GUT CHECK TIME: Willpower Part II

DAMN!!!

I was doing so good! I successfully avoided the Timbits all day, ate leftover whole wheat spaghetti and unsweetened apple sauce for lunch instead of going to the local greasy spoon with everyone else, JUST ate an apple 30 minutes ago for a healthy snack.

Then a sales rep here brings us Rolo Ice Cream Bars.

It couldn't be helped.

F Word.

M@

GUT CHECK TIME: Willpower

My co-workers are cruel.

Openly taunting my weight loss battle for their own amusement.

One of them hung a picture of a Baconator in my cubicle.

And today, one of them brought in Timbits. The cubicle right beside me. Box of 40.

So far, 9:27 a.m., and I haven't taken any. I will be strong!

And if there are any co-workers reading this, please come and eat the Timbits!

M@

GUT CHECK TIME: New Week

Hello all. Very quick post as work is absolutely retarded right now and I have no time for blogging, in all honesty.

Down to 219 lbs. as of this morning, ate so-so on the weekend (not perfect, but MUCH better than last week) and had a slight melt-down Friday night when I pigged out on East Sides, but in my defense, I had to work til 9:30pm and it was on the company, so...booya.

Had to hit work this morning for 7:00, so breakfast at home was skipped, and a Timmies breakfast sandwhich was purchased. I feel horrible for getting one as I've directly cut them out of weekday dining, but today looks to be an absolute marathon at the office (could be here when the sun goes down, likely a few hours past) so I'm not sweating the breakfast too much. All the rest of my food is healthy today, and if I get home at a decent hour, I'm gonna work out, promise!

So, that is all for now. Check out the Ryan Coke Experiment for more on healthy eating.

GUT CHECK TIME: A good week thus far

Well I have to admit I have done very well this week.

Breakfasts: Oatmeal each morning with a touch of sugar so I'm not eating paste. Sometimes chased with a bowl of bran flakes.

Lunch: Lean Cuisine Panini on Monday and Wednesday, accompanied by an orange and a peach-mango apple sauce thingy. An additional sandwhich later in the day as a snack and an apple.

Tuesday's lunch brought much temptation, as the sales department thought it would be a good idea to have a pot-luck lunch. I had one coldcut sandwich on whole wheat bun, and 5 different kinds of salad. (Caesar, pasta, colslaw, potato and garden). I took no sweets, and, most important of all, no nacho chips and spicy cheese dip. That's right, I manned up in the face of nachos. Rare for M@.

All I've had to drink during the day has been water, except on Tuesday I had an orange Gatorade, and last night while BBQing I had an MGD. I know, beer during the week's a small slap in the face of this process, but when you're BBQing in 25 degree weather, beer's ok. Right? Right.

Supper's have been good, too. Tuesday night was leftover awesome fajita casserole, and last night was BBQed steak, onion and green pepper-kabobs, and brown rice.

So it's Thursday morning, and I'm down to an even 220 lbs. I've lost 2 pounds in 2 days. Not bad, should help me considerably in the month-long Challenge vs Swinny!

Speaking of challenges....


This is the 15 Week Challenge. Click on the logo to read all about Amy's good idea. I would normally volunteer for the challenge, but I'm already focussed on my current task at hand. However, if you're serious about weight loss, this is a fantastic blog, very inspiring, and the challenge is an awesome idea.

M@

GUT CHECK TIME: Official weigh-in

As of this morning, my official weigh-in is 222 lbs. My opponent weighs in at 218.

Whoever has lost the most weight (or has gained the least?) after July 15th will be declared the winner of round 1. First person to win 2 rounds will be declared the winner, and will receive a prize from his opponent. As of now, the prize has not been determined.

My idea of a KFC gift card was rejected.

M@

GUT CHECK TIME: The first weekend

Well, I'm not gonna sugar-coat it....(HAHAHAHAHAHA, I slay me. But seriously, forks....) I did NOT have a good weekend, despite some signs of improvement. Let me explain.

Friday night was the perfect opportunity to go completely healthy. Laura wanted Swiss Chalet for dinner, and I thought, "Perfect! I can order all healthy stuff off the menu!" Well, I didn't pig out, but I didn't go full tofu either. Kinda met halfway. We ordered the same thing we always do. Family Chicken & Ribs Feast. A whole BBQed chicken, half rack o' ribs, and 4 sides. (And 4 dinner rolls). So, all roles were ordered whole-grain. The sides were mashed potatoes, rice, greek salad for her, garden salad for me! That's right, no caesar salad, no fries, I manned up and got the light Italian dressing and everything.

Food came, ate 1/4 of the chicken, SKIPPED the ribs entirely (made for a solid lunch the next day) and was filled, not stuffed by the end of it. No snacks that night, and I thought, "Ok, not a bad start to the weekend."

Saturday was bad. BAD. Breakfast was normal, pancakes and eggs, not great, but hardly an alarm. Lunch was leftover chicken, and a couple ribs (4-5 to be exact, nothing major). Then we went to Connor McPolin's 2nd birthday party. It was like an alcoholic walking into Cheers. Or Buckner walking back into Shea (to quote a movie). Anyways, the gracious host was piling on the BBQed beef, and there was a LOT of food up for grabs. Now these people are nice people, and as such I hate to offend. Am I gonna be the arsehole who says, "Oh, no thanks, Ken, I'm perfectly stuffed after ONE cheeseburger (with bacon)." No, I'm not gonna be that guy. Hell, they likely budgeted for my attendance at this BBQ, so I CAN'T very well say "I'm on a wee diet", no, I can't be a jerk. So I have 2 cheeseburger, one of those awesome garlic sausages, and a couple Bud Light's to wash'em down. I KNOW! Shut up.

Sunday was much better. Having crashed horribly on Saturday, and accepting the fact that weekends are virtually hopeless for healthy eating, I go into Sunday with a relaxed attitude, and make out pretty well, all things considered. Mirrored breakfast from Saturday, pancakes and eggs. (It's easy, Nathan partakes, it's all very cute). Peanut Butter Bagel for lunch, then it's off to the ball diamond for a double header. (I didn't pitch in either game, so it's tough to gauge exactly how my dieting affected my pitching, but I went o-4 at the plate, so there's that).

Home at 7:30, collect a BBQ chicken from the grocery store (Laura's idea, I lobbied for healthy Subway subs, a la Jared, she won) and had some more chicken. All good, some macaroni salad and carrot sticks and it was an ok Sunday. Great compared to Saturday, not too good compared to my goal.

Monday! Back on the horse! One bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, chased by a bowl of bran flakes! Kept the Honey Bunches of Oats in the cupboard. Lunch? Lean Cuisine Panini, cheese string. Snacks later? Apple. Orange. Peach-mango apple sauce thingy....unsweetened! Dinner was Laura's AWESOME Fajita Casserole, very healthy, very good. Broccoli too. Snack tonight, just a bowlful of the aforementioned Honey Bunches. That is all. I should be tryng to get more veggies into the diet, may brave some of that V8 Fusion stuff I keep hearing about. Laura loves it, Chipper over at A Little Bit of Everything Sports says it's good stuff too. We'll see.

So, my resolve is to go Monday to Friday as a health nut, allow Saturday to be whatever it is, and then try to regain my dignity on Sunday. The blogger over at Double Nut Flush Draw has challenged me to a duel to lose weight. Payoff has not been discussed, but starting now, the player to lose the most weight by July 15th wins. One month. Weigh in to come tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

M@

PS. For all you Rogues fans, we lost both games of the double header 4-0, and 5-4. I'm on the mound Tuesday night against the best hitting team in the league, the Good Ol' Boys. With some solid improvement on my mechanics since the last time I faced them, I'm looking forward to a better result! 7:00pm at the Blackburn Arena.

GUT CHECK TIME: Day #1

"Day damn one, Vivian, Day damn one." - Uncle Phil

"Let the great experiment begin!!!" - Tobias Fünke

Well, I survived the night. And at 8:00 am this morning I weighed in at 225.5 pounds.

Given the choice between spaghetti and haddock, I chose spaghetti. Basically we're trying to pick foods that Nathan can eat along with us, and since the fish is coated in batter it's likely not that healthy for either of us. However, upon picking spaghetti, a look to the cupboard presented a dilemma. Do I eat delicious spaghetti, or blah 100% whole grain spaghetti. Well, obviously I had to go 100% whole grain. But I wasn't optimistic. It's kind of like when Meg White does vocals for the White Stripes. It's still technically the White Stripes....but, you know.

Well, it wasn't all that bad. I often underestimate my own cooking ability. The spaghetti sauce was homemade, since we don't wanna give the little one the store-bought stuff. (We buy the sodium-free tomato sauce and dress it up ourselves.) Extra lean ground beef, onions, the sauce, and a teaspoon each of chili powder, garlic powder and italian seasoning, and we were off to the races. A tiny pinch of salt for myself and a side of peas, and I had myself one healthy meal.

For a snack later that night I had....nothing! Unusual for me, but them were some big pizza slices at lunch.

This morning a bowl of bran flakes chased by a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats (kinda sugary, I know) and that's where we currently stand. Lunch is leftover spaghetti, some peach slices and a cheese string. Supper? And the weekend beyond? You'll have to tune in Monday morning to find out. I'm optimistic I can keep up the health kick, but the weekend DOES pose many challenges. We'll see how I do.

Last week, when I started this thing, my plan was to kick it healthy Mon-Fri then I'd be at-ease on the weekend to eat as I wanted. But with my relapse this week, I'm gonna see how I can hold up against the constant threat of burgers and beer this weekend.

M@

GUT CHECK TIME: Introduction

Well, since I'm the General Manager of several things, ball team, hockey team, poker league, plus managing work life and home life and everything, I thought I'd add something new to the list: Myself. Let me explain.

I decided early last week that I was gonna take control of my eating habits. I'm not the healthiest eater, and I decided that I wanted to make a habit of getting better, heathier. That was Tuesday, June 2nd. After work, I stopped by Chapters and picked up a book on getting healthy. It looked like an interesting enough read, was actually a book about dads who were previously fit and grew beer guts after their kids were born, as their attention to their own diets goes out the window once there's a kid to take care of. I wasn't in great shape before having a kid anyways, but I thought it might be a funny read at least, and offer lots of insight.

I was right, it had lots of great ideas, the main one being eating lots of testosterone-building types of foods like lean beef, poultry, egg whites, broccoli, etc. Helps build muscle mass and lose fat, thereby toning your body and losing weight too. Sounded plausible, even had some recipes and meal plans you could build. Well, I read the first few chapters, everything food related, but stopped at the exercise chapters. Figured I'd read that part the next day or whatever, for now I'll worry about eating. And I got off to a GREAT start!

I completely cut out Timmies breakfast-sandwiches, which had become a disturbing regular trend for me. Easier than I thought. A bowl of oatmeal and a bowl of branflakes was easy enough. I listened to the book and ate as best I could. Pork chops that night, I only had one, with a small fist-size portion of whole-wheat rice and corn. For a snack later on, some grapes and a bowl of cereal. Next day for lunch was a leftover porkchop I normally woulda eaten the night before. Had an apple for a snack instead of Snickers from the Vending machine, and water instead of Canada Dry. And I was feeling better! This continues all day Thursday as well, eating nothing but good stuff, sliced peaches instead of apples, some steak, green peppers and onion kabobs for dinner. My ballgame that night, I threw the 4 Ks in one inning, and felt like I hadn't thrown that hard in a long time. Everything was going swimmingly!

Then Friday came.

I don't know, maybe I need an intervention or something, but I fell off the wagon hard since Friday. I had the day off, and on the way to Nordik Spa (for my wife's anniversary present) we hit Baton Rouge for lunch. Then it was a weekend of beer and BBQ. By Sunday I could still throw hard and had a pretty good game winning 3-2 and going the distance, but I was not as effective as I felt on Thursday). Monday? Lean Cuisine Panini, but a big supper. Tuesday Stouffer's (non-lean) Panini, then later a 6" Sub cuz I was still hungry. (It was a healthy sub, but I prolly coulda done without it altogether). Today I had a free work-related pizza lunch. Yesterday I had lunch out with a friend, who wanted to hit the Pizza Hut Lunch Buffet. Supper last night? Home made pizza! At least THAT had some veggies on it, but still, a far cry from where I was a week ago.

The free work-related pizza lunch today was the final straw....kind of a bitch-slap to the book I bought last week. 2 slices of Meat Lovers from Gabriel's, a chicken strip, a Coke, oh I know, I know, I know! It was awful. Tasted awesome, but awful. I even had my first breakfast sandwhich in a week this morning! (whole wheat bagel, but STILL).

Which is kinda the point. I figure, my wife will keep tabs if I try to eat better, and it's nice to have a cheerleader in your corner, but I need to be harder on myself, thus I'm going to try to do it publicly. (Well, as publicly as this Blog will let me....now maybe 3-4 people know about my eating habits instead of 1-2).

My plan is to adhere to the book starting when I get home today. I'll finish reading the exercise portion, go back to buying only the healthy food, empty the remaining Cokes in the house down the ol' sink and go healthy. Tomorrow morning, and every weekday morning thereafter, I'm going to post how much I weigh, and what I've eaten since my last blog.

Wish me luck.

M@

GAME SUMMARY: Rogues win 5th of the season

Warriors 2

Rogues 3

Sorry for the delay, as always there a few blog posts on Monday and Tuesdays. Sunday night we played the expansion Warriors, who were coming off their first win of the season.

They certainly had momentum on their side, as Rogues batters had a hard time figuring out their pitchers stuff, putting up little to no fight for most of this one. We scored 1 run in the 5th inning, after they had put up one run in the 3rd.

I was throwing fairly well as it was 1-1 heading into the seventh. Having made an adjustment to my pitching motion for my rise ball, it was more effective and I collected 6 Ks on the night. But while it WAS an effective pitch for the most part, it landed flat once too often in the 7th, as a batter who previously swung through all my risers, put my last one into the trees to give his team a 2-1 lead.

Thankfully the boys came through in fine style in the bottom half, as we loaded them up on 2 infield hits from our leadoff guys, and a walk to our #3 guy. Our clean-up hitter grounded to 1st, but the throw home for the force was over-thrown, and resulted in not only the tying run coming in, but the winning run too. Rogues win!

So we're now 5-3, which is one more win than we got in 2007. Strangely the roster hasn't changed that much, but for whatever reason, the team is hitting at a torrid pace, leading the league in runs for.

This Sunday we play a double header against the only team we have yet to defeat in the BMFL, the Knights. Hopefully we can put together another strong showing and finally get that monkey off our backs.

M@

GAME SUMMARY: Stunted again by the Barbers

Guzzlers 9
Rogues 1

Yeah, another dud vs the Orange and Black team. The Rogues were again only able to muster one run against the Guzzlers and most noticeably, the Barbers.

Personally I had an OK game, as I managed a hit against formidable pitcher Andy Barber, ended up being a line drive into his ankle that ricocheted over to in between short and 3rd. I scored the only run on a bloop single by PB who very deservedly picked up the only RBI of the game for the green side.

I came into the game in the middle of the 6th inning, as the Rogues were having a rough go of it, and a pitching change was needed. With runners on the corners and one out, I surrendered an infield hit to load the bases, then a walk to bring in a run, but I got the next batter to ground into a double play to get out of the jam.

My 7th inning was better, as I struck out 4 batters.

All-in-all, it wasn't the greatest game, as our defense wasn't perfect and our hitting was....yes, I said I struck out FOUR batters. That wasn't a typo. I told my wife when I got home, and I told my mother the next day, and both responded, "That's great". Neither of them questioning how it came to be that I was able to record 4 ks in one inning. The shocking part is my mom's actually a solid baseball fan, and while I doubt she'd know the dropped third-strike-steal-first rule, she DEFINITELY knows there's only 3 outs in an inning, lol. So I politely asked them if they thought it was weird that I whiffed 4 batters in one inning when there's only 3 outs, and they both admitted, "Oh yeah!" Then I explained the rule....it was a lot more conversation than I was originally anticipating, but it afforded me the opportunity to brag a little bit more about something I haven't been previously able to do in 15 years of pitching. And will almost certainly never be able to do again.

So Sunday night at 7, we face the Orleans Warriors (1-5-0) who are coming off their first win in their inaugural season, defeating the Exit A's in the early game Thursday evening. Both teams will be looking hard for a win.

M@

GAME DAY: Rogues vs Guzzlers

ROGUES vs GUZZLERS
Thursday, June 4, 2009
9:oo pm Blackburn Arena

Tonight the Rogues (4-2-0) look to extend their winning record to 5-2, as they take on the undefeated Guzzlers (5-0-1) in the nightcap at the Blackburn Arena. The Rogues are coming off another thrilling victory against Mr. Electric, and will be looking to avenge their dismall performance against the Orange and Black squad from earlier this season. In their previous match, the Rogues lost 7-1 after a rough start by Kevin Wilson, and the Rogues bats inability to muster anything off of Guzzler ace Jeff Barber.

Look for Chuck Musicka to get his first start of the season tonight against the Guzzlers, as the Rogues will play with a smaller squad, down to 10 players for tonight's match with Edmunds, Peters and Vanden Hoven all out of the line-up.

M@

GAME SUMMARY: Rogues back in the win column!

ROGUES 8
Mr. Electric 7

Well, we won another nail-biter against Mr Electric Sunday night. This time it was us blowing a big lead. Luckily, we got it back.

Kevin Wilson started on the mound and pitched VERY well, giving up one run in the first and no more til the 5th. We on the other hand scored 6 runs through 5 innings, including two 2-run homers from Pascal Lalonde and Brad Dishaw. But in the bottom of the sixth, the wheels started falling off.

Kevin got 1 out, but gave up 4 solid hits, and we switched him for Chuck Musicka. Chucky fared no better allowing a few more hits before getting out of the inning. All-in-all, the Electric squad put up 6 runs to take the lead 7-6 after 6 innings.

Top of seven, with one out, I'm up to the plate. I haven't gotten a hit all year (except for in the game that didn't count) and I've struck out twice in the game so far, so the catcher tells the outfielders to play in a bit. F#*K YOU, lol, I smacked a double to right center, over the fielder's head. After the next batter strikes out, I advance to 3rd on a pass ball. 60-Year old Jim Blakely's at the plate with 2 out and 2 strikes on him. He fouls off a few pitches before lining a shot to left field, scoring me to tie the game! Jim advances on another pass ball and eventually scores on an over-throw, giving us the lead. Jim pitches the 7th and gets 3 of 4 batters out for the HUGE save, and another Rogues win.


Also, it was effing FREEZING! Not good ball weather, but at least the bats were on fire. It wasn't looking good for a while there as the sky threatened to open up, and reports of hail in the neighbourhood made things iffy. (This pic is me en-route to the diamond at about 4:20. I was pessimistic, but I was wrong) Luckily, all was dry at the Queensway diamond, and we got our game in. Next up, the undefeated Guzzlers on Thursday.


M@