Week 6 Progress Report: Eat the Barbecue!

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Start Weight:	281.0
Original Target*:	291.8
Adjusted Target:	279.2
Actual Weight:	276.0
Loss/Gain:	– 5.0
Total Loss:	– 26.6
% of Goal:	19.2%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 4.4
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

About six months ago, my brother Ted decided to buy a new gas grill to replace one that had done yeoman service for close to a decade but was slowly falling apart. However, between one family crisis and another, plus his normal workaholic ways, it sat in its box by the back sliding door to the porch. Finally, this last Friday and Saturday, Ted made the time to put it together.

Friday night, we discussed what we would make for Sunday evening’s dinner to inaugurate the new grill. My initial suggestion was to try a recipe I’d found for a variety of chicken we had got from Central Market in Southlake the previous week. Ted thought about it and replied, “You know what I haven’t had for a long time? Barbecued chicken. I really enjoy it, but for some reason, I just haven’t had it or made it.”

He had me at “barbecued.” So I spent some time on Saturday looking up low-calorie barbecue sauce recipes. They’re out there.

Some Thoughts on Becoming Sexier

Image source: vectortoons.com.

The last time I successfully lost weight for any length of time was in 2009, ten years ago. From February of that year to September, I dropped from 324 lbs. to 280, a 46-lb. drop. Then I tried to quit smoking ....

On Friday, I weighed in at 278.4. This morning, the scale read 276.6.

It wasn’t part of my intermediate goals to break 280. After all, that was only a drop of 22.6 lbs. from my starting weight. Having lost 46 lbs. before, I was morally certain I could lose a mere 22. 

Thinking about it now, though, my inner smartass can’t help but quip, So okay, it took you 10 years to lose 50 pounds!

So what? It’s still 50 pounds. Another 112.6 to go. It would be nice to get there before I turn 60, though. Even better if I’m slim before my high school class’ 40th reunion. Talk about goals!

Week 5 Progress Report: The Lost Week

Sorry this is a day late!

Beginning Weight:	280.2
Original Target*:	293.6
Adjusted Target:	278.4
Actual Weight:	281.0
Gain/Loss:	+ 0.8
Total Gain/Loss:	– 21.6
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	4.3
*Original target calculated on a beginning weight 302.6 lbs. and an average loss of 1.8 lbs./wk.

The last week was filled with fluctuations, largely due to bad meal planning, from Friday night’s eggplant Parmesan to Sunday’s combination of corned beef and colcannon (not to mention a rich and fat-laden cake) to yesterday’s scrambled-egg sandwich and homemade pizza (not the same meal). Sunday was intended to be a “diet holiday”; Monday, however, was not.

Call it “the lost week.” As in, “I lost my mind.” The whole point of this program is to become more mindful of my eating habits. I tell people to trust the process; but for the process to work, you have to do your part by budgeting your intake. That means thinking ahead — planning what you eat instead of letting yourself be ruled by whim and opportunity.

So okay, I’ve got the excess out of my system, more or less, and learned how to make a loaf of tasty rye bread. As far as the pizza goes, it would have worked much better and had fewer calories with half the meat. (In fairness, I haven’t worked in a pizza restaurant for almost three decades, so I had forgotten how to portion supreme-type pizzas.) Time to get back on the wagon.

Week 4 Progress Report: Learning From the Past

Weight Loss Progress, Feb. 11 – Mar. 11.

Beginning Weight:	286.6
Original Target:*	295.4
Adjusted Target:	284.8
Actual Weight:	280.2
Loss/Gain:	– 6.4
Total Loss:	– 22.4
Average Loss/Week:	5.6
* Original target calculated on a start weight of 302.6 and an average loss of 1.8 lbs./wk.

Twenty-two pounds. I try to sound positive when I write these posts, but I’m actually a bit of a pessimist and a lot of a worrywart. Losing over 5½ pounds a week when I’d only planned to lose just under 2 per week is actually kinda scary: It shouldn’t have been this easy. (What’s wrong with me? Did I subtract too much from my budget? Am I losing too much water? Have I got cancer and just don’t know it yet? Fret, fret, fret.) However, I’m comfortable with the amount I’m eating, and no other physical problem has shown up, so I’ll take the win.

The last time I weighed in at 280 was in September 2009. It was a heckuva victory — I’d lost just over 46 pounds in 7 months. Then I tried to quit smoking at the same time. I’d grown too confident in my ability to stick to the diet; I thought at the time that I’d gotten to the point where the diet was maintaining itself. In fact, I had stopped tracking my food and being accountable to others. Eventually, as I struggled to keep smoke-free, I began rationalizing deviances from the diet and began to put on the weight I’d lost.

Four months later, I was smoking again.

Add this to my list of intermediate goals: I will consider that 46-pound record broken when I weigh 255 or less. But while COPD/emphysema is a growing concern, the smoking will have to wait for a while longer. I’m trying to keep my focus on one major life change at a time;  right now, obesity presents the more immediate health risks. And this time, I won’t make the mistake of thinking that a few weeks or months of conscious calorie-counting will be enough to keep me on the path to a healthy weight. This is the way I have to live from now on.

Santayana’s maxim about people who don’t remember history comes to mind. I hope I keep and learn from my memory of past mistakes.

Eating the Elephant: Setting Intermediate Goals

Of course, when you’re first starting a weight-loss program, you have an ideal weight to reach as your final goal, right? Sure you do. But if you’re obese — particularly if you’re morbidly obese (BMI ≥ 40) — you also want to have smaller intermediate goals. Why? Because success leads to success. The more small goals you knock off, the closer you get to the big goal. Achieving the smaller goals gives you things to celebrate in anticipation of the ultimate success.

Here’s another consideration: Once, when I was working myself into despair over the size a project my friend Larry and I were working on, Larry asked me, “How do you eat an elephant?” Puzzled, I couldn’t reply. He quietly answered, “One bite at a time.” Big, overwhelming tasks always less daunting once you break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Losing 100 pounds or more is easier to achieve if you break it into a series of smaller goals. And each goal you achieve means less of the elephant to eat.

The Final Goal

 First, let’s talk about the big goal:

The healthy BMI range is from 18.5 to 24.9, which when translated into pounds turns out to be a big plus-or-minus — just over 20 pounds if you’re 4'10", but over 50 pounds if you’re 6'4". It’s tempting to just pick a BMI out of your hat or choose a weight within that range that sounds right.

But there really are big- and small-boned people out there: people whose skeletal and muscular mass are less or greater than average. The key is not your weight so much as it is your fat-to-muscle ratio. This ratio varies according to not only sex but also age and your general activity level, but isn’t affected by the size of your bones or the width of your skeletal frame.

Here’s my idea: Get within the healthy range now; fine-tune your fat ratio later. The graphic above left is a range of weights in pounds at various heights in inches that approximate a BMI of 24.9 or slightly less. (In case you’re a math wonk: BMI = weight in kilograms times the square of height in meters.) Pick the weight that corresponds to your height and use that as a provisional final goal. Once you get your weight below that number, then there are a few alternatives for checking your body composition which vary in cost, availability, and accuracy.

Baked Chicken Breast with Parmesan Crust

Image source: Food Network.

This is my first attempt at posting a printable recipe.

I decided to host this blog on Blogger because that’s who hosted my other two blogs. I knew, however, that doing printable recipes would turn out to be problematic because of Blogger’s limited widget support. At one point, though, I was starting to move this blog to Wordpress out of sheer frustration. But I think I’ve hit on an acceptable solution.

About the Recipe:

The recipe comes from Ted Allen of Food Network Magazine. I found this recipe when I was looking for low-calorie entrées last week. Anything that’s got Parmesan cheese and panko breading can’t be bad, right? So I fixed it for Thursday dinner, and it was an instant hit. The few adjustments I’ve made only go as far as preparation; nothing about the ingredients needs changing. The recipe assumes 8-oz. breasts, a total of 2 lbs.; keep that in mind when you’re counting the calories.

Week 3 Progress Report: Dropping Balls and Casting Stones

Start Weight:	289.6
Original Target:*	297.2
Adjusted Target:	287.8
Actual Weight:	286.6
Actual Loss:	3.0
Average Loss/Wk:	5.3
* Original Target — Calculated from beginning weight of 302.6 lbs. at a loss rate of 1.8 lbs/wk.

I bowl in a league on Sunday nights. I’m not a very good bowler — average 137, although I can occasionally throw over 150 — and I’d like to be better, but I bowl because I enjoy it and it gets me out of the house to socialize for three hours every week. It keeps me from being too much of a recluse. It keeps me human.

As of today, I’ve lost 16 lbs. I throw a 15-lb. ball. So it figures that this simile would occur to me:

Imagine you’re carrying a bowling ball in front of you, in a frame that distributes the weight properly all over your torso. And you have to carry it with you all day, even when you sleep. It’s inconvenient and, even with the frame, it’s still a little tiring to carry all day long. It drags you down.

Add another. And another. And yet another. Each time you add a bowling ball, you have a different frame to distribute the weight. But it still takes more and more energy and strength just to do ordinary tasks, like housecleaning, yard work, fixing meals, even sitting upright. Imagine all the things it would make difficult. Imagine all the things it would eventually make impossible, or at least impractical.

That’s what obesity is like.

Once this simile occurred to me, the British convention of the stone (counting weight in 14-lb. increments) made a lot more sense.

When I started this program, I was carrying just over the equivalent of nine 15-lb. bowling balls. So far, I’ve dropped one. Eight more to go.

Ash Wednesday Fasting and Abstinence: What to Do?

Although, strictly speaking, this isn’t a religion blog, two important dates in the Catholic liturgical calendar are coming up this week: Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) and Ash Wednesday. And Ash Wednesday kicks off the Lenten liturgical season. Both days have implications for Catholics on a weight-loss program, especially if you’re from a more traditional parish or community that observes the pre-Vatican II practice of fasting all 40 days. For non-Latin Rite Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant communions that observe Lent consult with your priest, deacon, or minister on the rules pertaining to your church. (Once you find out, let me know!)

If you celebrate Mardi Gras, it falls under the “diet holiday” rule, especially since the next day you’re gonna pay for it. On the “holiday rule”, you try to eat as you normally do during the day so that, when the party comes, you’re not overly hungry. But when the party comes, don’t worry about tracking the numbers for one night — just enjoy yourself. If you don’t normally do Mardi Gras, you can still give yourself a night off. After all, you’re saying “farewell to meat” for the next 40 days!

Fun Fact: The last time I successfully dieted, in 2009, I started on Ash Wednesday. Although I went to bed very hungry, I felt good about keeping myself honest. It was a good start.

About the Project Nemesis Blog

Welcome to Tony Layne’s Project Nemesis: The Blog! Oddly enough, I started the Project Nemesis Facebook page before I started this blog. The Facebook page was a whim; I asked my friends if it was a good idea and some said Yes. The blog was Facebook’s idea. I began my writing avocation as a blogger, so it’s nothing new to me.

So what is Project Nemesis?

First and foremost, it’s an obesity recovery program. It’s not a “diet.” The weight not only has to come off but stay off. This means getting rid of the bad habits and the emotional associations that led to my obesity, essentially reprogramming my mind and emotions to live a healthier lifestyle. I can’t stop once I reach my goal weight; I can only shift into “maintenance mode.” This has to be the way I live for the rest of my life.

Second, it’s a video project. As I lose weight, I take front and profile pictures of myself to build into a .mp4 file dramatizing my physical shrinkage. I also hope to include short video clips at highlight points; tentatively, I have planned to shoot a video when the weight loss forces me to buy pants with smaller waists, probably somewhere between 265 and 250 lbs. When it’s completed, I want to publish it in the hopes that other people will be inspired and encouraged to make similar changes.

Third, it’s a social media platform for my family and friends, not only so they can follow me and cheer me on, but also so those who are in the midst of their own struggles with weight loss can share their successes, their tips, their concerns, and their obstacles. While I may let an occasional religious thought or reference slip, it’s not a religious or political blog. I don’t care what race, ethnicity, religion, sex, orientation, or political affiliation you are — God didn’t put me on this earth to judge you but rather to help and be helped by you.