I have mentioned here before – many times, actually – that one of my biggest trigger foods during the holidays isn’t actually food, it’s a drink: egg nog. I don’t know why I am as addicted to egg nog as I am. Sometimes I think that I don’t even really like it. I like the spices, and I like the creaminess. It’s a great flavor of yogurt. Or candy. Or ice cream. Or coffee.

But the drink by itself? Over the course of my lifetime, I have drunken gallons of egg nog. Did I ever really like it? Or is it just another bad habit I was inflicting on myself? Who can say for certain?

I’ve realized for the last couple of years that I need to control how much eggnog I have access to. I tried making sure I only had a little in the house, which helped a little bit (except for on Christmas Eve). Completely avoiding eggnog, though, led to deprivation. I wanted eggnog – or at least I thought I did – and denying myself was only making things work.

Those are two competing drives: I want some, but I have to limit how much I have. The solution turned out to be turning towards a massive corporation. (Don’t tell them or they’ll get big heads): Starbucks!

Starbucks sells a rather amazing eggnog latte. I don’t even want to know how many Points it has in its original form (13 Points for a tall). Leaving off the whipped cream and using skim milk lowers that a lot: 10 points for a tall. A tall latte is 12 ounces. 12 ounces of eggnog is 16.

End result? 6 ProPoints saved, eggnog AND caffeine cravings satisfied.

So now tell the truth: you didn’t think you’d hear from me again, didja? Figured I had tossed in the towel and given up, maybe had a horrible holiday season? Never give up on me, Dear Reader! I mean, sure, I have disappeared in the past. But the past is the past, and now is now! And I am very ready for 2011!

Not that I am starting out in the best of ways. I have been naughty this week, indulging in cupcakes and IHOP, of all things. What the hell is that, anyway? Cupcakes? Seriously? What am I, 10?

I actually have an explanation. It’s not an excuse, but it at least explains the cupcakes. This week both my wife and my daughter had a birthday party. One of the many naughty bits of food available were cupcakes. EVIL!!!! Do not fall under the spell of those wanton hussies! 

They tasted pretty damned good though!

Don’t even ask me about IHOP. I took my son and older daughter there after we went b’day present shopping. IHOP apparently is a major red-light food for me, ‘cuz once I started eating, I couldn’t stop ’til I had cleaned my plate. I almost never clean my plate anymore. That was very odd, and kinda unexpected.

That’s my long-winded way of saying I’m gonna gain a few pounds this week. I know it, and I know what the cause was, so I am not freaking out. But I don’t like that I’ll be starting 2011 on a negative note.

[le sigh]

-M 

This is going to have to be a fast update. I am already falling asleep at my keyboard. But I also haven’t updated my poor, neglected weight journal. This is all the fault of my New Testament in Review blog series. It has taken up a lot of my writing time. I just wrapped up reading Revelations, though, so now I have a lot of free time.

Anyway, things are going very well here headed into Christmas. The new ProPoints plan is turning out to be really easy for me to follow – especially since I get so many ProPoints in a day. I’ve been trying to make myself more active, which has also been paying off.

I am stil so tempted by egg nog though…  :)

Happy holidays! And a musical treat for you:

Pumpkin pie - yummy!

Thanksgiving weekend is always rough. There are always so many yummy foods to eat. Turkey, stuffing, yams (and my mom makes super-yummy yams, swimming in brown sugar syrup). And the desserts! Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, apple pies, blueberry cheesecake, home-made peach cobbler…

YUMMY!

Needless to say, I did over-indulge. I ate too much, especially too much of the yams, and too much dessert. And my weight gain shows this.

However, I also did a good job savings Points during the week. I behaved, making sure I didn’t go above my daily Points so I’d have the full set of weekly Points and activity Points left over. Those helped, helped a lot. Instead of being up 2 or 3lbs, I was up less than a pound.

I can live with that!

I sat down and mapped out a long term goal, and have that chopped up into a couple of short-term goals:

Long term goal: Lose 35 pounds by Halloween. The date is easy, since it is close to my son’s birthday. And he is part of the reason I really want to start getting back on track. I am picking the weight goal for a pragmatic reason. I want to have a heart scan done. The tables only hold a max weight of 300lbs, though, so I have to be under. 35 pounds would put me at 295, so I’d have room to spare.

Long term reward: Picking an appropriate long-term reward is kind of hard. It’s a guilt thing. Two-pronged actually. Guilt that I don’t really deserve a reward, since I’ve been a lot lighter than 295 in the past couple of years. That’s bullshit, of course. This is a new goal, it stands separately from everything except for my current weight. 35 pounds is a very good goal, and deserves to be celebrated. (The other reason I feel guilty is I hate spending money on myself.)

Okay, add all of that up, and I still need to set up a reward. And there’s only really one thing that stands out in my mind. If I am at 295 (or less) on Halloween 2010, I am going to buy myself a complete set of Legend of Zelda games for the Wii. This includes LoZ: Twilight Princess, and the earlier LoZ games on the Wii Virtual Console (I already have The Wind Waker). And no, I really don’t mind being labelled such. [grin]

Short term goal: There are seven months ’til Halloween, which  makes short-term goals easy.  5 pounds a month – approximately 1.25 pounds per week – and I am there. It sounds so easy on paper! It looks so easy on the computer screen. And it should be easy. At my weight, losing a pound or two a week should be a breeze. One less pop-tart, an extra 5 minutes walking a day, any of these will allow my body to get rid of this weight. It’s not natural to be this overweight, and one’s body will automatically start shedding weight if I just get out of its way.

Short term reward: At the end of each month, if I lost the 5 pounds I needed in that month, I’m gonna allow myself to buy any book I want. No guilt about spending the money, and no guilt about how silly or popcorn-ish the book might be.

Here’s to my first book!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Show notes:

Lost a bit this week. Yay!

Mother’s Day was a problem, but I had been good enough during the week to minimize the damage.

Hydroxycut is in the news, reminds me of phen-phen from a decade ago.

And it turns out that those of us who are obese might just be addicted to junk food.

2002 Study:
Reduction in Dopamine correlation with BMI,  Result: use over-eating to trigger the reward centers
http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/food/junkfood_addiction/dopamine.html
2008 Study
Very similar: ghrelin.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/tags/junk+food/default.aspx
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v11/n4/full/oby200368a.html

Video entries are fun! I don’t promise I’ll do them every week, but I’ll sure try.

I haven’t updated here lately, but this time it doesn’t mean that I’ve been gaining. I know, I am surprised too! I’ve actually done okay lately, as you can see either by my recorded weight up there, or by taking a look at my weight charts. Either way, you can see a definite weight loss over the last couple of weeks. Which is very cool to see.

We are, of course, heading into the holiday season. Actually, we are right in the middle of it. And some of my weaknesses are coming to the forefront. The worst is egg nog. I don’t know why, but every year I say I’m not going to have much egg nog over the season, and every year I end up drinking pints and pints. I have a profound weakness for it, and I have not figured out a way to get past that. And I need to: 1 pint = 17 points. Can you say HOLY CRAP!!! This is basically taking up all of the exercise Points I earn through a week, which means that I would have to really stick to the plan throughout the rest of the week to balance that out. And I haven’t exactly been doing that.

My other weakness? Cookies. And we have had a TON of them here at work. It started last Monday, with a cookie competition. Since then, people have been bringing in more and more home-made cookies. And I have to try each one. y’know, to be polite and stuff.

I know, I know, that’s cheating.

Well, actually “staying steady” is a bit deceiving. I’ve been up and down the last couple of weeks. That was mostly caused by having an excuse: my birthday! My wife E. threw me a big party, and even though she had lotsa healthy food, I still found not-so-healthy foods to eat, too. But things would’ve been okay if I had just stuck with the party. I took my forthcoming birthday as an excuse to go all-out. I started the morning out with one of my favorite coffee drinks, a Colorado Spice Latte from my local Peaberry Coffee. Then it was off to Bruegger’s Bagels – they’re not as good as Einstein Bros., but easier to find downtown – and had one of their Very Veggie Omelet sandwich (nutritional info available). The breakfast sandwich is 11 pts., which is actually within the range of my normal breakfasts. The Colorado Spice Latte added another 6 pts, I think. Maybe 7… so I had 18pts for breakfast. That was not a good start…

Actually, I am spending too much on my actual birthday. Like I was mentioning, it would’ve been okay if I had just splurged on my birthday. But instead, I splurged all that week, and really just stopped now. It was one of those little binge periods I have every now and then. I wasn’t totally out of control, and I was at least making good choices while I was eating poorly. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it does make sense. For example, I chose a small can of soda instead of a 44 oz. extra-large fountain drink. Small things like that… I was still bad, just not as bad as I could’ve been.

All in all, I am lucky to be where I am. But on the plus side, I can continue forward from this point.

it definitely could’ve been much worse.

The article provides advice on how to have a better chance at following through with a resolution to lose weight:

Once you do decide you’re ready for action, be as specific about your behavior change as possible. For instance, it’s not enough just to say, “I’m going to lose weight.” That’s an outcome, not something that you do to arrive at the outcome. Better to say to yourself, “I’m going to allow myself one scoop of ice cream a night and not eat any sweets after 8 p.m.,” or “I’m going to walk briskly for 25 minutes a day,” or whatever.

That actually makes a lot of sense. It is in-line with one of Weight Watchers tips: have specific goals. This advice is definitely going to alter my personal resolutions.

I just realized that this is my last weigh-in for 2007! The year has come to a close much quicker than I expected. I constantly lose track of time and dates, the days and months go by much faster every year now, and I can never seem to keep up. So realizing that this is the last weigh-in for 2007 really did surprise the heck out of me. Fortunately, I finished on a positive note, to go along with a year of positive notes. It seems apropos to finish the year out with a loss!

So my year finishes down 45 pounds from the start. I have to admit, I am pretty damned proud of myself. I think I’ve earned the right to pat myself on the back. It was a hard struggle. Sometimes it seemed quite easy, but looking back on everything, I actually did do a lot of hard work. It was hard to make myself stay within a range of foods, and a range of portion sizes. As anyone who has read this journal for the past couple of years knows, portions and sweet snacks have always been my downfalls. Giving those up – or at least cutting back on them – was a major challenge for me. I fought against it, I struggled and lost every now and then. But overall, I overcame! I still have to watch myself, because those old habits are easy to fall back in to.

But I haven’t given up. I will never forget. 2007 was my affirmation year, my proof to myself that I can control my weight. That I don’t have to be so god damned fat. That I don’t have to be a slave to my gluttony. I control what I do. I can be strong. I can get past my inherent laziness. 2007 was the year I regained my confidence, 2007 was the year that I turned everything around again.

It’s not just my weight loss that I have to celebrate, either. There are a lot of other benefits from what I have done this year. I am down three pants sizes, from a 54 to a 50 (and am really close to being able to wear 48s). I am down from 3X shirts to 2X. I no longer am completely winded when I walk up a flight of stairs. I was able to fend off the start of diabetes. I can fit in spaces that I used to have to avoid. I can sit in a booth at a restaurant. Other people can see the difference in my appearance. I can see the difference in my appearance! And there are more… initimate… benefits, too.

So, to sum it up: 2007 has been an interesting year. It’s been both wonderful and tough  emotionally. But all in all, I wouldn’t trade 2007 in for anything.

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s looking forward to a wonderful 2008!