Tag Archives: desserts

The Eating At Meetings

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I’ve written about this before.  It’s a terrible weakness of mine and I’m not quite sure how to beat it.

Today, two meetings provided food.  One was my local Rotary Club which provides breakfast every Tuesday.  It’s pretty much the same. Scrambled eggs, some kind of meat – bacon or sausage or ham – some bread of some kind – biscuit, bagel or silver dollar pancakes.  Yeah.  There’s fruit and I’m always surprised at how many people eat it.

My other meeting was a local Association of Realtors Task Force. It’s not a regular type meeting so there was lunch served to accommodate the fact that many of the Task Force members had come from some distance. Pasta, a sauce (today with chicken), a salad and dessert.

It’s the dessert-y stuff that gets to me.  The other stuff I try to take it easy on because I know I’m a spiller.  I always manage to drop a little something from my fork or spoon and because my stomach’s in the way, it never makes it to the floor or table.  It makes it to the front of my shirt. So I try to avoid things I can spill in public.  It’s really bad form to spill.

Dessert is another story.  It’s usually cookies.  Today it was these cute little chocolate cannoli things, cute little macaroon and chocolate cookie things and this baklava-like thing that was verrrry tasty.  Too damn tasty.

So I came home and instead of dinner, I tried to cut back by having a couple of hard pretzels and a banana. And I’m drinking lots of water.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings.  I really hate meetings.

Day 4 of my personal 30 day challenge to myself.

Weekly Weigh-in … Week 14

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Hoooo-ray!

Even though I went on a little business trip to an exotic locale (if you can call San Juan, Puerto Rico exotic) and didn’t log everything that went into my mouth, I was still able to reduce my weight.

Last week — 284.6 lbs
This week — 283.2 lbs
Reduced — 1.4 lbs
Total from the beginning — ~19 lbs give or take a few tenths

Of course, my all time high was about 303 lbs right before the Christmas holidays but I started actually counting around the beginning of the New Year.

The Way I Eat

Obviously, the ideal is to keep track of everything I put into my mouth and to add it to my online calorie counter and exercise log. It tells me how many calories I should take in just to maintain my current weight (my Basal Metabolic Rate). However, life is not ideal.

In addition to going to San Juan between last week and today I also went to a chili dinner fundraiser thing for a local swim club in my area.  It wasn’t a lot of food but it was chili (with cheese and rice and cornbread and cookies…you get the idea).  I think just the awareness of the fact that I want to keep reducing my weight is helping me from going completely nuts and loading up plate after plate.

Now, though, I don’t think I have any big meals on the horizon – fundraisers, professional associations, meeting friends for dinner – anything like that.  So, now I can get back to watching those calories more closely.

Back To The Gym

I also went back to the gym yesterday for the first time since my arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus.  30 minutes on the treadmill at 2.0 mph.  That’s a pretty leisurely stroll but it was 30 minutes straight and it burned 163 calories that wouldn’t have burned otherwise.  As time goes on. I’ll increase my speed, increase the incline to the treadmill and increase the burn rate on the calories.  I’ll also get back into the circuit training which helps with the strength and, I’m told, also helps burn the weight off a tad faster.  Plus, I need to make sure my muscle tone doesn’t go completely to hell.  Not that there is that much of it now.

So, all in all, I’m pleased that I’m making progress at about 1.357 pounds a week.  It would be nice to step it up and maybe getting back to the gym will help with that.  I’m still looking at a goal weight that is a looong way down the road.

Onward.

Eating On Vacation

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I recently went on a little vacation.  It was really more like a long weekend away.  My wife and I went to  a conference in beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico.  The weather was great, the company was great and the conference was took up just enough time during the day to leave plenty of time for sightseeing and other activities.

The real downside to going away, of course, is that there are so many opportunities to eat.  There is the conference food — typically a “Continental” breakfast of pastries and coffee.  Yeah, there’s fruit but I haven’t learned how to eat that, yet. Lunch was pretty simple and almost tasteless so it was easy to, er, go easy on lunch.  It was dinner that was the real killer.

Night One was dinner with a group of other Marylanders at one of the area’s premier restaurants. Since we were a group, the menu was limited but the salad, entree, and dessert were still plentiful.  Luckily, it’s easy for me to stay away from the alcohol calories.

Night Two was dinner on our own but since my wife’s nap took a little longer than expected we ended up at on of the hotel’s restaurants.  This was a nice place but, again, the food was plentiful and since it was a steak house, we ordered steak which is not know as a low-cal food.

Night Three was a conference sponsored dinner.  This was more portion controlled but still plenty of rolls and butter along with a tasty entree and a fabulous dessert.

On Our Own

We stayed an extra day for the heck of it.  OK, not for the heck of it, more because we had never been to San Juan and wanted to do some walking around in Old San Juan.  Oh, by the way, we wanted t taste some authentic Puerto Rican food. So we stopped at a couple of local restaurants and a couple of food vendors.  WE had some good food and some good sweets.

Quite frankly, by this time, I was getting worried about how many calories I was piling on.  I thought for sure when I stepped on the scale when I got back home it would tell me I was back to where I started.  I didn’t step on it right away.  It was a couple of days.  I though it might be a good idea to let me body re-adjust to my home routine. So, I got on the scale this morning and was both shocked and amazed and pleasantly surprised that I actually weighed in at slightly less than when I left.

The Official Weigh-In Will Tell The Tale

Hopefully, this will hold up until I weigh my self tomorrow for my official weigh-in day.  It’s a good feeling to know that I can go on vacation and be aware of what I am eating without having to log every calorie that goes into my mouth. Frankly, I wouldn’t have a clue as to what calorie level to assign to some of the stuff I ate.  It was all good and possibly even nutritious but I have no idea on how to break down the calories.

So tomorrow will tell the tale.  Can I keep my progress intact?