It Taste Like Burning

Good Morning all,

Sorry for not writing much lately.  I can't blog on my lunch anymore so and I've been either working late or busy getting ready for the holidays.  I don't about you but I'm so looking forward to the holidays and break from work.

Last night I started a work out program.  Mainly walking after work at the Findlay YMCA.  I looked so bad last.  My legs after exercising could hardly move and I'm trying to life them on a exercise bike.   Then the stair-climber machine almost vaulted me off.  Not fun.

I do get a little over a half hour workout and walked just mile shy of mile.  I do question if anyone reads the walking track sign because I seem to be the only one walking in the right direction.  An arrow is pretty hard to  not understand.

I think my look offended a couple of women because they forced me off the walking track and for a while a they were following me make some questionable comments.  The TV's drown out most of what they were saying, but the fact that they seemed to be at running every piece of equipment  was walking to, while laughing and muttering under their breath seemed odd.  I hope this gym doesn't turn into high school.

I lost another 5 lbs. this week.  Yay!  I've updated my page with my weight lose chart.  Also I added a section about exercise.

28 Calories Later

Woke up this morning and the yogurt zombie monster was staring back at me.  It wasn't the fact that I was eating yogurt for breakfast again.  It was the idea that I hit a slump in weight loss and I wanted to blame it on cultured dairy product in my view.  I've been hovering between the 451-452 lbs. mark.  Well I'm gonna have to do something about it. 

I looked up the health clubs that our insurance provides.  If I'm a women there are tons of cheap places that my insurance would take care of around my house and work. But the last time I check I'm not.  I talked to our HR director and got some info on the YMCA program we run here.  Our household finances are right at the edge, especially with Christmas coming up. So we'll have to give up cable and Scoop It dog poop service. But we can swing the membership with works' help.  Thanks work!

So onto my meal log:

Last Night's Dinner - Poached Salmon with the skin off and a bunch of Imitation Shrimp [also called baby shrimp]

Breakfast - Yogurt with a lil' extra Granola

Lunch - Taco Hot Pocket (the last of the Hot Pockets, only the light kind left), Almonds, Carrots, Apple

Pre-Dinner Snack (at work) - Carrots

Update - Tried to get my membership over lunch but they needed a check for the monthly payment.  Major but suckage.

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you feed me

Well they finished the calculations for the Biggest Losers contest at work.  I took first by a pretty good margin.  :)

While I'm really happy about this, I only have one more week of 'easy going.'  You see I'm so big that my body just went into shock and dropped a ton of water weight.  This week between today and Friday I'll start losing real fat.  Which mean anything from about Monday to then is just water weight as well.  I'll know when that time hits because my freaks out for a couple of weeks.

FYI: I put together a spreadsheet so I can keep track of my weight lose or gainage.  I'm hoping to get out of work on time so I can do a mile with my dog.  Here's hoping.

Meals so far today:

Breakfast:

• Low fat cottage cheese with chipotle seasoning (I love those smoke japelones)

Lunch:

• Diet Pepsi
• Chipotle's Burrito Bowl with:
• Chicken,
• Lime Rice (I really wish they offered brown rice)
• Fajita Veggies
• Black Beans
• Lettuce
• Fresh Tomato Salsa

Dinner:

• TBD

Dieter's Worst Night: http://www.woot.com/blog/viewentry.aspx?id=10144

Also, here's a a little doodle of myself I did when I started the competition.  I did to help keep myself inspired. Free doodle availible for anyone who wants one.  Enjoy!

I finally did it!

Yes my three readers I finally did it.  I had me some egg rolls.  Oh no, they weren't just any egg rolls.  They were the best kind, for a diet.  Yeah, I had a $2 special at Speedway. Stone me if you must but at least they're not fried.

So you've got to be asking yourself: where's the posts been?  The answer is work and life.

Friday was first time last week that I could get out of work before midnight (slight exaggeration, it had been 7pm the last few nights). Anyway I ran out the door, did a quick trip to the store, and helped my wife with 'bushia cookies.'  Now your asking: Erv, why would your wife torture you will yummylicious cream cheese cookies?  Because of her little sister.  Her one sister is leaving country for a new job and is going too miss Christmas and the cookies that go with the holiday.  So it was all for a good cause.

Saturday was our weekly running.  Also for the party I made some lemon bars, catching up on laundry, fixing a hard drive for said sister, and sending out our other baked goods to the soldiers we support overseas.  Somewhere in there I did collapse for about a half hour.  I was quite pleased with lemon bars.  They didn't taste like poop, actually they tasted quite good.

Sunday was church, taking stuff over to my in-laws for the going away party.  But I did almost have a nervous breakdown: there wasn't a veggie tray.  I reassured that there would be veggie tray and there wasn't one.  Some many carb rich food and nary a carrot to be found. 

My rough patches were the lemon bars - I tried one and was only suppose to be a bite but turned in a whole one.  It almost became two because I'm so use to downing one thing after another.  The other rough time was at the party.  I had a few of these cream cheese roll ups and about 2-3 slices of Marcos pizza.  I can't say exactly how many because the pizza was cut into squares.

All things considered I think I was pretty good.  For the meals themselves I had some fresco style stuff from da' Bell, a turkey Sub from da' Way, a chicken salad from Mickey D's, and a taco salad from Wendy's.  Lots of yogurt abounded for breakfast.

Monday I was pretty good.  Yogurt for breakfast and a onion breadie thing.  The day before I remembered that I had some canned salmon and decided I would make it.  You usually just mix the fish with breadcrumbs, onions, eggs and spices and lightly fry it.  Well I opened the can found out that the salmon had a ton of bones and other unappetizing bits.  So in trash the can went.  That left me with a mix of patty mix stuff.  I didn't want to throw it away so I added an extra egg and some chipotle seasoning and slow fried them in light oil.  They tested really good and with onions cutting the breadcrumbs the calories weren't to bad.  The carbs were terrible, but the overall calories were good.  

Lunch was the standard affair as the last few days.  I did finish off my old lunch snacks so lunch will be getting interesting.  Dinner was late because of work.  So I came home microwaved some turkey chili that was on sale at Aldi's (best place for yogurt if you don't have to have the name brands) and poured it over a couple of crush corn chips, Romanian lettuce, salsa and cheese.  It was darn tasty.

Tuesday (today) was yogurt for breakfast, left over chili salad for lunch, and two egg rolls for dinner.  I love the hot dogs and tornadoes from Speedway.  I have to stay away as much as possible or I will slip back into grabbing something here or there again an ruin my diet.  Fortunately I've been able to channel those feeling (best word?) into buying diet cranberry soda.  I think I'll be doomed after Christmas :)

So I'm tired and after I finish doing a quick edit on the post and put up the animals I plan on going to bed.

BTW: Thanks for encouragement.  You know who you are.

All Your Sushi Belong To Us

I would love to make some sushi rolls for lunch sometime.  Everyone has been talking about it at work and I found a simple recipe for sushi rice from Alton Brown.  It looks simple enough.  Now I'll have to pick up some salmon or make a vegetable sushi.  I'll sure the carbs off the scale since it short grain white rice.

Let catch up on meals:

Lunch (yesterday) - A flat bread turkey sandwich with a diet ginger ale soda.  Of course they put the tray right in front of so I figure I had enough meat to make at least another sandwich.

Dinner - An iced tea and a McDonalds crunchy ranch chicken salad.  I did sneak two fries from my wife

Breakfast - Yogurt and granola

Lunch (today) - Taco hot pocket, peanut butter crackers (yes we has ton of non-diet food to use up), sliced cucumber, and some carrots

I hope to have an apple this afternoon around 3:00.

Alligator tail and Eggrolls

I have been having a weird craving for alligator tail and egg rolls lately.  While my wife and I were vacation we went to Huck Finn's and we tried some fried alligator tail.  I really liked it, my wife not so much.  And yes it tastes like a strong chicken with a calamari like texture.  It has a naturally salty taste with a full savory/umami flavor so you shouldn't have to season it much.  Since almost all the tail meat is muscle its also very lean.

 

Now about egg rolls: yes they're deep fried.  But deep fried things are not bad for you. ::GASP::  What do you mean?  If you have a high heat oil it will sear and seal the outside of your food.  The result is that your actually steaming the food inside a crunchy shell.  What's bad is if the oil to cold you never seal.  Also if you cook something to long you'll force most of the moisture and let the oil into the foot.  Of course deep frying candy bars is never healthy.

 

So why egg rolls? I've been hungry for cabbage and the pasty shell.  The 'rolls are a great source of the leafy green goodness I desire.  I would have to find some vegetarian, chicken, or seafood ones.  I'm sure my local mega-mart has something for me :)  That brings up something else that has cabbage : is there any good Korean restaurants in the Toledo/Bowling Green area?  I've been wanting to try some kimchi dishes.

 

So what was for dinner?  Two hot dogs and some cottage cheese.  It was good but I could have had more.  I did sneak in a quarter piece of carmel candy.

What was for breakfast? Cup of yogurt and some granola.

 

Lunch will be some sort of sandwich provided by work.  I did bring in a couple of snacks just in case there wasn't a veggie tray.

 

One last note:  My wife said I started the blog off right my mentioning poop in my second post.  I guess I should mention poop once a day to bring in more reader, but I'll not sure how to do it today.

Lunch with the kids

I was cruisining on my Twitter over lunch when I can across Chef_Recipes' article on Top 10 School Lunch Choices.  Well lets see what I ate compared to what they had:

 

Pizza Hot Pocket - #5 on the list (pizza that is)

Diet Ginerger Ale - Nope

Peanutbutter and Cracker - Zilch

Carrots - #4

Nuts - Natta

And an Apple for later - #3

 

Not bad, I eat half as good as a school kid.  Personally I think I eat better (now) but that's life.

 

I know I could have eaten better but the diet competition kinda broadsided me so I have to eat what we got in the pantry.  Ah well, back to figuring out why a query will not run.

The official start

Here goes my official start to the new diet. Yesterday was suppose to be my first day but since they delayed the contest. So I decided to finish off the left over Marco's supreme pizza. Generally I prefer other pizza places but the supreme has so much awesome sausage and sweet onions it just makes my mouth water.

Diverging from dinner, lets hit breakfast. On my way home last night I hit up Meijers and picked up a diet ginger ale, some fruit on the bottom yogurts and granola cereal. If figured it had to be cheaper then McDonald's super ultimate yummy parfaits. It is.

The cereal cost me about 2¢ yogurt cup sized portion. The yogurt itself was about 45¢ so about half the price and 2-3 more ounces of the diet-IE goodness. Unfortunately its also half the taste. Oh well, I have a week and half of this yogurt and then I can switch to something cheaper and tastier: Aldi yogurt. Don't scoff at the Aldi yogurt. It pretty darn good.

Well me and my Faygo ginger ale have to get back to coding and fighting my stomach. See ya at lunch!

Soup it up!

Today's lunch was Chunky Beef Vegetable.  It was decent tasting. I used some crackers make it a little more palatable.  Chunky beef soups are so concentrated that you need something to cut the taste.

On a side note: SlashDot.org has an article about exercising without dieting doesn't do squat for your weight.  It may tighten up your waist some and will help your heart but your BMI stays about the same.  My guess is that you body, no matter what. will only absorb some many calories at a time.  After that you poop the rest out.  If you exercise without dieting you just burn more calories from what you eat and poop the rest out.

Phys Ed: Why Doesn't Exercise Lead to Weight Loss?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/phys-ed-why-doesnt-exercise-lead-to-weight-loss/

The diet starts

This is the first post on my diet. Why is some random guy dieting? Simple: I'm almost 500 lbs and my employer is offering a cash prize to people who lose weight. Money and tight cloths together make a great motivator. :) Why am I being so honest? I think everyone can see that I'm tubby as heck. I can't exactly hide it.

I tried to have some of my wife oatmeal this morning. Instant oatmeal tastes like glue to me, blah. Instant oatmeal with brown sugar tastes like sweet cinnamon-ie glue, double blah. Sorry baby but I had to throw away most of it.

When I was a kid my mom would make me oatmeal all the time. Then I could stomach only it because she used regular oats. Some how they cooked up like a brick, no glue like taste, just a brick that you could up with chocolate chips or sugar.

On the way into work I stopped at McD's and got an ice tea, no sugar, and a fruit and yogurt parfait. I remember when the parfaits were twice the size they are now. I wanted to order a second one because they are so good. I bet they taste so good because they're nothing but sugar.

BTW: Sweet tea is 'the suck.' Why ruin the great taste of boiled leaf juice with something so unnatural? Honey tea is ok but sugar blah.