4XLT

One of my better friends here in Portland is a fellow portly fella named Ben. We both are part of the Chi Alpha Christian community of folks here in town (where I’ve been on staff for the past year plus), so we see each other pretty often from week to week. On occasion, we’ll gripe about our weight and health. And leave it at that.

About two weeks ago we were in a van together on our way back from California and started griping about our weight again. This time, to help give us an incentive to get our respective acts together, we concocted a harebrained scheme.

We’re having a twenty pound weight loss race. The wager? Well, we’re both poor, so we’ve gone with public humiliation of some sort.

We started about two weeks ago. As of last week, Ben lost nine pounds (in a single week) due to cutting out carbs. Dagum Atkins diet. Grar! We go to our weekly weigh in at the hospital tomorrow, and I’m down four pounds to the guy. I may be in trouble if he pulls off another miracle week, but I’m in this to win it!

My gym time this week has been really off the charts – I’m starting to really enjoy going and lifting, although my right shoulder is still sore from my workout Sunday night. Eating hasn’t been the nightmare of large Dr. Peppers and fast food as it has lately, but I need to get a gameplan to my diet in the same way that I’m attacking the gym.

As it is, I’m eating relatively healthy when I do, but my eating is really, really sporadic. I haven’t been doing five smaller meals a day and I haven’t been tracking my intake. My water level is not were it needs to be, but not were it used to be. I’ve been hitting the diet cola a lot, which, odd as it may be, is something I’m really damn proud of. Apart from my diet pop victory, my only other extremely high point is that I’m making sure I eat protein right after I get done working out. Mmm. Muscle fuel.

I went and purchased The Abs Diet a few days ago – I’ll be building some food plan based on it and we’ll see where that goes. I’ll check in tomorrow on my weigh in! Here’s for another good week!