Monday, so that moving along the rails is a good thing.

Playing Catch-up

So I forgot to cover dinner last night, breakfast this morning, snack this afternoon, and dinner/dessert this evening, so it's time for a massive update.

Last night, I had the Wedged Potatoes and Sliced Beef Steak.

It was delicious, as always, and I had celery (unlimited vegetable), broccoli (vegetable), 2 tbsp of light ranch dressing (fat) and a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate) for sides.

Breakfast this morning was the same as it was yesterday, Nutricinnamon Squares Cereal with salmon (protein), wheat toast (carbohydrate) and a juice box (fruit).

For afternoon snack, I had BBQ Soy Chips.

I'm a big fan of these, and they were a very welcome meal since I forgot to eat lunch.

Dinner tonight was the Cheese & Spinach Ravioli with Meat Sauce shelf meal.

For sides, I had 2 tbsp of a new light bleu cheese dressing (fat, and oh sweet jesus, was it worth it), celery (unlimited vegetables) and some cauliflower (vegetable).

With the ravioli, I also had a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate).  These are on the list of non-frozen Italian dishes that are really good, though I didn't enjoy them as much as I usually do, because I've recently had the frozen equivalent.

For dessert, I had a Creamy Fudge Bar.

As previously mentioned, it tastes just like a normal Fudgesicle to me, and is quite a fantastic dessert.

All right, that's all I've got, I promise to get it all out of the way in a more orderly fashion, tomorrow.

Dinner and Other Myths

So I'm pretty sure all is well in the world of the RSS feed, as several people have told me that they got the last article.

And with that we can move on to what I had for dinner: The Wedged Potatoes With Sliced Beef Steak.

For sides, that lovely dressing mentioned earlier, some romaine lettuce (unlimited vegetable) and some chopped up broccoli (vegetable) in a salad, a slice of wheat toast (carbohydrate), and some green olives (fat).  I ended up not eating most of the lettuce, as there was not enough dressing to go around, and it was less than tasty.  I only ate 3 of the olives, because at the bottom of the box, they tend to be a bit soaked in oil.  The toast and entree were most excellent, though, and I finished them to the last drop.

For dessert: the Creamy Fudge Bar frozen treat.

This thing tastes just like a regular Fudgsicle to me, and although I don't normally eat iced treats all that often, it's quite welcome while on the diet.

For those who had their feed readers assaulted today, I apologize.  There was an issue involving Feedburners limits that took much longer than it should have to resolve.  I never did get to today's french lesson, because of time spent dealing with Feedburner, so I'll have to double up tomorrow, or something.

The new camera is getting here tomorrow, and I am most stoked, I guess I need to force myself through some more of the manual tonight, so that I might photograph dilapidated barn structures and Amish maidens.  I hear running from pitchforks is a good way to burn fat.

It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere

5:30am is earlier than I remember it being.

327.2 lbs, and the freaking Wii Fit continues to require deception.

I suppose it's pretty close to the mark, but it's still kind of aggravating, especially because screwing with the tare of the scale means it's not going to maintain an accurate record, at first, but we do what we must. I think part of the problem is due to using the thing on carpet and on its risers, I may try it without the risers tomorrow and see where that gets me.

I just finished my workout, and it was fun. I mostly am doing the boxing thing, which involves more complicated footwork and punch sequences the more you do it. I also am keeping at the hula hoop simulation, because it gives my stomach a hell of a workout. Slinging 330ish lbs around your waist seems to be a good workout, who knew. At any rate, Numbers Game:

Today's Time: 0:39 Minutes
Total Time: 1:15 Minutes
Today's Calories: 351

However, I feel the need to revise these numbers upwards. I've been having a problem with hitting the A button with the palm of my hand during the boxing workout, and this lead to accidentally resetting the activity once as it was almost finished. Revised numbers are as follows:

Today's Time: 0:46 Minutes
Today's Calories: 415-420

That is all, now I need to shower and shove food down my fat gullet, oh, and before I forget, here's my revised tentative schedule (all meal times remain the same, exercise and wakeup have changed, along with hard "lights out").


5:30am Alarm
5:30-6:15 Exercise (via Wii Fit Plus, for now)
6:15-7 Shower etc. (can be pushed into meal time if exercise goes over)
7-9 Breakfast time (flexible)
9-11:15 Job Search shit (flexible to include before 9am)
10:30am Morning Snack (if desired)
11:15-12pm Education (Rosetta Stone, etc.)
12pm-1:30 Lunch (flexible)
1:30-5 Job Search
5-7 Dinner (flexible)
7-10 Flexible Free Time
11pm Lights Out

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.

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.

Weigh In

Time for the Fatness Update.

336.8 lbs

Bask in my glow, cretins. More information as it becomes available.

Afternoon Snack and Dinner

So I'm running a few meals together, because it seems stupid to write two entries at this point.

Afternoon Snack consisted of a bag of Nacho Crisps.

I'm not a huge fan of these things, and I think I'll continue not ordering them. The flavor powder is alright, but the texture of the super-thin soy crisps is just too difficult to enjoy.

Dinner consisted of a Thick Crust Pizza and a Fudge Brownie for dessert.

The pizza comes in three parts: sauce, cheese and crust. I find it more than mildly disconcerting that the mozzarella can spend months in a package, unrefrigerated, and still be edible.

Regardless of my terror at the franken-foods I'm consuming, I prepared the pizza and shoved it in the microwave.

On the whole, it was a good meal. I enjoy the pizzas, although the frozen one they offer is better. I had all my sides in salad form, with the exception of my slice of toast (carbohydrate). In the salad were some cherry tomatoes (fruit), some chopped broccoli (vegetable), some green olives (fat) and some romaine lettuce (unlimited vegetable). Now, I realized after preparing the salad that I'd added an extra vegetable to the mix, but I'm not going to lose sleep over this. Why, you ask? Because I realized I've been omitting a vegetable from what I'm supposed to eat at dinner.

I'm going to stick to my original plan, without that extra vegetable, but I'm not terribly worried about a cup of broccoli destroying me.

Dessert was a delightful affair. I like that they put all the pastries in trays so that they won't be crushed.

The brownie is just about the size of my fork. It's a good brownie, but a .25" thick brownie that looks comical on top of a fork is... less than satisfying. Still, it's a good dessert.

Alright, bitches, I'm out, time for Justified and V.

Playing Catch-Up

So I'm just gonna speed through the last two days.

For lunch yesterday, I had some of my Cheesy Homestyle potatoes.

Delicious as always. However, as I was eating it, I was faced with this:

You see, the family had a very early "dinner" because some members needed to head for the hills. The asparagus was the one part of the meal I could have partaken in at dinner, but, since it was drenched in butter, I will not be able to use any of it. The leftover ham I will be able to use as a protein with my breakfasts and morning snacks, which I'm thankful for.

For dinner that evening, I had a Cheese & Spinach Ravioli with Meat Sauce, but I DID NOT have a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bar, and I will tell you why soon.

I had a juice box (fruit), some celery and ranch dressing (unlimited vegetable) and a slice of toast (not pictured, carbohydrate) for sides.

The reason I did not have the bar for dessert was the fortunate (for me) decision of a sibling to drop off of Nutrisystem. He doesn't need to lose as much weight, and with his goals, he just needs to get his tubby ass to the gym more often, so it probably makes sense for him. Fortunately, I and another member of the household on Nutrisystem were able to get another month's worth of food each out of his supplies that he brought home at Easter.

One of the results was the introduction of the delicious Oatmeal Raisin Cookie into my life. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and will have to amend my future food orders to include them. This brings us to this morning.

I enjoyed some Lowfat Granola Cereal for breakfast. This is probably my favorite cereal on the program.

I also had some toast (carbohydrate), 8oz of nonfat milk (dairy) and a juice box (fruit) for sides. The cereals all include 4oz of milk to go with the cereal. I had to spend most of the morning driving people to their homes out of town, so I decided to pack a morning snack and lunch bar into the car.

I packed a guestimated ounce of ham and juice box for the morning snack, along with a Chocolate Peanut Butter Bar for lunch. I enjoyed the morning snack on the fly in the car, but decided not to bother with the lunch.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of this weekend. I didn't sneak so much as a jelly bean, and continued weight loss through a holiday. I also passed the 30 lbs mark (my Nutrisystem starting number was 370 lbs, although it should have been closer to 380 lbs).

Unfortunately, I was rather tired after I got back from dropping people off, and I appear to have napped through snack and dinner. Going to bed hungry is not so awful, so I will continue on the great journey tomorrow.

/massive update

Dinner Happened, Then SQUIRREL

As mentioned, the food order arrived today, and I felt compelled, perhaps by divine calling, to try one of the new Nutrisystem dishes.

I entered the BBQ Sauce with Pork Wrap a little wary, as I'd tried a similar new dish with Buffalo Chicken awhile back, and was not impressed.

So far, it was pretty much the same. Wrapper in one packet, meat and sauce in another.

The instructions called for first microwaving the meats, then tortilla, and combining AS GOD WILLS IT.

I gotta say, I was less than enthused about this dish at this point, particularly because I was burning my goddamned fingers on the meat while i was pushing it out of the packet.

So I decided not to risk hot saucy pork spilling all over my chest and face and only putting about half of it in the wrap. As I had not had anything to eat all day (busy busy) the thought of this meat landing anywhere but in my wet waiting mouth just wasn't in the cards.

For my sides, I once again enjoyed some corn (carbohydrate) with butter (fat), and some chopped up cucumbers and broccoli with lite dressing as a salad.

OHMYSWEETTITTYFUCKINGLORD. This is my new favorite dinner entree. This meal was about as close to a summer BBQ dinner as you can come while eating diet food. I think I eyeballed my corn wrong, but otherwise, this was the perfect meal, that I was very sad had to come to an end...

BUT WAIT! A CHALLENGER APPEARS! And what a challenger! The Peppermint Cookie Patty was one of my few desserts ordered with today's food delivery, and it is, without a doubt, one of the most non-diet-tasting foods on Nutrisystem. It just tastes like a York Peppermint Patty with some cookie around it.

Now, not one of us needs to mention what this looks like. I haven't shown you pictures of THAT yet, and you know you should be thanking me for it. Really, though, if a Seraphim (self censored, it was just too vulgar, trust me, what you're going to come up with to put here is NOTHING compared to the ridiculous run-on sentence that this one replaced) over your face, in your hair and down your neck, it would be like this.

Well, that's about all I've got, I continue to suffer from gummi-induced gastrointestinal distress, crapping out only digestive juices that sear my rectum and destroying the local ecosystem by eating their way through sewer mains. I may have to give in to peer pressure and pop a gray wizard.