Working for the weekend.

Finally, another blog! I’m finding it harder and harder to write blogs on here. Now there’s nothing wrong with this blog becoming a daily update of my weight, but I’m sure that’s boring to you as readers, and if people aren’t coming to check out the blog because there are no updates, then it doesn’t have much purpose as a means of accountability. But lately everything I think to post about is either bragging about real accomplishments, bragging about accomplishments that are things I should be doing anyway, or complaining about my weight being screwy. Readers, are these things that you want to read, or should I limit my posts to new subjects?

Now, to write a post describing my daily life like an old person on the Facebooks. As most of you know, I’m a god damn nerd. I’ve built a fairly elaborate spreadsheet tracking my weight every day. Some of the data that I’m tracking has very obvious use (my cumulative weight fluctuations for each day of the week), and others are just esoteric, with very little real use (my cumulative weight fluctuations for each day of the month). My cumulative weight change for each day of the week has done a great deal to confirm what I already know about my weight loss: I fucking suck at weekends.

Here’s my cumulative totals for each day of the week:

Tuesday: -15.6
Wednesday: -15.6
Thursday: -27.2
Friday: -5.6
Saturday: -13.4
Sunday: +10.8
Monday: +5.0

There’s a few things to be gathered from those shitty, shitty numbers. I’m destroying Wednesdays. Almost half of my weight drops come on Thursday morning. I figure that’s the day that the damage of the weekend finally is overtaken by my weekday routine. Routine is a great friend. When your meals are regimented, it’s a lot easier to stay on target. Also, work sucks, and I eat more when I’m having fun.

But that weekend. It would be one thing if I my weight loss slowed on the weekends. But I’m actually reversing the strides I’m making. If I could even break even on the weekends I’d be sitting at damn near 80 pounds lost so far. And the culprits aren’t hard to figure out. I eat too much on the weekends, I eat out too much on the weekends, I eat too much salt on the weekends, and I drink too much on the weekends. Even more damagingly, I have a nasty habit of just stopping tracking on the weekends, usually when my willpower is overcome by something like Rice Krispie Treats.

And one of the problems is that there’s an upper limit to what I want to do to avoid this. I plan to lose this weight, and I’m not getting down about gaining weight on the weekends, but I don’t want weight loss to run my life. I don’t want to be the person that goes to a bar with a group and picks at a salad and a Miller 64. In fact, I had a Miller 64 at a restaurant recently and I wanted to punch myself. It tastes like diluted nothing. Also, there’s nothing wrong with going out and eating wonderfully awful food and drinking a little too much once in a while.

So what’s the solution? I think tracking everything I eat is the big one. Scanning the menu to find something relatively healthy is another. I was at the Tin Shed for breakfast on Sunday and had what was likely three eggs, a scoop of whipped cream cheese, a few ounces of smoked salmon, some capers, peppers and onions. Healthy? Not particularly. But compare it to an omelet smothered with cheese and meat and chili, something I would have been glad to have at any greasy spoon before. I have to learn to say no to the other things, like cheese grits and biscuits.

It’s both easier and more difficult to eat healthy in Portland. Portland has, to put it plainly, fucking amazing food. Even in the less fancy parts of town, there’s always at least five amazing places within walking distance, and usually many, many more. Some of these are healthy, but Portland has plenty of fat vegans too. So it’s hard when someone wants to go to a place I’ve recommended because they have amazing poutine to skip getting some for myself. (Seriously, have you been to Potato Champion? Go there. Now.)

Anyway, I know that this post has been incredibly rambling, but it’s partially because there are no easy answers. Besides, this blog is like a good therapist: it allows me to talk through things without arguing with me.

Oh yeah, and today I crossed 60 pounds!