An evening interlude for this mornings post

It is 8:20 pm, I just rode my bike for 25 minutes and I am feeling good about the mornings weigh in, I don't want to get onto the scale tonight (I usually do so I can estimate what I will weigh in the am) because I want it to surprise me, I have a feeling I will be pleasantly surprised or not surprised I guess if I am expecting a good drop in the weight. I have done everything right this week, I ate within my calorie range, I exercised every day for 25 minutes per day, and maybe most important I stayed positive about the entire week. every pound that that scale tells me that I've lost tomorrow morning was earned and every ounce that I have lost I deserve this week (every week but this week I was very good about EVERYTHING) I have a feeling that I WILL make it into the 350's this week and that is insanely awesome to me because its what I have been telling everyone that I weigh forever! My Drivers license says wt:350, my fishing license says wt:350, and I have a few other pieces of ID with the same thing on them, I think very soon I will be less than any of those things say that I am! when I got my fishing license the fella was going down the list and he got to weight, "weight sir?" to which my reply was "350" he looked up from the counter at me but held his tongue (good thing for him) and when he looked back down to write in the weight I said "as far as you me and that license goes I am 350 anyways" he just laughed and patted his gut and had some yeah us fat guys type comment, this year when I get it I will tell him "300 pounds" because come June thats what I will be.


I am looking forward to the weigh in this time around because of that, so heres to tomorrow morning!

As Ever
Me

An afternoon interlude to go with this mornings post.

22 degrees outside, the lake is frozen, 25 minutes on the stationary bike, some push ups and a nice long stretching routine later I feel energized. this morning I was thinking about how I still have more than 85 pounds to lose to get to my goal of 275 pounds (see the post below) and how I have already lost 172 pounds since last year but thinking that 85 pounds is still a lot of weight. With that said I know that I will hit my mark this year and I know that I will be that much more informed and knowledgeable on the subject in that same time. cool air, a sweaty back (sweaty fat dude image for ya there, enjoy!) escalated heart rate and I am 25 cardio minutes stronger than this morning and a tad bit more flexible, do you want to try and knock me off of the hill? nah come on up with me, there is room for all of us here.

Cold glass of Green tea with splenda and lime to go with the sweat and warm fuzzy feeling and no other reason for this interlude.

that is all.

As Ever
Me

An evening interlude and recipe of sorts.

I had some time and was just sitting around after dinner relaxing because its still at 6:45 pm 87 degrees outside and very very humid so I am hanging in the living room with the AC on for the time being. like I said I just finished a very good dinner, I made open face BBQ Turkey burgers with fried onions topped with laughing cow swiss cheese and on the side I had some seasoned white rice with 1/4 cup of whole kernel corn mixed into it. though what I had was not low calorie by any means coming in at 750 calories it is within my calorie range (I had a light day today) and I did have 2 open faced sandwiches, this could have easily been changed to 465 calories total if one sandwich was eaten instead of two, which is what my wife had. very quickly I will run through how I made this delicious dinner.

Click the image for a full sized look, this whole plate is 750 calories and was very good.

I mixed Grillmates mesquite seasoning, garlic powder and black pepper into the ground turkey and separated it into 4oz patties and tossed them onto the grill where I already had half of an onion frying up (in a low cal cooking spray). toast 2 pieces of whole wheat bread and put it aside. when the burgers are just about done I put a bit of Hickory BBQ sauce onto the toasted bread with some of the fried onions and place the grilled burger on top of that and spread a wedge of laughing cow swiss over the burger drop a dab more BBQ sauce onto the cheese and spread it out just a bit and top with a few more onions and enjoy! the rice is just seasoned with black pepper and Goya Adobo and topped with a little corn, and of course you can see my green tea in the back ground. My wife just rolls her eyes when I take photos of my meals, but she also asked "did you want me to load these pics onto your computer for ya?" welp there ya have my little intermission, hope everyone had a good day intake wise and got some movement in.

Until next time..

As Ever
Me

Admitting the funk

It is almost 3:00 pm Sunday, it is an odd day, the sun cannot decide if it wants to be shining or not and we have had a couple down pours. I have been sitting here most of the day thinking about my weight loss and I have to admit that I feel as though I have been slipping lately and what I mean when I say slipping I mean grabbing a couple extra olives with my Ground turkey tacos and not putting them into my excel sheet, or eating 2 Dunkin Donuts Munchkins while driving to the park and not putting them into the excel sheet right on down to taking a bite of macaroni and cheese that I made for the kiddos for lunch to "taste" it and see that it was "all the way done" bottom line, it needs to stop. Just 2 months ago these are the things that I would remind wify that she should not be doing and here I am with my hand in the cookie jar if you will. My exercise has slacked off as well, granted I do have a back injury and it did in fact act up a couple of weeks ago and I will admit that I am a bit worried about getting back into the workouts again because I don't want that pain to return, but then as I type that it sounds so much like an excuse to me, and I know that I need to get back into the frame of mind I was in back 2 months ago because I am admitting right now that I got comfortable and am in fact not being as strict with myself lately. I mentioned this very same thing about getting comfortable to a friend of mine that also blogs just a day or so ago and that comment on Robyn's page really got me thinking about being comfortable and slipping into old habits so I decided to take my own advice and fix it. I thought that if I posted on my blog and gave full disclosure about this fact that it would maybe help me re-focus and get back on track.

Now if you are a regular reader of my page you might be thinking "but you Mr. Meatball lose weight each week like clockwork" or "slipping here and there is not really a bad thing as long as you don't over do it we do after all need treats" yes I do lose each and every week, and yes it is ok to slip up here and there, BUT in the past 2-3 weeks I know that I have gotten comfy with the size I am and I AM slipping. I am approaching a weight and strength level that allows me to do whatever I want to do, I don't get out of breath any more, I do not have back pain related to just being too heavy, and I can out pace my bottle of energy running fool of a son on a hiking trail and not even feel it. I am back to a weight and fitness level that allows me to be active and in control of what I do and plain and simple I am getting too comfortable with it.

I have a long way to go before I am done with losing weight and just because I fit into the clothing that I was wearing when I met my wife 9 years ago and feel awesome that I am back to that size or at least very close to it does not mean its time to light the fireworks and call up the parade people. now with all of that said, I am not slipping to the point that I am not still losing, I am in fact still working very hard to eat properly and get exercise in, I do track my intake daily and do not eat mindlessly, all I am saying is that I have not been as diligent in the last couple weeks as I was in the beginning.

Here starts a new beginning.

As Ever
Me

Saving money while dieting? who wouldda thunk??

I have a few minutes so I thought I would pop on here and drop a short post up for the evening, I just got done making lunches for my wife for the next twelve days because were on mission to see how much money we can save whilst losing all of our weight. She was eating Lean cuisine's or smart ones for Lunch every day at work and if you buy these little convenient packages of goodness you know that they can be pricey, usually she can get them on sale four for ten dollars, and if she is lucky five for ten. so we were doing our bulk shopping list for the week last Saturday and came up with the idea to make our own little version of these lean cuisine meals since I am a pretty good cook and don't mind a little work to save a few bucks.

She and I just made 12 portions of the BBQ rice beans and chicken that I posted the recipe for a day or so ago and packaged them up and they are in the freezer right now. We bought a whole chicken while shopping this weekend and I baked it this afternoon so that it would be cool to make these little meals this evening, 2 cans of Goya black beans and made a pot of rice. The whole chicken was less than $5.00 we bought the Goya beans for 3 cans for $2.00 so the beans we used cost $1.34 the rice was oh I don't know, we have a 20lb bag that we bought for like $8.50 or something so lets say the rice was $.50 so grand total for these 12 lunches cost us $6.84 if I call the chicken five bucks, that works out to $.57 per portion. we had BBQ sauce in the fridge and black pepper and Mccormick spices in the cabinet so I won't include those in the total.

Each portion contains.

1/2 cup cooked white rice = 100 Calories
1/4 cup black beans = 45 calories
2oz shredded chicken with BBQ sauce on it = 120 calories

Total calories 265 per portion.

Now I came up with the calories for the chicken @120 per 2oz because it is mostly white meat which is about 50 per oz and the dark meat is about 60 or so per oz add the BBQ sauce and I just rounded it to about 60 per oz which I think is pretty close.

I am sure I will dip into these for a lunch here and there myself and I plan on making a Spanish version of these little portions as well as an Asian themed version, I have an idea that the Asian one will be very low in calories as I plan on using lots of veggies. The best part? tomorrow it is suppose to rain all day so I will make a soup with the carcass from the chicken that I used for the lunches, so we will have 3 containers of soup in the freezer by tomorrow evening and a nice home made spicy Spanish themed soup for dinner tomorrow night and all that will cost us is whatever the Veggies cost, which I estimate to be under $6.00, maybe I will figure that out as well and put it in a later post. with gas prices going up the way that they are and with food prices rising daily every bit counts and all of this creativity with my cooking and planning helps a ton there, and look at that! I am on a low calorie diet plan, eating healthy, getting my fill of highly nutritional home made meals and no special buy it now for only 3 easy payments of $39.99 miracle diet plans in sight.

As Ever
Me

It's a State of Mind...

There is something in the air today; upon waking up I felt the need to move. So I did. We were expecting rain so I left the house early and went on a 2 mile walk to get the blood moving, upon reaching my door again I went straight for the bike, 25 minutes later I had a decent sweat going and onto the dumbbells, Concentration curls, Hammer curls, One handed triceps extensions, Behind the head triceps extensions, followed by 50 push ups 20-15-15. All before noon, Tired, weak and sweating I feel great. Will I be sore tomorrow? Quite possibly, and most likely, but it will be the kind of pain that makes a person want more of the same. I do miss my heavy bag, maybe I will have to look into picking one up, ending this workout with some time hitting a heavy bag would have been the ending it needed. There’s a 6’5’’ 438 pound freight train coming through, step back now madam we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt. Hey kid It’s a state of mind, could you pick up your pity and step aside now son, I have things to do.

As Ever
Me

Home on a Saturday night

Its around 10:30 pm and I thought I would pop on and post a little intermission, we had salmon steaks for dinner tonight, on a whim we decided that it was a good day for Salmon! dinner was composed of Salmon steaks following the recipe that I posted previously, corn on the cob and baked sweet potatoes. Man this dinner can never get old as far as I am concerned. the salmon was pretty thick and took 18 minutes again to cook perfectly. Here is a picture of how it turned out.

Click the photo for a full sized view

The day turned out to be as boring as I had anticipated it to be with it being gloomy and all. it has not rained as of right now so maybe it will hold off and not rain at all, who am I kidding this is New England I wouldn't be surprised if it started snowing in an hour! anyways, thats my intermission for the evening. hope you all had a nicer Saturday than I did, because I know your dinner wasn't as good :) lol

As Ever
Me

Afternoon intermision

The day turned out to be very cool but very sunny, the wind was gusting but my new wheels got to go on their maiden voyage! My daughter and I went for a walk just before lunch and I have to say that the new kicks make it feel as if there is nothing on my feet. they are so light and there is no movement inside of them, my feet stay put and its like the sneakers are a part of my feet. I am glad I took a chance on a brand that I had never heard of, we shall see how the durability goes in the coming months, so far after the test drive I am satisfied.

I just thought this was funny.

It is after 4:30pm and I have only eaten 575 calories so far today, I am going to have to have a large dinner to make up for that or else I will end up way below and I don't like to eat late in the day, I have been reading all day so I kind of lost track of how many calories I have eaten...or should I say have not eaten. other than the walk and the extremely low calorie count this late in the day nothing more to report that holds any amount of interest I am afraid, so I shall end it here for now.

As Ever
Me

An evening interlude

I just thought I would post up a quick interlude for the evening, I am in the mood to write and I took a picture of my dinner, which was fantastic. we made Turkey burgers out of some ground turkey that I seasoned and diced some onion into and tossed on the grill. everyone in the house liked them and they smelled great too, with them I made some home made french fries which also turned out great, I basically just cut up and seasoned some russet potatoes. I had 2 burgers (4oz each) with onion, pickles, spicy mustard and ketchup on them with 5oz of the french fries. it was way too much food but I was low on calories for today, for some reason all I had was some fruit and a soup at lunch so the meal could have been only one burger and been enough to fill me up. the best part you ask? the entire meal was only 585 calories including the condiments! if you were to have only one burger cut the calories by 220 + condiments, so it would be 365 calories for everything minus one burger. This will be added to my meals. its not as good as a nice fat juicy Cheese burger but its very close and for a nice low amount of calories.

For fun I added up the calories that this would have if it were 85% lean ground beef and regular rolls with your average steak fries and the total was 940 calories. all calorie counts were taken off of The daily plate. that a nice little savings in calories if I do say so myself.

Grilled turkey burgers with home made fries, click the pic for a larger view.

I may post up exactly how it was prepared and cooked in a later post for reference but it was pretty simple and in my opinion it was very tasty and you cannot argue with the low calorie count, the only complaint that I have is the ground turkey grosses me out a bit, but thats because I have this thing about raw fowl, it gives me the willys. Thats all folks.

As Ever
Me

Temptations

Ok, it is almost 8:00 (closer to 7:30 pm) and I am 35 calories from my limit of 1500 for the day, I just ate a banana with a tablespoon of peanut butter on it and I am already hungry again, this is only the second time since starting this ride that I feel like I am going to go over calories just because its easier than sticking to it. I have been on here all day in an attempt to keep my attention elsewhere, just look down at my multiple posts for the day, and the fact that I redid the page and lots of other mindless busy things here at home. I have not had a drop of green tea all day, something in me says that is the reason for the hunger, something else says that its because I am coming off of being sick, either way I would like to take the jar of peanut butter and a tablespoon and kick back and enjoy it. I will be very surprised if I make it through the night without going over my calories for the day. I will try my best to not do it, but it is not going to be easy, I am not only hungry but that banana and peanut butter has me craving the peanut butter bad right now.

The Peanut butter mice twins taunt me.

As I type this I just drank a quart of green tea, I hope it helps. if not...I may be doomed.

As Ever
Me

Reflecting back to the start of it all.

There he sat, where he could be found sitting most nights at this time, it was 6:45 pm on a Monday night and nothing particular was going on that evening, which didn’t exactly make him happy because it was New Years Eve. The kids were running around and his wife asked him what was the plan for the evening, and they both decided that since there was no sitter for the children it was going to be a couple drinks on the couch watching a movie. An agreement was made and she ran out and grabbed some Disaronno and a bottle of sour mix, while he stayed at home with the kids. Upon her return he noticed that the bag was too big to contain just the drinking paraphernalia and he asked, “What else did ya end up getting?” to which she answered with only a smile. Inside the bag was a six pack of Mike’s hard lemonade along with the Disaronno, sour mix, and 2 pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, one pint of Chubby Hubby, which was very fitting, and one pint of Dublin mudslide. Looking at everything on the table and feeling a bit discouraged because of his afternoon of reading weight loss surgery websites he silently made a decision to himself to not eat the pint of Dublin mudslide sitting on the table so innocently. A short time later they made their way to the living room, put a movie into the DVD player, and mixed a couple drinks. After their first drink was done she walked into the kitchen and grabbed the 2 pints of ice cream and headed back into the living room. She offered him his pint, his reply to her was, “No thanks, put it back in the freezer I will eat it in a year” she complied and into the freezer the pint of Dublin mudslide went. He thought to himself “just make it through tonight without taking the ice cream”. She quietly enjoyed her pint all by herself, though making a joke here or there while eating it, things like “are you sure you don’t want just one bite?” but he did not give in and remained in the mindset that if he could just make the morning without eating it that it would prove that he did in fact have this thing called willpower. That night he went to bed and the ice cream did in fact survive the night, when he woke up the next morning it was on, and he wrote down every single thing that went into his mouth that day, as well as creating a blog “just to see how it went”. Who would have ever thought that a pint of ice cream could be so significant?

This is the very bottle of Disaronno and the pint of Dublin Mudslide that was bought on the night I just wrote about. it is still in the freezer.

The rest is, how do they say? History. I am the he in the short story above and the she is my lovely wife. Today he is 78 pounds lighter and has not eaten badly in ninety six days. That pint of Dublin Mudslide still lives in the freezer and in one years time from Jan 01 2008 he will enjoy it, BUT the difference is going to be that he is enjoying it on his terms, not because he could not resist it, or because he lacked the discipline or willpower to not eat it, but because on December 31^st 2007 he pronounced that he would eat it in a year.

I felt like writing tonight so I thought I would post this up there for anyone who cares to read it. I do thank everyone for their support up to this point and want you all to know that it is greatly appreciated. Thank you

As Ever
Me

An afternoon update

I changed a few things about the side bar, not a lot but changes none the less. I took the poll away (I got what I needed from it, thanks to those who voted), I also took the daily exercise counters away. honestly it was just too much work to update every time I worked out, I usually post the exercise in the posts anyways so it was Redundant to boot. something I added is a weight by month area on the side bar, I used my estimated start weight (which I believe to be higher than I posted but I will leave it at 534) I left the ticker set at 512lbs because its when I added it as well as my first 100% confirmed weight. so each month I will add the weight that I was on the closest weigh in day to the end of that month, along with how much was lost that month.


I also want to say that I have not taken Lecithin in more than 2 weeks, I didn't feel that it was helping and it was when I was taking it full swing that I had the lowest loss since starting, I am unsure if it is related but I stopped taking it anyways. I now only take it if I have a particularly fatty meal.

I have not exercised one bit this week except for random push ups here and there, I feel guilty for it but I have yet to find a vendor that sells a pedal for my bike, and it has been windy, cold, and raining all week so I haven't had a chance for walks. It doesn't seem to be affecting the loss I have to say, because I have lost as much weight this week as I did in the last two weeks, you will have to wait until the morning for exactly how much that is though ;) with that I shall end this post.

As Ever
Me