Time To Die(t)

Ok, so it's time the bare the soul here.

First, I swear this was NOT a New Year's Resolution. If you make them, you're an idiot because you will not keep them. (Although, many years ago my NYR was to never make another NYR and I'm going on like 20+ years of success!)

Every morning I woke up and said "geez, I gotta watch what I eat. I'll start right after my Egg McMuffin." Not good. Yeah, I've put on a lot of weight since I married a woman who's favorite pastime is cooking and my shadow and personal gravitational field have both increased in size. Our scale was conveniently broken but I was guessing I was hitting about 240. Pretty bad for just under 5'10".

I can tell the actual moment I decided that I had had enough. I was at work and had stood up from my chair, and actually felt the snap are on the front of my jeans flop over. The dam could no longer hold and the crushing weight of my dunlop was finally free!! The noise sounded roughly equivalent to a gallon sized Ziploc bag of pancake batter hitting the foor. MMmmmmmm....batter..

Time to diet.

So I got another scale, took a deep breath and hopped onboard. When I opened my eyes 10 minutes later, I wasn't at the 240 that I thought. Rather, I hit 226. Still pretty bad and considered obese by recent medical standards. So I set two goals. The first, was to drop 10 pounds in five weeks for my trip to New York. I figured that should be attainable. The second was an additional 10 pounds by my mid-March trip to Las Vegas. Could be tougher. I have seen the far side of 200 in a couple of years so 206 sounded awfully far away.

So now came the diet. I have done Atkins and it works great, except it's really expensive and the low number of carbs gives you weird cravings like a cardboard and treebark sandwhich. Not good. Jenny Craig was out since I don't want to pay $8.00 for 4 ounces of food. Jen suggested Weight Watchers and I told her that I can not be put in the position to make choices. (If I'm allowed to choose between eating a rice cake and a cocker spaniel, I cannot be held responsible for my decision.) If she puts food in front of me in the portions that I can have, I'll do fine. To her credit, she's done great for me.

I'm at the end of three weeks and I'm down to 212 so I've lost 14. The first goal is done with over 2 weeks left to go. I'm considering making 199 my goal for Vegas and I think that's possible. The snap on my jeans has returned to it's perky position and I'm wearing another pair I stopped wearing. My face is thinner and I actually do feel better.

The bad news is that I'm not getting enough exercise and I just cannot drink 8 glasses of water per day. I'm up to 2 and it makes me sick enough. I can honestly say I haven't cheated all that much with the exception of the Mexican lunch disaster last Sunday. It was totally therapeutic, trust me.

If nothing else, the Weight Watchers cookbook has some amazing recipes in it and we've added a handul of new meals to the usual dinner rotation.

So, we'll see how it goes and keep you all in the loop. I do get an extra 35 points to spend per week and I always save them for Friday. Pizza pig out time! Woot!

By the way, in searching for a pic for this entry, I came upon a fascinating article on the 1970's TV cartoon Fat Albert. Check it out here!