Diary Entry #7

Welcome everyone to the mystical land of the 220's. It is a land that is foreign to Mr. Lemonhead during this time of year and is usually only frequented during the late spring and summer. After keeping true to my promise of 2 consecutive 30-mile weeks I have finally broken that 230.0 barrier and welcomed myself to the Land of the Skinny (ok, maybe I'm getting a little carried away...the Land of the Not-So-Obese). Being that this is a holiday week I am going to try to keep this short (stop laughing please) so you can start preparing your meals for the feasts that are to come. With that being said, let's get this thing rolling.

This week I was told somebody in the family who shall remain anonymous (his name might rhyme with Laid Coudermilk) that the Mr. Lemonhead diaries were purely for show and the laughter and smiles that it may bring to those who are able to spend the 3 hours to read each entry. Well I guess you could consider me guilty as charged on all accounts. But what Craig (oops...his name was revealed but we all know Craig doesn't read and wouldn't have been able to get this far anyways) doesn't realize is that without this forum to reveal my eating for the week and the exercise log things would be much worse than what you see. So while yes, I do enjoy the opportunity to be funny, this is also an opportunity for you to help make me accountable for everything that I stuff into my mouth and after this week's results you will see that it is working (how about that for a segway). For those that can recall that far back you will recall that last week I weighed in at a barely-there 231.2 lbs. After some hard work out on the pavement this week and controlling the intake of large amounts of calories I weighed in this week (sans clothes) at a boney 227.6. I know I will have the opportunity to see you all this week so for those that I haven't seen me recently I will most likely have to re-introduce myself because you won't even recognize me after I have reshaped my body. Now that the cat is out of the bag let's take a look at how Mr. Lemonhead was able to pull off such a feat. 

Exercise - A

As I mentioned earlier, this week I was able to get out of bed and put my left foot in front of my right for 30.11 miles. I went on four runs of 7.50 miles or slightly more on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The runs are starting to get easier although I need to take back all the good things I said in a previous entry about the end of Daylight Savings Time and the mornings getting brighter earlier because that excitement lasted for about 1 week and now we are back to it starting to get light at about 6:40. I was also able to participate in a little basketball open gym on Sunday for about an hour which allowed for a little exercise after the previous 36 hours being spent on the road and in Chicago. Back to back weeks of "A's" for exercise and I am starting to get my confidence up a little bit.

Eating - B

I am not giving myself a "B" for the fact that I was able to resist all things delicious but I am giving myself this evaluation because for the first time since I have been penning these diaries it seems as if my will power (or your voices in my head) is starting to kick in and I am not going crazy on the things that I most enjoy. Some of the lowlights of my week consisted of eating too much Taco Pizza from Pizza Ranch on Wednesday night and having a pork tenderloin and cheese curds followed by a small Reese's Pieces and cookie dough concrete from Culver's. Some of the highlights were actually ordering a single cheese burger rather than a double cheeseburger at Portillo's (remember it's the small victories) on Sunday night and eating beef stew during the week. Beef stew was definitely not a highlight for the fact that I was able to eat it but it was a highlight due to the fact that by eating it I totally eliminated any hunger I had at all due to the fact that I was sick to my stomach from eating such a cuisine. 

Overall - B+

After significant strides being made the past two weeks in the above categories and a 3+ pound loss for the past week I can't help but give myself a B+ for the week. The key now must be to maintain this positive momentum (remember one of Newtons' laws regarding an object in motion!) through Thanksgiving and into the dreaded weight month of December. One thing is for sure though, we have this caboose moving in the right direction and it is thanks to you fine readers that I am able to do so.

With all of this said, the week of Thanksgiving brings the Collins family to God's country and with that comes Jennifer Mae and her unhealthy obsession with fountain sodas. I don't want to be the one to miss out on all of the fun so for this week and this week only (until Christmas) I am going to lift the 2 fountain soda restraining order and live a little. So I guess for next week you will be able to see which is more important to the hard-to-achieve weight loss, healthy eating or exercise. 

I believe I was somewhat able to limit my thoughts for this week and provide you with a holiday gift of my own. As always, thank you for reading and please feel free to provide any comments or suggestions as you follow my expedition towards the land of the 210's.

Love.

Mr. Lemonhead

Diary Entry #6

Hello there again. It may seem like you just finished entry #5 due to my inability to stick to the established guidelines for getting Mr. Lemonhead’s material out to you, but as promised #6 (almost the half-way point, can you believe it?) is published for your enjoyment. This past week brought signs of encouragement as I was able to battle the urge to fill my body with carbonated products and I was even able to curb my appetite (don’t worry, it is all relative) for a little while. For those that can’t remember (it was 4 days ago) I vowed last week to run 2 consecutive weeks of 30+ miles and by Thanksgiving I would be tipping the scales at a tiny 229.9 lbs or less. After one week, I can tell you proudly that I have made progress towards both of those goals and am right on track to be able to show myself come the Day of Giving Thanks and all the festivities that surround that holiday. It seems that my insightful thoughts/ideas are running dry so you may be in luck as this week the entry could possibly be read in less than 10 minutes (but I wouldn’t hold your breath). With the excitement brewing and I am sure the anticipation killing you as to what this past week had in store for me I’ll get things rolling.


For those of you keeping track at home, last week I weighed in at a gi-normous 233.2 lbs (which was celebrated as a small victory at the Larson Manor because it could have been much worse). This week after some hard work and dedication I was able to slim down to a petite 231.2 lbs (sans clothes). The key to this week was diversity. For the first time since I started penning these diaries I was able to do more than just run. I actually played a little basketball on Sunday night and threw in a walk as well. It doesn’t seem like much but just like those fountain sodas, every little bit counts. Two years ago for my birthday (yes we are indeed in the month of my birth already – and it’s half over) I received a Wii as well as the Wii Fit. Last night I stepped on it for the first time since March of 2009 and you will be happy to know that I have lost 3.3 lbs since then (it’s the small victories). Wii was also able to confirm what I have been saying all along in that I am indeed obese. I know I pass the eye test of an obese individual but it was nice to see it confirmed via a videogame. That led me to a great idea, now included in my weight loss chart will be my weekly BMI (the true indicator of my fatness) brought to you via Nintendo Wii Fit. This allows for a great opportunity to make another promise that will keep pushing me more towards the overweight side of the fatness spectrum rather than the obese. The vow is this my good friends: Come December 25th, 2010 you will not be able to look at Mr. Lemonhead and see an obese individual and in his place you will see someone who is merely overweight (once again it is the small victories). Now that I have got your interest peaked with yet another guarantee let’s take a look at the breakdown of my week.

Exercise – A
I bet you never thought that you would be seeing that magical letter up there. I can honestly tell you that I wasn’t so sure that I would either. This week I was able to go out and hit the pavement 5 days out of 7 (71.4% of the days) for a total of 34.66 miles. You got it, that is not a typo, I exceeded my stated goal by 13.4%. There was a time during one of my runs where I could have sworn that my pants were going to start on fire. When you thighs are tree trunks like mine there is often a large amount of friction that occurs while moving my legs back and forth quickly. I don't know if it is because normally I am breathing so hard that I can't hear the sound of the friction but on this particular run I must have been feeling pretty good because that wish wash was definitely audible. I thought it was only a matter of time before smoke started coming up and where there is smoke there is fire. Thankfully for all parties involved, the cold dampness of the air must have kept it from combusting and I was able to continue on without incident. Last week I rehashed my running of the Canal Connection, well here it is in a photo: My running of the canal connection last week (don't look at the face, they must have photoshopped somebody else's onto my body). My runs this week were 6 miles on Monday, 6 miles on Wednesday, 10 miles on Thursday (I love being a banker and getting Veterans' Day off), 6 miles on Saturday and 6 miles on Sunday. I even got up at 6:00 am on Saturday morning so that I could get that run in. As mentioned earlier, on Sunday night I participated in about 2 hours of basketball activities. For the most part I was able to run up and down the court but I am definitely not in basketball shape, so for about the last 45 minutes it was more of a job/walk up and down the court. Exercise is still exercise and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Now that we are on a high from that "A" seen above let's get to the real struggle.

Eating – C

Monday started off a little rough as I was able to eat my lunch at work but the evenings festivities took me to my first Illinois basketball game of the year. I left work at 4:40 to allow for enough time to get to the Assembly Hall, which meant there was no time for a Larson Family dinner. In it's place was a small 4" round pizza (of the Domino's variety) and a jalapeño cheese pretzel. This is where the real will power came into effect as I was not allowed the necessary carbonated beverages to wash down that delicious meal but instead was forced to drink water from the water fountain. Not quite as satisfying as one might think and definitely not the topper that one might look for after such a meal. Thankfully that was all the damage that was done on Monday. On Tuesday I was once again able to limit myself to eating my lunch at work and when I got home I was on my own for dinner. Normally this means that I am stopping by QDoba or Dominos but you are reading about a new me. Instead of the filth that I would normally partake in, I instead went with a partial box of pasta with spaghetti sauce topped with mozzarella and cheddar sprinkle cheese (no I didn't eat the whole box of pasta even though I came close...remember its the small victories). Dessert was two sugar cookies that Jamie brought home for me to enjoy. Wednesday was a different story as someone once again had the nerve to bring in a box of Trefzger's turnovers and I had to indulge in two of them. This was followed with the #2 lunch special at Buffalo Wild Wings (8 boneless wings with potato wedges and a lemonade - remember no C3). Dinner at Larson Manor was a fine slice of lasagna from Michael's Italian Eatery and some excellent bread. Thursday was a solid day as I was able to enjoy my day off by working outside and staying out the kitchen. Friday was once again PNC breakfast day and yet another person brought in Trefzger's turnovers and I was forced yet again to eat 1 turnover and a decent size of one large turnover. All-in-all it was a pretty solid week of eating at the workplace though. Friday night I and the Bethel family went to Davis Brothers Pizza for some fine dining and I had a decent amount of thin crust pizza (pizza was cut in small pieces so there were too many to count). Saturday was tailgating again prior to and after the Illini's loss to the lowly Minnesota Gophers and during that time I had two doughnuts, chips and salsa/queso and dinner was the Bobo Burger (hamburger with BBQ brisket on top) with some wings and fries. Sunday brought about healthier eating and a relief from the fast food. There were definitely some moments were I could have eased off the gas a little bit on my mowing down of food, but you win some and you lose some.

Overall – B

Simple math tells you what the overall grade should be for the week. An "A" plus a "C" average out to a "B", right? By far I think this was my best performance of the time that we have been together. There was definitely a plus with the running and the eating was controlled with a few slip ups here and there. For the first time in a while, I am actually starting to believe that I can do this thing. Of course, usually when I start feeling like this I pull a muscle (I'm sorry I mean I outgrow my muscle as discussed in an earlier entry) or struggle with a bout of the lazies. With a solid week of exercise and not as unhealthy eating this coming week I can not wait to journal the excitement of seeing that scale read things that it has not been able to read in quite some time.

Now if you taking scrupulous notes on my progress, that is three weeks of weight loss and two weeks of gains. At least for one week positive strides are being taken and before you know it you won't even be able to recognize me and my new lean figure. If this week was this exciting I can't even imagine what next week is going to bring. I promised to keep it short and I can't tell if I did, so hopefully you didn't hold your breath (I told you so).

As always readers, thanks for your time and reading (or skimming probably at this point) and please feel free to make any comments or suggestions as I continue my campaign towards a visible rib cage.

Love.

Mr. Lemonhead

Halloweak

Well here we are on Thursday morning and for the last 60 hours I’m sure that something has felt a little off. In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, what you were indeed missing was a little Mr. Lemonhead. For your angst and anticipation I will award you with a lengthened diary entry (you have to give the people what they want, right?) from yours truly. Before we kick things off there are a few items of discussion that I just need to get out of the way. First, I vowed last week to keep my consumption of fountain sodas to a total of 0 oz. for the week. And I must maintain that I was able to keep off the “fountain soda”, however, I was not able to keep from consuming Coca Cola Classic from the can. I know, it’s appalling but there is a good reason. I went to Chicago for a meeting and they catered in lunch and all the water had been consumed so there was nothing but soda for me to drink. It was either drink the soda, which I had vowed not to do, or take the risk of possibly dying from dehydration and I apologize because I chose the former. I'm sorry for choosing life. That led to one can and then I drank a second an hour or so later because the first was so delicious. I must admit that the second one was drunk with water being available so I did slip up. There was also another occurrence of my will power not being sufficient to resist the urge of the good stuff. The second offense took place after a hard run Canal Connection 10k. To quench my thirst and reward myself for a job well done I drank a can of Pepsi and a can of Mountain Dew.  I am sorry loyal readers (at least some of you are), but I am only human. While I’m putting myself through confessional here, I have another transgression to fess up. I vowed last week to put at a minimum of 30 miles on these legs and I failed to do so but that commentary will be written in its correct location. Now that I am feeling better about myself let’s move on to what keeps you reading.

This could best describe the week that I had that started with so much promise after getting through the Halloween festivities: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WFsVtCoVVXQ/SleCt7n3WLI/AAAAAAAABKw/w9kaNMkkN24/s400/WheelsComingOff.jpg. For the purposes of this entry, I shall refer to the previous week as “Halloweak”. For both the holiday that we just passed and also for my weak will power in resisting all things tasty. For those that are keeping track at home, last week I weighed in at a hefty 233.0 lbs. I had high expectations for Halloweak but things don’t always go according to planned. As a result of the week’s activities the past week I tipped the scales at a whopping 233.2 lbs, a measly gain of 0.2 lbs for Halloweak. You are privileged that you are getting to witness a modern day miracle first hand because after Halloweak I thought I was going to have to report a significant weight gain in excess of 3 lbs. Maybe the effects of last week will hit me on next week’s weigh in so you will definitely have something to look forward to. That being said let’s take a look at what led to such grim comments from Mr. Lemonhead.



Exercise - F
You will have to forgive me because I broke a promise that I made last Monday (11/1) that I would hit the road for at least 30 miles over the course of the week. I made one grievous error in making that vow to you though. That error was that I forgot that I had a race on Sunday in which I had to taper for. For those of you that are not familiar with my training technique I am affectionately known as the “King of the Taper”. I follow a strategy that has very few followers and if I had to venture a guess, most of them are probably overweight. But that Taper strategy is quite simple…don’t run. A few amateurs may just try to cut back on their mileage to keep their legs fresh, but not this guy. What could possibly keep your legs fresher than letting them rest and relax in a recliner? That way there is absolutely no weight to bear. It is simply a brilliant plan if you ask me. So with the said taper plan in place I went on Sunday and ran a brilliant race finishing with a time of 44:58, with an average split of 7:12. There is no need to mention that about ½ to ¾ of the first mile is downhill which may lead to a modest decrease in that first mile time but overall I felt I ran a decent race for being slightly obese. I can only imagine what runners are thinking as I run ahead them with my pants riding up my legs and my feet plodding along, it really can’t be a good feeling. I guess I have been known to be the “King of the Taper” because I inevitably become lazy and don’t get out there and that was the case this week. Being that Daylight Savings Time had not ended it was basically dark until 8 in the morning, so being in complete darkness while running did not help my case at all. Thankfully all bad things must come to an end and I am able to enjoy a little sunlight in the morning now before I go to work and if I muster up enough will, enjoy it while I’m traversing the road. So in all, this week I ran a total of 1 day for a total of 6.214 miles. Next week will bring a better outcome and progress will be made.  



Eating - F
This is where Halloweak gets really ugly. The best thing may be that I am writing this on Thursday now and I have allowed myself to forget the pain that I put myself through last week. Monday was an alright day as I ate a footlong sub at Subway for lunch and I went with the chicken breast on wheat bread. That may not seem like a big change from my old eating habits but I am used to the Cold Cut Combo on asiago cheese bread with ranch dressing (of 30 grams of fat and about 800 calories). It’s baby steps my friends. When I came home I may have indulged a little too much on the candy treats, but when you are married to the Candy Queen, what choice do you really have? On Tuesday before dinner things went just fine as I ate my lunch at work and was able to survive the work day on that alone. I then traveled to Chicago, as mentioned earlier, on Tuesday night and that is where Halloweak really began. McDonald’s just brought the McRib sandwich back nationwide so Tuesday presented a perfect opportunity to partake in the delicious sandwich. So I ordered the Sandwich (of course it should be capitalized it is a proper noun) and a large fry. I avoided the meal because I couldn’t drink fountain soda due to that cursed weight gain the prior week so I was in a dilemma. What do I order to wash down that delicious sandwich and salty fries? To answer that question you have to think like the obese and once you are able to do that the answer is quite obvious. A large McFlurry!! That way I can quench my thirst with the milk contained in the ice cream as well as enjoy some wonderful dessert. Now you may be thinking, “That is not so bad,” and I would agree with you but then my coworkers get involved. One of my PNC brethren went up early and stopped at Giordano’s pizza for dinner and called when I was on my way to Chicago to ask if I cared for the 3 pieces of leftovers that he had. When asked what he would do with the leftovers if I didn’t take them he responded that he would throw them away and I just couldn’t let that happen. So I et him outside his room upon my arrival at the hotel and he gave me the goods. Once I got into the room and got situated I then wolfed down not 1, not 2, but all 3 pieces of the Chicago-style deep dish pizza (I just don’t understand why it is so hard to lose weight). The next day I ate the cookie that they gave me upon arrival the previous night for breakfast and went to the meeting. At the meeting I had a salad (can you believe it) two Panini’s that were slightly larger than the size of a post it, a large helping of macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, and a cookie along with the two cans of soda. On Tuesday night I had a New York Strip steak along with a baked potato and some vegetables. Let’s just say it was a tough trip to Chicago. On Thursday there was a return to normalcy as I once again ate my lunch at work and dinner at home. On Friday, (I still have not gotten over the habit of eating breakfast at work) I had over the course of the day 3 doughnuts, an asiago cheese bagel from Panera, broccoli cheese soup in a sourdough breadbowl, followed by Jimmy John’s Italian Night Club for dinner. All-in-all I would say it wasn’t a very good Friday. On Saturday, Jamie and I split a bag of Chicago mix Garrett popcorn for lunch (for those that haven’t had it it should definitely be on your bucket list of items to eat) along with a regular size Razmataz smoothie from Jamba Juice and I had to polish off about ¾ of Jamie’s Berry Fulfilling. For dinner we enjoyed the fine establishment of Wendy’s and I enjoyed 2 5-piece chicken nuggets and a Double with cheese washed down with a medium vanilla frosty of course. On Sunday I had a bowl of peanut butter Captain Crunch to power me up for my race and had two pieces of pizza after the race which of course were washed down with a can of Pepsi and a can of Mountain Dew for good measure. Thankfully on Sunday night I was able to limit 
myself to two grilled cheese sandies and a bowl of tomato soup.

Overall - F

With two F's for my previous grades I am not sure how I could justify anything other than an F for Halloweak. On the positive side of things, I only gained .2 lbs this week but on the negative side of things, I almost annihilated my body. The great news is that I have my loyal readers by my side who aren't going to let me do that to myself two weeks in a row. Even though by now this week is almost half hour I won't spoil anything for Monday's edition. I believe the saying is, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again." In the spirit of that I now will make two vows for you to hold me to. First, I will not only run 30 miles this week but I will also put at a minimum of 30 miles on these tree trunks the following week as well. Just to make myself clear, I will be running at least 30 miles for the week of 11/8 and the week of 11/15. A pretty bold promise, I know, but sometimes you just have to stop messing around. My second vow to you is that by Thanksgiving I will have entered the land of the 220's. All bets are off during the days of the Thanksgiving celebrations, but at least you will be able to see some results prior to the festivities.

Well folks, I hope I provided a little glimpse into Halloweak and didn't make you all nauseous with the my large consumption of food as it almost made me sick thinking about it. So it has been two steps forward and now two steps back but thankfully my strides backwards have been smaller. I promise next week (although half over) will be brighter and for the first time in 3 weeks you will be cheering instead of booing my efforts or lack thereof.

As always, thanks for reading (hopefully not sleeping) and feel free to make any comments or suggestions as you follow my adventure towards the elusive land of the low 200's.

Love.

Mr. Lemonhead

PS This week's late edition was due to me having a busy Monday at work followed by an Illini game taking up my Monday night, Tuesday at work I didn't have time and Tuesday night I was having writer's block (ok just laziness) and yesterday I composed some at work but was watching Heather's kids at night so I didn't have time to send it out so that is why you are getting this on this Veteran's Day morning. You, as my loyal readers, deserve better and in the future I will work diligently to make sure this terrible offense isn't repeated.

Diary Entry #4

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Weeks have passed and everyone may not have noticed but this world of ours became a better place about two weeks ago from last Saturday. On that fateful day, Grandpa did what all humans should strive to do, he rid this world of one more opossum. It was a battle of epic proportions and involved a little trickery, but Grandpa was up to the task and for this he deserves to be commended. So from the bottom of my heart and from all of my fellow opossum haters out there, thank you Grandpa for a job well done.
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Well, readers based on the lack of responses I received from my last novel, I take it either you are still reading edition #3 or have lost interest completely (I am guessing the former). Just when you thought you had a breather, Monday rolls around and BAM! I’m throwing edition #4 in your face. If your interest happens to be weaning, this week I will bring to your desktop tales of lost will power and overindulgence in all things delicious and most definitely un-nutritious.  To allow for a small break from my witty words I will try to shorten the length of my weekly diatribe. That being said, let’s get things started.

I had a rash of clever things to say about my weight having gone down this week, but unfortunately I had to play the week out and things didn’t turn out like I was hoping. As a reminder last week I weighed in at a minuscule 232.6 lbs (I know, I know, I promised to send the spreadsheet out last week on Tuesday but of course did not do so and karma has struck me back). As a result of not following through with my loyal readers (although the numbers may be dissipating) my weight ballooned to a husky 233 lbs (wow, that gasp was audible from here). As a result of my transgressions of our pact and a vow that I made in Week 2, I now have to spend a week without ingesting any carbonated beverages (wow, another audible gasp). There is no need to feel bad for me though as I am sure I will survive and if I don’t, isn’t death the quickest way to shed some pounds anyway? I wish there was some reason that I could give for the weight gain but alas all the blame falls on my shoulders. I had a collapse of epic proportions as I succumbed to the candy and cookies that somebody unknowingly was testing me with. Unfortunately, much like most of the tests I took my Senior and Super-Senior year of college, this was a test that I failed miserably. On a positive note, I was able to hold off on the candy and cookies for a period of 24 hours. If you were to place blame on somebody, it should be on my coworkers for not stepping up to the task at hand by eating 3 bags of candy, 2 boxes of cookies and 2 coffee cakes in the span of 24 hours. Who knows, if they would have helped my cause by eliminating all temptations I might have entered into the land of the 220’s this week. Every cloud has a silver lining though and I made it through one of the major overindulging holidays and have a 3 week break before entering the next one. This allows me the opportunity to trim that waistline of mine even further (come on size 36 pants!) before entering the Thanksgiving holiday and all the opportunities that it brings to widen my waistline (stay away size 42 pants!). Just to spice things up a little bit I will make another vow to you all. During the week of November 1- November 7, Mr. Lemonhead will put in 30 miles of pavement pounding (please hold your applause until that fantastic feat is accomplished). With that promise out there, let’s get to my weekly critiquing.

Exercise – B -
Things weren’t all that bad this week as I was able to run 4 days this week and put in 22.97 miles. Laziness once again was a factor as one morning I basically laid on the couch awake for an hour after my normal 5:45 wake up call rather than going out for my run. I ran 6 on Monday, 6 on Friday, 3 on Saturday and almost 9 on Sunday. The most impressive event was the waking up at 6 (a.m. not p.m., this isn’t Jamie we are talking about here) for a 3 mile run before heading to the tailgating festivities for the Fighting Illini vs. Boilermakers football game. I did have a little scare on my Sunday run as some dog in the country must have thought that I was a running chew toy as he made a quick dash for me. Thank goodness that I am a tough mean guy and that dog knew who he was messing with (was it bad that I was hoping for a car to zip by and take care of my unwanted long-run guest?) for that dog backed away once I barked back at him. Okay, so maybe I picked up the pace a little bit to save my legs from being eaten by a boxer. The dog was probably harmless but every dog that you encounter out on the road by yourself seems like a raging pit bull. All in all, I am pleased with the progress that I am making and am still on track for my goal of 1,000 miles in 2010. I know if it weren't for these diaries I would be waking up for about 2 minutes and deciding that it was either: A. Too cold B. Too windy C. Too rainy D. Too dark or E. Too early. My runs are getting to the point where they are not so laborious and the miles are quickening. Things aren't all that bad for Mr. Lemonhead.

Eating - F 

So if I were to grade Monday through Wednesday (also taking out the 4 Sloppy Joe's eaten on Monday night) I may have given myself a B or B+ even, but unfortunately a week isn't made up of three days. It all started going downhill on Wednesday when I decided that a fountain soda normally contains 32 oz, so at Chili's I could have a refill of my 16 or so ounce glass once. When you throw in an all you can eat chips and salsa, how is any person supposed to contain themselves? My struggle with how to define a fountain (remember my limit of two) will continue throughout the 12 week period (I will most likely err on the side of what works best for me). On Thursday at noon it marked the end of the 24 hour cease-eating and the gloves came off and in about a 10 minute period I had managed to eat 2 cookies, 2 kit kats, 2 Reese's Fast Breaks and two packages of M&M's. The feel good story of the day was when I went to Huck's to enjoy the second of my two fountain soda allowance with my 52 oz mug in hand but at the eleventh hour showed my intestinal fortitude to put the mug down and go with my 32 oz "standard" fountain soda (I'm no hero, I put on my pants one leg at a time just like all of you). On Friday somebody had the audacity to bring in an egg, cheese, sausage, and hash brown casserole along with little biscuits like those at Red Lobster and brownies. My awesome eating continued its roll (no pun intended) with the consumption of 2 pieces of the casserole, 3 biscuits, and 4 brownies throughout the course of a day. Most mortals may limit themselves to that, but not this guy, who then decided that Taco Bell sounded tasty and went and got myself 3 supreme soft shell tacos. And of course, no different than the previous 3 entries, Friday night is Papa Murphy's night and I indulged with 4 pieces of pizza and 4 pieces of dessert pizza. Saturday of course was a football Saturday which consisted of a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit and egg McMuffin from McDonald's and a double slice of Domino's pizza at halftime. I then proceeded to go home and have two pieces of Papa Murphy's leftovers along with trying every piece of candy in Larson Manor that I had resisted for the past 2 weeks. Then we had a halloween party on Saturday night (I was a mustachioed referee) and I struggled to eat everything I could with my whiskers joining every bite. Thankfully Sunday allowed myself a reprieve from all the harm that I had done to my body the previous 3 days. I guess to sum up my week of eating would best be described with one of Newton's Laws. An object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Over that 3 day period my friends, I was that object in motion and there were no outside forces acting up it. Let's just hope that that object will stay at rest before being put into motion for the Holiday season.

Overall - D

If I were to continue on that path that I went down over that three day period I don't think I would be allowed on the Bethel's boat next summer because here would be the result: http://blogs.nyu.edu/blogs/jtb292/farts/wm-ss-fat-guy.jpg Thankfully I was able to overcome that episode and get back on track. It is pretty tough to lose any sort of weight when you put your body through that, so I can't be too generous with my overall grade this week. The best news is that all bad things must come to an end and I can wash my hands clean of last week and put together a solid week this week while putting together both 7 days of healthy eating and 30 miles of exercise. Yes, my loyal readers, better things are yet to come and you get to experience them with me.

I promised to keep this entry short, but unfortunately when you put all the garbage into my mouth that I did this week it is tough to accomplish such a task. Oh well, maybe next week.

As always thanks for reading and feel free to share any comments or suggestions as I continue my quest towards a physically fit physique.

Love.

Mr. Lemonhead