Wednesday, August 22, 2007

We Have Liftoff


Well here I am, it's launch day. Day 1. The Big Drop officially begins today.

Above is the obligatory "before" picture. This shot was taken 2 weeks ago whilst I was on vacation with the fam in upstate New York. Fortunately it's not a full body shot, so it shouldn't crash your browser. One can clearly see the massive second chin and missing neck, indisputable evidence of my fatness. At some point I will take the embarrassing and hideous full body bathing suit before shot, to be promptly encrypted with a secret password nobody will ever know until I am wicked buff and can reminisce about my "old" self. Conveniently our camera is busted at the moment (there is a God) so that photo will not be weighing down my hard disk anytime soon.

I'm feeling good. I've got my food plan totally set - menu done, shopping done, everything locked and loaded. This is key for me. From past experience I know, the NANOSECOND I open the fridge or the pantry not PRECISELY sure what I'm looking for, I'm TOAST. I know myself. Browsing leads to tasting leads to grazing leads to a major problem. With a plan (i.e. a menu), I'm safe. If it ain't on the plan, I ain't eatin it. Hungry? No problem, I know when and what my next meal is. I'm good.

Exercise plan is still not totally baked. The crabby manager at my old club wanted to charge me a $199 "joining fee" to resume my membership, which - by the way - I had only cancelled THREE MONTH AGO. I asked her if they could waive the fee - she said they'd reduce it to $99 bucks. Sorry, not doing it, on principle. Health clubs perplex me. Here I am ready to pay them $75 bucks a month and having been a member in good standing (really good from their perspective: I paid my dues and never went!!!) and they want to rip me off. Forget that, I'll go to Gold's for $44 a month and no joining fee. Gold's isn't as cushy but who needs cushy, I'm there to sweat, right? Anyway I'll get this on track later this week. Friday. I'll do it Friday.

By the way, I did my first official weigh-in this morning. Dumb stupid scale registered 330 pounds. Remember all that stuff I said a couple days ago about scales? Forget that, this frickin scale is evil. Anyway whatever I'm not going to get hung up on it. 330 it is. Get ready to rumble...

4 comments:

john - from fat to fit said...

Welcome to the battle and best of luck to you!

Jenn said...

I'm sticking to menus as well. I dropped almost $200 on alli-approved meats, side dishes, ingredients, bits of this and that and snacks.

Honestly, I'm a lazy turd. No, really... I'm somewhat house bound. I have an almost three year old and a one year old, and I work from home - full time freelance writing that keeps me tied to my laptop or desktop for hours at a time each day.
So my exercise plan is... um... walk to the mailbox every day? Park in the back of parking lots? Do twenty minute evening walks with the kids? Take four perimeter trips around Target? Yes, that's about it...

But, with following alli menus, taking the alli pills, and exercising portion control - watching my fat grams (15 or less per meal) and taking exactly ONE serving of anything, I'm making progress. Slowly but surely... I lost four pounds since the 16th!

Jenn said...

Oh, and that $200? That was for a week's worth of food. Granted, the fat free chicken and vegetable broths, substitute butter...stuff, spenda and few seasonings will last much longer than a week... but still!

Kiran said...

Jenn and John - you guys rock, thanks so much for reading my blog and posting comments.

Jenn, I know what you mean about the food. My grocery tab for this week was $300. Then again I have six kids but still, it was about $100 more than normal. Fresh produce is expensive (in New England), so that's a huge part of it. Hopefully it will go down - as with you, there were quite a few staples in my order as well which will last beyond this week.

Re exercise don't get discouraged - any exercise is better than none. If you can figure out ANY way to fit in some strength training, do it. A personal trainer I worked with for years instilled this in me, to the extent that I think that strength training may even trump cardio for weight loss. The problem is that without strength training, you can lose lean body mass while dieting, which lowers your metabolic rate, which spells disaster for dieting.