Goal: 200 Pounds

Notice of Closure...And Success

2008-04-19T18:44:00.000-04:00

After some reflection, I realized that I was beginning to repeat old advice in the text sections of the entries. This repetitiveness has convinced me that I really have nothing new to add. So, there seems to be little point in me continuing this blog. From now on, I'm dieting quietly.

If you want the experience of me going through the earlier diet, you can "relive" it from Day 1, or from "Day Zero" when I announced the plan that I would follow.

I realize that I had announced that I would be doing a with-and-without test of the Plateau Buster, but there seems little point in it now. Perhaps such a test is best left to professional dieticians, or other people more focused on the goal. The small E-book I wrote is still up, and it's fairly self-explanatory.

In closing, I would like to thank any readers who stopped by. I do not intend to delete this blog, as a certain update is indicated. It'll come, perhaps, around March.

UPDATE (March 8): I hit a snag that lasted more than two weeks previous to this part. As luck would have it, I got on a "weight treadmill" almost two months after I resumed the latest diet installment. For the last seventeen or so days, my weight (unclothed) has fluctuated between 210 and 215 lbs.

This could be chalked up to me going off the diet with regularity one night per week (sometimes twice per week), but any added food has been counterbalanced by a lot of added exercise - specifically, snow shovelling. It's been a heavy winter for the snow.

Most likely, my body has become acclimatized to the 1000 calorie/day norm by slowing my metabolism. I would like to think that this treadmilling is a result of me finally straddling the "overweight" and "normal" categories, but I suspect that others have been on this treadmill themselves while still overweight, or even obese.

When even the Plateau Buster doesn't fool the body anymore, the only fallback strategy seems to be the nip-and-tuck. If sustained dieting has pulled down body energy use, then a sustained holiday from the diet will (presumably) bring it up again. Undoubtedly, this will result in regaining some weight, but there seems no other option if metabolism confounds. So, that will be the next test, which may yield a useful tip for chronic treadmill-weight dieters: whether or not the nip-and-tuck technique (two months on, three weeks off) will get the regular weight losses back.

So, to test this, I'm pulling myself off until the beginning of April and then going back on. I hope this nip-and-tuck will enable me to reach that 200 pounds - for me, the midrange of normal.

Final Update: As of April 19th, 6 PM, I stepped on the scale, unclothed, and weighed in at exactly 200 pounds. I've made it.

As it turns out, going on an extended diet holiday proved to be just the trick. I shot up to 215 pounds, for about a five-pound gain, but stayed roughly there until April began. Evidently, my appetite was crimped even when I could eat what I wanted. When April began, I started off at the same 215 pounds.

Yes, it was a metabolism speed-up that kicked in. When I went back on the diet, which included judicious uses of the Plateau Buster, my weight only dawdled at the same 210-pound block point. 205 was a little more of a challenge, but I started sailing through it as of a couple of days previously. April 19 marks the end of it, making for a loss rate slightly greater than that featured in the free E-book I wrote.

Evidently, dehabituation through a diet holiday works. My body had been so good at calorie-burning efficiency, it's actually debatable whether I would have reached 200 pounds by Apr. 19th without that diet holiday. Regardless, I found that it's easier to stick to a diet that's working, so the faster rate gave me extra psychological wherewithal to stick to the final installment.

Before I sign off, I want to make one important point. I lost 15 pounds in 20 days even though I took myself off the diet each Sunday (and not just for a social meal, either.) I also had a "hunger attack" on Wednesday the 16th. Despite this lack of rigor, I still ended up reaching my goal of losing 15 additional pounds, in somewhat less time than I thought it would take. The point I'm trying to make is that one day's eating frenzy does not a ruined diet make. The trick is to make the dieting normal, and diet breaks or diet holidays the exception. The only way to do this is to shrug off the previous eat fest and see a return to diet mode as a return to habit. Obviously, this works best if you hold off from any diet break, or diet holiday, until you've habituated yourself to the calorie restriction. I suggested, and still suggest, three weeks without any kind of break in order to establish the pattern. Then, they will seem like exception-making rather than up-giving (sorry.)

Related to this point is a fallback one. If a diet becomes too much, try as much as you can to limit your daily food intake to weight-maintenance calorie level. This'll roughly hold your weight to your gain, enabling you to mark time until you have the psychological whereithal to diet again.

I don't know where I'll be, weight-wise, in the future. I undertook this diet primarily for the challenge, to see if I could get off weight I put on last year and more. (I'm more than twenty pounds lighter than I've been in years: my regular pants are all loose-fitting now, and my old belt is now too big for me.) This weight is around normal for someone of my height and build. If I chose to make a quest for the "body beautiful," I could probably lose another 15-20 pounds.

Even if I bob back up, though, going through this experience has given me the confidence that I can lose weight again, because I have. That success can't be taken away from any accomplished dieter, no matter how much weight he or she subsequently gains. The fat may come back, but the experience stays.

(Besides, it might come in handy if a doctor reads me the riot act someday.)

----------

If you don't mind a final self-plug of the free diet book, the download link to "How I Lost 40 Pounds In 60 Days" can be found here.

Fourth Day: What To Do When Leftovers Arrive

2008-01-06T18:39:00.000-05:00

On the last run, I discussed what to do when social outings require a temporary deviation from the diet plan. I recently faced a special one - a going-away dinner - and I followed the procedure I set out beforehand for "cheating:" casting it as a temporary respite from a diet, one that will supply good memories to tide me over when the going gets especially lean. In its place, nostalgia works - which explains why "forceum" plans often don't.

This time 'round, though, I faced a greater challenge: I got some leftovers which I had to get rid of in some way.

I say "leftovers," as opposed to gifts of food, because that's what they were: a kind of hand-me-down package of food. Since I have qualms about getting rid of a whole load of food outright, I decided to eat it as speedily as possible. This decision, plus the dinner beforehand, put me up several pounds.

I can say to the weight-obsessed that such respites are little more than setbacks. A sense of overall perspective is needed: since a serious diet is going to take a month minimum, and possibly a couple or a few months, prolongation of it by a week or less isn't going to do that much harm. Perspective leads to robustness; lack of perspective may mean an underlying lack of staying power. "Efficiency-centred" often entails a certain brittleness.

Perspective also drains self-absorption. Someone who doesn't share my sense of mission in this regard may decide that I'm simply hungry, or that I'm starving myself disproportionately to my need to lose weight. Looking starved, no matter what weight you are, does tend to invite charity from people who really care for you.

This point being noted, though, I have come up with a procedure to limit a deviancy from becoming a new rule. In a word, it's sequestration. That's why I tend to polish off any extras I receive as soon as I can - to get them out of the way. I admit that this approach does tread towards Bulimia Land, but it seems the best way to make the diet the norm, and heavy eating the exception. That way, my sense of the norm, and my habits, are inclined towards weight loss.

As far as receiving extra food is concerned, this procedure is the one I'm following:

a) Work any received low-calorie items into the diet, if they do in fact fit.
b) Those that don't, eat as soon as practicable unless you have no qualms about throwing them out.
c) Don't mix your diet food with the "extras" - keep them apart.
d) Some items don't make up much of a meal by themselves, or in combination with the others you're received. For these, it is tempting to go to the grocery store for extra ingredients to make "real meals" from what you've got. This is the slippery slope that's likely to make you an ex-dieter. Why? Because ingredients almost never balance out. So one trip turns into two, which turns into three, which turns into a regular habit. (Consider also that it shows that you really needed the food that you received, which makes for a happy giver who'll be encouraged to give you more of the same.) If you have to eat like a wolf for a time, so be it. Doing so will make it less jarring to go back to the diet plan.
e) For the eat-a-rama, it may be best to down the high-calorie items first and the lower-calorie items later. This practice leads you back to low-cal food, and makes the climb back up to the diet plan less abrupt.

Another point: the more you go off the diet only to get back on, and stay on, the more practice you have cutting down your food, and the more acclimatized you become to cutting back. There's little wrong with yo-yoing as long as the overall net change is downwards.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 247 pounds - a five pound, if temporary, setback.

Third Day: More About "No Exercise"

2008-01-05T18:14:00.000-05:00

The supposed benefit-point of exercising while on a diet is that it burns more calories, thus enabling weight to be shed faster. Like all plausible ideas, though, there is a hidden catch. I've been experiencing what it is recently.

The more fitness-centred you are, the more "in the body" you are. This is a plus for a physical person, but not so much of one for a dieter. When you eat, you get up and you grab the food. When you're physically oriented, you tend to snap into action when you've made a decision or choice. To the extent that exercise makes you more physical, the more inclined you are to get up and physically follow through on your desires...

...including the desire to snag an extra snack. "Go-go-go" to the fridge, to put it one way.

Those people who think that exercise is a necessary component to a diet should ask themselves why there are so many ex-athletes around with protruding bellies, for the male variety.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 242 pounds.

Second Day: Restlessness

2008-01-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

Last night, I bumped into a side effect when trying to get to sleep. I've set up a diet plan that doesn't require exercise, but during this second run-through I'm finding myself getting restless. I would like to believe that I'm abnormal with respect to this need for activity.

More normal is, of course, tiredness. Try as I might, I can't find any way around that part of it.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 243 pounds again.

First Day: It's Easier The Second Time 'Round

2008-01-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

Once again, I've felt the "empties" that come with the start of a diet. Having been through it once before, though, I had some idea of what was coming...which has made it easier. Also, the carrots, celery and cabbage pre-diet I've been through made coping with the fat-metabolism hunger easier.

There's something to be said for the people who try to diet, find that it's too hard for them at that point, and go back to their old ways for a time. The experience gained makes the second go-'round a little easier because the obstacles are clearer. When it comes down to it, unless a diet is medically necessary, there's no immediate need to shed the fat on the first go-round.

In fact, given that surgical and quasi-surgical help is now offered, there seems less reason to overdramatize. We do, afer all, live long lives.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 243 pounds (in part due to fluid loss.)

Back At It

2008-01-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

It's now 2008; after some re-fattening up, I'm back on the diet track. Unfortunately, I didn't gain the amount of pounds that I wanted to play with this time 'round, so I'm going to limit my fooling around with the Plateau Buster to this one test: for the first four weeks of this phase of the diet, I'm not going to use it - plateau or not. For the next four weeks, I'm going to whenever I bump into a plateau. Instead of a sliding scale, I'm sticking to a straight 1,000 calories/day until my goal is reached. This eight-week straddle will determine whether or not the Plateau Buster speeds the weight-loss process up.

As far as the last five+ weeks are concerned, I spent them using what could be called the "inside straight" of dieting: eating as much as I want of three foods, all of which are low-calorie bulk foods: celery, cabbage and carrots. The plan is simple: eat as much as you can, whenever you want, of those foods. "Cheating," or deviation from this plan, is all-but mandatory for nutrition needs. The rationale behind it is to lose weight without enduring hunger pangs, as the stomach is kept full with low-calorie bulk food. Supposedly, this bulk-up makes for an easier diet.

Unforutunately for me (as well as for anyone else who has tried it, I suspect,) there are two types of "hungries." The first comes from an empty stomach, and is one which every dieter is familiar with. This type of hunger is avoided by the "CCC" diet. The trouble is, there's a second kind of hunger that does not go away with this kind of diet - the "hungries" that come with consuming a below-maintenance number of calories. This kind of hunger is essential to any diet, as it signals the body to metabolize some of its fat. I found that the disjoint between the lack of the first hunger and the presence of the second, instead of making me easier with the diet, instead made me feel querulous.

It is possible to lose weight with this diet, but only slowly. I "cheated" frequently while on it, including spells of outright backsliding. One of the lethal risks results from the much greater sugar hunger it engenders. Normally, I found, drinking a sugar-filled liquid made me queasy after a few swallows. Not while on this diet, though: shortly into it, I gulped down more than a cup of maple syrup (which I had to get rid of anyway or else mold would have gotten to it) without any quease that would indicate that enough sugar has gone down the gullet. In other words, my sugar hunger had increased dramatically. This side consequence meant that I had to abjure sugary foods as completely as I could. A sugar-laden diet would have taken away the safety-belt feature of this kind of diet: making cheating impracticable because of an already-filled stomach.

I did lose a few pounds while on it, although slowly: seven pounds over the course of four weeks. This kind of diet can work for someone who likes to lose weight slowly and doesn't mind putting up with the querulousness caused by the above-noted disjoint. It may suit a true endomorph well, and/or someone who's uncomfortable with rigid food restriction. At the price of feeling both full and hungry at the same time, of course.

It also may work as a prelude to a diet because of the resultant stomach fooling. One day, about two and a half weeks ago, I had to shovel a lot of snow. Because I had to get out there, I forgot to eat anything. By the time I remembered, it was dinner-time. Despite me going hungry all day, which I didn't notice for most of it, I only had room in my stomach for a regular-sized meal. Had I decided to start a more rigourous diet at that time, I might have found it easier to do so because my stomach was fooled into shrinking already.

Nevertheless, I have to confess that this approach, as a full diet in itself, isn't the one for me: I suppose I need a more structured approach. So, I'm back to the more rigid, fatburner method of eating five snack-sized meals a day, all of which total up to 1,000 calories. To start off, my weight as of about 6 PM today, unclothed, is noted just below. As is usual for this blog, I will be measuring myself in that state of undress for all of the measurements in order to whisk away the effect that different clothes have.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 246 pounds.

FREE and Redistributable E-book

2007-08-31T21:12:00.000-04:00

The E-book, found at this Site, is PDF format; it's entitled "How I Lost 40 Pounds In 60 Days." It's a short one: 16 pages, and the word count is more suitable for a pamphlet, so you can get through it quickly. You may even like the design of it.

(If you have trouble with the main link, you can also access it through this alternate link. There's also another alternate access link from another holder Site.)

Day 60: Goal on Hold

2007-08-30T18:32:00.000-04:00

I'm bringing the diet I'm currently on to an end. As of today's weighing, I've lost 40 pounds in 60 days, which is actually the title of an E-book that I've written.

There are three reasons that explain why I'm halting. First of all, although I have seen that the Plateau Buster technique does work, it nevertheless rates a test under conditions controlled in advance, so I can have a better idea of how it works. If you're a regular here, you may have noticed me introducing variations to it recently; to be honest, I'd like to introduce more, but I'm running out of fat.

The second reason relates to the first. The decision to introduce the sliding calorie scale did wind up confusing things for me; I shouldn't have. Instead, I should have stuck to a fixed caloric intake all the way through. The next time 'round, I will do so until I hit 200 pounds, after which point I'll worry about pulling my appetite up to normal.

The third reason is more involved. To be honest, I had this suspicion that the diet I'm ending has been relatively easy for me because I was a "recreational eater." The more intractable kind of overweight problem is one where you've hooked performance to eating. I haven't done that, so I have no tips to offer for someone that has to go down that more difficult road. This point has bothered me, as it implies that I had a relatively easy time reducing my weight.

Once the link to the finished E-book is posted, this blog will remain dormant until - yes, this date is deliberately chosen for effect - January 2, 2008. By that time, I should be in worse shape (both in terms of weight and of overeating dependancy) than I was as of the start of this diet in the beginning of July. I do plan to jack around in a manner similar to the way I did so here in June, but not on this blog. It's too anchored as a diet blog for that approach to make sense, so I'm going to be doing so on a newly-started, independent Blogger blog.

Regarding the E-book: I'll post a link to it on this blog, in a more recent entry, once I'm finished. It will be short, but down-to-earth; it's being done in PDF format. It will be both free and redistributable, in an unaltered form. One the link to the book is in place, that will be it for here until January 2, '08.

If you've been a regular, thanks for reading what I've posted, and I hope you've gleaned some useful tips from what I've written. A diet is a challenge, no doubt, and I hope I have either eased it somewhat or helped a little in terms of extra results.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 220 pounds.

Day 59: Still Thinning

2007-08-29T18:37:00.000-04:00

The Plateau Buster has worked yet again, getting me slightly below the plateau I was stuck upon (with diet interruption) for eight days running. I've lost about four pounds since the start of the latest use of the Plateau Buster.

It's only been relatively recently that I've faced a hurdle that normal dieters normally face at the outset. Even though I'm entitled to a ration of 1,500 calories/day on the self-imposed scale I've been using, I'm hungrier than I was when fatter and eating less. Whatever the cue (I believe it's visual,) I've found that being thinner than "normal" makes a diet more intractable.

There are two options available to get through this added hurdle. One is to start off a diet at the normal-overweight level for you, and see the gnawing hunger as part of the initial shift-to-diet burden. The other, the option I chose, is to fatten up before commencing a diet, and then put off the gnawing experience until long after being habituated to calorie reduction. This option inculcates new habits to fall back on. With it, passivity is your aid. With the former option, fortitude is.

I don't know which one is best. The former option gets the bulk of the pain and discomfort out of the way at the outset. The latter option splits the discomfort in two. To be honest, part of me wishes that I had gone with the former option, even though doing so would have missed the experience of going abruptly from a huge appetite to a small one. In the final analysis, it's a value judgment, as is the decision to stay the course when things start to get tough. My own value judgments incline me towards toughing it through if I can, and deciding that I'm not committed (or ready) enough if I can't. There's nothing wrong, after all, with dress rehersals, pilot plants and practice runs - all three range between useful and vital.

I'm about five to ten pounds below my normal weight. If you're interested, my unconscious plays a trick on me when I weigh myself: I mis-remember the 220 level on my scale as 230. Chalk it up to diet anxiety.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 219 pounds.

Day 58: Back To Bottom

2007-08-28T18:25:00.000-04:00

As of this weighing, I'm back to 220 lbs, the low for this blog. After some time without wearing a belt, I have also found that my "pull it tight" habit involves me reaching for a notch that isn't there. The tightest notch fits, mostly comfortably.

The last round trip through a weight digit ending in a zero - 230 lbs. - lasted seven days. This present dally at 220 lbs. lasted eight days, from first touch at that level to today. Both interruptions included times when I pulled myself off the diet entirely. All in all, this wasn't a bad length of time, as my regular calorie consumption has gone from 1,000 calories/day to 1,250/day. The days at which I hit the 230-lb level were ones where I could go to 1,250 calories/day, and the ones where I hit the 220-lb. level were ones I could go up to 1,500/day. So, an extra day's round trip is understandable; it's less than 15% longer in terms of time.

I've been wondering, actually, if I set the threshold for increasing caloric intake too high. According to this body-mass-index calculator, someone like myself, with a large frame, should be at most 202 pounds. Perhaps, I should have set the threshold levels lower, or added more weight in between them.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 220 pounds even.

Day 57: Binge Recovery

2007-08-27T18:23:00.000-04:00

As I write this entry, I'm on the way down from a jump-up, thanks in part to the Plateau Buster. After ending a weekend binge and shifting to a more normal application of the Plateau Buster - a large slice of coffee cake as the main meal of the day - my weight is beginning to drop. It's one pound away from the all-blog low point I had established last week.

As the diet I'm on reaches the sixty-day point, I'm beginning to see glimmers of myself as a thin man. That pinch-the-stomach test I've brought up from time to time - in my case, it's "grab at all the fat you can around the area of the belly button" - shows 2 1/2 inches on the left side of the belly button and 2 5/8 inches on the right. One thing I've found is that your appearance changes in unexpected ways when you thin up. When I glanced at myself recently in a window that had served as a shadowy mirror, what struck me about my appearance was how wide-mouthed I appeared. As the "fat features" disappear, other features of the body become noticeable.

Of course, one of the drawbacks about the Saturday-night binge party I discussed in yesterday's entry is that it makes for a hungry Sunday. A heavy head might be bad enough for some, without the addition of a hungry stomach to it (even if water is zero calories.)

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 221 pounds.

Day 56: Big Rebound

2007-08-26T18:31:00.000-04:00

This last weekend, I ate, drank and was merry - and I have the weight gain to show it. As is customary for me, I threw myself off the diet for the length of the social occasion in question and am now back on, now that a normal schedule has been restored. I ate, drank and was merry from Friday night to Sunday morning, with a big "blow-out" on Saturday night - and now I have to repair the consequences.

This brings up an interesting question. Many people drink, but few are chronic drunks. That's because "social drinking" is socialized: beyond the Saturday night beer bust, the social drinker drinks little. This convention helps keep many drinkers from becoming drunks.

It's true that food does not have the same effect as alcohol; far from it. Also, food is a necessary for life, and alcohol really isn't. This difference, though, applies to food in general; it doesn't apply to specific foods.

There are already certain kinds of foods that are both delicious and deemed unhealthy if eaten chronically: corn syrup is a recent example. Foods of this sort do form a parallel with alcohol, with the noticeable exception of the hangover or lack of, and thus open themselves up to socializing in a similar manner. In fact, they can be mixed together.

It's true that a Saturday night "Sat Fat Fried Chicken And Beer Party" sounds a little odd, but it might not be if the dieting trend becomes general. People need a break, after all, and most are quite capable of indulging moderately but not excessively. With respect to alcohol, we've known it for decades (if not centuries or millenia.)

[If you're interested: a six-pack pulled me through the entire weekend; yes, I am a cheap drunk. Also: while I was choring away in the rain yesterday, I slipped and ripped the front closer out of my tight pants; I also ripped a little skin off a knuckle. Word from the slipped: if you spring for a new wardrobe in a lower and tighter size, save your old wardrobe for active days and use the newer stuff for dresswear until they're loose on you. Tailors cost.]

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today, after yesterday's hiatus: 223 pounds.

Notice

2007-08-24T18:19:00.000-04:00

There will be no entry tomorrow, as I'm going away for the weeked on one of those social occasions. This blog will resume on Sunday at the usual time. Enjoy your own weekend.

Day 54: Little Rebound

2007-08-24T18:17:00.000-04:00

I may not have gotten much of a drop thanks to the use of a pre-plateau Plateau Buster over the last two days, but the side effect of the little drop has been little or no rebound. Despite having socked away three (small) meals so far today, I'm at almost the same weight as I was yesterday.

I've also noticed that the take-out plan, where you eat more calories as your weight approaches normal, has the consequence of making me feel more hungry throughout the day than I was when used to the diet rut. Once again, the closer you get to the norm, the more the old habits are brought up from the unconscious.

On a more sartorial note, I'm writing this entry while in pants that have been in my closet for years because they've been too small for me. I'm normally a 38/32; these pants are 36/32. Except for the waist and the legs, they basically fit, although I'm not confident enough to test 'em on an athletic field.

At a waist of my size, the appearance makes little difference around the hip area. The main difference in appearance is the effect of the narrower pants waist: my flest, and fat, bulge out a little over the top of the pants. So, the ironic consequence of trading down a waist size is more visible flab. I suppose this effect explains why it's urged: it tends to keep the momentum going in the drop towards a truly low-fat body.

Or, for those who didn't mind being fat, it leaves a residuum of flab to carry the good memories of the old days through...

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 220 1/2 pounds.

Day 53: Interrupted Plateau, Day 2

2007-08-23T18:17:00.000-04:00

It looks, as of now, like the Plateau Buster only works for plateaus. After the second day of using the technique for a pre-plateau situation, I've found that my weight has dropped to where it was the day after the previous use of the technique. So, it looks like using the Plateau Buster to force weight gain in the absence of a plateau doesn't work very well.

I've also found that the use of more sugar-concentrated foods (such as the chocolate-covered biscuits I consumed this morning) doesn't make that much of a difference when compared to eating bulkier sugared foods with the same calorie level, such as donuts or danishes. Sugar seems to be essential, but the concentration isn't. All in all, if you plan to use the Plateau Buster, you'd get about the same effect through using sweetbreads as you would using, say, candies. Further caveat: it may not work at all for some people, as my digestive makeup may be unusual.

The above being said, though, the Plateau Buster has had the usual effect.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 220 pounds.

Day 52: Interrupted Plateau, Day 1

2007-08-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I've started a special use of the Plateau Buster technique, which has gotten a little extreme. (By "extreme," I mean overly focused on the sugar with no attention to either hunger or nutritional needs.) Today, I've consumed what might as well be liquid sugar, and that's all the eating I'll be doing for the day or night: as a special test, I consumed the entire day's ration at that one sitting. Day 2 of this Plateau Buster diet adjustment will be a little less extreme: I've got a small pack of chocolate-covered biscuits slated for tomorrow's breakfast, which total slightly less than 1000 calories. This will leave me a little more than 250 calories for the final meal of the day, the late supper.

If you're interested, the sight of all that sugary food did lead to a temporary hunger attack. Instead of just ignoring it, though, I did eat a 330-calorie meat pie at about that time. One benefit of the fat-burning five-(very light)-meal-a-day plan, late in a diet, is that hunger can be assuaged through the consumption of a very small meal. Unfortunately, though, this shrug-off comes with prior habituation to the fat-burner meal plan. Earlier in the diet, I had to either ignore or outright disown such hunger attacks.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: still 222 pounds.

Day 51: Rebound and Setback

2007-08-21T18:18:00.000-04:00

As I expected, reaching the 220-pound level when unclothed, and thus rating a higher caloric intake per day, has resulted in a rebound. I've gained enough to push my daily ration back to 1,250 calories/day.

I suspect that this rebound isn't uncommon when following a plan of this sort. The shift in intake isn't enough to convince the body that the good eating times are back, but the extra calories do mount up. So, the body's metabolism rate stays stuck at semi-famine level while the calorie intake goes up, leading to a stoppage in weight loss or perhaps even a gain. Add fluid variation and the gain is explained.

Speaking of surprises: I'm going to deviate from procedure somewhat and use another application of the Plateau Buster to see if the metabolism-boost effect, or the fluid-release effect, is central to it. This version is going to be another "extreme" one, and it's not really recommended unless you have above-average control over your hunger. Like the last one, I'm doing it for test purposes. I want to see if I can use it to jack down my weight without having been on a plateau for some time. Based upon what I've seen, it probably won't have much of an effect - but it's worth a try in order to find the Plateau Buster's limits.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 222 pounds.

Day 50: Droppage Accomplished

2007-08-20T18:40:00.000-04:00

As I write this entry, I'm wearing a pair of pants that I sent to the tailors a few weeks ago with a ripped crotch. They now fit comfortably.

The end of the latest use of the Plateau Buster has worked as expected. I now weigh in at an even 220 lbs. unclothed, which means that I'm now entitled to eat 1,500 calories/day. At this consumption level, I'm unlikely to lose much more for some time, as it's close to weight-maintenence level. Given my dance-around at the 230 lb. level, I'm also likely to go back to 1,250/day for a time.

That doesn't matter much, though. I've managed to lose 40 pounds in 50 days, with several diet interruptions along the way. These interruptions include experimenting with two other techniques that failed, as well as three social occasions and one deliberate "cheat test" for resolve.

In general, fat-burning does work, provided that you consume fewer calories than you use. I know because I've been trying it for most of the 50 days I've been on this diet - without exercise. To remind everyone, the Plateau Buster was developed as an add-on to a generic fat-burning diet.

One more disclosure: the only times I've eaten vegetables or fruits have been when they were given to me. The staples of this diet have been frozen and microwaveable food, ham slices, and small hamburger buns - generic fat-burning foods.

----------

"Different Scales, Different Weighings"

I have another disclosure to make: I switched scales in the middle of this blog. I didn't think it would make a difference, because one scale should give you the same weight as another, but I recently found out that it has. I started off with a (borrowed) basic spring scale with a small platform, which was already used but relatively new. What replaced it was a new, store-bought scale that's the same as the basic one I had used initially with one exception. It has a larger platform attached to the top of it. In addition to re-borrowing the small basic spring scale, I've also borrowed another one - also a spring, but more elaborate with a dial gauge. It's much older than the other two.

Here are the weighings - fully clothed, but with light slippers on - for all three scales:

The one I bought new: 225 pounds.

The one I used to start off this blog: 218 pounds.

The more upscale, but much older, one I borrowed: 209 pounds.

Yesterday, I made mention of the apparent fact that I was approaching my lowest weight since starting this blog. The above double-check shows that I've already been at my lowest weight in months for the past few days.

Based upon my disappointments during hospital physicals, I'll have to go with the newest one, and claim a weight of 225 lbs. fully clothed. This weighing puts me at an all-blog low anyway.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today, unclothed: 220 pounds, with the current scale.

Day 49: Plateau Buster Works As Usual

2007-08-19T18:35:00.000-04:00

After close to a week at a plateau of 225-6 lbs., I've used the Plateau Buster for the second day in a row today, in an extreme version: using sugar-laden snack foods for my 1,250 calories/day. For the last day and a half, all I've eaten is snack cakes and caramel corn, and one more snack cake is all that I rate for supper.

This use of the Plateau Buster is, obviously, extreme because it's not nutritious. I Plateau Busted in this way because I wanted to test if it was the sugar that revved up my metabolism and got rid of the excess water in my body through urination. What I've found is that this is largely the case, although there seems to be no added "oomph" to using sugar-laden snack foods as opposed to foods with sugary components to them, like danishes or glazed donuts. To be honest, it seems better to go with the sweetbreads because they fill up your stomach and keep the hunger at bay longer. I will, however, be testing the more sugar-centric variant once more.

I've found that my metabolism has increased over the last day-and-a-half. I'm presently at work on a repetitive task, and have found that my endurance level when at it has gone up. Unfortunately, I've also found that the more sugar-centred variant has upset my sleep a bit. (The amount of coffee I drink during the day has stayed about the same throughout.)

I've also reached a kind of moment in this diet. I've weighed myself naked throughout the diet, in order to control for difference in clothes weight. Afterwards, though, I weighed myself fully clothed with light slippers, as I used to during the first month of this blog's existence. I weighed in at between 226 and 227 pounds clothed, which is within a pound of my lowest weight since June began. Tomorrow, day 50, is likely to be the point where I sink to the lowest weight I've had since May 31st.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 222 pounds.

Day 48: Back To The Usual, With A Twist

2007-08-18T18:05:00.000-04:00

I've shifted back to the usual kind of Plateau Buster - one with sugared foods. In fact, after yesterday's debacle, I've shifted over to the other extreme, for test purposes. My "big breakfast" was a small bag of caramel corn and two snack cakes, both of which total 1,060 calories. The residuum of 190 calories is reserved for supper.

Before I reveal the result, I should add a warning about the "extreme" use of the Plateau Buster that I'm currently using. Once the morning ration of (in this case) approx. 1000 calories is gone, that's it for the end of the day except for supper. If you're on a, say, 1000 calorie/day limit, then approx. 800 calories' worth of sweet stuff is all you'll eat until a small snack-sized dinner at the end of the day.

The trouble with using candy or (in this case) caramel corn or snack cakes as a sugar booster is that they hardly fill up the stomach. Once again, I emphasize (with stomach growling) that once the big breakfast is done with, that's the end of the eating for the day except for the small supper. Danishes, donuts, et. al. seem to provide an adequate compromise between sugar-caloric and stomach-filling. Calorie-rich candy doesn't.

So, again, I say that this variant is only for experimental purposes, to see if it's the sugar that results in the metabolism boost/extra water clearout. So far, the answer to this question is "yes," but the full effect won't be seen until early next week. Happy rest-of-the-weekend.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 224 1/2 pounds.

Day 47: Lower Metabolism, No Drop

2007-08-17T18:15:00.000-04:00

The first day I've used the Plateau Buster with a non-sugared food item was definitely a "bust." My metabolism has slowed down, and my weight as measured today hasn't shrunk. Given what I know of the technique, this result is a sign that it's not working as it should.

So, I'm calling a halt to it in its present form, and am shifting back to the sugared alternative - which, for me, has meant sweetbreads (danishes, donuts, cinnamon buns) up to now. My digestive makeup may be unusual in this respect, but that's what the results for me show: no sugar means no metabolism boost, no unusual increase in urination, no weight loss. I'll have to confine experimental alternatives of the Plateau Buster to sugar-centric foods.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: still 226 pounds.

Day 46: Less Fat, Same Weight

2007-08-16T18:17:00.000-04:00

I will have to use another Plateau Buster menu-shift; my weight's bounced up a pound and is at the same level as it was five days ago. As I had noted yesterday, if the supposed success of the Plateau Buster was merely due to good timing on my part, I would have been dropping again right now. I haven't been.

Thankfully, in times like this, there are other points of reassurance that aren't confined to the scale. The amount of fat in my belly is dropping; a finger-squeeze right around the belly button reveals a little more than 2 1/2 inches to the left of it and about 2 3/4 inches to the right. As long as the diet is being stuck to, and you're consuming less than you go through, such points of bodily reassurance can help in keeping morale up.

As I also mentioned earlier, I'll be trying this Plateau Buster with non-sugared food - specifically some egg noodles in soup. If it doesn't make a difference, then I'll shift back to the sugared foods. The next try, over the next few days, will show whether or not the sugar or the calories, if not both, are the decisive routine-buster. As is usual with the Plateau Buster, the full effects will be revealed in four days.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 226 pounds.

Day 45: Edging Down

2007-08-15T18:30:00.000-04:00

That old habituation I mentioned in yesterday's entry is largely gone. So, as based upon my own experience, if you find that your own weight loss has been rendered harder by a hunger attack at an old weight level of yours, toughing it out will make the hunger pangs go away in a day or two.

I also mentioned that, if my weight hadn't lowered today, I would be re-using the Plateau Buster technique. The reason why I waited was to see if the Plateau Buster had launched a drop, or whether I began to use it when a drop from a plateau was due anyway. If it had been the latter case, then I would have been assigning credit where it wasn't due.

Based upon today's weighing of myself, though, the Plateau Buster does push the weight downwards. I've eaten the 1,250 calories/day by the regular schedule; my weight has dropped, but only by a little. This is the fourth day after I initially reached 226 lbs. unclothed. Normally, I would have been using the Plateau Buster today, so if the technique was a mere placebo, I should have been dropping more today. I'm still at the same weight I was two days ago.

I'm going to be testing the Plateau Buster once again, starting Friday morning, unless I see tomorrow that the plateau is melting all on its own. Indications from today suggest that it won't, without that push. As I said yesterday, I'll be using non-sugary food for the next time.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 225 pounds.

Day 44: Heavier and Hungrier

2007-08-14T18:33:00.000-04:00

Last night, I bumped into a dormant but well-established habit re-asserting itself. Before this entire experiment began, I used to eat a moderate-sized meal in the morning or early afternoon, and then sent myself off to sleep with a huge dinner. As last night wore on, I begame hungrier and hungrier, even though I was sticking to the same level of calorie restriction that I've become used to.

Evidently, the shape, as well as the look and feel, of my body at its present weight has triggered an unconscious expectation that I can go back to the old eating habits. So, here's the word: if, like me, you're shrinking your weight down from an unusually high level, you will encounter a tug of hunger once you get down to a long-established weight level. It'll kick in at the time(s) when you had usually eaten big. If that level is above where you want to be, then an extra challenge awaits once your diet takes you to it.

Ironically, this hunger resumption occurred during a time when I managed to gain a pound from yesterday. At the consumption level I'm at, I estimate that I should be shedding - if I were a reliable input-output machine, which no living person is - about 1/2 pound/day. Even though I've stuck at the same weight I had been at four days ago, it hasn't quite been long enough for me to call it a plateau this time. If I'm still at the same weight (or more) tomorrow, I'll pull out a special variant of the Plateau Buster which tests whether or not it'll work with non-sugary foods.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 226 pounds.

Day 43: Approaching A Kind Of Closure

2007-08-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

Fully clothed, I've weighed in at 228-229 pounds this evening, which is the same weight I was when I started this blog. It took me about 32 days to go from 229 pounds to about 264 pounds. It's taken me 43 days to go from c. 264 pounds to about 229 pounds, fully clothed. Had I stuck to my original calorie level of 850 C/day, I probably could have reversed my c. 35 lb. weight gain in the same time that I gained it.

This was not to be the case, for two reasons. The first reason is, I've had several diet interruptions, with one being completely self-imposed and the others being ones in which I was basically complicit, as I could have taken sick. The other reason is the shifting weight scale, which has bumped me from 850 calories/day to 1,250/day. The reasons behind the use of this kind of calorie scale are also two in number: one, to link future hunger satiation with weight loss; two, to head off any incipient anorexia. There's always the risk of getting to love dieting so completely that the process becomes an end in itself. If you consume more calories than you take in, regardless of what your present BMI is, then you will lose (more) weight over the long term.

Although my weight is the same now as it was when I started, my body isn't quite the same shape as it was. On the one hand, I've still got a bit of a pot; on the other hand, I'm (mostly comfortably) wearing my belt at a notch tighter than where it used to be. So, the distribution of my fat has changed so as to make me more "apple-ish," even though I'm at the same weight that I was at the beginning.

Unless I zig-zag, I'm on the verge of going into weight territory where I haven't been for years. I have three pounds to go before I clock in at a weight lower than any of the scale readings I've had while writing this blog.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 225 pounds.

Day 42: Plateau Buster, Assessment Day

2007-08-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm back on a normal food regimen for this diet - meaning, 1,250 calories/day consumed in five meals/day - I've seen a hint of what made me back away from the plateau buster earlier: after several weighings at around 6 PM, I found that I've gained half a pound over the last day. Fully clothed, with light slippers on, I weighed in at 230 lbs; unclothed, I weighed in at 226 1/2 pounds.

This slight gain isn't enough to make me abandon it. I have three meals behind me so far this day, even if the calorie count for all of them is slightly less than each of the big breakfasts I ate over the past two days. Since my weight is 3 1/2 pounds below the plateau level I started off at, I've decided that the plateau buster is a real, workable technique, although only an ancillary one to a real diet of the fat-burning type.

Here are its limits:

- This technique, as fully explained in the E-book obtainable at this Website, only works as part of a stuck-to diet. If you're not on a diet, it won't help you sustainably lose weight.
- It acts as a kind of "equalizer." I use it when a reduction of calories has not met with corresponding weight loss. This disparity is what makes it go: the use of the plateau buster should result in a catch-up to trend, not an acceleration of it.
- From what I can tell, it partially depends upon clearing fluid out that has been accumulated in the body.
- It also depends upon breaking food habit to speed the body's metabolism up to normal from diet-shutdown mode. Both this point and the last add up to the point two above: it's only an equalizer, which should get you back on trend. Whatever the underlying trend is depends upon the difference between the calories you consume and the calories you use.
- It also depends upon prior habituation to dieting. Anyone who isn't, will find it a special challenge to fast between the breakfast and supper. I mention that I started experimenting with the plateau buster after I deliberately pulled myself off the diet as a resolve test, and passed that test by going back on the diet.

Despite these limits, I believe it is a valuable technique for this reason: it's a frustration-lessener. One of the frustrating parts of experiencing a plateau is that the input-output relation is seemingly broken: you've got the input down, but the output isn't coming through. If this goes on for a few or several days, then it becomes a real dragdown and confidence drainer. In fact, the temptation to go off the diet does increase, from my own experience, because sticking to the calorie ration doesn't seem to matter than much anymore.

Luckily for me, I haven't experienced the annoyance of being accused of cheating on my diet when I haven't. The plateau buster may be of added use in these circumstances (especially if the big breakfast is eaten before anyone else in the household is awake, and nothing is eaten until the light supper near the end of that day.)

That's what I've got, with both limits and benefits. The plateau buster has, for all intents and purposes, passed the test as a side technique.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 226 1/2 pounds, as stated above.

Day 41: "Plateau Bust," Second Day

2007-08-11T18:28:00.000-04:00

Today is the second and final day of me eating a (comparatively) huge breakfast and small supper, and nothing in between, with the breakfast being sugary. I've settled upon glazed donuts for this trial: five of them in the morning. At 950 calories for that meal, I'm left with 300 calories, or less, for supper.

This "plateau busting" technique is designed to shake the body out of normal fat-burning mode, where five small meals are eaten each day. If it works in shaking out the accumulated fluid, then overnight urination will be greater than normal.

I'm summing up the technique, as based upon my recent experience with it, because it largely works. The last plateau I faced was 230 pounds, a level that I stayed at for three days most recently. Now, after using the "plateau buster" for two days, I'm down four pounds from the plateau level. Unless something weird happens tomorrow, it looks like I can call the "plateau buster" a success and take the quotation marks off it, while I go back to the five small meals/day that I've become habituated to.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 226 pounds.

Day 40: "Plateau Busting" Seems To Pre-Work In This Case

2007-08-10T18:24:00.000-04:00

I saw it was coming last night - specifically, in the middle of the overnight sleep stretch when I had to wake up and evacuate my bladder. I had to do so subsequently this morning. This dual bathroom session means that I lost a lot of water from bed to wake-up.

I mentioned yesterday that my weight after waking up and urinating, but before consuming any food or water, was unusually low. So, it's possible that my weight at 6 PM caught up with yesterday morning's shrinkage. It's also possible, though, that the "plateau busting" is beginning to work. Here's why:

In order to prepare for it, I bought a dozen glazed donuts from the store. Each donut is 190 calories. So, to fit the donuts into my calorie regimen, I had to eat five per day, or ten over two days. As a result, I had two left over, which I ate in place of a meal last evening. The rest of my ration was filled with a 120-calorie snack last night.

So, I dabbled in a mini-buster last night. Whether or not this mini-bust had an effect is debatable, but the loss I have to report today isn't. Since the full "plateau buster" takes two days, and tends to take two subsequent days for its full effect to be felt, I can't quite move it up from candidate technique to full one. It's moving closer, though.

I also should point out that the extra hunger, which for me kicks in about 6 hours after eating the big morning meal, is back too. In a sense, it's a good tiding, that my body needs more calories than before and is burning up more fat that it otherwise would. We'll see in a few days, though, whether or not the "plateau buster" will work as indicated.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 228 pounds.

Day 39: Third Day Stuck

2007-08-09T18:20:00.000-04:00

I'm stuck on the 230-lb plateau again, this time for the third day in a row. The only direct cause for optimism I have is the fact that I'm wearing my belt at the seventh notch, one tighter than I've normally hitched up at when normally chubby. Even that point of hope is a somewhat "loose" one, because the belt is sometimes tight around my hips.

I do, however, have a more indirect cause for optimism. When I weighed myself this morning, right after getting up but also after evacuating my bladder, I weighed in at 226 lbs. in my socks and briefs. Had I gotten fully dressed at that point, I would have weighed the same as I did at 6 PM today, while naked.

This disconstancy through the day may be distressing to some, but it can be cause for optimism. If you weigh the same at your normal weighing time, but see your weight drop at odd times in the day, it's a sign that the drop may very well be making its way to your normal weighing time as long as you stick it through. At least, that's what common sense would say.

Regardless of such hope points, though, I am stuck for the third day on what is clearly a plateau. So, I'm going to try out the "plateau buster" technique once again, with clear sailing and deliberate intent. For the next two days, I'm limiting my menu to two meals per day: one big sugary breakfast and a small dinner, which will both take up the 1,250 calorie/day ration I've confined myself to.

I'll find out whether or not it works in the next few days.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 230 pounds flat.

Day 38: Down To Slow, But In The Right Direction

2007-08-08T18:27:00.000-04:00

I suppose it couldn't have lasted, although fluid accumulation may be kicking in as well. After the first day of resuming the 1,250 calorie/day ration rated by my present weight, I've lost little, but I have lost a little.

One technique that might work in spotting fluid buildup is the use of a hand-caliper technique that I first saw in a late-1970s' Special K ad. Every now and then, I pinch my belly, after tightening my belt up, and measure the girth I've pinched with a measuring tape. Each side of the belly button gets one pinch. (If you're interested, the accompanying slogan of the ad was, "Pinch an Inch and You're Overweight." And yes, it was aimed at men - or their wives.)

Recently, I had pinched 2 3/4 inches on the left side of my belly button and 3 inches on the right side. Just now, I got a measure of 3 inches left, 3 1/4 inches right.

Since I've been losing weight as the measure has increasesd, the notion that I'm getting fatter isn't plausible, especially since I haven't eaten above 1,250 calories since last Saturday. (Three days - 1,000 calories/day; 1 day - 1,250.) Unless my body has figured out the trick of redistributing the fat in it, there has to be something else expanding my belly.

The most plausible guess is that it's water, a byproduct from using the glucose that a hungry body turns its fat into. (Interestingly enough, the other main byproduct of glucose consumption is CO₂.) Unfortunately, my previous attempts to get any water out of my body haven't met with success, weight-wise. There is, however, one trick I haven't tried as of yet: sweatin' it out.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 229 1/2-230 pounds.

Day 37: Leaner and Hungrier

2007-08-07T18:29:00.000-04:00

During the later stages of a serious diet, body vanity can do a bit of good, even if it's basically a distraction during the early stages of an extended diet. (After all, if you look good when fat, then why get thin? Apart from medical reasons, I don't know.)

I still have a reasonably thick layer of insulation under my skin, but I'm beginning to see subtle signs of genuine thinness emerge. With my shirt off and looking at myself in the mirror, I can see 'shadows' where my most protrubent lower ribs are. If I look closely, I can see hints of my floating right rib. I can almost tell where my rib cage ends through sight. I can't see my belt-buckle spot on my pants, but if I stand up straight I can see what colour my pants are, even below the belly-button level. With slouch all gone in profile, my stomach only protrudes out to the level of my breastbone. (Okay, my nipples.)

The candidate technique for plateau-busting is still working, but I've discovered a real side effect to it: a lot more hunger, once back to the same old calorie level for a couple of days. My hunger pangs had largely disappeared recently, but that's because I fell into a habit. The big-breakfast technique, especially when combined with temporarily going off the diet completely, does jolt out of habit to the point where the stifled hunger feelings come back full force. It was a bit of a chore for me today to stay with the calorie ration.

In retrospect, I should have reminded myself that the hunger travails were a good sign, that my body expects more food and thus hasn't gone into diet-hibernation mode. If all goes with expectation, my metabolism won't be in low/slow mode, which would facilitate the loss process.

The weight level I'm at now is the same one I bounced off a week ago. Given this round trip, I could brag about losing "thirty in thirty" or admit to losing thirty in thirty-seven. A three-time weighing at the top of the hour has confirmed that I'm at the 230 lb. level once again, so this current session of me using myself as my own experimental animal may continue tomorrow.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 230 pounds.

Day 36: Whipsawed

2007-08-06T18:30:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, I wrote off the technique of big breakfast, relatively small dinner, and nothing in between, too early. Last night, I had to empty a full bladder three times, which meant that I was finally getting rid of the excess water that's been replacing my shrunken supply of fat.

This evening, I got a weighing that was three pounds below yesterday's. That's what I got, three times in succession.

In the financial-services industry, this whole experience is known as being "whipsawed." What it means is: you get a good idea; you put money down on it; things go wrong; you bail out of it; the loss turns out to be temporary; and you see that you were right all along, only you wound up with a loss instead of a gain because you had bailed out.

On Main Street, though, being "whipsawed" isn't that bad. All it means is that you're right on something, but you're not sufficiently sure of your footing as of yet to know that you're right. Outside of playing the market, a "whipsawing" is just a way of learning that you don't have enough experience yet to trust your own judgement. It's a typical journeyperson's mistake.

This learning experience has given me some good news to report. Eating a big breakfast that consumes most of your daily ration of calories, a dinner that takes up the rest, and nothing caloric in between, does get your weight dropping when shrinking fat is not met with shrinking weight. It's worked for me twice - and the second time it worked was right after I had given up on it. I can't say that it's a plateau-buster as of yet, because it hasn't been for me, but I'll try it out when the next one comes along. My social calendar is going to be minimal for some time now, so I can test it without any complications getting in the way. If it doesn't work specifically, I'll try other variations, such as the big-lunch option. (The big dinner option seems to have lesser potential.)

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 231 pounds.

Day 35: Luck Runs Out

2007-08-05T18:34:00.000-04:00

After yesterday's social occasion and consumption of the superfluous food items, as well as today's continuation of an attempt to trick my body into a metabolism boost, I've found that I've gained two more pounds. My earlier luck is evidently running out.

With regard to the metabolism boosting, it looks like the body adjusts quickly to tricks of that sort. The same fake-out may only work once, or not work at all if I had been the beneficiary of a lucky coincidence the first time 'round. The only way to find out is to adjust the time of the "big meal," which I will try in subsequent days.

I also should make a note about encouragement or discouragement when dieting. Your desired weight is not always the same as a medically desirable weight, even when you're dieting, unless you're losing poundage for medically-compatible reasons. Your ideal weight in the eyes of others differs too, including from your own. As a result, it's not that abnormal for someone else to insist that you go on a diet when you're plainly obese, but to ply you with food when you're down to chubby. Such a person does not want you to lose weight until you're thin, but for you to take off enough to bring you down to slightly overweight - his or her opinion as to what your ideal weight is.

I can't venture any opinion about such a person, who may act that way because he or she doesn't take the lose-weight exhortations in our culture that seriously. "You're obese; lose X pounds or suffer the consequences" may translate into "oh, just lose a few pounds and go back to what you were." Such a person is likely to be easygoing; questioning their motive may result in finding a good one, though it be one that's at odds with your own. (Try comparing such a person with someone who complains about your obesity when you haven't reached the semi-anorexic level within two weeks.)

It would be nice if we could step into isolation booths while dieting, but we can't detach ourselves from our social matrix in real life - nor would most of us want to, because we need those others (as those others need us.) Exactly the same personality qualities of a supposed "diet destroyer" may be vital to us in other areas.

I can only think of two solutions to this kind of conundrum: either lower your weight-loss ambitions, or make yourself scarce during your diet and present everyone with a fait accompli.

Personal confession: at that social occasion I mentioned, I had a really fun time. And yeah, I did like eating the gifts of food I had gotten.

[Update: I actually reversed myself regarding the plateau buster technique in the next day's entry, "Whipsawed;" I also explained why.]

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 234 pounds.

Day 34: Still Stuck

2007-08-04T15:26:00.000-04:00

I don't quite know how to explain it. Despite me going back to the 1000 calories/day that my present weight rates, and despite me reaching into a fool-the-body trick that worked once before, my weight is still the same. Today's weighing is still two pounds above the one I reached two days ago.

This plateau I'm on is the first serious one I've encountered since starting the diet. I might even be reduced to reducing my calorie intake back to 850 calories/day. The ironic aspect to this plateau is that my sense of hunger has been reduced: this morning, my stomach was audibly growling for some minutes, but I didn't feel hungry while it was doing so. The most I felt was that I ought to be hungry. So, even though I'm not losing any weight right now, I'm still seeing a benefit from becoming used to dieting: the hunger you feel at the beginning of one does eventually go away. All it takes is endurance and perseverence, and the pangs become less noticeable once you've seen through about 3 weeks to a month's worth of diet; it does get easier as time goes on. The diet habit can get so strong that it's possible to "break diet," go back on it, and treat this break as no more momentous than the off-time between work weeks.

Two notes. First of all, the entry is up early because of another social occasion I'm going to. As is customary, I'm going to get rid of any gifts of food that I've gotten over the past week in an all-out off-the-diet evening. Secondly, a note about "plumbing." I've found that my #2s are much more watery than they used to be, though not at the level of personal embarassment.

Weight as of approx. 3 PM today: Still at 232 pounds.

Day 33: Stuck On The Yo-Yo

2007-08-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

This is the second time I've yo-yo'ed around a weight that's got a zero at the end of it. Despite me not having any unusual eating habit or calorie level to attribute to it, I've gained two pounds since yesterday. The platueau I'm currently on has proven to be more intractable that the one I encountered at the 240 lb. level.

Once again, I have to confess that I'm at a loss as to why. It might be fluid gain, except for the fact that any such fluid is hard to get rid of, as I've found. The odds of it being caused by additional fat are much longer against, as I've seen evidence that my hips have shrunk beyond what is normal for me at this weight range.

So, I have to content myself with the thought that I've been wearing that old belt of mine (one that I've had for almost nineteen years) at the same notch that I wore it at when 220 lbs. or so, and at times can wear it at the same notch I used, back in the late-mid 1990s, when I was around, at or below 200 lbs. I can do so at the same time I'm weighing in at more than 230 lbs, once again. According to that table I've been using, this gain today means it's back down to 1,000 calories/day.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: Back up to 232 pounds.

Day 32: Looking Back

2007-08-02T18:44:00.000-04:00

Despite some earlier hopes of mine, I can confirm that it has been harder to take it off than to put it on in terms of time. Weighing myself in the old way - clothes on - got a figure of 235 lbs., six pounds heavier than when I started off on the weight-gain track.

Of course, this point is easy to realize logically, because the most I can shrink my calorie intake is to zero/day (which of course is lunacy.) At that intake, given how much I've lost (and occasionally gained) on intakes ranging from 850 to 1,250 calories/day, I would have lost a little more than a pound a day. If my intake while fattening up had been sufficient to add, say, 2 lbs/day in that same amount, there's no way I could have taken it off in that same stretch of time.

In a way, I'm glad I began to get somewhat comfortable with being fat. Even now, I still look fat, and technically I'm on the heavy side of "obese." A serious diet takes so long, you have to acquire a liking for dieting as well as somewhat of a liking for the shape you show. Otherwise, the wait may begin to grate.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: Back to 230 pounds.

Day 31: Two Pounds Back

2007-08-01T18:14:00.000-04:00

Evidently, the use of a snack food as a substitute for meals wasn't that good an idea. Despite me keeping the calorie count at 1,250 for yesterday, I weighed in at 232 pounds, two more pounds than yesterday. So, it's back to 1,000 calories/day for me, and back to the shelf for another plausible but (when tested) counterproductive idea. A little hunger throughout the day is preferable.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: As stated above, 232 pounds.

Day 30: Thirty in Thirty

2007-07-31T18:35:00.000-04:00

As measured from the weighing from Day 1 of the diet, I'm now half-way to the goal I set for myself. Today, at the regular time, I weighed in at thirty pounds below the measurement made almost a month ago.

It would be foolish of me to say that I'm halfway to my goal in terms of time, because I'm hewing to a sliding calorie scale that's designed to slowly take me out of the diet. As of now, I rate 1,250 calories in a day's period. As I move "up" the scale by losing more, it's almost a certainty that I'll linger longer at a specified weight level unless I can come up with some new tricks that work, pick up an aerobic exercise habit, and/or "reverse-cheat" on the calorie count.

Speaking of tricks: I'm going to try a new one over the course of this day. I got a bag of pretzels totalling 800 calories, which I'm going to consume over the course of this day instead of meals. The idea behind this "snacking day" is to move beyond five small meals a day to a few bites ten or more times per day. In addition to seeing if it'll help burn more fat, I want to see what it'll do to the hunger: will the pangs be allayed or will I end up being low-level hungry all day? Tomorrow, I'll write about what I felt while going through it; the next couple of days should determine whether or not I'm on another wild-goose chase.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 230 pounds flat.

Day 29: More on Social Outings

2007-07-30T18:32:00.000-04:00

I went to another social outing last night, and decided once again to declare the day a write-off in terms of dieting. In addition to eating what was set in front of me, I downed a few "gifts" I had received, which I had stuck in the fridge, after it was over. Like the last time, I prepared for this ditch-the-diet night by not eating anything until the dinner in question.

With regard to food items that you can't refuse, I see four choices:

1. Work them into the diet by substituing some for regular meals;
2. Eating any "food donations" all at once on a specially designated off-the-diet day;
3. Storing them and passing them along to someone else, perhaps to the same person who gave them to you;
4. Letting them go to waste.

In the course of this diet, I've relied upon options 1,2 and 3, but not option 4. There's just something in me that hesitiates before getting rid of food. For a calorie-counter-based diet, option 2 might be the only practicable one if the "gifts" don't have a calorie count attached to them. Option 3 isn't practical for perishables, and perishability may cold-deck option 1. Option 3, with a food bank as the recipient, isn't practicable unless you've gotten canned goods or similar imperishables.

With regard to diet-bending social obligations in general, the possibility of them is one of the reasons why I deliberately "cheated" about two weeks into my own diet. It was a commitment test to see if I could fall off the tracks, get back on, and then stay on. With regard to abort-the-diet days or evenings, I suggest that a self-test of this sort should be done and passed before breaking routine in this way.

To get back to social outings: if going out-of-routine is unavoidable, I have two tips which'll help shave off the calories you have to consume:

a) Ask for meat;
b) Go to a place that has a dog.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: Despite the diet-bust last night, I weighed in at 232 pounds.

Day 28: Back To The Drawing Board

2007-07-29T18:26:00.000-04:00

After cutting down my water consumption to the point where I began to feel real thirst, I have to say that it's a "wash" with respect to weight loss. Two days of doing so have led to a weight drop of only one pound per day, a largely normal rate for me. I have to chalk up my apparent below-weight appearance to my memory fooling itself. Evidently, there isn't any spare water hidden between the fat cells for me to lose.

So, it's back to the drawing board for me. I suppose that the new malleability of my body is due to the fat cells shrinking and little else, and my impression that there was "hidden weight," which I could slough out through going thirsty, was just another example of my eyes being too big for my stomach (so to speak.) It was worth a try, though, even if doing so made my hunger worse. All told, drinking as much water as you please seems the best option when dieting.

If you're interested: when I was a child, there was a commercial for "Special K" cereal whose theme was "Pinch an Inch and You're Overweight." Largely aimed at men, it encouraged you to pinch your belly and measure how much you got between your fingers, I tried it last night, on both sides of the belly button, and got 3 inches on both sides. So, I'm still safely in overweight territory.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 233 pounds.

Day 27: Inconclusive So Far

2007-07-28T18:13:00.000-04:00

For the last day, I've been seeing whether or not a reduction in water intake speeds up the weight loss procedure. So far, I must report, the results are inconclusive. I have seen encouraging signs that a further weight drop is elicited, but they haven't shown up on the scale as of yet. So, it looks like my suspicions are either flat-out wrong or have to be tapped into through another technique. I'm going to give it another day before deciding whether or not I've been chasing the wild goose.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 234 pounds.

Day 26: Water, Water

2007-07-27T18:35:00.000-04:00

As more fat gets burned, the belly and other associated parts should shrink. I've seen this happen, but something's been odd unless my memory's been confounded: why do I sometimes look like I did when ten pounds lighter than I now am? If you're dieting, you may be wondering the same thing.

The excess poundage I have is unusually malleable. I can walk around with the belt tightened at a notch I normally use when about 220-225 lbs, or at times even tighter. My belly bulges out, but I can still do it. If I'm wearing no belt, and carry myself in a certain way, I can look almost flat-bellied. When I lie down in bed in the prone position, I am basically flat-bellied: the bottom of my ribcage juts up.

This unusual morphability confirms what I've already suspected: some of the weight I'm carrying around is now water, because fat don't move. It seems time to test it.

So, starting right now, I'm going to let myself get a little thirsty, in this way: I'm drinking only coffee, with no separate mugs of water. This should show whether or not I'm right about the excess weight, as well as seeing whether or not I can shed it along with a little more fat. Once again: if this trick doesn't work, then it's back to the drawing board, to try something else, for me.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 235 pounds.

Day 25: A "Whups" From The Other Side

2007-07-26T18:26:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I bumped into a mistake I had made in my calorie-counting. I thought that a kind of chicken strip carried with it a count of 250 calories for one of them. Today, the count seemed suspiciously large for its the size, so I dug the box from the near-bottom of the recycling bin and found out that I was inaccurate: it's 250 for three of them.

This kind of mistake is the one to watch for if you're wondering whether or not you're riding on the diet track. If you underestimate in memory the calories of your menu, then you still have to watch yourself. If you overestimate, then congrats: at some level, you're committed to your diet.

Testing yourself and finding resolve does have a benefit: you can play around with your menu while still observing your daily constraint. When the hunger got too much for me last night, I pulled out one of those (now-old) licorice sticks that I last touched twelve days ago. The one I ate was a little stale, which is something that I would like to brag about...even if doing so is like bragging about a fine set of used clothes that just came in.

Once again, though, I put myself on trial last night. Had I slipped, it would have been back to more self-watching, and perhaps other steps to tighten my menu had I slipped badly. I have found, though, that self-understanding does a dieter good. Even the consequent risk of pulling out of the diet entirely has its silver lining - not losing your sense of self-realism when doing so.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 236 pounds.

Day 24: Belt-Notch Variations

2007-07-25T18:21:00.000-04:00

One interesting aspect of dieting, if you have a self-absorbed side, is to watch your body change shape in unusual ways. Since about a week ago, I've varied in the notch I buckle my belt to. Sometimes, I can get it all the way up to the sixth notch with little discomfort and no soreness; when I do so, my belly bulges out. At other times, I can only hitch it up to the fifth notch, and doing so leaves a tight fit. When the fifth notch is all I can reach, though, my belly is considerably flatter relative to my hips and rib cage.

Yes, the "body plentiful" puts on an interesting show when you're burning the fat in it. [Addendum: I seem to be "stuck on six" as of now.]

Speaking of fat-burning: as I should have expected, the transition from a "false ending" phase of the diet to the resumption of five snack-sized meals, with the same total of 1000 calories/day, has brought back the continual hunger. I find such hunger easier to endure because of a mind trick that's generally a psychological no-no: "disowning" the feeling of hunger.

What this means is, detaching yourself from it. Dis-ownership of a feeling means relieving yourself of the responsibility of acting on it, of taking the go-passive option when it sends its signal. Normally, this means disarranging your unconscious somewhat, but going "passive" with respect to hunger feelings while on a diet means that you ignore the feelings in favor of the calorie-count schedule. Hunger just becomes something to be endured. I've found that going passive in this way - with respect to hunger feelings - adds to staying on the track.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 238 pounds.

Day 23: Whups

2007-07-24T18:37:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, after implementing the big breakfast and small dinner plan for one more day, I slipped without even knowing it. At the bank branch I go to, there was a plate of cookies - the kind with the sugar-topped strawbery jelly surrounded by filling - and I put one in my mouth without even thinking about it.

It's the downside of the "diet and feel good about it" approach: at times, you run the risk of forgetting that you're even on a diet.

In this case, the slip-up was sufficiently minor for me to deck tonight's dinner down to a lower-calorie option and to declare the pseudo-overeating experiment closed. If I don't remember that I'm dieting, then my unconscious must have been fooled as much as it's going to be fooled. So, it's back to the fat-burning, four-to-five meal a day option for me.

As far as the "big breakfast" is concerned, it was another cinnamon bun. If you're interested, it carried me through today from early morning to about 2 PM, when I started to wonder why I wasn't hungry. The hunger came shortly afterwards.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM (actually, 6:15 PM) today: the light side of 239 pounds.

Day 22: Life On The Plateau

2007-07-23T18:27:00.000-04:00

I'm still stuck on what has proven to be a real plateau for me, 240 lbs. unclothed. After looking at my body's changes, I have to conclude that this plateauing is due to water retention even though I can't prove it. The secret in dieting with endurance exercises may very well be the water loss due to sweating, not primarily the calorie burn. Any exercise as well as physical work that I've done or had to do in these last three weeks have had close to zero effect on my weight, probably because I haven't sweated all that much while engaging in them.

With regard to last night's social outing, where it was already known that I was on a diet, eating a full meal resulted in me becoming pleasantly but unusually tired. That's how it most likely would show if your stomach capacity hasn't shrunk to the point where you get physiologically stuffed by a regular ration.

With regard to the shift from 4-5 meals a day to two, I used a kind of food which, I hope, will trick my body into thinking the good times are back: a cinnamon bun, with lots of frosting. It's the kind of treat that I haven't touched in three weeks, if you don't count that licorice binge. Doing so has quelled the hunger pangs for a time span about equal to both breakfast and lunch, although it was on top of the full meal I ate last night. It remains to be seen whether or not this attempt to trick my unconscious will have the intended effect.

If not, it's back to the drawing board for me.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: still 240 pounds.

Day 21: Social Outings

2007-07-22T18:23:00.000-04:00

Here's the question that's facing me: what do you do if you're invited to a dinner with non-dieters and are on a diet? The ideal choice is to say that you're on a diet and ask for a minimal portion. What if such a choice is impracticable, though, if only because it isn't customary in such a gathering to use a calorie counter?

Afer thinking it over, I came up with three choices:

1) Decline the invitation, citing either the diet or a diet-related reason as the regrets;
2) Show up, but say "I'm on a diet, so I might be sending some food back;"
3) Show up and eat the regular portion, or up to the point where you're stuffed to the gills. If anyone looks strangely at you (being stuffed shows,) reply "well, I am on a diet." This option requires the decision to take yourself off the diet for the length of the meal.

I'm facing such an outing and I've decided to go with the third choice, with this added extra: I haven't eaten for about twenty hours. It was interesting doing so, because I've been long habituated to going to sleep on a full stomach. Late last night - actually, during the wee hours of the morning, as I've become a night owl - I fell asleep on an empty stomach.

It ties in with the recent variation I've tried to experiment on: scaling down the number of meals, and increasing the average calorie content of each, in order to trick my body into speeding up the metabolism a little. It would be reasonable to conclude that I saw this one coming yesterday...

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: despite having gone into temporary starvation mode, my weight's gone up slightly to 240 pounds. For me, the 240 level has proven to be quite the plateau.

Day 20: Jiggering and Poking

2007-07-21T18:37:00.000-04:00

It's been twenty days, and I've lost a little more than twenty pounds. Despite intermittent ups and downs largely associated with fluid gain and loss, I've averaged a loss of a pound per day. (I suspect this rate is unusually high for the typical person because I'm the type who uses more calories than average.) I've one day to go until I've reached three weeks on the diet, the point at which, at least according to urban legend, quitting something you like becomes less hard.

The main obstacle to further weight loss is still homeostasis, the body's attempt to maintain the old equilibrium in the face of a change. When dieting, homeostasis kicks in through a lowered metabolism rate and other tricks the body uses to conserve fat. This reaction is healthy in the wild, as the closest thing to a diet there is the onset of a food shortage. We're built to survive on a day-to-day basis, not to diet efficiently.

Despite this conservation, our equilibria in terms of weight do shift. We become fatter and thinner depending upon our net calorie intake. So, homeostasis is merely an obstacle.

It's one, though, that may be outfoxed. I've recently switched from eating five meals a day to four, in the hopes that any homeostasis reaction is reflexive - meaning, that the body adjusts to a specific new schedule of calorie intake but not to a new calorie level in general. It may be possible, by eating bigger and fewer meals which collectively add up to the daily calorie limit, to fool the body into thinking the "good times" have arrived again and to shift out of calorie-conservation mode.

Of course, homeostatis works both ways, so I may be fooling myself into thinking I can hasten the weight loss in this way; I may very well slow it down. There's only one way to find out, though...

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 239 1/2 pounds.

Day 19: Coping With Disappointment

2007-07-20T18:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, for the first time in the course of this diet, my weight notched up by more than a pound. You may be interested in my reaction to this disappointment: I went straight to the water mug. Put in words, I decided, "if I'm going to bloat up, I might as well bloat up a little more with some [zero-calorie] water." A more detached viewer would conclude that I'm trying to take control of my setbacks.

There's a variation on this technique thanks to the proliferation of zero-calorie drinks. One flavor of diet soda can be labeled - ironically, I hope - as a "sulk soda." It would take the place of water for anyone who wants to take control of their own setbacks in the same manner as I did last night. Water is zero-calorie, but it lacks a commiserative taste. Many zero calorie drinks have a taste that can aid in salving this kind of disappointment.

As for yesterday's weight gain, it does look like fluid gain.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 240 pounds. I now rate, though perhaps temporarily, an up in the calorie consumption to 1000 calories/day, as specified by the table in this earlier entry.

Day 18: On "Cheating"

2007-07-19T18:26:00.000-04:00

First of all, a disclosure. I did "cheat" with respect to the conditions I set for myself for this diet, but doing so didn't involve food. I went back to exercising with the dumbbell, which had the same effect as the last time: a near-sleepless night.

With regard to "cheating" in general, it flows from a dissatisfaction at living with a routine, or under a series of constraints. There are two reasons for doing so. The first is emotional, and it's a protest at having to restrict yourself in a way that's galling. The second is more intellectual: it's a self-test for the need of one or more of those restrictions. As long as glibness abounds, the latter reason for deviating might as well be called "rational deviancy."

Whatever the reason, deviating from the routine is something that can be planned ahead for. I note that I rigged things so that any break from routine didn't involve overeating, but exercise. Similar sneakaways can be done with TV, video games, sleeping around, "mental health days," etc. If the overall routine chafes, there are lots of ways to assert oneself, perhaps on the sly, that don't involve food at all.

Speaking of deviating from the routine, the story has ended with a weighing that has changed it into a tale of woe and regret:

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: on the heavy side of 242 pounds. This weighing may prompt the use of "dumbbell" in a somewhat different context, and not just because I mislabeled yesterday's entry with "Day 16" instead of Day 17. (It's now been corrected.)

Day 17: Old Weight, Old Habits

2007-07-18T18:44:00.000-04:00

In a way, the path I've been on has been easy, despite the abrupt shift from the overeating to eating about 850 calories/day and needing to gorge on water from time to time. Because the weight I reached at the start of the diet was abnormally high for me, I didn't have any well-engrained habits to fight off during the start of my diet.

Now that my body's beginning to look as it did when I was borderline-obese, despite my weight still being a little more than fifteen pounds over my norm for years past, those old habits are beginning to surface again.

Like many people, I ate when hungry. I had fallen into a habit of eating a large breakfast in the morning and a huge dinner, with no lunch in between. This habit, with a heavy ration of junk food once per week, kept my weight at about 220-225 lbs. unclothed, although it might have gotten higher at times.

Now, when I look at myself, I'm down to what I looked like back then. The sight of me at borderline obesity, for a man my height and build, has gotten me rehabituated to the same old eating pattern. So, I have to resist going back to my normal style of eating now that I've changed my look from unusually fat to normally chubby.

I believe this is more common than is realized. The dieter who starts off by "turning into the skid" - starting a diet after binge eating up to a new all-time high in poundage - may very well have a better chance than the dieter who starts from a normal weight for him/her, because the unusually high eating capacity isn't habitual. The latter kind of dieter feels the tug of old habit from day 1 of the diet, while the former kind doesn't. I've found this out, not only over the past 2 1/2 weeks, but particularly over the last day.

Last night, I went a little over 850 calories, in large part because I got bored with the food I had. My intake was below 900, but it's still over the limit I set for myself. I decided that this kind of overage is best treated by stocking the larder with more foods, for more variety.

Also, I've decided to set up a tabular sliding scale for myself now that I've lost almost twenty pounds. I'm sure this idea is not original, even if I'm of the opinion that the crash phase has to be endured before bringing this scaling into play. I've decided on this plan:

More than 240 pounds: same ration of 850 calories/day.
231-240 lbs. unclothed: 1,000 calories/day.
221-230 lbs. unclothed: 1,250 calories/day.
211-220 lbs. unclothed: 1,500 calories/day.
201-210 lbs. unclothed: 1,750 calories/day.
200 pounds and below: I can eat what I want, as I've met my goal. (Normal intake for a man my size and build is about 2,500 calories/day.)

This kind of plan makes intuitive sense, as the diet gets tailed down as the ideal weight is approached. Also, it hooks any hunger pangs to an incentive plan. The drawback is that it takes some self-discipline, so I'd suggest not using this technique unless you're already acclimatized to dieting, as shown by one of these two means:

Successfully going off the diet and going back on without any second derailments, or:
Staying on the hard part of the diet for at least three weeks, so as to acclimatize yourself to the new habit.

Until one of these two points are reached, I'd suggest sticking to a fixed goal and enduring, as I have done. Taking it day by day in the early part is challenging enough.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: a flat 241 pounds.

Day 16: Shifting Lanes

2007-07-17T18:21:00.000-04:00

I had a chance today to check my advice about following the repetitive task regimen, provided that a familiar task is stuck to. I wrote an article for a Webzine today and let several proofreading errors slip through, more than what I'm usually known for. This particular Webzine is one that I haven't written for since March.

I'm used to blogging, and can get through the blogging all right. I'm no longer used to writing a full article, so I bobbled the ball relative to my normal performance. So, based upon my own experience, I repeat the advice I gave earlier: to keep the sluggishness away, you have to busy yourself with a repetitive task that you're already good at, and avoid new ones (or, as I've just found out, ones that you haven't done for a long time.) Whether it be at work or not, the price of a diet is a routinized lifestyle.

I should also mention that I'm back on the "No Exercise" plan. I need the sleep too much.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: still 242 pounds, but approaching 241.

Day 15: Old Weight (Barely) In Sight

2007-07-16T18:37:00.000-04:00

I've been plainly obese for more than a month now, but I was always on the borderline of being so. Normal weight for me, except for a stretch in the late 1990s, had been about 220 lbs. clothed. In the last several months previous to the beginning of June, I had gotten up to between 225 lbs and 230 lbs. clothed. Taking off 5 lbs. for clothes, this implies a range of 220-225 lbs. unclothed.

Today, I weighed in at 20 lbs. above the middle of that range.

Evidently, the technique suggested by "mk," of switching to 5 snack-sized meals a day, is working for me, although it could also be the exercise I'm doing. There does, however, seem to be a drawback to mixing diet and exercise, as I found out this morning.

The specific exercise I've been doing over the last few days is building up my left arm muscles with a 25-lb. one-hand dumbbell. I'm not doing this out of diet considerations, but because my left biceps are much weaker than my right ones. I'm using the dumbbell in order to reach upper-arm parity. So, my exercising is not specifically diet-related. I should also mention that I'm a bit of an odd duck when it comes to exercise: I don't get any adrenaline rush out of exercising - I tend to plow through it quietly. (Once, I listened to an audiobook MP3 while working out.)

This reaction may be a result of my earlier holiday from the diet, but I suspect that the exercise itself is mostly the cause: Early this morning, I felt a kind of hunger that wasn't as intense as the pangs I felt when I began the diet, but I interpreted it as less of a feeling and more of an intention. I felt seriously tempted to get up, walk into the kitchen, and have a little more food. I actually had to go back to bed to make the feeling pass; when I woke up again, the intention part of my hunger was gone.

Here's a guess for you: the diets that offer the chance to lose a lot of weight without exercise don't do so just to appeal to our sendentary side, they also do so because exercise makes the hunger less intense but more actionable. Exercise brings with it an increased physicality that comes with a hard stint of it - at least, for a fellow like me - and that makes you more action-oriented, including more oriented to the action of going to the pantry or fridge. Exercise may very well increase the rate of weight loss, but there is that added risk. Also, the common-sensical conclusion that a calorie burner needs more calories to burn become more compelling.

This being said, I'm noticing that the fat in my belly is becoming less viscous - more jelly-like. I have to say that it's fascinating watching the gut shrink.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 242 pounds. It might in part be due to fluid loss, though.

Day 14: Too Tired To Eat

2007-07-15T18:24:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, I'm becoming too tired to eat. What I means is, on the weekend when I have little to do, I'm doing a lot of sleeping. If anything, exercise seems to augment my sack time.

Of course, I'm in a special slot, as I've been working quite hard during the weekday and probably have a "sleep deficit" to make up on the weekend. Nevertheless, it's also true that my lowered calorie intake has been adjusted for by my body having less vigor and less initiative.

It's an easy conclusion to make. When overeating last month, I found that I got a metabolism boost. Now, I'm facing a metabolism drop, as my body has compensated for undereating just as it did for overeating last month. It should result in my rate of weight loss slowing.

It's truly ironic that I've never been more "fat and lazy" than when I'm sticking to a rigorous diet designed to shed that fat. Over and above waxing nostalgic about my own food extravaganzas, this realization makes me sympathetic to those fat people who think that a diet is more trouble than it's worth. Why would someone seek to be thin when the obstacle is being called "lazy" as well as "fatty," expecially when the "lazy" is a byproduct of a serious attempt to become a thinnie? Something for the diet enthusiast, whatever his/her own weight may be, to think about.

Another thought regarding the slowed metabolism: this facet is why I recommended taking up a repetitive task, as it does swamp the lowered-metabolism effect if you really get into it. I've found this to be true over the last two weeks, provided that there's enough pressure to get the adrenaline level at "excited" but not more.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: still stuck at 245 pounds, for a good reason: I took myself off the diet yesterday. Today, I'm back on it.

Day 13: Cheating Day

2007-07-14T18:39:00.000-04:00

Starting at midnight, I had given myself free rein to cheat on my diet, with any food item in my larder. I did overindulge shortly afterwards, but I found that my appetite had shrunk, thanks to the diet, to the point where the effects weren't the diet disaster I had thought it would be. I've actually shrunk my stomach to the point where I couldn't eat all of a snack item (a 1-pound bag of red licorice) which I used to eat all of on a regular basis, even when my weight was about 20 lbs less than it is now.

I've bumped into the paradox of the serious dieter: I'm now "fat and hungry," with an appetite less that I had when at a more normal weight for me. Even when I cheat, I eat less than when I did normally: instead of being able to get down four Pizzas for One at a single sitting (when 226 lbs,) I only got down two plus a pizza pocket.

I've been in the den of the devil and have gotten the secret behind the insidiousness of cheating: the first burst of overeat doesn't seem like that big a deal. Myself, I only overate approximately 2000 calories, which puts my total consumption for the day at a little less than 3,000 calories. This amount is close to maintenance level for a man my size.

In fact, it's so close that it seems like less than a big deal to slough off entirely, to give up the dieting. This temptation is the real hazard of cheating: it seems like such a small potato at first.

Given this, instead of calling it cheating, it would be more useful, as well as accurate, to call it "going off the diet." These last eighteen hours, I went off the diet. I now have a decision to go back on the diet, or to stay off the diet. Repeated cheating might as well be known as "I brought the diet to an end." The use of moralistic words, strange as this may sound, obscures what's really been decided upon and done.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 245 pounds, same as yesterday.

Day 12: Too Busy To Eat

2007-07-13T18:19:00.000-04:00

Days like that are wearying, but are also a blessing when dieting. That's the kind of day that I've had today, thanks to the verdict being announced in the Conrad Black trial, which I've been blogging as well. If the pressure's enough, you can even forget that you're really hungry. It isn't necessary that the activity be physically exerting, only that it be under near-continuous pressure.

(Once note on the exercise I've been doing: for me, it worked as a sleeping aid once.)

Yesterday, I broached the subject of cheating, through disclosing a worry of mine over a calorie-counting mistake I may have made in my favour. Tomorrow, I'm going to enter the den of the devil, so to speak; I've set it aside as a "cheating day." I plan to simulate what someone driven to it by hunger would do: an open larder, free rein with the foods that I've been using as mini-meals. Also, I'm planning to open up that package of licorice in an attempt to mix in a simulation of someone who sneaks in some "cheating food." Afterwards, I'll go down the recovery trail.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 245 pounds. Some of the day's drop may be due to fluid loss.

Day 11: Counting and Miscounting

2007-07-12T18:27:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I was reviewing the calorie count for my shifted menu, and began wondering if I had overcounted. Instead of shrugging it off, I felt anxious about having (possibly) gone over the 850 calorie/day ceiling.

It's moments of uncertainty like this which test whether or not you're ready for a diet, as well as what stage of the diet you belong in. Shrugging it off, with a what-may-be-done-is-done attitude, may be the best reaction if you go back to the diet regimen subsequently. It implies that you're used to the diet, are relatively happy following it, and thus have less need of a routine. Of course, if being carefree proves to be the preface to a slippery slope, this reaction can be the worst. The best way to distinguish between the two is to watch yourself when it comes time to draw the line again.

My own reaction - anxiety - shows that my attitude has shifted to diet-favouring but I'm not quite comfortable with life as a dieter as yet.

Panicking isn't a good sign. Had I panicked, I might have wondered later if I had been pushing myself too hard. Had my answer been "yes," I would have felt entitled to a compensatory lackadasicalness for mental health purposes. That would not have been the best direction to go, even if I had refrained, because I would be associating the diet with unadulterated pain and sacrifice. This self-punishment would make it harder for me to stay in the diet. It would also put me at the mercy of the scale, which (as I've disclosed earlier) wanders from day to day, and not always in the right direction.

(Note on the dumbbell exercise: it does work fairly well as a sleep aid, at least for the first night spent lugging it up and down.)

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: a flat 248 pounds. I'm back in trend.

Day 10: Belt Tightening

2007-07-11T18:27:00.000-04:00

One old-worn dieting aid is "tightening the belt," literally: buckle up at a notch that's tight on the hips. The idea behind it is to make the uncomfortableness serve as a reminder to stick to the diet. The benefit of this technique isn't known, but it does have a side benefit if you have a belt that's old and you're thinking of a new one.

I'm now at the fifth notch - a level that would have signalled overeating when I was at a more normal weight for me, but now means I'm on the right track. It's partial evidences like this one that keep the morale up.

Two days ago, I got a suggestion from "mk" to effectively split three meals into five. I'm trying it today, and have found out something about my own technique: it depends upon routinization, upon structure. I've eaten three meals a day at about the same time each day, and had found that the hunger pangs have eased. Today, the hunger pangs have come back. So, a word to any dieter or would-be dieter: routinization makes your "willpower" grow considerably, especially if you keep yourself busy with something you're already good at. I've been easing the structure of my own diet recently, as a test, but I still have the basic template to fall back upon, which I'm largely following still.

If the monotony of a fixed diet is growing tiresome, here's an idea I've already implemented: substituting new foods that are slightly fewer in calories for the meals in the template. This associates variety, and relief of eating boredom, with a slight cut in the calorie intake. The basic meal plan can serve as the template of maximal calories, thus associating a slight calorie increase with monotony, if also a sometimes needed structure.

I'm still finding out how much my weight varies during the day. Last night, while my bladder was mostly full, I weighed myself, then weighed myself again right after urinating. I had lost two pounds, more than I've managed to shed off in two days of "official" measurement. It's observations like this one that, if you're in a cheerful frame of mind, give a sense of perspective to the whole matter.

(Note: This diet is supposed to be done without exercise, as one followed by an active but sendentary man. I might as well let you know, though, that I've gotten a 25 lb. dumbbell for what will probably be recreational use. It may work well as a sleeping aid.)

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 249 pounds. Evidently, I spoke too soon yesterday, but the direction is fine.

Day 9: Canary In The Mine

2007-07-10T18:27:00.000-04:00

It may seem odd, but while shopping for food last night, I also bought a 1 lb. package of red licorice, of the kind that I've eaten regularly (if infrequently) for at least a year.

The reason I've done so is to keep it on my shelf as a kind of canary in the mine. If I'm truly not committed to losing weight, it's best to find out through cheating with a sweet but relatively low-calorie bag of treats. The entire bag has about 2000 calories; if I gobble it down, then I've bumped by daily intake up to about 2,850 calories, which is a little more than a man of my size uses in a day. In retrospect, the water I had gorged was an attempt to deflect any cheating reflex I have, although some people may prefer to use cabbage, lettuce or a low-calorie protein drink, as "mk" has suggested in the comments section of yesterday's entry. You may be interested to know that, after I laid down subsequent to coming back from the store, I had a "taste memory" of the licorice. So far, the package is unopened.

Despite the plateauing I went through yesterday, my belly is noticably shrinking. Thankfully, the loping path of weight loss contains enough partial evidence to provide a little good news each day, or a plausible reason why there'll be some soon.

As far as the stomach itself is concerned, I might as well disclose the reason for my going through a hard crash-diet phase: it's another cheat trap. If I shrink my food processor as much as possible in the early stages, then any subsequent cheating will top out sooner, thus limiting the damage done. (It'll also make it easier to keep the weight down when finished.) This approach will only work if a few (or several) small-calorie and small-volume meals are eaten during the day. Of course, the use of the cheat-reflex deflection technique does work at cross purposes to this secondary goal.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 249-250 pounds. The current plateauing may be over.

Day 8: Plateau Management

2007-07-09T18:29:00.000-04:00

This last day, I've hit the first plateau since starting the diet. I didn't lose a pound over the last twenty-four hours, and it cannot be ascribed to guzzling water because I haven't downed that much today. And yet, I haven't really lost heart.

Here's why: first of all, I'm comfortable with my weight, so I've calmed away any sense of desperation. I knew it would be a long haul - a self-estimated 2-3 months - so the lack of weight loss on one day isn't that big a tragedy. Part of this attitude is regarding any daily weight drop of more than a pound to be either a windfall or the result of tailing back on the fluid consumption (plus frequent visits to the "water closet," including at sleeptime.)

The second reason comes thanks to an adaptation of a technique left here by "mk" in a comments section. He said that he had drank a lot of water while pulling his weight down; I've been doing so too thanks to him sharing his success story. In addition, though, I've been using water to manage the plateau effect before it happens. Here's how: when my weight takes a dive, I drink more water. When the weight is stuck at a certain level, or is going up, I scale back. By doing so, I'm self-plateauing through using weighty, but calorie-free, water.

I'm controlling the plateauing effect through doing this. Hence, when I hit a real plateau, I'm not left feeling helpless or desperate.

This practice may only be a control ritual, but it seems to work, at least in easing a think-through for the reasons why I haven't lost a pound over the last day. The answer is that my metabolism is slowing down, without a compensatory increase in task pressure to offset the lassitude yesterday. A weekend slowdown, which should vanish now that the weekdays are back.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 250 pounds again.

Day 7: Watching The Body

2007-07-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

The body doesn't operate according to linear functions, and this is evident in dieting. Last Thursday, I had moved my belt from the fourth notch to the fifth, and had assumed (with natural pride) that I had dropped to that belt level for good. I was actually planning to brag about it a little in this blog, although I didn't because another subject came up.

In retrospect, I was lucky, because I would have had to take it back because I had to loosen up the belt back to the fourth notch as of Friday. The body does not follow a linear function.

Even though I've gotten back some bulk around my hips, I'm seeing shrinkage in other areas. As far as I can tell, my belly juts out as much as before in the front end. It's beginning to shrink in the side parts of the front, though, so my pot's developing a dent or two. Also, a pair of pants I had begun to burst out of are a little less tight than they were about ten days ago. Once again, I note that the body does not follow a linear function. (For the pedants in the room: I'm referring to the biochemical processes of the body at the macro level.)

The only lesson I can draw from this uncertainty is to watch the calorie counter and tell yourself that if you're dieting and you're eating less than you use, then you're going in the right direction, regardless of what the most visible evidence tells you either way. The body does not follow a linear function.

A technique that some may want to experiment with, although I lucked into it. Some months ago, I got a bunch of popsicles as a gift. I accepted them, although I didn't later have much of a desire for them. Some of them are still in my freezer.

Here's the point: there have been some high-calorie treats in my freezer that I've basically ignored because they're not on my favourites list. I didn't have one of them, even while gorging myself last month. If you're in a pre-diet phase, it may be worth your while to shop around in the treats aisle for a high-calorie treat that you find you don't really have a taste for. Then, buy some and keep in it the shelf/fridge/freezer before starting your diet. Once you shift to diet, you can use that treat as a mental anchor, in this way: "If I can let [such-and-such] lie around, why can't I let [the more tempting target] lie around too?" Untested, but it may work, especially if backed with the wisdom that tastes are subjective, and can change over time.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 250 pounds.

Day 6: The Psychological Sink

2007-07-07T18:20:00.000-04:00

Last night, I had to buy something from the grocery store. While there, I lingered over the old foods that I used to enjoy. I felt a certain trepidation while going there, and at times experienced a headache with saggy cheeks and pursed lips, while there.

As it turns out, that trepidation was for good reason. Today, the bursts of hunger were worse, and without a pressing task in front of me, a listlessness took over. For the first time since the start of this diet, I "woke up" right after eating.

I believe that the difficulties I had today were caused by me breaking structure too soon. I'm still "food-homesick," to put it another way. Thankfully, I haven't cheated, but I was veering to a close call.

The usual method I use to get my mind off my hunger has a drawback, which I found out about last night: doing the same task while using a different method leads to doing it badly. This may result from the tiredness, but the tiredness largely results from the hunger. Word to anyone who tries it: stick to the old procedures if practicable, and budget time for (perhaps extra) checking if your repetitive task is work. Going robotic is a possible side effect.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 252 pounds. Yep, for the first time since starting, I've gained a pound. This wasn't surprising, as the three-pound drop yesterday was suspiciously big. I probably gained a pound of water today, as I've been drinking a lot of it.

Day 5: Drifting Back

2007-07-06T21:27:00.000-04:00

The sleeplessness that had dogged me ever since starting this diet is still there. In addition, the nostalgia technique seems to have set off an added spate of hunger. This morning, I thought that my being late for a meal yesterday meant that the experiment format was broken. (Actually, this diet is too loose to be a real experiment, as I don't control for water intake and activity.) So, I thought of shifting my diet a little to include a food item that I indulged in last month, only in a sufficiently small quantity to fit into the 850 calories/day intake I've confined myself to for the last five days.

Planning for it released a fair bit of hunger today. Even the water couldn't quell it like before, making the regimen harder to stick to.

Evidently, my self-insulation through nostalgia hasn't gone far enough. Me following through on that intention would put my diet at risk.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 251 pounds. Given my earlier weight-loss rates, this looks like a pre-plateauing bonus.

Day 4: Waxing Nostalgic

2007-07-05T21:26:00.000-04:00

Nostalgia (or the diet itself) may keep me awake late at night, but it also serves to distance myself from my previous food binges. When I woke up and read this report on a hot-dog eating contest, I just smiled, and remembered my own relatively picayune efforts in that direction. Joey Chestnut did America proud yesterday.

I'm finding that nostalgia does work, as long as you have the inner fortitude to ignore the hunger pains and are working under a moderate amount of time pressure. In fact, I'm finding that being pressured in that way, to the point of excitement but not of anxiety, has made me forget to eat a scheduled meal at the scheduled time already. It has worked, provided that the tasks in question are ones that are familiar to me.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 254 pounds. Still slow, but in the right direction.

Day 3: Surmounting The Catch-22

2007-07-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

Like many dieters, I've used a small but tasty portion of food as a meal in order to make the dieting process less unpleasant. Unfortunately, doing so leads to a certain catch-22: the body interpreting the meal as an appetizer. The net result if that you're just as hungry, if not hungrier, a short time after the meal. (This effect has been made the centrepiece of a diet, which I've described in this entry.)

It's really a catch-22. In order to avoid it completely, the meals have to be insipid as well as low in calories, which makes a tough regimen even worse. One way around it is to vary your meals, substituting one tasty low-calorie dish for another, but the runaround involved lasts only as long as there are different foods available that qualify. In the long term, this dodge encourages you to yo-yo diet.

Another trick, which I haven't tried, is to fill your stomach with near-zero-calorie bulk food after the induced hunger pains start - something like cabbage or carrots. Since I haven't tried it, I can't comment on it; I can only offer this observation: if you want to shrink your stomach as well as lose weight, this approach won't help with the former goal.

It looks like the only option is just to plow through, to the point where the appetizer reflex fades away. These reactions are unconscious habits; like all others, they can be lost.

Besides...there's always tasty water.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: this may be due to me drinking less fluids yesterday, but it's now 255 pounds.

Day 2: Tossing and Churning

2007-07-03T21:28:00.000-04:00

Those who have tried to diet after a lengthy spell of bulky eating may nod in recognition at this. Despite having turned in at 3 AM last night, it still took me about two hours to nod off. While in bed, less than an hour after my third and last meal of the day, my stomach growled for the first time.

I found, though, that accepting myself as being fat, and having a liking for what got me there, has a soothing effect that makes dieting easier. I'm beginning to feel something akin to nostalgia for my earlier gorgings. It's as if I had had to move from Fat County to Diet County and am beginning to have fond memories of the former. Remembering the good times, I've found, also keeps me from going fanatical, and has mostly quelled the headaches.

Of course, there are still the stomach aches. I've continued drinking water copiously as a food-substitute, and have found that at times it makes the achings worse, but at other times it doesn't. How you react to such a pain is likely to determine your success in sticking to your diet.

Another side effect of drinking a lotta fluids: it makes your colon act in a manner similar to getting a case of diarrhea. Enough said about that.

I'm past the first day on a 850 calorie/day menu, and I have a couple of tips that might be helpful to anyone starting out:

Tip 1: Prepare for the possibility that you won't get much sleep the first night of your diet. If you sleep with someone else in the same bed, this may mean taking to the couch or a spare bed, or at least warning the other person in advance.

Tip 2: I haven't felt any metabolism slowdown, because I've been swamped with work. It's too early to say definitively, but I have a hunch that beginning a diet at a time when you're swamped with repetitive tasks which you're already good at - but not new tasks - might counteract the metabolism slowdown. It certainly helps get you through the day after a near-sleepless night.

Weight as of approx. 6 PM today: 259 lbs. This lack of drop between yesterday and today doesn't bother me for two reasons: first of all, I can attribute it to the water intake, as I saw my weight go up 3-4 pounds earlier today after gulping down several mugs' worth; secondly, I tightened my belt up a notch relative to where I wore it as of the end of last month.

Day 1: Acclimatizing

2007-07-02T21:30:00.000-04:00

Most of the first day of the new regimen is now over. I've stuck to the plan that I've set for myself.

The difficulties at this point are mainly physiological, in the sense of the body adjusting to the reduced intake. My stomach has been sending out hunger pangs off and on for most of the day, and my second meal allayed them for little more than half an hour.

There has been, though, an effect that seems psychosomatic: the kind of headache that comes with the scalp muscles tightening up. I believe that this kind of ache is a willpower matter: if you find this kind of pain (if it pops up at all) daunting rather than bracing or ignorable, then you're going to have a tough time with a diet.

To the end of getting through it, I unconsciously gave myself an ego boost this morning by imagining myself to be thinner, even if a weighing revealed this feeling to be illusory. My memory was reminding me of what I felt like when I was thinner, so I 'felt' less heavy even though I wasn't. This psychological boost made it easier to start off, through giving me a beforehand taste of a thinner state. This illusion was butressed by me carrying myself in such a way that I looked a little thinner, too.

The second ego-reinforcing technique I used was to accept myself as fat. Rather than use throttled aggression, regret or shame, I decided to treat it as a simple shift of course. I wanted to be fat earlier, and now I want to be thin. Evidently, I need a feeling of control to get me through it. Part and parcel of this control is not only picking your own diet, but also choosing the starting time. You can't have control if someone else is controlling you.

To assuage the feeling of hunger when it got particularly bad, I tried a suggestion left by this commenter and drank a lot of water; it seemed to help. There's also a background sensibleness to this technique: since most of the early weight loss in a diet is water loss, anyone who uses it loses less intially but has the benefit of a smaller plateauing phase later on. It smooths out the weight loss process.

The new part of my menu tasted quite good. Eating something new does help in distancing yourself from your old habits of indulgence, in part because of the new taste variety.

Weight as measured at approx. 6 PM: 260 pounds. I've a long way to go.

The Diet Begins

2007-07-02T12:09:00.000-04:00

After a little more than a month of overeating, I've decided upon a diet regimen that will seem strange to many, but its purpose will be explained in this entry.

Simply put, I'm going on an invariant menu, with three items each day that make up three meals. The total intake under this regimen, according to the calorie counters I'm using, will be 850 calories/day. This is about a third of what a man of my size should consume to keep his weight steady.

- The reason for me going on a crash diet is because of the metabolism factor. I've found out this last month that overeating bestows a metabolism boost, which is part and parcel of the homeostasis effect that delays weight gain when piling in the calories. During the diet, I want to see how my behaviour is affected by what will probably be a metabolism drop.

To put it more simply, I want to put together a self-based psychological profile of someone who's sticking to a diet rigorously: behavioural signs to watch for that says a person on a diet is being faithful to it.

- The reason for eating the same thing every day, except for flavour variations, is to watch the plateauing effect. By holding my intake and calorie count as constant as reasonably can be, I'll see the plateauing effect, which has long dogged dieters, right in front of me. Given my weight-gain pattern, I suspect that I'll plateau at 240 and 220 lbs., but I cannot be sure.

Two of the meals each day are foods that I haven't eaten in a long time. The whole diet is balanced enough with an added vitamin supplement. Any liquids with zero calories are not restricted at all. The reason why I've budgeted nothing for snacks is that a "taste of the good life" runs the hazard of me going back to my old life. Once you've got the habit up, it's a hard habit to lose.

Will this work? I don't know. I'm aware that I'm breaking many diet conventions and, probably, sound advice. Nevertheless, this regimen will enable me to discover certain things about how the body sheds off weight under a reasonably constant input. I plan to measure my weight, stripped (except for glasses, which I need to see) at 6 PM. From now on, the entries will be daily progress reports.

Half of Twenty-Four

2007-07-02T02:04:00.000-04:00

What better way to celebrate Canada day than twenty-four brews. This is the task ahead of me as I bring the stuff-myself phase to the end. Given the other experiences I've shared, a day's bender seems the most appropriate way to bring the pre-diet to a close.

If you're interested in the particulars: last Friday, I walked home a two-four of Lakeport Strong beer. (5.9% alcohol.) The walk was about a half-mile, necessitating a few rest stops along the way. (The fact that I have no car, and the closest beer store is that half-mile's distance, pretty much assures that this will be a seldom occurrence, unless I smarten up enough to use either a bundle buggy or public transportation. Both seem unlikely in my case.)

This entry will be a liveblog, updated every hour on the hour. As you may have already guessed, the quality of the writing, as well as the editing and proofreading, will deteriorate as afternoon turns into evening.

Weight before the final fling: 263 lbs.

----------

The following took place between 12 PM ET and 1 PM ET: I have to stipulate to a certain patriotism. A large part of the first hour of ye bender was devoted to watching CBC's televised Canada Day celebrations; I stuck around for the pomp. I watched the Governor-General of Canada inspect the Horse Guards and a winning poster design for this year's Canada Day. At the end of my stint at this, there was a song by a band called "Delhi2Dublin," which performed a song that was a mix of traditional Indian music and Irish riverdance. I was impressed with how well the two meshed. During this time, I quaffed 2 beers plus a bit fo a third.

The following took place between 1 PM ET and 2 PM ET: I started watching Hang 'em High, starring Clint Eastwood. (The judge is played by Pat Hingle.) This movie is a sympathetic portrait of a stereotypical "hanging judge," humanized through showing what he faced. Even the prisoners like seeing another one offed. One interesting part of it was the use of a schizophrenic as a minor character, who was shot because he wouldn't (couldn't, really) heed the marshal. I believe that the addition of black people as deputies and bailiffs was realistic, as such a hiring practice is consistent with the Reconstruction effort to make it clear that black people were freemen. As of 2 PM, I've quaffed 5 1/2 beers.

The following took place between 2 PM ET and 3 PM ET: I continued with Hang 'Em High. The focus in the 45 minutes of so that I've seen since the last update is the difference between the cop's view of juistice and the judge's. The cop's view is the one treated sympathetically relative to the judge's, as the cop would go easy on a person that the judge would administer upon the full penalty of the law. This difference, though, is supposed to show the law's disinterestedness. As of now, I've guzzled down 7 1/3 beers.

The following took place between 3 PM ET and 4 PM ET: Break. I couldn't get through more, so instead I lied down and snoozed for a bit.

The following took place between 4 PM ET and 5 PM ET: An outright snooze.

The following took place between 5 PM ET and 6 PM ET: I woke up, and went back to the movie while nursing a "pre-hangover."

The following took place between 6 PM ET and 7 PM ET: I finished Hang 'Em High, whose denouement provided a reason explaining why frontier justice was often rough justice: no checks and balances. It was also made clear throughout the movie that the people wanted swift justice.

The following took place between 7 PM ET and 8 PM ET: After filling my gullet, I started on another Clint Eastwood movie: The Outlaw Josey Wales. It's a movie about how an army's descent into marauding calls forth opposing guerillas who would otherwise have been peaceable. I'm up to 10 beers consumed.

The following took place between 8 PM ET and 9 PM ET: Sometimes, you have to throw in the towel. It tuns out that me getting through that movie in a one-shot is too tiring right now, so I lied down and turned on some music. The same thing goes for consuming all the beers I've gotten; it retrosepct, thinking I could consume all twenty-four in a day was foolish. My tolerance is just too low.

The following took place between 9 PM ET and 10 PM ET: After mulling things over with the help of music, I finally figured out what made this stunt dribble off: I find it too lonely drinking alone. I just can't stand it.

The following took place between 10 PM ET and 11 PM ET: It finally sunk in that the food fest is over for me; tomorrow, the dieting starts. The twelfth and final beer of the day is gone, so this means I'm going to have two six-packs in storage, for what likely will be a long time.

Nearing The End - Food For Thought

2007-07-01T04:25:00.000-04:00

As this last month of stuffing myself comes to an end, I've bumped into another plateau. No matter how much I've eaten recently, my weight hovers between 260 and 264 lbs. My hope of pushing myself into scale-overflow territory has dwindled.

This means that, starting July 2nd, I will have about 65 pounds to lose. (July 1 being Canada Day, I've decided to extend the stuffit fest one more day, liveblogged.)

A few times, I've bumped into my eyes being greater than my stomach. This is a common human trait, but the consequences are quite profound. As long as we have this tendency to get more food than we ourselves can eat, we're inclined to share what we can't stuff down our own throat.

I really suspect that this fact is behind our tendency to share with others. As long as we're inclined to hunt or gather more food than we can eat, we'll also be inclined to share some of it with others because such sharing doesn't cost us a thing at the margin. If it's a choice between passing food someone else's way versus self-inducing a stomachache by eating it all (or the third option of wasting it), which is the more rational choice?

In a way, this realization is profound, as it explains a lot of the gut-level hostility to savings and capital accumulation that recurs throughout our history. The common-sensical, if primitive, view of money as "stored food" would excite a lot of rancour if the person with more money than spending doesn't give away the surplus.

All because we tend to have eyes bigger than our stomachs. We might even be genetically programmed to be this way.

h/t: This thought didn't just come from eating. It was sparked by my re-reading of a neglected classic, The Myth Of the Welfare State by Jack D. Douglas - specifically, the chapter entitled "The Ancient Dawn of Welfare Statism."

[By mistake, I had earlier put Chapter 2; it's actually Chapter 3. There also exists overestimation of memory skills.]

Rib of the Pig

2007-06-28T15:20:00.000-04:00

Pork ribs have a lot to recommend them. What's lost in bone is made up for in tasty fat, which makes it practicable as well as a delight to sloff down 2 kgs' worth of pig strip. They're so good, you can even warm them up in the microwave after being called back to computer duty, and they taste about as good as the batch you cooked fresh.

Ah yes, the pig is such a serviceable animal.

[Hint to the slippery: no trans-fats.]

Weight before I indulged: approx. 260 lbs. I got so excited, I forgot to weigh myself beforehand. And yes, I know that the Trump of Diet is less than a week away. I might as well have as much fun as I can while pre-obesing myself. It will be a challenge indeed.

Edging Towards Zero

2007-06-27T05:15:00.000-04:00

Well, not really - what I mean by that is, edging towards the limit of my scale, it being 270 pounds. As the month of overeating approaches its end, I've managed to put on between 30 and 40 pounds. I have little doubt that, had I continued, I would have been well over 300 pounds by the end of the year.

To continue on a theme I've already written about: there's a lot of weight gain before the likes of me notices in terms of gross body size, except for the bulge in the stomach. Some of my pants are getting tight, but I'm still wearing them, and they're the same size that I wore (waist 38) when I was 220 pounds. Actually, they're the same size I used to wear when I was around 200 lbs., about eight years ago.

Lest I turn too thoughful, an overeating note. A box of brownie mix, prepared and cooked up according to box specs, makes a nice dessert after a comparably bulky meal. It may be too sugary for a standalone snack, though.

Weight before double decking dinner and dessert: 260 lbs.

Thoughts on Weight Gain

2007-06-25T05:17:00.000-04:00

A little more than 24 hours ago, I saw that I had shot through the 240ish pound plateau. I weighed myself this evening and got 255 pounds, although I've recently gotten as high as a full 260 pounds. As July approaches, the imminence of the diet phase is beginning to sink in.

Based upon my own experience, I suspect that there are two reasons why it's so easy to gain weight over a long period of time: not only the plateauing effect, but also a disconnect between weight and body expansion. When I weighed in at 238 lbs, I had my belt on three notches from the beginning. I still do, and still had even when at 260 lbs. Not only that, I'm still wearing the same pants that I wore when 220-230 lbs.

The feedback betweeen a full stomach, weight change and body-size change in the parts of the body you notice is just too irregular to give any consistent warning. That's why it's so easy to go with the metabolism-boost effect and ignore the consequences. (It's hard to avoid a parallel with gambling, to be candid about this.)

With regard to my intake: I tried the 4 lbs of burger again, and came up short again, although this time I only left part of the last bun behind. As mentioned above, my weight was 255 lbs.before stretching my stomach in this way.

Sandwich Marathon, Part 2

2007-06-23T01:41:00.000-04:00

This occasion is one of those rare ones where my eyes proved to be too small for my stomach. The pound of bacon I had, with about half a loaf of bread surrounding it, went down with room to spare this dinnertime.

Despite having recently cultivated a habit of munching on high-calorie snacks between meals, my weight just before breakin' with the bacon was 238 pounds. I've already mentioned the plateauing effect, and have confirmed yet again that it works in both directions.

The end of this month's part of the experiment is coming up; I've been in the stuff-myself part of it for three weeks, enough time to get used to a high-calorie intake. What this habituation entails for the belt-tightening to start next month remains to be seen.

Big Burger - A Warning

2007-06-20T04:41:00.000-04:00

I've been so busy the last couple of days, I've almost forgotten to eat. In order to make up for the time squeeze, I tried to adapt an idea which came from a restaurant that serves a 10-pound burger. The tab for it is $200 - unless you can eat it within two hours, in which case it's on the house.

Trust me: this challenge is pretty durn challenging. As a veer-towards, I cooked up four 1-lb burgers, with a corresponding helping of fries. After an hour's worth of eating, I could only choke down three of them plus the fries. That's 3 lbs of fried beef, plus bun bread and fries.

I don't have a small stomach, and it has been stretched in the last little while. And yet, had I seen my gut as being up to the challenge, I would have been less than a third of the way through by the end of the first hour. By the end of the second, I would have had most of it left, ready for a nice big doggie bag, and a bill for two hundred bucks.

Word to the food-ambitious: if you're thinking of going for that challenge, try it at home first. It's a lot harder than it seems.

Weight before bumping into the eyes-stomach problem: 242 pounds. I'm back up to where I was.

10,000 Calories

2007-06-18T00:36:00.000-04:00

Yep, in the last twenty-four hours, I have tucked away 10,000 calories.

- Pancake extravaganza: approx. 3000 calories. (They were big pancakes, with lotsa corn syrup.)
- Between-meal snacking: 4000 calories.
- 2 lbs of spaghetti with a tin of sauce, all of which went in the gullet and stayed down this time: approx. 3400 calories.

Making allowance for a little overcounting on my part, I've come in at 10,000 calories for a day.

This being disclosed/bragged about, I've noticed something. One of the benefits to overeating is that it gives your metabolism rate a compensatory boost, which means that many low-metabolism fatties like chomping down for the metabolism buzz. Unfortunately for me, I've found that it can be pushed too far, to the point where the sleep gets disrupted.

Weight before ascending to a five-figure intake: 236 pounds. I don't know why, but I've backslid.

Garfield Would Feel Challenged

2007-06-16T04:46:00.000-04:00

Why? Because I've just chomped down a 5 lb. lasagna. Given the poundage, I had to take this one moderately; the closest I came to Garfieldesque table manners was insufficient use of the cutting knife, by restauranteur's standard. I used the fork all the way. It took me 45 minutes for 5 pounds of stuff-filled pasta - 9 minutes per pound. Not bad; less than an hour for the dinner.

Interestingly enough, this entire hunk of wheat, meat and added extras was about 2500 calories. Had I gone skimpy on breakfast and lunch, or skipped off on one or both, I could claim to have eaten a normal amount of calories for a man.

Weight before loading me up: another plateau. 241 lbs.

Chicken À La Whole

2007-06-14T04:41:00.000-04:00

1.973 kg worth; that's what it says on the label. That's about 4 1/3 pounds of bird.

Of course, this is gross weight. Some of it was bone, and some of the juice got lost in the drip pan. So, having a nearly 2 kg chicken for dinner sounds more impressive than it is. This weight disparity is, of course, what side dishes are for. As I've done one before, a full dinner plate had to serve as the side plate, and a plastic jug-salver had to be commandeered to hold the main course. The two potatoes and three onions I added more than made up for the bones I left behind. (They did fill up the dinner plate - no kidding.)

This meal, unsurprisingly, filled me up plenty enough so that I couldn't pull out the bread, take it to the drip pan, and enjoy a "busman's dessert." I do have limits.

Wight before I gave a chicken carcass a decent burial: 241 lbs.

Pancake Tuesday

2007-06-13T15:10:00.000-04:00

Specifically, the amount of pancakes that can be wrested from two cups of mix, an accompanying quantity of milk, three eggs (in total), about 1/8 cup butter, and all the corn syrup I could slurp back while eating them. Unfortunately for me, I was unintentionally stingy on the milk, so I wound up having a little trouble with the crumbles while cooking them. Chalk it up to inexperience.

Weight before churning out the hotcakes and pouring on the corn syrup: 242 pounds. I'm finally over the plateau.

Sandwich Marathon, Part 1

2007-06-11T23:14:00.000-04:00

It should have been a nice, 3400-calorie dinner. I threw 2 pounds of sphagettini into the boiling oily salt water and a can of sauce into a side pot, and proceeded to dig in. 4 plates, which should have gone down without a U-turn.

Unfortunately for me, I hadn't realized that the stomach goes by volume, not weight. Since the spaghettini had expanded through cooking, my stomach ran out of room at the end of the third plate. I couldn't get the rest of it down.

To be candid, a little of what I ate came up. Yep; five or so minutes after I had given up, my stomach has issued the final warning that some of what I had ingested needed to be evacuated. So, off to the toilet I went. I actually vomited like a momma bird: just a little, to get the tank down from extra-full to full. No more. It makes me wonder if birds use the same correction-from-overflow technique.

Flopping in this manner makes a person cautious the next time round. So, I stuck to a sandwich marathon in my bid to get (if not my weight, then) my stomach capacity up. Not counting an introductory ralf-down, I managed to get four peanut-butter-encrusted sandwiches down my gullet before taking the prudent way out.

Weight before climbing back up on the belly-bloat express: 236 pounds. The recent plateau phase may be no more.

Don't Leave Your Ice Cream In The Fridge

2007-06-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

As I found out with a 4L (close to a gallon) tub of the stuff, it mostly melts within a day, forcing you to get rid of it somehow. Rather than being wasteful of money, the option of eating it seemed preferable.

I wish I could go into detail as to why there wasn't enough room in the freezer, but doing so would take me into a side discourse on native treaty rights.

Since this particular food foray started at about the same time as the last, I really didn't weigh myself before its start. By default, my weight was 233 lbs. before I dug in.

Scaling Down

2007-06-09T03:27:00.000-04:00

I haven't quite followed through on my hunch that my recent eating habits and the continual up-swill of stomach acid into my gullet are related. It seemed easier to find pallatives. I have to admit to scaling back somewhat now, though. I had to restrain myself to three chicken legs, four potatoes and three onions.

In doing so, I discovered something useful. If you cook your chicken dinner in the microwave, then the second plate is ready at about the time you've finished the first. Provided that you eat at a moderate rate.

Despite my belly's growth, my weight's still stuck in the plateau: 233 lbs.

Brain Food

2007-06-07T04:01:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like a nice fish dinner. This definitely includes a bite of rainbow trout, even if it's one "fresh from the farm." Actually, the farm fish I scarfed down was pretty good, even if the butter chunks inside mostly ended up on the drip pan.

This particular chunk of fishhood grossed in at 1.8 kg, or 3.5 pounds. Some of this weight, of course, was head, tail, fins and bones, but the weight difference was roughly made up for by a generous "family serving" of fries.

Yes, it was quite a family meal. Since I happen to be a family of one, I felt satisfyingly justified in eating it all. Even if I had to use a platter as a plate, and a dinner plate as a side plate.

Weight before this family dinner: 233 pounds. Still.

Comparing and Contrasting

2007-06-06T13:29:00.000-04:00

I'm finding out that it's more difficult to gain weight than I thought. In addition to the plateau effect, whose root is homeostasis, I've also gotten a case of acid reflux, thanks to my body's response mechanism working in another way: the recent surfeit of food has resulted in a recent overproduction of stomach acid. I have enough spare production capacity to get some of it up my foodpipe.

If only I had known what a challenge was ahead of me. I keep looking at the scale, wondering why it is so difficult to get up to 240 pounds. The size of my belly seems to be co-operating nicely, but the scale still confounds me.

It's almost certain that you've seen "Special K" being advertised as a diet food. It actually does serve well in that capacity, tasting fine with only milk. Perhaps my taste buds are out of whack, but I found that adding 1 tbsp of sugar to a bowl doesn't improve it that much, and leaves a gloppy sugar residue at the bottom of the bowl, which would only be appealing to the type of person who likes sugar as a between-meal snack. (Come to think of it, that does remind me of something...)

More promising, but ultimately disappointing, was the same amount of corn syrup stuck on top of a bowl. Maybe it's the idiosyncracies of my taste buds, but I found that a nice heap of corn syrup makes the cereal taste better than the sugar did. The only drawback is the residue of the syrup sticking to the spoon, which makes the first few spoonfuls kind-of sticky.

The best option, I found, was using chocolate milk; that made a bowl of "Special K" taste great. I suspect that others discovering the same thing is what led Kellogg's to offer a chocolate-covered version of the cereal.

Weight before the four-bowl breakfast: still 233 pounds.

Plateauing

2007-06-05T16:25:00.000-04:00

In my recent baseline preparation for the latest gorge fest, I've discovered something. My June-centered goal to quickly accumulate poundage has run into a roadblack. I've actually plateaued.

Here's something else that's funny. After stuffing myself - most recently with a mushroom, ground beef and three-layer-cheese pan pizza whose volume seriously belied its area - I've begun to feel a kind of lassitudinous, not unpleasant buzz. Recently, I've also been sweating and, at times, panting like the stereotypical fat man.

Best guess: stuffing the face and filling the stomach right to maximum-F induces a rise in metabolism rate, which some may find pleasurable indeed, like feeling exercised without having to move a muscle (except for gastro-intestinal ones.)

This is new to me, but I suspect it's old and familiar to a hard-core fatboy. In the early stages, you can even kid yourself into thinking that the "gastro workout" fully compensates for the extra calories - and, when the plateau is over, you can fool yourself by remembering the early stages plus any intermediate weight-plateaus.

Weight before gobbling down a true my-cheese-runneth-over pan pizza: 233 pounds. I checked it three times.

Back on the track

2007-06-04T02:01:00.000-04:00

One of the good things about relaxing in front of a movie, even one on the tube, is that overeating is socialized in this activity. In addition, the attention paid by snack food companies to making healthier snacks means that more can be consumed with fewer qualms. What better venue to gobble down both a pound of low-fat red licorice and the rest of a tub of ice cream?

Weight as measured before rediscovering the Law of Unintended Consequences: 234 lbs.

An impure weight-gaining heart

2007-06-03T18:46:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, I saw a report about a new diet approach on the TV. The idea behind it was that certain foods act as "appetizers," stimulating the body's hunger for more food. The imbibing of empty, tasteless calories would trick the brain into substituting the memory of a tasty, weight-gain-inducing food that serves as an appetizer. In order to reduce weight, the idea is to avoid those foods to control your appetite.

I imbibed 1/4 cup of edible oil so as to go through its motion, but I found something strange happening. That much oil does tend to curdle the stomach, so I wound up associating the taste of grapes, and at times ice cream, with feeling ill. Believe it or not, the memory of the grapes began to taste bad.

So, I've bumped into a variation of said diet, which may have an ironic efficacy. Edible oil is about 80 calories per 10 ml.; imbibing 1/4 cup of it means taking in 1000 calories at one shot. You'd think that this strategy would be awful for a diet, but the associated stomach-curdle may very well make it a good one, long term. I seem to have lucked in to an approach that's similar to the one traditionally used to get boys to stop smoking: "you're staying in your room, without meals, until you've smoked the whole pack."

Incidentally, I have a full, 2 L bottle of edible corn oil that's explicitly rated at 8 calories per ml. This means that the entire bottle has 16,000 calories. It cost me three bucks, implying that I got 5,333 calories per dollar. Sugar goes for a buck per kg while on sale in the same store. At 4 calories per gram, you get (at a sale price) 4,000 calories per dollar. So, it looks like edible oil, not sugar, is the food product that gives you the most calories per dollar spent.

Despite this report breaking this month's format, here's a weight report on me anyway: 231 pounds, right after drinking down the oil.

Twenty-Four

2007-06-02T17:24:00.000-04:00

Weiners, that is.

The following takes place between 2:00 PM and 2:04 PM:

Got myself prepped and them ready for eating...all 24 of them. Two pounds in total.

The following take place between 2:04:00 and 2:14:05 PM:

Down my gut they all went. Despite continual jaw soreness, a bout of hiccups at weenie #4, recurrent throat blockage and a warning queasiness starting at weenie #22, I did it without a break. The time elapse is from the first bite to the final swallow, measured ungenerously.

Assessment of performance: Despite my lack of breaks, including for water, my performance was still mediocre, largely because I have yet to master the art of swallowing big chunks. This meant that a lot of my time was consumed by the need to chew. In order to rate at all in this event, I would need some practice in my swallowing skills. It's little consolation that my jaw muscles got a workout.

Weight before this time-limited endeavour: an understandable 232 pounds.

[For the "Goal and Purpose" of the blog, click here.]

First Experiment

2007-06-02T01:07:00.000-04:00

As part of the full dinner and dessert, I had a "Pizza for One," designed for the microwave. It's called "Celeste," and according to the label on the back, it carries 380 calories per pizza and weighs 188 grams. It has a little saturated and trans fat in it.

It was easy to cook in the microwave, and came out nicely done after the recommended time expired. It was easier than the warning label cautioned to get it on the plate and ready to eat.

Since this is microwave food, and a basic serving at that, the dough was a little crunchy, but what was above the crust was quite nice. When I had finished gulping a single one down, my stomach felt full, and even warm. It left an aftertaste of spice. Once finished dinner, there was enough room in my gut for a dessert of approx. 500 g of ice cream. 'Tis the season, after all.

One more note: the above experience with the "Pizza for One" is based upon a selection from the appropriate experiences I actually had while ralfing down four of them. The ice cream followed the last in the "inverse sampling" chain.

[The box did say "Pizza for One," but no time date was specified betwen the last and the next. With a little opportunistic brass I can claim to have eaten "a pizza for one."]

Strangely, despite my pre-gorge preparatory nibbling (I need the stomach expansion), my weight clocked in at 226 pounds before starting to cook and eat. I had actually lost three pounds between this entry and the last; homeostasis evidently works both ways.

Goal and Purpose

2007-05-31T20:32:00.000-04:00

I hit upon the idea of starting this blog while watching my weight balloon about a month ago, while working on the Conrad Black trial blog I've been running. As it turns out, I had fallen into the habit of eating more to increase my concentration.

As the top-right sidebar spells out, I'm going to be spending a little more than a month pigging out, in a probably perverse spree to gains as much weight as is practicable during that time. This will involve expanding my stomach (as well as my belly) somewhat, and will provide certain memorable moments, at least for me. I'm not going to regale you with my entire menu during that time; only highlights will be posted. The measuring plan is for me to weigh myself before I exert myself in a post-worthy chow-down.

Once Canada Day (July 1) is over, the dieting part begins. The plan is the reverse of the June-centered luau: to shrink my stomach and get by with less food. You've probably heard of the plateauing effect, where a cut in calories isn't matched with a cut in weight. In order to observe it, I'm going to standardize my diet by consuming the same food items every day, in the same quantity, so as to hold my caloric intake constant during the diet phase. As the diet progresses, the intake will lower, but will remain constant until lowered again. This will make the plateauing effect plain.

Once I shift to the diet, I plan to shift to a daily diary, with a weighing at the same time every day. To get the ball rolling, I've just weighed myself: the scale said 229 pounds.

Suggest A Diet Link

2007-05-31T16:53:00.000-04:00

This thread is for any diet links you'd like to recommend for the blogroll list. Feel free to leave any suggestions in the comments.