26 February, 2011: Eat Whatever I Want Day # 4

It'd definitely harder to pig out on a work day, but I managed to do pretty well. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast, with buttered toast and coffee, then I had a pizza for lunch. Then I went to work, and was limited to a few biscuits from the office biscuit tin. Then when I came home, the pigging out got going for realz.

Dinner was a big plate of nachos (white corn chips, seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomato, onion, olives, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, and jalapenos) and a couple of ice-cold Cantinas to wash them down. I don't know why the picture turned out so blurry. Maybe it was the beer.

Then after dinner, we watched The Prince of Persia (possibly the worst movie we've seen since 10,000 BC) and I ate most of a bag of Thai Sweet Chili flavored potato chips, and then later some coffee-flavored ice cream with chocolate-covered almonds and Grand Marnier. Unlike last week, I didn't eat the whole freaking container, and I ended up with an estimated daily total of around 7000 calories. The block of Green & Black's milk chocolate with roasted almonds will have to wait until next week. I just couldn't fit it in.

It feels good to be back at work, and it feels good to be another week closer to my goal. Now all I've got to do is get busy making up for my day of excess.

19 February, 2011: Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day #3

After weigh-in, it was time to get down to the weekly carb-fest. I started out easy, with a couple of fried eggs, some bacon, and my oh-so-decadent treat of buttered toast! And coffee with actual sugar! Let's call it 700 calories.

The we loaded the kids into the car and headed into the city for a family shopping expedition. I needed new clothes for work, so our first stop was Kingsize Big and Tall. That's right, no Target or Lowes for me. I'm all about the downtown boutique shopping. The good news was that it all took less than 15 minutes, including the ever-popular trips to the changing rooms. The even gooder news was that I dropped two sizes in pants, and one size in shirts. It feels a helluva lot better to walk out of there with smaller clothes than the ones you've got on, instead of the other way around.

Then we went to Target so Karen could buy some towels or something or another, then we'd decided to have lunch out at Zambrero. It was a bit early for lunch, so we just enjoyed walking around the city, doing a bit of window shopping, checking out some of the public art, and I particularly got a kick out of watching Karen and the boys reacting to some of the more, um, colorful and unique (and in several cases completely hammered at 11 in the morning) inhabitants of the inner city.

Anyway, when we got to Zambrero, it was closed, even though the sign said it was supposed to have opened a half an hour earlier. And it didn't look like it was going to be open any time soon. That's one thing that pisses me off about Civic. So many of the restaurants and cafes are only open Monday through Friday. On the weekends, some parts of it are like a freaking ghost town. But not to be daunted, we headed back to the car, drove home to Gungahlin, and went to the brand spanking new Zambrero right here in our own little surburban dream.

Jack and I both got burritos, and the two younger boys got corn chips with salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. It turns out that the burritos weren't vegan, so Karen didn't get anything. Bummer for her. My burrito had rice, refried beans, beef, lettuce, tomato salsa, sour cream, guacamole, cheese, jalapenos, and their Smoky Tamarindo sauce. According to their website, that came in at around 750. With a Coke and the chips and salsa that Tom so kindly "shared" with me, I figure the whole meal was probably around 1100 calories. And it was thoroughly enjoyable, and definitely something I'll have again.

Throughout the course of the day, I also ate more beer nuts (call it 600 calories worth), an entire litre of coffee-flavored ice cream (2750 calories), more Coke (say 500 calories worth), and we ended up ordering Pizza Hut for dinner. Based on the info on their website, I'm guessing that was around 1200 calories for the pizza,  plus another 500 for the chicken wings we got with our side order. Plus another 200 calories for the Coke.

It's hard to say because I really didn't keep track of exactly what I was shoving into my face throughout the day, but I think it's safe to say that it was an 8000+ calorie pig-out day. Remember a few days ago when I said "Surely I can enjoy eating some of the things I'm missing out on during the week, without going completely bat-shit crazy and scarfing down five or six thousand calories"? Well, apparently not.

Oh yeah, and just to make sure I got the full effect of the Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day, I once again did absolutely no exercise at any point during the day. Unless, you know, you count walking around town for an hour or so. Not to mention walking around Target while pushing a shopping cart filled with pillows or towels or whatever the hell was in there, plus a three-year-old. No? Doesn't count? Fine. Whatever.

In any case, it was a pretty damned awesome day. My new weigh-in number is the lowest I've had since joining Weight Watchers. I had fun hanging out with my family, first in the city and then at home, eating our "special treat" meals, plus we hung out watching some movies together. First Toy Story 3 for Tom, although I think he lost interest about half-way through. I say I think because the truth is that I fell asleep, and so did Karen. Then after dinner we watched Iron Man 2 with Jack and James, then Karen went to bed and we stayed up to watch X-Men 2 to finish up our Super Hero Double Feature. But it turns out the copy I downloaded has no audio after the first half hour, so we gave up and went to bed.

So I ate a lot of junk food, had a great day, and tomorrow I'll get back to slow-carbing it, and after a few days without exercise, I think I'm ready to get back to it.

12 February, 2011: Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day #2

I didn't take pictures this time, but now I wish I had. I really need to find my little camera, because using the big one (especially when out in public) is a bit of a drag and a hassle.

After weigh-in, I came home and cooked breakfast. The usual eggs, bacon, beans, salsa, etc. and in the end the only thing I changed was the real, actual white cane sugar in my coffee. I'd planned to have buttered toast, but in the end, I didn't feel like it would really add that much to the meal, so I skipped it.

For lunch, I once again wanted a cheeseburger. But rather than hitting Mickey D's, I went looking for a good cheeseburger from one of the many local eating establishments here in Gungahlin. I knew that most of them don't serve cheeseburgers, but thought surely there would be a few places offering what I was looking for. Turns out, not so much. The Central Cafe has a cheeseburger on the menu, but at 3:00 pm, they had the chairs up on most of the tables and looked like they were getting ready to close.

The Connect Cafe also had a cheeseburger, but it was an "Italian-inspired" sort of thing with bocconcini cheese and basil, on turkish bread, etc. Which may well be quite nice, but I wanted a regular, old-fashioned cheeseburger. "I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french-fried potatoes!" You know what I'm saying? A few of the other cafes had grilled chicken burgers, fish burgers, veggie burgers, etc. but in the end, I wound up at Hungry Jacks (Burger King), with a Double Whopper with Cheese, a regular fries and a regular Coke. Not bad, but the ambiance leaves a lot to be desired. Our local Hungry Jacks is connected to a petrol (gas) station. So I'm eating my burger, reading a book, and when I look up and out through the glass wall, I'm staring at people putting petrol in their car, checking their tires, etc. But hey, the burger was good (better than many I've had at Hungry Jacks), the place was clean, and the staff were nice. So far, so good.

Oh, and I discovered that we've now got a Zambrero here in Gungahlin. Apparently they're officially opening later this week, but they were selling food yesterday and I was very tempted to abandon my cheeseburger hunt and just have a burrito instead. But in the end, I chose to stay on course, continue the mission, and wait until next week to try the burrito.

Then between lunch and dinner, I chilled out on the couch, reading a book and eating some chocolate (Green & Black's organic milk chocolate with roasted almonds -- yum!). A very enjoyable way to spend a few hours of an afternoon, and one I hadn't done in a long time.

Then we had chili dogs for dinner, and at the last minute I decided I'd grill them on the BBQ. Then I discovered that I had very little charcoal, but I gave it a shot anyway. Didn't happen. I ended up getting them about half-cooked on the grill, then finishing them off inside in the oven. They still tasted good, though.

Now let me add that at this point, I really wasn't doing too badly calorie-wise. About 4500 calories in, and in between breakfast and lunch, I'd done 3 sessions on the cross-trainer (15 minutes, 20 minutes, and a big 40-minute session) for about 1200 calories burned. So at some point after dinner, I was thinking that another couple of sessions on the cross-trainer and I could possibly end up with net calories of around 2500, just a little over my recommended daily allowance.

And then the after-dinner pig-out commenced. It started with dessert -- the coffee-flavored ice cream I had left over from last week. None left over this time, because I ate the whole thing! Then later, when everybody else was asleep and I was catching up on news and email and what-not at the computer, I ended up eating the rest of the BBQ chips from dinner and the rest of the Coke, too. Then still later (around midnight, I think) I went digging through the pantry, and ended up eating a bowl of Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes (wtf?), and two little bite-sized chocolate bars that may or may not have been left over from Halloween. And to finish it all off, some time around 1 am I started digging out the shaved ham and the salami and whatnot and built myself a bit of a Dagwood sandwich (basically, the same stuff I put on my sub sandwich last week, but in between 2 regular slices of bread). Leave off the bread and the cheese and it's practically slow-carb health food, but as the coup de grace of a 7000+ calorie day, it probably wasn't the best choice. Sure tasted good, though!

So while I started my EWIW Day off going pretty easy on it, I ended up making up for lost time by the end of it. I'm glad I got in some exercise earlier in the day, because I sure as hell didn't do any after lunch. The only time I went anywhere near that cross-trainer was to evacuate various frozen delights from the freezer out there in the garage.

Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day # 1 Continues

Holy hell, my inner masochist must be on the loose today. I did another half-hour on the cross-trainer before dinner. And I learned (apparently I'm the only one who didn't know) that you can adjust the resistance as you go along. So I did Program 1 for 6 minutes at the usual level 6 (3 bars), then upped it to 4 bars for three minutes, then 5, then 6, then 7, then 8 (level 16, the max), then back down to 5, and finished the last 6 minutes on 3. I kept forgetting to keep an eye on my times and distances, but I know that I finished the first 3k just before 11:00, and I did 8km in the 30 minutes.

According to CalorieKing, my total cals burned so far today is 1660 (Weight Watchers says 40 ProPoints). The thing is, that doesn't help my net calories all that much, on account of the fact that I've shoved in a total of just over 5000 calories (148 ProPoints). So far. Keep in mind, my normal daily allowances are 2000 cals, or 66 ProPoints. I'm eating, like, three fucking days worth of calories here.

That's kinda insane.

I think that on my next Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day, I might take it a little easier.

I'll update this post later with some pics, and maybe some final numbers. At this point, I'm not entirely sure I'm done eating. Or exercising.

Update: No, I wasn't done eating. Or exercising.

After the whiskey, I had a nice little buzz going on, and I grabbed my afternoon snack. A bag of chips.

Yum! I hung out and talked to Karen while she cooked up a bunch of something or another (she's all clever and organised and cooks up things like spaghetti sauce and soups and stuff on the weekends, then freezes it down to eat later in the week), then headed for the garage. I did 8k in 30 minutes, then started making dinner. Nothing to it, because we were just having submarine sandwiches, potato chips and Coke, and Karen had already cut up all the salad for us. Sweet!

Mine had mustard, mayonnaise, turkey, smoked ham, hot salami, cheddar cheese, baby spinach, tomatoes, red onion, grated carrot, cucumber, red capsicum (bell pepper), sun-dried tomato, olives, and jalapenos. And it was delicious. Some BBQ potato chips and a Coke rounded out the meal.

So the bag of chips 900 calories, and dinner was a huge 1400 cals. That's more than the freaking Quarter Pounder! But it was a damned good sandwich. Add another 61 calories for my after-dinner coffee, and the total for the day was up to 5188.

Then after dinner and what-not, I went back to the cross-trainer, and did another 15 minutes. I did it all on Program 1, Level 4, and managed to keep a reasonable pace with the lower resistance. 3k in 9:25, and 4.5k in 14:16. Finished up with 4.7 km. Then I watched another episode of Eureka with James, sent him to bed, and sat down to start putting in all my numbers, and realized that I was three minutes away from doing a total of two hours on the cross-trainer today. So I jumped on and did 33 minutes, for a total of 2 1/2 hours on the cross-trainer today and a total burn of 2443 calories (or 58 Weight Watchers Activity Points). Then I had a bowl of ice cream to finish out the day.

Coffee flavored, with bits of chocolate. Not bad, but I had the same sort of thing, but a different brand, a few weeks ago that was better. Still, this was nice. And it was 336 calories, bringing my total for today to a staggering 5525 calories. For one fucking day. The crazy thing is I'm guessing that's probably not any kind of personal record before. It's just that I've never actually recorded it when I've eaten more. But even so, I can't think of another day when I've eaten this much junk food.

So my final numbers for the day are 5525 calories in, 2445 burned, for a net of 3080. That's over 1000 calories over my net daily budget of 2000, but without all the exercise, it would've been a lot worse. It'll be interesting to see how I pay for it over the next week. In terms of Weight Watchers ProPoints, I ended up on 148. That used up all my 66 daily allowance, my extra 49 weekly bonus ProPoints, but because I earned 58 Activity Points, it's telling me that I've still got 25 Activity Points remaining. That's enough left over to eat the Snickers bars I've got in the fridge, and still have a few Points left over. But I'm not going to do that. I'm done.

CalorieKing says that I got 35% of my calories from fat, 45% from carbs, and only 11% from protein. It also says that I ate more than 3 times my daily allowance for fat (209/61g), 4 times my daily allowance for carbs (597.8/130g), and went a little over on the protein as well (149.8/128g). The only thing I didn't go over on was my fiber (21.2/38g). Should've eaten more lentils. :)

And I drank about 7 liters (1.85 gallons) of water today.

What an absolutely insane kind of day. I think I'll be very happy to just have a nice, easy, slow-carb day tomorrow. And next Saturday I might keep in mind that Eat-Whatever-I-Want Day doesn't have to be an Eat-Everything-I-Want Day.

5 Feb 2011: Eat Whatever I Want Day #1

So after the excitement of the weigh-in, it was time to get down to some serious eating. It seems so damned counterintuitive, but it's an essential part of the program, so I'm going to give it a shot and see how it goes.

I started this morning off with a quick workout. 3.7 km in 12 minutes. I was hesitant about screwing with my weigh-in morning routine, but hey, what the fuck, right? Whether it helped or not, I have no idea, but it felt like it did, so I'm going with it. Then I came home from weigh-in and made my first Eat Whatever I Want Breakfast. Which ended up looking a lot like my standard slow-carb breakfast, with a few extras.

Two fried eggs and a mix of bacon, beans, corn, and onions, with plenty of salsa. This is what I'm talking about when I say that this is changing the way I eat. I'm more than happy to eat this on a day when I can eat anything I want. Adding buttered toast and coffee with real actual sugar made it a treat.

I honestly can't believe how much I like that bean & corn mix for breakfast. It's just never even been anywhere near by radar. I mean, I don't mind chili and eggs for breakfast (although I've probably eaten it more often as a breakfast-for-dinner or a breakfast-for-midnight-snack kind of thing) after picking up the habit after too many late night's at Beverly's (a hometown all-night greasy spoon) .

It was delicious, filling, and felt indulgent, which seems perfect for an Eat Anything I Want Breakfast. According to my trackers, it came in at  835 cals (18 ProPoints). I ate that around 9ish, and didn't get hungry until well past noon.

And a weird but cool sort of thing happened between breakfast and lunch. I exercised. Seriously. My plan, as such, was to try to do a full session. Thirty minutes. I haven't done that in a while. So out to the garage I went, and to make it even more interesting, I tried a new program. Program 3, Level 10. Basically, it starts out with higher resistance, slowly dropping to the lowest resistance level at the half-way point, then slowly rising back up and peaking for the last 3 minutes.

As I went along, I couldn't really tell any difference (the program I normally do stays steady at a low-to-mid-level of resistance for the whole time), but as I noticed my pace increase slightly as the resistance dropped, I thought that maybe it was working after all, but that the changes were so slight that I couldn't really noticed them. When the resistance started increasing again on the second half of the program, I noticed. Big-time. Remember when I said that I should stop hating the cross-trainer because it's not trying to kill me? Forget that shit. It kicked my ass in the second half.

But I finished the 30 minutes, and my times weren't too bad. First 3k in 9:50, stayed on pace to finish 4.5k in 15:06, and 6k in 20:00. Then, as the resistance increased, I slowed down and finished the half hour with 8.7 km.

After I finished, I was sweating like crazy, couldn't seem to get enough oxygen, my thighs were on fire, my abs, somewhere deep below the flab, were burning, and I was hurting in places I didn't even know I had muscles. But I'd finished, and I was happy.

Then as I sat there drinking from my water bottle with a fan blowing in my face, I remembered something I'd written here back when I first started on the cross-trainer. About how even doing 3 minutes was better than nothing. So after I could breathe again, I decided I'd climb on and do another 3 minutes. I did 10 (2.8 km). So I rested, drank some more water, then climbed on to try to do another 3. And I did 10 again (2.8 km). I caught my breath and climbed on again, and did another 6 minutes (1.6 km) and decided that was enough.

And then when I was putting the numbers into RunKeeper, i realized that if I did just 4 more minutes, that would be another half an hour. So I did that, and finally I was done. In the end, I'd burned 978 calories (according to CalorieKing, 2658 according to RunKeeper, which I am no longer taking seriously anymore). With the rest breaks, it took my about an hour and forty-five minutes to do an hour on the cross-trainer. Holy shit!

Then, after I'd recovered (that took about an hour), it was time for a cheeseburger. My original plan was to cook my own, but a slight miscalculation in the amount of mince (ground beef) I needed to defrost required moving to Plan B.

Yeah, whatever. It's not the best cheeseburger in town, but it's not hard to do worse. And it's a known quantity, easy to plug into the trackers, and it did the trick. It was hot, salty, sweet, and more or less the right amount of greasy. The funny thing was, just as I was about to walk into the place, I realized that after living in Gungahlin for two-and-a-half years, I've never set foot in the local Micky D's. Been through the drive-thru plenty of times, but never inside. Until today. So I had my Quarter Pounder with Cheese, medium fries, and medium Coke, sat outside and  enjoyed a bit of people-watching, and then moved on.  1065 calories (29 ProPoints) done.

Then, after days of thinking about how much I was going to enjoy a few frosty mugs of ale, I had a change of heart when I got to the store and started perusing what was available. In the end, I went a completely different direction.

Pre-mixes are a sort of insurance policy, and they go down easy enough of a hot summer day. Bam! Another 924 cals (29 ProPoints). Is this really part of the diet?

For those of you keeping score at home, I'm up to 2825 cals (76 ProPoints) in, 1175 cals (28 ProPoints) burned, for 1650 net cals so far today. I'm carbing out like a crazy (43% of calories consumed) while protein is at 13%. Yesterday, it was 44% protein and 19% carbs, Thursday was 35% protein and 35% carbs. But hey, it's all part of the plan. Apparently.

I hope like hell that this is going to work out okay. I'd really like to see another 3kg loss by next Saturday. But I'm guessing that it's going to take half the freaking week just to recover from all this. I'll have to wait and see how this plays out physiologically, but I can already see part of the psychology of it. No carb-cravings here, I can tell you. I have indulged to excess, and I'm not done yet.