I think I had given more thought to what I was going to say in my inaugural email (yes I know I am pathetic, I had been thinking about it for a couple weeks) than to what I was actually going to do. Do I write down everything I eat? Is there some sort of penalty for me ignoring those talking people on my shoulder (were there but not loud enough this week)? This epic battle with obesity (possibly of the morbid variety) is going to be constantly changing from week to week in an effort to keep you, my readers and voices in my head, on your toes. For the time being, I have decided not to jot down all the junk I eat (unless things get real nasty and I need to) and to give you a summary of my overall week with a couple highlights. I have also decided that I tend to be motivated by reward/punishment so I have decided for the weeks that I don't lose weight I will forego my allowance of two delicious carbonated beverages. I know you feel that I am being too hard on myself by depriving my body of the biggest selling soft drink and most popular product in history (thanks Coca Cola for that tidbit of information) but desperate times call for desperate measures. I have also decided (a busy week this week with all of these decisions) that I am going to break my weekly performance into three areas and assign a letter grade to each area, much like a beat writer grades his team's performance. Now the anticipation must be killing you as to what three areas I might be breaking down. Now if you had paid attention in health class and read my email carefully last week, you would know that a key to healthy living is to eat right and......exercise. Those two make up 2/3 of my categories with the 3rd area being Overall performance. These grades for each week will be tracked through my weight loss spreadsheet and by following me through this journey I will be able to prove/disprove the healthy eating + exercise = healthy living/weight loss theory.
Once again, if you had been paying attention last week you would have noticed that I did not give my weight out during my diatribe. That is because I am too embarrassed and am afraid that you will all mock me and I am a real sensitive person. I never get made fun and by letting the world (consisting of you loyal readers) know my level of obesity I am opening myself to ridicule which I am just not sure if I can handle. Alright, your persistence has hammered it out of me, my weight last week (measured in the morning in absence of clothing) was a whopping 237.2!!!! I know it isn't quite at my career high of 261.1 achieved on January 1st, 2007 and isn't even an 1/8 of ton, but the idea here is to be a little preemptive people.
Here is the skinny (yes, pun intended) on my Week 1 performance.
Exercise - D-
So you can go back and view the transcripts from last week and you would see that I vowed to run at least 20 miles a week and this week I failed, but there are a couple of reasons excuses for me not reaching my stated goal. First, the DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness - thanks Micah for that term) really kicked in after my 26.2 miles of fun on Sunday 10/10/10. It was all I could muster up to get out of bed walking the next few days after let alone hitting the pavement for some maintenance miles. I did say a few days, not a week so I could have attained my goal with some miles on Thursday-Sunday but I have found that I am very convincing to myself. Second, thanks to Craig and his construction my favorite running routes have been obstacles the past month and a half so rather than find new routes I have chosen the route to the couch. Don't fear though, construction has finally ceased until the spring so that excuse has been eliminated. I was able to get out for a little over 7.5 miles on Saturday so I can't give myself an F when there was at least one run in the mix. If there was someway to broadcast this warning to the commuters in Morton, I would love to broadcast this message: If traveling between the hours of 5:45 am and 7 am on Mondays-Fridays and Saturday and Sunday mornings look out for the person struggling through the streets at a snail's pace. There is a reason that these commuters need to be on the lookout. I have certain running shorts that I wear on my runs that may be short for most people's taste (especially when I have speed skater thighs like JMC). It was a rather rude awakening on Saturday when I put on the aforementioned runners' shorts and they turned into biker shorts (yes, Spandex). If you can imagine (I'm not sure you want to) I looked something along the lines of this: http://2.bp.blogspot.
Eating - C
First, the positives. I cut back significantly on the amount I ate during the week and my body was not a storage location for everything that I could fit in it. I was also able to limit my fountain soda to 1 during the week which was a drastic drop from my previous week's total of 32 (only joking...sort of). Everything was smooth sailing until Friday at work. You should know that every Friday morning one person is in charge of bringing in breakfast for everybody. Our theory on the third floor is if you don't eat it then people are going to stop bringing it in. I normally eat a lion's share so to stop eating the breakfast provided altogether would throw off the whole order of things. I have to ease my way out of the breakfast club. I was able to limit myself to one square of a casserole (probably a 3in x 2.5in square). Then of course a woman celebrated her birthday on Friday so she brought in a wonderful treat. If I were to not eat that then she would feel bad so I had a small square of that dessert. And Friday night's at Larson Manor usually consist of Papa Murphy's pizza accompanied by a free dessert pizza. For $11 this meal is enough to feed an army so as you can imagine we had plenty of leftovers (limited myself to 3 slices of each pizza - regular pizza slices were of course larger). Jamie also lured me into unhealthy eating with her caramel corn on Thursday night which translated into having enough to indulge on until Sunday. Much like Classic Lays, "I bet you can't eat just one" and that bet would have been won. Saturday night we had a bon fire at Northwoods Park and I am sure everyone can agree, you are not having a bon fire without roasting 'mallows (limited myself to 3 or 4...who's counting). Sunday was a return to normalcy with my eating. So all-in-all it could have been a lot worse. There were some weak moments but definitely an improvement over my eating last week. The voices in my head informing me that I was going to have to divulge what I ate definitely were heard but were able to be ignored at times.
Overall - D+
My weight this morning (as before sans clothes and before a run) was 235.4 bringing my weight loss for the week in at 1.8 lbs. I thought I did a nice job of reeling the eating in a little bit but there is definitely some room for improvement. I am still trying to get used to the "it's okay to be hungry" mantra whereas before I thought if I satisfied my hunger and than doubled the amount I ate in the same sitting it would eliminate hunger from ever rearing its ugly head ever again. While losing lbs is always nice, it would have been nice to see a larger loss than the one I witnessed this week but I have a feeling better things are yet to come when I throw a little exercise into the mix.
While maybe not what I expected for the week, a loss is a loss and when you are my weight anything and everything counts. Coming next week is a marathon wrap-up (I know it was last weekend so it should come in this edition) and my previously mentioned weight loss and grading chart but your attention spans only last about 25 minutes so I am sure I have used all of that up with this novel.
Thanks for reading and as always, please feel free to make comments and/or suggestions as you follow my trek towards a physically fit body.
Love.
Mr. Lemonhead
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