Day 28

I always find it funny when Cracked has a fairly serious column.  Today they had a column on the "8 people who will ruin your attempt to lose weight" (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-8-people-who-will-ruin-your-attempt-to-lose-weight/).  Well worth reading, both for the humor of the classifications, but also because you can totally identify some of the people in your life who match them.


For me, I've primarily got #8 "People who think they're doctors," and #5 "People who never think it's good enough."  The column captures one of the hardest parts of being on a diet.  Generally friends and family are very supportive, but there's always those who are going to nitpick every choice on the diet. 

If you calorie count, they'll tell you that the only way to do it is to count carbs.  If you go to the gym twice a week they'll tell you that's not going to do anything.  And if you struggle with the diet, those voices become louder and much easier to listen to.  Then either you fall off the diet, or start trying to "fix" it, when sticking with the changes to behavior and food will pay dividends in time. 

I checked on my weight around 30k points, and initially it looked like the extra week and 10k calories hadn't done much (maybe less than a pound).  Had I listened to those voices, I might have gotten disheartened or worse just randomly jumped onto one of the more complicated diet plans.  Instead I kept to the plan, ate a lighter meal plan on the weekend and weighed myself again and saw that the simple day to day variations of weight had deceived me.  It's about another four days before my next formal weigh in, but at least everything still seems on track.

The lesson: don't make things more complicated than they need to be and don't listen to negativity.  This plan I'm doing is a long term strategy.  I'm not going to lose 50 pounds in a month, but I don't want to.  If I did that, it would never stick, and I'd just end up back where I am.  I'm just planning to keep an eye on the eventual prize.  Literally in my case.

Food today: breakfast sandwich (300 calories), turkey sandwich (300 calories), grilled pork loin, rice and green beans (900 calories).  Exercise was the walk around downtown (100 calories).

Today's Results:
Daily Food Total:  1700 calories
Exercise:  100
Points Earned:  1400
Total Points Earned:  36920
Points to go:  163080