100 Days

So how does a guy celebrate losing 50 pounds when he only actually lost 49, but rounded up to make himself feel better?

He gets a pizza…

And then throws up because of it.

That’s my celebration, and I am sticking to it. For your information, the pizza had anchovies and black olives on it. Weird I know. That’s what I like though. Am I proud of the pizza? No. But I’m not sweating it too much.

Anyway, we’re answering comments today. Always fun.

To the subplot idea from yesterday.

From: Brendan
Re: Gay?
I think a great subplot would be you wrestling with your sexuality which we all know you do and has been in question for quite some time now.

I’m not gay. I just like sex with men on occasion. But not really.

From: Liz
Subject: Take my sister
Hey Dan, I have an available cute 22-year old sister for you.

That sounds pretty good. Have her email me. Love might be in the air.

From: John
RE: Subplot idea.
Dan what happened that made you not feel good yesterday? We were all (at least I was) hoping that you would let us into some insight. You had two meetings yesterday and didn't mention anything other then after them you felt sick. Well, that made me wonder what could have been said at those meetings.

Actually, John, the meetings were very good. The parent company sent in a writing coach basically for my benefit (and coworker Jen’s benefit, as well. We both soaked up the entire thing.) I felt bad because of a fight with a friend. I did something stupid that I’m not gonna talk about on here. Sorry. I am usually pretty open, but this one you just gotta let go. If you’d like, you can wonder what sort of dark secrets I am coping with. Actually, John, if you really wanna know, you can call me.

From: G.R.
RE: Hey great job.
Hey, you have a great blog here and are doing an awesome job of tracking your progress and documenting what you eat and what exercise you do. Glad to hear you will continue it past the 100 days. I have been blogging my weight loss since August 2005 and am down about 90 pounds from a high over 430 - so I still have a ways to go.

It is great that you bought something off the rack at Kohl's - I still need 48s so I can't wait for that day myself.

Keep at it and good luck.

Ok, this is good and bad at the same time. First, thanks G.R. for dropping by. I wish you nothing but continued success in your weight loss.

However, his blog started before mine. That makes me mad. I thought this was my original idea. What a sucker I am! I went to G.R.’s blog, and he had links to a bunch of other weight loss blogs. Apparently I am part of a genre. I wanted to be original. Damn. If I would have known, I would have tried something else.

From: Janie
RE: Good job!
Good job! In my opinion, you have no need to rationalize if you are making a choice...if you think it over, know the ramifications and decide you WANT it anyway. LOL if you do that every day and say it's okay, THEN you are rationalizing (or bullshitting yourself!) It's when we stick things in our mouth automatically or without thought of the consequences that we have to be concerned, IMO, not when you make a thoughtful if unwise choice.

Janie is the bomb. She is one of the many people I have come into electronic contact with through this blog. She lost 115 pounds over three years and turned herself into a super hot 40-something woman. (She sent me pics. Trust me, she is hot.) She is a bit of an inspiration, and something of an ass kicker when I screw up.

But she is just one person that has gotten behind me in this. Thanks, everyone, for showing me such support over the first half of this. Really, a lot of the decisions I make (that don’t involve pizza) are done with all the readers in mind. This blog is working perfectly. Since it is way too easy to let myself down, I needed someone else to invest themselves in my journey. So I chose whoever would read my ramblings on a regular basis. Now, I feel like if I don’t complete this, I would be letting the handful of regular readers down. Thanks for that pressure. I mean it.

From: Heather
Re: Get a dog
Keep working hard! I know you sure do love sandwiches and it seems to be all about portions, so stick to Subway if it works. I think you should get a dog, I have to walk my stinking dog (a mini Mia named Peter) four times a day and you wouldn't be alone in Colorado. But, think twice before leaving it in a bathroom when you leave for the night or letting the crate full of poop sit out side. We can all learn a little from Buddy the wonder dog. Stay golden Pony Boy

This one is from my ex girlfriend. I just put it in here to prove to everyone that I do, in fact, have an ex girlfriend. She liked me, though there are a hell of a lot of inside jokes here.

From: Cameron
RE: The best Idea Cameron has ever had
Forgive me for saying so, but you complain about money and your job. You spend a shit load of money at the local subway. You also bitch about having shitty service at the local subway....seeing a solution here? Get a job at the local subway. Jesus, you're there 5 days a week. Why not get paid for it.

Cam, not only have I thought about getting a part time job at Subway, I have also inquired about it, albeit, in jest. Still, it certainly would give me more time with the cute Subway girl who may or may not be 17.

From: Than
RE: You eat like crap!
Try a day without salt, sugars (of any kind i.e. sugar, honey, fruit, lactose, fructose. If it's a "tose" don't consume it.), vinegar, alcohol, preservatives, spices, caffeine, carbonation, processed anything. See what happens. Then try it for a week, Oh and no breads, just grains and/or gruel.

Uh, no.

I don’t think this is a diet that is particularly high in sugar, vinegar or alcohol. I don’t know if this guy is serious. Let’s hope not. But see, at this point, I have done the most important thing: I have found something that works for ME. Aren’t we kind of past the whole “You are eating too much/too little of this or that” part of the diet? Certainly I always value eating suggestions and ideas, but the point is that I have lost 50 pounds to date. And I think I am gonna stick with what got me here instead of making drastic changes.

Although I might start working in gruel.

From: Diana
RE: You da man Dan!
It's encouraging to read your entries, that you are as honest and up front about your stumbling blocks and frustrations as you are. I hope you're seeing what the rest of us see: the window into yourself that you've opened up allows the rest of us to view the process honing both body and mind.

That’s about what I was going for. Someone gets it.

From: Natalie
RE: Bearer of bad news
Dan, this may not be what you want to hear, but it seems to me what you need to do is not just do "a diet", but change the way you eat forever. That is the only way you can both get and keep the weight off.

I agree totally. I think the big unspoken goal is to change my entire lifestyle to the point where I won’t be tempted by fatty foods and eating healthy will become second nature. My friend Jake said early on that he believed that I would never not be tempted by fatty foods, and I agreed. However, now I see my temptations dwindling. The problem I am facing now is that I can still convince myself to eat fatty foods when I know there is an alternative just as satisfying (i.e., the pizza today, which could have been countered with a healthy choice dinner or, yes, an impromptu trip to Subway.) So now that I have found a plan that works for me, the next step is to get my mind and stomach working on the same frequencies at all times.

From: Scott
RE: Vicious cycle
The problem with falling off the wagon is that it's hard to stop that backwards slide. Once you cheat at one meal and not see any negative consequences, it's an automatic rationalization to cheat again. Only, instead of once a week, it'll be once every couple days, then once every day, and then eventually your diet is shot and you're putting on weight again and in six months you look back and think "If I had stayed on the diet I would have lost so much weight by this point." It's a horrible cycle and I've been there myself. I dropped about 20 pounds last fall and then convinced myself, much like you, that I was doing so good on my diet, I could afford to eat some junk food. Eventually my diet was shot, the holidays rolled through and wouldn't you know it, I was back at square one. I've since started again and have dropped about 10 pounds so far, motivated by my coming child to actually get in shape.

I guess what I'm saying is that this is a war worth fighting Dan. Don't give up now. If nothing else, I like reading your day to day progress and I want to see a completed 100 days. But you have to do it for yourself as well. You list the reasons you want to lose the weight often. Keep those in mind. Keep your eyes on the prize and see this thing through man. You won't regret it.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Totally. I think one thing that I have been dodging tonight is the fact that I can see these “breaks” creeping in. I ate healthy for a week after I got back to Wyoming, only to order a pizza tonight. I promised myself I would eat well in Wyoming, only to end up eating butter for three days.

And the biggest problem I see is that my mind, right now, isn’t in the same place it was for the first 40 days. Don’t get me wrong, my mind is in a good place right now, a place where failure isn’t even close. But I don’t seem to have the same drive and determination I did when I was just starting out. On Day 20, when I hit 347, my mind was as strong as ever. It was a huge breakthrough and I wanted nothing more than to keep going. At that point, substantial weight loss still wasn’t a given. Oh, but now, I’ve lost 50 pounds, a new personal record. And I am just taking the next 50 for granted. Remember after the first 50 days when I said I was changing the goal to 30 pounds in 50 days? Well what happened to that? It’s still in my mind, but I am not attacking that mark with the same vigor I had for 100 in 100.

So can I get that drive back or am I leveling off mentally? I mentioned to my friend Bryce the other day that this whole diet was on cruise control and I was really proud of that. Well, maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe it needs to be tweaked a bit, maybe I shouldn’t rely on Subway so much. Maybe I need to make a real effort to go cheat free in the last 30 days. I think that’s the answer here because as we all know, as far as I have come, I still have further to go. And with the first day of Spring coming Monday and my desire to look fucking good by summer, time is a factor.