The Hollando Diet

Well, my midnight run to McDonald’s was thwarted by an early closing. So despite driving half a block in the pouring rain, my long journey proved fruitless. Perhaps this failure was Providence. I’ll have to avoid undoing that with an Egg McMuffin this morning…

If only my hacking, wheezing cough would go away so that I could return to the gym and begin the weight loss regimen. Last night, Larry King featured a congenital amputee born with none of his four major limbs. He was described as a motivational speaker and male model. He was filmed working out at the gym, wrestiling opponents to the ground, and in general exhibiting more energy and discipline than I’ve had in my life. I won’t go to the gym because of a sniffle. He goes despite having no arms or legs! How humbling! Now I have no excuse. I have to go to the gym.

After a peripatetic few months, I’m finally back to my own kitchen, my own neighborhood, and my own exercise machine. Travel, as Holland notes, is not conducive to good eating habits or regular exercise. I’d even go so far as to say that not only does eating poorly have a low short term opportunity cost, but that the more stressful the times are the lower that opportunity cost gets.

But today, of course, was a bad day for any diet. Thankfully, I’d already had Thanksgiving this year, as chronicled elsewhere in this blog. Originally I’d expected to be on the road, so being able to spend Thanksgiving with two-thirds of my immediate family was a pleasant and unexpected bonus. Of course, if my mother wasn’t such a wonderful chef I wouldn’t have to exercise quite so much right now. The apple pie was just gratuitous, and although I have a few slices in my fridge right now I was at least able to avoid walking off with any of the ice cream. And we swapped the turkey for a capon.

Since I haven’t been home much, I’ve been hovering in the mid-160s without much progress towards the home stretch. So now’s the time to gear up and get going again, even if it does mean that I have to skip the egg-nog lattes at Starbucks.

And Holland - don’t exercise when you’re sick. It can’t possibly be good to stress the system in that many ways at once. And Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Well, first I went up one pound on Wednesday, only to be followed by a drop back down to 182 lbs. today. Of course, pecan pie and other Thanksgiving excesses will not aide me in my quest. Tomorrow morning promises to offer me an unforgiving verdict.

Well, despite my cold, I ventured out to the YMCA. I exercised on the old LifeCycle gizmo for a half hour, followed by about ten different leg, ab, and arm exercises. After it was over, a weighing revealed… 182 lbs. [Sneeze.] [Sniffle.] [Wheeze.] [Cough.] Progress? Nah, but it’s a starting point.

Chloraseptic, Robitussin, DayQuil, Contact, Contact PM, Centrum…

I have a chemical factory inside of me, thanks to this cold. Things seem to be worsening. My plan to get to the YMCA was thwarted (big surprise!) and I ended up spending most of the day on the road. Travel seems to be the natural enemy of exercise.

But I was the loyal friend, dog-sitting and house-sitting for a lawyer pal while her mattress was delivered to her home. From there, it was off to DFW Airport and the Terraces Hotel, which was the closest hotel to Coleyville, home of an applicant to Yale whom I needed to interview. She was a no-show, and I returned frustrated and wheezing. Passing out on the couch with this post half-typed, I awoke an hour later to phone call from Dad… who just rang the doorbell…

…ah, return I do to the typing of my blog post. Bleary and wheezy, I give up, having not even weighed myself. Tomorrow I return with a vengence… or a sneeze.

I have lacked the discipline to lose weight. Or, better put, weight loss has not enjoyed a high priority thanks to inactivity and a non-existant short-term opportunity cost attached to eating poorly.

Now I have accepted a job offer at Merrill Lynch. In order to make the proper impression, I need to weigh somewhere in 160-169 lbs. range as of December 6, 2004–my start date. So off we go again! The adventure continues. But now the failure to lose weight has real consequences.

Tomorrow I will post the starting weight. I will go to the YMCA, despite my wheezing and my phlegm-filled lungs. I will stick to sushi, tuna, and other relatively lean food options. I recall the Olympic film Sixteen Days to Glory. The Rocky theme plays in the background. Fourteen days to glory…

I’m back in England now, and without a scale to confirm I’m still there, but on Sunday morning I checked in at 162.4 pounds. For those following the original bet, that’s 20 pounds off my the starting point. Even discounting his head start, it looks like Matthew still beat me in terms of elapsed time, although had I been traveling a little less I might have been able to shave a bit of time off. Basically, it’s taken about three months to get here from 183.

Of course, it doesn’t really count yet. The last night on Easter Island we made what turned out to be a somewhat unfortunate restaurant choice, with the result that, well, food, wasn’t a hugely attractive option for me during much of last week. I will simply note that it could have been much worse and move on–but the last three pounds or so can probably be attributed to residual salmonella.

On Friday night I had dinner at my parents’ house, and my mother had done her usual fantastic job, culminating with a fresh-baked gingerbread bundt, which is one of my favorite desserts. Four months ago I would have had a slice, and then followed it with another slice. Friday I was able to simply have one, and, although I wanted another one, keep it at that. Of course, I could always have done that for any given slice of gingerbread, but as for doing it consistently, that’s new.

I’ve also found a gym here in Birmingham that accepts month-to-month members at a reasonable rate, so I’m planning on going over and joining this evening. I’m back in the US on the 15th, and should be within spitting distance of the 160 barrier (and permanently there) once I am.