day 2.5 begins

It’s not really day 3 since yesterday was our scheduled “don’t count” day. I didn’t splurge, which is good. I have some advice about cheating days below. Today is the make or break day of the week. It’s hump day, and I didn’t keep track of points yesterday. We’ll see how today goes. I don’t have a weight update because I haven’t weighed myself yet today. Deep stuff huh?

I’ve got 5 people intereseted in starting a public accountability weight loss forum with me. 5 more and we’re in business. I’d start it right now, but my wife won’t let me buy the domain name for it until 10 people have expressed interest. So fellow fatsos, express interest! Anyway, to the business:

Advice: Everyone goes off their diet for one reason or another. When I’m being serious about it, my only reasons are when we have dinner events with friends. I’d say only about 1 in 4 times we actually count points. Otherwise I pretend beer is zero points (it’s 3, 2 for lite). When I’m not being serious about it a high stress day will make me convince Linnea we need to eat out. Another big reason is we didn’t take anything out for dinner.

So, to the actual advice. If you go off your diet, only do it for one day. We would usually just neglect the rest of the week. This leads to splurging and trying to “eat it while I can,” before the new week of dieting begins. DON’T DO IT! We’ve also found that making a weekly dinner menu virtually eliminates the “what should we have? oh, let’s go out” aspect.

survive day one? check.

Day one went as I expected. When I thought about food, I wanted it, whether I was full or not. The idea of knowing you can only have so much just makes me want it more. Oh well, like my first post title says, I’m addicted to food. It just tastes so good. While I normally won’t give “updates” on a daily basis, I decided that, since I just started, I would anyway. Overall, day one was a success, I only used one of my flex points. As a recap, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, the weight watchers points system (well, the old one if it’s changed) gives you a certain number of daily points based on your weight and gender (30 in my case), and 35 weekly “flex” points. These points are based on calorie, fat and fiber content. So to the update…

Weight loss: 2.0 lbs. I’m not marking this at daytum.com/diberard, because I fluctuate by more than 5 pounds throughout the day. Granted, both weigh-ins were in the morning, but I’m only showing this to brag. It’s only been a day and that could swing back the other way tomorrow.

Cheating?: Technically, I had a “pinch” of shredded cheddar that I didn’t count. It’s a wash because I never exactly measure all my servings when I’m following WW anyway, but it still works (assuming I stick to it for more than 1 week).

Today will be our designated cheating day, we have our bi-weekly bible study/dinner. We’ll count 5 flex (35/7 days), and be done with it.

Advice: (pertaining to the above statement) I’ve actually heard though, that diets are MUCH more effective if you have one day where you don’t calorie count. Otherwise, your metabolism adjusts to the lower calorie intake and you burn less.

Forum anybody?: So I learned there is a really cool domain name I would use if this “public-accountability” weight loss system picks up interest. Anyway, please email me (or comment) your interest if you think you’d post either weight loss stories, struggles, advice, etc. Since I’m poor, I’ll need some “donors” to buy the domain (it’s only $10/yr), but then I bet if I threw Google’s Adsense on it we’d recoup the cost. Let me know, I think it would be a cool support system for people like me who always “wait ’til next Monday” to start their diet.

hello, i’m a fatso, and i’m addicted to food and lazy

I have decided to start this website to create a public accountability for my weight loss actions. Since my initial attemt at following the weight watchers points system (where i lost 40 pounds in 3 months with no exercise outside of walking to class), i have completed about 2 full weeks following weight watchers without cheating. That was 4 years ago. I suck. I’m fat. I’m addicted to food. I’m addicted to being lazy and not doing anything about it. It needs to stop. I need to start fitting back into all my pants. My extra-large shirts need to stop getting tighter.

I’m officially starting tomorrow. I plan on keeping you updated to my weight (at least weekly) and work outs on my daytum.com profile. When I update those, I’ll let you know here in the “big fat updates” category. I’ll also let you know when (I mean if) I cheat on following the weight watchers points system. It’s a fancy way to count calories, and I get 30 points/day with 35 extra “flex” points/week. The one rule I’m implementing with my wife Linnea, is that we don’t count on Tuesdays (Bible study dinner) and deduct 5 of our flex points. I’ll also be posting some about my experience, how I’m dealing with the public accountability, etc. in the “big fat thoughts” category.

Please feel free to offer your support. I’m also hosting this myself, so if there is an interest by some more fatsos I can set you up as contributors, get you your own fatso email, set up a mailing list, etc., so let me know if you’re interested. I’m thinking a forum would be a nice touch too.