CondoMax's Blogs

Diary of a Backslider

2008-03-23T01:07:00Z

First of all, Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate Easter! And happy springtime to all of us!

The title above says it all. I was never very diligent about NutriSystem, mixing in fairly frequent dinners out at upscale restaurants, replete with booze and dessert, yet between November 2006 and July 2007, I managed to lose (not "loose", damnit! :)) over 60 lbs. In that latter month, I had major surgery on my cervical spine, removing degenerated discs and ligaments, installing bone grafts, and fusing four vertebrae with a titanium plate and screws. (See X-Ray in my photo gallery here.) Following surgery, my activities were restricted and I was required to wear a neck brace constantly for over four months.

That's when the backsliding began in earnest. I thought that after all I had been through, I should eat whatever the hell I wanted. Meanwhile, the only form of exercise I was permitted was walking. Walking is great exercise, and one that I love, as I am a hiker; however, even doing a brisk (4 mph) three-mile walk every day did not offset the daily pig-outs. I gradually porked up.

My porkage accelerated through football season, when each weekend I would invite guys over and prepare a spread that would feed an army. If the army faltered, I was there to finish the job when the troops pulled out. The Tostitos and the wine flowed freely. I porked up some more.

After the neck brace came off, I went to physical therapy for rehab three days a week. My exercise level thus increased a bit, but I merely increased my piguous eating to compensate for it. After the PT ended, I joined the associated wellness center, so I could access the gym equipment. I had an exercise physiologist design a program for me that would emphasize weight loss, but would include strength training and cardio exercise. That was January. I'm still in the program, and have been working out for 1.5 hours per day, three days per week. I'm working hard--15 mins of stretches, 45 minutes of strength training and crunches and stuff, and 30 minutes of cardio. And you guessed it: my appetite increased yet more and more! (But I'm two times 15 reps of bench pressing 200 and leg pressing 400, which is its own source of satisfaction.)

Meanwhile, living in Florida, this is prime season for visitation by northern friends and relatives. You guessed it! More meals out at decent restaurants. Great Del Friscos ribeyes and wine and booze and good cheer. So, before the robins' departure heralded the arrival of spring, I had gained back 30 of the 60 pounds I had previously lost.

While I backslid (or is that backslud?), Nutrisystem food, particularly lunches and dinners, piled up in my pantry. I can always find uses for the breakfasts. They're handy. The snacksand desserts, of course, while inferior to REAL snacks and desserts, made their way into my voluminous gut. (Any port in a storm.) In any case, I must have about 80 dinners and a similar number of lunches stockpiled at this point! So, I'm getting psyched to work off the backlog.

For those of you who read this and immediately feel impelled to give me advice, cheerleading, or pseudo-scientific blather, that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing it partly as a confession (to purge myself), partly as procrastination (I have work waiting), and partly to tell you all a story you can relate to, with dieters' pitfalls glaring at you from between the lines.

I hate the "Yo-yo Syndrome" but I've lived that life for all my adult life. However, it is never too late for good intentions, and never too late to start again. So, here I go...

Be well and happy "looseing",
Ben

Pain in the Neck Redux

2007-09-18T02:28:00Z

Apologies! I haven't been here for a while. Trying to recovery from neck surgery while immersing myself in college and NFL football is a full-time job. (Don't tell my real boss. Oh, that's me. Never mind.)

Anyhow, if anyone is interested in the status of my much maligned neck, hop over to The Nittany Turkey, my real blog.

Cheers,
Condom

P.S.
You might want to read my article about the new Domino's Oreo Dessert Pizza, too!

Call the Bucket Brigade!

2007-08-01T12:45:00Z

Don't you just love the helpful utterances from the plethora of pseudo-dietitians hanging around the NS BB and chat room? Seemingly empowered by their own success with the program, they endeavor to help newbies, proselytizing them in an almost evangelical mode. During some of these ministerial sessions, I've had the occasion to laugh at some of the pronouncements, as their Rosie O'Donnellesque nature has provided amusement at times when I was fading into NS ennui. The best of them so far:

"Water burns fat!"

I wanted to call Rosie, but she had already left The View. Only dear Rosie could have embellished this naively preposterous comment to give it more comedic value. I picture her employing some hyperbole like, "I will produce dietitians and physiologists who support the fact that never before in the history of the world as we know it has water failed to burn fat!" This, of course, would be followed by a raucous chorus of "Amens" from the dutifully oblivious lemmings in the audience. But I digress.

What's my point? My point is that there is no substitute for intelligent research when approaching a subject as important as your own body's response to diet and exercise. Taking the advice of charlatans can often backfire. Knowledge is power, folks. Take care to evaluate the anecdotal information you read in the forums and chat rooms here. Just because someone has lost 100 lbs does not make him or her a nutritionist or physiologist. The diet and exercise mechanisms that worked for him or her might not work for you. Do a lot of research, and I don't just mean pop science diet books. Also, understand that people love to be listened to, so thank these nattering nabobs of NutriSystem for the entertainment when they come up with crap like "Water burns fat!"

Can I have watermelon? Please?

2007-07-20T09:09:00Z

A newbie happened into the chat room yesterday. Not unlike many similar entrances, the newbie blurted out a question: "Can you have no bacon?" A chorus of responses came from the helpful old-timers. "No!" "No!" "Well, you can have turkey bacon, I think."

The newbie persisted. "What about steak?"

"No." "No." "Fuggedaboudit!"

Now, the newbie grew argumentative. "Why? Those are good foods!"

Honey, did you come here to lose weight or eat "good foods"?

Another frequent question asked by newbies is whether watermelon is allowed because they don't see it on the plan in the yellow book. (What does that tell you, folks? Are you hoping beyond hope that you can sneak in your sugar insidiously through watermelon contraband?)

This sort of question suggests to me that people are less than serious about dieting, unwilling to give up the foods that caused them to pork up in the first place and rationalizing six ways to Sunday about why such contraband foods are either good for them or harmless. (After all, watermelon is mostly water! Yeah, right -- more like a sugar solution with very little else of value such as fiber.)

My suggestion to these people is always to give the plan a chance. It worked for me, and believe me, my eating habits were as bad as anyone's. However, unlike many others, my first step was to admit that both what and how I was eating were making me an unhappy fat man and both had to change in order to fix the problem. So, I committed to NutriSystem for five weeks, vowing to stick strictly to the program and not rationalize deviations.

Aside from losing over 20 lbs in that first committed period, I believe that this cold turkey, dive in headlong start was successful for another reason: I lost the cravings for stuff like steak, bacon, and watermelon. Furthermore, I was indoctrinating myself to a portion size that was a minute fraction of what I used to eat in a sitting. If I had stretched the plan to suit myself, I would still be filling a large serving bowl with salad greens, dumping a load of cheese and bacon bits on it, adding a half pound of chicken, and then kidding myself into calling it a salad--a bad habit I developed on the Atkins diet. I would not have curbed my eating disorder. And the calories would continue to sneak up until I found myself doing 6,000 kcal per day again. (By the way, folks, EVERYTHING COUNTS!)

So, newbies, if you are serious about taking off this weight--and why the hell are you here if you are not serious about it--how about giving the NutriSystem Nourish program a chance before you customize it to resemble the "yummie foods" you like to eat? Get rid of those bad habits--don't promote them. If this means giving up steak and watermelon, so what?

View food as a fuel that resolves the body's daily energy deficit, not as a "yummie" end in itself.

All Is Well at NS High!

2007-07-18T03:32:00Z

Hey, I stopped into the chat room yesterday to see how everyone was doing at the old high school hangout. Everybody seemed to be great and there wasn't even any hot gossip. Well, that part is kind of disappointing. I know it is there. I'll just have to dig deeper.

I've noted that a lot of the behavior of the formerly fat parallels the high school behavior they never got to participate in. So, now it's a matter of establishing pecking orders, leaders, followers, and so forth, but with little experience along those lines.

In my case, I was the class clown in high school and that's how I fit into the NS chat room. That's my high school type. What's yours?

I see lots of categories in there: cheerleaders, class president wannabes, prom queens, outlaws, and skateboard weenies. The competition is great fun to watch.

There are, of course, a vast preponderance of well adjusted people in the chat room whose high school days were left behind when they turned 18. Or 21, if they decided to attend extended high school in the same town (community college).

What's the point of writing this? Hell, I don't know. To inspire controversy, as usual, perhaps? For entertainment value, perhaps? To effect a decrease in the clicquish high school behavior? Nah, that ain't gonna happen!

--Ben

How much does one lose in a week...

2007-07-16T05:05:00Z

...in the hospital?

This was the burning question asked in my last blog entry. It always cracks me up when some newbie comes into the chat room and asks, "How much can I expect to loose [sic] in a week?" My response is usually a facetious, "*results not typical."

OK, but I've just done some empirical testing with hospital food and some catabolic surgery involving several vertebra, followed by a secondary bacterial infection and a tertiary candida infection caused by the powerful Vancomycin I was on for five days. (Listening carefully? There will be a test.) The hospital food involved was typical three "squares," with stuff like chicken with gravy, scrambled eggs, meat loaf, turkey...yeah, like totally bland. There was no jello, but there was plenty of stuff like strawberry shortcake, banana pudding with vanilla wafers, and pears in syrup. Yummy yummy yummy! (I continue my NutriCheating!)

It ain't really cheating, folks when your doctor prescribes it and the hospital dietitians say it ain't. And it ain't really yummo, either. And the "tum-tum" is never in great shape after total system shutdown due to anesthesia. However, you'll be pleased to know that the hospital food was an apt provider of NutriFlatulence.

And now, the big number!!! What did I "loose" in a week in the hospital with almost complete immobilization while being hydrated from a saline drip? I thought that you'd be interested in knowing that I lost 11.5 lbs.* Don't congratulate me--it wasn't intended!

*results not typical

And now, the more important and less facetious part of this blog. I will have a limited amount of time available for doing computer tasks, so I want to thank each of you here for your wonderful well wishes during my ordeal. It is heartening to know that I have so many NutriFriends. I wish I could respond more personally to each of you, but this will have to do for now. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'll be pretty immobile for 12 weeks, so we'll have to see how that works out in the scheme of things. I'll be mixing NutriStuff with real food over that period. Walking is about the only viable exercise for me, and those of you who know me will know that that is my preferred exercise, anyway. I hope these three months pass quickly and I can get rid of this damn neck brace soon thereafter, as it will be rather funky by then!

Your Atypical Result,
Ben

re: Gone for a while

2007-07-09T07:50:22Z

Condo,

My back aches just thinking about your surgery tomorrow. My dad & both brothers have all had lumbar surgery and did great. I will keep you in my prayers! :0)

Cyndi

Oh! GO! GATORS!

Gone for a while

2007-07-09T06:35:00Z

OK, Folks...I'm outta here for a while. Surgery tomorrow at 8:30 AM. The surgeon has the OR reserved for 4.5 hours and then I'll be in the recovery room for another couple, unless he screws up big time. In any case, today is going to be hectic, but I intend to have three good (read non-NS) meals.

And if you're reading this, Kristy Rae, here is how you change color. (I think.)

See you all in a couple of weeks, maybe, perhaps.

Ben

Chat Room Hypocrisy

2007-07-04T08:36:00Z

Who creates the standards for our NS chat room? I see none published anywhere. Without established rules and enforcement mechanisms, what we have is the inmates guarding the asylum.

The results are not pretty, amounting to an experiment in bad high school behavior. People who have no compunction themselves about salacious chatting and who condone it--even encourage it among their friends on line--vigorously lambaste a newbie if she should even veer in that direction. When challenged, these hypocrites will say things such as, "She went over the top." As if they don't!

Who establishes the line between good conduct and "over the top" conduct in our chat room? I submit that it cannot be up to those who will not abide by their own rules. Self-policing is impossible when the police themselves are corrupt.

So, folks, don't excuse your own behavior with a hand wave while castigating the similar behavior of others who just happen to be new at this. In other words, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Having Surgery -- Key to Weight Loss

2007-06-29T05:03:00Z

I am scheduled to have major surgery on July 10. Without going into the gruesome details of the operation, let me just say that it involves my spine. So here, folks, is yet another opportunity for weight loss!

I will remain on Nutrisystem until the end of next week, when I will up the calories to 2600 per day for four days prior to surgery, carbing up a bit while increasing the protein, too. I won't gain any weight during that period, especially because I've been keeping the exercise level high. An increased fitness level will pay dividends in post-op recovery from the butchery as well as the general anesthesia.

OK, so here's the deal. My prior hospital stays have all resulted in significant weight losses, so I once again anticipate that I'll come out of this thing lighter by up to 10 pounds.

If there's one thing that works better than Nutrisystem to "loose wait," it is hospital food. I usually start with the regular diet but somewhere along the line, someone--and I don't know who--decides that I should have a low-fat diet. That's when the food really turns to tasteless gahhhbage. Egg Beaters? Sheeeeit! So, they give me what seems to be 900 Kc per day--why wouldn't I lose weight?

I know--I'll bring a bag of NS food with me and hide it in the closet. Then, I'll eat it cold. The tuna casserole should be particularly good like that.

Anyhow, I wanted to let you all know why I might turn up missing for a while. I should be in the hospital from July 10 to July 13, if there are no complications, but I won't be computing for a while after that. Save a space in the chat room for my big ass.