Good morning, everyone! Twelve weeks have passed in the BSC 2011. I can’t believe that three months have gone by already! It was another week that started strong but ended, well, interestingly. Would this be the week everything falls apart? Let’s break it down:
The week started off well enough, with three straight days at the gym and a continuation of my healthy diet. It seemed that everything was going according to plan and the “Under 300 by the 8th” goal was going to work out. Here’s a glimpse at the ol’ DigiFit screen:
There are two things you should notice about that. The first is that Tuesday’s workout, as usual, is missing. The second thing you should notice is the large gap between Thursday and Monday. What happened, you ask? It’s quite the little story, actually.
I had dinner plans Friday evening with a nice young lady and did just that. I went out and had dinner. I wavered some on the diet, having a few beers, but I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol all week and we were eating pretty healthy (the finest meats and cheeses) so I didn’t think much of my beer intake. One day certainly wasn’t going to kill me. After dinner and a trip to another bar at which I was narrowly beaten in a best of five air hockey tournament, the evening with the nice lady was over and it was time to check my phone, which I had kept off for the night so as not to be distracted.
What I found was that there was a Cosby Sweaters offsite meeting happening not far from where I was. This meeting had been going for a while so I decided to join the staff. I was driving so I didn’t have anything else to drink that night and was able to get the boys home safely. One of us didn’t fare as well, as evidenced here:
We all awoke the next morning and had breakfast at Pann’s, a lovely little diner. I opted for the Denver omelet and, admittedly, had some hash browns with it. Again, no big deal as far as I was concerned. It was halfway through this wonderful meal that The Simpleton dropped the big news on us. There was a pub crawl he was attending in Santa Monica and invited us to go. Well why not, we answered? We proceeded to a CVS to pick up some Jack Daniels so we could pre-game at The Diplomat’s house. This is a decision I’m not 100% sure was a good idea. In any case, after a stop by our CA parents’ house to have a couple of drinks, it was back to CSHQ to relax until gametime.
And gametime it was. We attended the pub crawl, for a while anyway. There were a lot of things we were supposed to be doing during this particular crawl. Eventually we just gave up and kept drinking wherever we liked. In an attempt to keep this post brief, here are some brief highlights from the evening: Jameson shots, a waiter chasing us down the street because we didn’t pay our bill, two foreign girls, sushi, a stolen Big Mac, and we were selected to audition for a TV game show. That’s the stuff I remember anyway. Here’s a little souvenir photo I took of myself somewhere along the way:
I’m not sure what I was so angry about.
In any case, that night got a bit out of hand. We drank too much and ate like jerks. Still…this was a 24 hour period in an otherwise good week, right? Sunday was spent relaxing and not doing much. I returned to my rightful eating ways and got some mild exercise in. Monday was business as usual, food and gym-wise. This morning I did what I do every Tuesday and discovered that…
…I’d lost nothing.
It finally happened. I broke even. Now how it was that this week I broke even and I was able to lose that single pound during “The Spring Training Miracle” is beyond me. I was remarking to The Diplomat last night that I think it’s time to change up my routine – shock the system, if you will. I’m doing the same exercises I’ve been doing for 12 weeks and I’m not burning the calories I was in the beginning. That makes sense because there’s less of me to burn at this point. Still, something has to be done to get everything rolling again. While I know I did very, very poorly for a day I am not convinced that my poor decision making was the sole root of this. I’m also wondering if my fairly stagnant diet of oatmeal, grilled chicken and salad has something to do with it as well. It could, however, just be my body punishing me for putting it through the ringer.
One thing I did accomplish in the past week, though, was an often overlooked part of the BSC 2011. I haven’t had a cigarette since Sunday, March 20 around 7PM. I used the patch until Friday and am now just rolling through it. Perhaps that has something to do with this week’s stagnation?
In any case, it’s now 19 pounds to lose in 11 days – a monumental task, to be sure. Tune in next week to see if I’m any closer.
