Day 1: Does Gum Count?

morning weigh-in - 153.4 lbs.

I'm not much of a breakfast person on work days, partly because I leave the house too early, but mainly because I'm too lazy. So the first entry in my little pocket notebook will often be:

gum, 1 piece

I wasn't sure at first if I should even bother, but then looking at the package I notice in the — ahem — nutritional information, that one piece of gum is five calories. Now I don't know if that's five calories just from chewing it or if they assume you'll swallow it eventually. But there you go.

Later in the morning I had a medium black Tim Horton's coffee to go. When I say "to go," I mean that soon after my last sip I'll be searching for the nearest bathroom. But that's another whole blog for another day.

After finishing work I consumed a 12 oz. bottle of water while on the treadmill at the gym. Oh, didn't I mention the gym? I joined in February mainly for cardio exercise. While there I tend to look around a lot at the guys over in the weight-lifting end of the room and think to myself "That looks like a lot of work. They'd have to pay me to do that."

Finally got home around 1 p.m. and actually ate some real food. I started writing in the notebook:

one used pork chop

then realized it wasn't used, it was left-over from the night before. I ate it naked. Not me, the pork chop, naked is my own euphemism for no knife, no fork, no plate. Also had a Tops Fruit-On-the-Bottom yogurt, 8 oz. container, cherry. You may notice as the summer wears on that cherry is one of my favorite flavors.

Seeing that yesterday was Friday, it was spent, as are most Fridays, downtown with friends. The 2-for-1 special at the Statler City lobby bar was still in effect, so I happily downed a couple of pints of Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, a lemonade-flavored beer (yeah, I know, but I'm not a beer snob). Then we headed over to The Old House Downtown a block away, where a recurring cast of friends enjoyed a bring-your-own style buffet featuring Howard's machine-made whole wheat bread, along with the ham which he single-handedly unspiraled, Mary's greens-n-beans crock-pot dish, some really sharp Romano cheese, Ryan's store-bought peanut butter brownies (we cut him some slack here, as he's admirably taking the summer off from cooking), and our own cabbage-free cole slaw. We won't go into portion details here — suffice it to say when I eat a meal it's a regular-sized meal. That said, I had two brownies. And a can of Diet Pepsi Lime. Hey, summer is supposed to be citrus-y.

Upon returning home later in the evening, I refrained from eating anything, mainly because of the stupid notebook. (It's working already!) I did have another 12 oz. glass of water before bed though. And then dreamt about eating — which is calorie-free.