4XLT

Congratulations to my weight loss blogging buddy Matt – he’s recently gotten engaged! Go tell him congrats.

Today’s Weigh-In: 312.4 pounds
Next Goal: 300 pounds
Pounds to Go: 12.4

The worst winter storm in a decade is beating up Oregon right now (much like it has been through two snowy cold fronts since last weekend). A lot of snow and freezing rain is making everything a mess. For me, I haven’t driven since Friday night. I just walk across the street to the store and the pub for internet access and a change of scenery (so I don’t go crazy with cabin fever), but my truck is covered in snow and ice (just like all of town).

My parents are flying in later today, hopefully. The Portland airport has been canceling and delaying flights all weekend, and so I’m curious to see how my folks’ flight will turn out. We originally scheduled for them to arrive in Oregon around 7:30 so I could meet them at the airport after work, but with the snow and ice, I won’t be driving. I’m going to look into taking buses and the rail line to get to the airport, but it may just be that my folks will pick up their rental care from the airport and meet me at my apartment, or a restaurant near by.

This Week with my Folks

With them coming in for the week, there is a terrible chance of me repeating my disastrous Oklahoma trip where I re-gained ten pounds. With the poor weather and limited time with my parents around, I won’t be going to the gym until next Monday (when they fly out), although I found out last night that jogging through the snow is a pretty good workout. However, the fact is that to keep heading in the right direction with my health and weight loss, I will have to do it all through my nutrition.

I will do that by staying on a strict food plan from this weekend through Christmas day (Thursday). My mom is going to cook the traditional Christmas meal for the three of us, and I will enjoy it. But after that off day, I’m going back to watching my intake. I won’t be as strict with my chicken, bread, almonds, and cheese plan, but I will still show restraint with portion sizes and being carb conscious.

From Here Until New Years: Is 299 Possible?

I’m back down to my pre-trip levels of the low 3-teens, and though I’ve pretty much blown my chances at getting under 300 pounds by New Year’s, I am still no less ready to be in the 200s.

I have ran some numbers where it would, theoretically, be possible to hit the 300 mark by January 1st, and that involves weighing in at 308 on Christmas morning, maintaining it through Christmas and the day after, hitting 304 when my parents fly out next Monday, and pushing hard until Thursday morning.

On paper, it sounds feasible, but it discounts any splurging with my parents and celebrating on New Year’s. Granted, I don’t have any New Year’s plans at the moment, and depending on where I’m at mentally, I may just want to bust my ass and get into the 200s rather than party.

Waking up in 2009 and weighing 299 would be pretty stinking awesome. But then again, having a good time with people is pretty stinking awesome, too.

I’m just going to keep my wits about me for the next week while my parents are visiting and make that call when Monday rolls around.

Today’s Weigh-In: 320.4 pounds
Next Goal: 300 pounds
Pounds to Go: 20.4 pounds

Last time, I mentioned my plan to quit talking the talk and actually walk the walk with my nutrition plan. Friday didn’t go exactly according to plan, but I was more or less in the ballpark. The reason why? It’s hard to eat chicken when you don’t have any in the freezer.

Doh!

Today’s been basically right on track, with a few minor changes: I woke up really, really late (around 11), and so today will end up having four meals instead of five. I also made chili for two of my meals instead of the chicken based meals because it’s snowing like crazy. Something warm and spicy really hit the spot.

But apart from that, everything’s going good.

Nutritional Details

I’m keeping my plan extremely simple as to make it easier to actually try and accomplish. Keeping with my routine of five daily meals, I am eating 6-7oz. of chicken every meal. The first three meals are carb heavy, accompanied by three slices of whole bread. The last two will be fat heavy, and come with either 1.5oz. of almonds or several slices of cheese.

Carb-Heavy Meals

7 oz. Chicken Breast: 192 cal, 42g protein

3 slices Wheat Bread: 210 cal, 6g protein

Meal Totals: 402 calories

Carbs: 39g, 156cals, 39%

Proteins: 48g, 192cals, 48%

Fats: 5.5g, 50cals, 13%

Fat-Heavy Meal with Almonds

7 oz. Chicken Breast: 192 cal, 42g protein

1.5 oz. Roasted & Salted Almonds: 255 cal, 9g protein

Meal Totals: 447 calories

Carbs: 7.5g, 30cals, 7%

Proteins: 51g, 204cals, 46%

Fats: 25g, 226cals, 51%

Fat-Heavy Meal with Cheese

7 oz. Chicken Breast: 192 cal, 42g protein

4 slices Swiss Cheese: 210 cal, 16g protein

Meal Totals: 447 calories

Carbs: 8g, 32cals, 7%

Proteins: 58g, 232cals, 49%

Fats: 22g, 203cals, 43%

Looking Forward

I may switch out one carb meal for a fat meal with the almonds mid day, depending on how the numbers go. My parents are flying up this week for the holidays, so I won’t be going to the gym, but I also am hell-bent on sticking to this meal plan. Really, I looking at this as more of a laboratory experiment than anything else. So, if the weight loss goes well, I know exactly why.

My only reservations right now are the cost. I’m going to be going through almost a full bag of frozen chicken breasts a day at this rate. At about $8.00 a bag, that $48 every week just for the chicken, not discounting bread, cheese, almonds, and off/cheat day grub. But I guess when I look at it in the big picture, I probably spend just as much on random meals and the like. Maybe not, but who knows?

Well, I’m back into the blizzard that Portland’s getting right now. The news stations have been pre-empting their programming with continuous news coverage of the weather. Word is the snow will turn to freezing rain tonight or tomorrow – I hope this doesn’t exclude my watching of football games tomorrow. Boo hiss.

Today’s Weigh-In: 324.8 pounds
Yesterday’s Weigh-In: 325.4 pounds
Next Goal: 299.8 pounds
Pounds to Go: 24.0 pounds

Let me get this right out there in the open: I gained more then ten pounds while I was back in Oklahoma for my sister’s wedding. I don’t really know whether to be really pissed and dissapointed at myself or to just try and learn from what happened and move on. I’m leaning towards both, though.

But let me hit the highlights real briefly, and then I’ll talk about what’s next:

The Good

Compliments. It’s nice when people notice. I won’t lie.

My new nickname: “Half-Pint.” So, I went (somewhat grudgingly, at first) to the Hominy, OK house church with my best bud Nate Saturday night and had a really great time, both socially and spiritually. But in the midst of talking and goofing off, I got dubbed with a new nickname: Half-Pint. But, when I get to my goal weight under the 250 mark, that will all get changed to Quarter Pounder.

Broken Glasses & Contact Lenses. I broke my glasses during the reception at my sister’s wedding Friday night, and then stumbled around half blind the next two days. While that’s not great in and of itself, I ended up finally taking the plunge into contact lenses (and have subsequently purchased some sweet tortoiseshell Ray-Ban Wayfarers). These things have a brutal learning curve, but I’m determined to stick with it.

The Bad

I talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk. I wrote here on 4xlt about how I was going to write up a meal plan and try to follow it, but allow a few splurge of Mom’s home cooking. That didn’t happen. At all. What did happen was me grazing from the M&M’s dish in the den, drinking beer with friends, and eating lots of fried food (and feeling good about it).

Deliberate dehydration. Normally I drink a ton of water while I’m at work. Lots. However, while I was back home, I rarely drank anything outside of what I would drink at meals (at home: Diet Coke, eating out: Diet Coke and water). I’ve learned that annoying, uncomfortable things happen to my body when I don’t keep my water intake up (and I’ll leave it at that).

Delicious, wonderful Boulevard Wheet Beer. I’m not much of a drinker, and never, ever the type to get drunk (I get that from my dad). I’ll have a beer or cocktail (a Bronx made with Tanqueray #10 gin, please) maybe once every 1-3 weeks. But while I was back, I was drinking one or two drinks every couple of nights. Probably four or five nights out of the nine I was back? Not exactly great for the weight loss front.

Where Do I Go From Here?

It’s a week until Christmas (HOW IN THE WORLD??), and I’ve got just one, singular goal: quit talking about my food plan and actually follow it. Not just calories, not just half of the time, but actually man up and eat right for one week. I’ve never done it before, so I’m gonna cook up my chicken tonight and hit the ground running in the morning.

As of right now, I’m planning on using a very basic menu: chicken and turkey for protein, whole wheat bread for carbs, and cheese and nuts (probably almonds) for fats. Carbs in the morning. No fats with carbs. Protein with every meal. Eat green veggies at night.

And I give you all full rights to call me on my general patheticness if I don’t stick to it.

I need to apologize.

Months ago, when I rolled out Version 2 of 4XLT (replacing the very early, white & minimalist design that the blog started with), I didn’t do a very good job of double checking that everything on my blog worked correctly and that it displayed correctly across browsers and operating systems. I just threw it up and ran with it.

And though I’ve been aware that some things have been lacking for a while now (for example, my archives don’t work), I’ve become painfully aware of the cross-browser problems this week.

Firefox hasn’t been working correctly (read: at all) on my work computer, and so I’ve been relegated to using Internet Explorer 7. I’d much rather be on FireFox, but now that IE has tabs, I can deal. But what I can’t deal with is how horrible my blog looks. And I shudder to think how many people have seen the blog in this state.

So, I’m aiming to fix that. In the coming weeks, I’m going to be working on a total site redesign. I might upload a decent, simple WordPress theme designed by someone else in the meantime.

Ungh.

On The Health Front

I really got in the groove the first couple of days this week. I was eating right and pushing hard at the gym. Sunday and Monday were awesome (read: nasueating) HIIT sessions. Tuesdays are my off nights to watch House and Fringe. But yesterday, I discovered a bit of an embarrasing health hickup that’s going to keep me out of the gym until it resolves itself, as hard work could only exacerbate the problem.

So, I’m understandably frustrated, but as they say, “abs are built in the kitchen.” So, I’m going to keep it up hard on the nutrition front and continue gameplanning for my trip back to Oklahoma (D-Day minus two!). Things were going really well yesterday until evening time.

I was aiming at coming under my caloric goal for the day of roughly 2200 calories by about 2-300 calories since I knew I wasn’t going to be exercising. So, my plan was to just grub on a couple slices of cheese throughout the evening after work. That worked until about 10:00, when I was coming back home from an errand and was stomach-rumblin’ hungry.

I caved and stopped into Taco Bell to drop two bucks on a taco and a cheesey burrito. I was in a hurry this morning, so I didn’t weigh myself, but I’m worried that I may be back around 315 or so. We’ll see tomorrow.

Today’s Weigh-In: 313.4 pounds
Total Weight Lost: 126.6 pounds

I had a pretty awesome, albeit obvious, realization yesterday evening as I was pounding out some HIIT cardio on the elliptical machine. I’m under twenty pounds to get into the 200s. Man, that’s nothing at all! And now, having weighed in this morning below 314 – that means it’s just under fifteen pounds.

Yeah, just basic arithmetic, I know, but it’s a nice psychological edge. And it gets me pumped to knock out the next fifteen pounds and be under the 300 pound mark for the first time since high school. And it also makes me wonder why in the world I get so lax from time to time when I see how I can make good progress in a short time when I work hard in eating right/less and get to the gym!

If I continue to work hard, there’s no reason I can’t be at 299 by New Years Day.

But before that happens, I need to keep my wits about me for the next few days until I fly home to Oklahoma. While there, my strategy is to map out my meals through the week, giving myself a few splurges but otherwise staying on track. I’ll write some more about that soon.