Resisting Temptation

Current weight: 179.6
Total weight lost: 3.2 lbs

One week in and I am down 3.2 pounds. That's great. For the most part I ate very well. One lunch trip to McDonald's with a Big and Tasty meal with fries and a Friday night beer drinking, fat laden grouper sandwich outing were my only stumbles. But that's ok. I don't aim to be perfect, just greatly improved from my normally poor habits.

Of course this morning my sister in law calls and invites me to go eat breakfast at La Peep. And, I also have reservations for a get together tonight at Fleming's Steakhouse. So I order an omelet at La Peep and they bring a good 3 egg omelet with ham, cheese, and sour cream that filled up the plate alongside a heaping of potato squares and 2 slices of processed bread. I'm guessing that was about 1300-1500 calories of food and I ate 800-900 calories of it. Now it's Fleming's at 7 and I need to get in my required fruit and vegetables. I plan on eating a salad and drinking water. We'll see how that goes.

Fat And Out Of Shape

I stand 5'3" and weight 182.8 pounds. Actually I weighed 182.8 a week ago. I am sick of being overweight and have decided to make another attempt to get back in shape. From my blog title, you may have guessed how I intend to do that. I, like most overweight people, have tried diets before, lost weight, gained it back, lost it again, you get the picture.

The problem with the weight though, is that it affects my quality of life. For instance, I like to ride bikes. I have been riding for recreation since 1986 as an adult. I enjoy doing organized rides from time to time and did a little racing in the early 90s. My excess weight though has always been a source of frustration when on these rides, training for these rides, or just performing well on the bike while riding through the park. You just can't go up a hill well when you're obese no matter how strong your legs are. In cycling, weight is everything when going up a hill.

So the Mediterranean diet, why did I choose that? Well, like I said, I have plenty of experience dieting. Most of the diets I have tried included low fat intake. Apparently I really like fat. I can't stay on a low fat diet and have always abandoned them after starving myself down to a measured improvement. Anyway, the Mediterranean diet is lower fat than what I normally eat when hitting the restaurants every night, but it lets me eat good fats like olive oil. From what I know it's what everybody knows they should be eating anyway: fruits, vegetables, fish, nuts, and whole grains. But I chose the Mediterranean diet after reading an article in Outside magazine about a Triathalete who tried 8 popular diets within a year. After completing them all, he said the Mediterranean would be a fallback for him as he had tons of energy and felt great when training. The fact that it was heart healthy and was a balanced reasonable lifetime sustainable plan made sense to me. That being said, I don't know the details yet. I impulsively bought three books off Amazon to get started, two cookbook types and one diet book called The Advanced Mediterranean Diet by Steve Parker M.D. That's the book I plan to read and follow. I've started but have not progressed very far.

For exercise, which I believe is critical for long term success and general fitness, I will be cycling. However, I own the P90X workout system and once I drop a few pounds I hope to give that a go. Right now I am not exercising but I have been eating better for a week.

My goal is to lose 1 pound per week over the course of the next 9 months and get down to 147 by my birthday in November. Then sometime in 2011 maybe I'll reach my ultimate goal of 137, be totally fit, and retry the Etape Du Tour (see my other blog).

The world wants to know how I do so stay tuned.