Kim and I went on a little mini vacation Mon-Wed. It was a great time. But I loosened up on my diet a bit, which in addition to some binging before I went away must have contributed to me putting a couple pounds back on.

I won’t sweat it too much because, like the economy, my weight loss needed a healthy pull back. Well, that sounds good anyway.

Though my diet went to hell, I only lost one day of working out. I worked out Monday morning before we left and Wednesday night when we got back. We haven’t been dancing as much lately though, which was like an extra mini work out every night. But we’re back on that schedule too.

Fat-casting
I called into a podcast recording with Jason Calacanis and a bunch of other fat-bloggers today. I’ll let y’all know when he posts the podcast. It was a good time. I at least met (virtually) a bunch of other passionate fat-bloggers stay in touch with.

I’ll be reading through everyone’s posts and link to them over the next few days. I also had a ton to say, but didn’t get to any of it. There were a lot of people to fit into the recording, and Jason does a really good job of quickly filling in any silences 😉 So I’ll also try to address some of the things that I took notes about during the call. In any case, I want to thank Jason for the opportunity to speak on the show. Unlike we joke on the podcast, this not just some excuse to get to know a VC. I’m doing something for my health and taking advantage of all of the support we’re drumming up in the community.

Also, one of my fellow guests on the show was none other than Tim Elliott from WineCast.net. I “know” Tim through my work at WineLog, and have been in touch with him lately. But I had no idea he was on this fat blogging wagon as well. He fat blogs at his personal blog here, which I didn’t even know existed. So unreal. Go Tim!

My Work Out Today
Kim and I had a dance lesson, 40 minutes long. We also made it to the gym for about 30 minutes. Since the session was shorter, I ran on the treadmill instead of playing basketball and did an abbreviated lifting routine. I’ve been incorporating more leg stuff into my weight training, which is good. Our biggest muscles are in our legs, and so they are good to target for fat burning. Bigger leg muscles = more calories burned = slimmer Jason.

Daily Calorie Count
I think I did good today, but let me add it up. I had a sandwich for lunch with some chips from Route 11 that we picked up earlier in the week. They are the best chips ever. I’m a bit of a potato chip connoisseur, and I think they’re the tops… followed by some Good’s “Blue Bag” (I might need to proposition those guys to build a real website for them).

Sandwich bread = 250Cal, mayo = 100Cal, 150Cal for cheese, 200Cal for meat (turkey ham!), negligible amounts of lettuce, and 300Cal for the chips. I also had one Hershey’s Kiss (left over from the Twisted in Philly event) for 25Cal. That’s 1025Cal for lunch.

I had a small handfull of cashews between my workout and dinner, which is maybe 125Cal.
Kim made chilli for dinner, which was great (again). I had two medium-sized bowls with some bread and butter. I’d say 350Cal a piece for the chilli bowels and 350Cal for the bread and butter. That’s 1050Cal for dinner. 2200 on the day. Not bad. Could have been better. A sub 2000Cal day would be nice.

Am I Addicted to Losing Weight?
Busy day today. Lots of work tomorrow too. But I think I’m going to be able to maintain this workout and fatblogging schedule. Before I would be slacking off more as my other responsibilities piled up, but I think I’m becoming addicted to losing weight.

Seriously, I’ll look at myself in the mirror and notice some little things (and the changes are still pretty minor): my chin looks more defined, my biceps look more defined, my leg muscles are poking through the fat a bit. Seeing myself in the mirror, looking better, makes me want to keep it up… to lose more weight and become more in shape. I can see how some people become obsessed with this. I’m about 10 pounds away from being at my all-time low weight as an adult, and that excites me.

Hopefully I won’t go anorexic on you guys and then have to start blogging about that, but I think I’m detecting a little bit of a value-change. I used to wonder about how I could be so responsible in other areas of my life, but not be able to control my weight.

Calacanis brought this up on the podcast tonight: how come there are all these super successful people changing the world but unable to control their weight? I’m not in the same league as the guys he was referring to in terms of wealth or power, but I think for instance how easy it is for me to save money and act financially responsible compared to my brother. It’s practically second-nature for me to make good money decisions, a lot of which revolve around delaying gratification (buy a used car now to retire $100k richer later). But when it comes to food, it’s been much harder for me to delay gratification (pass up on that cheese steak now to be healthier later). Anyway, I think that’s changing a bit. We’ll see how things go.

No gym today. We headed home to Reading for Kim’s bridal shower, which was kind of a surprise. I thought I would drop her off, say hi, and be on my way. But I stayed for the whole thing and had a decent time. It’s good to see folks ladies I haven’t seen in a while.
Today was another day of cheating. I’m too scared to even count the calories I ate today. I think I’m done celebrating my weight loss by eating it back (although the scale has been pretty good to me anyway). I’m going to start tomorrow off right with a nice long visit to the gym.

Besides my goal of weighing 210lbs by the wedding, I’m also giving myself the goal of bench pressing 210lbs. Last time I maxed out at 185lbs. I’m going to do a bit of research to see if that is a realistic goal for a couple months of working out.

I’m also interested to read about how much weight you can actually gain by building larger muscles. You always hear people talking about “losing inches, but no weight… cause muscles weigh more than fat”. My guess is that I’m not really at risk of having my muscle gain interfere with my weight loss goals.

Enjoy the weekend, kids. It’s kind of nice here on the east coast.

A relatively bad couple of days. Yesterday was an official “day off”. I needed to rest my body a bit from the workouts and dancing I’ve been up to lately. And last night we met up Philly for a little wine party. I definitely over indulged in the cheese and crackers and free wine that was there. A 3000Cal night easy.

Today I did go to the gym for a nice 1-1.5 hour workout, but had a textbook binge moment tonight. I’ve been watching poker and snacking for the past couple hours. A banana muffin and extra small bowl of the casserole we had for dinner adds an additional 600Cal or so for the day.

Overall not too much damage done, but I’m not trying to “maintain” here. We need to be losing. I want to break through 220 hard next week… no this weekend. Yeah!

Still feeling good. I’ve been going over my 2000Cal # pretty routinely the past few days. But on the other hand, I’ve also been working out more than I planned. At the beginning of this, I thought my diet would be the most important part of my weight loss. But I’m having a lot of fun working out and so finding ways to fit it into my schedule.

Yesterday I had about 2300Cal for the day, mostly because I had lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s. Two “mini burgers”, which runs about 650Cal, fries at 350Cal, and a 300Cal salad had me at 1300Cal just for lunch. What really put me over my goal though was a relatively harmless muffin and glass of milk I had for breakfast. That 400Cal or so made all the difference.

Know What You’re Going to Have for Lunch and Dinner Before You Have Breakfast
See one of the things you HAVE to do if you are going to try this “I can eat whatever I want, just less” diet is plan your meals out for the entire day. I had a mid-day meeting yesterday, which I thought was going to be at Starbucks. I don’t drink coffee, so I wasn’t planning on having anything to eat or drink during the meeting. Since I was going to be away for a while, I decided to have a muffin and glass of milk to hold me over until I could get a bigger lunch at home.

However, on the way to the meeting I found out that were actually going to be having lunch over the meeting. And at Ruby Tuesday’s no less. Now, I could have eaten something healthier for lunch, but it goes against my philosophy here. I would have much rather passed on the breakfast, which would have been no problem at all knowing I was getting mini burgers in 30 minutes.

Yesterday’s Workout
Kim and I danced yesterday night inside “Founder Hall” at Haverford. I think we’ll be going over there for our dancing practice more often. It’s a lot nicer than trying to squeeze in our dancing in the living room here.

Afterwards, I hit the gym (fairly late – like 10pm). I was shooting some hoops. There were a couple other guys there and we played what they’re calling “21” these days. It was nice. I work pretty hard when I’m shooting by myself, but this game of 21  was much more intense than my usually bball workout.

Also, I stink at basketball. This one guy killed us. I was able to get more points than the one guy though bases solely on my height advantage and rebounds.

I found out though that I missed one of the best episodes of Heroes ever. So I’ll need to find a way to get that sh!* online.

Today’s Workout
Kim and I had another private dance lesson today. Decent workout. I broke a bit of a sweat, probably because their heat was so high though.

I thought that this lesson wasn’t as successful as the first. I guess you just can’t beat the ROI for that first lesson. We did learn a few moves, get some pointers on some old ones, and get a nice long list of stuff to do for “homework”.

We’re going to go back to Founders Hall for some more dancing tonight. We will probably work on our Fox Trot, Rumba, and Meringue. If I’m feeling it, I’ll go to the gym afterwards again, but I’m pretty beat and have a long night of work ahead of me.

Peace out fans.

Weighed in at 220 pounds today. 221 yesterday. I need to keep this up. I plan on having a long day at the gym tomorrow. I’ve got a midday meeting and a lot of work, which will make it tough. But if I gain back a lot of this weight I recently lost, I’ll be very bummed out.

So “fatblogging” is all one word I think. I need to make sure I write it that way if I want folks to find my stuff I’m writing. I think I’ll use both “fat blogging” and “fatblogging” tags from now on out. I dunno.

Check this out. My fat picture was in the snapshot of Calacanis’ site on Alexa. Nice.

I think I will credit our dancing for the nice results I’ve had this past week. In addition to going to the gym about every other day, Kim and I have been dancing for at least 1hr every night. Dancing isn’t too rigorous, but it’s about equivelent to a semi-brisk walk. I imagine it’s at least another 200-400Cal burned every day. And we’re having a ton of fun too.

Yesterday I ate terrible, but not too much (quantity-wise). And so I think I stayed close to 2000Cal. I had a Sausage McMuffin with Egg for breakfast. They gave me a hasbrown that I didn’t order, so I ate that too. That’s about 700Cal according to this nutritional chart at McDonald’s website. For lunch/dinner I had a dozen ranch chicken wings and some nachos at the Pike Cafe, a great place to get food and drink in Reading, PA. Chicken wings are about 100Cal each and I’d say I ate 400Cal worth of nachos. That puts me at 2200Cal. I also had a glass of white wine at night for a total of 2300Cal or so.

I’ll go over what I ate today, even though I know I’m over. For breakfast/lunch, Kim and I went to Minella’s Diner in Wayne. I had a huge ham and cheese omelet with spinach, hashbrowns, and wheat toast. I’m thinking 4 eggs, 3 slices of cheese, and 200Cal worth of ham in the omelet for about 1000Cal total. Toast = 300Cal. Hasbrowns about 350Cal, putting me at 1850Cal right there. I also had a slice of toast with jam at home early in the morning for 150Cal. Dinner was some great chicken rice soup Kim made. A couple bowels of that would have run me 500Cal. I had about 400Cal worth of tortilla chips and salsa. Later, Kim made banana bread muffins. I ate one with a small cup of milk for about 400Cal. That puts today’s total at around 3400Cal. I hope I overestimated some things in there because that’s about 1/4 of a pounds worth of calories I overate today.

No worries. If I stay on my regime, I should do alright. One more quick tidbit before I go. Last night I dreamt that I had 2 cans out of a six pack. I was holding my shirt up, and Kim was poking at my abs in awe. I woke up and took a look at myself in the mirror. No six pack. My stomach was still flabby, although less so than usual. I also thought my chin and neck area looked nicer. This is probably the most I’ve been motivated to lose weight in a long long while, possibly ever. I credit about 50% of that to the upcoming wedding and about 50% of it this fatblogging movement. Only a couple weeks old, it’s already having an effect on me. I hope we can keep it up.