Category Archives: Legit

Day 624: Tuesday!

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Watching my Noles play some baseball. I could care less about the NBA right now. I can only listen to Jeff Van Gundy pine over the Heat so much before I want to take a power drill to my temple.

But I digress.

Day two of counting points was a big success. I felt like I was back in control of my eating. I am still working on my issue of eating out of boredom though. After work, that’s all you want to do so that time between getting off work and dinner is prime boredom eating time. I need to start playing tiddlywinks or something to keep me occupied.

Breakfast: Megan and I went to Bruegger’s Bagels for some breakfast awesomeness. I had the cinnamon sugar bagel it is the most amazing thing in the universe. It was only 6 points so I was off to a good start.

Lunch: I just had a Chicken Suaza SmartOne which was… you know… a SmartOne. 6 points

Snack: When I got home, I was relatively good! I had some delicious cherries and then a 2 point peanut butter one bread sandwich. 

SAWS: Since Florida is awesome, we went to the pool to soak up the sun (not like Sheryl Crow) and to get my swim on. I did some treading using just my arms and then swam a few laps, but it’s not a big pool so laps is a relative term. (Photo credit to Megan.)

 


Dinner: Megan made this awesome pizza using the Jiffy pizza-in-a-box that’s only 54¢ at Walmart! She put peppers, elephant garlic we bought from the farmer’s market, tomatoes, fresh basil and turkey pepperoni. It was epic and 10 points for two slices. Fantasticness.

So now, I’m chewing on some gum to stave off the late night hunger. Today, I got to 24 points which is awesome! See ya tomorrow.

Day 623: Dear Conscience

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So I am writing this while working on some other stuff so this is going to be brief.

Here we go.

Conscience, whomever you are, you were right. Counting points is important. I always knew it was, but it really is hard at this point in the game. Or maybe I’m just telling myself it’s too hard to give myself excuses. Today was an eye-opener. I super went over my points because I hadn’t realized how far I had went over until it was close to 10 pm. As I was reaching for a snack, I finally tallied it all up and it was bad. I ate 39 points worth of stuff today. The worst part was that I was pretty good yesterday (I mean, not excellent but still pretty good) and I wasn’t hungry throughout the day and it felt like I had eaten less. Snacking is just an issue for me right now. When I get off work, all I want to do is come home, have a bowl of cereal and watch something awesome on Nexflix (such as Workaholics. I love that show. It’s a 21st century adaptation of Office Space except more illicit activities.)

So Conscience, you were right. Thanks for keeping me honest. Today really opened my eyes to what I should be doing. I know that Weight Watchers works, it has gotten me pretty far. Time to keep at it and lose some weight this week! P.S. let me know who you are Conscience! Let’s talk.

See ya tomorrow.

(Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand this is the coolest picture I have ever accidentally taken)

Day 622: Finally a Post and a Weigh In!

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It feels like I haven’t posted in forever. (Oh yeah, that’s because I haven’t.)

So today was Father’s Day and I have to thank my Dad for everything he has done for me. He has worked hard every day of my life to support me and my family. If I didn’t have a Dad like him, I don’t know where I would be today. Thank you Dad. I love you.

Alright, so this was kind of a weird week. I was pretty good for the majority of the week. Yeah, I wasn’t posting my points online, but I was still was counting to make sure I was on the right track. Then, my “conscience” was nagging at me to post them which was a little weird and threw me off a little. I know my “conscience” meant well, but it still odd. (Look at my last Monday post in the comments to see what I’m talking about.) I know I’m not perfect, but I’m going what I can to keep at it. And I am going to do what I can to count my points to optimize my weight loss awesomeness. I’m going to be even better this week because I’m back in the weight loss saddle again. I lost 1.6 pounds this week! So I am down to 240.8 which is about 5 pounds away from where I was before our trip! I’m getting there! Let the awesomeness continue!

Breakfast: I had a bowl of Special K Strawberry which was not too shabby!

Lunch: After church, Megan and I went to Momo’s for pizza the size of our heads. I had the Big Meaty (or whatever it was called.) Awesomeness.

Dinner:This afternoon, we went over to our friends Jacob and Emily’s house to chill by the pool and have dinner (along with that Andrea person.) We had grilled chicken with Emily’s delicious potatoes along with some squash and corn. Then Megan made her awesome blackberry cobbler! Needless to say that you should be jealous of our cookout. It was awesome.

So that’s about it for the day. This week is going to be good.

Oh yeah, I’m going to run a half marathon in July 2013. Get stoked.

See ya tomorrow.

Day 617: Chip Reed’s Here Edition

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Why Hello!

I’ll keep this brief tonight, because I have a big day full of awesomeness ahead tomorrow!

Breakfast: I just had toast with a tablespoon of peanut butter. Yumtastic.

Lunch: I had the best leftovers ever for lunch: not fried fried chicken with acre peas! Then I had a rice krispy treat, a serving of almonds and a Special K bar that found deep in the bowels of my lunchbox.

When I got home, I had some cobbler, some lunch meat and a handful of chips. I need to figure out a way to avoid that kind of snack (except the lunchmeat is a really good snack option because it tastes fantastic and it’s super filling!)

 

 

 

 

 

Chip Reed Here:(That’s how he answers his phone because he’s a legend.) One of my good friends from grad school, the legendary Chip Reed, came down from Virginia  for the week. So tonight, we all got together at Alex’s parent’s house for a cookout to catch up and reminisce the good ol’ days of grad school. Alex’s parents made an awesome spread with some delicious fruits and veggies along with Mrs. Swanson’s classic monster cookies! It was a great dinner and I made sure to eat my share of fruits and veggies to fill me up. Awesomeness!

 

So that was it for today. It was a good one. Get ready for an awesome Wordless Wednesday! See ya tomorrow.

Day 616: What A Beastly Monday

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(The Kings just won it. What an awesome series and season of hockey.)

Today has been awesome. I feel like I am back to where I was before my vacation. I might not be down to where I was before (since I just wrote about that yesterday) but it feels like I’m back on the right track and it feels awesome. Alright, let’s talk…

Breakfast: I had two pieces of toast with a tablespoon of peanut butter. I then had a little Dove Chocolate that said “Happiness looks good on you” late at work. Good stuff.

Lunch: I didn’t bring a lunch (which I will start doing again) so I just walked across campus and had Pollo Tropical, which is quite possibly the best on campus restaurant in the nation (hyperbole aside… and except for the Taco Cabana that’s on campus at the University of Texas.) Anyway, usually this comes with a roll, but I immediately threw it away to stave off any temptation of eating it. What an awesome lunch.

The Rundown of the Run… Down: I didn’t run in the morning… and I immediately regretted it. I ran 5 miles this afternoon when it was cooler (cooler being 90-something with a heat index of 8000 degrees.) I found this new trail that goes from my place right on to campus. Anyway, mile 1-3, I was running 10 minute miles exactly, but the heat and the sweat searing my retinas was really getting to me. I also thing I pseudo-strained my left groin muscle a few weeks ago so around mile 3 or so , my body gets mad at me. It totally worth it though, I ran 5 miles in 53:31 and burned 926 calories. I have already gotten some of my running swagger back which is awesome. Last Monday I ran 4 miles in 48:30 so I’m already shaving time off like a boss. SAWS!!!

Dinner of Awesomeness: For dinner, Megan made her awesome not fried fried chicken with squash and acre peas. It was magical. Then, she made this awesome blackberry cobbler from the Pioneer Woman blog. It was perfect with a scoop of Edy’s Slow Churned.

So that’s it for the day. Here’s to another awesome one tomorrow.

My gift to you: the Alabama Shakes. You’re Welcome

Day 615: A Weigh In and Stuff

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I honestly can’t tell you why I haven’t posted at all this week. I want to act like I have a reason like I was starring in the stage production of the movie Cliffhanger or something, but that simply wasn’t the case. Even though last week I had a lot of drive  to lose some weight this week (which I was really good with my food! Honest!) it didn’t happen on the scale. To make matters worse, I realized I’m back up to where I was at Christmas. It’s like I’ve taken one giant step back. I feel like there are certain foods that are particularly hazardous to my weight loss. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE BBQ!?!   It feels like every time I think it’s okay to splurge a little, the floor caves in. Maybe my addiction to food (well… certain foods) is a lot worse than I think and that I can’t tempt (splurge) myself like that. I used to think that it was okay to eat bad because you can lose it, but I’m now realizing that is much more of a slippery slope than I thought it was. I should have realized that last November when I left for Thanksgiving weighing 235only to gain 8 pounds in 4 days. I worked up until this May to get back down to 235 only to come back from vacation gaining it all back. Weight loss is a fickle thing like that. I am responsible for what I eat and how I treat my body. It’s time to be better to myself. It’s time to break that 235 barrier for good.

Okay… now that I have that off my chest…

I created this blog for accountability with the objective of being completely transparent. I feel that I have failed in that regard. I don’t report the handfuls of this and that that I eat every once in a while which is what really gets you in dieting. So with that being said, I’m going to change the format of the blog up a little bit. The food is going to be more of a list for a while. I’ll still keep my witty banter and what have you, but I need to keep that portion simple for a while. It’s hard to explain, but I need you to go with this for me. And yeah, today I don’t have points up (because Genghis Grill is hard to calculate) but that will also be a part of it once again. I feel like I learned how to ride the bike but then needed the training wheels again so I can re-learn the mechanics of it all. I had a really good thing going for the first hundred pounds, time to keep at it.

So as far as weight loss this week Ilost .2.It’s a bit of a downer, but at this point I’m just glad it wasn’t a gain.

So here is the epicurean rundown of the day:

Breakfast: I had two pieces of toast with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. Recently, I have been just shellacking my toast with pb which is a caloric code red so no more of that.

Lunch: Today after church, a group of us went to Genghis Grill for lunch. I made a beautifully monstrous bowl that others were jealous of (the old people behind me where ooowing and awwing like it was the world’s largest ball of twine.) I could only stomach half of the bowl and I took the rest home! I also had two pot stickers and two small spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream.

Snack: Later this afternoon, I had a bowl of slow churned coffee ice cream with a small scoop of cookies and cream. Both of them are lower in fat and calories than regular ice cream.

Dinner and Dessert:Since I still had a trough of leftover Genghis left in my fridge, I just had that for dinner. Personally, leftover Genghis (does it sound like I’m talking about eating a guy named Genghis? Man, I need to lay off the bath salts…) is perfect cold with some Asian mustard. Perfection, thy name is leftovers.

For dessert, I cut up two peaches that I got from the farmer’s market on Saturday. South Georgia peaches are amazing, ’nuff said.

Before the underwhelming season finale of Mad Men, I had a serving and a half f chips and salsa. Yum.

So that was it for the day. Pretty cut and dry.

This is going to be a good week. I can feel it. See ya tomorrow.

(P.S. I was just kidding about the bath salts. The Fotographing Fat Kid condemns the use of illegal drugs. Crack is whack kids!)

Day 610: Terrific Tuesday

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So I know yesterday’s post was a little crazy and a little womp wompy, but I am finally out of it. I have changed my outlook on life a little bit to make it more positive. Life will be okay, it always is. Anyway, what made life even better today was I was asked to have my story submitted for this awesome blog Transformation Pics which required, you guessed it, submitting a before and after picture. I came across the picture on the left. I remember when this was taken. On the inside I didn’t think I look that bad, but then I actually saw myself in the photo and what a hot, big mess I was. Little did the Nathan in that photo know that awesome things were on the horizon. At that point, I didn’t know I was going to get in to grad school, I didn’t know I was going to meet certain people in Tallahassee that would make this journey so much better and I didn’t know that losing more than 100 pounds was even possible. All I knew was that life was wide open and in a way, I was looking in to the future. (I was actually just trying to look artsy, but that’s beside the point.) Now, that old me is looking at the new (much lighter) me and he is saying “Keep up the awesome work kid!” I may not be perfect. I still eat a lot of BBQ and I still get tired of counting points, but I have come a long way since then and I feel dang proud of it. Thank you all for the encouragement and the 138 Likes of this picture on Facebook. You all rock.

Well it’s late and I’m going to run a 6 miler tomorrow morning so I need to sleep. Overall, today was pretty normal food wise except for the fantastic pork chops we had at Julie’s house tonight. They were freakin’ fantastic. I’ll post some pictures in tomorrow’s Wordless Wednesday post. See ya tomorrow.

Day 609: A Super Case of the Mondays and a Weigh In Edition

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Have you ever felt like your life is just passing you by? That everything is going in fast forward and you have no control over anything?

That is exactly how I feel this week.

Job hunting is such a waiting game that makes me so frustrated, confused and frankly a little scared.

I know that something will work out and that the right door will someday open up, but in the meantime I am just excerified (yes, that is the combination of excited and terrified.)

With all that being said, I have felt really held back this week. For the first time in a long time, I feel fat. My the button-up shirt I’m wearing is pulling for the first time, I feel lethargic and I abso-freakin-lutely hate it. Well I should feel fat. I deserve to. I somehow gained 14 pounds on my vacation! What the crap? I mean yeah, I did eat a lot of BBQ, I did enjoy myself but 14 pounds? Are you flippin’ kidding me!?!?!?!?!?!?

Well, luckily (and I use that term loosely) a lot of that was retained water, so when I weighed yesterday (sorry about not posting last night. That was wrong and dumb.) I still am up 7.2 pounds from two weeks ago. This is not okay with me. What makes it even worse, I have no one else to blame but myself. I should cut my portion sizes in half, I should have exercised more, I should have done a thousand things differently. But there is nothing I can do it about it now except learn from it and move on. My addiction to bad (but delicious) food is still far from over. I need to keep at it. I have high goals for myself and I aim  to reach them and beyond. Time to get to work.

Breakfast: I had two servings of the always awesome Kashi Go Lean. Awesome and filling.

Lunch: I had the last SmartOne that we had in the freezer. It was okay, but not the best choice. The one delicious thing about lunch was eating cinnamon roasted almonds and biting in to an apple at the same time! It was awesome! It was a symphony of awesomeness in my mouth. Fantasticness.

Snack: I had some chips and a few wasabi peas. Nothing special

Dinner: Tonight we had Uncle Jim’s chili, but better. Last night, Megan soaked the beans instead of using canned. It made all the difference, it wasn’t near as salty as it usually is. It was even better with some rice, some cheese and sour cream, not to mention some fantastic green Tabasco sauce. Yumtastic.

Run Time: A little after dinner, I went on the first run of my 10k training. Tonight was a 4 miler and it was brutal. Thankfully, it wasn’t 97° outside like it was earlier today. The wind was cool and the humidity was low. I ran a new route tonight that I can’t wait to go run again. Like most trails in Tallahassee, it was hilly and beastly. So much sweat and some many calories burned (710 to be exact.) I love running, and even though my time was meh (48:30) it was a stepping stone for a better time soon. At this point, it’s all about building that endurance back up to where it was in the fall.

Oh, and one more thing… celery is awesome.

So that was my day. A lot of highs and lows but it ended well. Tomorrow should be better. It always is. See ya tomorrow.