Losing a part of me

My Bulk Barn experiment failed, but only marginally… and only because my ability to convert grams to ounces is weak. I should also mention that while the experiment did not go as planned, I did nonetheless learn a great deal from it which will help with my weight loss going forward.

I went in and measured out a much smaller portion than I usually do. I weighed it, and it came to precisely 100g. That looked to be about a reasonable portion, right? For the fun of it, I then measured out a portion the size that I usually would have taken and weighed it. That weighed nearly 350g. Alright, the first bag it is (of course). Little did I realize that the 100g of peanuts contains 643 calories, and the portion that I had thought was a reasonable serving size was actually 3.5oz. For the fun of it, yes… I now realized that the serving I was buying previously was actually over 2,000 calories… more than I want to be consuming in a day, let alone in a sitting. It is time to seriously rethink my snacking… which is to say I am done with peanuts for a while.

To put things into perspective… if I was going to knowingly add 2,000 calories to my daily food intake, here are some of the things I could have gone in for:

• Sixteen Double-Dusted Chicken Wings at Montana’s… if we add the Starter Caesar salad, that takes us to 1,890 calories. If we add ranch dressing to the wings, that should tip the scale.
• A whole medium hand-tossed pizza with extra cheese from Domino’s would be 1,840 calories… but I could add a salad to that to get over 2,000 calories.
• A 16-ounce rib steak is only 1,480 calories, so if I were to add a medium baked potato for nearly 200 calories, I would still have room left over for dessert.
• At P.F. Chang’s (not my favourite, but easy to get honest nutritional information for) I could have a cup of Hot & Sour soup, two vegetable spring rolls, an order of Sesame Chicken, a side order of fried rice, and four fortune cookies for 1,990 calories.

Are you getting my point? This is likely a major reason why my weight loss has been more or less stagnant over the last couple of months. The peanuts are out.

What I will be doing though is ordering more meal replacement bars for when I get to Leslie’s place in Dallas. I have been nursing the last two boxes that I have but decided over the last couple of nights to have one instead of the regular meal replacement shake… they have fewer calories, so when I am eating later in the evening it just makes sense. They still satisfy my cravings and sate my hunger, while doing so with significantly fewer calories. I see no reason why I cannot start replacing the peanuts in the middle of the day with the meal replacement bars.

It is this sort of thinking that I will have to use going forward. I do not mean just now, rather for the rest of my life. If I want to lose weight and keep it off, I need to start thinking like this always. As I have said every time I have started this program, while it is important to stick to the program to lose the weight, what is most important is that I change my relationship with food.

Sometimes it takes an outside voice to show you that you are going astray. That voice can be berating or demeaning, but that just makes you feel lousy. When the voice is encouraging and trying to help, it can make you think about what you have been doing and make you evaluate your choices… and how to go forward. I am so grateful to my loving fiancée for pointing out that I was eating a lot of peanuts.

This morning the bathroom scale had me up from yesterday, but only by a little. Having lost over two pounds yesterday morning, it is not surprising that I gave back a little less than half a pound, despite a tremendous bowel movement. Yes, that is gross… but it is something that people trying to lose weight have to be cognizant of.

Today I am planning another relaxing day. My allergies are kicking my butt this morning, so I took my pills and sprayed my spray, and they are much less debilitating than they were an hour ago. I am hoping that by noon I will not feel them at all. I suspect it helped not at all that HRF Princess Sophie decided to go traipsing through a field of dandelions this morning on our walk. At least we got some steps in. I have invited Eduardo to come for a cigar, but he is not sure if he can because he is waiting for a repairman. If he does, great; if he does not, he will come tomorrow. Either way, it will be good to see my friend.

This evening, I will spend a few hours with my son the younger. He will want to get dinner, and I hope he picks somewhere that I can make reasonable choices, rather than somewhere that I cannot eat, and just sit watching him enjoy his (whatever he orders). Either way, I love spending time with him… and I will do my best to stick to the program.

I just realized that dinner with my son will interfere with my diet program support meeting. I will ask my diet buddy if she can reschedule.

After that, depending on what time he wants to go home, I have been invited to a cigar event at Alec Bradley’s, so if I have time I will show up. If not, then my son is and always will be more important.

My son the elder said that he will come over tomorrow evening for a dram. I originally invited him to come celebrate finishing his exams, but it seems he has one last exam in a couple of weeks. He suggested he come over to celebrate my engagement. I’ll take it!

The weather is a cloudy but warm, with a forecast high of 23°C. While it felt like we were going to get rain when we were out, precipitation is not in the forecast for today. Welcome to Canada… we’ll see!

Have a great day folks!