Tag: weight loss

I Said No… Well, Sorta

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, FoodLeave a comment

Wow, this diet must be really messing with my head because I said no to Taco Bell today.

I went to the grocery store before Darrin came home to buy him some fried chicken and macaroni salad and I also bought him some macaroni and cheese just in case he wanted it.  I also bought some salad stuff for myself.  But when Darrin came home from work he was carrying a Taco Bell bag.  UGH!

So we went in the house and he had 3 of those .99 cent double beefy cheesy burritos or whatever they are called and a .99 caramel apple empanada.  I was going to say no thanks to them all but I just couldn’t.  I only ate 1 burrito and the empanada.  I did say no to the other 2 burritos though.

Well, technically I didn’t say no, I put them in the fridge.  I’m sure he will end up eating them but that’s ok.  I’m ok if he does.

In order for me to be successful with my weight loss I have to say no as much as possible.  I don’t think 1 burrito and an empanada (which is an apple pie) is going to hurt me though.  But tomorrow I’m definitely going to eat a salad and hope that he ate all my burritos hehe.

He isn’t working tomorrow so he can have the burritos for lunch and the fried chicken for dinner (or vice versa) and I’ll just eat my diet foods/shakes.

Preoccupied

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I haven’t been blogging the last few days but I’m still here.  It’s unusual for me not to blog since I typically blog 1-5 times daily lol.  But I’ve been preoccupied with other things.

We just had new tenants move in on May 1st and so I helped them carry boxes in the house from the U-Haul truck and I’ve been watching TV.  Catching up on Stargate SG-1 on Sci Fi as usual.

I have noticed some weight loss thanks to my new way of thinking about eating and stuff.  Before I was just riding hoping that would be enough to lose the weight considering I lost nearly 20lbs last year with exercise alone.  It doesn’t seem to be enough now so I’ve been measuring my food and drinking slim fast for lunch too.

I’m afraid of talking about my progress because it seems to never fail, I talk about how much I’ve lost then the weight loss stops completely then I plateau for a couple of months before I give up.

About maybe 5 years ago I was eating nothing but salads and snacking on sliced cucumbers and baby carrots and I remember I was 212lbs and then one day after about 2 or 3 months of this diet I decided to weigh myself and I was 172lbs.  Well from that day forward the weight stayed the same, it just stopped then I got frustrated because I plateaued then gave up and the weight came back almost as fast as it left. That’s because I started bragging about how I lost the weight.

All I’m going to say is that I’m working on it.  I’ve decided that by not talking about it I’m not bragging about it and if/when people come up to me and tell me OMG you’ve lost so much weight I’m just going to say thanks and move on from there.

As long as I’m eating right and not over eating and exercising I think I’m going to do good and lose the weight I need/want to lose then I can get back on with my life.  But not talking about it lol.

Weight Loss

On By Michel McDonaldIn DietLeave a comment

I’m going to be brief because I just took an ambien about 30 minutes ago and it’s kicking in.

Yesterday and today I’ve been following a new way of eating.  Muffin for breakfast (today bran muffin yuck hehe) and slim fast shake for lunch then whatever for dinner.  Tonight we went to Young’s grocery store and got the Chinese food but only ate half of it.  I’m saving the rest for tomorrow nights dinner.

So far a couple lbs lost.  Tomorrow I’m going to ride the bike with this diet and we’ll see how it goes as far as how hungry I will be and how much energy I have from taking Slim Fast Optima.  We will see.

Friendly Spam

On By Michel McDonaldIn Email, SpamLeave a comment

Is there such thing as friendly spam?  I don’t know, all I know is I much prefer spam fried and on bread with mayo.

I get a lot of emails every day advertising something like porn, penis enlargement, weight loss, and from various companies like Pepsi and Dairy Queen and even news emails from newsmax.com.  I don’t care for them, I just immediately delete them, that is if they don’t find themselves in my spam folder.

If it wasn’t bad enough getting those spam emails, I get tons of other spam from people that I know.  Friends send me spam constantly.  I get either petitions or chain letters and they are all guilting me into sending them to 10 or more people.  The petitions say that I have to sign my name at the end of the email then forward it to 10 people and those 10 people sign it and forward it.  First of all, those petitions don’t do any good because they never get to who they are intended to go to and 2nd whoever they are sent to don’t take them seriously.

The chain ones say if you don’t send it out to 10+ people you will have bad luck.  I don’t believe they will give me good or bad luck.  No voodoo priestess enchanted an email to give you good or bad luck OK.  There is no luck with chain letters or chain emails.

The spam I hate, really really hate are religious emails that friends and family send me.  Sometimes that’s all they send me and when I email them they don’t even respond to my emails at all so I start to wonder why I even have them in my address book at all.  Why don’t I just block their emails from coming to me.  I hate religious emails.  It’s like they are shoving their god or Jesus down my throat.  I don’t send gay emails to everyone shoving homosexuality down their throats so what gives them the right to do that to me?

This one person who I met on the greyhound as I was going to visit my aunt in 2000 or something who I gave my email address to sends me nothing but religious emails and yesterday she spammed me with about 10 emails with all of her YouTube videos.  Yeah, I’ve seen them and they aren’t new, I don’t know why she feels the need to share them with me again.  One of them is a video of this guy in his 50’s or 60’s and he’s sleeping with a laptop on his lap and he’s sleeping sitting up but hunched over the computer and she’s laughing and saying MySpace addict.  I didn’t see MySpace up on the screen.  It was just the desktop with icons.  How does that make him a MySpace addict?  It just makes him a laptop addict.  That makes no sense to me so I don’t even respond to it.

Frankly, I’m sick of getting emails from anybody because that’s the only crap they send me.  I think there are 2 people who send me emails with conversation in them who I correspond with and that’s it.  All the rest feel the need to spam me on a daily basis.  I don’t mind the jokes or the puppy/kitty/baby pictures, those I love to see and the jokes and comic strips are really funny.  But don’t shove god/chain/petitions down my throat unless you are prepared to get a 20 page email about homosexuality.

10 Speed

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I decided last night that instead of getting my bike fixed right away or when I get money I want to go to the thrift store where we saw that 10 speed road bike for $20 and see if they still have it.  I’ve wanted to have 2 bikes at the house so if Darrin ever decides he wants to go bike riding for weight loss then we can go together.

I also wanted a 10 speed road bike because that’s what the majority of the people are riding on the bike trail.  I think that a 10 speed is a lot faster because it’s lighter and it will give me less pain in my legs, I think.

I still want to fix the handlebars on my mountain bike but just when I get the money that’s all.  I don’t want to fix it myself because I really don’t know what I’m doing.  You gotta take the rubber grips off of the handlebars first and I just don’t want to do that because they have the roadmaster logo on them.  I also would like to just bring it in to the bike store so they can look at it to make sure everything is in good condition.

My mountain bike can keep the lock on it and the lights with the generator because I might want to ride that to the store (when it’s fixed) at night and I’ll need the lights and the lock.  But I will transfer the computer over to the 10 speed and the frame bag.  The frame bag really doesn’t work in the mountain bike because the frame is too small for a frame bag.  I was barely able to keep my water bottle on it because with the bag there the water bottle was sticking out and I’ve been terrified that it would eventually pop out into traffic.

I’m actually looking forward to getting a 10 speed road bike because I think it would be easier to ride and I think I would go a lot faster which would mean that I would burn much more calories.  If I went faster I could probably ride the 18 miles in a lot shorter period of time and burn a ton of calories in the process.  And rest less.  Yes, I’m very excited about this.

Bad Week for Riding

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well today I didn’t get to ride at all because of the delivery mix up.  Since they finally showed up at 1:45pm I thought it would be ok to go out but I really prefer to go in the morning after breakfast.  I’d prefer to get it out of the way and not have to worry about getting too hot.  What am I going to do in the summer time?  Sheesh I’m gonna have to get up at 4am in the summer time.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the neurologist for my carpel tunnel syndrome and that appointment is at 11:30am which means I’m going to have to get up really early to leave.  I’m usually gone for an hour and half, I could leave at 9am and be back at 10:30 so I have an hour to get ready.  I think I’m gonna do that.

But then on Friday I have a doctor’s appointment with our regular doctor for a regular visit at 10am.  There is no way I’m getting up at 7am to ride my bike lol.  I normally don’t get up until 9:30am so I’m just going to go after my appointment, that is if I get home by noon lol.  We’re usually gone for 2 hours even when we have an appointment.  What’s up with doctors?  You come early and you end up waiting in the waiting room for 45 minutes AFTER your appointment time even if you were there half an hour early.

I know one thing is that I’m going to ride this Saturday and Sunday no matter what.  I know that I’m keeping my weight down (even though I’m eating a PB&J right now) but in order for me to really keep my weight down I gotta exercise as much as possible.  I’m talking about maintaining my weight loss as well as losing weight.  That’s been my problem, I can lose about 10-20lbs but then I start to just maintain it.  Even if I am able to maintain my weight I need to keep going.

Delivery

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I was supposed to get a package this morning and the driver rang the doorbell but the batteries in our doorbell are dead or dying so we didn’t hear it.  They left a note saying they showed up but there was no answer and so I got a call from my pharmacy who delivered the package saying that they will call the delivery company about a 2nd attempt.  They called me back saying that I’d have to wait until 5pm.  I told them that the delivery company will have to bang on the metal door and I can’t count on Darrin being awake to get it for me so I gotta stay home until they show up.

I just hope they come before too long because I can’t ride my bike if the sun starts to go down because I don’t like riding it at night.  First of all the generator on the bike gives me more resistance, which isn’t bad if I wasn’t so heavy I guess because then it would give me a better workout but I would rather get that better workout when I’m thinner heh.

If I have to just end up staying home today and not getting any exercise that’s fine I guess.  I know it’s going to take at least a year to get this weight off so what’s one more day eh?  This just means that I won’t take Sunday off.  Normally I like to ride 5 days a week and take 2 days off but I don’t mind riding 6 days.  I actually don’t even mind riding 7 days but I do like to give my legs a break every so often to help recharge them.

I was just hoping that this Friday when I weigh in I will actually show that I’ve lost some weight.  I don’t see any weight loss so far from last week.  I could weigh in every 2 weeks, it doesn’t have to be every week.  I mean, actually I could weigh in once a month.  It doesn’t matter when I weigh in, as long as I weigh in.  I would prefer not having to weigh in on a weekly basis because it makes me feel bad when I constantly weigh myself because I feel discouraged when I do weigh myself.

Edit: The package finally came at 1:45pm and I had plenty of time to go on my bike ride but just decided not to.  I like going at 10am when it’s still early.

R&R

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Today I decided not to go bike riding because I wanted to give my legs a chance to rest since I’ve been going such a long distance.  Tomorrow I will be going out again.  I’m just not sure if it’s worth riding 17 miles a day while I’m still in this stage of still getting used to riding a bike at all.  I mean it’s only been a month and even though I’ve seen 8lbs of weight loss so far I’m not seeing very much weight loss even with 17 and 18 mile days.  It’s nice to go a long distance to really step it up and everything but I just don’t see the results.

Now I realize that by me saying that I’m saying that I’m giving up on going such a long distance and I don’t want to say that but at the same time I think I can just do the 11 miles and get away with it for now.  I want to burn calories but not at the expense of causing myself pain and possible injury to my muscles.  I’m probably going to notice no weight loss at all this week and that’s possibly because I’m building too much muscle in my legs causing me to gain muscle weight so I don’t see the fat weight disappearing.

The first month was only 8lbs and normally I would be upset by that because 7lbs isn’t a lot to lose in a month, that’s 2lbs a week but at this point I’m just happy to not be in the 240’s anymore.  Being in the mid 230’s makes me feel that if I can get there then I can get to 220’s and so on but it takes time, a lot of time.  I need to stop worrying about the scale and stop thinking about it too much.

Tonight I decided that since I was weighing myself as 238 which is more than last weeks weigh in by 1 calorie that I would start eating salads for dinner, just to give me smaller calories for that meal of the day.  Breakfast I’ve been eating toast and a yoplait, lunch a peanut butter and jam sandwich or a ham sandwich.  Actually I’ve been eating 2 sandwiches but I’m going to limit myself to just 1 from now on and as soon as I get more yoplait’s on friday I’m going to limit my breakfast to just a yoplait.  I love coffee but I’m going to try to limit that too.  Darrin bought me this whole big thing of creamer so it’s going to be difficult to not be able to enjoy it.  I’m thinking for now coffee every other day.  I have been drinking a lot of water though so that helps big time.  Not the sparkling bottled water with flavor that Darrin has been buying from Albertson’s but just plain filtered water.

Well, I’m blogging this just before bed, I’ve taken my ambien already so I’m gonna go do the litter box then get in the shower and go to bed.

Weight Loss

On By Michel McDonaldIn DietLeave a comment

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).