It has occurred to me that I haven’t posted a picture of myself since starting the Just Lose It! program and this blog.
Here is a picture of me on Jan. 27, 2011 in Salt Lake City. As you can tell, I haven’t let vacation get in the way of exercise. This is me at the local gym near our hotel:
Trying to decide which bottle to the left will work best with my bicep curls.
Consider this your “before” picture. I’ll post an “after” picture at the end of 10 weeks.
A note: Here in Utah they water down the alcohol content in the beer, so you have to go straight to the liquor store for the good stuff.
Food Journal
Breakfast: Steak strips in whole wheat tortilla
Snack: hard-boiled egg, tiny wheat bagel with peanut butter, 1/4 apple
Lunch: Chicken stir fry with brown rice and seasame oil and lots of veggies (at Chinese restaurant in SLC)
Dinner: Spaggetti with meatballs at Italian restaurant (small portion, thank you!)
Snack: Whiskey
Exercise: Yeah … uh … nope.
Film Warriors.
I have to leave my home tomorrow by 5 a.m. to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Salt Lake City, where I’m meeting up with eight old pals from college. It’s a reunion of sorts. We all used to work at The Daily Barometer together a decade ago. These are some of the best current and former journalists I’ve ever known. And the best drinkers, too.
These people can be trouble.
The eight of us will be attending the Sundance Film Festival. We’ll be watching movies by day, and partying by night.
I’m a little nervous about this trip. Not because I won’t enjoy seeing my old friends, but because it will be a test. Can my new lifestyle mesh with a weekend of partying with old friends? Can I stick to my diet while staying at a hotel? Do vacations mesh with the Just Lose It! program?
We’ll see.
Food Journal:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with nuts; hard-boiled egg
Snack: Protein SHAKE! with banana (Thank you Paisley)
Lunch: Chicken wrap with salad
Snack: Yogurt
Dinner: steak, salad and brown rice
Tired. Brain dead. Blah.
As my good buddy Mark and I sat down to watch President Obama’s State of the Union Address at the Clinton Street Pub, I felt myself stumbling over words. My speech was inarticulate. I couldn’t always say what I wanted to say as fast as I wanted to say it. I had nothing on President Obama.
“I feel exhausted tonight,” I told Mark. “It’s weird, because all last week I felt fucking fantastic.”
“And you’re not having a beer?” Mark asked. “That’s weird, too.”
Mark and I like to see movies at the small independent theaters around Portland — the kind of places where you can watch the movie with a piece of pizza, or a glass of beer. Places like the Bagdad, Laurelhurst or Hollywood Theatre.
Tonight’s movie was going to be “Lemmy” at the Clinton Street Theater, and our usual routine is to have dinner and maybe bring a pitcher into the screening room, or in my case (especially recently) a glass of wine.
“Lemmy” is the story of Lemmy Kilmister, the whiskey-drinking, speed-taking, 60-some-year-old frontman of the legendary band Motorhead. It was kind of ironic, I thought, that I’d be watching this documentary without a buzz. This is the way our mid-week movie excursions are going to be for the next nine weeks (and maybe forever), I told Mark.
This is what I had for lunch at my office: chicken wrap in whole wheat tortilla, brown rice, salad.
I’m changing my lifestyle. It’s not that I can’t ever have a drink on a social occasion with friends, it’s just that I’m going to try to limit those occasions to weekends. Besides, it’s been reported that two glasses a wine a day is actually healthy for your heart. I’d rather save them up and have 14 on Friday.
All kidding aside, I want to lose weight and feel better about myself. I’m so frustrated with how I look that I get discouraged every time I see myself tagged in a picture on Facebook. The small sacrifices are worth the payoff. I can do dinner and a movie on Tuesday without the glass of wine, I told Mark.
The bartender brought me my dinner: chicken salad with small sides of pecans and potato salad. Mark decided just to stick with beer.
“I feel like I might be brain dead because I’m not getting enough carbs,” I told Mark, pointing to the potato salad I’d specifically added to the meal. “But I wonder if the mayonnaise on that jives with my diet?”
Mark looked perplexed.
“Dude,” he said, “I can’t believe you’re eating a salad.”
Food Journal:
Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla, small handful of almonds
Snack: Crappy protein drink, a string cheese and tuna salad
Lunch: Marinated chicken wrap with veggies in whole wheat tortilla, brown rice salad
Dinner (4 hours after lunch): Chicken salad, side of pecans, side of potato salad
Snack: 4 little sushi rolls (salmon, veggies and rice)
Exercise: 22 minutes of interval training on a treadmill
I don’t know what’s going on, and my trainer doesn’t have all the answers, either.
I stepped on Paisley’s scale at the gym this morning, and it told me I weighed exactly 259 pounds.
That’s just 3 pounds of weight loss after seven days (2.6 pounds to be exact). I’m not going to sugar coat this: I’m disappointed, and I said as much to my trainer.
“That’s actually a more healthy pace of weight loss than what we had discussed,” Paisley told me. “But I expected you to lose more.”
I did, too. Because I feel fucking fantastic. Even my sore muscles feel good in a weird, pleasurable way. Last week I stuck to the 40-40-20 diet without deviation, and really enjoyed it.
I’m wondering if I had a small setback this weekend at the coast, because my eating schedule got a little out of whack and I had a few cocktails and pigged out on pizza Saturday night with my friends. I went to the beach to work on three condos I manage, and I had planned to get a 10 mile hike in but I got too busy with my project.
“Too busy with work” has tempered my exercise schedule my entire adult life. I’ve got to get to the point where I was “too busy with exercise” to get all my work done. But I digress.
The scale at the gym and the scale I’ve been stepping on at home do not jive.
Last Wednesday I stepped on my personal scale — the first time I weighed myself at home in several months — and it said 252. On Thursday it said 249 and on Friday it was 249 again. When I woke up Thursday morning I even felt thinner. Not in a big way, but if you’ve ever lost weight I think you know what I mean.
Before I got to the gym this morning I let out a loud groan when my personal scale said 251.8. Three down, 2.8 up. What’s going on?
“Do you have any ideas of why it might fluctuate like that?” I asked Paisley, referring to the apparent three-pound swing between Friday and Monday.
“It could be a lot of things,” she said. “It could be your water weight or any number of factors.”
Maybe I should have taken a shit before I went to the gym, and not right afterward?
Regardless, 3 pounds is progress. Because if I keep this pace, I’ll lose 30 pounds in 10 weeks, and be poised — I hope — to win the Just Lose It! contest.
Still, I know I can do better.
Food Journal:
Breakfast: Oatmeal with milk and walnuts.
Snack: Protein water drink (why am I still drinking this crap?) with banana
Lunch: Tuna salad
Snack: Greek yogurt
Dinner: Grilled chicken, brown rice, steamed vegetables, salad
Exercise: Arm Day with Paisley plus 45 minutes cardio on the elliptical
Catching up on the blog/food journal …
I spent the weekend at the beach with one of my favorite couples, Brian and Jennifer Yoss.
The Yosses encouraged me to misbehave this weekend at the beach.
I designated Saturday as my “Eat Whatever You Want Day,” as I’m allowed by Paisley under this program. I had only three meals, with the first around 10 a.m. at Kyllo’s Seafood & Grill, right next to our Sea Gypsy Condos.
I endulged in clam strips and a cup of clam chowder, favorites of my pre-Just Lose It! diet. I finished everything on my plate, and not long afterward I felt drowsy and bloated.
Drowsy and bloated is something I feel often when I’m not eating healthy. Restaurants load you up with oversized portions, and when I’m hungry I usually finish them and feel like shit afterwards. Before this weight-loss program started that was my M.O.
After my oversized portion of clam chowder and clam strips, I thought to myself: Why do I have an Eat Whatever You Want Day? This isn’t a reward? This makes me feel full and bloated. This is just taking me back to my old habits.
Having reached that epiphany, the three of us went to Chinook Winds Casino later that night, gambled, got wasted, and then pigged out on pizza at 1 a.m.
Thank God for epiphanies.
And Eat Whatever You Want Days.
Food Journal:
Saturday (Eat Whatever Day):
Breakfast: Clam strips with cup of clam chowder from Kyllo’s
Lunch: Chicken bacon pitaza from Mulligan’s Sports Bar
Dinner: Pizza at 1 a.m. (seven hours after lunch)
Sunday:
Breakfast: A tiny bit of meat and cheese from last night’s pizza; small apple
Snack: Greek yogurt
Lunch: California sushi roll
Snack: Veggies including cucumbers, bell peppers and celery
Dinner: Pork loins, brown rice, salad
Snack: Greek yogurt
Exercise Note: I had planned to do a 10-mile hike at the beach this weekend, but I got too busy hanging out with the Yosses and working on my condos.
The deli at Whole Foods.
I ate out today, but it wasn’t Panda Express.
I went into the Whole Foods between Lloyd Athletic Club and my office to improvise my lunch.
I spent several minutes looking through the glass case of the deli and fending off repeated “Can I help you” inquiries from the employees. Finally, I settled on baked salmon and a concoction called “Broccoli Crunch,” which consists of bacon, onion, cashews, eggs, raisins and, of course, broccoli.
I have to admit, this can be kind of fun. I have to figure out what I can eat on the 40-40-20 diet (40 percent carbs, 40 percent protein, 20 percent fat), and it forces me to try things I wouldn’t normally seek.
I could get used to this.
Food Journal:
Breakfast: Greek yogurt, small apple, small handful of almonds
Snack: Banana, string cheese and that same crappy protein drink
Lunch: Baked salmon and “Brocoli Crunch” from Whole Foods.
Snack: Greek yogurt
Dinner: Pork loins, salad and a bell pepper slices
Well, this is interesting:
I’m still a fat bastard, but I’m not as fat as I thought I was.
This is the scale I’ve been using for the past 10 years. It’s a better gauge on how much I weigh compared to previous months and years. Let’s just say it offers better perspective.
This scale doesn’t say I’ve lost over 10 pounds in four days. It just tells me there’s a huge discrepancy between this scale and the one at the gym.
I’d like to think this one is the right one.
Food Journal:
Breakfast: Two scrambled eggs in whole wheat tortilla
Snack: Banana and crappy protein water.
Lunch: Tuna salad
Snack: Greek yogurt
Dinner: Grilled chicken, salad, Spanish rice, salad
NOTE: Dinner was with the fam and some of the chicken had skin on it and the spanish rice might have violated the diet.
This is Day 3 of the “Just Lose It” contest, and today was Leg Day with Paisley at the gym.
But legs weren’t really on my mind.
My arms are killing me. I can’t even straighten them out. They are so sore from Monday’s weight-training session, the first in about five years (I think), that they’ve been bothering me the past two nights as I try to sleep.
You could say I have a bad case of Randy Arms because, well, I can’t put my arms down.
When I’m standing up, I look like Randy from “The Christmas Story” the way my arms hang. I might be mistaken, but they even feel swollen.
The only time I could straighten them today was while I was laying on my back, doing hip thrusts to work on my hamstrings. Gravity helped me out.
Paisley has told me repeatedly that diet will be 85 percent of getting me to my weight loss goal. “I can’t believe this is only 15 percent,” I said today after doing a set of lunges.
“Yeah, but it’s a very important 15 percent,” she said.
My Randy Arms sure can feel it.
Food Journal
Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs on Ezekiel bread and very small serving of almonds
Snack: Banana and that crappy protein drink (where’s the beefcake?)
Lunch: Sonoma chicken salad (with celery, walnuts and grapes)
Snack: Small serving of oatmeal
Dinner: Pork loins, brown rice and steamed vegetables
Snack: (skipped)
There are some things I like to teach myself, and some things I like to be taught.
Diet and exercise are two of the latter. As I mentioned in a previous installment of this blog, I don’t find a lot of joy in cooking my own meals. I don’t daydream about mixing ingredients into that perfect recipe, or think about what blend of herbs and spices might make something better. Spare me the ground cumin, and just give me a burrito and give it to me now. Here’s six bucks, thanks.
So yesterday, my trainer Paisley Ann Meekin made me an awesome protein shake. Right after our first weight-lifting session, she told me to meet her downstairs at the front counter where she’d have some protein goodness waiting for me.
When I began this program, I committed to eat what Paisley told me to eat, but I wasn’t convinced I would enjoy it. But what was waiting for me was right up there with a McDonalds milkshake — so good that I had to slow myself from scarfing it down like a McDonalds milkshake
“Enjoy your food and eat it slowly,” Paisley tells me.
This awesome protein shake served two purposes. First, it sent protein straight to my muscles to rebuild them after weight lifting. Two, it counted as the second of six small meals and snacks I am supposed to eat during the day.
When I don't get specific instructions, I end up buying protein water instead of protein shake mix.
“What in the world is in this?” I asked Paisley.
“Just get whey protein,” she said. “Mix it with something like berries or a banana.”
“No, I mean what kind is it?” I asked. “I want to know what to buy at the store.”
“There’s lots of different kinds you can get and there’s a GNC just over there,” she said, pointing in the general direction of Lloyd Center, I surmised. There are no windows at our gym.
“No, I mean what is it exactly?” I said.
“I’ll e-mail you,” she said.
I’m still in the phase of this where I want to take orders. I’m a private that needs a sergeant. I don’t want to figure things out, I want to be told what to do. If I knew how to do this on my own — or had the enthusiasm — I don’t think I’d be here now, 60 pounds overweight and feeling like I fucked my health up.
After the protein shake, I went to a store on Freemont Street called Foot Traffic to buy some new sneakers and some protein goodness. But I fucked that up too, and what I bought wasn’t so much protein shake as it was protein water. Yuck. The shoes were fine.
Maybe what I really needed was something called Weight Gain 4000, as this video explains:
(CLICK TO PLAY)
I like that video, because the guy is screaming and yelling and giving orders. I am still in a phase where I take everything literally, and want things to be very specific.
If Paisley tells me to go buy Weight Gain 4000, I’ll buy Weight Gain 4000.
And if she tells me to yell “beefcake” ….
BEEFCAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Food Journal
Breakfast: Oatmeal with blueberries and milk; small whole wheat tortilla with peanut butter.
Snack: Crappy protein water (see picture above) with banana
Lunch: Tuna salad wrap
Snack: Greek yogurt
Dinner: Grilled chicken, steamed vegetables and brown rice (same as last night but without salad)
Snack: (skipped)
My first unofficial weigh-in at the gym.
Words aren’t necessary, but HOLY SHIT!
Food Journal
Breakfast: Greek yogurt, small apple, handful of almonds.
Snack: Whey protein shake with banana.
Lunch: Tuna salad.
Snack: Greek yogurt, one carrot.
Dinner: Salad, steamed vegetables, brown rice and grilled chicken.
Snack: (skipped)
