Baby steps.
I’m making progress, but I’m not all the way there. Baby steps.
I’ve used this Just Lose It! contest as the catalyst of a lifestyle change. I know one of the main factors to my weight gain over the past few years is my eating habits. Specifically, the fact that I don’t like to cook.
I used Paisley’s training program to force myself to learn how to shop for healthy foods and learn to prepare them.
Tonight, after doing my interval training at the Lloyd Athletic Club, I stopped by QFC to pick up some groceries because I’m dangerously low on food. And today was one of those days were I was insanely hungry.
So as I walked through the deli I saw an easy way out. And I took it.
This will get me through a day or two. And look, no cooking necessary:
Easy to prepare.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Protein bar.
Snack: Protein shake with banana.
Lunch: Grilled chicken, 3 chicken lunch meat slices, small apple, carrots.
Snack: Greek yogurt, cashews, protein bar.
Dinner: Chinese-style pork, elaborate green salad.
Paisley and I were so focused cramming two sessions in Monday morning that we forgot to do the weekly Official Unofficial Weigh-in.
Well, more good news: 247 pounds.
This is definitely good, despite the fact that I was sick last week, only worked out one day (Tuesday) and spent a debaucherous weekend with one of my best friends, Nolan.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m actually 5 or 6 pounds lighter than this because Paisley’s scale is skewed high, but the point is this: On Day 1 this scale said 261.6 pounds. That means I’m down almost 15 pounds midway through Week 6.
This is awesome.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs, grapes.
Snack: Protein shake, cashews, 1 stick of low-fat string cheese.
Lunch: Baked salmon, apple, 1 stick of low-fat string cheese.
Snack: Perfect Food bar, grapes, cashews.
Dinner: Grilled chicken, apples and handful of walnuts (I couldn’t finish all the apples).
Damn all these dirty dishes
This might seem like a pointless observation, but there’s one thing about this lifestyle change that is really, really, really annoying me.
My kitchen is a fuckin’ mess.
I can’t keep up with the dirty dishes. Finally tonight I had to budget some time to make a dent in the pile in my sink. Also, I have nothing left to eat on, except maybe my laptop.
Life was so much easier when I was fat, drunk and eating out all the time.
Goddamn this new healthy lifestyle!
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs with chopped bell pepper, onions.
Snack: Protein bar.
Lunch: Egg salad sandwich in whole wheat bread (at Starbucks).
Snack: Greek yogurt, grapes.
Dinner: Grilled chicken, carrots in vinaigrette sauce.
I pay Paisley Ann Meekin, my trainer, for 30-minute weight training sessions three times a week.
Last week, we only got in only one session. I was too sick to work out on Wednesday, and I was in Las Vegas on Friday. So today we combined two sessions into one at my request, but not a weight was lifted during the first half hour.
Paisley and I reviewed this very blog and went over the the food I’ve been eating the past six weeks. We have four weeks left of the Just Lose It! weight-loss contest, and I’m ready to put things into high gear. The $1,000 cash prize would more than make up what I lost on black this weekend.
I had a trainer once before, in 2002 and 2003. But we never covered diet any more than what you eat is important. I think Paisley puts a larger focus on diet than most trainers, and a week before the contest began we spent an hour going over the Glycemic index and talking metabolism, protein, carbs and fat … you know, fun stuff. Paisley has a degree in nutrition and doesn’t believe in counting calories. She just teaches you to eat five to six meals a day, and balance the meals between 40 percent protein, 40 percent carbs and 20 percent fat.
As I began to show Paisley pictures of the meals on this blog and on my phone, she seemed to just nod in agreement.
“Yep, that’s good … I like that meal … Good job cooking that pasta up all by yourself.”
From our discussion, I found that the 40-40-20 thing isn’t an exact science. It’s less like rules, and more like guidelines. I’m glad I’m doing a decent job, but I wanted to know what I could do to take it to a new level.
Paisley came up with a plan.
From here on out, I’m going to focus on the 40 percent that comprises carbs. Paisley suggested eliminating most bread products in favor of carbs exclusively from fruits, vegetables and other greens. No more whole wheat tortillas. No more mini bagels. No more bread.
If I pull this off, I might even win that $1,000 cash prize.
That would be more than enough for another trip to Vegas.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Brown rice California sushi rolls
Snack: Protein shake
Lunch: Baked salmon, grapes, raw cashews
Snack: Perfect food bar
Dinner: Chicken and a couple brown rice California sushi rolls
“You’re looking good!”
I wish I could say that comment came from a lady, but it came from my buddy Nolan, who joined me in Vegas this weekend for three nights of what my trainer would call “debauchery.”
That’s what Nolan told me the moment he arrived at our hotel room at Mandalay Bay. He immediately noticed I’ve lost weight since last fall. He thinks I look like I’m back to where I was when we were next door neighbors in Twin Falls five years ago.
It was good to see Nolan again.
If I haven’t said it already, when you’re losing weight the feeling is intoxicating. Feeling this good is better than any dopamine Panda Express might give you. It’s payoff for the hours you spend in the gym.
And while I still have a long way to go, let’s just say it’s good to be on the way. Nolan and I are both single bachelors now, and we decided we’d meet some ladies this weekend. It wasn’t a matter of trying, it was a decision. I am feeling so good about myself that I’m overconfident.
Words could not describe this weekend. I’m proud to say that although I couldn’t keep to my diet, we never hit a buffet and we actually didn’t eat much at all. Maybe that was my subconscious effort to leave room for the empty calories.
We met some nice ladies from Minnesota and spent considerable time with them on our last night. Hitting on random women is not something I have had confidence to do in a long time (read: 2 years). For some reason, I told the one paying the most attention to me that I had lost a lot of weight recently, and by the end of the night I was confident she liked my features.
Food Journal (click to view):
Sunday, Feb. 27:
Breakfast: Chicken wings at Hooters
Lunch: Peanuts on an airplane
Dinner: Brown rice California sushi rolls
Saturday, Feb. 26 (Eat Whatever You Want Day)
“Breakfast”: Cheeseburger from room service at 3 p.m.
Lunch: Nachos at Dick’s
(That’s it, seriously. That and copious amounts of alcohol.)
Friday, Feb. 25
Breakfast: McDonald’s breakfast burrito from last night (found in my pocket)
Lunch: Crazy flatbread awesomeness
Snack: Power Bar
Snack: Power Bar
The weight is continuing to come off. I'm about to crack into the 230s.
I’m in Las Vegas tonight, sitting on my hotel bed waiting for one of my best friends to get here from Twin Falls.
I just munched on a small tuna salad sandwich and salad, along with some raw almonds. There is a fresh bottle of whiskey on the drawer. These items were all overpriced, because I got them from a store downstairs at Mandalay Bay, where we’re staying.
I can’t wipe the smile off my face. I’m about to have a wild weekend with a best friend. And I’m ecstatic about my Friday weigh-in, which I did this morning, on a Thursday.
Despite being sick, missing last Friday’s workout and calling in sick yesterday, I’m still losing weight. I stepped on the scale this morning before hopping on my plane. According to the Unofficial Unofficial Scale, I’ve lost 4.6 pounds in six days and I’m about to crack into the 230s.
The feeling is amazing.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: California sushi rolls (with brown rice)
Snack: Protein bar at 30,000 feet
Lunch: Tuna salad sandwich with seven-grain wheat bread and salad, handful of almonds.
Dinner: Egg omelette with hashbrowns (but I barely nibbled the hashbrowns)
Snack: Drunken breakfast burrito from McDonald’s (at 3 a.m.)
My pile of tissue.
Good news and bad news.
Good news: I drank two gallons of water today. Bad news: 1 gallon came back out my nose.
Good news: I got a lot of rest today. Bad news: I had to cancel my Wednesday workout with Paisley because my nose was running like a faucet and my throat felt like sandpaper.
Good news: I’m leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow. Bad news: I’m leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs in whole wheat tortilla, orange.
Snack: Protein bar.
Lunch: Green salad with hard-boiled egg.
Dinner: Grilled chicken and green salad with vinaigrette.
Snack: Greek yogurt.
Pointing with my pinky.
“I’m going to be out of town this weekend,” I told Paisley Ann Meekin, my trainer. “And you’re not going to like where.”
It took her only one guess: “Vegas?”
“Vegas.”
“For another weekend of debauchery?” Paisley said. “Why now?”
Pointing at Mark.
I explained that I made a promise to a friend a long time ago. The promise was that if he became single again, I would take him to Las Vegas. Not just for a celebration, but to help him clear his mind. He had been in a relationship that was suffering a long slow death. In the past few years, he has committed so much of his time to his significant other that he lost touch with many of his friends. And he was isolated from them, too. It’s a long, complicated story, but we’ll leave it at that.
The problem — if we want to call it that — is that my friend just became single, and is cashing in on the promise during the 10 weeks I’m trying to win a weight loss contest.
Pointing at Karli.
Paisley told me she was mildly disappointed I’d picked this weekend to take that promised Vegas trip. I was just there a month ago during Panda Express Week.
“Do you still have the same goals,” she asked me. “What do you want out of this?”
“I want to lose 50 pounds,” I said.
We weighed in this morning and according to her scale my weight hasn’t budged since last week. However, I weighed myself on my own scale this morning and was down to 244.6 pounds, about a two-pound drop from last week. I’m certain that I’m down a little bit.
I fully intend to lose 50 pounds, I told Paisley. But I don’t think it will be as fast as we had once discussed.
Pointing at Cami.
“Hey, I’m proud of the fact that I lost 10 pounds in 28 days,” I explained. “And honestly, I’ve been debaucherous four out of the five weekends so far.”
Paisley was a little startled by this fact, and what ensued was a question and answer period about how often I go out, and why. I had a debaucherous Thursday and Friday, and my friends observed that when I’m drunk I like to point at everything and everyone, all the time.
But it’s not that I’m a party ringleader, I explained Paisley. I’ve just had a lot of extraordinary events take place during the Just Lose It! program. Some old grad school friends have come to Portland to visit, I went to the Sundance Film Festival for an extended weekend and I went to the beach with some friends the first weekend. It’s not about alcohol either, I explained.
Pointing at Katie.
“You just have a lot of friends in your social circle who like to party, right?” Paisley asked.
“I’ve just decided that I can’t put my life on hold for 10 weeks,” I said. “It’s a choice I’ve made. And look, I’m still losing weight.”
Paisley said she was hoping I’d be losing more weight, and more rapidly. She had hoped that I would have taken the 10 weeks of this program a little more seriously and cut out alcohol all together.
“So are you saying if I go out to the bars on Friday I’m going to put weight back on?” I asked.
“I can’t answer that,” she said.
This whole conversation took place during our workout while I was doing bicep curls and other arm exercises. Paisley made her case, and I spent my time trying to justify my behavior.
Pointing with Cami.
“I want you to know I’m still proud of you for what you’re doing,” Paisley told me as she had me down on the ground doing a plank.
I was silent.
“You do understand that, don’t you?” she repeated, as if feeling bad for giving me grief. “I want you to know that I’m still proud of you.”
I was still silent.
I wasn’t ignoring Paisley, it’s just that I’m not in the mood for chatting while she has me in that agonizing plank position.
“You know what I need to tame me,” I said. “I need a girlfriend.”
And with each pound I lose, the odds of finding one improve.
Pointing with Nick.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs in whole wheat tortilla, orange.
Snack: Greek yogurt and salt-free cashews.
Lunch: Turkey, salad and sliced bell pepper.
Dinner: Progresso chicken and rice soup.
Climbing Dog Mountain.
The first rule of Hike Club is you do not talk about Hike Club.
My good buddy Brian Yoss and I did a series of hikes in the fall of 2009 and winter of 2010 that we came to call “Hike Club.” I think we called it that because when other people heard about our Sunday hikes, some expressed interest in joining us.
We didn’t want anyone slowing us down or whining (or, for that matter, embarrassing us with their hiking superiority), so we decided to keep it between the two of us. We called it Hike Club and agreed not to talk about it in a care to join us? kind of way.
For me, Hike Club was one of my vain efforts to lose weight during the past two years, which will eventually be referred to as The Dark Ages, or maybe The Fat Years. The hiking was awesome, but I didn’t do anything else. No diet or exercise of any significance during the week.
Hike Club died a quiet death for various reasons. We’re both busy guys. But today something fantastic happened.
Hike Club is back!
I’m using a loophole that’s not covered in the fine print to tell you about Hike Club. I’m not allowed to talk about Hike Club — that’s the first rule, you know — but there’s nothing in the contract that says you can’t blog Hike Club!
Yoss and I returned to where we last left Hike Club: Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge.
This was the biggest mother fucker of a hike we ever did. You gain 2,800 feet of elevation. When we last did Dog Mountain, we took the easy way up, which is a gentler slope but you’re still unable to get out of the 2,800-foot elevation gain.
In a classic example of how fat I had become, a quarter of the way up I had to borrow Yoss’s knife and slice open the legs of my boxers because they were too tight around my fat thighs and humongous balls. The chaffing was horrific.
That hike ruined us a year ago. But today we kicked its ass.
When you are getting in shape the feeling can be intoxicating. Yoss and I took the hard way up this time, and spent the first 3 miles marching virtually straight uphill. We came down this way a year earlier, and as we descended we both acknowledged that we’d never have made it up this way.
Because we are fucking awesome.
About a mile into the hike we came to a junction that had a sign. One way was marked “less difficult” and the other said “more difficult.”
We took more difficult, because we are fucking awesome.
I have to hand it to Yoss. He left me in the dust a few times. He’s been doing something he refers to as boot camp with a trainer for months. He has slimmed down quite a bit and put on some muscle.
I had the last laugh, though. When we did all these hikes last winter, I always wore shorts and would draw funny looks from other hikers. Today was the first time I have ever done Hike Club with pants and Yoss, strangely, decided this would be the first time he wore shorts.
Well, about a mile and a half up we started to see the snow. And by the time we got to the top there wasn’t a bare patch of dirt anywhere. We crossed paths with four hikers at the top who made no secret of how ridiculous Yoss looked in his shorts.
“I didn’t know there would be snow up here,” Yoss told the group.
“Dude, you do know it’s still February don’t you?” one of the guys fired back.
So there you have it. This is Hike Club. But don’t try to ask me about it later because my lips are sealed. I can blog about Hike Club, but I can’t talk about it.
That’s the first rule, you know.
Look at this asshole!
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs in whole wheat tortilla
Snack: Two whole wheat mini bagels, orange (while on hike)
Lunch: Chicken wrap and vegetarian chili (at Big River Grill in Stevenson, Wash.)
Dinner: Second half of wrap from restaurant, almonds, string cheese
Snack: Power bar
Courtesy of PDX Pipeline
My trainer took Friday off, and so did I. She’s entitled to some time off … I suppose.
Today was the day that I was going to do the workout I was supposed to do on Friday. Paisley left me do-it-yourself instructions on her blog. Before I hit the gym, however, I had to retrieve my car, which was on 37th & Hawthorne. I left it there because I cabbed it back after a session of binge drinking this weekend with friends.
Retrieving my car was quite the unofficial hike. I had to walk 30 minutes from my parent’s house to the Max station in Beaverton. Then I took Max into downtown Portland, walked across the Hawthorne Bridge and then hiked all the way to 37th Street in southeast Portland, right next to one of my favorites places in the world: The Bagdad Theater.
All told, I think it was an hour and a half of walking. I wore my gym shoes and dangled my gym shorts out my back pocket. After picking up my hybrid, I stopped by my office in northeast Portland, pulled up Paisley’s blog and started to look at the workout I was supposed to do on Friday.
Her instructions were very loose, and if you’ve read any of my previous entries, you know that I like things very specific if we’re talking diet and exercise. Then I thought to myself, “If I have to figure this out on my own, why do I have a trainer?”
Having a trainer and structure and appointments is one of the only things that keeps me going to the gym. And the check I write her is motivation, too. I know I could figure this out on my own if I really wanted to, but I don’t.
So if my trainer skips town, I’m taking the day off, too.
Food Journal (click to view):
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs in whole wheat tortilla
Lunch: Chicken taco, black beans, lettuce at La Palapa (I didn’t touch the Spanish rice)
Snack: Tuna salad with cranberries and walnuts mixed in
Dinner: Pork chops and grapes and a cheese stick
Food Journal for Saturday, Feb. 19 (Eat Whatever You Want Day):
Lunch: Panda Express
Dinner: Brian’s Bowl at Por Que No? (shredded chicken, beans, green sauce and a lot of other goodness).
