Season of the Devil

BEFORE

AFTER- So FAR!

Greetings fellow fat fanatics! Let's get rolling with another debriefing on my de-beefing.

Since our last update, I have made some progress and I do mean some. I have managed to budge slightly downward on the scale to 187.8. I guess I'll take it. Any weight loss at this point is welcomed!  I was hoping to be at 185 by tomorrow morning.  With any luck, I will be at 186.9. I need to be as low as possible tomorrow morning. Why? Because at noon my seasonal dance with The Devil commences.

Let's introduce The Devil to our new followers and reacquaint him with our loyal followers.

The Devil is my mental nemesis. He resides forever in the deepest corners of my psyche. His only goal is to make me weak. To make me succumb to my inner cravings. To make me lose all inhibitions. To make me give in. In short, to make me forget how far I have come.

While The Devil is ever present and challenges self myself control daily, he really goes all out on special occasions. And there are no better occasions than the holiday season. The "D" is licking his chops right now. He knows I have a myriad of lunches, dinners, family get togethers and seasonal office revelries on my immediate schedule. Add to these distractions, my travel schedule starts to get a bit hectic.  I have have one trip a month planned for the next four months, each with it's own brand of fine dinning and adult libations.

I know when I am thinking soberly, I can make the right choices and not fall off the food wagon. But that's not how The Devil rolls. He knows I'm strong enough to go toe to toe with him with a clear mind. That's why he travels with his wily henchmen, Al C. Hall and Vinny Vino. He knows, that despite my personal fortitude, I will celebrate the season and imbibe in an abundance of adult beverages. Al and Vinny will be there to happily provide me with a plethora of choices to help dull my senses and weaken my resistance. The "D" is always waiting in the shadows, armed with a hot pizza pie, ready to pounce at me at the slightest loss of will power. Or it could be a cookie he wields to take me down. Perhaps some crunchy Fritos. Whenever my guard goes down, The "D" will be ready with the soup du jour.

So let the games begin! It's a fancy country club lunch tomorrow, Thanksgiving Thursday, and then couples dinner Friday.  I get a couple days off then I'm off to Palm Beach for a week with relatives and friends. My new goal is to weigh no more than 189.9 on Tuesday, December 10.  That would be a small victory. Meanwhile, if I show up at your doorstep caroling with a martini in hand, you know a well done cheese and sausage can't be far behind.

See you in a couple of weeks

Johnny

No News is Bad News is Good News

Hello again everybody! It's time for your favorite periodic pudgy press conference. I did alert all of the major media outlets. But it seems they had more pressing obligations. Go figure. I'm flabbergasted that they don't think this is breaking news. I bet if I got a pit bull to bite me in the ass I'd be all over the 5 o'clock news.

Let's talk about my weight loss for the past week. (Buzzer sound here.) That sound means I have nothing to report. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Same weight, almost to the ounce, as last Monday. While it's true I busted the 190 mark and hit the elusive 189, it is here that I am stuck.  Mired in melancholy.  My previously reported frustration with my temperamental metabolism is rearing it's ugly head once more. It's very disheartening to get on that scale really feeling pumped for a loss, only to have that electronic bastard spew it's bad news. I'm going to fling that thing out the window some day.  I have never had such a love / hate relationship with an inanimate object before. I once had a putter that crossed me the wrong way and I sent it to a watery grave in a small water hazard. This fancy Fitbit scale only has so many lives.

The no news is the lack of weight loss.  The bad news is I probably won't hit the goal I set for myself of 186 by the day before Thanksgiving.  Seeing that is only 8 days away, it will take an act of the fat gods for me to make it. The other salty news is that this plateauing is messing up my math. I need to lose at least 20 more pounds. When I was at the 1-1/2 pound per week pace, I had the goal date of March 1. One pound per week puts me out to mid April. If I fall below that, I guess we're talking May.

I'm doing my part. I'm staying on my 1200ish calories a day plan. I'm limiting my drinking to special occasions. Now I'm stepping up my workouts to 4-5 days a week. I have actually been doing sprints in the middle of my treadmill walks to boost my metabolism. I am working some with weights. I say "working" because my loss of muscle really makes "lifting" hard. These increased workouts have come at great expense to my aging and abused body. I had bad eyes, bad shoulders and creaky knees going into this thing.  We can now add bad feet and sore hips to the hit parade.

The good news is I'm not giving up. I have a few hurdles here to overcome in the short term, namely Thanksgiving, Palm Beach , birthday, Christmas, New Years Eve, New Orleans, Palm Beach  and Scottsdale. My loyal readers will remember that this was the schedule last year that made me bust out of my pants. Well, not this year sports fans. By hook or by crook I will be under my goal by my Bandiversary. May 15, 2014. In the meantime, let's all pray to the god of fatness, Plumpurius, to guide us to the promised land.

Bye now!
JT

We Have Movement .....

Hello all!

Since my last update, I have had downward movement on the scale! YAY! It was getting very frustrating being stuck at around 193 for around 2 weeks. Frustrating and discouraging. It gets to a point where you start thinking you need to change something. I would like to thank Dr. X and the bubbly Ms. K from talking me off the ledge during my last visit. They both like my program and the results. They unanimously encouraged me to be patient and stay on point.  They were right.

I not only had a loss, I broke the 190 barrier as well. As of this morning, I have been in the 189 range, give or take a few ounces, for about 5 days. This certainly is a huge step in the right direction.  189 is significant for a couple of reasons.

First, hey it's 189! I'm in the 80's. I have talked previously about how long it's been since I was in this weight division. I think I broke the 200 mark in circa 1985.  So 189 was years before that. Perhaps the 70's? Might I have been doing The Hustle at 189? Possible. I know I played high school football at around 190 and that was my pre-Hustle days. Alas, my memory fails me again.

Next, 189 makes the 65 pound loss mark.  That's not just a significant amount of blubber, it also puts us only 5 pounds away from another blog entry of "what does this weigh".   Always amusing. And informative.

Lastly, 189 puts me exactly 20 pounds away from my original goal of 169. Yes fans, the finish line is coming in to view. It's time time to refocus and put the after burners on.  I can't get distracted and I have to be PATIENT! That's going to be the hardest part. Good thing I have the holidays coming up to keep my mind off of food, drinking and merry making.  I better rethink that.

See ya real soon...

JT

5 is better than 4

Yesterday I made my monthly sojourn to the Center for Fat-ass-i-ness. As usual, I arrived a bit early, checked in with Ms. Grumpy at the desk, got my hospital name bracelet, and selected a fat ass chair to park in while I waited for the venerable Dr. X.

As always, the waiting area was filled with a mixture of pre and post bandsters. I can usually tell who's who. I remember my first consultation there back in January. I envision that I probably had the same look on my face. A look somewhere between anxiety and fear. And right down the street from What the F am I doing here. Yup. That look. Taking that first step takes a lot of courage. Not military type courage. It takes personal courage. It's very humbling to waddle into a fat ass clinic full of normal sized people and ask for help. It's the last stop on the rotund railroad. Miss this stop and you're on your way to I-Give-Upsville. I bet almost all of these pre-bandsters have their consultation and take the plunge like I did. Once you've gone this far and once you're comfortable with the people trying to help you, the rest falls in to place. All that's left is the commitment.

Dr. X must've been busy, because I waited 45 minutes for the extra wide doors to swing open and the bubbly Ms. K to call my name. Once inside, my visit went by briskly. Ms. K, Dr. X and I have all become chummy and we spend more time chit chatting than we do about weight loss. But our work does get done. Blood pressure, excellent. Body Temperature, excellent. Now to the industrial scale and... 89 kilos exactly! It's always so anti climatic. We then went in to the exam room and dissected the numbers. Five pound loss in 5 weeks. They were happy. Me, not so much.

After the normal questions regarding my eating schedule and exercise routines, the three of us discussed my current plateau situation. Dr. X was very supportive and told me to hang in there. I'm doing the right things and it will pay off. But he decided to give me a little adjustment anyway. Another .25 ccs were squirted in to my port bringing the total restriction of my band to 47.5% full. I told him up front that the last injection "got my attention". I had three small stuck episodes and experienced my first slimming after the last boost. I really have to pay attention to the size of my bites and how fast I eat them. I guess I'm a real bandster now.

Before I took my leave, Ms. K inserted her two cents worth by suggesting I try cross-training to help me move off my plateau. Cross-training? I'm not really sure what that is. If cross dressing is the uniform for the cross training sport ... you can count me out.

Until next time...

SHUT YER MOUTH!

Johnny T

Curses! Stuck again

I'm sitting at my desk during my mini lunch period. I just fired down a Starkist Tuna Lunch to Go and a single serving of low fat cottage cheese. About 300 calories in all. Add my Muscle Milk Light shake with blended banana breakfast, I'm at about 500 calories right now. I stayed away from my mid-morning yogurt and have not consumed any water or Vitamin Water Zero. Only a couple cups of coffee. I'm straying from my routine.

Why? Because I'm frickin' stuck again and I'm going to the Fat-ol-o-gist in an hour and a half. I have to face the bubbly Ms. K and Dr. X, not to mention Ms. Grumpy (the nurse that take all my vitals). I'm going to give them my monthly rundown of average daily food intake and exercise and then answer all their prying questions.

Then we are going to look at my weight chart. For 5 months straight that line has been going down 5 to 8 pounds per month. Great progress. Remember? I got the gold star rock star routine from them? I'm worried I'm going to get some other type of doctoral input today.

Here's the skinny on the fat loss. I was 195 pounds on October 12. I was 194 pounds this morning. That is not good. I have been bouncing up and down between 192.5 and 194.5 for about 2 weeks. Verrrrry frustrating. I don't know what the problem is. I'm sticking to the plan. I am overly active. In fact, my heal hurts from walking 8.5 miles yesterday, my shoulder muscles hurt from weight lifting Saturday and my knees are burning from my new brisk 18 minute treadmill workout. I don't know what's killing me more. This working out BS or the lack of weight loss.

I checked my Fitbit app to get my weight from September 30, the last time I saw Dr. X. It said 198. It looks like the best I'm going to show is a 4 pound loss in 5 weeks. Yech. I don't want to make excuses. Excuses will not get met to 169. But if it does come up, I'll blame it on Vegas. What happens there doesn't always stay there.

I'll report the news soon.

Johnny T