Food is expensive

After spending 550 NIS on getting my stupid exterminator spayed, all I can afford for dinner is Rami Levy brand cornflakes (without milk).

Eating a healthy diet is an elusive pipe dream.

Murder

Screw healthy eating. This calls for cookies.

Food orgy

What a feast I had today!

Breakfast: branflakes, coffee with milk, and later on I had ארוחת עשר which was 3 whole wheat Lachmit crackers with white Ski cheese. And then another three. And then another three. You see, I had to polish off the whole mini tub of cheese because it didn't have a reusable lid (sorta like a yogurt type container), so I needed the crackers on which to spread it.

Lunch: salad with tuna and dressing. Half a clementine swiped from a colleague.

Afternoon snack: A clementine of my own, some coffee with milk, and three more crackers.

Dinner: here's where it gets interesting. I defrosted tuna steaks, but then the kids didn't finish their toasts so I had to eat their leftovers in order to avoid throwing it out. All together appx three slices of bread with two slices of cheese. Then I had a chocolate chip cookie that Noam and Yael made. And then another one. And another. And yet another. Four in total (to be fair, they were tiny - about the size of a quarter).

So now what, I'm going to throw away the tuna steak? Of course not. I grilled it and ate that too. And it was delicious.

But wait, that's not all!

Later I went to a shiur where I ate an almond, 2 or 3 strawberries, 5 cashews, and about 5 chocolate covered "kariot".

The positive side of things:

1. I refrained from eating the really delicious looking pastries at Kollel this morning. 
2. I refrained from eating cake at our weekly coffee and cake hour at work. 
3. I met my exercise target. 1h19m today. 

Hungry and tired.

Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday. Let me make it up to you with a Far Side:

Now that that's out of the way, let's discuss what I shoved into my face yesterday.

Breakfast: too many handfuls of cornflakes, followed by branflakes. Coffee with milk (twice during the course of the morning).

Lunch: Salad with vegetables, legumes, tuna and I cheated by slopping some Thousand Islands dressing onto it.

Dinner: On my way home from work, I went shopping on an empty stomach. I was starving, so I got a rice cake snack thingie. It took a helluva lot of willpower not to get the awesome peanut butter pretzels that were still staring me in the face.
I had Yael defrost a chicken breast, but by the time I got home I didn't have koach to start grilling it. I really didn't feel like mayonnaise-less tuna, so I got all pissed off that there was nothing for me to eat and ran upstairs in a huff.
Ultimately at around 22:00 I got really hungry so I came back down and had three "lite" pitot (88 calories each) with hummus and lettuce.

The good news is I managed to meet my exercise targets.

This blog is getting boring. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell a joke. Tell me in the comments, dear reader, what kind of joke would you like to hear?

Shabbat of Obesity

Shavua Tov.

The weekend was very challenging. In addition to not moving my body nearly as much as I have been during the week, I enjoyed food that will eventually kill me:

• Cookies 
• Cake (and the batter thereof) 
• Mini Eclairs (so delicious that I had two!) 
• Peanut butter chocolate square 
• Challah

For Melaveh Malka we pulled some lamb out of the freezer (leftovers from sukkot). I burned it on the barbecue and ate it like a cannibal.

The above all outweigh the accomplishments:
1. I cut the challah paper-thin;
2. I took the time to make salad with tuna for Friday lunch, rather than eating whatever junk I could slap together quickly.

Weight gained in one day: 1 kg.
Way to go!

A Very Healthy Pee

Good day.

I decided to go ahead and up my exercise target to one hour of "being active". The Google Fit results speak for themselves:

Here's an interesting "hack" I figured out: I work in a 4 story building that is very long (appx. 200m from end to end) (appx. 656.168 feet). This morning at 9:14 I had to pee, and instead of going to the bathroom right next to my office, I went upstairs to the first floor, and walked to the far end of the corridor. Then when I finished my physiological business I walked up to the second floor, walked all the way to the other end of the corridor, up to the third floor, back to the other end, and so forth. The end result was that I walked 1 km without leaving my building! All during the course of a bathroom break.

Breakfast

Sugar free branflakes, coffee with milk.

Sugar free candies.

Lunch

Salad with chicken breast, olive oil.

Sugar free candies.

Dinner

Vegetable soup.

Then I had a Paamonim meeting at this family's house, and the wife offered me some freshly baked babka. It would have been rude to decline.

Now, what are we going to do about Shabbat?? It's my day of rest and food. I hate having to limit my Oneg Shabbos. Ideas?

Wednesday

Let's carry on as if yesterday's post never happened.

Exercise

So here's the interesting thing: getting a little bit of exercise is not as challenging as it sounds.

Have you heard of Google Fit? It's this really neat app that somehow magically measures all of your activity throughout the day. My initial impression is that it does so with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy, and without killing your battery life. That's Google for ya.

I started using it yesterday, when I set a goal to spend 20 minutes being active (i.e. walking). As it happened, I finished the day with 47 active minutes without even trying very hard.

So today I set a goal of 40 minutes, and at the end of the day here are the stats:

• 96 minutes active
• 4.6 km walked
• 8,711 steps taken
• 2,487 calories burned (709 of which from walking)

It really wasn't so hard; much of it was accomplished going to a meeting at CAAI headquarters,

after which I popped into the supermarket for a few things.

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Diet

No commentary; I'm just going to leave this here and let you be the judge.

 Breakfast

• Sugar free branflakes

Lunch

Salad - vegetables, tuna, potato cubes, tehina

 Snacks

1. Olives, pickles
2. 3 sugar free sucking candies
3. Clementine

Dinner

• 200 g chickenbreastburger in a pita, with tomatoes, ketchup and mayonnaise.
• Three cookies

I Surrender.

Exercise

The good news is, I took a roundabout route to my car, which I had parked at the far end of the far parking lot.

Diet

The bad news is that when I got home, I was starving, and there was a delicious smell of pancakes wafting through the air. I quickly consumed two small pancakes:

Then I was still hungry of course, and since I'll die of obesity if I just slap a sandwich together like a normal human being, I had no choice but to start taking a chicken breast out of the freezer and cooking it. I then proceeded to spend the next hour cooking a chicken breast and a baked sweet potato.

This is not a sustainable lifestyle. I do not have time or money for this.

Given the above, I might as well call it quits now. Why waste all the effort into being disciplined for the next week or two or three, when I know that there is absolutely no way I can maintain this kind of lifestyle in the long (or even medium) run?

I guess we'll have to come up with a new theme for the blog. Blogger's gonna blog.

In conclusion, let me quote Gary Larson's written word instead of his visual art:

"'Off days' are a part of life, whether you're a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller."

Exercise and Happiness

Good morning, Buckaroos!

Time for another day of being healthy. Uch.

Breakfast

This morning I had 1.5 handfuls of dry sugar-free Branflakes. That was followed by a cup of coffee with milk.
Weight gained: 46 grams.

Then, my son failed to finish his cornflakes so I had to eat them rather than throw them out. Luckily it was only 15-20 flakes.

To take to work, I put some bagged salad in a plastic container with a blob of Cottage and some pepper on it.

Thus, a bag of salad that cost 10.90 NIS lasted only two meals. Clearly not sustainable.

Exercise

Yesterday I went to the doctor and he said that I should exercise (big surprise). This is an argument we have often. He told me, "Stop thinking of exercise as a Jane Fonda workout video or something that requires putting on shorts and sneakers, and think baby steps - just adding a little activity to your day for starters."

Interesting.

Then my evil step mother (just kidding, she's not evil) (or is she? trying to get me to exercise...) forwarded me some articles with similar advice, and pointed out that when I say that I don't have time to exercise, it's just an excuse. And while it's true that I don't have 10 free minutes a day, I guess if my life depended on it I could find the time, and taking that logic a step further - my life does depend on it. Besides, I am writing this blog post, aren't I? That's time I could have spent exercising.

So I hereby resolve בלי נדר to start with the following baby steps, weather and time permitting:

1. To park at the far end of the parking lot at work; and
2. To take a more "scenic" route from the cafeteria back to my office. Maybe take a brisk stroll around the tarmac for a couple of minutes and look at some airplanes while I'm at it.

משנכס אדר מרבין בשמחה!

Chodesh Tov! The Simcha of Adar, Purim, and Pesach (don't talk to me about Pesach!!) mostly revolves around food. That is in fact one of the things that always ruins my attempts at weight loss: Holidays. I can spend months putting in tremendous effort to lose weight and then gain it all back over one day of Yom Tov.

Any ideas how to experience שמחת יום טוב without בשר, יין, ואזני המן? Let me know in your comments below.

Day One Wrapup: I hate this blog.

For dinner I had more salad consisting of:

• Tuna with mayonnaise
• Lettuce
• Cabbage
• Carrot
• Tomato

And also some sardines.

I'm not going to lie. I'm still hungry.

To make matters worse, I saw these Pretzel Sandwiches "filled with creamy goodness" of peanut butter. If it weren't for this stupid blog I would have downed a whole bag. I hate this blog. :(

 

To sum up day one of being super careful about what I eat and blogging, I'm feeling hungry and pessimistic. This is not how I want to live my life. I want to be able to eat chicken and rice, let alone  pretzel sandwiches.

See you tomorrow.

Clementine

16:06. The hunger is back.
I'm going to eat a clementine. Let's hope it's a good one!

Lunch

Dear Readers,

Your outpouring of support and comments has been absolutely heartwarming! Keep it coming!

Despite this morning's branflakes, I arrived at lunchtime very hungry. Here's what I had:

1. Bowl of vegetable-barley soup

2. Salad consisting of:

• Cucumber
• Red pepper
• Carrot
• Olives
• Sprouts
• Peas
• Tomato
• Tuna
• An egg
• Tehina
• Hot sauce
• 
  

Great news! I'm not hungry anymore! In fact I'm feeling stuffed and ready for a nap.

Weight gained at lunch: 1kg

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTICE:

I have made an executive decision to refrain from reporting calorie-free beverages such as water and coffee. Let me know in the comments if you disagree with this policy and why.

Another prominent feature in popular blogs is cute pictures of kittens, so here it is.

Far Side

One of the things that makes a good blog great is the use of Far Side cartoons. So here goes.

Failure.

I had another handful of branflakes. 😨
What, I was hungry!

I swear, this just happened!

I got into an elevator and it started buzzing because it was overweight!

Guess I shouldn't have had those branflakes.

Hungry hungry hippo

Well, I got hungry, so I went to the supermarket, spent a week's budget on sugar free bran flakes, and ate two handfuls (or is it handsful?).

Weight gained: 60g

By the way, it did absolutely nothing to quench my hunger. I'm still hungry. 

Greetings

I am fat.
I have been fat since I was a child.
At this rate, I will be fat until the day I die, which will most likely be due to obesity-related disease.

I have tried to lose weight more times than I can count. Usually I can shed a few kilos but fall off the bandwagon for various reasons:

• I hate to exercise. Hate hate hate hate hate. Honestly, I would rather drop dead of obesity than exercise. 
• I enjoy food, especially fattening food. I don't like the idea of having to live my whole life eating only salad and chicken breast, but apparently that's the way it needs to be if I want to avoid diabetes. 
• I can't afford healthy food, and I don't have time to cook it. It's very easy to say "eat chicken breast and a pile of broccoli", but my budget only allows for spaghetti with salt.

I have considered bariatric surgery, but:

  a) I don't like needles, let alone knives and catheters; and
  b) I'm embarrassed to take time off work for fat surgery.

Listen, I need to lose a good 30-40 kg or else I'm going to die. So maybe with your encouragement, dear reader, I might stand a chance. Well, probably not, but what have I got to lose?

From now on, I'm going to blog everything that goes into my mouth, and you can shame me when I slip up.

So far today, I had a cup of coffee with milk, and a handful of cornflakes straight from the box into my mouth. Breakfast of Champions.

By the way, my inspiration for this blog is the fantastic celebrity blog The Heart of the Matter, which addresses all life threatening issues, such as open heart surgery for infants and "business trips" to Brazil.