Being Healthy is Killing Me!

So, my first Monday back on the wagon went pretty well for the most part.  I brought my own lunch to work, and I tried to space out my eating so that I never had a "Oh God, I'm starving, give me three double cheeseburgers!" moment.  I also received a ton of support from my Facebook family, so I went back to feeling pretty good about this little project.  But then, at a time I estimate to be between 3 and 4 am, my body decided it was going to reject this little healthy notion my mind had come up with and made the bold move to suffocate me.  I woke up around 6 am, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, and couldn't move.  I noticed yesterday that I was starting to get a little congested, which was probably the warning shot from one of my man boobs telling me not to mess with what we had going.  But today it was all out warfare.  I made the call in that I was sick, rolled back over fully expecting not to be able to sleep seeing as how I couldn't breathe, and woke back up again at 12:30.  So, today I made it through lunch with a calorie intake of 0, unless you count the snot in my throat, which is probably on par with the nutritional value of one of the 20 or so Halloween Tootsie Rolls I ate last week.

I looked around for some sort of medicine to get me back on track, but I shared the plight of old Mother Hubbard.  Sick or not, I fully intended to vote today, so I decided I'd hit the grocery store on the way to the polling center.  After doing my civic duty, I made the dreaded trip to the grocery store.  Here's what I hate the most about the diet tango.  There's always that first trip back to the grocery store when you've recommitted yourself, and during that trip you have to visit the section of the store you usually blow past on the way to the frozen pizza aisle.  I always feel a little overwhelmed trying to pick out fruits and vegetables, but I generally know what I like.  I'm a big fan of Honeycrisp apples, bananas, and pears, and I am fairly tolerant of broccoli and carrots.  What this generally equates to is me leaving the store with bags and bags full of fruit that I'm fairly confident rot on the way home.  Seriously, how long is a banana supposed to last?  I try to pick some green ones to last me through a week, and they almost always brown before I get to one.  You know how long a Twinkie lasts?  Forever!  Also, you know how much five Honeycrisp apples cost?  Roughly as much as five Jack's pizzas.

But I'm committed.  I only buy enough fruit to get me through the weekend this time.  I came up with this crazy plan to make a baked potato for lunch with my nifty microwaveable potato bag and then put a Green Giant Broccolli and Cheese single on top of it.  That puts me at around a 300 calorie lunch that just happens to be one of the meals I usually looked forward to on the cafeteria menu.  Match that up with a $3 apple (seriously, did I miss the small diamond in the middle?) in the afternoon, and I should be able to fight my mind's starving reflex.

One of the other steps of the new diet tango is getting rid of all of the "bad" food around the house.  I did a fairly convincing job of that this weekend, because, as anyone who has struggled with weight before knows, you'll start new on Monday so you might as well get in your last two large pizzas from Dominos.  Anyway, going into yesterday I just had a few pieces of leftover pizza in the fridge, so with the exception of the huge bowl of suckers that I bought for the trick or treaters that I eventually decided to shun, I think the house is pretty much temptation free.  I live with a guy that weighs about 140 lbs soaking wet and who leads an active lifestyle, so I can't even blame it on him.  Bastard!  Just kidding, Ryan...don't jack up my rent!  I did eat the rest of the pizza last night, which most surely put me over the 2,000 calorie a day mark.  But get this: according to a recommended calorie calculator, I have to take in 3,034 calories a day to maintain my current weight!  I used multiple tools online to figure out this number, but it was always very close to this number.  In order to lose just one pound a week, I need to get that number down to 2,534, and to lose two pounds I have to average 2,034.  And that's living what the websites affectionately have termed "a sedentary" lifestyle, which basically means I move as much as a rock. These numbers reinforce to me that it won't take a major overhaul in my lifestyle to get this sedentary rock a rollin'!

Mr. Body, I will win this war, one way or another.

Breathlessly yours,

Mr. Mind