weightlossshake’s blog

I have barely any time this month, so I'll rattle this stuff off as quickly as possible.

First off, here are my health links: the best multivitamins and omega 3 vitamins

Now for some fun and healthy recipes I've cooked recently.

Chili - I've mentioned it before, but always worthy of a reprise.

Mexican Casserole - a bit high in calories, so portion control is necessary, but very low in carbs, and it actually tastes like Taco Bell on a reheat (and I like taco bell)

Ratatouille - yes, inspired by a movie, I made a simplel version of the dish. It wasn't very tasty, but I could definitely see where there is room for improvement.

Spaghetti sauce - There's a whole assortment of tomato based sauces I'm going to try over the next few weeks. I put some chili powder in the first one I made, and it was quite tasty. We'll see what happens!

I continue to read the usual health blog roundup every day, and I continue to do my low carb diet. here are some of my recent eats:

Omelets: I've done so many omelets, I'm almost sick of them. As much as they fit with the paleo diet, its the one dish I have a hard time imagining a caveman eating. "Hey" says Gorak, "let's wait till the chicken has an egg, the chop the chicken into pieces and fry it IN the egg!"

Chili: Made a big old batch of chili and it lasted me three days. Beanless chili to minimalize the carbs. I must say my chili was a little on the dry side, and definitely burnt a bit, but still pretty tasty.

Chicken Wings: I just bought three loaded bags of frozen chicken wings. The only tricky part is, they take almost an hour to cook, so I've got to plan ahead when I want to eat them, which is usually tricky, because I often want to eat right after I get back from the gym at night.

Salads: More salads than anything else. I have a salad almost every day. I vary the ingredients of the salad up, but not much, it's usually either italian or caesar dressing, and a host of green veggies with some turkey, eggs, or tuna.

Slim Jims: This is my afternoon snack. Pretty filling little stick of meat and saucy as hell.

I finally got really serious about listing the foods I eat. Which then made me really serious about the nutrition of the foods I eat. I've been going no sugar/low carb for almost a week and I've lost almost a pound a day! So, now to the list of actual foods.

Breakfast:
I still don't eat breakfast. Not sure if this is wise or not, but it keeps the calories down.

Lunch:
I almost always have a salad. I try for turkey, but tuna suffices. Plenty of greens, a bit of cheese and bacon, and a good deal of Ceasar dressing. Hoping to cut back on the dressing since it really pumps up the calories on the salad. I often have a Slim Jim at lunch as well, just to get some extra protein.

Afternoon snack:
Not every day, but sometimes I'll do a handful of nuts, some beef jerky, or some cottage cheese. All beneficial for obtaining washboard abs!

Dinner:
Steamed or fried veggies. Mushrooms and onions recently. And then some meat in a pan. Pretty simple. I've done chicken, and then lamb last night. Tonight it'll be steak.

Later:
I've been making the Responsibly Slim weight loss shake (protein shake), but I usually add almond butter, cocoa powder, splenda, and half & half to the mix to make it frickin' tasty. It's the sweet tooth in me.

Vitamins:
I try to take vitamins every day. I get my vitamins online. There's an abundance of vitamin information online, so it's pretty easy to get what I'm looking for.

In all honesty, I really broke my diet plan the last few weeks.

It started out with the chili burger. The burger was so delicious, I had two (over the course of a week).

Then came pizza, and once you start with pizza, my friend, there really is no turning back.

I kept going to the same Italian Kitchen, off of olympic blvd, and I have to be honest, it once the taste of the pizza that attracted me to the establishment. It was the cute serving girl.

I would blame my pizza binge on the adorability of the person serving me pizza, but no, it was just me being lazy. I've decided to start the early morning workouts again as a habit. It seems when I bother to wake up early enough to jog each morning, I have the gumption to stay on the diet.

Until then I've rounded up a couple more links: people records, and orthorexia nervosa.

I've actually been doing pretty good on the diet recently my last month's meals have been mainly this:

BREAKFAST: None

LUNCH: Ralph's salad bar. Salad includes spinach, canned tuna, mushrooms, vinegar, and then lightly grazed with almonds, feta cheese and sometimes a bit of ceasar dressing.

DINNER: Bowl of Progresso soup. These are very low calorie (200-400 total).

I realized I needed to start eating breakfast more, so I recently added protein shakes into my diet. Sometimes instead of the Ralph's salad, I will do a protein smoothie from the diet barn. I know these contain sugar (carbs=no good!) in natural organic fruit form, so I'm trying to be careful with them.

Overall it's been a great month. I've lost 17 pounds!

But, everyone has a weakness, and often these days I find mine is pizza. I ordered a Domino's pizza last Thursday and it was really damn good. Then yesterday I had a couple slices of pepporoni from a local place. They joint boasted only 133 calories per slice which was hard to believe. Anyway, I haven't felt too guilty about the pizza because overall I'm doing very good, continuing my exercise, and finally for the first time in a year and a half, I'm losing weight.

So, with all diligence, I give you the Damage Control Master Formula and how to deal with stress as two websites to chew on for the next month until I update you with more food news, and hopefully it will be a thinner version of me doing the updating!

I've been traveling back and forth between Los Angeles and New Mexico this past month. That's no excuse for what happened, but I certainly haven't been eating as healthy as I had intended. I've managed to control it so I haven't actually gained weight in a month, but I haven't lost any either which is my whole purpose right now.

The bottom line is, I haven't been drinking the weight loss shake, which is the only way I'll ever lose this gut. I really need to focus on Primal Nutrition as well, but alas, that's why I blog.

So here we go, my past menus:

While in New Mexico I ate mostly:

Chicken Fingers and French Fries (it gets worse, I dipped them in ranch, honey mustard, and garlic parmesian sauce)

This is probably the worst sort of food I could have ingested, but damn, they were the best fries I've ever had. They were both sweet and salty, the perfect balance on a potato, dipped in buttery, tangy goodness.

I also had several servings of frozen yogurt, which was fat free, and apparently low in calories, but somehow I don't think that makes up for all the chicken and fries.

In all honesty,  I probably wont pick the diet up again until after my final trip to New Mexico, but I'm okay with this, because after New Mexico I've got nothing else to do besides diet....so be it!

How many times have I been on a diet? Probably a hundred times. If I added up all the weight of gained and lost over the years, it's probably in the multiple thousands of pounds. The question is, am I a thin person who lets himself get fat, or am I a fat person who occasionally works himself down to a healthy level. My mother is unusually thin and my father is grossly obese, so I guess that at least partially explains why I am what I am.

Right now I'm in the fat getting thin mode. I spent the previous six months in the thin getting fat mode. Unfortunately, that phase lasted longer than it usually does, and now I'm fatter than I've ever been. Or at least I was two weeks ago. I've already lost 10 pounds in two weeks. This sounds like a great accomplishment, but its really not when you adjust for the fact that I have to lose almost 100 pounds to be back down to my thinnest weight again. Yeah, that much, no joke.

Oh well, this blog wasn't designed for me to feel sorry for myself. It was designed for me to hold myself accountable for the foods I eat. Basically its just a list of my las day/week/months meals. So here we go.

Monday: Light Salad, Protein Shake, Weight Watchers panini sandwich
Tuesday: Light Salad, Cup of Broccoli and Cheese Soup, Bowl of Gazpacho, Light Salad (but with heavy dressing), handful of chips.
Wednesday: Light Salad, Protein Shake, Weight Watchers panini sandwich, bowlful of chips, chocolate covered cherry (just 1)

And that's it. That's all folks. No extremely healthy, but not extremely unhealthy if I say so. Certainly healthier than meals from previous weeks which look something like this...

Mon-Fri: Footlong Sub, Candy Bar, 4 slices of Pizza, 3 Taquitos, 2 more candy bars, bag of Combos.

I'd say a big improvement.