The Race Is Long... » Diet

5 Eating Pet Peeves…

John — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:30:20 +0000

Someone asked me the other day, if I had any pet peeves. Of course I do, but I found out that a lot of them have to do with eating or habits that people have while eating. I eat out fairly frequently, and I was once married to a “picky” eater so I find myself uniquely qualified to compile a list such as this. Feel free to comment on these and add your own.

1) I hate when a person refuses to try something because they don’t like how it looks… If you’ve never tasted it, how do you know you won’t like it?

2) I hate when a person has to “special order” every menu item… Someone trained in the culinary arts created that menu item, its not up to you to make it better by adding and subtracting ingredients… take it as it comes. Its one thing if you are allergic, its another if you are just too damn picky.

3) I hate when a person doesn’t use table manners appropriate for what we are eating. If we’re eating ribs, feel free to use your fingers… if we are at a fancy french restuarant please don’t employ the same technique.

4) I hate when a person will send it back 100 times because its not EXACTLY to their liking. Sure, send it back if it is completely unacceptable, but sending back a steak because its got burn lines on it, is ridiculous.

5) This only happens after you’ve been with someone for awhile, but I hate it when a person does not eat what they orders but would rather pick off MY plate. If you wanted what I have, you should have ordered it… Now instead of me being able to enjoy my meal in peace, I have to stab your hand to protect my steak..

Anyone else have any pet peeves they would like to share? Feel free to share them by using the comment function!

Fatblogging: 245

John — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:14:21 +0000

I have absolutely been terrible with my diet the last couple of weeks (er.. months?). This weekend for example, I had way too many beers, and ate basically crap all weekend. I’ve skipped meals, drank sodas when I should be drinking water, and basically eat chips whenever I’m bored. The bad part about all this, is that I consciously do it. I KNOW that I shouldn’t be drinking sodas and eating chips…. but they are so tasty.

And of course, my weight shows it… as well as certain parts of my body. Bringing this home, I walked by the mirror the other day, and I swear I saw my neck wiggle.. Genetically and medically I’m prone to having a big neck and a double chin. This is partly from my thyroid condition, but also, my father has a double chin as well… not much I can do about that besides lose weight so that it isn’t as noticable. I’m sure that other parts of my body are fatter as well, but since they aren’t as noticable to me, I don’t pay attention to them.

So… today is the start of another diet cycle for me. I’m going to try and eat right and exercise this month. My goal is to get to around 235 by the end of the month. I don’t really see that as being a problem. I just have to cut out the sodas and start eating decent meals. If I can somehow throw in a walk or bike excursion a couple times a week, I should be good with a 2-3 pound a week drop.

Fatblogging: 240.5

John — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:22:20 +0000

Somehow between yesterday and today, I lost 4 lbs. It might have something to do with the fact that all I had to eat yesterday was a cuban sandwich, some french fries and an orange soda. Obviously thats not the right way of losing weight, but I’ll take it.

Fatblogging: 244.5

John — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:50:02 +0000

I had to send my son back to his mother this weekend, ending our month long adventure together. One drawback to having him here, was that it threw my dieting and weight-loss out the window. Yeah, yeah, I should have been eating healthy in order to set a proper example, but bah… thats just not me. We were always eating hot dogs, popcorn, and all other kinds of crud.

Now that I’m single again, I’m going to try and commit myself to eating better. Maybe throw in some proper exercise once in awhile.

This week in review: My Weight Loss program

John — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:27:30 +0000

Ok… I know I said that my diet started last week. And in some respects, I did start dieting. I started by throwing out all the crap food I had in my house. This wasn’t really that hard, because most of the junk I had was old and needed to be thrown out anyway.

I then went to the grocery store and got some fruits and “diet snacks” (low-cal yogurt, weight-control oatmeal, wheat bread, etc.) I also bought some lean red-meat and some other items that I could make reasonable dinners with. I tried to buy some items such as Progresso soup (which are low-cal, tasty and come in microwavable containers) that I could take to work and eat for lunch.

I started eating 6 times a day (or atleast trying to.) This concept makes a lot of sense to me. One of my problems is “over-eating”.. I will skip meals and then just gorge when I actually sit down to eat. If I can train myself to just eat small snacks throughout the day, perhaps I won’t get the urge to inhale huge meals at night. Here at work, I have a lot of people that are into healthy eating, so I get a good amount of motivation to “eat right.” Plus it is much cheaper to bring your lunch, instead of going out to eat all the time.

I’ve also been cutting out the sodas. Ok, this was an easy one. I never really drank that much soda anyway. I’ve been using those little Crystal Light single bottle mixes that you just dump into your water bottle, and shake. I love the lemonade version and its only 5 calories.

One of my biggest problem as I see it is that I like to snack when I get home. Maybe it relates to the whole, “eating out of boredom” thing I grew up with. But I just love to snack… so I really needed some low-cal items to snack on. I’ve been trying to snack on watermelon and pineapple chunks instead of chips and peanuts, but its just not the same. When I get a “salt” craving, I eat a pickle instead.

I seriously need to incorporate more exercise into my life… I tend to walk more than the average American (but then, most American’s only walk from their car to their door)… but I need to start some weight-training, or take my bike out more… I really have no excuses.

So far, I’ve lost a couple of pounds, but I tend to fluctuate a few pounds here and there throughout the week, so I can’t really say if my diet has done anything for me.

Fatblogging…

John — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:05:42 +0000

Apparently, I’ve been involve in a trend, without even knowing it. Today, I was surfing through the web, and heard about “fatblogging”… or basically chronicling your weight-loss/gain in blog format. I guess I’m not the only fatty blogger out there.

On ‘fatblogs,’ heavy people weigh in

The Diet is on!

John — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:23:13 +0000

Ok, its been awhile now since I stopped worrying about my weight, and its starting to bother me again. I’m hovering at about 240 lbs. and it would be nice to get that down a bit.

What got me thinking about this again? Well, the other day, I was late for my train, and as the train pulled into the station, I had to make a mad-dash of about 200 yards. Unfortunately, about 50-100 yards into my sprint, I started to have one of those fat-man “Oh my god, I can’t breath” moments..

I ended up missing the train.

I remember a time when I was quite younger, where I could run for awhile without getting out of breath. I used to play soccer and tennis, and although I was not the fastest, I could atleast run a mile without too much trouble. Mentally, I still feel like I can run, but as my train-dash taught me, I’m physically not able to do it anymore.

This has got to change. I can walk all day without any trouble, but get my heart-rate up a bit, and I struggle. I have to think that this is due to both my weight and my lack of daily exercise.

Well, I’m going to go back to what I did before, and try to cut back on some of my less-than-desirable eating habits and try to incorporate a bit of exercise into my daily routine.

Of course, I will blog about it on occasion, and let you all know of my progress.

Been slacking…

John — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:56:35 +0000

Its been a few days since I posted to this blog. I’ve been trying to slowly move into my new apartment/condo this week, and have been actually pretty good about my diet. I’ve been eating decent lunches and have not had much soda. Dinners have been very small, usually a couple of peanut butter sandwiches or chicken breast.

I’m down about 4 lbs. So hopefully I’ll be able to lose a couple more before our Friday weigh-in.