Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The making of an action hero pt7

Entry #6 I have good days and bad days. Some times I am chock full of positive energy. Other days the world seems likely to end soon. Most of the time life falls between those extremes. That’s one of the cold hard facts that make eating well difficult. When I’m tired, depressed, not feeling well, food is a safety blanket. Eating in general is a comfort. So setbacks in other parts of my life tend to correspond to setbacks in my diet. Some may recall that Thursday marked the beginning of my daily weigh-ins. As it turns out, the anticipation was worse than the reality. After you know roughly how much you weigh and you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, there aren’t many surprises out there. It’s the fear of that first time that is ruff. Friday started fine. Then that evening we hosted a small gathering. At the end of the night, everyone wanted to check their weight. At first I thought someone had broken the scale. Then, after repeated checks and checking Amazon reviews, I realized a teensy problem with my regimented plan. You see big people aren’t made for modern digital scales. We are poorly constructed to stand on a small platform and hold perfectly still for a minute or more. The result of that structural failing is that my weight varies by as much as 9 pounds depending on my stance. Holding perfectly still with my feet beside each other can’t be done. There’s inevitably some rocking and correcting. I can manage if I place my feet one ahead of the other, but the difference in stance leads to inconsistent results. If anyone has a better talking scale they can recommend I’d be grateful. Over the past few days I’ve eaten out, eaten with friends, and eaten at home. When the scale seemed to fail it felt like a major setback. I fought off the urge to quit, and have now redoubled my efforts. In the end, the scale weighs. I don’t care as much about the specific, only the average. So I’m somewhere between 305 and 312 pounds. That’s good enough for now. Yesterday night we shared an evening and leftovers at a friends’ home. It was good food, so good that I had a second smaller portion after the first. I had one beer with dinner and a scotch afterwards. There’s something freeing in viewing alcohol as an indulgence rather than as a commonplace accompaniment to a meal. I’ve always been a man of large appetites. That has applied as much to drink as food. What is it they say; absence makes the heart grow fonder? Perhaps that’s so. Even limiting consumption for two weeks, I’m trying to view alcohol as something to be consumed in one or two glasses rather than in terms of the amount remaining in the bottle. I’ve been reducing consumption in general for a while. Yesterday was the first time that felt like a benefit. Intake: Breakfast=A bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and bananas and a glass of cranberry juice. Work Meal=A container of pasta salad, turkey and cheese sandwich, an apple, and a flavored almond snack pack. Dinner=A glass of water and the leftovers of the light lasagna I made on Friday.

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