Northbound

Breakfast – Had breakfast at five in the morning, thanks to a cranky baby.  Kashi granola cereal with a little honey.

Lunch – I had a parking space near my office today, and that meant I could go out for lunch, and that’s what I did.  Didn’t go to Five Guys, because a healthy trip to Five Guys (no peanuts, Coke Zero, no cheese, no bacon) is no fun.  Went to Chevy’s, got something relatively healthy (flautas with no sauce, as opposed to chimichangas) and the chicken tortilla soup.  Still lots of points, don’t get me wrong.

Dinner - two hot dogs, a small diet Coke and a hot chocolate at the Atlantic League finals.  Go Patriots.

Breakfast – two FiberOne cereal bars, eaten in my car.  We bought another box of these at Costco on Tuesday night (one reason why we had Chinese food).  Five and a half points.  Just enough breakfast to hold one over until…

Lunch – I have packed my lunch three days this week and am very pleased with myself.  The centerpiece item is the Honeycrisp apple – sweet enough for my sweet tooth, juicy enough that I don’t need to pack a drink.  Add to that a cereal bar and some peanut butter crackers, and I’m all set.  Twelve and a half points.

Dinner - leftover taco casserole, I’m guessing 14 points or so.  Came in under the total points for the day (mostly thanks to a late-afternoon bag of M&Ms).

I won’t say much about Tuesday, as it was much like Wednesday (cereal bars for breakfast, a light home-packed lunch of a big apple and some pretzels and peanut-butter crackers and another cereal bar) except to say that the boneless spare ribs at Jumbo Palace are surprisingly lean, and I ordered the steamed rice instead of the fried rice.  Probably shouldn’t have gotten the egg roll, but this is progress.

I would have made it without the cookies.  You see (maybe you don’t) we had our big New Jersey AT conference on Friday, and there was all kinds of food there, and I didn’t do so well with it, and then we brought some back, only the cookies (which didn’t go in my car) didn’t make it back in the office until Monday afternoon, after a weekend filled with all sorts of sugary goodness, and even though I had my lunch packed (a major step) and a relatively innocuous dinner planned, I had me some cookies.  Don’t judge me.

Breakfast – when the baby spits up on you, you get to have a nice breakfast.  Grabbed a cranberry juice and a hunk of cake from the sub shop.

Lunch – I had talked myself into Five Guys.  I really wanted to go.  Really.  And if I had, I probably would have gone whole hog – double cheeseburger with bacon, Cajun fries, peanuts, and a real Coke with some lemonade or orange soda mixed in.  And a refill or two.  But I didn’t.  I figured I could get a burger somewhere else, and while it wouldn’t be a Five Guys burger, it would be OK.  So I walked uphill to State Street to the food court in whatever state office building that is, and got a single cheeeseburger with a small order of fries and an iced tea that tasted like it had mop water in it.  And then I walked back to my office (it is uphill both ways).

Dinner – those sweet chicken nuggets, but with peas and mushrooms as a side instead of something starchy, and not very much of either.  And no dessert.

Here’s the thing.  I’ve been reading this book that talks about morality being a necessary precursor for happiness – that one can’t be truly happy if one is acting in an immoral way.  And I know that the happiness that one gets from going to Five Guys (oh, Five Guys, how I love you, how your fat-laden hamburgers fill me, how your Cajun fries excite me, how those free peanuts and free refills stir my soul) is fleeting.  Intense!  Joyful!  But fleeting, and ultimately self-destructive, etc.

Did I mention that Five Guys has free peanuts?

Anyway.  Five Guys makes me happy.  Losing weight does not.  I have lost fifty-five pounds since I started doing Weight Watchers in 2008.  This is a good thing.  My clothes fit better (the XXXXL Eddie Bauer polo that I am wearing fits me like Gadhafi’s tent).  But I am still fat, still woefully out of shape, and (if I am going to be honest about it) I am still ashamed of who I am, fat-wise.  That’s not going to change, even if I lose fifty more pounds, even if I get down under three bills.  The amount of weight loss it will take to make me happy simply isn’t attainable today, or this week, or this year, or probably next year.  And Five Guys is just up the road in Ewing.

Breakfast – Actually had time to make breakfast, and a healthy one at that – Kashi granola cereal and milk, no juice.

Lunch – waited too long to grab lunch, so I ended up getting some junk from the convenience store – sweet tea, and pretzels, and peanut butter cookies (for the protein).  Not a good strategy.

Dinner – made a casserole out of leftover chili, with more ground beef, and cheese, and fat-free refried beans.  Didn’t eat too much of it, though, so there’s that.

Breakfast – Went to Costco over the weekend on a formula run, and picked up a big Costco-sized box of Fiber One bars (which are basically candy bars, but only have two points) and had one of those for breakfast.  Big mistake.  Because…

Lunch – when you only have a little morsel for breakfast, that makes you super-hungry for lunch (especially if said little morsel is packed with sugar).  Sweet & sour pork with sweet iced tea for lunch.  (Got the white rice instead of the fried rice, and only ate half of it, but still.)

Dinner – Brisket and cornbread, which wouldn’t have been too bad, except that because I had all that sugar earlier, I sort of needed a handful (or two, let’s be honest) of Oreos when I got home.  I don’t even want to talk about it.

Thursday – I don’t even remember Thursday, how do you like that.  I know it happened but that’s about it.  I think I had pizza at one point.  Oh, wait.  I recorded points – let’s see, way over.  Oh, yeah.  I remember now.  We were going to the ball game, but one of the babies came down with a fever, so we stayed at home and ate whatever came to hand, which was frozen bourbon-glazed chicken nuggets, and those little things are trouble.  But it was the first day over that week.

Friday.  We had a day off, but we had a sick baby that we had to lug around.  (She was fine, just a touch of fever, but enough to keep her out of day care.)  We both wanted to go to the Hillsborough Star Diner for breakfast, but the schedule and the need to keep points down interfered, so we went to the Bagelicious in the Shop-Rite center.  Sesame bagel with peanut butter, not bad.  Had to get a very quick lunch, and that meant fast food – I tried to be good and get the grilled chicken at KFC.  Never doing THAT again, never had a worse meal at any KFC ever.  Just nasty-tasting greasy miniature bites of chicken.  Ew.  Double ew.  Were able to go to the ballgame (Somerset Patriots) and got a dog and a Coke Zero, and then broke down and got some ballpark nachos.  A bit over again.

Saturday:  No breakfast that I can remember.  We schlepped to the mall and I got nachos again, this time from the BBQ place in the food court.  We ended up having a baby-related meltdown in the furniture store we went to in Green Brook, and we needed to stop somewhere and feed them, so we ended up going to a Dunkin’ Donuts.  (I was good and only got a couple donut holes and a chocolate milk.)   Got home a little late to grill anything, so ended up with baked potatoes and ribeyes cooked under the broiler, not too bad.

Sunday:  I had pretty much given up by this time on keeping track of points and whatnot.  Cooked hash browns for brunch (and stirred in the last of the horseradish cheese, extra-special-good).  Didn’t have anything after that until dinner, which was pork ribs lovingly cooked in the smoker, served with fresh pineapple.  Probably came in under points, but just barely.

Verdict:  Down two pounds (this largely from spending Sunday doing a variety of chores, not to mention lots of walking in the mall, etc.)  Still adjusting from junk-food to diet, obviously, and the even more obvious self-discipline issues.

Breakfast – skipped, no points.

Lunch – basically, made lunch instead of breakfast.  PBJ and two small bags of pretzels.  Wasn’t enough, so I got a small bag of M&Ms later (peanut M&Ms, for the protein).  17 points.

Pre-dinner – was waiting for cornbread to cook, which took forever, and had a few cookies and some pistachios.  Five points.

Dinner – homemade cornbread, with a little chili and cheese and sour cream on top.  Larrupin’.  15 points or so.

Dessert – WW mint chip cone, 2 points.  40 points overall, came in well under.  Should have had more chili.

Breakfast – peanut butter and Tabasco sandwich.  My wife caught me making this and made fun of me.  I don’t care.  It was good.  (It was the smoked chpotle Tabasco, which is my new go-to flavor enhancer.) 5 points.

Lunch – see, this is where I have to explain things.  My office is in downtown Trenton, which is (ahem) not known for its parking.  Or for anything else.  My office has three designated parking spaces for forty-some-odd people.  This is not good.  This is (how to put this) miserable.  The three parking spaces are rotated in and out, meaning that you get a space once every two or three weeks, almost always on a day that you’re not in the office.  (The rest of the time you have to park a half-mile away, uphill on a dangerous street.)  So this was my day to park, and that usually means I go out to lunch, and that’s usually somewhere really really good like Five Guys or Chevy’s, and I was thinking about doing just that, diet be hanged, but I forgot I had a 2:00 meeting and waited until 1:30 to leave and that meant Taco Bell.  25 points.  Which is a lot – but not as much as it would have been if it had been Five Guys, trust me.  And they poured me a regular Pepsi at the Taco Bell and I told them, no, I ordered a diet.  So THERE.

Dinner – baked potato topped with chili from Sunday and sour cream.  11 points.  Total was 41 altogether.  Hoo-ah.