Pigs Fly – Day 3

Thursday, July 7, 2016 

272.

I’ve lost 6 pounds in 2 days.

I’m still not impressed. This was the easy weight. I had been hovering around 272 for weeks despite what I ate or didn’t and only zoomed up to 278 after a pre-holiday binge-fest with 2 lavish lunches at work (one served fresh and one just as large of the leftovers the next day) and then the long weekend where I sketched out some skeleton of  plan for a diet in the future while I gorged in the present.

It’s the coming days that are going to prove to be difficult compared to the past 2 – they were easy. Old habits that won’t go quietly gain strength under the waterline as I delude myself that ‘progress’ has been made – when I’m really back where I started. I can’t continue to lose 3 pounds per day and as much as I might intellectualize that, a stubborn number on the scale refusing to move despite my best efforts will help to aid the sublimated urges for eating whatever I want, whenever I want, most likely concluding in a small cheat that quickly unravels into a diet death-spiral that leads me back to the point right before I started.

I have to recognize this as my probable fate if I have *any* hope to avoid it. Even knowing this, the chances are thin. Ironic rebound – the notion that ‘I got this’ that lulls you into a false sense of confidence right before the old demons arise in unison and retake the fortress – is a bitch that I have to recognize in order to have any chance of succeeding at all.

Blather aside, my day started hot. Yesterday’s heat was dry – today the humidity would reach tropical levels and the temp would remain high. I got stuck in traffic on the way to work and tried to enjoy the early morning sauna in my car – figuring a positive attitude might help prevent me passing out.

Work included coffee and a shake in the morning – and I did notice feeling weird around noon. No headaches – just weird. The afternoon flew by somehow and around 3pm I skulked into the kitchen and went to the back to eat one of the things I stocked my drawer with as healthy choices – a can of Wild Planet Sardines in Marinara Sauce. I feel like a pariah eating this in public. I don’t usually care what people think, but I have enough eccentricities – I don’t want to add sardine-eating to the list.

I added it to my Loseit calorie tracker and scanned the bar code for the nutrient info. Of course it was wrong. First, the can contains 2.5 servings – like 2.5 people are going to huddle around the can and share it. I wish manufacturers would stop this.

Then the person that had entered the info only multiplied the calories by 2.5 and left the rest of the nutrients at the single-serving numbers, so I had to edit it and calculate the numbers in my head.

the Loseit! app is calorie focused – they even took out fiber tallies in their daily nutrient summary so I have a tough time calculating net carbs – and I’m not surprised some doofus entered the calories right and everything else wrong.

I again had a big drink of water before the ride home. It was still 95 degrees but the ride was not as bad as the day before. I seem to be acclimating to the heat.

I won’t say I didn’t enjoy the AC at home. It’s been acting weird itself lately and I’m thankful every day it works.

I was asked to pick up PF Chang’s on the way home and came in with a large bag of ribs, noodles, and fried tofu with broccoli.

I had water and finished up the Dan Brown novel ‘Inferno’.

Later, with little ceremony, I had maybe 5 ounces of hamburger with regular ketchup and onion as well as a hot dog with mustard. These were from the July 4th BBQ and I ate them cold.

I know I’ve grossed a lot of you out right there – but remember the phrase ‘food fast’ I bandied about on Day 1? This kind of embraces my notions behind that. Of course the burger and dog would taste better warmed up – but the more palatable the food, the more you want to eat. It’s easier to take in fewer calories when the food tastes just OK. It’s the same deal with the sardines. They’re OK, but I will never be caught binging on 5 or 6 cans of the stuff at one sitting.

I’ve heard of a notion called ‘hyperpalatable’ – modern manufactured foods that are intensively tested on focus group over and over can create foods that can literally bypass our higher thought processes by appealing to so many different hedonistic receptors in your brain that you conscious mind is overruled as naked desire overtakes logic and control.

This above pseudoscientific psychobabble is bullshit – but it passes the test of feeling close enough to what’s going on that I can use it as a working truth in lieu of the actual truth – which may never be known. There’s a term for this as well as an entire book on this: ‘True Enough‘.

Anyway, before bed I had an Atkins shake and a taste of the fried tofu and broccoli. No big deal.

My approximate tally for the day was maybe 1,300 calories, 70 grams of fat, less than 30 grams of net carbs, and over 100 grams of protein. I think I need to up my calorie intake slowly from here – it hasn’t been some intolerable deprivation to live this low in calories for the past 3 days, but I don’t think it’s healthy to do for more than a few days at a time.