Day 25 - The Nothing New

Hello blog.

Not much to report today. I had instant noodles with a bit of chocolate pocky, then I had a bacon ranch salad with crispy chicken from McDonald's. Below 1200 calories on the day.

Partway through eating the candy, I actually lost interest in it. Which is pretty amazing, because I hadn't gorged myself or anything, and I actually didn't want any more food.

I think for the first time I'd say I really don't have binge eating disorder right now.

Though I'm sure I'd be amazed how easily it can come back.

Still 2 more pounds to photo updates.

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 24 - The Gnocchi Marinara

Hello blog.

I took my mom out to a little Italian restaurant for lunch this day. I ordered the potato gnocchi with marinara meat sauce, garlic bread, then ate this little raspberry cookie-type thing that they make there.

I ate a little over half this much. And the garlic bread was pretty heavily buttered.

Then when I got in front of the computer, I kind of lost track of how much chocolate pocky I was eating. It could've been as much as 800 calories throughout the day.

I could've gone without dinner at that point, but remembering my commitment to try to eat at least one salad each day, I did go out and get a caesar salad with grilled chicken for about 450 calories.

Not entirely sure, but I think the day was around 2200 - 2600 calories. That's obviously too much, but my worst days used to be three or four times that amount. I wasn't paying much attention this day, and still I didn't binge, which I think is a good sign.

I'll try to come back strong with a lower calorie total.

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 23 - The Creamy Cilantro

Hello blog.

Today I skipped breakfast for lunch. Pulled through a McDonald's determined to not order beef, and ended up with this.

The Premium Crispy Chicken Club. It comes with bacon, swiss and mayo. A little over 600 calories.

I got it in the meal and tried to order it small, but they just ignored me and punched in a medium. I don't think they actually offer their value meals in a small. So add medium fries and a medium plain iced tea to that.

So it was about 1,000 calories.

In the morning I had some dark chocolate pocky sticks for a snack. Then mid-afternoon I pulled through El Pollo Loco and got a chicken caesar salad with creamy cilantro dressing. Also ordered 2 grilled chicken legs and ate those. Then later when I ate the salad, had some more dark chocolate pocky.

No gains.

About 2100 calories today. Too much. I'll need to specify small orders from now on, I don't need medium fries. And I guess I could do a better job of staying away from the pocky.

Keeping up with my commitment to eat a salad every day so far. It feels good. Go me.

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 22 - The Chopped Cob

Hello blog.

This time I had a 3-egg plate in the morning, scrambled, with 3 or 4 strips of bacon, and two slices of lightly buttered rye toast.

I also ordered a diet pepsi with this, but after a few sips I wasn't sure I could trust it was diet, so I ended up not drinking it.

I took home a chopped cob salad with fat free italian dressing. It had grilled chicken, avacado, diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar, bacon, and one hard-boiled egg. Dressing and all, it was about 750 calories total. And I couldn't finish it all.

I was really unhappy with the low fat italian. They need to keep it flavorful, and flavor comes from fat and sugar, so as far as I can tell they basically just replaced the oil with corn syrup. It was like eating my salad with maple syrup or something.

That does reduce the calories a good amount since fat grams have 9 calories and sugar grams only have 4, but I think next time I'd probably just go with a regular italian.

Probably about 1400 calories on the day, or another 100 if those sips of pepsi were non-diet as I suspect they were.

Two more pounds to the first 20-pound loss and new pictures.

For people who don't understand why I can't go to the supermarket and buy fresh food all the time. I take on a tremendous workload because I'm able to give myself unlimited hours and the work is incentive-based. Fresh food needs to be cooked and also expires quickly. I don't have time to be my own chef, and I don't have anybody that's willing to cook for me all the time, other than people in restaurants.

I thought about hiring a personal chef or assistant, but I just think that would be way too weird and don't think I have enough use for one for it to be worthwhile. I also have certain social phobias that would make it very difficult for me to have a stranger around all the time.

What I'm doing now is probably better than what I was doing before. And what I was doing before was probably better than what I was doing before that. Maybe things will just continue to improve.

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 21 - The Steak & Egg

Hello blog.

I got all my food from Jack in the Box again. It's a matter of extreme convenience. Being able to get all my food for the day before work, eat part of it then, and eat the rest after, is just very convenient for me.

I ordered a crispy chicken pita snack, a steak and egg burrito, and a southwest crispy chicken salad, for a total of about 2,000 calories.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that burrito.

The pita snack weighed in at like 400 calories. It was way bigger than I was expecting it to be. That they call that a "snack" is quite ridiculous.

My original plan was to remove some ingredients from the southwest chicken salad to compensate for the unexpectedly high caloric content of the burrito and pita, but at the end of the day it just didn't happen that way.

I found out it came with spicy corn sticks. If they were just regular corn sticks everything would have gone according to plan, but I'm a junky for spicy food.

And then they weren't even spicy to me. Oh well.

I was pretty impressed with that salad, though. It came with roasted corn and black beans and jack cheese. The southwest dressing was good. I find myself really enjoying these salads.

I feel a bit like Nacho Libre when he could finally afford to make salads for the orphanage instead of bean slop. How salads in that movie seemed to be regarded as the most expensive and tastiest of all foods.

Good for them for not giving in to product placement and having Nacho buy Coca-Cola or something.

Just four more pounds to updated photos. I'm fully expecting there to not be hardly any difference, but we'll see.

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 20 - The Two Salad Meals

Hello blog.

It was the first day of the new year, and I felt like making a change. Not a resolution, because calling something a new year's resolution always seems to condemn it to failure. Not something big, either.

I've just decided to eat more plants. I'm gonna try to have at least one salad a day for a while. I might start bringing in some fruit, too.

I had two of these, the chicken club salad from Jack in the Box. One before work and one after.

I ate it without croutons (lower the calories and carbs a bit) and without tomatoes (I hate tomatoes). There was bacon and cheese and ranch dressing, so it's not completely without things to cry about. Each salad was about 750 calories, so 1500 for the day.

The graph is coming along. This is going to take a long, long time...

...

Until tomorrow,
Eric

Day 19 - The Two Cheeseburger Meal

Hello blog.

Got all my work done and it was probably the most lucrative day of my life so far. To have a day like that capped off with the ball dropping and the world rolling into the year 2010 felt incredibly good.

The salad I was going to get turned into a two cheeseburger meal, with medium fries and a diet coke.

It was just disgusting honestly. I feel like I don't have the stomach for this shit anymore. I didn't get even the slightest enjoyment out of eating it.

That was before my work day started (at 3am), then after I was done (at 7pm) I had a turkey and cheddar sandwich, ruffles with french onion dip, and a corona.

Probably something like 2400 calories on the day.

Until tomorrow,
Eric