Tag Archives: restaurants

Weekly Weigh In … Week 17

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Up.

And I know why.

Eating out is the main culprit.  Not enough exercise is a close second. Grazing is in the picture, too.

Week 16 – 282.6 lbs
Week 17 – 284.2 lbs
Increase – 1.6 lbs
Year to date – down ~ 18 lbs (average 1.05 lbs decrease/week)

I guess I should look on the bright side and see that I have been decreasing my wight, albeit very slowly, since the beginning of the year.  But, I really need to get with the program.  Especially since this most recent week-over-week change is a significant increase.

It always steams my shorts that losing weight takes so much energy and time and gaining weight is so easy and quick.  Work like a dog and nibble on carrot sticks and cucumbers for weeks and you lose a few pounds. Go out to dinner and have a little dessert and, BAM!, you gain 2 lbs overnight without even thinking about it.

Something is not right with this picture.

Going Off The Rails

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Over this past weekend, I went off the rails.

I didn’t count calories, I ate pretty much what I wanted and, horror of all horrors, on Sunday I actually ate out at restaurants with friends for both lunch and dinner.  That was some heavy eating.

You would think that I would have gained a couple of pounds or something.  But, I didn’t. I did gain almost a pound — about eight tenths in the two days.  The real kicker is this: I got back on the wagon Monday and even went to the gym and walked on the treadmill for 40 minutes (my longest time since the knee surgery). I’m up to 2.5 mph, which isn’t that fast but it’s something.

Anyway, I weighted myself this morning and I’m up a full pound from yesterday. Yesterday was the day I started watching what I ate and went and exercised.  WTF!!!

Maybe it’s the barometric pressure or the paradox of losing while eating or something unknown and unknowable but it is damn frustrating.  Especially since I really want to get below the 280 lbs mark in a couple of weeks.  Now I have farther to go.

It really pisses me of.  More to the point, it’s the kind of thing that makes me think that I can never go off the rails.  I will always have to be vigilant.  I really need to get on the carrot sticks and celery thing.

There has got to be a way to kick the sugar habit.

Weekly Weigh-In … Week 13

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As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was a little disappointed in my weight.  Primarily, because I was eating too much.  Well, I don’t know how I did it but I managed to reduce another pound between last week and this week.  Anything is progress and I’m certainly glad to be down a pound.

This week the scale tipped at 284.6.  Last week it read 285.6.  That’s a reduction of 18 lbs so far. A little over a pound a week.

Hey, a pound is a pound.  Especially since I’m not back to the gym, yet.  That will be coming sooner rather than later.  My knee is starting to feel better and I think I can probably start back light in another week or two at the most.  At least, that’s my plan.

It was really a week of ups and downs.  I ate more than I should and ate out more than I should.  So I’m really glad that I didn’t gain.

This week I’ll be in beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico though Monday.  I really need to watch what I’m doing.  The conference I’m attending is providing food and, of course, we have to try out the local haunts while we’re here.  I’m determined to keep a lid on it, though. I don’t want to start going up.

The Clothes Make The Man

One of the nice side benefits of reducing weight is that my clothes are starting to feel just the tiniest bit more comfortable and, maybe, even a little loose.  I tried on a suit that would have been out of the question a couple of months ago and I can actually fit into it (again).

The other nice thing was that the airline seat wasn’t horrible.  Yes, it was still a tight squeeze but I was able to fasten my seat belt without the extender (barely) and all that is progress.  Sometimes it’s not only the number on the scale.  It’s the way things fit and how you feel moving around.

I can hardly wait to get to my goal weight (180 lbs).  Won’t that be sweet.

The journey continues.

Falling Off The Wagon…Temporarily

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I’m about to go on a short business/pleasure trip to beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico.  It’ll be the first time I’ve gone there and there will be some meals as part of the conference and, of course, the eating “on our own”, as the agenda says.

But, that’s not the topic of this post.  You see, I was planning to do my Weekly Weigh-in today.  I have to get up super early tomorrow in order to get out the door and to the airport in time to catch a relatively early flight.  So, I thought, I’d do it today and then go back to Thursday next week when I get back.

Well, the road to hell are paved with good intentions.  I stepped on the scale this morning and surely thought I had gone to hell.  I was up (I won’t say how much) but it was more than I wanted to admit to the world via the Internet. Of course, you don’t go to hell without sinning, first, and that’s exactly what has been happening.

Eating For The Sake Of Eating

Over the last week I’ve been eating later at night and I’ve eaten out for a couple of lunches.  To top it all off, I had this huge breakfast yesterday morning topped by a ridiculously fattening and high calorie meal last night at a local restaurant.  It’s not even a restaurant I like very much.  It just happened to be convenient and fast.

Yes, there was stuff on the menu that would have been a better choice but between being hungry and wanting to “let loose” I ordered the fish and chips.  Wrong choice.  Very wrong choice.  Not only was it deep fired within an inch of it’s previous life and horrible looking and bad tasting, it was mega calorie. As if that wasn’t bad enough, i ordered dessert which I shared with my wife but still….

So, I learned my lesson.

Keeping Nutrition In Mind

If I’m  going to fall off the wagon, I want to do it with food that is well prepared and tastes good and may even be nutritionally good for me. This eating garbage just to satisfy hunger just doesn’t get it.

So I’m going to get up early tomorrow morning, hop in the shower and write down my weight.  The nice thing about the Internet is that I don’t have to be in my house, at my dining room table (as I am right now) to weigh in and report.  I can do that from virtually anywhere and I’ll certainly be able to do it from a hotel room in San Juan.

Today, I’m really going to watch what I eat and drink lots and lots of water.  Maybe swill down some psyllium in the hopes of flushing out my system.

Stay tuned.  I’ll report tomorrow whether it’s up, down or sideways.

“Hey, Wanna Get Together For Dinner?”

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One of the biggest challenge with reducing weight is figuring out what to do when friends suggest a get together. I’m not sure I remember what we used to do but anymore it seems like “dinner” or some other eating event is the way I socialize with friends.  The thing is: I like the whole eating together thing.  Granted, most of the time it’s in a restaurant because, God knows, I don’t cook (and neither does my wife). So, that means dealing with restaurant food and restaurant portions.

Yeah, I know the drill.  Don’t eat the bread. Drink lots of water. Get a salad or have them box up half the stuff they bring to the table.  But all that is easier said than done.

The real thing is to figure out alternatives to having food placed in front of me or, more to the point, me placed where there is food.  You see, I know it’s all about choice and as Tyler Weeks says on his 344 Pounds blog it’s time to Stop Making Excuses For Weight Problems.  Yet, it’s hard to tell friends you may not have seen for awhile or friends you like being around that, “No, I’m really trying to quit.” when it comes to going out to dinner.

Of course, I understand the side benefit of not doing the dinner thing is saving the cost of the event which can be substantial.

It’s just another one of those little challenges on the path to real and sustainable weight reduction. Working through alternatives to eating out. Not as easy as it sounds.

Food – The Problem With Weight Reduction

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As I continue on this journey through weight reduction, it occurs to me that one of the biggest challenges with getting rid of the weight is food.  I know that sounds silly and stupid. Yet, for met it’s a big, big challenge.

You see, I don’t really cook.  At least, not well and nothing ever very fancy.  My wife doesn’t either.  She just never got it passed down from her mother who was a Depression era mother in an urban area.  So cans and processed foods were the way things were done.  Still are.  Easy, if not cheap and laden with so many calories you can’t keep count.  Ditto sodium which is none to good for old blood pressure readings.

So, the solution is to eat a lot of sandwiches or stuff on the run.  Things that come out of a box or a restaurant.  It’s really kind of sad but I klnow there are millions of people just like me who eat on the run or grab something simple or pre-prepared at the grocery store.  Sure.  Apples and bananas are simple and easy to eat and I go for them.  But, a lot of the time I’ll through some ham on two pieces of bread or fill up a bowl of cereal.

So, tonight, I’m thinking about food.  Now that Christmas is over and all the people who cook are done cooking and I’m left to my own devises,a gain. (Note:  all that “home cooking” over Christmas was so sugared up, fatted up and salted up that it might as well have had a skull and crossbones on it.  But it tasted soooo good.)

Maybe I should take cooking lessons.  Ya think?

The Irony of Restaurant Seating

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It may just be me.  But, it seems to me that many restaurants, including the biggest offenders, the fast food places, have forgotten that the food they serve requires more, er, spacious seating.  That’s right.  The food they serve requires wider and possibly longer seating.  Not because they serve so much food.  Although that is a big reason.  It’s because we have eaten so much of it we can’t fit into it anymore.

I can think of how many times I’ve been to this or that restaurant and can no longer fit into a booth.  Yet, that’s the first thing the I’m led to when I enter a restaurant.  It’s leads to a little bit of embarrassment when I have to ask if a table might be available.  Mostly because the person I’m with can still fit.  I’m over it now and I usually try to preempt the restaurant person by asking for a table upfront.

Still, it begs the question: if restaurants are so gung ho to serve large portions of high calorie, high fat foods why don’t they make the seating big enough to accommodate the people they serve?

At least in some restaurants the tables in the booth areas are movable.  But have you ever been inside on of those places where the table is either bolted to the floor or bolted to the wall? I’m not quite sure how this design became popular but it seems to be the design of choice in fast food places and not a few “casual dining” restaurants, as well.

Obviously, it is my responsibility for getting as large as I have.  I could have said “no” to the dessert or 16oz NY Strip. I could exercise more. Drink more water.  Yet, I can just look around, listen to the news stories on NPR and so on to know I am not alone in being circumferentially challenged.  It’s just a real irony, that the very places that want our business to eat their food have frozen us out with seating meant only for the fit and trim.