It's not always smooth sailing

I really wish I could say that it's super easy for me to lose all this weight but we all know that would be a BIG lie. Friday and Saturday proved to be major challenges for my willpower and determination.

I work shift work and it's rare that two consecutive days start at the same time. Most of my days as of late have started between 7 and 8 am and I'm usually home by 7 to 8 pm. Friday was different, 5:30am start. So I'm out the door by 4:30 and as part of my usual habit I had my "breakfast" before I left. In hindsight I'm not sure that was such a good idea or not. I've been sticking loosely to a schedule of eating every 3-4 hours. This way my blood sugar doesn't dip too much and my stomach always has something to do. So starting my day so early really threw me off and in no time flat I was feeling famished. I trudged on through the best I could still dealing with the only rule I have when I'm at work; "I can eat anything I want as long as it comes out of my cooler bag." By the time I got home at about 4:30 I was already feeling starved beyond belief and it was about 3 hours since my last shake and I was facing only one meal left for the rest of the day.

I think I did what anyone else would do, not wanting to fall off the wagon, I grabbed the dinner that would give me the greatest volume of food. I usually have 4-5 frozen dinners on hand that run from 200-300 calories each so I'm less likely to succumb to the other evils that lie in wait in the fridge.

Saturday was just as bad but to the other end. It was a much later start than usual, 9:30 and none of that helped at all to get me back to any kind of a regular schedule. Sunday I was off and that should have let me get things back to normal right? Wrong.

Went to see Monster House in 3D and because of when we had to leave it meant eating a bit early before and a bit late after. Well wouldn't you know it but someone in the row in front of me had a HUGE order of poutine and boy did that thing smell both amazing and disgusting at the same time. If you've never had it then it's something you must experience if you ever venture north of the border. It's basically overcooked french fries, cheese curd and spiced beef gravy. It's gooey and messy hence the name which loosely translates to "big mess". Well this mess in front of me was driving me crazy. As much as I knew what it was and remembered how much I enjoyed it, the smell was acutally on the disgusting side. Now I don't know if it was because it was movie theatre poutine or it's because my brain is changing how it perceives food.

In the end I was able to stay strong and I have never once deviated from my path. Once in a while (about every 3-4 days) I will treat myself to a XL Timmy's coffee w/double cream & splenda (milk in coffee is just wrong and it tastes nasty), but having just looked at what that's costing me calorie wise I'm going to have to cut that back some, ok a lot. I always thought that coffee was calorie free and it was just the cream I had to worry about oh well...

So what now....

I needed to know WHY I was overweight; was I an emotional eater (a lot of things fall in this category) ? Addicted to sugar, cake and candy and the like? Or did simply just eat too much at meal time.

I am a recovering emotional eater that ate too much. I would eat when I was depressed (which was a lot), when I was bored (which also was a lot), even when I was happy. Hell, I really didn't need a reason, I would just eat. It was just that it was also how much I was eating. If 2 spoonfulls of ice cream were good then 37 spoonfulls were better. One slice of pizza was great but 6 was about my average with the remaining leftovers eaten at breakfast with mayo smeared all over them. What would really get me is that I would do this kind of eating mainly at night and with how my schedule has been for the past few years dinner has been getting later and later into the evening. It's not so hot to eat a full meal and 20 minutes later head off to bed.

So how did I get this way? Like most kids I was told that whatever I put on my plate, I had to eat no matter how full I was feeling. If I took more than I thought I could eat....too bad, I had to finish it all. Now add this to the fact that I associated food with safety and comfort as I know a lot of people do. Money was always a major issue when I was a kid but no matter what it took, my parents always made sure that there was food on the table (hence the clean your plate bit). From a young age I learned that as long I went to bed with a full tummy that everything was alright. I was safe.

Patterns that are developed at such a young age, under 6, are some of the most deeply routed and most difficult to undo. This will sound goofy but this is the breakthrough I had. I finally realized that if I didn't do anything that I was going to keep gaining weight. I was within sight of crossing over the 400lb mark and I knew that I was at a turning point. I had to fight, to the death. It was either me or the fat and one of us wasn't going to survive.

This was the plan I devised....

• SlimFast shake for breakfast
• SlimFast shake for lunch
• SlimFast shake for afternoon snack or something real to eat
• Real food like a Lean Cuisine or similar prepared meal
• Grand total of 1000 calories per day
• Vitamins everyday and some at night to make sure I wasn't doing any damage

Why so extreme? Well I figured that my eyes were terminally bigger than my stomach when it came to eating so drastic times call for drastic measures. If I only had 20 or 30 punds to lose, this would have been a very bad choice. In my case I have well over 150 to lose so I needed to take my subconscious out of the equasion.

Now when I go to work I pack everything in my cooler bag. Diet soda (yes I'm a soda junkie), water, and my two shakes for the middle of the day. I would have already had my morning one before leaving for work. This way I can tell myself that I can have anything I want to eat today as long as it's in that bag. To me, this forces me to adhere to my program and in a matter of days it's a no-brainer. When I first started I did have hunger pangs but I would just use something like Pepsid or Zantac to get through the day. I was trying to keep to a schedule and spread my meals out evenly through the day. They only lasted maybe two days then they weren't an issue anymore.

Now what funny is that this is only day 2 back on my VLC diet (very low calorie) and I can already feel my mental fog lifting. I have energy again (well it's returning) and I can see my goal again. It feels odd to say this but I'm actually happy to be back on this program. I don't think of it as being very restictive or hard or denying myself things. I think of it as a transition period. I spent over 30 years being fat, yes I used the F-word, so I think I can manage a few months of changing things around so I'm not fat anymore.

I'm back on track now and soon that scale needle will be going in the right direction again.

Why I stopped Atkins

First off let me say that I do believe that Atkins is a good diet program and I have been very successful on the program before (ok only my first attempt - more on this in a bit). Things have change metabolicaly that Atkins no longer works for me.

• I was feeling nauseaous from all the fat that was in the diet.
• I had NO energy at all. I felt like I was on the verge of falling asleep all the time.
• I had lost my mental focus of seeing my goal and mentally cloudy overall as well.
• I began to GAIN weight.

Two weeks of incudtion and I lost ZERO pounds and I felt like crap. I followed the program to the letter and even re-read the book just to be sure. In the end it was an easy decision to make so I went back to what worked.

I had also seen some references to the "Golden Shot". Basically it means that you get one good shot at doing Atkins and any attempts after that don't work. Not sure why it happens but looking back at my attempts I could see that it was happening with me. So there was even more reason to switch back to what I was doing before. Dammit I have a schedule to meet. :P (I'm teasing about the schedule bit, it's just a goal not a deadline)

A change is in the works

I've been a little frustrated for the past two weeks since I switched from my 1000 calorie a day diet to Atkins. On the first diet, weight was dropping like mad. On Atkins, two pounds in two weeks. That's pretty pathetic compared to the 7 pounds a week I was doing before.

Now I know arguements can be made that it was water weight or something but I can't ignore that I'm down 2 pant sizes and 1 shirt size.

Another thing is that for the past two weeks I've been exhausted yet when I check my urine for ketones, a tell-tale sign of fat metabolism, it consistantly near the top of the range. This tells of that something is not going how it should.

So tomorrow I'm going back to my previous diet plan. Time to get this puppy back on track.

It's late and I have to be up early but I will elaborate more in a day or two.

Last day of phase one

My 30 days of 1000 calories/day comes to an end today and tomorrow I start Atkins. I'm glad that I did it but damn it's been rough. On the days that I've been working it hasn't been that bad because I would take a little cooler bag and I would tell myself that the only things I could have until I got home was whatever was in that bag. My days off on the other hand were sometimes a whole different issue.

I think my body knows that there is a switch coming up. I was off Friday (wasn't supposed to be) and it wasn't too bad but I didn't do much of anything that day. Saturday was really bad. I went to the gym in the morning and was feeling really crappy afterwards (combination of not going for the longest time and the diet made me really weak). Because of how I was feeling I had my "lunch" early. By the time 5pm rolled around I was famished and my hunger was back in full force. What wasn't helping was that I was watching one of my favorite PBS documentaries that is about how Hot Dogs are made and served all over the US. I really wanted a hot dog after that, I mean REALLY wanted one. I survived and didn't crack.

Now I'm on my final day and I'm glad it's here. I haven't had my "breakfast" yet but I'm determined to not crack today. The only tough part will be the fact that I'll have to prepare my lunch for work tomorrow and I'm sure that it will be tempting but I'll hold strong. I didn't make it this far to lost it on the last day.

Speaking of last day....how have I done? Well it's been more than a week since I've been able to use one of the Tanita scales (model 3101 Handrail Scale) so I have no official weights for this transition. My bathroom scale however (I don't trust it near as much as the Tanita ones) tells me that I'm 350. So I'm going to do a tiny bit of rounding and call my 30-day weight loss at 30lbs. Once I can get back to one of those scales then I'll have a better idea of how much further I've gone.

30 down and 50 to go before I reach my first goal.

My final goal? You know I haven't decided that yet. I know it will be below 240 for sure but I'm actually toying with the idea of trying to get under 200. I'll set my final goal in the next few weeks and we'll see how reachable it is. I know goal #1 is because I can already see it in my mind.