Grammy's scale was NOT accurate

So the scale yesterday at her house showed me not up at all for the long weekend, which I knew couldn't be accurate.  I figured it was 2 or 3 pounds.  But as of my scale this morning, it's actually FIVE pounds.  Yikes.  I have my work cut out for me this week just getting back down to last week's weight.  I REALLY wish I had some will power so that instead of always trying to undo damage, I was making progress. 

So...who's joining me for hoops tomorrow night?

Oops!

Some signs that perhaps you still have your eating problem:

* You wait until everyone else has gone to bed so that no one sees you eating that giant Hershey's Kiss you found on top of the fridge.  (And to make it worse, you discover upon opening it that it's from Valentine's Day!)

* You head from the adults' table into the kitchen to "get a drink" then polish off a piece of pizza from the kids' table on the way back in.

* You go prospecting in your mother-in-law's pantry and find snacks from last summer when you were here last.  Sure they're stale, but they're still snacks...

On the upside, I did run a little over five miles today (the most since the marathon relay in May) and felt pretty good after an early cramp let up.  There's no way that remotely made up for the damage done over the last few days, but it had to help.  We also spent much of Friday raking leaves, so that's something.  Grammy has a scale here that had a very attractive number on it for me after my run this afternoon, but who knows how that compares with mine at home.  I guess I'll find out tomorrow!

Giving thanks for weight loss

I weighed in at 256.6 this morning.  Therefore, tomorrow I will give thanks for weight loss by having a large turkey dinner, albeit not quite as large as I normally would (hopefully).  In any event, Grammy always has acres of leaves for us to rake, and gutters to clean out, so I should hopefully work it off.  Really nice, flat jogging trails up there also.  Have a good long weekend everyone!

Bill, new pictures will be up soon, I promise.  I've been taking them; they're just still in the camera.

Slight schedule change

I haven't done this before, but I'm planning on weighing in tomorrow morning instead of Thursday this week.  We're leaving Thursday morning to drive up to NJ and I won't be able to post.  That's my official reason.  The real reason is that I played ball tonight and tomorrow should be a nice, low weight.  Oh, and I'm playing cards tomorrow night.  So...Wednesday it is.  Call me a cheater if you want. but it's my blog so I make the rules.  Plus it gives me an extra day to get rid of my second Thanksgiving dinner.

The new TV is working

As I mentioned, I got a high def TV for our bedroom as an early Christmas present for myself.  The idea was to have me watching sports in the evening farther away from the kitchen.  So far, so good!  I was watching Eagles-Bears last night and definitely wanted a snack, but here's where my inherent laziness works in my favor.  The snacks were an entire floor away!  So I just went to bed hungry.

Pants update:  Now wearing size 40.  That might still sound insanely large to most of my more normal size readers, but I was in 44s in September.

Weekend update:  I seem to have come through the Bonefish/casino night/Thanksgiving weekend relatively unscathed.  So with hoops on Tuesday I'm hopeful for another successful week.  Thanks, again, to everyone for all your kind words of encouragement!

Speedbumps coming

I have Bonefish tonight followed by the All Saints casino night, then the Griffin family Thanksgiving tomorrow.  Of course, real Thanksgiving is next Thursday, so this could be a rough patch.  Luckily, I've got basketball on Tuesday, and I did play frisbee this morning.  If I can get through the next four weeks or so without major backsliding, it will be a real accomplishment.  My mom makes really good Christmas cookies, and lots of them!

Eagle Eye Maenza

So I get this email from Bill Maenza yesterday.  It says:

Jim,

I am calling you to the carpet big boy!

Initial blog excerpt: My friend Kevin Caiazza keeps encouraging me to join the 300 club, and I still maintain that I've never officially been north of that particular border.

Today blog excerpt: It seems like a long way from my max of 301.

Nice try - do not try sneak one by me, ever! I will catch you and call you on it.

OK Mr Law Boy - I expect a full retraction!

Bill


Given that the email arrived at 10:46 a.m., I'm sure Bill's boss would like an explanation of why he wasn't working but was instead looking back through 62 old posts going back nearly three months to compare my words from this week versus my original words. 

But OK Bill, here's your retraction.  I was, indeed, 301 at one point.  Only for a day, or maybe just an evening after a big dinner, but I did see that number on a scale once.  And yes, I was on the scale alone.  Since I was 295 the day I started the blog then that's the number I use officially, but unofficially I sometimes measure from 301.  I appreciate you calling attention to it like that.  Figured I was getting a little too proud of myself and needed a dose of humility, did ya?

My first official 250's weigh in

Since today's Thursday, today's weight is the official one for the week, and it was 259.6.  I was thinking about it this morning, and I realized that in less than 3 months I'm basically half way done!  Another 35 pounds and I'll be at 225, which I haven't weighed since college (or shortly thereafter, like law school).  The lowest I got down to in 2006 when I had my last big weight loss was 228, and that was just for a few days.  I was in the 230's for months, but not the 220's for very long.  I really can't imagine, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, that I'll be able to continue this pace for another 3 months and be "done" before Spring, but a man can dream, can't he?

I've asked Peggy to take my measurements and do the body fat assessment again on me, so I'll be able to update the stats in the right hand column.  I'm eager to see how much things have changed.

The first weight I'm really actually kind of proud of...for real

I was 259.4 this morning.  (Of course, since this is Wednesday rather than Thursday, that's an "unofficial" number.)  Besides being down more than 6 from last week, just seeing the 250's again is very gratifying.  It seems like a long way from my max of 301.  That being said, the 40ish pounds I've lost so far aren't making as big a difference as I would have thought in they way my clothes are fitting.  Sure, they're looser.  But I want them falling off!  (I realize that no one else, including Therese, wants that.)  I want one of those giant pairs of pants where they skinny guy stands completely inside one of the legs to show how much smaller he is.

Funny food-related story

So we're in Williamsburg with Caroline and her friend Genna and the other kids at the Japanese steak house and we get to the part where the hibachi chef asks everyone how they want their steak. 

Me:  "Medium."

Therese:  "Medium."

And then we chose medium for the girls.

Genna:  "I want mine large."

Me:  "Genna, he's asking how you want your steak cooked."

Genna:  "But I want mine large!"

Therese:  "Not medium as in small-medium-large but medium as in rare-medium-well done."

Genna:  [very puzzled look] "I want a big one."

I don't think we ever got the point across.

Stupid Cowboys

If the Cowboys had won, then I wouldn't have had to console myself with bon bons.  It's Romo's fault that I'm fat!  When you get a first and goal at the one yard line and you have Marion Barber on your team, RUN THE BALL!

Now that I have that off my chest, I can proudly say that I did NOT, in fact, console myself with bon bons, or any other food item.  As the final seconds were ticking off the clock, I was holding the trash can so Will could vomit into it.  While many will take that as a symbolic gesture of what he thought of his team's performance, it was actually due to illness.  That's actually what I've been doing for one kid or another for what seems like weeks now.  But seeing that up close and personal does tend to blunt one's appetite.

Thursday Weigh In

Sorry I'm late updating this.  I weighed in Thursday morning but we then left right away for Great Wolf Lodge and I didn't get a chance to post.  My weight was 266 even; down 3 pounds from last week and .6 from two weeks ago.  It definitely seems like I'm plateauing a little earlier than I had hoped.  Then again, instead of blaming some "plateau," I should probably blame the filet mignon with fried rice I got at the Japanese steak house Thursday or the chocolate cream pie shake I got at Sonic on the way home Friday.  Maybe I'll lose some of it back since I've come down with a nasty cough/fever and now I can't sleep.

Hopeful for Thursday

Thanks for all the comments yesterday guys.  Nice to see my friend Jean weigh in (ha!) all the way from the Congo where she's doing medical missionary work.  Dave, when you're a non-fat guy, no one cares how fast you can run!  It's just assumed that you're in shape.  Peggy, I'd be happy to jump in there for you Saturday...if you were running a 5K.  I hope to be ready for a half marathon by spring, but my full marathon days are over.  I'll keep your health in my prayers b/c I know you've trained really hard the last few months and will be very disappointed if you can't go on Saturday.  There are four days left, so that's enough for a miracle cure!

I'm still hopeful that I'll be down at Thursday's weigh in to below the 266.6 that I was two weeks ago.  Brendan and I played racquetball for an hour and a half tonight and he ran me around, so that should help.  Now I need to figure out what to do in the rain tomorrow while Therese is at work.  Hello treadmill??

You guys are hard to please

Since yesterday's post about breaking the 10 minute mile mark garnered exactly zero comments/kudos (I did get an out of office reply from Dan; does that count?), I'm going to try again.  Today I ran with Therese who pushed me and I did 9:19 miles.  Pace from the last 3 days:  10:07, 9:29, 9:19.  I'm not going to try to run tomorrow b/c I feel dead tonight, but I'll figure out something. 

Finally got under 10's

I went from 10:07 miles Saturday all the way down to 9:29 Sunday (for 3 miles).  All I wanted to do was get under 10 minute miles and apparently I was moving faster than I thought.  The weather was good and I was just feeling it.  Now that I have my pace to where it's respectable, I need to start increasing distance.  My goal, since I like to set them, is to finish a half marathon in under 2 hours.  I think my current best is 2:03.  To finish under 2 hours, you pretty much need to run the whole thing at a 9 minute mile pace.  I realize that for the Bob Colemans and Peggy Harrises of the world, those are just cool down laps.  For me, a sprint.

How Jim got his groove back

Running, mostly.  I'm almost back down to where I was two weeks ago, so I'm hopeful that next Thursday's weigh in will be a good one.  I almost made 10 minute miles today, which has been my goal for weeks.  I ran 2.9 miles in 29:21, which is a 10:07 pace, so I'm almost there.  The next few days all look good for running, so I think I might cross the threshold this week.  Peggy, if the weather holds up we could do the workout outdoors again, except for the daylight issue.

I guess it had to happen

I got on the scale this morning and confirmed what I had suspected for days.  My first weigh in failure.  With Halloween, Caroline's birthday, a Ruth's Chris steak dinner in AC courtesy of [pre-blackjack-failure] James Younts, and buffet comps, the only suspense was really how much I'd be up.  Since I was still in the 260's I guess that counts for something.  I did run Tuesday morning on the boardwalk, which is a great place to run b/c it's perfectly flat and there's tons to see.  Also music blaring from all the casinos.  I would have run again Wednesday morning if Younts didn't drag me back to the blackjack table till 4 a.m. 

My goal for this week is not just to be down from the 269 I am now but to be down from the 266.6 I was last week.  Now to find a way to get rid of the leftover Halloween candy...

Off to Atlantic City

Well, Halloween and Caroline's birthday have come and gone, and I didn't get on the scale to assess the damage.  I'm hoping to run along the boardwalk the next couple days and avoid the free buffets and hope that helps.  One good thing about being such a great poker player is that I'll be at the table so long that I won't have time to eat!