If You Can't Eat Good, At Least Be a Good Eater

Well, we knew they weren't all gonna be winners.

This was my first week with no forward progress, and now it's about how well I weather the storm.

I didn't fall off the wagon or anything - I just didn't go about things with my previous gusto. Made it to the gym a few times and never consumed an entire pig in one bite, but I was definitely a member of the Clean Plate Club, and got a few cases of the shacks. (This is when you get so snacky that you develop the shakes.)

I've won more of these than Michael Phelps has won Olympic medals.

I've got roughly one week before I'm home for Christmas, and I'm determined to make it a good one. Because as hard as I'm going to try not to go overboard on cookies, let's be honest. You don't send a sex addict into a brothel and expect him to come out with a hard-on.

Where I have been making progress is on the book front. I got my query letter written, received feedback from a number of friends and did a few rewrites. Downloaded and watched a couple of 2-hour webinars on obtaining literary representation, and actually took copious notes. Also got a start on my synopsis, and am looking into attending the SDSU Writers' Conference in San Diego next month. See? I told you I was going to make a million dollars in 2017.

I've generally been on the ball. Got all my Christmas shopping done, took care of a bunch of bills and other nasty-looking paperwork I'd been eyeing warily and hoping would go away on its own for the past month.

I could be sleeping better. If it's not an uncomfortable sleeping position, it's the temperature in the room. If it's not the temperature in the room, it's a cat crawling on my face. If it's not a cat crawling on my face...well, okay, there's always a cat crawling on my face. Point is, I need to figure it out, because four hours a night ain't cutting it. Because then when I get up, I'm exhausted, and I'm unmotivated, and I have to spend at least five minutes cleaning litter out of my eyebrows.

Okay. I'm going to the gym right now, and I'm not leaving until I'm a supermodel.

Day 28 weight: x - 6.7 lbs

Target Practice

Down seven pounds in three weeks. I would take that pace for the next five months.

So yeah, getting there, slowly but surely. There were no nasty, food-centric holidays threatening to derail me this week, so that was nice. Ate a few salads, limited snacking to foods in the "fruits and vegetables" portion of the pyramid, and got my butt to the gym five out of the last seven days. Canceled my subscription to the "Seven Layer Cake of the Month Club." All signs of progress.

Christmas is a-coming, of course, so A) I have to make sure I've dropped considerable poundage before going home, in anticipation of the calorie tsunami that's about to hit, and B) I have to resolve, once I am hope, to reduce that tsunami to a ripple. Hm. The word "ripple" just made me think of "fudge ripple." I still have a lot of work to do, huh?

Remember a few weeks ago, when I said I deleted all games from my phone? Well, I've added some new ones. I'm sorry. I tried. But I need something that allows me to avoid an excess of human contact in social situations. I can't be expected to engage 100% of the time. Once in a while, you people just need to leave me alone so I can work on my archery skills.

I'm sure successful, prolific authors do a lot of this.

I met with a writer friend of mine to talk shop, and that was productive. Got some advice on queries and synopses, conferences to attend, publications to subscribe to, etc. I'll be getting my book back from my editor in about a month, so I want to be prepared by then to start submitting soon afterward. My early New Year's resolution is to receive enough rejection letters in 2017 to wallpaper at least one room of my house.

The meditation thing isn't going great. I may not be the meditating type. I do, however, want to work on sitting down for a couple minutes every morning and writing out everything I want to accomplish that day. Having stuff in writing always seems to help. Just look at the success I'm having with weight loss since I started blogging again. All good fodder for my future book: How to Bullshit Your Way to a Healthy Weight. 

All right. Let's hit that 10-pound mark next week, shall we?


Day 21 weight: x - 7.0 lbs

The Leftovers

I'm down another pound, y'all. Normally, that wouldn't be too exciting, but since my last post there was freakin' THANKSGIVING, followed by The Week of Leftovers. So I'm counting it as a major win.

But seriously, you've never seen so much food:

Two turkeys
Three baking dishes full of mac n' cheese
Two trays of regular stuffing
One tray of cornbread stuffing
Multiple muffin tins full of stuffing in ball form
Three different types of cranberry sauce
A rice dish
Salad, for some reason
Sweet potatoes and marshmallow
Mashed potatoes
Green beans
Cauliflower mashers
Brussels sprouts
Spinach lasagna (one of the Pilgrims' little known favorites)
Rolls
More rolls
Corn casserole
Roughly twenty pies
Pumpkin roll
Pumpkin loaf
Chocolate-covered peanut butter balls
And, oh, I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

So, even though we had 25 people at our place on Turkey Day, there were still plenty of leftovers to tease and tempt me for the remainder of the week. And it didn't help that one of our friends - THANKS, HOLLY - decided that what the world really needed was for there to be a day after Thanksgiving where we all get together and EAT MORE FOOD. Just for that, I'm instituting a new holiday immediately following Valentine's Day where we all have to love people for an extra 24 hours. Karma's a b-word.

But, while I certainly didn't eat like a bird, I behaved as well as can reasonably be imagined. I took small portions of everything, and only helped myself to seconds of a few items (not the Brussels sprouts, in case you were wondering). I did a pretty decent job of not filling up before dinner, nor mindlessly snacking afterward. In the days since, I've controlled my leftover intake, and actually ended up tossing quite a bit of it for the first time in recorded history.

My plan was to get to the gym a couple times over the long weekend, and...that didn't happen. It was honestly because of a packed schedule more than a lack of motivation, as evidenced by the fact that I've gone every day so far this week. And I've been kicking my butt more than usual. I keep forgetting to bring a towel, though, so my apologies to whoever used that rowing machine after me.

In other lard-discarding news, I got myself an editor for my novel, and she's already on the job. Should have a final, submission-ready draft ready by the second week of January. In the meantime, I'm meeting with a writer friend to pick his brain about query letters, synopses, etc., and welcome any other advice (preferably from someone who knows what they're talking about). I'm not writing anything new until I've sold this son-of-a-gun. It's gonna happen.

Fortunately, there is nothing else coming around the bend to tempt me food-wise, so - GOOD GOD, IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS. Well, shit. Fingers crossed I spend more time this month dreaming about sugarplums than eating them.


Starting weight: x lbs
Day 14 weight: x - 4.3 lbs
Total loss: 4.3 lbs