Day 178
by Scott Hardie on June 29, 2010
People have been asking me how the diet is going. I'm still at it, although I cheat much more often than I'd like, so the daily caloric average is now 1500-1800. However, I've been stuck on one seriously cruel plateau. I've been bouncing around the 390-lb range for two months now, unable to get beyond that level. (Weighed just now: 392.2.) It's incredibly frustrating every day to keep eating diet food and denying myself what I really want, and get nothing out of it. I can wait out short plateaus, but two months without results is just painful. I keep waiting for progress that stubbornly refuses to come.
One big change has been the addition of Nutrisystem. Once upon a time, I really wanted to join the program. I liked that it took over everything that you ate – you ate what they told you to eat, when they told you to eat it, down to the number of glasses of water. I felt like there was no point of failure in that kind of system for me, because I had never invented a diet that I could successfully impose on myself. Last month, my mom gave me a very generous birthday gift by signing me up for the program and paying for it for the first few months. That's a huge gift; this stuff ain't cheap.
While I'm more than grateful for the help, and pleased to discover that most of the Nutrisystem food is actually pretty tasty, what I'm sadly coming to accept is that it just doesn't work for me. Nutrisystem gives you very tiny portions, like lunch that would fit in the cup of your hand, and asks you to eat constantly throughout the day to keep your metabolism up. They're all about eating a little bit every 2 hours, either a snack that they provide like a 100-calorie bag of chips, or some fruit or veggies from the grocery. But I don't have that kind of self-restraint: If I don't feel full after a meal, I eat another meal, and keep eating until I feel satisfied. And I don't just nibble on their little snacks when I start binging; I sometimes eat things I'm not supposed to eat from Kelly's stock. This results in me eating non-stop all day, consuming perhaps 1000 calories after work and as many as 3000 calories a day when I'm home on the weekend.
It's not the sole reason that I haven't made progress – I've been roaming off-diet for too many meals, particularly meals at restaurants, and I need to stop that – but Nutrisystem is clearly not working for me. I think I'm going to finish this month's shipment and go back to what was working, because I have to make some progress soon for sake of my sanity. It feels oddly vindicating to be beyond Nutrisystem: Once upon a time, I looked up to it as a solution because I didn't know how to diet, and I wanted it to teach me. Now I feel like I'm a successful dieter who came up with a better solution than they offer (for me anyway), and they're holding me back. Honestly, I don't really care how I do it; I just want to lose the weight already.
The encouraging feedback that I get from others continues to be a big help. I'm not getting as much attention as this guy (good luck, Banks), but it does keep me going, especially when the plateau is this cruel. I'm grateful to everybody who has cheered me on. I'm just saying that because i want to say it; not to fish for feedback. :-)
Two Replies to Day 178
Jackie Mason | July 3, 2010
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Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Windbag
I don't know what Polaroids he has of whom, but somehow Tom Skilling has elevated himself to some kind of all-important weather-broadcasting god. When I grew up in Chicago, I watched him gradually get a bigger and bigger budget for his animated graphics, and gradually get a larger and larger timeframe to deliver his dull reports. By the time I left town, he had a whole 20 minutes of the hour-long midday newscast for the fucking weather, and boy did he find trivia to fill it: Average dew points across Cook County on this day in 1854, theta-e temperature predictions for every Cubs home game next season, you name it. Go »WGW: If It's Good Enough for Dan Marino, It's Good Enough for Me
This is more like Weight-Gain Wednesday after a week and a half with Kelly, bouncing around Sarasota restaurants and Disney World. No matter how many thousands of calories I burned walking around that theme park for three days, I'm sure I consumed twice as many, and that was just in fudge from the Main Street Confectionery. Now that I'm back and I've done some very scientific research – asking a friend whether she hated one – I have chosen NutriSystem over Medifast as the exclusive supplier of my every meal. Go »Ketchup Packets
I was verbally mugged by a former coworker today, a guy I used to think of as a friend some time ago. I had the displeasure of laying him off last year, and after months of struggling to get by with nothing but condiments in his fridge, he started a blog to vent his frustration at me and a few other coworkers he disliked. The comments are very mean-spirited, from professional criticisms about my managerial competence and decision-making, to personal and apparently very nasty jokes about my weight and appearance. Go »Documenting My Discomfiture
My company hired a new guy to do documentation a few weeks ago, Rajeev. I've seen him walking around talking to the software developers, and attending meetings with managers in glass-walled rooms. I've heard several managers praising Rajeev by name and telling me that we need to get Rajeev to review prior documentation before we begin on projects. Go »Let the Bodies Hit the Floor
Damn it. After The Sims 2, I'm not ready for another glitch to ruin a game. Elder Scrolls IV has always been a little buggy, tending to lock up my Xbox when it gets too excited for instance. Go »
Steve Dunn | June 29, 2010
Start trying a bunch of healthy low-calorie foods and see which ones you like. Then, eat the hell out of them. Maybe raw broccoli with no-fat ranch dressing - something along those lines. Vegetables, mainly. Figure some form of preparation that tastes good to you, and make that your "get full" fallback.
Also bear in mind:
1) It can take 10-15 minutes after eating for satiety to kick in. So if you're still hungry after eating, wait a few minutes. It often turns out you're satisfied after all.
2) The hunger diminishes and goes away in time if you stick with it. Being hungry all the time IS part of the deal at first, but not forever. You gotta keep it real and bust through, though, or you'll stay in yo-yo land forever.
Update on me: I went off the rails for the Final Four and haven't really gotten back. I had a beach vacation and just got back from a weekend in Boston - both were bad for my weight loss efforts. So, I've made some negative progress. I'm back on the wagon as of yesterday and I intend to finish this thing out...