I'm freaking tired.

Looking back at the program so far, the first week was pure hell. I wanted to throw up and die in each of the group workouts I attended. There was a definite moment that Friday as the difficulty of the program him me like a ton of bricks, 11 more weeks looming over my head.

By the second week, I was starting to get the hang of things. The group workouts weren't the most horrible thing in the world and I was getting really used to the food plan.

This week has been great. The group workouts are still no picnic, but I'm somehow better able to manage the pain. Preparing my meals, food shopping and eating 6 times a day is becoming second nature.

But two nights this week I had trouble sleeping, for whatever reason, and I'm paying for it now. I went to the gym tonight and did a chest workout, assigned to me as homework. I managed to burn 500 calories, as I padded my workout with time on the treadmill before and after the weights.

I decided to do the bicep portion of the homework tomorrow night, since my forearms and biceps are still sore from Monday's hammer curls and Australian pullups.

Go ahead and look that one up. It's not pretty. I got through 6 of my required 50 reps and was just about done. I completed the remaining 44 two at a time. It was so much more brutal than it looked.

I'm looking at the size large triathlon racing top I've hung on the wall that faces the entrance to my bedroom. I'm thinking about a trip to Vegas with friends in May when this is all over. I'm thinking about the 19 additional pounds I need to lose. And I'm trying to stay focused.

I can't wait until Sunday's day off. I'm looking forward to a whole lot of nothing, with a possible stop at the Alamo Drafthouse for a movie and a milkshake.

Cheat Day...Ugh.

I write this entry a steaming ball of indigestion and regret. Today was Sunday, my cheat day from the meal plan I've been on. Drunk with power, knowing I'd lost almost 8 pounds over the last two weeks, I decided to treat myself a little bit. Surely I'd earned it.

Ugh. Let's just say, pizza + ice cream + chocolate chip cookies = no bueno. It's been a few hours and on top of still not feeling quite myself, I feel guilty as hell and it definitely was not worth it.

It felt like I'd chugged a pint grease. Really disgusting. I had a similar experience last week after the pumpkin pancakes at Kerbey Lane, but quickly dismissed it. I'm going to have to look into the biology of this, and if anyone reading can provide some insight, that'd be great. But it would appear that, after only two weeks, my body has decided that bad food really is bad for me and from now on it is going to make darn sure I know it.

Plus, it really wasn't that much food, but it was a ton of calories. Today really opened my eyes into why I've put on all this weight in the first place. Three pieces of pizza (3X276 calories), two chocolate chip cookies (170 calories for the pair) and some ice cream (300 calories) was super easy to put down. And I used to do the equivalent almost every day.

To be honest, I'd much rather go through a day of what has now become my usual stuff, oatmeal, cottage cheese, sweet potatoes and all. 

So my next step will be to get off my butt and research recipes that make all this healthy stuff I'm eating actually taste good. Sheryl, my RevEx client manager, sent me some last week, so I'll start there. Wish me freaking luck.

Numbers

Since I started this whole thing, my day is just a sequence of numbers. The following is a composite that could make up any given day:

Wake up. Step on the scale. 216 pounds (Saturday’s weight). Meal 1. Measure 1 ¼ cup of egg whites. Heat up on number 9. Let it rest on 6. Pour the eggs. Move it to 7. Measure ½ cup of oatmeal. Microwave for 50. 1 teaspoon raw honey. 21 calories. Cook Meal 4 ahead of time. Defrost chicken then grill.

Measure chicken on food scale. 6 ounces. 180 calories. 39 g of protein. Measure BBQ sauce. 1 tablespoon. 23 calories. Prepare Meal 2. 1 scoop whey protein. ½ additional scoop weight protein. 9 ounces of water. 1 cup of frozen mixed fruit. Blend. Prepare part of Meals 3 and 4. Measure potato on food scale. 7.5 ounces. Put everything in containers.

Get to work. Drink 32 ounces of water. How many grams in an ounce? 28.3495231, says Google. Part of Meal 3. Scoop out one cup of cottage cheese. 160 calories. 26 g of protein. 5 calories worth of sriracha sauce. ½ cup of brussel sprouts and cheese sauce. 60 calories.

32 more ounces of water while working on web project. 1 cup of grape tomatoes. 63 calories.

Go to group workout. Turn on heart rate monitor. Count reps. Count reps. Count reps. Peak at 183 bpm. Average 140.  893 calories burned. Go home. Eat meals 5 and 6. Drink 32 ounces of water. (Long since added up to 1 gallon of H2O for the day).

Feeling sleepy. But first, log in food calories. 1568 calories consumed. 132 calories under daily limit. Go to bed.

Holy Hell

I lay on the rubber exercise mat, chest heaving and covered in sweat. The first workout was over. Kevan, a former Marine, had run me and 3 others through an hour workout. Several times I almost threw up. At one point I was doing decline pushups and was unable to push myself up off of the ground. So I collapsed into a ball. It was pretty embarassing.

"The first day is the worst," said Missy, who was starting her ninth week. "No. The second week is the worst," said the other guy we were working out with, I never caught his name. "Because you're sore AND you suck."

One Week Down, Eleven to Go
Ok, well it's been a week since I started my 12 week program with Revelation Fitness. I'm working out 3 times a week with them and 3 times a week on my own. Seven days a week I upload my food log so they can monitor what I eat. Once a week I upload progress pictures I take of myself in my living room in shorts and with my shirt off. I'm sure the thought of that has the ladies drooling.

Here's the good news: The diet is no where near as hard to get used to as I thought it would be. Eating 6 small meals a day, high in protein and complex carbs, is actually not bad at all. My biggest fear coming in to this was the expectation that I would be going to bed hungry, but that has yet to happen. Chicken, protein shakes, strawberries, sweet potatoes, oatmeal and egg whites. No Blue Bell ice cream. No pizza or breakfast burritos or any of that other stuff that makes life worth living. One gallon of water minimum per day, however, has not been a challenge to drink. I actually really like cottage cheese. I know!

Now for the bad news: The workouts are brutal. To protect the innocent, I won't go into detail, but lots of circuit training with weights and pushups and burpees. If you're not familiar with a burpee, it's like a squat thrust: start out standing; bend at the knees; put your hands on the ground and kick out your legs behind you so that you're in a pushup position; do a pushup; bring your feet back up to your hands; jump in the air. Rinse and repeat. Whoever gave this little bite of hell the cutesy name "burpee" should be shot. I'd probably rename them something more appropriate, like "hemorrhoids" or "gall bladder removals."

This past Saturday morning we did the Spartan 300 Workout, which some motherless bastard thought up as a way to test the fitness level of the actors training for their roles in the movie 300. I'm too traumatized from the experience to re-live it here, but if you Google "hell on earth," it shouldn't be hard to find.

Cheat Day
Sunday is my cheat day from the food plan, so I can theoretically eat whatever I want. But my Revelation Fitness client manager, Sheryl, who I constantly pepper with questions, suggested I just do just one cheat meal instead. All week I was walking around in a half awake/half unconscious state where I would see Chef Boyardee Ravioli around every cubicle at work, like an oasis in the desert. I would daydream about eating pizza and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Friday afternoon I met up with friends for happy hour. Those bastards got to eat chips and queso and drink beer. I sipped water and had to leave early in order to get to 24 Fitness to get a workout in. I would have killed 15 people for a quesadilla.

Thusly, I was afraid my cheat day would start and then I'd wake up in a ditch somewhere, covered in pizza, with no way to account for the previous 13 hours. But Sunday morning came around and it was as if a switch happened and everything was OK in the world and those Jurassic-sized cravings subsided. I ate the same 3 first meals I'd been eating all week. Then I met up with my friend Dustin at Kerbey Lane and ate some Pumpkin Pancakes. I cannot put in to words the spiritual joy those pancakes gave me. It's something I will never, ever forget.

The Bottom Line
In case you're wondering, I started the week at 223 pounds. Sunday morning I weighed 218.4. And I fought for every ounce of it. Boom!

A Farewell Tour

I’m a big eater and always have been. Getting me to finish my plate was never a struggle for my parents. When I was a teenager, my Uncle Desi and I would plan our trips to the Ponderosa Stakehouse all-you-can-eat buffet with the same bloodlust as Vikings planning plunder. Until my early 20s, the quality and quantity of food was never a concern. I was rail thin no matter what I ate. But then around 25 or 26 my metabolism slowed down from the speed of a Porsche to that of a 1977 Pinto.

Good bye, good friends

With the start of my 12 weeks of high calorie burn workouts and low calorie meals looming on Monday, Feb. 6, I’ve spent the last week conducting a farewell tour of my favorite foods, or as I like to collectively refer to them, “Everything that makes life worth living.”

I’d like to take the opportunity to address the following foods and drink individually:

Big Red Soda: You haven’t been in my life very long, but have definitely left a profound impression. You and the Styrofoam containers full of work cafeteria-served lunch entrees will be missed. Thank you.

Beer: Hang in there, little buddy. I’m going away for a while, but don’t worry, I’ll be back. You and I have a complicated relationship, since, let’s face it, you’re a big part of the reason my body fat hovers around 23 percent these days. But that’s OK. I forgive you.

Papa John’s Pizza: Feel free to let the employees and cardboard box suppliers to your Austin locations know that you’re about to take a hit over the next 3 months, if not forever. While you’re at it, please notify the folks over at the Amy’s company of frozen, organic pizza and other foods that they won’t be hearing from me for a while, either.

Egg & Sausage Breakfast Taco/Biscuit with Strawberry Jam: It is with particularly solemn emotions that I address you, my wonderful morning friends. The warm embrace you provide during our daily encounters, and the satisfied warmth and comfort you leave me with afterwards, will be hard to replace. All the best to you.

This weekend, in a final orgy of beer and barbeque, my good friend Ryan Kohn and I will leave Austin, not to mention our gastro-intestinal tracts, a scorched, barren wasteland. He is referring to it as “Carlos’s Mardi Gras.”