Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 2

By Dan Nied [send email]

What I ate today
Breakfast
2 slices wheat bread
4 slices lean turkey
2 servings fat free mayo
Yellow Mustard
Calories: 270
Fat: 4 grams

Lunch
1 can Campbell’s spaghetti
Calories: 400
Fat: 4 grams

Dinner
12 inches of delicious Subway Club, yellow mustard, tons of vegetables.
Calories: 640
Fat: 12 grams

Snack
A crapload of grapes
Calories: 100 (100 calories is the default amount I will use when I don’t know the caloric intake of something like fruit, vegetables or fried dough, except that fried dough is probably more than 100 calories, which means I may want to rethink that.)
Fat: 0 grams

Snack
2 slices wheat bread
3 slices lean turkey
2 servings fat free mayo
Yellow Mustard
Calories: 245
Fat: 3.5 grams

Total Calories: 1,655
Total fat: 23.5

Exercise: A heart-healthy 30 minutes on the old elliptical machine, burned 500 calories. Flirted with working out, but decided against it, partly because I am lazy and partly because…well mostly because I am lazy.

As we roll into Day 2 on the Fortress of Weight Loss, there is already a big announcement I need to get out of the way. Instead of posting to Blogcritics once a week, as stated in the preamble, I’ve decided to go ahead and post to BC every day. I figured I would present this project in full for as many people as possible, and BC is definitely the best way to do that.

Since that’s out of the way, there is even bigger news to report.

I should preface this by pointing out that the actual first day of the Fortress was on Wednesday, not Thursday as the preamble might have led you to believe. So Thursday morning, I woke up and weighed in on my fancy newish digital scale. It turns out I lost 1.2 pounds in the first 24 hours. Officially, I am down to 297.8 pounds. As you can see, I am conquering this quest right from the start. And let me tell you, I feel pretty damn good about how Day 2 turned out: Less than 1,700 calories, less than 30 grams of fat. For the first time in at least two months, I am actually looking forward to stepping on the scale Friday morning. (Continued below)

That's me gettin' down on the houseboat three or four years ago. A not-so-svelt 320, I'd say. Funny, my gyrations did not attract any female suitors that week.

And here I am in April 2006 at 280 pounds, 15 less than I am now. If not for the hair, I am certain this look would have attracted a few female suitors.

So things, to this point, are good. But that’s not to say there haven’t been temptations.

One of the reasons I began the new diet on the day after Christmas _ instead of Jan. 1 or some other special day _ was because the temptation levels are supposed to be low right now. Originally, I wanted to begin on Christmas Eve, but realized no normal person can make it through Christmas without eating like crap. The day after, though, is a different story. Most people are still filled with ham and cookies, and really don’t want to eat fatty foods.

But what happened on the first day? Glad you asked.

I was standing by the counter, trying to choose between a salmon fillet and a skinless chicken breast when my roommate came home carrying bags of groceries.

“You hungry?” he said.

“Nope. My body is a temple,” I happily replied.

“Too bad.”

“Well, what did you bring?”

“Fried Chicken.”

Of all the goddamn days he could have picked to bring me fried chicken. For the last two months, I have been eating myself drunk on deep fried animals and vegetables. But the first day I really try to eat well, he heads out to the Colonel and offers me half.

Bastard.

I was tempted, no doubt. But I looked at his bucket of chicken, and looked back at my healthy options. I plugged in the Foreman, and grilled up the salmon fillet.

And the next day, I had lost a pound.

I didn’t have to work Thursday, but I stopped by work to get a phone number. It tuns out someone had bought pizza for the entire office. Let’s just say I walked right by it, did my business, and got out. Now, if I had been working a normal 10-hour shift, it might have been a little harder to ignore. But really, it has all come back to me now.

When I started losing weight two years ago, I realized that the key to resisting those out-of-nowhere temptations is simple. It’s about simply choosing to do it or not do it. If someone offers you fried chicken or free pizza, you have two options: Go nuts, or say no.

And so many times you say no at first. But then you keep thinking about what you are missing. You know it is right there in front of you, ripe for the taking, waiting to give you pleasure. That pizza costs nothing in terms of money, and it is so easy to rationalize why you should accept it. So you take it, feel good for five minutes, then feel bad for 12 hours.

All because you talked yourself into it.

For me, the chicken was tough, because the blog wasn’t going to begin until Thursday. Theoretically, I could have pushed the healthy eating back a day. Instead, I took the first of many stands. I said no, and didn’t look back. It was the same with the pizza. I didn’t spend the entire day thinking about what I was missing. I just realized that I’ve had thousands of pizza slices in my life, and there is plenty of time for me to have thousands more.

It was more important for me to say no, move on and let it slip from my mind.

It’s about controlling the urges, instead of letting them control you.

P.S.: Because Blogcritics requires that I post these articles there first, I have to wait until the next morning to post them onto 210west, and since I live in the pacific time zone, and generally wake up around 11 a.m., I fear these won't get posted until the afternoon in the eastern time zone. But there is an advantage there, since I weigh in in the mornings and I have more up to date information when I post to this site. So I wanted to share this little tale of water weight: Got up at 10:30 this morning, took a pee, stripped down naked and weighed myself: 295 on the dot. So that means I've lost four pounds in 48 hours. I know most of it is body shock and water weight, but it still helps the cause a ton.