Diet Log: Week 5, Day 1

Anybody who has ever tried to go on a diet knows that it is a difficult thing to stick to when you are on vacation. For one thing, access to nutritional information is difficult. For another thing, you want to enjoy yourself while on vacation, which is generally the opposite of dieting. And then there is the long car ride. If you are the driver, there is nothing else to do. You HAVE to snack constantly - I'm pretty sure that's a law in some states. In my case, where I was going off with a bunch of my buddies, I knew it was going to be especially hard - with the all-you-can-eat-hot-wing contests, and the "Hey Big A, I bet you can't eat that 15 lb world record cheeseburger"



or the many cans of Easy Cheese and beef jerky that must be consumed, to say nothing of the difficulty of squeezing in the daily workout around all of the busy hours of sitting around watching TV in the hotel room. In order to not totally un-do all of the progress that one makes during a vacation, Dieting experts tend to recommend devising a strategy ahead of time. I decided to go with the bold new strategy of "NOT EVEN TRYING". While I did not enter any hot-wing contests, nor did I try to eat a 15 lb burger, I didn't really think about losing weight either. We stayed across the street from a Hardees which makes delicious burgers and milkshakes. While I argued constantly about the need to find some place with a salad bar, my friends dragged me to Hardees twice a day and insisted on force-feeding me huge burgers and enormous milkshakes. When I got home I decided to stay off the scale until this morning, hoping for some massive miracle bowel movement that would instantly shed all my vacation weight.

Anyway, since I was not very good last week, I decided to be extra good this week, so my food of the week will be salad - well, except for Wednesday. I have Red sox tickets for Wednesday's game, and I WILL be eating a RemDawg. If you don't know what a RemDawg is, I will try to take a picture. What constitutes a salad you ask? Well, I am going with a pretty loose definition. It can range from a traditional salad with leafy green vegetables to anything that gets chopped up and mixed with mayonnaise. The only requirement is that it has the word "salad" in its name.

Workout: 40 minutes on the treadmill. My treadmill computer has totally pooped out now - I have no idea how fast it is going or how many calories I am burning. I just speed up until my legs hurt and I try to maintain that speed. Sticking with 30 pushups and situps again this week. I backslid a little while on vacation, so I'm going to get back on the horse slowly.

Weigh-in: -11. eh, 3 lbs higher than my last official weigh in. Not great, but not bad considering I have been off the diet for nearly 10 days. (1 week + 2 weekends).

Breakfast: Fruit Salad. I don't know how many calories, because I accdentally threw away the lid. I don't even know what the quantity was - all I can say is it was a medium sized bowl of fruit.

Lunch: Chicken Ceasar Salad from D'angelo's. About 537 calories. This is a really good salad. It comes with a little piece of pita bread that you can break off and eat along side it, or dump the contents of the bolw into it and have a ceasar salad sammich pocket. mmmmm...... sammiches. I think I may have those next week.

Dinner: For dinner, I went with the Big A Grilled Chicken Salad. This is a salad of my own invention - A bed of lettuce topped with Tomatoes and Mushrooms, crumbled Feta Cheese, Grilled chicken Breasts and creamy Ceasar dressing (wishbone brand). This was delicious if I do say so myself. I had two heaping plate fulls. I have often thought I should be a chef - but as I was busy patting myself on the back, my darling wife reminded me that I didn't actually MAKE any of the salad - I merely dictated what should be in it. She's got a point there. I am good at inventing dishes, but actually cooking stuff is a pain in the neck. I guess I should be a HEAD chef - that way my "trainees" can do all the grunt work for me. About 800 calories.

Total Calories for the Day: 1337 + fruit salad

Note about the giant burger: Yes, that picture is really a 15 lb cheeseburger. It has 11.5 lbs of meat, 25 slices of cheese, 1 head of lettuce, 3 whole tomatoes, 2 large onions, 1.5 cups of peppers, and 1.5 cups each of mayo, mustard, ketchup. At 34.99, it actually seems like a bargain. If you look closely, the "plate" it is served on is actually a pizza pan. It is my dream to someday go to Dennys Beer Barrel Pub and take the Belly Buster Challenge. This is a two-man (or woman) competition, so if anybody would like to be my teammate, let me know.