Daily Food Reports Have Come To An End

So, I had taken pictures for Friday's food, but still haven't gotten around to posting them.  I started taking pictures of Saturday's food, but I only got to the breakfast picture before my daughter told me she needed a camera to take pictures of her costume at the play she was in this weekend.  So, I gave her my phone, and wound up with no phone for the whole day, and no convenient way to get pictures of my food.  On Sunday, maybe because of having done without a camera the day before, I simply neglected to take pictures of everything.

After all this, I've come to a decision.  I think it's time to give up on the published pictures of every single thing that I eat.  For one, it's not working well enough, because I am not taking pictures of every last thing that I eat, like I should.  And two, it has just become really tedious.  I find myself waiting two or three days before finally publishing all the posts about the food that I have eaten.

I think it has served its purpose.  It got me on track, and helped me lose 15 lbs.  But now that I am on track, I think just doing my best, and sticking to my regimen should work to get me where I want to go.  So, I am killing the daily food reports off.

That doesn't mean the weight-loss group is over, or that weigh-ins on Wednesdays will end.  That will continue unabated until I reach my goal of 200 lbs. or die (whichever comes first, hopefully goal fulfillment will come first, but you never know).  So, I still expect you all; Marshal, Tena, Jeremy, Tobias, and anyone else who wants to join in; to stick with it, and report in.

On a related note, I am going to try a really hardcore push this week.  I am going to try to go the entire week, from Monday morning to Monday morning eating absolutely nothing with sugar or carbs in it (not counting vegetables, which have some carbs in them, I guess.  I mean white flour kind of carbs here).  I will report on Monday of next week, whether I succeeded or not.  And maybe I'll even post a picture of whatever it was that caused me to fail if I do.  Yeah, I'll agree to that.  If I fail, I will post my failure for all to see.  That should help me try a little harder.

So, here we go...

Daily Food Report #30

I was home sick from work Thursday, which is always trouble, because what do you do at home all that time.  Well, if you're me, you eat.

That was my first splurge of the day.  My wife had bought some of those Mini Babybel cheeses, which I love.  I had one.  Then I had my omelette for breakfast.

I had the normal snack at snacktime.

And for lunch, I had leftovers from dinner the night before.  My wife had made chicken tikka masala, and rice as well as purchased some naan.  It was tasty, although I accidentally left the naan in the microwave way too long and made it a little chewy and hard.  It was probably too many carbs though.

I missed my second snack, and almost missed my dinner too.  As I was running out the door to watch my daughter's play at her school, I warmed up some more of that chicken with some rice.

Sadly, after having been pretty good the whole day through, after the play, I had a semi-binge fest.  I had this handful of M&M's plus one more on top of that.

Then I had this bowl of Honey Nut Chex too, plus one more on top of that.

It wasn't a total disaster, but when I weighed myself this morning, I was up instead of down.  Hopefully, Friday will be better than Thursday was.

Uninvited Guests

 Rish and I did a little bit of guest hosting on the Journey Into... Podcast. We presented an adaptation of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson that was made for the radio by NBC Presents: Short Story back in the day.

Head over and subscribe to the podcast to have all the episodes delivered straight to you in the comfort of your own phone. Also, hit the play button below for a quick and easy listen to the show.

Daily Food Report #29

Woke up late yesterday.  My alarm didn't ring, so I didn't have time for an omelette.  Made a quick shake.  Luckily, I'd already made my lunch the night before, so I wasn't screwed.  Drank my protein shake at 9:00 AM

At 11:30, I had my usual snack.

Then at 2:00, I had what is starting to seem like my usual lunch.  I mostly mix up the main course at least, but I had the Costco rotisserie chicken leg again, for the second day in a row.

At 4:30 I had my snack.

And at 6:00 I had my dinner, another chicken leg, nuts, and the rest of my salad.

Did I eat anything else?  Well..

I did have a handful of M&M's, and then, I met Rish at the Taco Bell right before we saw a movie, and had this:

Those are Stuffed Grillers I think they're called.  I looked them up online, and they are about 400 calories a piece.  I had two.  I should have just had one, but I didn't.  I'm a bad man.  I was good for most of the rest of the time, though, so hopefully it won't set me back far.

Weigh-In Day #7 and Daily Food Report #28

I can't believe I've been doing this four weeks already.  Weird.  Who'd have thought that I'd have the stamina.  As long as I stick to it, though, it really works.

Anyway, yesterday for breakfast, I had my usual omelette.

Then I had my usual snack.

My lunch was one of the chicken thighs from Costco that I've been having now and then, plus my salad and some nuts.

And then I had another one of my usual snacks

Lastly, for dinner I had another one of them there chicken legs, the rest of my salad, and some more nuts.

Well, that wasn't quite lastly, because I did have this handful of M&M's when I went out to my car to go home:

Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I picked a bunch of pepperonis off the pizza that I picked up on the way home for the kids to eat for dinner.  I did this while I was driving, though, so I didn't risk taking pictures.  I suppose that means that I shouldn't have eaten them at all, but I did.  I was naughty.  Probably about ten pepperonis and whatever cheese clung to the bottom of them, which was enough that my daughter complained, "what happened to the cheese," when I got home.  Bad Dad.

So, for the most part, I was really good both Monday and Tuesday.  It was in a desperate attempt to get myself at least back to where I started from on Wednesday of last week. On that day I weighed:

And this morning I weighed:

So, I guess you could say that I lost some weight this week.  0.4 lbs to be exact.  Although, despite the fact that our scale measures to the tenth of a pound, it's really not very exact.  I weighed myself again right after this one, and it said:

All I did was step down of the scale, and then step back on, and that's the difference it gave me, 1.2 lbs.  So, it's pretty hard to know for sure what I am at.  I guess we'll say that I am even from week to week.  Which is a success when it comes down to it, because I was terrible for a good portion of the time.  I'm going to try to be better this week, and hopefully, if I'm really good, I'll crack that 260 barrier, and be weighing in the 250's by next Wednesday.  That's my goal for the week.

So, Tena, Jeremy, Tobias, Marshal?  How did you guys do?  Better than me I hope.

Daily Food Report #27

These are five honest pictures.  This is what I actually ate yesterday.  Breakfast was the leftover eggs from the sandwiches my wife had made the night before.

Snack was the usual.  I ate it, but I wasn't even hungry for it when it was time.  I think there might have been more eggs in my breakfast than I thought.  I don't know.

Lunch was salad, chicken burger, and nuts.

Snack was the usual again.

And dinner was chicken burger, the rest of the salad, and nuts again.

And that's it.  When I got home, I was pretty hungry, but I didn't give in.  I didn't eat anything extra, and I especially didn't eat something without taking a picture of it.  This morning, my weight was coming back down considerably.  However, I think I'll be lucky to be even from week to week.  This week, I'm pretty sure I won't be losing weight at all.  We'll see tomorrow when I weigh in.

Daily Food Report #26

Today is where it really went wrong, and I don't even have the pictures to prove it.  Which means that I'm a dishonest douche.  The whole point of these blog posts was to keep my ass on track, and make me too ashamed, or at least inconvenienced, to eat like a pig.  But instead, I just ignored the whole thing really.

I think it might be because of this lazy/bad attitude that I've been developing recently where if I'm only going to eat a very small amount of something, then I don't need to take a picture of it.  There's a comment on the blog from last Thursday where one Rish Outfield decried me as a witch : "I saw Goodie Anklevich eating M&M's with the devil in the parking lot last night!"  I never owned up to eating any M&M's at that point, and I just ignored his comment, hoping that he would leave me alone, and my conscience wouldn't have to bother me about it.

But instead, it developed further and further into a bad habit of snacking and not photographing and reporting it.  Sunday was where it came to a head.

In the morning, I had protein shake for breakfast.

Then, according to my photos, I had a snack:

And our dinner, which was ham and egg sandwiches on a pretzel bun roll.

But there's so much that I had in between there that I didn't photograph.

On Saturday, when we went to the store, and I bought a Gatorade, we also bought a bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs for my wife.

We bought a bag of Coconut M&M's Speckled Eggs, because I know how much my wife likes them.

And as I said in the last post, we bought a box of Girl Scout cookies too.

None of these things were supposed to be for me, but I partook of them all.  And in small, but, eventually when added up, copious amounts.  I nibbled at these things the whole day through, and by the end of it all, I probably ate 500 to 1,000 or more calories in chocolate and cookies.

This morning, when I weighed myself, it was worse than I thought it could be.  I hope that by Wednesday, I'm at least back to where I started this week out on, because that's really the best I can probably hope for.

I have to recommit to this thing.  I am vowing to not put anything in my mouth besides water without photographing it.  No matter how small the bite might be.  I think it will make a big difference if I do.  I'll surely be less likely to have these backsliding weeks, and I won't have to lose the same pounds twice or more to get past them.

Daily Food Report #25

I wanted to make up for my freak out of the night before, so I tried to stay on track with eating.  I made an omelette for breakfast.  But I saw that we had three different kinds of cheese in the cheese drawer in the fridge for some reason, and I decided that I had to include them all in my omelette.

Probably not good. I've been trying to avoid cheese for the most part recently, because I don't think it's a particularly healthy way to obtain protein.  But it's soooo good, that sometimes I give in.  I gotta cut this crap out.

I was busy doing a lot of chores and stuff, so I was pretty good, aside from the fact that I didn't eat enough most of the day.  At lunchtime, I had a sort of sandwich without a bun.  It was ham, cheese, lettuce, and tomato.  I ate two of these, the second one I put Mayo on.

Now, at some point in the day, I got out some M&M's to take a picture for the binge fest that I'd had the day before.  I wanted to be honest about what I'd done, and I hadn't taken pictures while I was at it, so I tried to recreate it all.  Of course, I wound up eating the big handful that I got out to photograph.

Way to go!

I did go running on Saturday.  My sister's been on my case to get going on the marathon training, so I went out and ran five miles.  It was much harder than it used to be in December when I was doing it every single day practically.  I struggled through it, and felt really tired and sore afterward.  My daughters wanted to go to the store to get themselves some chocolate, so I drove them, and got a Gatorade for myself while we were there.  That's 200 calories it turns out, but I think it did help me get re-hydrated.

Outside the store we went to, there was a troop of Girl Scouts selling cookies.  We bought one box of Samoas, and I had this cookie pictured, as well as one more before the night ended.

Not a huge deal, except that they are super high in calories, so two has gotta be the limit.

In the evening, it was time for our weekly date night, so my wife and I went to this place called The Wild Zucchini.  It's an interesting place where you can make Italian food to order.  They have a bar with a bunch of Sandwich Artist-types on the other side, and you tell them what you want, from sauce to vegetables to meat, and so on, and they put together your food for you.  I've been there once before, and had the noodle bowl.  This time I decided to get the piadina.

It's a wrap with noodles inside of it, so you can guess that there was a lot of carbs and calories in it.  I surely ruined everything by eating at this place tonight.  I should have forced my wife to eat somewhere else, but where?  I don't know restaurants well, because we've never been the types that eat out a lot.  So, let me pose this question to anyone who eats out enough to know better than me.  Where is a good place to eat out that is both nice and low calorie/low carb?  Should I just go to the steakhouse and order steak and veggies only?  Is there another good option?

Daily Food Report #24

I waited too long to post this one.  I'm forgetting how Friday went.  Hopefully I can reassemble things from my memory okay, of course the pictures will help.  Let's see...

Started with my breakfast omelette.

Then I had my usual snack.

My lunch was the leftovers from our date night last Saturday.  I discovered them in the fridge after all this time, and decided that I would not let them go to waste, because they had been so yummy.  I ate all of mine, and this was just what was left of my wife's chicken masala.  Also, I had my salad, with a new addition, snow peas.  Mmmmm....snow peas are so friggin' good.  Too bad they're always so expensive.

I had my first M&M snack somewhere between lunch and dinner.

Don't remember why, but I never ate my snack for Friday afternoon.  Instead, I just went straight to dinner.  Which was a hamburger.  I ate it the same way I ate it Thursday, using my salad as the good stuff.  Tomato and lettuce added to each chunk, no bun.

When I went out to my car, I grabbed another handful of M&M's to snack on, and then I drove home.

That's where the trouble started.  I was itching for a treat...don't know why, but I pretty much lost all control.  I had a bowl of cereal, a small one, but still, I didn't need one at all.

The kids had a box of Wheat Thins out on the counter, and I had what you see in this picture about twice over.

Then I had a few Saltines.  My daughter was eating them, so so did I.  They're not even particularly good, but who cares, I was eating everything right?

Interspersed with all this crap, I also went out to my car about four times to get larger than usual handfuls of M&M's to eat.

I guess everybody has bad days, but this was particularly bad.  And it was the start of the weekend, which is always the hardest time for me to keep my eating under control.  Looked foreboding to me.