2nd day down...

Not a bad day. I didn't get a chance to get out and exercise, but I'll work on that tomorrow. I also didn't get a chance to get anymore veggies and fruits and whatever other extras I need for the Nurtrisystem

Around noon I heat up one of the 'dinners', a single chicken breast. Tossed it in the micro, and a couple minutes later the delicious smell of cooked cat food wafts from my oven, lol. Seriously, one of my cats was going bananas because she didn't hear a can opener, but she smelled the same scent. After I plated my cat food chicken breast, I had to trip over the same cat as she winded her body in a figure 8 around my feets. I somehow managed to scarf it down, unmolested, but yeah, it smelled like cat food and had a very chunky texture, but it wasn't like totally gross. Well, maybe a little. It was suggested to eat the cat food chicken breast with a 'small whole wheat dinner roll', well I didn't have one so maybe that would have made a huge difference....

I had a friend over most of the day working on the house, and I didn't want to be digging in my Nutrisystem box for food so I waited until 7:00 pm when he left. Then I dived in like a starving woman at an all-you-can eat ravioli bar and pulled out a Chocolate Brownie dessert. That got scarfed down pretty quickly. One of the youngin, with a nose for chocolate came sniffing around for some brownie action. She got a smidge of one corner, and was then told the rest was made of coffee and hot peppers, so that got her thinking a second, and it was in that second while she decided if I was serious or not, that I popped the rest of the brownie in my mouth. HA! Kids are so dopey.

About half an hour later, I heated up a Chicken Noodle and Gravy dinner thing. It was ok. I ate all the noodles and my dog licked up the gravy, only because I try to avoid gravy in real life, as it's yummy goodness can only get you in trouble. 

As I mentioned, I'm still not eating all the food I'm suppose to because I haven't got down to the store to pick anything up. I tried to sneak some of the spring mix lettuce that I feed the guinea pig, but he started squeaking so loud when he heard the rustle of the bag, I felt guilty and gave him the last of it.

So, at almost 8:30 pm, I'm not particularly hungry. Not full, but not hungry either. On a usual night, I'd feel like I just had enough room for a pint of Ben and Jerry's, so the fact I resisted, speaks volumes for my current fortitude. That's not to say my fortitude will not win out by midnight...we can just wait and see tomorrow...

6 POUNDS DOWN!!!

Yep, that's right. I weighed myself 4 times to make sure I wasn't seeing things. So now I'm 280, whooo hoooooo! I think a lot had to do with the natural progression of chicken picatta, bruschetta and mozzarella sticks through the digestive system, heh, but it is cool that I lost an extra 2 pounds, on top of the picatta pounds!

This morning I had the Apple Streusal scone with vitamin water for breakfast. The scone wasn't too sweet, actually not too bad. The texture was a little too smooth and moist for me, but it wasn't horrible.

Next week I have to get on a plane and fly for 3 hours to another state for a week's stay. The last time I did that trip I was 255, and could barely get the seatbelt on. I have a feeling with about 25 extra pounds, I'll be having more problems than that, sigh. I'm hoping I can get down to 275 by then. And then to 270 by the time I fly back 9 days later. I'm trying to figure out how to transport 9 days worth of Nutrisystem meals on the plane. I think I'm going to go through my foods today and set out the 36 meals and desserts now, as I'll probably want to pack the smaller, light-weight foods.

In the middle of June, I'm going on a 2-week road trip. It will be nice to be 250 by that time, as there will be a ton of walking, and right now I can't walk more than a block or so without a lot of pain. Recently, I've walked up to a couple miles, but after the first block, the pain progressed to such a level, that I was almost numb from it. I would love to be able to walk that same 2 miles in June without the agony.

Almost the end of Day 1.

Right around 4:30 this afternoon I started getting hungry. It didn't help that I spied the container that held the chocolate cake from last night's dinner in my garbage can. It didn't help that it was one of those clear containers and the smears of chocolatey cake goodness could still be viewed. It didn't help that I wanted to take that container out and lap up the cake remnants like a crack whore and a dirty mirror. But I stopped myself. I went through my food box and kinda got a read on what was sent to me. I didn't do an inventory, and only found 3 egregious substitutions (split pea soup. peanut butter granola bar and black bean soup). So, at 4:30 I had my 'dessert' of one chocolate graham bar, which was actually pretty good.

Around 5:30 I decided to have my dinner, Chicken and Dumplings, because I was thinking I would take the youngin to the mall after school and I didn't want to be tempted with the deliciousness that is Cinnebum and Wetzels Pretzels, and all other manner of yummy junk food. The Chicken and Dumps was ok. Not great, but not horrible.

Like I said, I went through my Nutrisystem packet and read through some of the stuff they sent. Evidently I have to eat a bunch of salads and fruits and veggies and milk products to round out the nutrients. I kinda knew this before, but I hoped it was only a once a day thing, because frankly, leaving it up to me to portion-control and calorie count three salads/veggies/fruits a day is a little beyond my abilities right now. The reason I got into this mess in the first place is an inability to make healthy choices on my own, and the lure of a wonderful bakery right down the street.

A friend told me this story, many years ago, about her then 4 year old daughter, which I have always found absolutely hilarious. The family had some friends over, one of whom was a very nice lady, who happened to be shaped like a pear. She was seemingly normal sized on top, but at the waist, her hip, butt and thighs were of immense proportions. I've seen people like this and so I could well imagine the woman. Anyways, the lady was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, chatting up her hosts, when the 4-year old walked in. She went to the women, looked at her this way and that, surveyed her from behind and then finally stood right in front of the women and said,very matter-of-factly 'you know, you have a big fat butt!". Of course the girl said this with all the innocence of a child, and she said it without judgement, but with a little awe, like you would expect a child to say 'you know, you have blue eyes' or 'you know, I can fly to the moon'. Unfortunately, the lady did not take this comment in the spirit it was offered and became greatly offended and left in a huff, and now 15 years later, has still not spoken to the family. The point it, if you went to all the trouble to raise a big fat butt, then for Dog's sake OWN YOUR BIG FAT BUTT! You should be proud of the accomplishment, not ashamed of it. How can you be offended by the truth?

In the spirit of that story, I made a sign for my office. It reads in large font, 'you have a big fat butt'. The funny thing is that I made the font on 'butt' so large that it spilled onto the next page, similar to how my butt would act in real life. I took this sign, and have it hanging on the wall in front of me. First of all, it makes me laugh every time I see it, which is a good thing. Second, it reminds me that change comes externally, and when you own your faults, you're in a better position to change them (if you're troubled by them). So, yes, I have a big fat butt. No, I don't think there is anything wrong at all with a big fat butt. I like my butts big and fat, as a matter of fact! But if you want to change your big fat butt, you first have to admit that it does, indeed, exist. Having a sign up, reminds me of my big fat butt (as if walking sideways through doorways and hallways isn't reminder enough, lol) and it reminds me that a big fat butt isn't the end of the world, you can find humor in a big fat butt, and for that you're all the richer.

Ok, that's my all my posts for the day. Celebrate your big fat butts!

The thing about fat people and bikes....

First of all, if you're tipping the scales at 300 pounds and 250 of those pounds are located in your ginormous ass, the little dinky seat most bikes provide, will do little to contain your massive buttcheeks. Those same butt cheeks will spill over the seat, and get caught in the bike chain. I'm going to see if there's a market for bikes that have been retrofitted with LazyBoy recliners, instead of the teeny tiny standard bike seat. I felt like one of those full size clowns on the miniture bikes.

The other thing I have to remember is that when you have massive thighs and quadruple chins, that at some point in the pedaling process the two will make contact with each other.

That said, my bike ride lasted 24 minutes, which was the time it took to complete my circuit zigzagging through the neighborhood. My neighborhood is as flat as my chest was in junior high, so there was no coasting at all the whole way, which was good, because that means I had to pedal the whole 24 minutes.

If any of you other fatties out there are considering bike riding for exercise, I would suggest you get a cruiser type bike. The seat is a bit wider than mountain bikes, the wide tires make it more stable, the way the seat and handle bars sit, allows for less stress on your back and neck.

I gotta rest now. I'm due for dinner in a couple hours, whooo hooooo!!! I think I'm going to go digging around in my box and see what I can find. Still not particularly hungry, but remember, I usually wouldn't have even begun eating for the day at this hour (almost 4 pm).

I'll post pictures.

2:00 pm update

For breakfast at 9:00 am, I had the scrambled eggs with veggie sausage. It comes in a little cardboard cup and you add water and throw it in the micro. About midway through I took a peek and it still looked like yellow soup, so I was pleasantly surprised to see what appeared to be scrambled eggs at the end of the time. It was HOT HOT HOT, but the texture was very much scrambled eggs. It was a big bland, but I usually like bland, so no problems there. The 'sausage' was a little like the bit of sausage you get on a large delicious Totinos freezer pizza, but not horrible. I also drank a half a bottle of 0 calorie vitamin water.

By noon my cats were playing hide and seek in the Nutrisystem box, so I hauled their furry butts out. I can see these boxes are going to be a problem with the cats, so I imagine the coming weeks/months I'll be picking a lot of cat fur out of my food. Does cat fur have calories?

At 2:00 pm I had lunch. I'm still really full from last night's chicken piccatta et al, so had a later lunch. Digging through my box I found more crap that was substituted for the original crap I ordered. Of course, I'm too f'in lazy to actually do an inventory and I have a feeling by the last week I'll be starving because honestly, there's NO WAY I'm eating peanut butter granola bars (gag) or split pea soup. Anyway, lunch was a foil bag of chicken salad. It suggests you spread it on Melba toast, which I didn't have, so I substituted a Duraflame fireplace log, and the taste and texture was about the same. No, I'm kidding. I didn't have Melba toast so I just ate the chicken salad. Not bad. The texure was a little too smooth, kinda like chicken salad pudding, and it tasted a bit too much of relish for my tastes, but heck, I'm suppose to lose weight and if it was really tasty, I'd probably eat 4 or 8 for lunch.

The one thing I like about the Nutrisystem program is the food is basically microwave and go. No freezer needed as a lot of it's dried or something. I HATE cooking for myself (yet oddly, I'm always looking to see what cool cooking classes Sur La Table is offering) so having the option of heating up a microwave meal, or cramming a couple of handfuls of Oreos in my mouth, I guess I can eat the healthier option.

As for hunger level, as I said before, I'm still really full from last night, and I typically don't eat breakfast and will eat either a late lunch or just dinner and snacks for the rest of the night, so I'm already two meals up on where I usually am this time of day. I'm drinking Eating Right brand vitamin water, because it's got a bit of fruity flavor, it satisfies my desire for juice. It's also got 0 calories, so that's got to be a good thing. Hmmm. It also has a 'caffeine' boost. Hahahaha. So that's where I got the energy this morning to rock out on my air guitar when I was blasting music.

As for exercise, other than the rocking air guitar this morning, I haven't got out of the house yet. I have horrible pain in my heel from a bone spur, scoliosis in my lower back which causes me to hunch over like Quasimoto and scoliosis in my upper neck which causes it's own brand of pain. Truthfully, the air guitar playing did loosen up my neck and shoulders so I may have to do that more. I'm going to ride my bike up the street to mail off some bills, so if I take the long way, I can go 4 blocks in one direction and zig zag back and forth for the 7 blocks which is the depth of our neighborhood. That should take about half an hour or more (if you've never seen an almost 300-pound, 45-year old woman, straddle a cruiser bike, then hell, you simply haven't lived!). Unfortunately, I have to go passed my kid's grammar school, so hopefully my kids and her friends won't be out front laughing their little butts off. Not that I mind being laughed at (hell I should get one of my friends to video tape me, so I can have a laugh myself), but I wouldn't want the little urchins hurting my kid's feelings.

OK, I guess I REAL diet is in order

So here I am. ballooned up to 286 (as of this morning). Last week I ordered a month's supply of the Nutrisystem program. Yesterday I checked UPS online and tracked the package and found it would be coming later in the day.

So I ate. Haha. I started off at 282 yesterday morning, so I had to eat A LOT to get to 286 this morning. Let's see, I visited my fave Italian restaurant last night with one of the kidlets. We started with warm Italian bread dipped in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, proceeded to thick garlicky bruschetta, continued to mozzarella sticks with marinara, and then segued into a spring garden mix salad with balsamic dressing. Then we waited a few minutes until our dinner arrived. I ordered up the Chicken Piccatta with rice and zucchini pilaf. OMG it was sooooo good. The lemon sauce was divine, so rich and tasty. The chicken breasts were pounded to an inch of their lives and tender and juicy.

We finished with a huge hunk of chocolate mousse cake, which we took home because I was jammed between the chair and the table by that time.

This morning I awoke with a clean slate and a 47 pound box of Nutrisystem! Yep, 47 pounds of food that has to be eaten in ONE MONTH! It's kind of a scary thought that I have to eat 47 pounds of food this month and STILL expect to LOSE weight. Oh, I forgot to mention, last night I decided to taste test one of the foods in my Nutrisystem box, of course, it was the Chocolate Brownies, which was a very generous hunk of brownie and very very rich and chocolatey. Very good but, like I said, also very rich. It's the kind of thing where you wonder how you're going to resist eating all 28-day's worth of food in one night! I wonder how many calls Nutrisystem gets each day that begin like this--"Hi, this is Mary Jo Fatly...ummm...yeah...so yesterday I was supposed to have got my Nutrisystem food box for the month...and ummm...well it never arrived...yeah, it never arrived".

A quick look through the box showed that several of my preferred food items were not included and substitutes were sent instead. Why they substituted Split Pea Soup (double yuck) for Spaghetti and Meatballs, I don't know. The least they could have done was subsitute another of those Chocoate Brownie deals when they run out of something. Believe me, if left to my own devices, I would have ordered all desserts for the month. Unfortunately, Nutrisystem has put a lock on the 28-desserts per month online button. Let's be honest, with 28 desserts sitting in a box in my kitchen and the necessity to eat a total of 4 meals everyday, you just know the first week is going to subsist of 4 desserts per day.

More post will follow telling what I ate and when.