T - 74 - Surviving the Buffet

After a week of going on and off the routine, Saturday was probably the first day where I actually stayed on routine.  Like every other Saturday since I started this diet, Saturday's have been a day of getting things done.  Be it celebrating a birthday, doing house chores, planning my cheat meal or even playing video games, its always been a productive day and this one was no different.

Since I was so busy with work last weekend, I had completely forgotten about my cheat meal.  So I've been looking forward to it this time around.  The plan was to go to The Cheesecake Factory or a buffet at an India restaurant.  That's right.  When I say cheat meal, I mean it.  I really wanted to go to both places.  Get a dessert from the factory and the spicy chicken from the Indian place, but in the end decided to just choose one.

T - 75 - Finding Balance

What a week.  This week has been probably the busiest I can remember in a long while, and yet at the same time, the least productive since I started the weight loss journey.  Doesn't make sense?  It will in a second.  The busy part, is due to me being overloaded at work and the least productive part, is pretty much everything else.  As I got busier at work, my diet, workouts, the blog and pretty much everything else in my routine has suffered.

I'm not used to dealing with a busy after work schedule, so making sure I get my daily tasks done has been challenging.  I'm finally starting to understand what people mean when they say work life balance.  Until now, I thought it meant, you shouldn't overwork yourself like hog forever.  You should take a vacation every now and then to unwind, etc.  So in the past, I would work a crazy amount of hours week after week.  When it finally came time to take a breath, I'll schedule some vacation time and completely go off grid.  I'm now coming to the realization, that even though I thought I had a good work life balance, I didn't.

T - 76 - The Guilty Parts

If you read my previous post, you know already know that my Thursday was a total blur.  So I'm going to skip the details here and not bore you to death.  Though the day was a blur, I do remember some parts very clearly.  The guilty parts.  I don't know about you, but when I'm on diet, the guilt is amplified.  Eat an extra French fry at lunch, feel guilty for 2 hours.  Go above my calorie amount for the day, starve the rest of the day. Skip a workout, stay up all night feeling guilty.

I'm sure you have an idea by now, how my day went.  I kinda knew that I was off my routine right from the beginning.  First of all, I just could not get out of bed in the morning.  I felt like there was a 500 pound bear sleeping on top of me.  My whole body was so heavy.  No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't move it.  By the time I was up, I was already running late to work.

T - 77 - Confused

Wow, I missed Wednesday's update and didn't even know it.  Yesterday was a total blur.  I had no idea that I missed the daily blog update until it was time to go to bed.  Work has been crazy lately, so unless I set myself reminders to do something, it does not get done.  I usually write the blog post at lunch time, and yesterday I forgot to do that because I didn't have time for lunch.  Anyways, I know its a day late, but hey, better late than never.

Since work was so busy, I didn't get time to make notes of about how the day went.  That means by now (Friday) I'm all confused about what happened Wednesday.  So once again, you'll have to forgive me for the lame quality of this post.  Thankfully, I did enter my meals into My Fitness Pal, so I have some reference.

T - 78 - The Couch Devil

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me.  After that lazy Sunday and a crazy Monday I had, I was ready to get back to normal.  I started the day off with a bad taste though.  I had that crappy fiber cereal for breakfast.  You know I've been wanting to get more breakfast ideas.  Though I found some good options, most of them require some prep work, and I was really not in the mood to prepare anything.  So cereal was the easiest healthy option available.  I'm planning on doing some prep work for tomorrows breakfast tonight, I'll let you know how that goes.

Once at work, I had my cup of joe and was ready to go.  It was an uneventful day, so that gave me the chance to pretty much do most of what I had on my things to do list.  I got most of the office work done.  I had to make up for missing my update on Sunday, so I posted that and Monday's update yesterday.  So overall I was pretty happy how it had turned out.  I had a healthy breakfast, a salad for lunch, some soup for a snack, drank plenty of water.  I even took the stairs through the day.  I was all geared up and ready to go the gym after work.  When I got out of work, however, the couch devil came out. 

T - 79 - Case of the Mondays

"Someone's got a case of the Mondays".  For those of you who don't know, its from the movie Office Space.  It is a must see movie for those of you who work in a cubicle environment.  I hate Mondays.  They are some how cosmically aligned to be the crappiest day of the week.  As if going back to work after a weekend isn't hard enough, something all goes wrong on Mondays.  Be it a flat tire, spilling coffee on your shirt, work related disasters, they all aim for Mondays. 

I had been working all weekend long trying to get things done, so I won't be swamped when I get in the office on Monday.  Its a good thing I did because, when I came into the office Monday morning, we were having all sorts of issues.  Our entire office network was being affected with god knows what, but anything that could fail, had failed and needed immediate attention.  So I spent all day putting fires out.  I should have know that it wasn't going to be a good day when it started with me spending an hour and half stuck in traffic

T - 80 - Lazy Sunday

I know, I missed my update for Sunday.  I was super busy with work yesterday that I barely had anytime.  My appolgies for the delay.  Here it is.

Like the title says, it was a lazy Sunday.  That doesn't mean I didn't do anything the whole day.  Its just that I didn't workout.  As you know I had been working mostly over the weekend, and Sunday was no exception.  I woke up early morning and worked all the way through till about 3PM.  I took a break in between to have some coffee, but that was about it.  I was working from home again, so I didn't even realize how fast time flew by.

Since I had been working almost the whole weekend, I decided to skip the workout, get some rest, and enjoy whatever was left of the weekend.  From a diet perspective, I don't feel too bad about skipping the workout though.  That's because I didn't eat breakfast, lunch or dinner.  You may think that I didn't eat because I was so involved in work but that was not the case.  It was a planned decision.  Why?  Because I lost only 1 freaking pound the whole week.  That's right 1lb.  The same as the week before.  I was not a happy camper. 

T - 81 - The Distracted Diet

 I've found the my best method for avoiding cravings.  Distraction.  Its amazing how little cravings you get when you are busy or per-occupied.  Be it doing something fun with your loved ones, playing video games, watching great movies, or in yesterday's case, just plain working.  As you know, my Friday routine was blown to smithereens, and I ended up working from home partially.  I need to work over the weekend to catch up, so that's how I spent most of my day yesterday.  Exciting, I know.

While it wasn't my favorite pass time, work did keep me so busy that I forgot it was my cheat meal day.  Amazing, right?  I mean, the prior weekends, I was looking forward to my cheat meal for the whole week.  I knew where I wanted to cheat.  I knew what I wanted to eat, and I knew exactly how much I was going to eat, and how many calories that would add up to etc.  This week however, I barely even thought about it.  See, I wasn't kidding when I said time is flying by.  I think I'm going to write about it.  The Distracted Diet.  Look for it in a bookstore near you shortly. Haha!

T - 82 - Saved by Sashimi

I had a nice little routine planned for yesterday.  Wake up early and have breakfast, get a cup of coffee, have a nice soup and salad for lunch and snack, head to the gym in the evening after work, and meet some friends for dinner and a movie.  Nice, right?  Well, things didn't go quite as well as I had planned it.

I did wake up early as planned, but right after I got out of the shower, I got a call from my wife that her car broke down on her way to work.  That kind of threw a monkey wrench into the routine right from the get go.  No time to eat breakfast.  I just got dressed and went to pick her up.  I had to then drop her off at work, and get her car towed.  All this wouldn't have been a big deal, if I didn't have the coffee headache to go along with it.

T - 83 - Need Cardio Ideas

I'm pretty happy with the new blog schedule.  Posting to my blog in the afternoon, gives me enough time in the evening to get other important things done.  I'm able to get to bed early and wake up early as well, which is probably the biggest plus.  Also, I'm not as exhausted so I can think more clearly, so it doesn't take me as long it used to at night, to write a post.

There is, however, one down side that I had not anticipated.  I don't remember a damn thing that happened yesterday, to write about it today.  While I can think clearly to write up a quick post, I'm having to spend more time remembering what happened yesterday, so I can give you a better breakdown.  This is a problem that needs to be rectified quick.

T - 84 - Speed of Light

"Time is making fools of us again" ~ J.K. Rowling. 

That is what I feel like now.  Remember how I used to complain about the days being so long and slow.  Well, I'm doing the opposite of that now.  When I started this whole diet and blog process, I felt time had crawled to a stop. The first week was the worst. Everyday felt like an eternity. Having to plan every single detail of every day was exhausting. I recall every night while typing the blog I had to force myself to stay awake. I was so tired by the end of the day, that I would pass out as soon as I hit the bed.

Now that I'm in a routine though, I feel like I'm in warp speed. I blink and a day has gone by. Holy cow! Just when you get used to the pace, time plays tricks on us and speeds up.  I've definitely got more energy throughout the day. For example, yesterday I need to burn of some energy while at work, so I decided to go up and down 10 flights of stairs during lunch. It was a nice quick little workout. I don't feel as lazy as usually, but I've still got a long way to go.  Working out in the evening still seems like a tedious task, but its not as daunting as it used to be.

T - 85 - Rain or Snow (Long Read)

Last night was a crazy one.  Probably the craziest since I started on this journey.  It all started in the evening.  As part of my strategy to not go out for dinner, I've been eating a good sized meal a couple of hours before I head to the gym.  This prevents me from feeling too hungry before, during and after my workout.  I've only been doing this for a few days now, but it has been working pretty well.  I was eager to get back to the gym since I hadn't worked out all weekend.  I wanted to get in there and sweat the guilt out of me.

So there I was eating my chicken soup, around 4PM, as a pre-workout meal.  The soup cup wasn't too big, but I could tell it was loaded with chicken.  As I was getting to the bottom of the cup, I realized I'm getting pretty full.  Almost too full for a pre-workout meal.  I was worried.  What if it doesn't digest enough for me to do cardio in a couple of hours?  What if I end up using this as an excuse to skip the gym, again?

Night Owl No More

I've come to the realization that the task of updating my blog every night is actually one of the reasons I'm staying up late.  I just don't have enough time in the evening to squeeze in a workout, dinner, update the blog, relax for a bit and still go to bed early.  If I am to meet my goal of sleeping early every night, somethings gotta give.  Don't worry, I'm not giving up on the blog.  I'm just going to shift the time I post my updates.  Instead of posting my daily update at night, I'm going to start doing it in the afternoon.  So for example, tonight's update, will be posted on my blog on Wednesday around noon.  Make sense?

T - 86 - New Grading System

I'm not off to a good start this week.  Once again my plan to workout in the evening at home didn't materialize.  This is precisely the reason why having my gym close to work is a great option. It forces me to workout right after I get off from work, preventing me from making up excuses once I'm home.  I'm not going to sound like a whiny baby and spoil your night.  So lets just say, I'm determined not to skip gym tomorrow.

Also, I've been thinking.  Keeping track of how I did each day with the checklist below is a good idea.  However, I don't exactly know how I did today, compared to yesterday or the day before etc.  To solve that problem, I've come up with a new grading system that I can use to grade myself each day.  Here is how its going to work.  For each task on my checklist, I get 1 point.  I'm going to split task 7 into 2 points, so I can round it out with an even 10 points.  So if I completed 7 out of the 10 tasks successfully, then I get a grade of 70%.  Simple enough.  This will help me graph my daily, weekly and monthly progress.  Hopefully it will also show me a trend of which days I'm having the most trouble with completing my tasks, so I can better prepare myself on those days.

One is a lonely number

I decided to weigh myself early last week, since I knew I'll be cheating heavly on the weekend.  So I weighed myself on Saturday morning and found that I only lost 1lb last week.  I can't say that I'm surprised by it, though I was hoping for a little bit more.  One is just such a lonely depressing number.  Although, I guess it better than zero.  Considering how much I ate over the week, and the amount of exercise I put it, 1lb sounds about right.

So I'm two weeks into the diet, and I've lost a total of 5lbs so far.  I'm still on track with my goal of losing 2.5lbs a week, but I need to kick things up a notch this week to make sure I don't fall behind.  I had signed up for My Fitness Pal a week ago, and have been keeping track of what I'm eating through their iPhone app.  Until now, I've been doing it to just be aware of the calorie breakdown of my diet.  Going forward, I have to actively manage it.

Birthday Weekend Results

Epic Fail!  That is the best way to describe my accomplishments over the  birthday weekend.  As you know, I had made this nice little plan on how to survive the weekend, without recking my diet. 

I got the sense that things are not going to go too well, when I deviated from the plan within a few hours after I had come up with it.  How miserably did I fail this weekend?  See for yourself.

T - 87 - Red Robinnnnnn. DUMMMM!

Well that didn't take long.  Only a few hours ago I had made this great little plan on how I'm going to stay on track with the diet this weekend, even though its my wife's birthday.  Oh if only we could all roll back time or be able to see the future.  I can only wish.

Obviously things didn't go as planned tonight.  Neither did I workout nor did I have a protein shake.  Instead, my wife and I went to Red Robin.  Yes, Red Robin.  The land of beefy juicy burgers, layerd with cheese and bacon, yummy steak fries, and oh so thick milk shakes.  Even while on the way there, I was dreaming of biting into the Bleu Ribbon Burger, my favorite.

Birthday Weekend

I'm in the second weekend of my diet, and am looking at the yet another challenge.  Last weekend, was the long weekend, and I had an elaborate plan on how to get through it.  This weekend, its my wife's birthday.  Needless to say, we will be out celebrating.

In the past, we would celebrate each others birthday for a whole week.  It could  be something as elaborate as going on a vacation or cruise, or just going out and doing something special everyday.  Either way, food was major part of it.  One year, I took her to all her favorite restaurant in one weekend.  This year however, because of the diet, we've decided to keep things rather low key.  A small gathering with friends, another with family and then something romantic with just the two of us. 

Aside from this, I also have a lot of house chores to do this weekend.  Cleaning, mowing, and blah blah blah.  The fun stuff.  So the challenge here is, how do I get this all done?  Celebrate her birthday, get my work done, find the time to workout, eat right and do all of it while showing my wife that she is most amazing girl in the world.  No small task, I know.