Category Archives: Frater Sodalis

Day 594: Hooray For Another Weigh In Day!

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Before I talk about today, I have to give a shout out to an awesome dinner last night with our friends Brian and Kimi! Brian grilled up some cajun chicken and veggies. It was so good that I’m talking about it today (not to mention it made for an awesome photo!)

Okay, back to today!

The following is a list of things I did today that made me feel old:

  • Read a newspaper
  • Clipped coupons
  • Watched Downton Abbey
  • Really got in to Downton Abbey
  • Watched golf

Anyway, where was I?

So this week I was pretty good with food, but not as good as I had been doing. Either way, it all worked out! I lost 1.2 pounds this week! I am down to 235.4 which is the lowest number I have seen on the scale so far! That’s really exciting! I am slowly breaking through my plateau that has been holding me back for so long! Truth be told though, I’m sure I would have made better strides with it if I had stuck to my points better. Anyway, this week is hopefully going to be an epic week of weight loss. I’ll talk about that soon. Get stoked.

Lunch: I didn’t have breakfast so after church we decided to go to Pho7 like last Sunday. Today, I tried the pork version of pho which had pork broth and egg noodles with slices of tender pork. I think it was better than their actual Pho (that and this time I didn’t accidentally make it so spicy that I was sweating profusely.) I looked up pho and it’s about 8 points which was probably about the same as what I ate today. If you ever want to go there, let me know and I will go with you!

Snack: When Megan and I were sucked in to the portal of awesomeness known as Netflix all afternoon. In the meantime, I had 4 points of popcorn, 2 Georgia peaches that we got from the farmer’s market yesterday and then a 5 point slice of this Skinny No Bake Cheesecake that Megan made earlier this week. Not too bad!

Dinner: So the last couple of times we have gone to Wingstop we have been getting our own 10 piece meal with fries. That shouldn’t have been the case considering when I went there when I first starting my weight loss journey (when I was still in the 350’s mind you) I was able to share that combo and still be full. Eventhough I have been doing this weight loss thing for a while, my mind still gets in the way of letting me know that I’m full. It sucks when you order more food because you are scared of leaving a restauraunt hungry. When does that ever actually happen? NEVER! Anyway, what I’m try to say is tonight Megan and I split a combo at Wingstop and it was plenty of food. Neither of us left feeling disgusting, we both left comfortable and satisfied. It was 14 points which is high, but a nice comfort meal.

So that’s about it for today! I got to 31 points which is only 3 points or so over.

 

Teaser: this week is going to be epic.

 

See ya tomorrow.

Day 592: The Fotographing Fat Kid Goes To Impact Health And Fitness

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Before I started tonight, I just wanted to show you this picture that was featured on an ABC affiliate’s Facebook page today. This was taken in Hillsboro, Texas, where I grew up. This is why Texas is awesome. That’s all I have to say about that.

Anyway, so today was overall pretty good. Food was better than it has been which is a win in itself. I decided today that it’s time to really get serious about my goals. I know that’s not something you usually just wake up and say, but I am 37ish pounds away from my next goal! That is totally possible! I’m on the homestretch of sorts! I’m not going to lie, there are times that I have eaten light ice cream and have not counted it on here. It’s not because I’m hiding it. It’s because  I just plain forget to post it. Granted it’s something like 2 points or so (because Breyer’s is awesome) but those little snacks have sugars and things like that. It’s time to get back to the super dieter I once was. Time to give the 230’s the boot!

Impact time!!!

So now that I’m all graduated and stuff, I don’t have a place to work out. No more Leach for this guy. It’s going to be tough to lose weight when I don’t have a gym readily available. So… time for a new installment of the blog called “THE FOTOGRAPHING FAT KID TRIES OUT A NEW GYM!” I’m going throughout Tallahassee to find a new place to get my SAWS on!

Earlier this week I talked to Vince over at Impact Health & Fitness and he gave me a free week pass to test drive his gym. Impact is located in north Tallahassee right next to the Tallahassee Mall (which looks like the mall the characters end up in during a zombie movie.) From the outside, Impact looks like a business building from the 80’s. I was ready for Joel Goodsen to pop out of a corner at any moment (imdb it.) But when you walk in, the place is MASSIVE!!!!! There are multiple levels with any piece of workout equipment you can think of! I started out on a treadmill to warm up. It was a little older, but it got the job done. Then I went over in to their circuit area and started to work out. I did medicine ball throws, bosu ball squats, kettleball squats, and some lunges. There was enough room to do anything I could think of and it wasn’t because it was empty or anything. I was there around 4:30 when gyms usually start to pick up traffic. Anyway, I finished up with 30 minutes on the ARC Trainer. So much sweat… As far as demographics, there were a lot of older ripped guys (think retired Navy SEALS), some moms, some college-aged folks and the occasional meathead. It was really a nice change of pace. Plus they have a bunch of classes to choose from including TRX and spin classes! Overall, I was impressed with Impact. It’s not that far from campus, you can breathe in there, you don’t have to worry about being in people’s way and the staff is really helpful. Oh yeah, and they have a sauna and childcare! What more could you ask for?

If you are looking for a new gym that is a local business, definitely give Impact a try! Their pricing is competitive with other gyms in town and they have different rates to fit with what you can afford. Let me know if you decide to check them out.

Here are some pictures of my adventure at Impact. See ya tomorrow.

(I’ll post some more when I go back!)

 

Day 590: Tuesday Time Stuff

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Why hello!

Well I didn’t see an owl today, but I did help paint the inside of a house! This will be a brief, yet efficient, post.

For breakfast, I just had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine. If you haven’t had this cereal, run to the cereal store and get some!

For a snack for work I had a FiberOne bar and then ate a Chicken Suaza Smart one for lunch. It was magical. For a snack I had two fat free Fig Newtons.

As far as SAWS goes today, I helped paint three rooms in Adam and Crystal’s new house! A lot of upper body movement and other fun stuff. It was a good way to get some physical activity in while helping out!

So for most of the day I was good, but instead of eating at home we decided to grab some pizza from Gumby’s. It’s greasy, decadent, but delicious… at least when you’re eating it. Tree hours later, my mouth still tastes salty. That’s not a good sign. We ate there to save time, but in turn ate too many calories. Not the best trade off.

So that was about it for today. I promise tomorrow’s Wordless Wednesday will be better. Count on it. See ya tomorrow.

Day 589: The Time an Owl Flew Over my Head Edition

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More about the title in a bit…

So today was good, but a little more snacky than I wanted it to be. Know what I mean? A few chips here, a few almonds there, not bad by themselves, but together they add up pretty fast. Let’s get to it shall we?

Breakfast: I had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine which is super duper filling. Not to mention delicious! 4 points 

Lunch: So the plan was to get Jimmy John’s for lunch which is usually around $9 (you pay for their freaky fast delivery but it’s worth it) but today I figured I would go get a Nature Valley bar from the bookstore across from where I’m working part time. Come to find out, half of the food in the store is 50% off! So I bought some FiberOne bars for 45 cents and Fig Newtons for 38 cents! Awesomeness! So anyway, I had a Nature Valley bar pack and two fat free Fig Newtons. They are delicious! My pseudo (but cheap!) lunch was 8 points. 

Snacking Galore: Like I said, overall today I did about 14 points worth of snacking. I would keep a mental account, but it’s still a dangerous thing because you can overeat pretty easy. I used to be really easy for me to be okay with the counting out what I wanted to eat and that was it. Now, it’s a little hard. It just requires a little more willpower which is still a work in progress!

Dinner: Speaking of cheap meals, we decided to go to Bandidos for dollar tacos which happens every day from 4:20-7:20. They have some of the best tacos in town and for a buck how can you pass that up!?! I had three tacos with cheese lettuce and tomato. That’s it. No sour cream or anything like that. I kept it simple. After doing a little research, we figured they were about three points each so it came out to about a 9 point dinner. 

Owl Time: So there was an awesome thunderhead north of Tallahassee tonight with some really bright lightning shooting around it. Megan and I decided to go out for a walk to watch this awesome storm pass by (it was clear where we were. Don’t worry mom, we weren’t out in the rain or anything.) When we were walking up to our house, a giant winged brown bird with talons flew directly over our heads! It felt like I was at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in the Flights of Wonder show! This creature flew up in to a tree above our car AND IT WAS A FLIPPIN’ BARRED OWL!!!!! It was so cool. It looked down at us and we looked up at it in a stare off like fashion. We stood out there for a good 10 minutes before the owl flew off in to the woods. We have heard owls out there a lot, but we’ve never seen one. Tonight was our lucky night. That dot that looks like a star is actually the owl’s eye! Spooky huh? It’s been a great day with a great night to finish it off. See ya tomorrow.

Day 588: Weigh In Day!

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Hello Dear Readers!

How to you like my new layout? Personally, I’m a HUGE fan! I love it and I hope you do too!

So this week, I was overall pretty good with my points and with my portions (not to mention the gallons of water I drank…) It paid off! I lost 3.2 pounds this week! So that means I am down to 236.6 and I have lost 120.4 pounds so far. Like I said last night, I’m feeling good about the place I’m in right now and I have begun to hit my weight loss stride. I like where this is going!

Breakfast: I just had a litt Special K cereal bar. Nothing special.

Lunch: After church, we went with our friend Julie to this Vietnamese place in town called Pho7. The last time I had pho was in Chinatown in San Francisco so I had some pretty high expectations (he said like a hipster.) We started off with some appetizers like spring rolls and crab rangoon. I ordered the beef pho and it was awesome! I added some sprouts, a squeeze of lime, some cilantro and mint, oh and some jalapenos which made it super hot! Drinking the broth after was a bad choice. Then after that I had a Vietnamese iced coffee which cooled off my mouth which was still on fire. Good call Julie! I can’t wait to go back and order the 100 other things that looked delicious on the menu.

Dinner: After that meal, I was pretty stuffed so I didn’t eat anything until late this evening. It was kind of a potluck night for dinner. I had some leftover chili, a little lentil salad that Julie had made for us (which was awesome!) some gnocchi and some honey nut cheerios. Pretty weird combination, but don’t worry, I didn’t eat them all in one sitting on one plate. That would have been interesting.

As we close tonight, I want to thank my mom for being such an awesome support for me through out my life. Whether it has been helping me with my math homework, listening to my problems or just laughing at my bad jokes, you have always been there for me. Thanks mom. I love you.

 

 

See ya tomorrow.

Day 587: Saturday Stuff

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Tonight, I”m blogging by candlelight on my back porch. It is kind of warm, but the tall trees with hanging Spanish moss remind why I love my place. Florida is not a bad place to be unemployed.

So I didn’t wake up until 11 am this morning. I cannot remember the last time I slept in that late. I think it’s still some residual sleep deprivation from last semester. (Makes sense to me at least…) Anyway, so needless to say I didn’t eat any breakfast. Instead, Megan suggested the Crepevine for lunch! I had the Gooleys which is a smaller portion crepe with bacon, chicken, chicken and romaine. For sauce, instead of ranch. which is what comes on it, I got honey mustard. I was really impressed with it. I usually get the bigger portion, but there is no need to! The smaller one is big enough as it is! It’s weird that our brains crave the bigger portions because it terrified that the smaller portion isn’t going to be big enough. Thankfully, the portion sizes in America are massive, so that’s something we should never have to worry about.

Speaking of massive portions… after Crepevine, we decided to get some froyo at Yogurt Mountian. Sadly, I think froyo places are becoming my enemy. When I started my weight loss, I would be really good with my portion sizes and my toppings. Now, I think it has become a place where I can get away with eating candy since it’s on top of nonfat yogurt. I’m like Newman when he discovers “non-fat yogurt” and then finds out that there is in fact fat in the yogurt. While I am responsible for my actions, I have to give some of the blame to the cups that they give you at the pay per ounce places. They are huge so you don’t really have a grasp on how much yogurt you are getting. I just got a few different flavors, a few scoops of toppings and before I knew it I had 13 ounces of yogurt and toppings! Holy cow! That’s insane! That’s almost a pound of frozen deliciousness! No bueno. I think I need to go back to places that have actual serving sizes so I can measure it out and become the good little weight loser that I know I am! That’s life I guess.

So after that debacle, I knew I needed to go on a run or something so I could undo some of that damage. For those of you who don’t know, a summer day in Florida almost always includes an afternoon shower. It will get overcast and then boom a 20 minute shower. Then it either cools off or get unbearably humid. To me, the best time to run is right before it rains because it will cool off for a few minutes and there is a cool breeze. That’s what I did today. I was planning on just doing a little 5k around the block, but then the running spirits challenged me to go a little further. I am slowly getting my running endurance back to where it was in the fall when I was training for a 10K. I ran around 4 or 5 miles (I didn’t have a pedometer on) with terrain ranging from steep hills to a track around the high school football field by our house. It felt awesome to go running. It helps me think and brainstorm about different problems and ideas. So in about an hour of running, I burned a beastly 668 calories. Ihopethat burned off my yogurt…

 

 

 

For dinner, I made some of Uncle Jim’s famous chili and it was awesome as always. Speaking of portions… again, I used to eat two cups of chili which is only 5 points for my first bowl along with a cup of rice. Then I would usually eat half that much again for seconds. Tonight, I ate two cups of chili and a cup of rice total! And I was stuffed! That’s a really good sign! That’s the ebb and flow of changing your eating habits, your body eventually gets the picture and it adjusts!

 

 

 

 

 
For dessert, I had five little iced oatmeal cookies that we bought from Publix. five of them are only 3 points! Yum! They go perfect with a cup of coffee on the back porch.

So today was good and bad. I am frustrated about the yogurt, but it was a teachable moment for me. I have learned my lesson and I’ll move on from it. Tomorrow is weigh in and I have high hopes for it. I was overall pretty good this week so we’ll see what happens. Either way, I’m in a good place with my weight loss and I have nothing but time. See ya tomorrow.

Day 585b: Thursday Again

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“The Song Remains the Same” Led Zeppelin concert from Madison Square Garden in 1973 is on right now. My life is complete. I was born in the wrong decade.

Anyway, today was one of those days where you drink a lot of water, but your mouth is still dry and salty. That’s no bueno. I have been good pretty much all week, but today I might have veered off a little bit, but momma said there’d be days like this… It’s like what Lenny from The Simpsons always says “everybody makes mistakes. That’s why pencils have erasers.” He is a wise man.

Breakfast: I just had three strips of bacon and a Special K bar. No… really. I was in a rush this morning so that was all I could get as I was running out the door. Yum.

Lunch: So today, I got a lunch break and while I was talking to my friend Andrea, we both realized that she had a lunch break too! So we went to Pitaria for some Greek awesomeness. I had the gyro with the pita fries. It was magical. Somewhere in there, I had two Dove Chocolates at work which were a point a piece.

Snack: I had a little peanut butter on a toasted hamburger bun.

Dinner: Megan has been doing her comprehensive exams all week (they are like her O.W.L.S. or N.E.W.T.S. but on steroids) so we decided to  go to Mr. Roboto’s for dinner. Last time I went there, I lost nine pounds in 24 from an incredibly bad stomach bug. While I don’t know if the two were related, they curry that I ate last time did not help the situation. Anyway, I had a California roll and some rice. Megan got a side of veggies and she shared some of them with me too! Yum!

Snack: Later on, we both wanted some TCBY but to save a little money, we decided to stay home and eat some of the low fat ice cream that we had in our freezer. I just had plain vanilla with a little sugar free chocolate syrup. Good stuff.

So that’s about it for tonight. Like I said, I wasn’t perfect, but I’ll definitely be better tomorrow. Maybe even get a run in there somewhere too. See ya tomorrow.

 

Oh, and one more thing…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWAN!!!!!!

Day 583: Tuesday Stuff!

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This week, the Institute of Medicine has addressed the issue of The Weight of the Nation in Washington. I have been keeping track of it as much as I can and while there are some really good suggestions being made like making school lunches better and encouraging mayors to create healthy initiatives for their cities, some of the rational behind this conference is a bit skewed. Here is a quote that kind of bothered me.

“The traditional view that blames obesity on a failure of personal responsibility and individual willpower “has been used as the basis for resisting government efforts – legislative and regulatory – to address the problem,” says the report. But the IOM panel argues that people cannot truly exercise “personal choice” because their options are severely limited, and “biased toward the unhealthy end of the continuum.”

This is ridiculous. MacDonald’s, Burger King, or the Government doesn’t force feed people the last time I checked. Everyone is responsible for what they put in their bodies. You cannot blame others for these kinds of things! The issue is that people don’t want to take the extra steps to become healthy. It requires work to count calories, to buy fresh ingredients, heck to even exercise. Some people act like they want to lose weight, but they want to eat exactly the same things and not sacrifice taste. Losing weight does take work and it is absolutely worth the extra steps. Read the article and let me know what you think!

Alright, so although I didn’t post last night, I can tell you that Day One of Nathan cooking went really well! Our friends Stacy and Emma came over and they brought some Spanish Mackerel that Emma’s family caught while deep sea fishing in Destin. I fired up the grill and cooked up it. It was the first time I have grilled fish and it turned out really well!

So today I did pretty well. I didn’t bring a lunch to my work which leads to late afternoon snacking.

Breakfast: I had two servings of Kashi Honey Sunshine. It was filling and fantastic! I had a banana and a Special K bar for my morning snack.

Lunch? I had a massive bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. It was a few servings…

Snack: I was doing some freelance work so I decided to go to Starbucks for some iced coffee. As I went to sit down, there were no spots left. Since when are coffee shops so popular? Anyway, so I drove over to Panera which had plenty of seating. I sat in there with my iced coffee from Starbucks. I felt like I was loitering. Awe well.

Dinner: So for Night Two of Nathan making dinner, I made some burgers out of the grass fed beef that we bought from the farmers market on Saturday. I grilled up a chopped up jalapeno and put it on top of the burgers along with some of the mustard cheese that we bought a while back from Earth Fare. I also got some fries from Wingstop. They actually aren’t bad when you split them.

Dessert: I cut up some strawberries from the farmers market and put them on my Breyer’s ice cream. It was magical.

So overall today wasn’t bad, but it definitely could have been better. Tomorrow, I’m going to finally try to run at some point. I feel like I haven’t worked out in weeks (probably because I haven’t.) See ya tomorrow.