Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 27

Answering your comments

THE COUNTER
Starting weight: 299 pounds
Last weigh-in (Sunday, Jan. 20): 285.2
Total pounds lost: 13.8
Pounds until 240: 45.2

Hey hey, what’s up people? Hope everyone had a good weekend and had a chance to celebrate the life of MLKII. I celebrated by only eating twice and going to the gym for a 40-minute ellipticising session.

One of those was good, the other not so good. I actually forgot to eat twice on Monday. Never thought that would happen. Oh well. What I did eat (bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a Big Ass Pimped Out Salad – the Big Ass Salad just has vegetables and some form or protein, the Big Ass Pimped Out Salad has vegetables, protein, and fat free croutons and fat free cheese – came to about 1,100 calories by my unofficial calculations. Not perfect, but I’ll take it.)

Anyway, I am going to answer some of your comments today, but before we get to that I want to catch you up on some things.

1. If you haven’t read the last post, you don’t know that I have scrapped daily weigh-ins in favor of weekly ones. The daily weigh-in was screwing with my mind, and I have to admit that I am not sane enough to handle it. So weigh-ins will occur every Sunday morning from here on out.

2. I finally lost some weight! Yep, that’s right, two and a half pounds last week. So I am now feeling pretty confident about this process.

3. I’ve thought about my entire goal (60 pounds), and realized that I haven’t made up any short-term goals to enable me to get there. Previously, I was just trying to lose the weight as fast as possible, praying that the scale would be my friend. Well, I’ve set some short term goals, which I will talk about more tomorrow.

4. I’ve made the decision to cut this blog from five times per week to three times per week. So from here on out, expect entries to be posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I am doing it to keep it sort of fresh, and not have to rehash things every day. Trust me, you’ll thank me for it.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to your comments, all of these come from Blogcritics. That is because the comments are turned off on my site. Though we will hopefully be turning them on very soon, which means a lot more comments from people who know me well. Most of them are assholes, so that should make it interesting.

Anyway, let’s get down to business:

From: Phillip Winn
Comments: Your project was definitely a source of inspiration when I launched my own 20-week 70-lb weight loss, and I, too, have a final bit of weight to lose. The hardest bit, of course. It may take me as long to lose my 20 as it takes you to lose your 60, though!

Now when are we going to start hearing about "the second hundred days?"

That first one from Phillip came right at the beginning of the Fortress. The second one came right at the end of the 100 days. Certainly I have not gotten around to answering that. Phillip did his own weight-loss project for Blogcritics and, as far as I can tell, was pretty damn successful. Now, it would be crass and conceited for me to take credit for Phillip’s weight loss, so I won’t. But I will point out that I have the power to change lives.

Now that my god complex is noted, I will have to agree, that final weight is definitely the toughest. In fact, I never lost my final weight from the 100 days. I wanted to get to 270, I ended up at 275 and figured it was good enough. Believe me, when I hit 270 on the Fortress, there is going to be a celebration of mythic proportions. The 100-pound mark will be a great day in my life.

From: Hucbald
Comments: 1) Throw the scale in the trash.
2) Fill a liter mug with ice cubes all the way to the top first thing when you get out of bed in the morning, fill it with water, grab a multi-vitamin while you let the water chill, then drink the water as quickly as is comfortable. Refill the mug until the remaining ice barely floats, and repeat until you have melted all the ice.

My nickname was fatso as a kid. I know how this works.

Now this is advice I like. Is there any way in that I am going to do this in its entirety? Nope, I am on a different diet. But there are certainly some useful points that I can integrate into my plan. For one, I like the logic of making your body burn calories by heating up near-freezing water to 98.6 degrees. I also like the idea of the split workouts. I might try that one of these days.

So Huc, your nickname was fatso as a kid, eh? Lucky you, the kids weren’t very creative at your school. Here are the nicknames I have enjoyed since my youth:

Fatass
Fat Dan
Tank (Freshman year of high school)
Meat Box (Basketball camp)
Slim (Another basketball camp in which I got to meet Isiah Thomas, back when he was an awesome point guard for my Detroit Pistons and not a sexual-harasser and shitty coach)
Moose (That’s what Isiah called me when we met. One of the highlights of a 10-year old life)
Fat Dan’s ride (Not me, but my car in high school. My friends were kind of dicks, and they made that up)
Big Dan (College, they weren’t very creative there either)
One Man Gang Bang (This really has nothing to do with my weight. However, I do have to credit college roommate Brendan Cullen for coming up with that joke. I stole it from him)
Dookie Dan Nied (From college roommate Jeff Kostic, who was referring to my lack of cleanliness in our otherwise pristine household.)

From: Alexandria Jackson
Comments: I am so impressed with your honesty and your willingness to share your vulnerability here. Maybe it doesn't feel vulnerable to you, but it sure would be to me. I'm rooting for you to find and marry that 240 girl across the room. I'm looking forward to marrying my own fella...and you give me motivation to keep the goal in sight. Good luck with the fortress!

Again, I admire you for putting it all out there.

A few things to address within these comments.

Alexandria, you are definitely my favorite poster. I hope I keep motivating you, and if I ever let you down, please yell at me. You should come around more often.

Finding an active hobby is definitely something I would like to do. A few months ago, I looked into joining a rugby team, but decided against it for fear of death and broken bones. I am not getting any younger. I need an adult basketball league or a softball team, for sure.

As for the vulnerability, I feel it, but not that much. Of course, there are some things in my life I don’t share here. But those are the things I don’t share with anyone that is not a lifelong friend. As for this weight loss, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be public domain. If I can have people rooting for me (or against me) then that just provides more motivation for me to succeed.

My favorite book is the memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers. In one of my favorite parts, Eggers is confronted with the question of why he would pour his tragic and fucked up life out in the pages of a book for public consumption. His answer is simple: What am I giving you that makes a difference in the world? You read this story, and you think you know me, you think you’ve got it down. But what do you really have? He goes on to list the phone numbers of his friends, and some other personal information (it’s been a while since I read it).

To me, that was the perfect answer to the question. I am not really vulnerable, because I am offering to share this part of my life with you on my own terms. Perhaps I am doing it with a great deal of emotion, surfing the good and the bad and letting you know exactly how I feel. But I have to do that in order for it to work. Otherwise, I could just post daily progress charts, and there would be no human element to it.

I want people to see that I am a normal guy with his fair share of problems. I want people to understand that I am doing this fully on my own, even with many real-life forces working against me. And if I have to embarrass myself from time to time in order to that, if I have to discuss my bowel movements and my moments of weakness, then so be it. That’s the real story of what is happening here.

From: Bill
Comments: Dan,

Bill Geronimo
President

Bill Geronimo, everyone. He’s, apparently, the president of Eat Smart Products, which does indeed have a very nice Web site.

Bill, if you are offering a scale, then I am accepting. Feel free to email me at nieddan@gmail.com. Actually, I have been thinking hard about getting a food scale, especially with the addition of non-labeled vegetables to the diet.

I am loving the Big Ass Pimped Out Salads these days, but the problem is that I really have no idea how many calories are in there. I do know there are 90 calories in two servings of Just 2 Good Blue Cheese dressing, and I know there are 90 calories in a half cup of fat free shredded cheddar cheese, and 60 calories in two servings of fat-free crutons. But that’s about it for the measurables. My friend Guy (who will be heard from in a bit) just purchased a food scale and is raving about it. I might take the plunge. We’ll see.

Of course, if Bill wants to hand one over, then I’d be happy to offer my endorsement.

From: Guy
Comments: Good work on not ordering the pizza! And consider yourself lucky you are not within the grasp of Mike Ilitch and his Little Caesar chain's $5 Hot 'n' Ready pizza here in Michigan. Sure it tastes bad (well as bad as pizza can taste) but it's $5 and there's no wait.

As for the roommate...I'm sure Ruben is a good guy - I mean he obviously is good at sharing. But a role model he is not -- so best to keep your distance, at least in the beginning.

Ruben is a great guy and a fantastic roommate. And I have done a great job of resisting his generosity.

And Guy, I actually do live in the land of Little Caesar’s $5 Hot ‘n’ Ready pizza: The greatest deal known to man. And since Mike Ilitch owns the Detroit Tigers, my favorite sports team ever, I sometimes find it difficult to resist supporting the company. But luckily Little Caesar’s is a bit of a drive away.

From: Purple Tigress
Comments: Lots of sodium and not only in the salami and pretzels, how about the bleu cheese dressing?

You definitely lack a well-researched plan and discipline and I wonder if you don't need to deal with some emotional issues.

This is running long, I know. Sorry about that. Hope you had some time to kill. But we end today with Purple Tigress, one of my favorites. This woman has been berating me almost daily, telling me where I am going wrong, why I suck and how I can get things turned around quickly. I fully appreciate the advice. I love it, actually. She has been correct on many points.

But I still have to refute this latest comment. So let’s break it down for the finale:

Lots of sodium and not only in the salami and pretzels, how about the bleu cheese dressing?

As I have said before, sodium isn’t my main concern. However, fairly recently I have wondered aloud about it. That was when I was mistakenly eating condensed soup a few times per week, and having trouble with regularity.

But I am not cutting sodium out completely, nor am I really paying attention to it for now. Now that I have added vegetables and started drinking more water, I feel comfortable with the sodium intake from packaged, low-fat foods.

Better than lettuce would be spinach -- more nutrition.

True, but I don’t like spinach salads. So I am not going to eat them.

You might try to stop eating after 6 p.m.
A sound argument for someone who goes to bet at 10 p.m. But in fact, at 6 p.m., my day is barely half over. I go to bed at 3 a.m. and wake around 11 a.m. So my eating schedule is a bit unconventional. My final meal comes just after 11 p.m., usually, which actually would be 6 p.m. for a normal person.

You also eat meals that aren't particularly appetizing. A sandwich is a snack? That's more like breakfast 1 and breakfast 2.

That’s certainly a subjective view on this. I think sandwiches are quite appetizing. I could eat them at all times if I had to.

Also, I’ve made the mistake of labeling my meals by traditional standards (i.e. breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks). But really there is not traditional meal other than breakfast. Everything else just kind of goes together. If I say I have a sandwich for a snack, then it just means I ate a sandwich for my second meal of the day. It doesn’t affect the calorie intake of the day, outside of the 220 calories it contains. I don’t aim for larger meals at certain times, though maybe I should. The thing is, I have no idea when I eat dinner. Is my dinner the 5 p.m. meal on my work break? Or is it the 11 p.m. meal, the last of the night? It’s all just labels anyway. I think I’ll change the food journal to Meal 1, Meal 2, etc…

My friend commented recently that athletes eat to perform well as opposed to exercising so they can eat. I think overweight people, if they exercise at all, exercise so they can eat.

That might be an objectionable comment. I am not sure. But I certainly don’t “exercise so I can eat.” When calculating expected weight loss, or planning meals for a certain day, I don’t take into account what exercise I have gotten. I look at exercise as kind of a bonus. Whatever it does, it does. I do it to be healthier, and to get into shape.

You also seem to have slightly defeatist attitudes. At one time it seemed as if you were weighing yourself more than once a day.

True! I was weighing myself more than once a day. I had a good two-week string where I weighed myself at least twice a day, because I expected the pounds to be gone quickly. I wouldn’t say I was naïve, as much as I had unrealistic expectations and too much curiosity. That’s why I’ve scaled back the weigh-ins to once a week.

As for defeatist attitudes, I don’t know if I would agree with that. I think there have been some defeatist activities along the way, but the attitude has largely been one of confidence and determination. If I was a defeatist, I would have given up on Day 3, when I gained three pounds. But I stumbled ahead, and now I am very confident that this will be a success.

You definitely lack a well-researched plan and discipline and I wonder if you don't need to deal with some emotional issues.

Of course I have emotional issues! Haven’t you gathered that by now? Well, obviously you have. I’m not crazy, but I do wonder why my father doesn’t love me (Actually, that’s true), and I am dealing with a lifetime of being fat. So yeah, there is at least a little bit of baggage there.

And you may be correct, in one sense, about the lack of research. Obviously, this isn’t a diet that was developed by a doctor or nutritionist (Though both were minimally consulted on this). This diet was developed with one scientific fact, though: Burn more calories than you consume, and you will lose weight. And it turns out that is right. One month in, 14 pounds lighter.

There also was a very valuable bit of usable research going into this: The research of my own body. I’ve done this before with great success. The last time I did it, I had no scientific basis at all, but now I do. I conducted an experiment with my own body, and it turns out my hypothesis held up. Seventy pounds in 100 days, 95 pounds in seven months, and I kept it off (yes, yes, I gained 25 back in the two months prior to this, but there was an explanation for that which I will get into at a later date).

So I know what works for me. It may not be for everybody, but then, I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m not publishing the diet, I’m, not writing a book about it (unless someone offers. Then I would be all ears).

All I am offering is proof that losing weight is possible if you really try to do it.