[esm@logic.net ~]$ _

I can't even begin to describe how little fun this is. As an old friend of mine once said, it's possibly the best weight loss plan even conceived of. I've been lucky enough to keep the nausea at bay so far, something I remind myself every time I cramp up or run screaming for the bathroom: "just think, it could be worse!" :-P

Some things, people just shouldn't get. This is one of them.

So, for the second year, my wife and I participated in the annual L.A.T.E. Ride, a 25-mile cycle ride around the city of Chicago at midnight with nearly 9000 other riders. The ride starts at Buckingham Fountain, heads south and west a few blocks, then north to Foster Ave; at River Park on Foster, a half-way point is set up to feed the tired riders and to give everyone a rest, and then you finish heading east to the lakefront and follow that all the way back to Buckingham Fountain again, where only the finest that McDonald's has to offer is served for breakfast while you watch the sun come up over Lake Michigan.

This year, I made the ride with a substantial addition of weight, and absolutely no riding ahead of time in preparation, and it showed; the first half was a breeze for me, but we ended up making several stops on the second half (both to catch our breath, and to snap a few pictures; we probably spent a good half hour of the ride just snapping shots). We were in the first group that left at 1:30 AM, and we pulled in around 5:30 AM; substantially longer than we took last year, but we took in a lot more along the way. Erica also had a chance to add a bunch of decorations to her bike this year (I was boring and just stuck a glow stick on each end as marker lights), and I suspect we'll both be a bit more creative next year.

And now, I'm pretty much exhausted: no sleep for an entire weekend plus a 25-mile ride take their toll on you. ;-) I definitely need to be in better shape for next year, but I'll do it again even if I'm not; it's just too much fun, and the sense of accomplishment for a (very) casual rider like me is fantastic.

After an MRI, a couple of doctor's visits, and a physical therapy session (and at least one hefty medical bill), it looks like nothing is going to happen with my knee, at least for a couple of months. Since most of the discomfort is gone at this point, and all that remains is the "locking" of the knee (which I've learned to work around at this point), the doctor's recommendation is to let it be for now, and see if the loose body that's floating around in the back of my knee either re-asorbs, or settles in somewhere. If I'm still having issues in a few months, they'll probably choose to scope it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was helping my brother-in-law install a set of lowering springs on his shiny new Subaru Impreza 2.5RS, and after doing a bit of work on the ground, I got up and discovered that I couldn't put any weight on my left knee. Now, as a kid, I'd damaged that knee pretty well when I helped a neighbor push her car out of the ditch; I put a bit too much weight over that knee, lifted on the car, and "POP", down I went. Nothing much was done at the time; my bones were still growing, and it eventually healed, although it was never completely right. I can tell you exactly when the weather is going to change, just by the feeling in my knee. ;-)

So, after two weeks of limping around, I finally went to the doctor today; I was immediately referred to an orthopaedic doctor, who I'll be seeing later this week. The expected outcome is that I'll get a few x-rays, an MRI, and arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus. Yay.

So what was the tipping point for getting me off of low-carb eating? The Chicago L.A.T.E. Ride, an annual meeting of about 9000 crazy people at midnight in downtown Chicgo for a 25-mile bike ride through the city. Erica has done it once before, but this was my first time; it was sort of like Burning Man meets the Tour De France. Some people were there on normal bikes, others had full-on competition setups, still others had rolling artwork with lighting, decorations, and pets. The idea is that you start out from Buckingham Fountain shortly after midnight, and ride north through the city to Foster Avenue, then back south along the lakefront as the sun is coming up; you take a break at a half-way point in the ride, where food and refreshments (all high-carb, of course) are provided, and then again at the end of the ride. That didn't quite work out for us; we kept up a pretty hard pace, getting the ride done in about 2 hours and 45 minutes, including a 15-20 minute break, so we averaged about 10 miles per hour. Not bad for a couple who doesn't get much in the way of regular endurance exercise, but it meant that we didn't see the sun come up until we were settled in at Buckingham Fountain with our breakfast.

A very "interesting" event, overall. We'll definitely have to do it again, and this time, we'll have to spend a little more time decorating the bikes. ;-)

After five months of low-carb living, it's pretty obvious I've reached a plateau; in the last month, I've managed to lose an additional three pounds, putting me at 233.6 as of Friday. Some of the problem is just the fact that the diet is rather hard to stick to: there are places around here that we love to eat at, but simply can't go to when I'm on a low-carb regimen, because I couldn't get enough nourishment there to feed a fly. Plus, five months of gyros and steak sound good at first, but you start wishing for a bit more variety. So, I'm putting myself in Erica's hands now, and going with a drastically-reduced caloric intake instead. Day one was Saturday, and as of today (Wednesday) I'm at 232.4 lbs, which debunks the old "you'll gain back 10 lbs in water weight after Atkins" myth thoroughly, in my mind. Yesterday's intake was about 1000-1200 calories, which is low for my body size, but seemed to be plenty to remain comfortable; once I get past the binge-eating urge, I should be fine.

I hit a new low of 236.2 this morning, putting my recent rate of loss at about 10lbs per month. Not exactly great, but when you consider that the majority of that loss has been in the last two weeks, it looks a lot more promising; we're now eating at home for supper during the week, which has done wonders for knowing what is going into our meals each night, and consequently means I've been taking in far fewer carbs with each meal. And let's face it, a pork tenderloin prepared on the grill beats most restaurants anyway. :-)

Well, weight loss has been slow and sporadic this past month, probably due in no small part to the recent two week business trip to Colorado; I ate pretty well, but it was in sporadic bursts of gorging, not normal meals (just because we were unbelievably busy the entire time). Needless to say, my best weight so far this week has been 245.2 lbs, a scant 5 lbs down from this time last month (and almost all of that was the first few days after getting back from the trip).

I finally broke 250 yesterday, and currently weight in at 248.6. Along the way, little things are becoming apparent that probably caused me to stall out the last time I was on a low-carb regimen: specifically, you can eat all the ribs in the world, but if they're slathered in BBQ sauce, you're just not going to lose any weight. Since I eat out for practically every meal, keeping an eye on the ways restaurants add sugar and other starches to the mix to "enhance the flavor" has been interesting; I'm starting to find that chicken (grilled) is almost universally safe, but most pork and beef dishes (unless it's a grilled chop or steap) usually have an excess of sugar somewhere, either in the sauces that they marinade with, or in the "filler" they use to hold something together.

So far, so good. I'm actually seeing a reasonable rate of loss, which is what I usually need to keep motivated to remain on a particular diet. Hopefully I can hit my 200 lbs target by the end of the summer, before the "eating season" begins.

Eventually, I'll get there. ;-) I'm currently bouncing between 254 and 257 lbs, after observing the effects of a single day of "cheating"; I went to dinner at a friend's house, and ate what was offered, and spent the next week five pounds heavier and showing absolutely no loss. I'm back to a strict regimen now, and the weight is starting to come off again; lesson learned.

This is probably one of the more annoying traits of low-carb dieting that I've bumped into: a tendancy to "stall" or plateau every so often. What's weird is I've never had that happen during induction, but that's what happened: I went about a week with almost no loss, followed by the last couple of days of knocking pounds off as expected. I'm now sitting at 259.2 lbs, which is nice to see: breaking 260 seemed like it wouldn't happen for a while there.

There's a reason people like low-carb diets: the first week presents an amazing level of weight loss. I'm on day four now (my first day back on the diet was March 1, 2006), and I'm down to 263.6 lbs. Not bad.

After a lot of experimenting, and realizing where some of my problems with actually losing weight on a normal reduced-calorie diet were (ie. mostly psychological), I've given in and gone back on a low-carb diet as of yesterday. Current weight as of this morning is 268.2 lbs.

I suppose those "psychological problems" need a bit of clarification, since I'm hanging this out for all the world to read. ;-) My basic problem appears to be moderation; I have a hard time not taking something that's "good", and repeating/consuming/perpetuating it long past the point of where it becomes "bad". Take the fuel system I'm currently designing for the car: rather than allowing current plans and a certain amount of "wiggle" room to guide the capacity planning for the system, I'm building a system that will support the largest conceivable combination of parts I might put together. Not because I worry about the cost of doing it twice, which might be a reasonable answer, but because I can. Because it's fun to build things, and thus building something incredibly complicated and expensive must be more fun, right?

It applies to other things too. How many people do you know that run their own web and mail servers at home, complete with backing databases, along with a four-network router/firewall that handles Internet, DMZ, wired, and wireless network traffic, all basically hand-built hardware running Linux? Do I need it? Nope. But what if I wanted to run an ISP from my spare bedroom?

The same unconsciously applies to food: I sit down in a restaurant, look over the menu, and rather than selecting what I need to feel sated, I head straight for what gives me the most enjoyment then-and-there, and which completely satisfies me: a large entree with appetizer and dessert. So, while I have the mental wherewithal to temporarily curb my usual habits, I almost inevitably go back to what seems to be a core personality trait with me: excess.

So, we come back to my goal: lose weight. Ideally, I'd simply change my outlook on life: stop over-engineering, stop driving so fast, stop ordering dessert with every meal. Pragmatically, that's not likely to change anytime soon, so focusing on another route to the goal is in order. Enter Atkins; a low-carb diet allows that level of excess to remain, in that I can eat as much protein as I can handle, but I'm not allowed to have carbs, period, full-stop. Desserts (after the induction phase, anyway) are allowed, as long as I accept that they won't be ice cream and cake, but instead will be more like cream cheeses and such. It was a diet I managed to stay with for almost a year before, until I stopped seeing progress and specifically made the choice to get off of it.

So, we'll see how this goes. The interesting part is that the past few weeks have demonstrated that I'm capable of maintaining a particular weight, so there might actually be hope for me after I complete the "loss" phase of this.

So, as is painfully obvious, I'm not keeping up with this nearly as well as I should. I'm currently at 269.2 lbs, after a week of quite a bit of experimentation, so the lack of progress isn't too surprising. A few things have become fairly apparent: I can starve myself during the day if I want to, but that just results in me gorging at dinner. I've tried a few combinations of skipping breakfast, delaying it, shrinking lunch, and other ideas, but it all results in me being incredibly hungry at night. So, smaller, more-frequent meals are probably going to be the most successful for me. (Which, of course, is common advice, but proving it was educational.) We'll try that as a plan for next week.

Apparently, weekends are terrible for me. I ended up eating way too much when we visited Erica's parents' house for her brother's birthday party, and again yesterday for no discernable reason other than "mmm, food". I fluctuated between 267 and 268 all weekend, and settled on 268.8 lbs this morning. Ugh. Must...eat...better. This week looks promising: I'll be at the datacenter all week, by myself, meaning that there won't be any poor choices of food-dispensing establishments other than the poor choices I make. :-)

Okay, I didn't have a chance to post an update the last two days. On Tuesday, I had a pretty bad day; lunch at work was catered, and of course I went straight to the brownie (followed by tacos at home for dinner). So, I weighed in both Tuesday and Wednesday at 268.6 lbs. Yesterday (Wednesday) was much better; I stayed well under 2000 calories for the day, and it showed up this morning: 267.2 lbs. Anyway, that's my quick update; more later when I have more time.

I'm starting a new section of my blog tonight, to try a little experiment. My health is becoming a bit more important to me, with getting married again, getting a little older, and some of my bad habits. So, I'm setting aside a section of my blog to talk about the things I'm doing to improve my health, both to let folks who know me keep up to date, and to publically embarass myself if I fall off the wagon. :-)

Previously, I was the poster child for low-carb dieting: in the course of a year (without any significant weight loss during the last four or five months), I knocked off 75 lbs sticking fairly strictly to an Atkins-esque regimen, going from roughly 300 lbs to 225. I was pretty happy with that, and was targetting knocking off another 25 lbs through exercise and lightly reduced caloric intake.

Instead, I gained back 50 lbs. In about four months. Mmm, cheesecake.

I don't blame the low-carb diet for the weight gain, by the way. By the time I officially stopped calling what I was doing "low-carb dieting", my daily carbohydrate intake was pretty much at what I'd call a normal level for most folks. The problem was purely mental: I was off the diet, so I was free to slip into some old habits, right? It was made somewhat worse by the mental place I'd put myself during the diet: I was used to the idea that high-fat, high-protein stuff was good for me, so I still gravitated toward that kind of food...not good when you're filling up on breads and pastas too. Long term, that kind of thinking could do substantial damage to my health, even if I somehow managed to keep the weight off.

So, to the experiment: I'm going to try and publically chronicle what I'm doing about my weight. The plan is to update this blog regularly (daily, if possible), with weight updates and what I'm doing to reduce it. I'll try to make note of things that work, things that didn't help at all, and stuff I'm considering. As the reader, you're welcome to comment to me about this, or not; either way, it's my website, and if you don't like it, you can always try something else. *grin*

Today, I weighed in on my highly-accurate bathroom scale at 270, down three pounds from yesterday (yes, my weight has fairly dramatic daily swings). I limited myself to about 1700 calories yesterday, and around 2100 today. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with 2% milk, while lunch was a slip-up of a chicken and black bean burrito, so dinner consisted of a chicken breast sub. I've already figured out that lunch, as with Atkins, is going to be the hardest part of the diet, since that's typically the time I get together with co-workers to get away from the office for a few minutes, and the choice of eatery isn't always a good one. We'll see how it goes.