Here we go again...

Weight: 230.1

Dang

Falling of the wagon is easy. Getting back on it it's hard.

I don't know how much I weigh now, but I know for certain that I've recovered most, of not all the weight that I had lost thanks to the Skinny Bastard book.

My mom saw some pictures of me recently, and went on a tirade on the phone about how I was not taking care of my health.

The worst part: she's right.

So, today is my third day eating better.

Will try to keep up the veggie heavy diet.

Weighing Time

Weight: 213.1

Well, not surprised.

Last week I got less observant. And the weekend was kind of bad. Not so much on the types of food, but the quantities.

This week will be difficult, with family in town. But we'll see... I definitely don't want to lose the momentum.

I also wonder if by getting back to the weight I had for so long (around 212), I didn't hit some sort of "old fat" plateau.

I'm hoping to be able to start exercising again later this week. Hopefully that will help.

TGIF

Breakfast: Oatmeal, two tangerines

Lunch: Veggie sushi combo + small salad. Green tea.

Blood work

Today I went to the doctor again to get blood drawn and check on my cholesterol. We'll see where it is now.

Breakfast (after fasting): Arepa and cheese, cachapa and cheese. Passion fruit juice. Not good, but oh so good.

Lunch: Roasted veggie sandwich. The vegies were tasty but gistening. I wonder how much fat they had.

Dinner: Escalante's - a modified version of my usual. Replaced fajita chicken with refried black beans. Not ideal, but better than the standard configuration.

Screwed by chocolate

Breakfast: Oatmeal, peach

Lunch: Salmon, broccoli

Dinner: Pasta with shrimp sauce, cherries

Post-dinner screw up nack: three large pieces of chocolate with hazelnuts

Pizza... pizza...

Breakfast: Peach

Lunch: Chopped salad

Snack: nuts

Dinner: 5 pieces of pizza (pepperoni-mushroom-anchovies, tomatoes-cheese-anchovies), passion fruit juice.

Of course, after unfulfilling breakfast and lunch, dinner was a mess.

Although must admit, pizza hit the spot squarely. Oh well...

Weighing Time

Weight: 212.1

Wow.

This was a surprise.

I thought I was going to actually go up in weight. I got a big boost on my motivation, seeing that whatever process I started in my body to lose weight, kept on going even though I messed up.

I don't know if it was water I lost, or what. But this inspired me to get back on the wagon.

Sadly, I won't be able to exercise this week. Long story. But at least I can eat right.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, flaxseed, soy milk. One apple.

Lunch: House salad (felt so wrong to go to Texadelphia and just order a salad... ridiculous), SmartOnes southwest quesadilla (microwaved).

Huge Snack before dinner: too many toasted pieces of bread with pesto and tapenade.

Dinner: Delicious turkey chili with corn bread.

A-pork-alypse Now

This week, like in Kafka's metamorphosis, I turned into a pig and the diet world came to an end.

All the good intentions I had last Monday disappeared in an atomic cloud of read meats, cheese and alcoholic rain.

From a trip back to the Korean restaurant (small pieces of red meat cooked to perfection), to two visits to my favorite restaurant (queso, margaritas, beef and chicken), last week was a mess.

I had wine and beer at home, and pizza. And Saturday I had my usual weekend happy hour starting at noon, with more wine and beer.

Of course, because of the alcohol, I didn't feel like exercising. After running on Monday, I didn't do anything else.

Sunday I started my hike, trying climb back on the bandwagon...

So...

Breakfast: Oatmeal.

Lunch: Vegetarian burrito at Freebirds. No chips or queso.

Snack: Nuts, fruit.

Dinner: Broccoli, Brown rice, vegetarian burger.

Weighing Time

Weight: 215.6

A bit dissapointed. Was hoping for 214, but at least is less than last week.

This past week, while I was pretty good about exercising, wasn't as strict about what I ate.

This week: keep on the exercise and reduce complex carbs. And no stupid peanut butter extravaganzas before bed.

Friday:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, flaxseed

Lunch: Black bean soup, Greek salad

Dinner: Assorted veggies at a Southern all-you-can-eat in Columbus, Texas. Ate too much.

Saturday:

Breakfast: Oatmeal, flaxseed, peach

Lunch: Veggie and cheese pizza at an all-you-can-eat. Too much of it.

Snack: 3 beers

Dinner: Spaghetti and turkey sauce. Wine.

Sunday:

Exercise: 1-hour bike ride, on country roads and through the woods

Breakfast: blueberry pancake, banana, syrup.

Lunch: Salad with greens, tomatoes, walnuts and "light" honey mustard dressing (too thick and sweet to be really light). Pineapple

Dinner: Horrible bean burrito, covered with melted cheddar cheese, but I ate every bite of it. Half a ton of chips and salsa. Bad.

Before bed: Two pieces of banana-nut bread, smothered in peanut butter and jelly. Really blew it.

Motivation by the pound

I went to bed at 9:30 last night with a headache. Woke up not feeling well: tired, still a slight tension headache. This morning I was not going to run.

Then, just for fun, I got on the scale.

The weight was way low. So low that I won't even mention it here. Too low. But it was interesting the effect that that caused in me.

It hit me that I could eventually not only reach that weight, but beat it.

My first stage of weight loss is to be below 210. And I realized the best way NOT to reach my goal was to start letting things slip.

Like skipping one day of exercise.

So, in spite of myself, I got on my running clothes, took the dog and went for a 32 minute run, burning 380 calories.

The bummer is that the calories I burned were not even half of what I did to myself with my demonic PB&J snack last night. The good news: it was almost half.

Having an awareness of what I put in my mouth, how I ofset that with exercise, and how I can see a direct impact on my weight is making a huge impact on me staying on track.

Dead by Peanut Butter

Exercise: Boot camp. It was tough, but fun. We did tug o' war. I'd imagine I burned about 550 calories.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, flax seed, soy milk.

Lunch: One peach, one nectarine, frozen veggie quesadilla I melted in the office.

Lunch was very unfulfilling... so you can guess what happened later...

Dinner: Chips and queso, chips and salsa (tons of chips, both fried and baked), burrito de vegetal, frozen margarita

After dinner demonic snack: Four Reese's peanut butter cups (it was only four because that's all I could find), one mini chocolate with peanuts, peanut butter and jelly sandwich (tons of PB&J, one slice of wheat bread). Probably about 800 calories. A shame.

It's interesting to start seeing the patterns as I blog about this. I have to make sure each meal is satisfactory and fulfilling, to make sure I don't blow it on the next meal.

Bunnies

Exercise: Bike ride along the Bayou: 1hour and 9 minutes. Seeing a half dozen bunnies in the wild: priceless.

It was a beautiful morning for the ride. After the storms yesterday, there were several banks of fog covering the ground. It looked almost like a European prairie landscape. I'm happy I did it.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, toasted flax seed, half banana sliced, soy milk.

I wonder if the breakfast was too many calories.

Lunch: Big salad with tomatoes, greens, cucumber, alfalfa, pepers (yuck) and to big piles of cheese that I avoided.

Snack: wasabi almonds (when I was craving junk food)

Dinner: Vegetarian Burger (Amy's brand), steamed veggies and edamame. Very tasty and satisfying.

Whine about wine

Dinner: One slice of cheese pizza with three slices of Tofurkey. Watermelon. A peach.

Yes, I said one slice. And no wine.

The wine temptation was so difficult to resist! It was a long day at the office, and normally I would have gotten home, drank at least three glasses of wine, eat at least three slices of pizza and go to bed groggy.

Of course, the next morning I would have gotten up late, tired, with no energy to exercise... and probably would have screwed up breakfast also...

That's how the sliding slope begins.

However, I dug my heels. I had some crackers with tapenade and fake cheddar. And ate my slice.

I went to bed more relaxed and happy.

Having the awareness of what I'm eating, and documenting it here, is really helping me to stay on track.

Rainy Tuesday

Exercise: one hour boot camp. It was not as hard as last week, but still was drenched at the end.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, flax seed, soy milk

Lunch: Regular sushi combo at my usual restaurant. Tried to order the vegetarian combo, but at the last minute my cravings won...

(And speaking of cravings, I'm so craving this chocolate cookie they sell at the coffee house around the corner. It's heart shaped, made with chocolate and nuts. It's so incredibly good. So addictive... that I think it was concocted by the Devil himself.)

Weighing time

Weight: 216.6

This is the baseline weight. My all time high was about 230 lb. The all time low (that I recorded in the US) was 188 lb


Exercise: Running 30 minutes.


Breakfast: Oatmeal, toasted flaxseed, soy milk.


Lunch: Cup of black bean soup, greek salad


Dinner: Leftover tofu and steak sauce (I know. I'm sick), protein enriched pasta with amazing home made pesto sauce

Back-on-track Sunday

No exercise today. Resting.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, toasted flax seed

Lunch: Delicious provolone and tomato panini with pesto sauce.

Dinner: Sushi at Sushi Jin, awesome restaurant. Relativelly healthy.

My favorite part of this cuasi-vegetarian diet: guilt free carbs!!!

Unfulfillment turns men into pigs

Exercise: 1-hour bike ride along the Bayou.

Breakfast: An "Egg Beaters" asparagus frittata, with meatless breakfast sausages, slice of bread.

The sausages were dry and dense, but very good tasting.

Snack: Watermelon

Lunch: Tofu with steak sauce, green salad, nectarine, blueberries

I thought I would experiment with the block of tofu I had gotten last week and found this recipe online. I may have done something wrong, because the end result wasn't that great.

However, I ate a lot of it. My daughters tried it and liked it, but I think it was the extra steak sauce I poured on top of it.

This lunch left me unfulfilled... and led me to snack throughout the afternoon: watermelon, nuts, crackers with tofu "cheddar"... two glasses of white wine... which ultimately led me to blow it at dinner...

Dinner: Hummus. Mushroom pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. Glass of chardonnay

The pizza wasn't that bad health-wise: three types of mushrooms, cheese. What was bad was the quantity. I was tempted to stop half way through, but I didn't. Ate all but one slice.

Now, this is a departure from the past. Before I would have eaten every last piece of it and don't give it a second thought. But I believe that since I started this new approach with food, my stomach is slightly smaller.

So, there's progress in failure.

But this didn't stop when we left the restaurant. When I got home I attacked our snack pantry and ate two Reese's peanut butter cups.

* sigh *

It's very interesting to write about this, because it helps me see the pattern and how blowing the diet is a progression, not an explosion.

If I've had a fulfilling lunch, probably dinner would have been different. So, seems like the key is to tackle unfulfillment before it causes "pigging out" incidents.

Fishy

30 minute run in the morning.

Breakfast: Spelt bagel with a can of salmon packed in water. Handful of blueberries.

Lunch: At Studio Movie Grill, watching a movie. The menu here is so non-vegetarian! There was only one choice without meat, some spinach quesadilla, but the creamy sauce and the advertised cheese made it sound very high on fat.

I ordered a Southwest Salad without the chicken, but with extra black beans. They brought the fried chicken anyway, which I consciously fished out of my bowl. The salad had too much dressing, need to order it on the side next time.

Dinner: Pizza at home. I eat a cheese pizza with pieces of over roasted Tofurky on top. My wife made mild fun of me... but I shall prevail. :-) I had two glasses of white wine, too.

Queso-less

Bootcamp at 5:30. It was rough today. Felt dizzy, but finished.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, soy milk and a spoonful of toasted flax seeds. This is supposedly very healthy, it has a lot of fiber and it added a nice nutty flavor to the oatmeal.

Lunch: Cup of black bean soup and Greek salad.

Dinner at our usual Mexican spot. Burrito de Vegetal again. Tempted by the queso, oh so tempted, but focused on the Margarita instead.

Another discovery - usually we eat a large queso bowl. Since I stopped eating it, we're left with half of it. I had no idea I was eating so much of it...

Warm Turkey

Dinner: high fiber, protein enriched pasta with my wife's "meat" sauce, which she now makes with grund turkey. As good as the cow one.

Korean light

I got up early and went for an hour-long bike ride along the bayou. I enjoyed the quiet of the morning, and saw so many bunnies! Almost spotted a Teletubby.

My meals of the day began with spelt organic bagel and soy "cheddar" (weird tasting but strangely satisfying), then took a violent detour towards the light.

I had a client lunch and she, originally from Korea, wanted us to eat at her favorite Korean restaurant.

When we got there, she asked "does everybody eat meat?" My friend Mary, who knows what I'm up to, turned to look at me. But I smiled wide and said "of course."

OMG - this was one of the best meals of my life. I have seen the light.

I don't really know if it was my brain playing tricks on me, red meat addiction or whatever, but holly mother of God that meal was amazing.

It was simple, marinated and grilled beef, surrounded by a plethora of small side dishes called banchan. Most of them I have no idea what they were, but they did have cabbage and radish kimchi: fermented vegetables... but trust me, it tastes way better than it sounds.

All and all, it was a memorable dining experience which I enjoyed immensely... It served as a realization that I'll never be able to become a strict vegan.

I don't want to miss out on the adventure of eating dishes that I've never tried before. I don't want to limit myself... which in a weird way is why I'm so enthusiastically exploring this new "veggie" lifestyle.

My usual restaurants are becoming new spots, as I explore the menu for vegetarian options. This is fun, as long as it's not frustrating in any way.

So, I'm doing this skinny bastard thing for my health and my weight, not out of conviction or because I believe that animal products should not be eaten.

But what I didn't count on, was that it was going to be fun. Surprises that life gives you sometimes.

"It's not fair!"

So, she cooked her wonderful chicken, mushroom and rice casserole. I ate a veggie southwest burger and broccoli.

My 5-year old daughter complained: "That's not fair! How come you get to eat what you want, and we all have to eat the same?"

I wanted to tell her "Oh, my dear child. What I want is what you are eating!" But instead I went into a rather convoluted explanation about how I was eating special food so I could get healthier. I quickly realized she was not interested and was busy digging into her rice.

Technorati

To register with technoraty, the site is asking me to post "qj32zb8thg" on my page. Hopefully I can delete this post later :-)

Denial

This is strangely easy.

I had planned to go to boot camp this morning, but I couldn't get up at 5 am (it starts at 5:30), so I went running instead. Ran about 3 miles and took the dog with me.

After running I got on the scale and was at 216. I knew I was going to score low: sweat. But I was surprised that I wasn't back on the 220's.

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with soy milk (I'm really digging this), a handful of blueberries, some strawberries.

• Lunch: Veggie combo at my usual sushi spot.

The sushi experience was another tough one. I love sushi. It's probably my favorite food on earth. I come to this sushi place at least once a week and order their lunch special: four pieces of nigiri, four pieces of roll and a handroll. The fish changes each day of the week.

When I got to the restaurant I thought I was going to order my usual. However, I noticed the Veggie combo and ordered it. Futo Maki, cucumber roll and avocado roll, with a salad.

I wish I could say it was horrible, that I felt unfulfilled... but I hate to admit it: It was good!

It felt like the right amount of food.

I also made a discovery: what I crave about the sushi is not so much the fish, but the flavor of the wasabi and soy sauce. I was happy.

We'll see about dinner tonight. My wife read the blog today and, by messenger, commented:

Wife: you're giving up dairy and chicken this week?

Me: yup

Wife: already cheese and meat

Me: yup

Wife: what the hell am I going to cook for dinner???

Which brings up an interesting point. Breakfast and lunch are easy. At my house, everybody is on their own. Dinner is different. Dinner brings the family together.

To me, sharing the same food and conversation every day is the most important glue that keeps a family strong and together forever.

Also, I don't want to impose my new weird approach to eating on the rest of them. So, I'll have to find a way to dance around it. I told my wife not to worry about me, that I would figure something out.

So far switchihng my eating habits so dramatically has been easy. Too easy. And I don't usually have too much will power when it comes to food.

So, I must be in denial. My knees and my will may buckle the first time I'm in front of a juicy steak and plump fries.

But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In the meantime, denial is bliss.

First Monday

Today is the first Monday in my skinny bastard life.

I usually hop on the scale on Mondays, and today I had the lowest reading I've had in a long time: 117 pounds. Last week I was at 224.

You'll credit the Skinny Bastard diet. I blame the fact that my body doesn't like what I'm doing.

I've spent most of the last 24 hours in the smallest room of my house. The silver lining: finally went through a pile of magazines that had been sitting on my side table.

I feel oddly out of balance, as if something is off internally. Not pain-and-sickness off, but weird-feeling off.

I'd love to think that my body is getting rid of all the toxins, undigested animals and useless stuff. But it probably is that tofu doesn't agree with me.

Sunday was bad. Too much wine with dinner, and a bunch of chips and salsa. At least my meals were ok:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal with Soy Milk

• Lunch: salad with some soy-made chicken lookalike called Chick'n.

• Dinner: Grilled tilapia with veggies

The chick'n was really something. It looked a lot like a chicken breast, but more rubbery. The best part: according to the package, you can grill it! We shall see.

I didn't exercise today, but at least I'm back on the wagon eating-wise.

• Breakfast: Strawberries and a nectarine - not completely fulfilling, but left me with a strange "clean" feeling.

• Lunch: a "Veggie Loaf" I found at a restaurant by my office. Some sort of meatloaf-looking brick made with black beans, carrots and God knows what else. Not bad, but made me thing about some bizarre food from the future.

• Dinner: Burrito de Vegetal, a veggie burrito at my favorite Mexican restaurant. This was a toughie. I've been eating at that restaurant nearly every week for about 10 years. I always order one of three dishes... but for the first time in years I looked at the menu. It was quite good.

In all, I survived another day of temptation.

Homo Vegetus?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the "Skinny Bastard" book was how it shows that physiologically humans are more like other herbivore species than carnivore species.

I always thought we were omnivores, and that has been my usual counterargument against vegetarian or vegan lifestyles. But come to think about it, I never took the time to research biological aspects that may prove that point.

After a few minutes in Google I came across two very interesting articles about how humans are really more like herbivores:

• The Comparative Anatomy of Eating, by Milton R. Mills, M.D.
  At the end of this article there's a wildly interesting comparison table between herbivore, carnivore omnivore species, and humans.

• Eating meat is not natural, by Michael Bluejay.
  This article tackles the common counterarguments against vegetarian eating. I'm guilty of having used most of them. After reading this article, I agree with most, if not all the points that Mr. Bluejay makes.

I'm really thinking about this...

Soy improved something. Weird.

Comediant Jim Gaffigan has a really funny bit about bacon. His point: bacon is such an amazing food, that anything will actually be improved by wrapping bacon around it.

Shrimp? Good. Bacon-wrapped shrimp? F-ing awesome.

In the universal scale of things, bacon is at one extreme. The bad, hedonistic extreme. The other is, of course, shared by bacon, tofu and brocoli. So, I was surprised this morning when Soy milk actually improved something.

Today was my first day using Silk soy milk for my coffee and instant oatmeal. The coffee was ok. It's hard to break a life-long habit of using skimmed milk in the morning. Now, the oatmeal was a different story.

Since the crazy high cholesterol reading I've been trying to eat oatmeal for breakfast everyday. The "lower sugar" instant oatmeal by Quaker is actually good. But until now I had made it with water and added some soy powder to add protein to it. The end result: so so.

This morning I made it with Soy milk and, wow. Creamier, tastier and better.

Bizare experience when something good for you tastes good.

About tofu and dying

There's an 8% chance that I'll have a heart attack in 10 years. That's 1 in 12.

Let's put it this way: my odds of having a heart attack are TWICE the odds of getting hemorrhoids.

And I thought that carrying a blow up ring was bad.

A couple of weeks ago I got the results of my physical. My cholesterol is through the roof, the bad one is in the basement, my liver lipids are out of whack, I had too much sugar in my blood and my weight is 30 pounds north of where it should be.

My doctor, usually a light-hearted guy who wears cowboy boots every day, sounded ominous when he left me a voice mail with the results.

He needed to put me on cholesterol medication, was worried about heart disease, liver malfunction and diabetes, and wanted to run some additional tests.

In plain English, he scared the shit out of me.

So, I did what we all do. Started running (again), eating less fat and carbs (again), eating more "lean" protein (again)...

Exactly the same things I've been trying for 20 years, with no results.

A few weeks after starting my new "regime" I went on a week-long business trip to Austin and New York and predictably, I didn’t exercise all week and ate a shitload of crap.

Fell off the wagon (again).

But unlike before, that thing about dying before my oldest daughter finished high school was still bothering me.

While waiting for my flight out of La Guardia I saw the “Skinny Bastard” book. I had heard about “Skinny Bitch,” and after flipping through a couple of pages, I thought it was funny. Oh, and the two bitches on the back cover were hot. So, I bought a copy.

Little did I know that destiny wanted me to read the whole book that day: my airplane got stuck on the tarmac for 5 hours because of a storm.

I’ve read many dieting books in my life. From Scarsdale to The Zone to Eat to Win. And I was never so riveted by the facts thrown at my face.

I’ve always been a meat-eating guy. I always thought that vegetarians were annoying and vegans were an insane hog-hugging bunch (calling them tree-huggers seems inappropriate).

I thought tofu was for sissies and that not eating animals was simply wrong. After all, we’re on top of the chain. We can eat anybody. Right?

I was truly shocked by the book.

It was a kick in the ass.

By the time I landed in Houston I had a very different view of the things I needed to eat.

It was (and still is) a weird feeling. Suddenly realizing that what I’ve thought my entire life was wrong.

The next day I went with my two daughters to Whole Foods Market and bought a few things. A carton of soy milk, organic whole grain bagels and, God help me, some veggie “burgers," “meats,” and “cheese.”

The girls wanted chocolate milk, so I got them chocolate soy milk with a panda on the carton. They didn’t notice the difference.

So, how far will I go? How realistic it is that I will become vegetarian, then vegan?

I don’t know. Probably unlikely.

But there are three things I do know.

First, I’ll do my best to change my eating habits for good.

It’s literally a matter of life and dead. I have future projects, want to see my girls grow, want to retire in a few years and enjoy life with my wife. Am I willing to give all that up for a slice of bacon?

Second, I want to go slow.

I’m planning to gradually move to healthier choices. When the cholesterol results came in, I gave up red meat and cheese immediately. This week, I’m planning to give up dairy and chicken. The following week, who knows…

The only way to climb a mountain: one step at the time.

And third, I’m NOT going to tell anybody outside my closest loved ones.

When I told my wife about my shopping trip to Whole Foods, her attitude was “oh-kay…” She’s seen me get excited about crazy things in the past, like that one time when I wanted to start my own country (long story). But she was surprised.

I don’t know what shocked her more: my new commitment to eat healthier foods, or the fact that for the first time in my life I used the word “tofurkey” and I was not making a joke.

In any case, I don’t want to become a weird animal rights activist. Nothing against them. I think it’s great that they’re willing to go to town and be vocal for the things they believe in.

I think it’s great when they go out and write a book, like the skinny bitches did.

I just don’t want to be annoying.

Is it bad caring about what other people think? Absolutely. But I don’t care about what you think about me caring about what other people think.

At restaurants, there are always healthy dishes I can pick discretely. At friend’s houses I can always navigate around the available choices. I don’t want to proclaim my cleanliness and try to make other people feel bad about their carnivore lives.

And that’s the reason behind this blog. While I don't want to say anything about this, I NEED to tell someone.

In a strange way, this should give me accountability. I know it’s a bunch of strangers, but hey.

So, we’ll see where this takes me. Go, Tofurkey, go!