Northbound

Breakfast:  ran out of Rice Chex at last, switched over to Quaker Oat Bran – more fiber, less sugar.  Looks like Crispix, tastes like really mushy dried-out lawn clippings.  Ungh.

Forgot to bring blue bag home, so had to eat lunch out.  What I’m going to try to do is to go to the places I would normally go and get something different than what I would usually get.  Today, Krauzer’s convenience store across Market Street.  You can actually do OK at lots of convenience stores, but not here so much – very small space, very limited selection, big focus on candy, soda and lottery tickets.

Normally

Chocolate milk, or else a big 30 oz bottle of Nantucket Nectars cranberry juice.

Today

Diet Snapple, peach iced tea.   The best of a bad lot.

Normally

Bag of chips, preferably Bugles

Today

Pretzels.

Normally

2 Little Debbie oatmeal cream snack cakes (the big ones, because oatmeal is good for you)

Today

They didn’t have any, so I got a bag of M&Ms for later.

And that’s it for now.  No idea about dinner tonight at all, although I should have some time to work out if I’m not stuck at the office.

We pause to note that Baylor’s gift to the National Football League, Daniel Sepulveda, Hero of American Youth, is out for the year with a bad knee.  The Hated Pittsburgh Steelers will miss his mighty leg and booming kicks.

And that’s why I’m doing this.  Not for Sepulveda, or for Tiger Woods, or Terry Glenn, necessarily, but for what they represent – the season-ending knee injury.  I like my knees fine the way they are – creaky but servicable, and I have no desire to injure them any further than I already have by being this fat.  That’s part of it — that, and airline seats — but that, I think, is plenty good motivation to keep going right there.

There’s bagels in the kitchen of my office, not thirty steps away, and I am not eating them.  Period.  No matter how good they are or whether there’s cream cheese or not.  Not.

Just a little bit over my points total; I rolled the chicken I was sauteeing in potato chip crumbs – a great way to get rid of the last few tiny potato chips in the bag.  Cooked in a non-stick skillet so I wouldn’t need extra oil, so that’s good, and polished off some more of the macaroni salad on top of that.  Filled in the last few points with the Weight Watchers ice cream bar (I like the toffee, just 2 points) and called it a night.  Had to work a little longer than I wanted to, so couldn’t manage the gym trip, or else I didn’t want to.

I made my lunch today, which is a Big Step.  I hate making my lunch.  I detest brown-bagging it (actually, I have a blue bag, but still).  I dislike the process for some reason.  It is alien and weird.  And I am – pause for understatement – not a morning person, in the same way that Barack Obama is maybe a teensy little bit full of himself.

What’s in the bag:

• PBJ – Martin’s potato bread, Jif Extra Crunchy, Bonne Maman cherry preserves
• two Nature Valley granola bars
• two chocolate Weight Watchers snack cakes
• A bottle of diet Snapple (half iced tea, half lemonade, what they call an “Arnold Palmer” at the country club)

So that’s it.

UPDATE:  I have to remind myself sometimes that this process could be more humiliating – the Brit tabloids could be interested.

I like Weight Watchers just fine, but durn it if isn’t difficult being honest.  I mean, look, I did not eat all that much today.  Sure, two slices of greasy pizza isn’t that great a lunch, but I more than made up for it at dinner – cheese ravioli and tomato sauce, with fruit salad – and I’m slightly over my points total because I had two cookies when I got home, and now I can’t have any ice cream.  (I mean, I could, but I’d rather save the extra points for something else.)  Bother.

I meant to go to the gym today, really I did, but they delivered our patio furniture today (the patio isn’t built yet, it’ll take a couple of weeks) and we sat outside and enjoyed the evening, and then I had to cook, and there wasn’t time.  (Well, there was, but I didn’t make good use of it.)  Tomorrow for sure.  Or the next day.

I had an appointment upstate first thing this morning, and I was driving through Flemington when it hit me. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts in Flemington. 

This is not overly surprising – it’s the Northeast, there are Dunkins everywhere – but it was a major thing just then.  It’s like that new Colbie Calliat song they’ve been playing non-stop on XM 26 – I just realized what I just realized, and it would be perfect to get donuts, and I’d never get found out.  I could have, like, three or four donuts, and it was such a perfect, clear, wonderful vision.  It’s a drive-through Dunkin!  It’s on my side of the road!  (I used to pass three Dunkins when we lived in our last house, and I never went in any of them, because they were on the wrong side of the road, don’t you see.)

Let’s see.  Chocolate milk, yes, oh definitely, and a chocolate buttermilk donut, and a Boston Creme, and maybe a lemon-filled.  That would be so, so nice.  I could eat them on the way to my appointment, and dust the sugar off my shirt, and nobody would know anything about it.

Drove right past.  And didn’t drive through Flemington on the way back home because there’s a Chili’s there, and they have the only decent CFS in this part of the world.  Went home for lunch and had unsweetened iced tea and the last two leftover pizza slices.  And I’m not going to whine about it, either.

Weighed in this morning – 438 pounds, down six, very nice indeed.  (The last weigh-in was a big gain, caused mostly by eating Chinese food before the weigh-in, which is a very bad idea because Chinese is so salty and will get your water weight up.  I didn’t have anything at the Springsteen concert but one beer, so that wasn’t an issue this week.

That, and I spent three hours at the concert sweating like a ditchdigger, so there you go.

Nothing to report food-wise – Rice Chex for breakfast, leftovers for lunch.  Actually, the Rice Chex was kind of a big deal because we took the day off (figuring that we’d need it after the concert), and I dearly, dearly would have loved to have schlepped over to the Hillsborough Star Diner and gotten some French toast and chocolate milk, or at least to have turned on the waffle iron and made crispy delicious waffles.  But I didn’t.  Self denial isn’t easy, baby.

Polished off the last two cupcakes for breakfast (had to get rid of them somehow) and spent the rest of the morning cooking.  Broiled chicken drumsticks, macaroni salad, fruit salad, potato chips, and fresh sweet corn on the cob, yum.  Then off to East Rutherford for the Springsteen concert.

Starting with breakfast, and you will forgive a bit of circumspection here, but we had someplace to go in the morning, someplace that would normally be expected to have free bagels.  But the promised free bagels never materialized until we were walking out the door.  I had to subsist on graham crackers and was starving when we got home.

And then there was another cookout, this one sponsored by the people who are building our development, and it was a chance for people to get together and eat overcooked meat and bitch about our houses.  (Because we’re the only ones who understand each other, you see, and the ordeal that you have to go through living in a mini-mansion in the Jersey suburbs.)  Only had one tiny little hamburger and a couple of diet Cokes, and of course, that ain’t enough, so I had all these cupcakes lying around – extra batter from the cake I made the other day got turned into cupcakes, and they’re delicious, I had two.

And there’s another cookout tomorrow – actually, a cook-in because we don’t have our patio built yet and really can’t cook outside.  But we can by-God cook inside, and so we will.  Broil up some chicken drumsticks (so much more substantial than wings, and easier to manage) and make some fruit salad and basically One Big Meal tomorrow, which is not great either, but you get the idea.

Had to go to the store tonight to get all the grub for tomorrow, and there wasn’t anything we wanted to eat there, so we ended up getting takeout from Joe’s Pizza, which is just our local place but it’s good anyway.  Pretty much anywhere you go to get pizza locally in Jersey is good, as long as you stay away from the chains.  My dad was up here once from East Texas and decided to drive around and find something to eat on his own, and got as lost as you can possibly be while still staying on the American continent, but he found a good pizza place and said we had to try it.

“What’s the name of it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, where was it?”

“I was so lost I couldn’t tell you.  But it had really good pizza,  You should try it.”

“So we should try a pizza place, in Jersey, that you don’t know the name of it and don’t know where it is exactly.  That could take like three lifetimes.”

Anyway.  Had three slices (and a Dr Pepper) and still stayed within my points total for the day because I’d spent an hour mowing our scraggly lawn.  Diet and exercise, can’t beat it.

May not be time tomorrow, but I’ll be back on Monday with why Terry Glenn’s injury helps keep me focused.

Well, of course the office summer picnic was the first day of me writing about what I’m eating.  I mean, what do you expect? Of course something’s going to happen to upset things, that’s just how this sort of thing goes.  (Like starting a diet on New Year’s Day, and not accounting for all the leftover Christmas food, and the playoffs, and the cold weather, and whatnot.)

But, in a way, it’s good, because – well, the first day of training camp is supposed to suck, you’re really out there trying to earn your way onto the team, and suchlike, and you have to work harder than you have all summer.  And once you get the first day out of the way, you can sink back into your routine.  Right?  Sure, why not.

Anyway, got a burger and a hot dog and a little bit of bean salad, passed up the chips and other tempting items, and got a diet Coke.  I used to drink diet Coke by the gallon, but Coke Zero blows it away – but there wasn’t any, just diet Coke.  (At least it wasn’t Diet Pepsi, which is foul and vulgar.)  I ended up having like six diet Cokes.

It wouldn’t have been an unreasonable lunch if I’d stopped right there, but I didn’t – I got a taco and a handful of Utz potato chips, and then a slice of pineapple cake.  I would have abstained from the pineapple cake if it were not for the fact that – um – I made it myself.  Recipe?  Sure:

2 boxes store-brand yellow cake mix
2 boxes instant vanilla pudding
1 can Coco Lopez cream of coconut
6 eggs
2/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup milk
8 fresh pineapple rings
8 marischiano cherries
1 bag shredded coconut
1/2 bag crushed pecans

Grease a large aluminum cake pan. Arrange pineapple rings at bottom of pan, and put a cherry in the center of each ring.  Cover with coconut and pecans.  Mix remaining ingredients until you get a smooth batter, then pour over pineapple rings.  Bake in 375-degree oven for an hour or so, depending on the size of your cake pan (you’ll need a good-sized one).

So, not my best lunch day, but hey, it’s the office picnic, what are you going to do?  There was plenty more dessert, and lots of real Cokes and sugary iced tea and other attractions, and I stayed pretty much away from most of it, so there’s that.  Not a great first day, but we’re working on it.

As far as exercise goes, I’m sitting here blogging waiting for the window-treatment guy to show up; when he fixes the one busted blind that we have, I can go to the gym and tell you all about that.  Beats two-a-days, anyway.  UPDATE:  The blind guy got stuck in shore traffic coming back from Staten Island and I ended up writing a droll little apocalyptic piece for McSweeney’s instead, which they will doubtlessly find to be too weird to publish.  First-day-back-at-the-gym piece to follow.