The Big 3 0 0 !

Good news on the weight loss front. For the first time in years, I've come back down to 300 pounds. This is down from a high of 365 and a "normal" weight of about 330 this past decade. The weight loss is 6 pounds for the week. The program if anything is getting easier. I still get urges to gobble down say a hamburger, but I'm rarely very hungry. My energy level is relatively high. My blood pressure is 99/60- probably better than it's ever been.

Week 1- 5/8/14 334.5 16.5 318
Week 2- 5/15/14 318.0 6.9 311.1
Week 3- 5/22/14 311.0 5.1 306
Week 4- 5/29/14 306 6.0 300



I've taken to enjoying broth a great deal. Believe it or not, it's the highlight of the day for me. Some people look forward to carne asada fries, I've got broth. The man that used to gobble down endless carne asada tacos, now salivates over broth. Let me explain. There are these packets of chicken broth that they give us. I also got our favorite Vietnamese noodle place to serve me a small bowl of their broth (not technically allowed by Kaiser, but I figure it's probably only a few calories). Put the right combination of hot sauce and lemon in the broth and you have something wonderful. At least, relatively speaking...

We had a new teacher in my weight loss meeting. She made the point that our weight is tied to our self image. To an extent, this is true for me, but for the most part how I feel about myself has had little to do with my weight. I think maybe that's been part of the problem for me. I was never bullied or discriminated against because of my weight. I've been able to live a pretty happy life as a fat person these last ten years or so. It's had costs, of course. And it's long past time to become skinny again.

300 is the number. I finally hit 300. Now, it's time to hit 200. The journey of 10,000 steps..or 140 pounds lost..starts with a single step. Optifast has been a good step.

On the road to Hugo Boss

Let me take you back about a dozen years. I had graduated law school, passed the bar exam, beat cancer and had a job waiting for me as Deputy District attorney. Although I couldn't really afford it yet, I decided the time had come to buy myself a real suit. And the suit that I wanted was a Hugo Boss. I felt like a million dollars wearing the suit and decided to only use it on very special occasions. I wore it during my first ever jury trial. I celebrated my win with a good dinner out with my girlfriend (now wife). The next time I put on the suit, I noticed that it was a tight fit. Maybe I'd had too many good dinners... So, I switched to another suit, thinking that maybe I'd hit the gym to lose a few pounds. The suit has hung in my closet ever since. I take it out sometimes and look at it. Maybe by September, I'll wear it again.

This week's results:

Week 1- 5/8/14 334.5 16.5 318
Week 2- 5/15/14 318.0 6.9 311.1
Week 3- 5/22/14 311.0 5.1 306

We had a guided meditation in group where we were supposed to imagine our safe place. It turns out that my safe place is floating in the waves on my boogie board. I'm going to have to make it back to the beach sometime soon.

Missing you and wishing you were here...carne asada tacos!

In Court yesterday, I was talking to a client that was about to be released. He told me that he just couldn't wait to have carne asada tacos again. As he paused to think about this, I felt like I could picture those tacos also...

It was a tougher day yesterday. One of the hidden secrets about extreme weight loss that people don't often blog about is the bad breath that it causes- burning all that fat has some...shall we say...lethal side effects. So, yesterday I was chewing a whole bunch of gum to mask the dragon breath. By 5pm, the gum had my stomach hurting. As they warned in group, sorbitol in sugar free gum can upset an empty stomach. It felt like a big build up of gas. Since this is a family blog, I'll save the details of how this gas was later released... Let's just say that it scared the cats..

This morning at the gym's scale, I hit 303 pounds- this is probably 306 pounds on the scale at Optifast, so I'm on schedule to lose at least another five pounds this week. The task before me is still pretty monumental- 23 pounds lost as of last Thursday out of a 142 total to lose. I still have 119 pounds to go, which if you think about is a small human. It's at times like this that I wonder why I ate so many carne asada tacos. The simple answer is because I enjoyed it. Life has been a pleasurable if overdulgent journey these past ten years. It's just time for a healthier route now. From carne asada to pollo asado? From tacos made out of corn to tacos wrapped in lettuce? Lord, change is a coming!

chicken soup for the (skinny) soul

Chicken soup may be good for the soul as the popular book series holds, but Chicken stock is good for keeping this chubby guy on the straight and narrow in his Optifast diet! This Thursday I picked up the optifast chicken broth at my class. I'd been holding off on getting it, but I'm glad I did. At only 20 calories a packet it's a nice change of pace. The taste is good with a little bit of hot sauce. It reminds me of one of those vietnamese soups that I used to like in college- just without the noodles, meat, etc.. You get the picture.

Today was a tougher day than most. I went to visit a friend at prison and went about 5 hours between shakes. They allow you to buy food during the visits, so I got to watch him enjoy a chicken wrap and some watermelon. Actually not too hard an experience, but not pleasant. I managed to make it through without asking him too many times about how it tasted. Now if he'd been eating pizza, it might have been another story...

A friend asked me why I go to visit Eddie, even after his murder conviction given that I knew the person he killed. The reason is simple, he didn't stop being my friend when he made that horrible mistake. I usually do think about the person that he killed- Anna- while I'm with him. I remember how much my wife liked her and what a nice person she seemed to be. Hopefully she's in a better place now. My friend remains with the guilt and with a life sentence. Sadly, life goes on, just not like before. Still, it's nice to play dominos and laugh with an old friend. Every good moment is precious.

The scale is wrong

So, my numbers have to been slightly optimistic. It turns out that according to the only scale that matters, the honorable Optifast scale, my weight is actually 311 instead of 308. Updated numbers therefore are:

Week 1 334.5 16.5 pounds lost 318
Week 2 318 6.9 pounds lost 311.1

So, the goal to break 300 pounds becomes a little bit longer- maybe three weeks instead of two weeks from now? It's been forever since I've been under the 300 mark. I've been at this current weight before- maybe a couple years ago when I was in my heavy workout phase. But it took me months of working out to achieve what two weeks in Optifast has gotten me. No real cause to complain so far, right?

In group, we got slightly into the touchy feely zone- with talk of a safe place and directed flow of consciousness writing. Touchy feely is not really my thing. I mean I'm great at listening to other people's problems and counseling them, but the reverse isn't my norm. I went through most of fight with cancer without telling anyone outside of my parents and my brother. Even now, 15 years later, there are probably close friends of mine that have no idea. It's not so much that I mind sharing my feelings or thoughts with other people- but I don't often do this.

So group is somewhat interesting in encouraging me to spend an hour or so with my feelings. This hour had me exploring the contrast between the somewhat shy and lonely child that I was with the adult that I became who is fairly outgoing and only rarely shy. How did the bookworm become the student politician and then the trial attorney? And what, if anything does this have to do with my gaining weight in my 30's? Dunno...

I doubt the answer to my weight gain has anything to do with my childhood, but I can see the importance of figuring out why I ate so much in my thirties. Maybe it's a way of dealing with the stresses of the job? I guess I've got a lot of time to think about this in the coming months on Optifast.

I weighed in this morning at the gym- it's not official, but it looks like I've lost another 10 pounds in the 2nd week. This would put me at:

Week 1 234.5 16.5 pounds lost 218
Week 2 218 10 pounds lost 208

Not too shabby a start, but of course I'm nowhere near slim. Over the weekend I went to Seattle and the seatbelts barely fit on the Delta airlines (score another point for Southwest). On the flight back, the person I was going to sit next to, looked up with dread when he saw me sitting down. What can I say, I'm working on it...



In case you are curious, this picture above is of underground Seattle. A city under a city. Kind of...

Day 9 Optifast

Day 9 of the Optifast diet. So far, so good. I lost 16.5 pounds at the weigh in on Day 7, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I still get the urge to eat, but I find if I take my shakes on time that I don't really get hungry. Energy level is good and clothes are already fitting me that previously didn't fit. For instance, today I'm wearing my Rays jersey and it's actually a little bit loose.

Starting Weight 334.5
Week 1 Weight 318.0.

Let's see what week two brings...

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It's now day five on the Optifast diet. (The picture is from Day 3- My nephew's wedding. As you may have guessed, I'm the larger one!) So far, so good. Day One was the worst- but wasn't really too bad, I was just fairly hungry throughout the day. Since then, I've only felt hungry about the time when I was due for another shake. On days two and three, I did get some abdominal pains- kind of a stitch in the side. It's been fairly smooth sailing since then.

The toughest part has been watching other people eat. For instance, at my nephew's wedding, I had to sit and watch the people on either side of me pick from a dozen trays of Spanish tapas. So far, I've been able to handle this well. But it has been only five days. Maybe 20 days from now, I'll breakdown and attack someone's french fries. I hope not...

I put on a shirt today that was too tight for me to wear before. This makes me think that maybe I'm going to weigh in Thursday with a weight loss of over 10 pounds. I'm hoping for 20 pounds, like this blogger "Optifast Loser" registered in his first weigh in, but seriously I'm already happy with how this diet is going.

Of course, many of the urges to eat are still there. Leaving Court today, I saw the 7-11 and thought about how I often hit the place for an after court snack. Later, I passed by a tamale place that I had also hit! Strange to think that if I'm successful, my next tamale is 6 months away. This really is a vacation from food. Maybe vacation is not the right word. An incarceration from food?

Day two on optifast was much better than day one. I only felt hungry when it was about time for a shake. I did get stomach cramps twice: kind of felt like that stitch in your side. That you get when you are jogging. Admittedly, it had been awhile since I've been jogging!

The first day on Optifast

I had my first shake last night after the meeting at about 9:30 PM. What can I say about the taste? Imagine the best milkshake that you've ever had. Can you taste it? Now imagine taking a teaspoon from that milkshake and mixing it with 28 ounces of water.. That's the optifast shake- kind of bland. Nothing really offensive about the taste, but really not much taste there. But it doesn't really matter much to me. I'm seeing the shakes as being just medicine. Something that I have to take every three hours or so. I had a shake at 6am, another one at 9am today. It's now 11am and I'm starting to get hungry. I'd rate my hunger at about a 6 on a ten point scale. I understand it's going to get worse. The guy from my group that was successful in losing 100 pounds said that the first 3 or 4 days are hell! Let's see...

I'm at the morning of the day when I get my optifast product and as you can see from the picture above, my belly is rebelling at the thought of a diet! This last week has been a number of meals where I think to myself that this will be the last time in 6 months that I eat this particular item (Fillipis pizza, for instance). Now, it's time to get serious about things. Soon, there really won't be anything else to eat. And, if reading other blogs is any guide, I'll have about 3 days of extreme hunger before my body gets used to getting energy directly from my fat stores. The process is called Ketosis. It sounds almost like psuedo-science to me, but this Kaiser program has a number of successes. If another man can successfully lose weight, then I can also. I have to believe this.