Diet

Today Darrin went to the grocery store and bought a few things and one of those things was a bag of 8 pieces of fried chicken. OMG it smelled so good when I first smelled it. I resisted and went back into my bedroom. Although, around 9pm I started to get a little hungry and so I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge and saw the chicken bag so I took out 1 piece and heated it up in the toaster oven.

OMG it was so good. Hey I’ve been so good the last couple months. Sometimes you are allowed to sneak something good even if it’s bad hehe. And it was oh so bad. But 1 bad thing wont ruin my entire diet so who cares. Tomorrow it will be diet as usual.

Weight Loss

When I quit smoking in 1996 I gained weight. A lot of weight. About 50lbs. And over the years it has grown. I’ve gone on diets and I’ve never really lost that much weight and when I did lose it, I ended up gaining it back.

One time I lost 40lbs and didn’t even realize it until I weighed myself and then I started gaining it back. Well, I’ve gotten so heavy that I went to 243lbs. I was originally 150lbs when I first quit smoking. I was very comfortable at 150lbs and I was happy but 243 is just too much so I went back on a diet.

I’ve so far lost 20lbs and hope to continue this quest of losing weight. I’m using 2 different programs, SparkPeople.com and Slim Fast. I like the slim fast optima because it curbs my appetite for 4 hours. I don’t get up early, I get up at noon, I don’t know why. But I do and so I wake up and have a chocolate shake then 4 hours later I have vanilla shake then at 6pm I eat dinner that is usually a recipe from Spark People.

At 8pm I will have a strawberry shake because I’m usually hungry again by that time so the shake controls my appetite until it’s bed time. Unfortunately I can’t go to sleep until 2am. The last shake would normally wear off by midnight but I try my best to not eat. If I have to I’ll eat a Slim Fast candy bar hehe. Those have the optima too. Well, I’m hoping to be 200lbs by the end of summer at least and then 150lbs by my next birthday.

If you want to see my progress look at the scale on my spark page (look at the menu on the left).

Emergency Room

We went to the store tonight and I bought a can of Slim Fast Optima because it controls your appetite for 4 hours it says. During the day I really don’t have much of an appetite, it’s typically after 6pm when my appetite comes at me.

I will eat dinner at 6pm but an hour later I’m hungry again and I keep wanting to eat until about 1am and that’s bad. You aren’t supposed to eat past a certain time, I think 8pm or something. So I needed something to help me out with that so I bought Slim Fast.

Well, so I got out my slim fast shaker cup and filled it to the 8oz line with some low-fat milk then I put a scoop of slim fast in it then shook the cup. Then I looked over at my blender and thought oh I should put it in there and add some ice to it and I got a real milk shake.

So I went over to the blender, it’s not a big blender, it’s a 1 glass blender so it doesn’t make a pitcher full of drinks, just 1 glass at a time. So I went to unscrew it from the unit and when I did that I unscrewed the glass from the blade instead of the whole thing from the unit.

So I sat the glass down and grabbed the blade part and tried to unscrew it and I was turning it the wrong direction and completely forgetting that I had it plugged in, I was holding the unit with my right hand and accidentally pressed the button on it and it blended my left hand.

Well, thankfully it didn’t do a lot of damage. All it did was it made a half round mark on the palm of my hand, it cut deep enough into my skin that I had to go to the E.R. The cut near my index finger was superficial compared to the cut near my thumb.

I didn’t have to wait that long and I got seen and they cleaned it up with iodine and the doctor used Dermabond to glue the cut closed instead of stitches. It doesn’t hurt or anything, I just gotta be careful and not get it wet for the next 5-10 days which is how long it will be on before it falls off. I was very, very extremely lucky that it wasn’t worse. I could be missing a finger.

Sparking Up Again

In October 2007 I was on the SparkPeople diet which is really not a diet but they teach you how you should be eating the right foods and the right portions. They tell you what foods to eat which include the food pyramid and you eat veggies and drink water all day long and you tell them exactly what you ate and they tell you how many calories, carbs, fats etc you had for the day.

This is really helpful in losing weight. It’s not a diet because you are eating foods you are supposed to be eating anyway. You can eat snacks just as long as they aren’t too fatty or have a lot of calories. Eating an apple for a snack is good, or carrots, hey my mom used to give that to us for snacks and celery with peanut butter. And they tell you to exercise and you can log your cardio exercises in there so it can tell you how many calories you have to burn 3 days a week. The program has 4 stages too.

In October 2007 something changed in my life a few weeks after I started this diet and I ended up slacking off because I was too depressed to continue with it. I started out on October 1st at 225lbs and lost about 13lbs. Since I quit I gained 30+lbs.

I can’t tell you how much I need to lose this weight. I am having trouble breathing, my back is breaking all the time from carrying around 93lbs of extra weight, I have sleep apnea, if I don’t get thin I will be diabetic and that is no joking matter. I need this to work.

I’m going to try to get a jump rope today because apparently that is really good cardio. I was using the treadmill a couple years ago and the calorie loss in 1 hour is the same or more for 30 min of jumping rope. When I was a kid I jumped rope for hours so hopefully I can get back into it and lose the weight.

SparkPeople

I was doing a search on the internet for diets because I really need to lose some weight and I found this website www.sparkpeople.com and I’m really happy with it so far.  I signed up on October 1st (technically I signed up on 9/30 but this website goes by Eastern time so to them it was after midnight) and I’ve been following their direction for the last week.  They tell me, actually tell me what to eat.  Even though I know I’m supposed to eat fruits and veggies etc. I never really do it because I don’t know what kinds to eat so I just don’t.  I know that is a sucky excuse but it’s true.   It’s like if I am not told what to eat then I will just eat whatever I want to and I know that’s bad.  But I’m learning from this website how to live better, healthier and to eat the right portions.  It will help my stomach to shrink so I can lose weight faster because the portions they give me will actually make me full and maybe I will get to the point where I wont eat the amounts they say to eat because my stomach will be too small to fit it all.

Check out their website.  They give you a meter that shows your progress.  I’m on there as Xanapus.  I’m putting a link on my site in the menu called My SparkPage.  I will update it at every weigh in.