Diet was not going so great.
It's kind of hard to diet when everyone around you is eating whatever, whenever, however. In other words, dinner is a lot of high calorie, fat laden greasy stuff that tastes wonderful but in no way, shape or form is anything even remotely associated with the term "losing weight".
So, we discussed going on some sort of diet weeks ago. Maybe months actually. You see, I'm just getting fatter and fatter and I am literally disgusted with myself. I haven't ever been this fat, ever. I'm a good 35 pounds over weight, but if you go by my most-of-my-life-adult-weight, it's more like 40.
I never thought I'd even have an issue with weight considering my entire life up until just a few years ago I was in pretty good shape weight wise and fat wise.
The thing is, at least for me, the Feds have this fat program, I call it that anyway, they call it body mass index, for truck drivers. Go over a certain amount and you are disqualified. Or you have to jump through hoops to stay qualified temporarily, I think, while you deal with it.
Trucking is mostly a very sedentary lifestyle. Unless you are doing flatbeds or some sort of version of it that gets you out of the truck and doing physical work, you are likely going to get fat unless you really adopt a disciplined lifestyle, something I have struggled with in recent times. I mean, you are on duty for 14 hours and driving for 11 of those, getting out of the truck and doing much of anything after a day that long isn't really the first thought. The first thought is get something to eat, brush your teeth and go to sleep if it's late, which many times it is.
The last trip was a prime example of that. Late load - 12:30 pm at the plant, always means a late night end. In that case, it was 2:00 am, or just a few minutes before, before I got done with the "day". I didn't eat tho, I just went to sleep. The next night I was done at 11:00 and didn't get home until after midnight. Again, I didn't eat, but still, it's just an example of the hours. Tomorrow morning will be reversed, get up at 3:00 am but means I can't work later than 6:30 pm. It's actually optimal the first load, it's just that I feel like crap all day long because I never get enough sleep that night. Going to bed at 7:00pm just doesn't work for me. 9:00 at the earliest and then, I always have difficulty sleeping on this early rise nights - I don't know why, I can't explain it, it just happens that way almost every time.
Anyway, there was a point not all that long ago where the fat accumulation seemed to multiply at an exponential rate. No increased eating of junk or sweets, no change in eating habit at all. That was mystifying, but it's not like I was trying to do anything about it, either.
Anyway, I pushed the issue for starting this weekend. Money issues and such came up, no thanks, I'll buy all of it, I don't care about spending a few dollars on getting myself to a healthy weight again and I certainly like the idea of doing it with other people for accountability. She needs to lose at least 50 pounds according to her, he doesn't really need to go on this diet at all - he has a very physically demanding job - but she basically pushed him into it. I mean, what were we going to do, make 2 different meals at dinner time? Nahh bro, we can't do that. Not like the food we are going to be eating is nasty, just a lot of prep time and advance thinking for what you are going to eat for dinners and lunches.
Tomorrow? We haven't got that far yet. But they have frozen meals made for this kind of diet. My truck has a small freezer and I can get a small microwave. The truck has a 3,000 watt inverter, easy enough to plug it in, heat up my food and be done with it. But I'm going to have to have some sort of nibbling food. I mostly don't eat that much while driving, but here and there I feel hunger pangs, having something - anything really - in hand's reach is what I need that works with this diet.
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We're full fledged going into this now. I went with Taylor to Kroger's and we spent 2 hours in there. Taylor is an extremely organized person that looks stuff up and prints stuff out in advance. The entire week's worth of dinners are going to be made - today. It was a chunk of change spotted to get this started, but if it works, it's money well spent It's a version of the Adkinson diet - a keto diet - where you're eating almost no carbs/sugars. I'm not trying to get into eating a bunch of fat either tho. Anyway, we spent over 2 hours walking up and down the grocery aisle looking for everything that we need.
Of course, once we got home, we found out we don't have everything we need. So, put the boys to bed, I said I'm not going anywhere, they left to Walmart to get other stuff we don't have. I also need a small microwave for the truck that they are going to pick up. I'll have 2 days worth of eating in advance, put it in the truck refrigerator and have the microwave to heat the stuff up, avoid truckstop food altogether and get this thing rolling. I"m all in on this. ALL in. I'm tired of this incredible fat gain and willing to do just about anything to get this nonsense reversed.
It's just wonderful that there are 2 other people living in the same household doing it as well. We can crank on each other if there are "failing" moments. I guess I could get away with whatever on the road, but I'm really committed to doing this and getting this done.
So this is consuming the entire day. First cleaning up yesterday's mess -- I don't like that kind of stuff but I tolerate it cause' this ain't my house and I want to stay at peace with everyone - but I cleaned all of it up when we got back from the grocer's, got the dishwasher cranking and then got started on putting everything up. I didn't do the putting stuff up alone tho and she is definitely putting out to get this going too. She has her own weight loss issues that have crept up on her over time.
My God I'm up to 225 pounds. I just weighed myself a few weeks ago at 222. This is insanity. Like someone said hey, let's dump a bunch of fat on this dude and just let it accelerate at a ridiculous rate! Note again: I haven't changed any of my eating habits, but the weight accumulation has accelerated exponentially in just a month's time? What the heck. That just motivates me even more.
NO.
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We spent the entire day with the beginning of this project. The beginning meaning a rather large spot of money on food, cooking, bagging/prepping/putting into containers, cleaning dishes - we're on our 3rd trash bag full and second load of dishes not to mention those that are cleaned by hand - and getting this ready to roll. I'm set for the two days out on the road. If I have to go a 3rd day, I have enough snacks allowed by the diet to keep me eating. This isn't a starvation diet. You eat, you just don't eat carbs/sugars. It cuts out a lot of different types of food but it also cuts caloric intake per day significantly.
If anything experts agree on - consume less calories than you are expending. I will up my workouts and force myself to do a minimal amount of exercise even if I have driven all day and don't feel like it. This isn't an instant thing. I don't expect that. I do expect to see some kind of results after the first week, but I know I'm not going to lose the amount of weight I want to in a few weeks. Try 6 months. Maybe more.
