Music City Bowl

Posting tonight just so I can say I made an entry.

I'm in a bad mood from watching the Vols lose the Music City Bowl to North Carolina in most bizarre fashion. The refs actually announced the game was over, players from opposing teams shook hands andetc., then after a lot of chaos 1 second was put back on the clock, which led to overtime and eventually a Vols loss.

Be back to weight related entries tomorrow and definitely on Jan 1, which has to be the most popular day of the year for starting weight loss blogs.

Night all,

Stealing Your Friends

I've noticed that about half of the weight loss bloggers I used to chat with all the time have pretty much fallen off the blogging circuit like, and haven't posted anything for months. And a lot of the group that is still around posts very infrequently, maybe in part cause it's still in midst of the holidays. Mostly though I think a lot of folks (myself included) started off strong with their blog on Jan 1, stayed active for quite a while, and eventually other parts of life just took over.

It sure has been a lot of fun jawing with Tammy from the old crew though, and it has made me remember how much I enjoyed the everyday camaraderie of the blog. So be warned, over the next few days I'm going to be raiding everyone's friends (startign with Tammy's, LOL) to form a new group of "regulars!"

Good night y'all!

Some Good Things

Today, for the first time, I feel like I'm starting to get back on track. One good thing I did was eating only half my meal at our favorite Chinese place and then finishing the other half as leftovers for dinner. A week ago I would have just eaten the whole thing. You know how it is. You eat about half the meal and you feel satisfied, but you keep taking another bite and another bite because it tastes so good. Then a few bites later, there's not enough left to justify a takeout box and...well..you don't want that great food to go to waste, you are past the point of no return and you finish it off.I can't count how many times I've done that in my life, and obviously that's a big part of my issue.

Another good thing is that I ran on the Wii Fit for 10 minutes as soon as I got home, which I hadn't done for months and months. And boy did it show. A few months ago I could run 20 minutes straight on there without any issue, but I struggled through 10 minutes today. Even with some good music playing, I kept eye on the timer almost the whole time: "Geez, 7m30s left still! I've only been running for 2m30s!" and so on. I don't know that I was ever "in shape" before but I'm definitely "out of shape" now. Ah well, I got through it anyway. Tomorrow will be easier.

Other good news: breakfast was oatmeal, and I walked down 8 flights of stairs at work a couple times. Still I would only grade today a B, because I had two very salty meals plus a good bit of homeade beef jerky, which is basically like eating a block of salt. But it feels good to be on the right path.

 Good night y'all!

Pizza and Beer

Today started off with good potential - oatmeal for breakfast and just a big bowl of wonton soup for lunch, and plenty of walking. Then came a call from the wife around 3:30pm to see if I wanted to meet up with our friends/family at Mellow Mushroom. We had tomato basil bruschetta for an appetizer, which was good, though probably fattening, Then she and I split a small House pizza, which wouldn't have been bad, except that she was pretty full from the appetizer and only ate 1 slice, leaving 3 for me. All that along with a Fat Tire on tap made for a good tasting dinner, but not a good dinner.

Of course I could have eaten just the two slices and been perfectly full, but even when I was in my peak weight losing pahse earlier this year, leaving a slice of pizza sitting there was never my strong suit, Ah well, one meal is just that, one meal. Right back on it tomorrow. Night all.

Leftovers

Today was not great in terms in of weight loss I'm sure. Lots of leftovers from yesterday (honey spiral ham, green bean casserole, rolls, candy, etc), but the good news is those great leftovers can only last so long. The scale will tell tomorrow. Good night all.

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all are having a Merry Christmas and aren't worrying about weight loss too much for today.We actually got a white Christmas in Nashville for the first time in 17 years or so!

I have updated my sidebar to show the weight I gained since I started slacking off on the blogging and good habits. Also I've readjusted my end goal from 160 lb to 165 lb, which I think is realistically the right weight for me. So now I can start setting some short term and long term goals. Short term: wife and I are attending a wedding in mid-January and I'd like to lose 5 lb by then, which will be about 1/3 of the way towards my goal. Long term is reaching goal by the end of March. All in all, it averages out to losing just a little over 1lb per week, which I think is very doable.

Everyone enjoy the rest of the Holidays, we'll have plenty of time get serious about the weight loss again soon!

The Wagon Is Tipping

Today I at least started thinking about the things that were so successful earlier in the year and blending a few of those things into my day. For example, went to Cracker Barrel for lunch and just had a big House Salad and it was plenty to eat. Well, I bummed a few steak fries from someone else at the table, but the point is that the wagon is starting to tip the other direction.

For better or worse, I am one of those all or none people. So if I'm into something (e.g weight loss), I get vested in it wholeheartedly, but I also tend to fall out of these things wholeheartedly. Getting back into this blog is sort of the first step of folding all the other good habits in.  The good thing about how I originally lost all the weight is that it wasn't even a diet or a plan. I ate every kind of food I wanted (pizza, ribs, beer, etc.) , but in much lesser portions than I'm capable of eating. And the thing was, I hardly ever felt hungry or anything during that time. Just the opposite: getting out of bed was much easier, I felt a lot less tired and crappy, and I didn't miss all the overeating.

My "plan" consisted of basically of one thing: don't eat unless actually hungry. That's my biggest downfall, if the food is offered, I'll eat it. If I'm stressed, I'll eat. If I have to stop to fill up with gas, I'll grab a snack just just because it's there. I am convinced that stopping that behavior alone accounted for 70% of my weight loss, the other 30% from simple exercise and getting plenty of water. So simple when you think about it, but also so easy to drift away.

Anyway, it's good to be back on here and heading in the right direction. Merry Christmas to all blogger buds!

I Would Gotten an "F" for Today

Earlier in the year when I was in the full swing of blogging, I would give myself a letter grade every day based on factors like the healthiness of what I ate for the day, exercise, glasses of water, salt intake, etc, etc. When I stopped the blogging, all the good habits tat led to the weight loss slowly vanished and I've put on some wieght since. So I've committed to getting back to everyday blogging as a way of getting back on track, but I haven't actually started doing anything differently. Right now, I am very much in a "if it's there, I'll eat it" phase. I haven't ran on the Wii Fit in months, I drink water now and then, and the saltier the better. Today was no exception and I think if I were in the grading phase, I'd have had to rank today an F. But that will come in time, today I'm still just happy to be reconnecting with everyone.

Breakfast
2 homeade blueberry muffins my wife made. Not Low Fat, Low Sugar, or low anything. At least they were topped with "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter"

Lunch
Krystal. 5 Buffalo Wings and a Sprite.

Dinner
KFC Original Chicken Breast, mashed potatoes (no gravy), a biscuit, and some asparagus wife made.

Exercise
A little bit of walking.

Snacks
Crackers, Sno Caps, Peanut Butter, can't remember what else.

Water
None.

Can't Believe It's Been a Year

I first started this blog on January 1, 2010 and dropped from 192.5 lb to 167 lb by the time April rolled around - the discipline of doing the daily blog just kept me in the pattern of doing the right things when it came to eating, exercising, water drinking, and so on. My goal had been to drop to 160lb, but weeks and weeks kept going by and I couldn't get any lower than 167 lb. I should have just decided that was the right weight for me and gone into sort of maintenacnce mode, but instead I basically stopped blogging and slowly got away from a lot of the good habits that led to all the weight loss to begin with.

I haven't put it all back on, but I'm back up to 178 and it's disappointing on several fronts. When I was big into the blogging, I had "met" some other weight loss bloggers that I really considered to be good friends, but I have managed to pretty much lose touch with all of them. I really do miss the daily interaction. And of course, it is disappointing that I have to work on re-losing the weight that I worked so hard to shed in the first place.

My plan to is get back to everyday blogging again, as I think it played such a key role in my success earlier this year. Hope I can re-connect with some of y'all.