7 more days on this phase...

and I am down 32 pounds.

THIRTY

TWO

POUNDS!

My clothes are baggy...I am beyond the last notch on my belt and need to consider getting another one. My shorts sag below my butt to the point where I look like some sort of weird Indian gangsta rapper (somehow, those three words just look ridiculous next to one another). The most important thing is that I am still not hungry! I have my morning tea and eat my meager lunch and dinner without feeling hungry. Last night, it was 7 PM before I finally forced myself to get up and make my dinner (and this is on 700 calories per day). Next Friday, I will celebrate my first day of dietary freedom by dining at Girl and a Goat, but I think that I will still have food components on the mind. At least I will be able to eat 2000 calories, but this once in a lifetime reboot of my metabolism will likely have me tentative in terms of what I choose to eat.

The one thing I have not considered is the expense of new clothes (ok, now I am being snarky). But you have to understand-all of the weight gain happened between law school and now. None of my suits fit at...all. As for alterations to make them fit, they would still be too baggy for me to wear. I need new clothes.

OK-the last 7 days should be easy. I'll report the final weight loss amount in 7 days.

The First 10 Days are HIstory, so what result?

So the first 10 days are down, and so am I. According to the bathroom scale, I am down 11 pounds. I really am losing about a pound a day, and i am doing it the right way (reduced fat and carb meals and very careful attention to my total daily calories). I think that the idea of rebooting my metabolism at my age is intriguing. I mean, science tells us that once you cross your early twenties, your metabolism starts an irreversible slide wherein your system is less adept at burning off food. Most things automatically go into long term storage. It is almost as if our bodies replicate the way most of us live life. You know-early on, we have nothing. We gradually acquire things and slow down as we get more and more content. Similarly, our metabolism in our youth is easy able to process food correctly provided that the right type of fuel is being fed into the system. As we get older, however, things just seem to...stick around...unless we go through the effort to burn it off. I think that I also just needed a reset button. After 5 years of eating poorly and putting off my own reset until "tomorrow", I woke up one day and decided that enough was enough. I hoped that I could just flip a virtual switch and turn on my will power, but having a real eating plan made all of the difference. I know what I need to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I have my fridge stocked with so many choices for my meals that I never find myself merely grabbing a bag of chips or ordering out for a pizza.

The hardest adjustment has been going out with my friends. I never realized how much I used to eat and drink before! The ones I have told have been extremely supportive of my efforts and proud of the fact that I am sticking with it. At the same time, I think back to all of the social events I attend-almost every one of them revolve around drink and/or food. I am also a foodie and love fine dining. These things, when coupled with a sedentary lifestyle, have played havok with my physique. One of the more humorous side effects is the amount of money I have been saving by not going out and eating and drinking.

I still have 30 days to go, but if I can still continue creating new and interesting meals, these days should fly by. Last night, I had a sea salt and pepper crusted sea bass fillet that was amazing. I can't wait for dinner tonight.

Back Again...and Something to Blog About

You know, when I was younger, this whole exercise/weight loss thing was a lot easier. I used to eat what I wanted and never really gain a significant amount of weight. When I was studying for my doctorate, I had a lot of time in between experiments and spent a lot of that time in the gym. It got to the point where I was working out so much and watching my diet with so much attention that I was able to compete (and place) in some natural bodybuilding competitions. The constant maintenance, however, was too much for me. Over the 12 years since that time, I have literally ballooned in weight. It really did creep up on me. I can trace it back to when I had a job that was heavy on travel. Instead of doing my hour or so in a hotel gym and eating carefully, I reverted to bad food habits (getting fast food to go and then eating in my hotel room in front of the TV). When I started law school, I found all sorts of excuses not to work out (class, studying, meetings, etc.) and also, all sorts of excuses to indulge in the law school diet of fatty foods. Things did not get any easier once I started my job, for now I was sedentary for 10 hours a day. My only real exercise was getting up to get lunch!

About 2 months ago, my financial advisor turned me on to a weight loss program that he said was perfect to jump start my system. No, this is not a commercial for that program. In fact, I am going to keep the name of the program secret for the next 35 days. My blog will be an account of my journey on this program. Once day, I want to look back and read about this (hopefully 30 lbs lighter!). Come along for the ride if you like.

I started the program on June 19th. I have been very strict and not cheated at all during these first 6 days. The wonderful thing is that, though I am restricted to 600 calories a day, I am not feeling hungry. The hunger pains were always my major limitation, and when they used to arrive, I would shovel in anything that would make them go away. I haven't missed the sugar and fat that I have given up, and I am thankful that this diet is also serving to reboot my system by detoxing my poor organs. My new scale arrives today, and I am kinda nervous. I really should have weighed myself before the start of the diet, but oh well. Now I look forward to seeing the daily changes. I'll start to report daily weight loss (or lack thereof) as it happens.