Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 9

Editor's note: First, I apologize for this going up at 11 p.m. Pacific time on a Friday night, 21 hours after it was written. See, Blogcritics insists this gets posted to that site first, and because they get 50,000 readers every day, and 210west.com gets about 17, I abide by their rules. I usually post this as soon as I wake up, but today Northern California was beseiged by heavy winds and rain, and of course the Dan Nied compound suffered a power outage around 10 a.m. (or sometime before I got up). You gotta hand it to those people over a Pacific Gas and Electric, they responded quickly and seemlessly, and had the power going no more than 13 short hours later.

Anyway, the power outage forced me to the gym today, even after work. So you'll be happy to know that. But that is why this is being posted so late.

Second editor's note: Some of you (well Bryce Thornton of Columbus, Ohio being the only one actually) complained that you couldn't leave comments on 210west. That is true. During the 100 Days blog, we got spammed pretty bad, so we have to keep them off for now. Ken, my web guy, will be upgrading our systems fairly soon. After that, I am hoping to turn comments back on. I need them on, as I am not sure anyone is actually reading this right now (Except you, Bryce. Thanks buddy).

What I ate today:
We’ll go through it quick, as it is nearing 2 a.m., and today wasn’t a particularly great day at work. We won’t go into that so much, but let’s say I am not feeling at my perkiest right now.

Still, the food journal must continue, even without the fancy bullet points and such:

Wheaties for breakfast, apple and yogurt as a snack, Subway club and some pretzels for lunch, apple and yogurt as a snack, Four fat free turkey hot dogs (45 calories each), two slices of bread and a boneless, skinless chicken breast for dinner.

Total calories: Roughly 1,940
Total fat: Roughly 17

THE COUNTER
Starting weight: 299
Yesterday’s weight 298.0
Current weight: 297.8
Total pounds lost: 1.2
Pounds until 240: 57.8
Bonus! Pounds I lost between the time I wrote this entry and the time I posted it: 1.8
Another bonus! Weight as of Friday morning: 296

There are a few things of note about the information above. First, I was quite disappointed to weigh in on Thursday and be only .2 pounds less than I was on Wednesday.

That was after a buckling-down effort of 1,500 calories and less than 20 grams of fat. But I understand variables, and I understand that weighing yourself every day completely screws with your mind. But what I need right now is a bit of a breakthrough. Sad thing is, I’ve already wasted one breakthrough, coming on Day 3 when I had lost four pounds. I gained nearly all of that weight back.

But here I am nearly 10 days into this and I have lost just over one pound. Perhaps that is the healthiest way to do it, but I don’t know if I can really keep interest in this endeavor for the next 60 weeks. Sure, sometime in March 2009, we can all throw a party celebrating my arrival at 240 pounds. But by then, won’t you be as tired of reading this as I will be of writing it?

So it is clear that the pace must be picked up. However, that is really out of my control at this point. All I can do is keep the calories and fat down, find a suitable workout routine, and let my ever slowing metabolism work its magic.

And that is exactly what my plan is. I am currently trying to find the right mix of economically affordable and heart-smart food that will allow me to do this on my own terms. I’m not taking this diet from a book, or some crazy hyped up dude with a shaved head who swears he can melt inches off my waistline. There are no supplements, no shakes. It’s just me, armed with a $200 per month grocery budget and a newly purchased gym membership. If that isn’t enough to get it done, then I guess we’ll all learn a valuable lesson here.

But we all know that is enough to get it done, don’t we? At least I do. It worked once before, it will work again. Of that, I am confident. Still, for the sake of my mental state, I need a breakthrough soon. To do this without obvious results is a surefire way to jump head first off the wagon.

Perhaps it would be smart to lay off the daily weigh-ins. I should tell you, for entertainment purposes, that the weigh-ins occur every morning after I evacuate my bladder. They take place in my bedroom on a digital scale that I bought about six months ago, just to make sure I was maintaining my weight. You should also know that I am fully nude for each weigh-in. Just a giant 6-foot-3 inch ball of peach-colored flesh sporadically covered in brown hair. How’s the mental image coming for you?

Maybe what I should do is mount a mirror in front of my scale. That would scare the pounds right off. But the mental torture is enough right now with only the ever-slowly dwindling numbers.

I spent some time Thursday trying to pinpoint what variables went into the day’s paltry weight loss. It dawned on me that I drank a fair amount of diet Sierra Mist right before I went to bed. Now, I don’t know much about body science, but I wondered if I was retaining that. Then I realized that, between eating pickles with dinner and having two cans of condensed chicken soup on Wednesday, I was loading my body up with sodium.

I am not much for watching my sodium intake, at least not for 10 years or so. But I do somewhat understand the consequences of high sodium intake, most importantly the retention of liquids.

So I was thinking a lot about liquids on Thursday, and realized again that I drank almost no water on Wednesday. I thought that to be bad planning, so I ratcheted up the water intake on Thursday, falling just short of my goal of drinking at least one pitcher. So that’s encouraging. I don’t remember peeing too much on Wednesday, but I do know that I peed a lot on Thursday.

I guess we’ll see how that works out.

Ultimately, my confidence is still high. Thursday was the fourth straight day of relatively healthy eating, and the second straight day in which I came in under 2,000 calories (though the totals can be disputed somewhat) and 20 grams of fat. I also tried to boost my protein a little bit with the chicken breast at dinner.

Eventually, I am going to figure out the system, and that is when the pounds will drop off.