Week 7: Good News

It seems that my wife has been paying attention to her crazy husband and asked me what I've been using to loose weight. I pointed her to the Food Diary App I've been using and she has decided that she wants in on this action.

This should make things quite a bit easier since she will be counting her daily allotted points too.  Now when she chooses something to prepare for the family I'm sure it may be a healthier choice today than in days past.  It should also fit into my points allowance since this is something she'll be tracking as well.  At this point portion size will be key.

Another app I pointed her to is Fast Food Nutri. & Weight Loss app which has the Points Plus points (lists as Units) for all of our local restaurant / fast food joints.  This allows us to make informed choices when dining out.  She often frequents Panera Bread and this app allows her to look up what points are in various dishes before she orders.

Speaking of Apps, the app I use for food tracking has an extensive database of items, but this list is crowd sourced.  This means the folks that use this app can input items into the database.  On occasion the entries may be slightly off either because the item was entered in wrong or because the item may have been actually changed slightly by the company.  Just be careful.  If you have the item you are looking up in hand then verify the protein, fat, fiber etc... before entering it into your favorites to be used over and over again.  Also ensure the serving size in the item you are looking up matches the serving size of what you have in your hand.

Weigh-in - This week I clock in at 263.6 lbs for a weekly weight loss of  2 lbs which makes my running weight loss total 16.6 lbs.  See you again next week and if you were wondering about the above quote... I'm very happy.

Week 6: Then and Now

When I retired from the Navy I weighed 240 lbs.  Sixteen years later I weighed in at 280 lbs.  That equates to 2.5 lbs gained each year.  At 2.5 lbs a year it slowly creeps up on you and before you fully realize what was happening you are huge.

I have heard of obese folks saying that even after they lost weight they still see a fat person.  I suspect this is because they still haven't addressed the reason they were obese in the first place so they still see someone that they don't think is worthy.  I may have mentioned this previously but I had the exact opposite problem.  Even at 280 lbs it was hard for to see myself as obese.  I guess I was in denial.  The bottom line is I don't have a self-image problem and have never doubted my own worth.

So when I say that 280 lbs just sort of crept up on me over the years when I wasn't "looking," I mean exactly that.  I only talk about this line of thought because I came across the below image and wondered if perhaps changes in portion sizes over the last 20 years may have contributed to my weight gain.

Investigating this image led me to the ChooseMyPlate.gov site that had these 2 quizzes Portion Distortion 1 (2003) and Portion Distortion 2 (2004) covering portion sizes and calorie differences over a 20 year period.  Take the quizzes for yourself I think you'll find them interesting.

Well with that behind us lets get down to my weekly weigh-in.  Today I weighed-in at 265.6 lbs for a running weight loss total of 14.6 pounds.  So far so good. I'll talk again in a week.  Stay Positive!

Week 5: New Hampshire Whoopie Pies and Self Sabotage

Photo by Flickr Artist F_A (CC)

This week I got tripped up by 2 things.

The first thing was my wife's best friend in New Hampshire mailed us a care package of goodies.  This included a bunch of her home made Whoopie Pies.  Now in case someone is unfamiliar with these concoctions I included a picture to the right. There is a fascinating history of the Whoopie Pie over on Wikipedia.  All I know for sure is that I hunted down and consumed 2 of these bad boys.

The whoopie pies in and of themselves wouldn't be that bad, but as fate would have it I accidentally sabotaged myself this week.  When shopping I came across some low fat no sugar added ice cream sandwiches.  I thought I could sub these in for the 1 point Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom Fudge Lites that I had at work the week before.  Unfortunately the ice cream sandwiches were 4 points each.  The good news is I only bought a 6 pack and not a 12 pack.  Still those 4 point wonders were at work and the only way to remove the temptation was to eat them.

When all was said and done I weighed-in this week at 267.2 lbs for a weight loss of .8 lbs, giving me a running weight loss of 13 lbs.  Bottom line, even with the unforced errors I was still able to drop my total a little this week.  I don't know about you, but I'm going to call that a win.