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Weigh-In Week 9

245.4!!!! That's what it said on the scale this morning. That's a loss of 4.8 lbs! It's a miracle.

Is anyone starting to see a pattern here. Big loss, little loss. Big loss.... you get the picture.

Here is my theory. It seems that any radical change in normal activity has the effect of kicking my metabolism in the patootie. (Can you say patootie on the internet?) So not running this week may have actually helped give my body a little jump start. It could also be that I ate better knowing that I wasn't going to get as much exercise this week.

Whatever the reason I am finally under 250! I can't tell you the last time I weighed less than 250. I know for sure that I have been over 250 since 2003 and probably back even further than that.

And here I am on the chart!!! Whoopie!


The big winner this week is my Mom. This is Mom's second win. Congratulations Mom! For being the most optimistic of the optimist this week you have won yourself a peanut butter pie. I found this great recipe for a low cal frozen peanut butter pie. Now I have an excuse to make it.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Tony
8/10: 245.4 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
25.4 lbs. to go

p.s. Don't forget you can now subscribe to this blog via e-mail.

Guess How Much I Weigh Conest - Week 9

It's amazing to me how much I miss working out. I never thought I would be one of those guys, guys like my dad who need their fitness routine like a caffeine addict needs his coffee. But I've got to tell you, I am dragging this week. Hopefully Dr. D will give me the all clear tomorrow so I can get back to it.

I did borrow some weights from my Sister and Brother-in-Law and I have been doing about 20 mins. of upper body workouts this week. Hopefully that will help.

I have no clue what to expect tomorrow. I really hope I have at least a small loss so I can keep the streak alive. Minus the Ice Cream Sandwich, I ate pretty well this week. As always, only the scale will tell.


Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.

I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.

Stats for the week of August 6th.
Walked / Ran: 6.83 miles (before Sunday)

Calories Consumed: From Thursday morning through Wed. night I have consumed aprox. 12348 calories.

Calories Burned: From Thursday morning through Wed. night I have burned aprox. 27909 calories.

34% of my calories have come from fat.
10% of those calories came from Saturated Fats.

49% of my calories came from carbs.

17% of my calories came from protein.

Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!


Tony
8/9: 250.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
30.2 lbs. to go

The Ice Cream Sandwich

On Sunday night after my leg wound was cleaned, I was required to travel to three different Walgreen's to fill my prescriptions. The last one was a 20 minute drive from my house.

I arrived there at 11pm, tired, frustrated and in pain. All I could think about on the long, lonely drive to the pharmacist was how much I wanted an Ice Cream Sandwich...that and how much it hurt to drive with my leg and how much it sucked that the late night guy at the Walgreen's pharmacy didn't seem to know fiddly. But mostly I wanted an Ice Cream Sandwich. And not just any Ice Cream Sandwich, I wanted the behemoth 500 Calorie monstrosity know as the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich (pictured above.)

I am sad to say I gave in to my urges.

The ice cream sandwich in itself was not the bad thing. It was my reason for having the ice cream sandwich that was the bad thing. I am beginning to realize that one of my food triggers is stress (the other big one is boredom.)

I will have ice cream sandwiches in my life, but I should eat them sparingly and only at times when I can make a rational decision to enjoy the Ice Cream Sandwich because I want an ice cream sandwich. I will do my best to not grab an Ice Cream Sandwich out of emotional vulnerability at the end of a day of already elevated eating.

Here is another sign of my growth. Normally I would have hidden the Ice Cream Sandwich wrapper and tossed it in a gas station garbage the next day to conceal the evidence. On Sunday night the first thing I did was run home to my lovely wife and confess my dalliance. Then I confessed to my mom the next day and now I confess you.

Tony
8/8: 250.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
30.2 lbs. to go

Recipe Wednesday

Apple Pan Chicken

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
3 apples - peeled, cored and sliced
3 tablespoons dried currants
3 tablespoons pine nuts (optional)
1/3 cup apple juice
1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS
1. Heat oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat.
2. Saute onions and garlic until soft and translucent. Move the onions to the side, and brown chicken breasts 4 minutes on each side.
3. Top chicken with apples, currants and pine nuts. Pour in apple juice. Season with thyme, parsley, jalapeno, salt and pepper.
4. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or until apples are cooked and chicken is no longer pink.

Servings Per Recipe: 4

NUTRITION INFORMATION
Calories: 301, Total Fat: 8.7g, Cholesterol: 68mg, Sodium: 661mg, Total Carbs: 27.3g, Dietary Fiber: 4.4g, Protein: 29.8g

Recipe Courtesy of All Recipes.com

p.s. The photo is not of Apple Pan Chicken. Don't be confused!

Tony
8/8: 250.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
30.2 lbs. to go

The Whole Story

We have a good family friend who is a renowned reconstructive surgeon and wound specialist. Let's call him Doctor D. On Sunday night I ran into Dr. D's wife and daughter at church. They both took one look at my leg and said, "That looks infected. You should come over to the house and let Dr. D clean that."

This sounded like an extremely painful idea, so I hemmed and hawed for a little while, but in the end when the wife and daughter of a renowned reconstructive surgeon and wound specialist tell you your leg looks infected it's best to listen.

So at 9pm on Sunday night in the middle of Dr. D's kitchen, while his kids cleaned the dishes and entertained me with bubbles, I had my wound cleaned and disinfected. I should probably mention that all of Dr. D's kids are over the age of 22.

This probably sounds a lot worse than it was. Dr. D put some numbing cream on my leg which kept the pain to a minimum and he was remarkably gentle, considering he was using a scalpel and a tongue depressor to scrap away all the scabbing, dead skin and dirt.

He put me on antibiotics and some heavy pain killers and sent me home. Don't worry I didn't take the pain killers until I got home.

Yesterday my leg was doing much better. Unfortunately my tummy was not so happy. I had a bad reaction to the pain killers and was stuck on the couch for most of the day. Luckily I had 12 hours of X-Games coverage on Tivo to keep me company. and a wonderful wife to make me breakfast in bed.

My mother was kind enough to play chauffeur for my follow up trip to Dr. D yesterday afternoon. This time we went to his office.

So the good news is I will be just fine. I have a follow up with Dr. D on Friday, but the healing from Sunday night to Monday afternoon was already starting to look good. I am not to worried about my leg taking a turn for the worse as long as I take care of it.

The bad news is, no strenuous exercise for the rest of this week. Which means no running, no power walking and no strength training of the lower body.

This is going to be a big test for me. In the past this is the kind of thing that would derail me for good. I am determined to not let that happen. I will continue to eat well this week. I will do my crunches and I will try to add some low stress upper body work out to at least keep a minimum of exercise going.

I'll be bummed if I don't get down under 250 this week but like we've been saying all along, it's a marathon, not a sprint... this week may just be a bump in the trail.

Thank you very much to Dr. D and the whole D family for taking such great care of me and keeping my leg from falling off.

Tony
8/7: 250.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
30.2 lbs. to go

Good News, Bad News

Here's the good news.

My doctors appointment on Friday went very well. One might even use the words anti-climactic. I guess that's only one word. I have excellent blood pressure and an excellent resting heart rate. I have to go back in a week for a cholesterol check. I was hopping to scan back through my records to see how much I weighed in the past years. Unfortunately the only weight they had for me was from June of 2006 when I weigh 282 lbs. There records went back ten years. Which means I haven't had a physical since I was 22. oops.

Here's the bad news.

The wound on my leg from last Monday night appears to be infected. Shouldn't be a big deal, but I am having it checked out today. Right now I am on antibiotics and pain killers that are making it very hard for me to type. I'll update with the whole sorted tale later tonight or tomorrow when my head stops swimming and my tummy stops rolling.

For now it's back to bed.

Tony
8/6: 250.2 lbs.
Goal: 220 lbs.
30.2 lbs. to go