January 21 weight: 178
Last 5 days average weight: 181.2
January 14 weight: 181.5
Workouts in last 7 days: 4
I’ve lost 3.5 pounds in the last 7 days. I’m more than happy with that rate, and a little surprised given that I not only had a bad weekend, but a bad three day weekend where I ate the better part of a pile of oatmeal cookies.
In fact, if you look at the graph below you can see where my weight rose back up ABOVE where it was in last week’s post:
This really stressed me out, as I kept thinking about having to post here, today, that I had failed. How embarrassing! So, I clamped down on the diet in the last 2 days and thankfully the influence of those few bad days wasn’t long lasting. I think this is a perfect example of why public goals work so well: you may be able to make excuses for yourself, but if you know other people aren’t going to buy them, you may just decide not to fail in the first place.
Of course, I’m totally setting myself up here for gaining weight next week, aren’t I? Well, here’s a poor quality picture:
The hack I thought I’d mention this week is another food one: smoothies. A few weeks ago Alton Brown did an episode of Good Eats devoted to how he dropped a ton of weight. That’s where I got last week’s almonds recipe, and Alton had exactly one other idea that I thought was practical: a fruit smoothie for breakfast every day. Well, almost every day. Most nights what I do is place 3/4 cup of each of the following in the blender’s pitcher: strawberries, blueberries, banana, and skim milk. I then just put the pitcher in the fridge and when I get up the next morning it takes me about 10 seconds to make a pretty good breakfast that’s just under 300 calories.
I’m a huge fan of nuts. I generally have almonds or pistachios on my desk and gobble a handful every few hours.
Interesting comment on Alton Brown. I’d heard Alton say in a radio interview that he lost all of his weight by cutting out dairy. Since it was a key ingredient in so many things that he ate in excess eliminating it was the easiest way to remove those foods from his diet. Maybe an exageration?
Huh, that kind of clicks with some stuff he said in that episode. He had this whole side conversation about how he doesn’t eat much dairy any more because it makes him “do bad things.” His smoothie recipe even had soy milk in it instead of cow’s milk. But like I’m going to go out and buy a whole different kind of milk…
Ok, I hate you just a little bit. No fair that men can loose wait more easily than women.
@Shawn: Hey, you lost a ton of weight yourself. No need to sell yourself short.