It's time for me to Diet.

So, I stepped on a scale last week and was pleasantly surprised.....

I had been avoiding it because I was sure I would not like what I saw, but fortunately it was not as high as I was afraid it was going to be. That being said, it was still higher than it needs to be, sooo.. I have decided to go on a diet. I have been thinking about this for a while, but I have been resistant. The two favorite parts of my day are when I am eating and when I am sitting around doing nothing. A good weight-loss program threatens to kill both of them in one fell swoop, so I will try to have a "new" favorite part of my day - namely amusing myself by trying experimental diets and writing about the results in my blog.

So I am going to invent my own diet. I will post my daily progress reports here for the sake of accountability. My diet will consist of 5 simple rules:

1. Pick a food you like, and eat only that for a week. For example, week 1 starts today, with ONLY CEREAL. That's right, I will only eat cereal for every meal this week. Next week I will choose to stay with Cereal or switch to something else - like Ramen Noodles. The goal here is to prove that I can pretty much eat anything I want and lose weight. It is also possible that I will make myself so sick of eating stuff that I will lose my appetite. Either way is good for weight loss. (Any creative suggestions are welcome)

2. Max Calorie rule. I will set a maximum calorie limit, and will not exceed that. I will not count any other stuff - fat, carbs, etc.. Initial Limit is 2500 calories. We will see how that works for a while. If I get lightheaded and start fainting a lot, I will bump it up a lot. If it's not working, then I will drop it down. Seeing as I have no idea what my daily intake is, I'm pretty much taking a stab in the dark here.

3. 10% rule. Every good diet requires exercise to work. My workout for each day must be designed to work off 10% of my daily caloric intake.

4. 5-day rule. The 5-day work week works well for a lot of things, so why not my diet? Plus dieting on the weekends sucks - your kids want to go to McDonalds, or get some pizza, or your wife makes a big giant plan of lasagna... so I will adhere to my diet strictly Monday-Friday and take Saturdays and Sundays off.

5. Drinks. I can drink whatever I want, provided I include the calories in my daily calorie count. I will mostly be drinking diet pepsi and water.

Week 1 Day 1:

Workout:
Got up an hour early this morning and hopped on the treadmill. While I was working out I watched the new Fox show "free ride" which I had recorded last night. It was kind of funny. After that, I watched the show "War at Home". This is not really one of my favorite shows, but it served as decent treadmill fodder (treadmill fodder - something you do while on a treadmill to prevent yourself from dying of boredom).

Weigh - in:
I will not be posting my weight because I don't want anybody to know the truth. What I will do is to represent my weight at the BEGINNING of the diet as X. Any weight loss will be represented as X - such and such.
Today, I got on the scale and it was 3.5 pounds less than last week. Woohoo, just THINKING about losing weight has caused me to lose 3.5 pounds. Excellent. This is going to be easy.

Breakfast: Two bowls of Frosted flakes. Not Kellogs, but the Malt-O-Meal off-brand variety from Walmart. I say two bowls, but it was actually 2 servings. Each 3/4 cup serving looked pitifully small in the bowl. I've got to get smaller bowls. I also had 1/2 cup of 1% milk with each serving. To Drink, I added an ice-cold glass of diet pepsi. Total Calorie intake: 350

Morning (Drive-time) snack:
1 can of Diet pepsi. Total Calorie intake: 0.

Lunch: Two bowls of Cinnamon Flavor Toasters (Malt-O-Meal's rip off of cinnamon toast crunch). Having learned my lesson from Breakfast, I had two full bowls, which actually turned into 2 1/2 servings of the cereal. Again, each bowl was accompanied by a 1/2 cup of 1% milk. Also drank a can of diet pepsi. Total Calorie intake: 435
Afternoon Snack: 1 cupo of Cinnamon Flavor Toasters. No milk. I ate it dry like you would a bag of chips. I actually prefer to eat them this way. Total Calorie intake: 150
Evening Snack: Medium Shamrock shake from McDonalds. You may say, AH HA! not even one day in and Big A is cheating. But that is not really true. This is My diet and I make the rules. First of all, I really like Shamrock shakes and they are only available for a limited time, plus my Wife loves them and being pregnant made me drive into rochester tonight to get her one. I really had no choice. Secondly, a milkshake is a drink so it is within the rules. I have another reason, but I'm too tired to get into it tonight. Total Calories. Not sure - is a medium at McDonalds 15 oz or 21 oz? Either way it was either 560 or 740 calories.

Dinner: Two bowls of Marshmallow Toasties. (generic lucky charms). Total Calories: 350
Total Calories so far today: 1865 or 2025