Well, here I am again. Two weeks ago I was writing about my motivation being at a new high and as quickly as it went up, it sank back down. I had an excellent week or two and basically stopped doing what made it an excellent week. I have a feeling that when I weigh in tomorrow, it isn’t going to be very excellent. I’m starting to think my motivational issues are being affected by my mood and my mood is being affected by my lack of daytime activities, among other things. The week before I had my best week, I spent 4 out of 7 days outside walking around at the fair. But the weeks following the fair, I have been swamped with work, so I haven’t really had the chance to get out much. Monday was my first real time outside in a few weeks with the exception of a few hours a week for soccer games and driving the kids around. Monday and Tuesday were better days. So, it would seem that the more time I spend outside getting fresh air and exercise, the more motivated I am to try and eat better and lose weight.
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We have had a turkey in the freezer for about 4 months. We bought it right before summer started. At the time we had planned on having some family over and were going to serve turkey dinner. We ended up doing something else and the turkey hung out in the freezer taking up space for the summer. Who wants to eat a turkey dinner in the middle of summer? With the weather getting a bit more fall like lately. Although, the past few days have been more like spring. The windows are open and the fans are running. It is beautiful outside and I am sitting inside working and not outside enjoying it. Anyway.. back to my turkey. I decided it was time to put the thing out of its misery and enjoy a turkey dinner. With thanksgiving coming up in just over a month, we decided to make the turkey a little different than what we usually do. Usually we roast it with lots of good veggies like celery and onion and carrots and packed full of homemade bread stuffing that I have been perfecting over the years. Each year it gets a little bit better. This time though, we opted to use a recipe we tried once before saving the traditional bird recipe for thanksgiving day. Yesterday’s recipe was a maple, bacon turkey. More specifically, this was a 13 pound turkey covered in two pounds of tasty bacon and smothered with a full flask of 100% pure maple syrup. Now, seeing as I am trying to lose weight, I know I’m not supposed to be eating things like this. But, sometimes you just need to say, what the hell. And I did!
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My son had the day off of school Monday so we planed a hiking trip back to red rock mountain and Ricketts Glen State Park. I was hoping that we would get to see some great sights and plenty of fall. The problem is that the weather has been so warm. The colors of fall haven’t fully set in yet. Needless to say, we didn’t see many colors, or many sights of fall. But, we did enjoy the hike. Here are some of the pictures from the hike.

The start of the Grandview Trail	A view through the trees	The fire tower on top of red rock mountain
A view from the top	The rest of the grandview trail	More from the trail out
Field of ferns	No bears, but bear poop	The Adams waterfall

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One of my favorite soups is French Onion. I have always liked it. I just try not to eat it very much. We haven’t had any for close to a year, so I decided to make some on Tuesday. It is a simple recipe, cooks up quickly and tastes great. The problem is, the fat content and even worse, the sodium content. My recipe contains:

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Here comes a rant! I have been holding back on this one for awhile. But, I have come to a point where I need to vent. It is hard enough to find decent clothes when you are built big. I can’t go down the street to the local shopping center because they just don’t have the sizes. I think there is one store locally that sells clothes and is generally way overpriced and most places just don’t sell anything over 2XL. As much as that sucks, it isn’t really a big problem. A few years ago I found a couple of places to buy from online. One being Casual Male and the other Being King Size Direct. Each one had different products that I liked. King size had some shorts and jersey knit pants that I really like wearing. They were built well and very comfortable. Casual Male sells shirts that I like as well as casual khakis. For the most part, the products from Casual Male have stayed the same. The quality is pretty good. But the stuff from King Size has had lower and lower quality each time I place an order.
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This week I weighed in at a pound more than last week, 361.8. It wasn’t a very good week overall. At least not nearly as good as the week before. Between going out to eat twice during the week and also being my wife’s birthday on Monday (had to have at least one piece of ice cream cake), I just didn’t do as well. I also haven’t been feeling my best for a few days. I feel like I have a cold coming on. Last week at this time the temperature was in the mid to high 80’s and now it is in the low to mid 50’s. A big difference and tough to adjust to. The temperature change is probably the reason I weighed in at a pound more than last week too. Last Friday I was wearing shorts and a lighter shirt and today I am wearing long pants and a heavier shirt and socks. But, whatever the reason. I need to work a little harder this week and I should see a better result next Friday. I am planning on taking my son hiking tomorrow to check out some of the sights of fall from the top of the mountain we went camping on back in August which means I will see a bit more exercise this coming week than last and hopefully a bit better weight loss.

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My son had a soccer game this morning which meant everyone getting ready and heading out quickly. We had a light breakfast and packed into the van to head off to the game. The game started at 11 and was over by noon. The games are pretty quick seeing as the kids are 6 years old. After the game was over, my son wanted to go to a local restaurant with a food bar. I didn’t really want to go, because the last time the service wasn’t all that good and the food isn’t always the best either. I also didn’t want to go seeing as how well I did last week with my eating and watching my calorie intake. But, everyone was hungry and my will power cracked… and temptation won out. We decided not to go to the first restaurant and instead went to the local Chinese buffet. Then my fat cells rejoiced. Whenever we go to the Chinese buffet, I like to mainly eat the chicken or beef dishes with vegetables but I just can’t resist some of the fried food either. Especially considering there is usually so much of it. One thing I took notice of today is how much grease is on all of the food, vegetable dishes included. My fat cells soaked it all up and said gimme more! I can’t imagine how many calories are in all of those dishes. Guess I will have to do a little less work this coming week and a little more working out and do better with my meals throughout the week. Still, there is nothing quite like the Chinese buffet for a good weekend lunch.

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Well, it has been awhile since I posted my last weigh-in. It has also been awhile since I have been this motivated. I spent the week eating healthy and eating less. I paid close attention to portion size and also made better food choices for my daily meals. Breakfast for the most part was fruit and maybe a small bowl of cereal on some days. Lunch was quick and light like my Veggie Wrap. Dinner was big enough to fill me up, but not so big that I felt like I overate. I cut out snacks except for fruit and I stayed completely away from any alcohol. I also made it a point not to eat out all week and the only liquid I drank aside from the 1% milk in the cereal I had was water. Another thing I did was not to eat past 8PM. Not even snacks this week.
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I had my previous calorie goal set to 1800 calories per day. This was based on the rule of 8 calories per pound to maintain your weight. That was to reach my overall target weight of 225 pounds. Because of the fact that I have been so hungry and the fact that I was getting discouraged more often than not, I decided to make some adjustments and instead of setting my calorie target for my goal weight, I am setting it lower in stages. My new calorie target is at 2800 calories per day, which will put me at my current short term goal weight of 350 pounds.
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I was out shopping yesterday and saw some tortilla wraps that looked good and ended up searching for something to use them for. I decided on trying to make veggie wraps. Without a specific recipe, I had no clue where to even start. I picked out some veggies I like and decided I would give it a shot for lunch today. My new lunch recipe included:

1/2 small onion
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
2 small vine ripe tomatoes
3 babby bella portabella mushrooms
3 - 10 inch tortilla wraps

I sliced the peppers, onions and mushrooms really thin and cut up the tomatoes into small chunks and set it all aside while i heated the tortillas in a small frying pan. After the tortillas were heated I set the veggies in the pan and put some wishbone fat free Italian dressing on it and cooked it just long enough for the veggies to be slightly warm and bendy. Iused a slotted spoon to let some of the juice drain off and then placed the mix on a wrap and filled up.

The recipe ingredients I used were enough for 4 wraps. I ate three of them and then finished the veggies. I was particularly hungry today. The veggies totaled about 153 calories with 9.4 grams of fiber. I used a bit too much dressing… about 5 servings worth. I need to cut back on that next time. That totaled 100 calories and the wraps totaled 300 calories and 24 grams of fiber. So I got a full belly on less than 600 low fat calories and I got close to an entire days worth of fiber in one meal. Not bad. And if you aren’t quite as hungry a I was you could probably fill up for half of that. The best part is, it was mighty tasty!

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