Still on vacation. Still not really in control of my eating habits. We’re taking the kids to the movies this morning. I am going to avoid eating popcorn. This will be a triumph of my will. Wish me luck!

Update: DONE. NEXT SONG. Wow, an entire movie without popcorn or soda. When I was with 3 people who were all chowing down. And not only that, but this is the first movie theater I’ve ever been to in my entire life where they did the butter right – fill the bag up halfway, dump some butter on, shake it around, fill the bag up to the top, more butter. The perfect bag, and I was able to avoid. You know what that means? I get to have a beer for dinner!

Update 2: Ugh. Just when you’re feeling good about yourself, it all falls apart. I made it past the popcorn hump, and then I had way too much to drink at dinner + dessert. It wasn’t even like I was keeping up with the Joneses … I just get one beer in my belly and I’m like, “fuck it, it’s on.”

The plus side is that I felt awful all night long. It was the first time I had more than one drink in a week, and it felt like my throat was drowning in stomach acid. Not a pleasant picture, I know.

Breakfast
1/2 bagel w/ cream cheese, fried egg, and avocado
2 cups coffee

Mid-morning snack
1/2 an apple

Lunch
6 inch oven roasted chicken sub – Subway

Dinner
Pork chop (honestly, it’s been years since I’ve eaten pork chops, but I’m at my sister’s place and we offered to make them dinner and so we’re just making the same thing I made on day 1 of the challenge)
mixed salad
sweet potatoes
3 beers, 1 glass of wine (See? I get started, and I just don’t stop.)
1 piece strawberry shortcake w/ whipped cream

Popularity: 5% [?]

Woof. Dieting on vacation is nearly impossible.

Breakfast
1 1/2 scrambled eggs
1/2 a lemon poppy seed muffin
2 cups coffee

Lunch (at the bowling alley)
3 super nachos (3 chips + everything gross that comes on them)
3 french fries w/ ketchup and ranch dressing
1 draft beer

Afternoon snack
1/2 an apple
1/2 an orange
1 yogurt

Dinner
about 20 corn chips with salsa
7 sticks asparagus
1 ear corn w/ butter & salt
2 grilled steak tacos (homemade)

After dinner snack
1 popsicle

Popularity: 5% [?]

We woke up early this morning and flew to my sister’s place in Portland for the weekend. It’s a little tougher to stick to a diet when you’re on vacation, I discovered. But we’ll do our best. (I say, as my sister figures out what pizza toppings to get.)

Morning weight
199 pounds

Breakfast
5 AM
generic Grape Nuts with raisins & 2% milk

Plane snack
small coffee with 1/2 & 1/2
apple

9:30 AM (second breakfast! totally unnecessary)
iHop 2 X 2 X 2 (2 pancakes, 2 strips bacon, 2 eggs)

Lunch
open-faced ham & turkey sandwich w/ mayo, mustard, & cheddar cheese
handful of Trader Joe’s gorgonzola crackers

Dinner
2 slices Papa John’s pizza
2 pieces cheesy bread w/ garlicky buttery dipping sauce
a tiny bit of salad

Popularity: 5% [?]

Last night I didn’t eat a thing after dinner. And like I said in yesterday’s post, I don’t think of myself as a snacker. But man, was it difficult to stop myself from grabbing something to munch on. We watched half of The Fall, and it took everything in my power to not throw on some popcorn. It’s a healthy snack, right? But no: no eating after dinner. That is the most important rule of them all.

The Fall was okay. It looked pretty. It was directed by Tarsem Singh, the guy who directed The Cell and the “Losing My Religion” video. He certainly knows how to make good use of color. But I was having a hard time getting into the story. I have a feeling if I watched it under different conditions (stoned ones) I might enjoy it more.

I had a hard time sleeping and woke up this morning with a pit in my belly the size of an ostrich egg. Who knew that not stuffing oneself full of food at night could cause such immediate damage? There’s gotta be some reserves in there that my body’s chewing through, right?

Morning weight:
199.0 pounds (Woo-hoo! see you later, .2 pounds!)

Food consumed:

Breakfast
1 bowl of generic Grape Nuts w/ raisins & 2% milk (incidentally, what do people think about the fat free vs. Vitamin D milk debate? I am more inclined to think the closer you get to natural, probably the better it is for you. Meaning Vitamin D is the way to go, even though it seems like skim milk is better. But then, where does 1/2 & 1/2 fit into that equation? I’ve started using skim in my coffee, just to see if it makes a difference … I generally take a healthy helping of 1/2 & 1/2 (with no sugar, which is how I learned to drink coffee when I was in 7th grade band … I remember nothing about my childhood but I specifically remember the day David what’s his name and I were sitting on the stage at the high school waiting for practice to begin and he convinced me to join him in a cup of coffee … and I was like, “I don’t think we’ll both fit in that tiny cup” har har har) but I figure that in this race, every little calorie counts … I might return to it, though, if I find that I am unsatisfied with the taste of my coffee. One of our rules in the Weight Loss Challenge is: never sacrifice taste for health benefits).
1 large coffee w/ skim milk

Mid-afternoon snack
1 orange

Lunch
1 salad with olive oil & vinegar and NO CHEESE (victory!)
1 green tea

Dinner
Tropicalia grilled chicken w/ rice and beans, plantains (I didn’t eat the rice)
few bites of a salad

Exercise
1/2 hour tennis

Also, for those who would like to join in the weight loss challenge (Harmon), my friend Rosten sent me this site: http://daytum.com/, which seems awesomely geeky and useful, but I fooled around with it for about 1/2 an hour and couldn’t figure out what in the Hell I was supposed to do. So maybe at some point we can figure all that out and then everyone will have his own login and that info will just get automatically embedded on the site or something.

Popularity: 6% [?]

So. Here we are. It’s been forever since I rapped at ya’. There are a few reasons for this: 1) Awkward. I’m not doing that much work for Awkward Press, although we do have an amazing new book and movie (!) collection coming out soon. But I have to maintain the Awkward blog solely by myself, and it is just too much work for one man to maintain 2 blogs at once. 2) Work. I have actually been getting work over the last year. I don’t know when it happened, but somehow my services became valuable. I am as shocked as you. Right now, I’m in the process of ghostwriting a memoir. I can’t tell you anymore about it, because shh! I’m a ghost. 3) I had no idea what to do with this blog. I pretty much post the exact same stuff over at Awkward that I post here … sans political commentary, because, you know, don’t want to alienate anyone … so it felt like any decision I made to post on this blog instead of that blog would be strictly arbitrary.

BUT NOT ANYMORE! Because I finally figured it out. This is the blog where I can post CHALLENGES! Personal challenges. Things that I am challenging myself to do. And today, I am embarking upon a new challenge. Would you like to join me? Please do!

The first challenge is to lose the 20 pounds. It’s scary to say that out loud. But here’s the thing: I was a solid 185 pretty much my entire adult life. That still felt about 10 pounds overweight, but at least I didn’t have man-boobies. And then the 30s hit, and the scale started inching its way up. I averaged out at 190 when I was in New York, even though I drank like a fish and ate like a goat, because in New York you walk everywhere. But then I moved to Los Angeles and settled into a far more sedentary life. And I shot up to an average of 200 pounds. Which, at 5’11”, is not yet in the obese category, but is without question more than I should weigh.

Also, I’m having a baby. Well, I’m not having a baby. My wife is having a baby. This is actually the first time I’ve announced it in public. Surprise! Congratulations, us! And I figure if Sarah is having a baby and has to sacrifice drinking and doing fun things and will eventually feel compelled to lose any weight she might gain during the pregnancy (which she probably will not have to worry about because she is a beanpole), the least I can do is make a real attempt at losing the creeping pounds that I’ve been ignoring for the last 15 years of my life.

Also, I read this thing. This guy lost 60 pounds in 5 months! Just by eating sensibly! That’s the kind of weight loss regimen I can get with. Here’s the thing: I’m not a snacker. I’ll have a handful of tortilla chips or pretzels at night, but from 9-7, all I eat is breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t really eat sweets. Some ice cream once a week or something. I wouldn’t call myself a compulsive eater.

However, I do really, really like good food. When we eat out, I pretend I am on food vacation. I will eat every slice of bread in the bread basket. I will eat every scrap of food on my plate. And if it’s a special occasion, like, say, Friday, I will get a dessert. So we need to put an end to that.

And also, I really like beer. I do not have any weakness for hard alcohol. But put me in a festive environment, and I can easily plow through 8 beers without blinking. This is not something I’m proud of. And maybe putting myself up for public shame is the thing that’s going to get me to finally break my nasty habits.

Or, like many other experiments I’ve attempted in the past, I could get lazy and just stop doing it after a few weeks. We shall see. For today, anyway, I’m feeling motivated.

So here’s how I’m hoping it will work. I’ll start out by writing a little thing like this. Telling you more than you care to know about me. And then I’ll post my daily weight and the food I consumed that day. The second part will be the hardest, but it’s also the most necessary … it’s so easy to forget about that handful of Skittles unless you’re actually keeping track. I may not be writing something interesting every day, because I tend to get wrapped up in these things and then half the day will go by and I will have accomplished nothing of economic significance. But I’ll do my best.

Oh, and also, one more caveat: I’m going away this weekend and may not be able to post my results every day. So this is sort of a precursor to the real experiment. I know I need to learn how to follow the same rules when I’m out of town as I do when I’m in town, so I’m going to try my best. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Morning weight:
199.2 pounds

Food consumed:

Breakfast
1 egg white omelette w/ black olives, garlic, green onions, & feta cheese
1 cup green tea

MId-afternoon snack
1 giant cup of coffee w/ skim milk
1 tangerine

Lunch
1 Greek salad w/Greek dressing & chicken
(note: I often order this salad from El Greco, the Greek place down the street from my office. My favorite part of the meal is the 2 triangles of grilled pita bread they throw on top, which I usually dip into the leftover Greek dressing. Today, in a moment of sheer, stupid willpower, I did not eat the pita bread.)

Afternoon snack
1 banana

Dinner
1 pork chop with organic applesauce glaze (thanks, Jamie Oliver! It was delicious!)
Kale w/ raisins

Exercise
2.5 mile run

Popularity: 6% [?]