Weigh-in Wednesday: October 25, 2023
My journey towards a meh bod
The good news: I started tracking my weight this week. The bad news: It is hard to track your weight when 60 percent of your calories are dad scraps.
We took the kids to Cedar Point last week. And we also had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese over the weekend. I wanted to track my food in the app, but you literally can't track “total carbs in a subpar cheese pizza that's just the cheese and some sauce but also a bit of the squishy bread that got in there by accident.” Or: “Chicken finger with most of the breading removed but not all of it because no matter how hard you try some of that breading is just not coming off.”
If someone wants to launch a Keto Dad Scraps weight-loss tracking app, I have $1.99 a month for you.
Intermittent fasting is still going strong. I broke down and ate breakfast on Friday morning before Cedar Point (our local amusement park) because I didn't want to be in super-dad travel maniac mode AND be hungry when we got to Cedar Point. I just wanted to be in super-dad travel maniac mode all by itself. “YOU COULD HAVE GONE ONE MINUTE AGO BEFORE WE LEFT THE HOUSE!” * turns up neighbor's driveway at 25 mph, drives over lawn, heads back home *
This week's glaring hole
OK, I have the fasting down. I am tracking what I eat now. I am eating low-carb foods. But I still feel like something is bogging me down. I don't think I want to admit it, but I'm trying to be as real as I can in these updates. At night, when the kids are down, and Jen and I are watching a streaming episode of a couple-friendly show neither of us hates (Hi “The Morning Show” on Apple), I like to have a cocktail.
In the past, when I've put the booze aside completely, I've lost weight faster. I don't know why I thought this time would be different. I am guessing tequila may have been a factor. Next move is to limit the booze to just every once in a while, like on social occasions instead of as a wind-down at the end of the day. I think I just like the routine of it, and that it's something I do for me. From now on, I'll just have to watch TV stone-cold sober, which is not how streaming dramas starring Reese Witherspoon are meant to be consumed.
Drum roll, please...
Starting weight: 187
Last week: 186
This week: 185
Goal: 170
Headed in the right direction again! I have ten weeks until the end of the year. If I drop a pound a week, I don't make 170. If I drop one pound half those weeks and two pounds the other half, it gets me there. I need to have some two-pound weeks, but I am happy to be trending back down again.
Shout-outs
Two of my buddies checked in. I'm going to give them nicknames because the last thing they probably want is for their real names to be Googled and the first search result is a newsletter by a guy who just wishes they made chicken tenders with no breading. (How would they do that? I don't know. I’m not the chicken tender scientist in this scenario.)
My one friend, whom I'll call Barry, after our shared appreciation for Barry White, is down two pounds. He is training for a half-marathon, and it's helping him shed weight. He has me thinking I should try to run a 5K next year. If I do, it will be all I talk about the for the next decade.
My other friend, whom I'll call Jimmy, after our shared appreciation for Jimmy Buffett, has gone all-in on his mental health and weight loss routine.
I got goosebumps reading his message to me.
“I’ve struggled to lose weight for years, and until very recently, I didn’t realize the reason might be that I had created an unforgivable, Grand Canyon-sized mental gap between the Old Me (thin, confident) and the Current Me (overweight, take your pick from among a gazillion antonyms of confident).
“My physical reflection in the mirror was no longer anywhere close to my mental reflection of myself. The more that gap between the Old Me and the New Me widened, the more my belt and my brain tightened. A couple weeks ago, motivated by your post about weight-loss transparency, I simply committed to letting go of a ghost. I pictured Old Me with a gentle hand on the face of Current Me, and I let both of them go.
“I’m creating New Me, starting each day now with a mental-wellness routine that has renewed my zoomed-out connection with the world, reinvigorated my strengths of making people laugh and think, and reshaped my emotional relationship with food. I’m going to hit my physical goals because I am hitting my mental ones. It’s amazing how much less food I’m eating now that I’m giving weight much less weight.”
Jimmy shared his morning routine with me. It is a list of about a dozen questions and prompts. Things like:
What is my connection to life?
What do I have?
This is our only life.
Be a friend to yourself.
Visualize the day.
Jimmy has lost almost five pounds in two weeks.
What he had to say about identity resonated with me. I have this idealized version of myself in my head. But it does not match what exists in reality. The gap, for me, is a place where I tend to get very sensitive about things, especially when someone accurately sees me as the real me, as opposed to the me I think I am. Weight is one of those things that Ideal Me doesn't ever think about but Real Me obsesses over. You can see how it gets messy.
As always, please leave a comment about something you're trying to accomplish.
Or just say hi.
Great article.....I'm sure losing weight requires both metal and physical adjustments. I'm gonna have to work on that.
Just started IF and down 1 pound in three days, eating the same foods. It might just be a coincidence but time will tell.
And I agree with building muscle mass....it helps to burn fat even after you stop. I also eat very little sugar and I can't believe how much better that makes me feel.
At our age not much can be accomplished with our bodies without building and maintaining muscle mass. You don't need to IF. It isn't about calories in and out anymore. You need to eat 150grams of lean healthy protein a day (but no more than 30 grams of protein per hour; that is all our bodies can synthesize), plus healthy carbs (grains and rice).
But, you have to do something to build and maintain muscle. Not talking about getting jacked and looking silly. But building muscle is what will help you burn fat. I do not do these things, so do as I say not as I do.
If you want results, I suggest push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, bicep curls, kettle bell swings. Nothing crazy, but a regimen you can adhere to every day. 20 minutes of circuit training. You don't even need to do cardio because your heart will get a workout in that time.