Week 2

The title of this post doesn't really hold any significance. I've been dieting for three or four weeks now. For the first week, I didn't have a bathroom scale. But now I do and I weigh myself every week, only once. I don't really know the rules of weighing myself. Is one day of the week better than another? Is evening better than the morning? I don't know. But I try to keep it consistent. And I make sure it's only once a week.

Today I took my third reading, so let's consider this week 3 (though I don't feel like changing the title). My first success was eating much less. It only took a few days of rationing for my body to get used to less food. I rarely get that fierce hunger that I used to get before eating. And I don't really get the urge to snack after dinner like I used to. It also helps that I am out of the house all day and not sitting around with nothing else to do. I've melded breakfast and lunch into one meal, and it's usually just a scrambled egg or a cup of yogurt. Unfortunately, I'm very particular about my yogurt, so it's an egg more often than not.

I've been drinking a ton of water. Like half a gallon a day. It has replaced most of the fluids I consume daily. I was already pretty good about what I drink; no sodas or energy drinks. But I would usually drink one or two full glasses of chocolate milk and a glass of orange juice. So I've been cutting back on that.

I should also mention that I biked back and forth to work this morning. I should try to do that every morning (pending reasonable weather). Then again, every summer I make the same promise to myself, and every summer, once the mornings start heating up, getting to work drenched in sweat at sunrise loses its appeal. Last week, I went for a run around the block with my dog. He's basically a gazelle, so my jogging pace is just a comfortable trot for him. But he kept me moving about as effectively as grabbing the handles on a treadmill, so that helped. Maybe I'll trade off biking and running in the future.

I find that at least once a week I end up eating more than I really should. It's not intentional; on average, I eat out or with friends once a week, and I am pressured to eat something I really shouldn't. And I hate leaving food on the plate at a restaurant. The other day I had a fajita. Shame on me.

I've also been experimenting a bit with vegetarianism. I guess that sounds silly. Basically I challenged myself to go without meat for a few days. Turns out it's not that hard. I'm definitely not becoming a vegetarian any time soon, but it felt good to eat only fresh fruit and veggies for a period. The hard part is finding a balance. I'm simply not hungry enough to eat what I should. I bought fruit to eat in the evenings instead of snacks, but like I said, I don't even get the urge.

In my original post I said that my only goal was improvement. Well, I'm making progress. It seems slow, but it's there. And it's starting to show. It's definitely the progress I need to keep going. I do have a real goal set now, but I don't want to type it because then I'll be anxious about it. We'll see how things go.

We're all unhappy. Do we have to be fat too?

That's it. I'm going on a diet.

More accurately, I'm already a week or so into a diet. Nothing special. My main goal is just to keep a closer eye on what I eat. You see, I am one of those people who eats casually when there is nothing else to do. I blame this on a big stomach. I don't know if that has anything to do with it at all, but it just seems like I'm never full until I'm stuffed. I'm never really hungry either; I just get the urge to eat. And eat. And snack. And eat.

Well, no more. From now on -- or, at least, for as long as I can and before I lose interest -- I'm going to pay attention to what and how much I consume. I'll stick to the serving size on the package. I'll drink lots of water. And most importantly, I'm going to slow down when I eat. No more stuffing my face and then getting a bellyache.

And switch all of those verbs to the present tense, because, like I said, I've already been doing this for a week or so now. That was test number one; to see if I could last that long, before bothering to write about it.

I survived so far. But don't get me wrong, for the past week, I have been pretty consistently hungry. So much so that I'm beginning to find fast food commercials somewhat arousing. Food is popping into my fantasies. No more sex...just...a slab of bacon. Fuck that, this is MY fantasy, make it a mountain of bacon. With meatball boulders cascading down the slopes, over the prosciutto-thatched roof of my sausage-link cabin. Sauce is raining from the sky. Watch out for the orecchiette hail; they can get up to six inches in diameter. And what's this? It's a sauce flood! Gotta hop onto my macaroni raft and paddle to safety. Better yet, I'll hop onto a lasagna ark with two of every cold cut.

Okay okay! Snap out of it, sicko! Now I'm all hot and bothered. And starving.

Anyways...

Let me just collect my thoughts...

I try to skip breakfast. If I can't, I'll go for one egg and a piece of whole wheat toast. But if I have that, then I skip lunch. I make big delicious salads now, with cucumbers, apple slices, grapes, tomatoes, whatever I can find. As long as it's not chocolate chip cookies. And I try to go by the rule that a meal isn't a good meal unless I am still a little hungry [read: not engorged] afterwards.

My next mission is to start exercising. I'm too cheap for a gym membership, but I have a lunatic of a dog, with infinite energy, who would love to run with me. I already tried it, and unfortunately for him, my most consistent jog is barely a fast walk for him. But we'll start there. ...Okay, let's be honest. We'll START with a walk around the block. Then maybe a longer walk. Then maybe a bike ride or two. And eventually I'll get to running.

I don't like to set goals for myself. Mainly because I don't know how to create a realistic goal. And then when I don't reach it, I get discouraged. So my goal for now is...improvement. If we reach that goal, then I'll come up with a more specific one, along the lines of: MORE improvement. Worst case scenario, I get into no better shape, don't lose any weight, but feel slightly better about myself. Couldn't hurt, right? Then again, if I go through all this trouble and don't lose any weight, I'll probably just feel worse. So maybe there's an even worse case scenario. But let's not talk about that.

I'll try to check back in another week or two to talk about that goal I mentioned earlier.