Friday Weigh In

What. An. Awesome. Feeling.

I'm down 7.4 pounds from a week ago, which means I've lost about half the weight I gained back over the past year. Another good week, or two decent weeks, and I'll be at my lowest weight in years.

Today is also Day 7 without soda, caffeine or, for the most part, processed sugar. I may have eaten some this week, but if I did, it was through something like bread or pretzels. None has come from candy, cookies, cake, chocolate, ice cream or soda. Deprivation doesn't work for everyone, but it's working well for me, so far. I haven't had any cravings for soda or chocolate. I can't say the same for fast food or caffeine, but I can say that I haven't given in to any of those cravings. And I have to continue to not give in, because when I've given in in the past -- you know, just that one time -- it's invariably led me back into making poor eating choices.

This week's weight loss is an excellent beginning to my new lifestyle: it reminds me that I was eating way too much food just a week ago, and more importantly, that I was eating way too much of the wrong kinds of food. It also reminded me that I can survive without a visit to McDonald's or wherever -- and that I'll feel better by not eating that garbage.

My wife has been totally supportive, doing things like measuring when she cooks dinner so that I can analyze the calories and carbs in each meal. I'm presently counting 1,800 calories a day, with everything else like fat, carbs and sodium falling into an appropriate range for that many calories. What I mean is that while I could eat 1,800 calories worth of Sausage McMuffins and hash browns, the fat, carbs and sodium would all be inappropriately high. By eating things like chicken, vegetables and brown rice or fruit, yogurt and oatmeal, the fat, carb and sodium numbers will naturally fall into line. So while I do track those things and have some daily targets for them, I'm not worried if my sodium goes up one day (Sunday, when I made homemade tamales, for example) and the carbs go up the next, as long as they're a) up only a little bit, and b) drop back down the next day. I've been much less tolerant of variances in my calorie intake.

I use a simple Excel spreadsheet to total my food for the day, and then re-enforce how I'm doing by color-coding each day's calories, fat, etc., as green (good), red (bad) or yellow (okay, but....). I developed that system 18 months ago when I started this after reading a number of other blogs. I took bits of the tracking systems that worked for different people, put them all together, and then met with a dietician to figure out what my target numbers should be.

What is clear to me, from reading all the successful weight loss blogs I've found on the internet, is that you have to come up with something that works for you. That's what I'm doing.

Day 5

This is Day 5 without caffeine - or a whole bunch of other stuff, for that matter. No caffeine, no soda, no chocolate, no junk food, no fast food. It's all going okay, except for the lack of caffeine. I can't stay awake at night and I can't wake up in the morning. One of these days, my body will be caught up and I'll no longer crave the stuff. Fortunately, this is a good week to go to bed early and sleep late, work-wise.

Meanwhile, the benefits of cutting all of this crap out are wonderful: I'd feel lousy if I were only cutting out caffeine while continuing to fill my body with garbage. Instead of eating McDonald's and other junk food, I've been subsisting entirely on things like chicken breasts, brown rice and beans, homemade tamales (high in salt but low in calories), yogurt and fresh fruit and vegetables. The scale is showing a weight loss (I'll report that officially on Friday). The bags under my eyes are nearly gone. I have more energy for swimming at the Y, which I've been doing since January. I have more energy for doing stuff around the house.

And all of this after just five days of eating properly.

That choice of words was deliberate. I'm not on a diet. Lord knows I've been on a hundred diets over the past 25 years, and all of them have ultimately failed. When I started this in November 2008, and once again now, I'm making lifestyle changes. I'm eating the right things instead of the wrong things. And, yes, I'm tracking what I'm eating, primarily because I have to in order to keep myself accountable. A year ago, when I stopped tracking, I did fine for a while, but eventually I crept back into my old habits, and by last month, McDonald's and I had become good friends again.

Tracking my food is something I will have to do for the rest of my life. It will probably be more difficult to do that than it will be to eat the right things, because here's what I discovered last year: good, healthy food tastes better than crappy, fat- and sugar-filled food.

So, when good, healthy food tastes better, and since I felt so much better when eating good, healthy food, why did I eventually fall back into my old bad habits?

I have no idea. If I had the answer, I'd probably be normal-sized rather than, as skinnyr.com put it to me yesterday, "super-obese."

But here's the good stuff: I think I'm getting closer to solving that puzzle. When I've tried to lose weight in the past, I found dozens of ways to cheat, thinking I was pulling one over on Weight Watchers or my dietician or whoever, and never realizing that it was really me I was cheating. When I started this journey 18 months ago, I never had the desire to cheat, at least for a few months. And when I did finally cheat, it was a benign kind of cheating, rather than a mindful kind.

The result was the same, of course: I fell off the wagon and gained some of my hard-fought loss back, but my attitude was correct last year, and it's correct this year.

And it will work this time around.

Procrastinating

I've procrastinated starting this blog for more than a year now.

It's May 2010 now. In November 2008, I embarked on a briefly successful period of weight loss after a rather unhappy visit to the doctor. I came home with three prescriptions to treat my high blood pressure and diabetes and a burning desire to drop some weight.

And it worked, for a while. Between November 2008 and April 2009, I went from 375 pounds to 335 pounds. I felt better, my friends were beginning to notice and my numbers were moving in the right direction. I had done everything the right way: eating properly rather than being on a diet, tracking what I was eating, increasing my activity level, etc. I cut out almost all fast food, with the exception of Subway (no cheese and only vinegar dressing), was reading a bunch of motivational weight loss blogs, and was on the right track.

Then, everything derailed.

I write this not to blame anyone but myself, but I can trace the derailing to two specific things: I had been looking forward to seeing several people I hadn't seen for a long time, and showing off my 40 pound weight loss. When I did see them, they didn't notice that I had lost weight, or at least didn't comment on it. While this should not have affected me at all -- after all, friends who had seen me every day had noticed that I was losing weight -- it did. My motivation was sapped, and I slipped back into some of my old habits.

A few months later, my doctor, who was pleased with my results so far, scheduled me to come back six months later, rather than three months, which brings us back, more or less, to the present day.

As he put it last week, "when the cat's away, the mice will play."

And play they did, though fortunately, not too much. My weight is up a bit, but only about 15 pounds (to 350), which gives me a pretty good maintenance record over the past six or eight months. But my blood work numbers are higher than either of us would like, so the good doctor sent me home with yet another prescription. I am determined not to take all of these drugs for the rest of my life.

And so on Friday of last week, I started doing all the right things again: I am tracking my daily caloric intake, and limiting it to about 1,800. That target is much easier to reach than it would have been previously, now that fast food and junk food -- broadly defined as most stuff I would buy at a convenience store -- is out again. To make it easier, I am now on Day 3 of eliminating soda, both the sugared and the sugar-free types. This will be, possibly, the most difficult thing for me to do. I love soda.

For motivation, I'm back to reading several of my favorite weight loss blogs - Tony, who's lost an amazing 225 pounds; another Tony, who has lost a bunch of weight since I'd last read his blog; Kim, who doesn't write much but faithfully reports each week; and the Fat Lazy Guy, who is anything but these days. All of these guys have lost at least a hundred pounds; who they are now is who I want to become. And I can identify with who they were.

I'm adding my own blog this time around. It's something I considered doing last time, but never did. My failure to hold myself accountable online contributed to my failure to continue to be mindful about what I was eating.

This time, it's for real.