My 2-Day Diet, week 15 (stats at end)
This is the first week in over three months since I began the 2-Day Diet I am reporting a weight gain instead of weight loss or an
unchanged week from the previous week. However, truth to tell on a couple occasions I reported my weight to be a pound less than my actual Sunday
“weigh in” revealed to avoid reporting no loss or even a small gain. Yes, I’m a liar. I am going to make a wild guess that
all of us are. We lie to ourselves and to other people all the time. Then we
excuse ourselves. Here are my excuses for lying to us the, I don’t know, two or maybe three times I’ve done that:
1.) My weigh-in day is a Sunday—perhaps not the best choice. I tend to
eat more on the weekend, go out dinner, go to parties, travel with my band or
my wife, Rita.
2.) In the week previous, I’ve stepped on the scales at least one
morning and seen weights below the previous week’s weigh in, so I tell myself
that is my true weight and on Sunday it was just an anomaly—a little water
weight or constipation that put that pound or two back on.
3.) It is the downside to how very public I’ve made my decision to
pursue this diet; I’ve not only wanted to be successful in this diet for
personal reasons like better health and increased self-esteem through improved
body image, but I’ve felt somehow invested in the method I chose, the book,
“The 2-Day Diet,” and imagined that if I were very successful, I’d be able to
convince more of my friends to try it and be successful as well.
So there it is. I apologize. I intentionally deceived you. I should say,
“This will never happen again.” However, I know that I can’t make that promise.
I believe it’s human nature, and unlike politicians and some religious leaders
who pretend they can make superhuman assertions about how perfect they are
going to be, “from now on,” I am a humanist and I accept my imperfections. I
may lie to us sometimes, but I mean well and I have my reasons. In the end, the
proof of the success of my weight loss effort will be my weight from day to day,
month to month, year to year and my general health compared to when I started
this regime. Today I weigh over twenty pounds less than when I started
depending on what time of day you weigh me (my body weight generally goes up three to four pounds during the course of a day from a morning weigh in).
I’ve been honest about how I’ve been eating. If you’ve been reading my
blog posts or go back and read them, you'll see I have described the process I went
through as I learned how to pay more attention to how I ate, how much I ate in
a serving, a sitting, a snack, a meal, the kinds of foods of was eating, and
the state of my hunger. I learned so much about myself in that first month or
so—how I’d been deluded into believing that I was hungry all the time when in
fact I’d forgotten what true hunger felt like, and the sensation of a stomach
that was not completely full had become the definition of hunger for me!
For the past month or so, I have not looked at my diet book or the
charts of the types of foods or number of allowable servings for each food
group it recommends. I am still more or less on that diet. Two days a week, I
try to make it two consecutive days, I have my “low carb days” during which I
scrupulously avoid higher carb foods like bread, pasta, grains, root vegetables
(except carrots), and of course anything with sugar. The
rest of the week I will eat some of those foods, but only in very small
amounts. I rarely eat a sandwich with two pieces of sliced bread. I’m more
likely to use one piece of bread and use some lettuce instead of a top slice.
Or have a salad with a piece of toast on the side. Or have just half a
sandwich. When I put rice, pasta, or bulgur wheat on my plate I put on the
equivalent of a golf ball and a little bit more. I try to keep to less than a cup,
and usually I can, by eating more vegetables, more protein, or just by eating
slowly and making sure I wait at least twenty minutes after I’ve cleaned my
plate to decide if I really need to eat more. And usually I don’t.
I frequently do not snack between meals anymore, and when I do, I often
am satisfied with half an apple and a small handful of walnuts or three or
four slices of canned peaches and two or three tablespoons of cottage cheese or
yogurt. Maybe I'll eat four Triscuits with cracker sized slices of swiss cheese, or my
old standby, especially on low carb days: celery or green pepper and salsa.
People who know me and haven’t seen me for awhile comment on my weight
loss. I bought two new pairs of jeans—size 34 waist. I used to wear 38’s with
my belt buckled below my belly, not in the middle of it. My new jeans are
a little tight, but I can wear them at the waist. I feel great. I work out harder
and longer than I used to, not only because I know it will help me lose that
pound this week, but because I’m feeling good and it’s feeling good to push
myself harder on Stairmaster or the elliptical strider or even just walking up
that steep hill as fast as I can.
So there it is. Do you forgive me? Or will you write me off because I
lied once, so how can you believe anything I say? Okay. I’ll prove to you I'm not lying about losing weight.
This week I’m posting a picture of me enjoying eating and drinking more than I should have been on November 2, 2013, the NIGHT BEFORE I STARTED DIETING! Compare that to the photo from today! Look better, don’t I? Would you like to experience changes like this? You can
do it, and I’ll help you. I’m retired, and if you’re reading this, you’re
probably my friend or a friend of a friend, so I would feel good being in your support group or serving as a mentor, at least until too many people asked me or I changed my mind for one
reason or another. I’m not lying--really, I’ll do it. I bought the book for a
couple folks early on and two of them have told me they lost a few pounds when
they started the diet, but I’m not sure if they’re staying with it. Buy the 2
Day Diet book or embark on some other weight loss plan you think will work for
you and check in with me here or on Facebook or by e-mail, and let’s see how it goes.
Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.
Height 5'8" Age: 61
Goal weight: 165 lbs.
Total loss goal: 44 lbs.
Beginning waist size: 43 in.
Current waist size: 39 in.
Weight end of week 15: 188 lbs.
Gain/Loss this week: +1 lb.
Total Gain/Loss: -21 lbs.
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| November 2, 2013 The night before I started the 2-Day Diet! |
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| February 17, 2014 Halfway to my goal! |
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