The Barrier, Part 2

One week ago our intrepid hero was still frustrated by his inability to get past The Barrier. Foiled once again by his arch nemesis, Charlie was seriously thinking about drowning his troubles in an eighteen inch, thin crust, pepperonly pizza. I mean, just look at three weeks of hard work:

Since I’m sure you’re all wondering where things went from there, please, come follow me as I now relive this past week:

Monday. I step on the scale this morning. It reads 202.5. Astute readers will realize this is two full pounds over yesterday’s official weekly weigh in and right next to the scary green clouds on the graph again. Boing! Right off The Barrier again. Frustrated, I immediately make up my mind to finally give the low-carb lifestyle another go. At lunch, my new, low-carb lifestyle comes to an abrupt halt in a giant bowl of Nong Shim noodles.

Tuesday. I step on the scale this morning. It reads 201.5. Wow! Maybe the new low-carb, high-noodle diet I invented yesterday is worth examining. I dropped a whole pound.

Wednesday. I step on the scale this morning. It reads 200.0. Oh man, oh man! I hit it again! This only happened once before: on February 4th. Could this be it? Am I going to hit my goal?

Fast forward about eight hours. I’m now at work and being presented with cake. (See Jess? You were right. It showed up on the blog.) Mmmm. The cake looks so good. I’ll just have one piece. Or two. Or three plus a cookie. Dangit! Oh well, hopefully this won’t hurt me tomorrow morning.

Thursday. I step on the scale this morning. It reads 202.5. Again. Just like Monday. *sigh*. Gee, didn’t see that coming. The Barrier wins. Again.

Friday. I step on the scale this morning. It reads 199.5. Dang it! I knew I’d blow it ag… wait a minute. WHAT’D THAT SAY? Did that scale just say 199.5?! In disbelief, I step back on. This time it reads 200.0. GRRRR! It’s The Barrier! It’s taunting me! It knows. I pace around the bathroom a couple times. What to do? Do I get on again? Do I let it go? I finally decide to give it another go and this time I get a camera, just in case. I get back on the scale. It now reads 200.5. GRRRR! How on earth—? Oh, wait a minute. I’m still holding the camera! I put the camera down, get back on the scale and THIS time it reads 199.0. You have got to be flipping kidding me! Now, thoroughly perplexed, I get on one last time. It reads 199.5. Stop it, stop it. End the torture. Get off while you can.

I decide to record 199.5 as the official weight for the day. I was hoping to cross The Barrier with something a bit more clear-cut than this, but I’ll take what I can get. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s Friday. I still have all day Friday and all day Saturday before the official weekly weigh-in Sunday morning. Those are traditionally my worst days.

True to form, I go to Austin Pizza Garden for dinner Friday evening. The good news is I order a Caesar salad and I don’t eat a single slice of pizza. The bad news is, it’s a fourteen-pound salad. The even more bad news is I drink about five beers. That’s probably more than I had in all of 2008.

Saturday. With fear and trepidation, I step on the scale this morning. It reads 198.5. Talk about dodging a bullet! Granted, it’s a couple hours later in the day than my normal weigh in, so I gave myself a few extra hours to lose weight, but still! This is not only less than yesterday, but clearly counts as Two Days in Onederland. But it’s still not official until Sunday, and Saturdays are always bad. I’ve gained three pounds overnight before. It’s bound to happen again.

Sunday. With yesterday’s fear and trepidation still lingering, I step on the scale this morning. Believe it or not, it reads 198.5 again. That’s good enough for me, this is not a fluke. I have definitely crossed the threshold. The Barrier, dare I say, HAS BEEN BROKEN. Take a look:

Of course, I’m not officially in Onederland. As I’ve said before, I must have eight straight days at or below 199.5 for it to count. But this feels good. I really think this is it.

Here’s the usual weekly stat table. I’m now down 25.5 pounds and as you can see, I only have 9.5 pounds to go. Wait a minute! Nine and a half pounds to go? What’s he talking about? Well, as I’ve been fond of pointing out, Onederland is just the first stop on this train. Weighing in the upper 190s is still a good thirty pounds more than what I weighed just eight years ago. I’m under no delusion that I’m going to drop another thirty. But I can drop another ten: so that’s the next goal: 189.0.

Before I go, Mr. Realist has one more chart for you. Before you all applaud and congratulate me (or worse, ask So how’d you do it?!), take a look at my daily caloric intake:

To say that this was a low calorie week is an understatement. Even though I ate all that cake on Wednesday, I didn’t eat much before that and I didn’t eat anything after it. And Friday, the day I ate the giant salad and drank a bucket of beer—even that day was still about 300 calories below my base rate. As you can see, a couple of days were very close to 1,000 calories.

I’d love to say I’ve lost all this weight eating carrots and running on the treadmill, but I did it eating cake and drinking beer. Once again, if you’re looking for a role model, please turn elsewhere. I hate saying that, in an area desperate for inspiration, but I can’t advocate this.

So why are the numbers so low? Well, in a word, I’m busy. I’ve really been too busy to eat my usual meals. And then when it did come time to eat, by the latter half of the week, all I could think of was The Barrier. I couldn’t go another week without crossing it. This is why I had a salad instead of pizza. But it’s also why I didn’t anything on Saturday until around one o’clock.

So I’m hoping to get this silly goal behind me once and for all and to just do things right for once. I owe it to y’all, my fan club—but mostly I just owe it to myself.

Then Mondays can be funny posts again.