Week Five

262 pounds at my work weigh in this morning. On my home scale undressed I'm consistently getting weights under 260 most mornings.

I have concerns that this progress will come skidding to a halt this weekend. We're going to a con and will be eating out all weekend. There's no question that probably the biggest factor in my success is the fact that my wife Cheryl has taken the lead in meal planning and has displayed some pretty amazing cooking chops at bringing in dinners that are low calorie and super nutritious. Most of our evening meals are coming in under 500 calories, yet we wind up full because we're eating a lot of non-starchy vegetables and lean proteins. The only "diet" food we're resorting to regularly is a diet salad dressing, a balsamic vinegarette that tastes pretty awesome. (I also tried some no-fat hot dogs a few weeks ago. Not as awesome.)

Travelling means eating out for dinners, and it becomes a lot harder to guess how many calories you're consuming without breaking out a scale at every meal. At home, we weigh most of our calorie dense ingredients and have a pretty precise measure of how many calories we're consuming. When we're at restaurants, we often get a wide range of calorie estimates when we type the dishes into our phones. Still, when we do we out, we're definitely making smarter choices than we used to. Avoiding pasta, potatoes, and white bread is a decent rule to follow in these situations.

Last week, I mentioned that, despite losing twenty pounds, I really couldn't tell it in my appearance or my wardrobe. Then, Sunday, I kept having to hitch my pants up. I finally had to punch a new hole in my belt to keep from having them slide off me. Jeans that were tight only two weeks ago are now loose. I have a leather jacket that I stopped wearing about 4 years ago because it was too tight around my gut. I almost gave it to good will when we moved. Today, I wore it to work and it was a perfect fit.

Still a long way to go to win the competition, though. One of my coworkers is pretty close to losing 10% of her body weight.  I'm only down 7%. Fortunately, I still have plenty of flab to work off, and seven weeks to go. I think I still have a shot at this.