It sounds like there’s a relatively new fat substitute that tastes and “feels” right, is all-natural, and has no side effects. If this is true, this product should sell huge:
Z Trim, which has no fat, is made from the hulls of corn, oats, soy, rice and barley. It was developed by a scientists at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Illinois in the mid-1990s.The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group that often speaks out on unhealthy food, said it has no safety concerns about Z Trim.
It’s taken several years to get the product into production and on the market. In 1998, FiberGel Technologies of Mundelein, Ill., acquired the license for Z Trim and built a manufacturing plant with plans to market and sell it to both food manufacturers and consumers.
Sold as a gel or powder, it can be used in dressings, dips, sauces, baked goods, processed meats, snack foods, cookies, pies and other foods. Unfortunately, it cannot be fried.
Now, I’ve tried products with Olestra. And aside from tasting a little odd, and having a weird kinda greasiness, they also did really bad things to my tummy. I’m never going to eat another foodstuff containing Olestra. But Z Trim sounds very interesting, especially since it seems benign. Since CSPI doesn’t have any objections to it, that makes me very, very optimistic. Anything which reduces the amount of fat and calories in foods without punishing one for trying to be healthier while eating junk food is a good thing in my book.
Weight: 330
Difference from last entry: -5
Wow. WOW! Just, like wow man! (Sorry, we’ve been watching a lot of Scooby Doo.) I’m down 5 pounds from last week! Five whole pounds, and all I’ve really been doing is trying to reduce the amount that I eat. Just trying to keep it to reasonable levels. I have done a good job in reducing the amount that I eat during meals, and cutting out most snacks. As my wife pointed out, I have been snacking at night – mostly having chip’n'dip. But that’s about all the snacking I have been doing. Which is very, very strange for me.
One other small change I’ve made concerns coffee houses (mostly Starbucks). Normally I order my drink, and I have some kind of pastry to go with it. I’ve stopped doing that. I have my drink – making sure to order it made with skim milk and without whipped cream – and that’s it. I’ve also been drinking a lot of water and green tea. Both of those are helping me avoid the snacking, too. It’s amazing how less hungry I am when I am well hydrated.
Exercise has been hit or miss, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. Aside from a good three-month stretch in 2005, I have never been good about exercising regularly. And that is the next thing on my list. I have to start getting in at least a little bit of exercise every day. I need to get my body working, get my muscles actually doing something. That’s the key piece: with exercise, everything else will fall into place.
I am heartened by this week’s loss. I am looking forward to trying to lose weight again. This is going to be another solid, conscious effort to whip myself into shape.
Goals for this week: EXERCISE!
Gettin
Weight: 335
Difference from last entry: -0.5
Okay, I decided that I didn’t give myself enough credit last week. Because while it is true that I wasn’t going out-of-my-way to try and be healthier, I was having some exercise forced on me. In the form of shoveling snow. For those of you who haven’t heard, Denver (and most of Colorado) has been hit by three straight major winter storms, two of which qualified as blizzards. That left a lot of snow everywhere, and forced me to get off my butt, head outside, and dig out our driveway not just once, but multiple times.
That may not sound like fun, and trust me, it wasn’t. But it is a lot of exercise. And the good kind, the kind that gets all of those big muscles in one’s back and thighs working. Those are the muscles that burn calories and get one’s heart rate up. And those are the muscles that scream at you after shoveling 33″ of snow.
I attribute all of the weight that I’ve lost recently to shoveling. And with another snowstorm coming in this weekend, I’ll be being forced into more exercise. Hopefully that means more weight lost!
Weight: 335.5
Difference from last entry: -1.5
Well hello again. Happy New Year! Biffster again, starting in on the 10th year of this weightjournal being online. 10 years! I am gonna have to search back in the archives to see when my first entry was. I’ll definitely have some kind of 10th anniversary celebration here!
As for my weigh-in, I am down a bit over a pound from my post-Thanksgiving weigh in. But I don’t think I can take much credit for that. All I did was eat a little less than I had been. At my weight, one can pig out and still lose a little weight, because it takes a hell of a lot of calories every day to maintain 335 pounds. That was working for me here.
But the new year means a new start. Yet again. As with a large number of other people, one of my new year resolutions is to lose weight. And the way I am going to do that is sensible, logical, and I referred to it last year: I’m gonna follow my action plan for losing weight. It’s a good plan! It worked when I followed it last year. And it is mine. So why the hell am I not following it?
I am also setting a few goals for myself. I’m goal-oriented, and love the challenge to try and meet a goal. So I am going to set myself up with a few weight-related goals, and a couple of behaviour goals:
And we’ll see where I end up from there! 
Welcome to 2007, everyone!
