Jericho: Ducks, 1 (One) Row

It's that time of year again. All the fatties are in the gym, glistening with the waste products of the excesses of the past year - or their entire lives.

And, yes, I am dieting again. I'm at the highest weight I have ever attained: 512 pounds. It's disgusting. I'm having all kinds of health problems because of my weight. I look and feel awful. It's time to take it off.

And, maybe I'm finally ready. They say it takes eight tries for a smoker to quit smoking. Well, I don't know how many tries it takes for an eater to quit eating, but I think I'm finally there.

And, I finally have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me. I've been building up to this point for years. Steph and I have had several good experiments with dieting and weight loss and several failures. So, here I am, ready to go and I think I'm prepared.

I know how to diet. I know what works for me and what doesn't. Steph and I had really good success several years ago on Adkins. I lost 50 pounds. Then I gave up. The things I don't like about Adkins is that finding a low carb meal when you go out is hard - unless you order something on the menu and strip off everything you don't want. I also didn't like the low veggie content - it makes pooping difficult. Pooping, while not fun, is good.

One of the GREAT things about low carb dieting is that it makes you buy better food. You can't fill your stomach with bread and pasta - so now you have to find protein. The fun thing about protein is that, if eaten slow, you will be full before you finish eating even a small meal. I sometimes take a few bites of something high in protein and begin to feel full immediately. This is good - you eat less. Plus, if you are about to go home and grill yourself a steak, a really nice New York or one of our new favorites: a flat iron steak, it really doesn't make sense to buy fast food. I can go home, heat up the grill, throw on a steak, cook it and be sitting down to take my first delicious bite before I would be home from the fast food place with a bag of grease bombs, most of my order missing and the voice of some minimum wage idiot still ringing in my head.

So, having said all of that, Steph and I are going with the low carb concept. However, we are not skimping on the veggies. If I want a salad - I will have a salad and I don't care how many carbs. I drink the Slim Fast shakes as part of my plan. The low carb ones are pricey - about $5 for four shakes. You can buy 6 of the Slim Fast Optima shakes for about $6. At this time of year, you can even find bonus packs of 8 shakes for $5 - half price of the Low Carb shakes. (I filled my trunk the other night!) It doesn't make sense to pay double for a few less carbs. My food for the day-time, for breakfast, lunch and snacks, costs about $6 and comes in at about 1100 calories. Leaving 900 calories for steak at dinner - yum!

Steak and grilling brings up another point. Like I said, I finally have all the pieces in place. We now own a gas grill. I used to be a die hard charcoal barbediva. Charcoal gives a great flavor - nothing like it. However - it takes forever to get hot. Steph tried to tell me for years that gas was fast. I thought I would lose flavor. Well, it just isn't so. Today, I made burgers for our first meal of the day at 11 AM. I chopped up onion, threw in Mrs. Dash, Onion powder, Garlic powder, pepper and two pounds of good ground beef. Before I formed the burgs, I turned on the grill. I formed them up with Steph nodding approval, tossed them on the grill which in less than five minutes was a roaring 400 degrees, four minutes a side. Steph opened a bag or two of salad and we were ready to go. Total prep and cook time about 20 minutes - I've seen longer lines at Burger King and I got a gourmet flame-broiled burger. They were tasty.

We also bought another piece of diet equipment a while back - a treadmill. The treadmill has been a bit of a let down. It has been exactly what I feared it would be; unused. Steph and I have both had fits and starts trying to get going to use the darned thing. It was expensive, too. Really chaps my cheeks that it's just sitting there, taunting me. Well, I showed it this week! I got on it three times. Three! I think that's about a 50% increase in the number of times I have been on it since we bought it! I haven't done anything crazy - quite the opposite. I did three half-hour walks. Strolls would be a better description - I didn't go faster than 1.5 mph. Slow. But, it got the blood working.

I'm already seeing results. I have edema on my legs; swelling, fluid build up. I've had it for several years now and it's gotten bad the last two years. So bad that a cat scratch I got over a year ago is just now healing. The fluid pouring from the wound prevented healing. In fact, I got a staph infection several months back and that made it really bad. Steph had to clean and dress it and apply prescription cream to it. It has sucked and just made me feel stupid and even fatter and more depressed. Especially when she cleaned it: iodine and hydrogen peroxide! Yeouch!

What made me feel the stupidest about this edema is that the doctor told me it's due to lack of circulation. If I just got a little exercise - like walking, the edema would clear up. Instead, I sat on the couch feeling fat and it got worse. Well, three times on the mill this week and already I think I see some looser skin. It's all less tight. As soon as I get off the mill my feet look better. So, I'm hoping by the end of the month I can see real results. We'll see.

What's made walking on the treadmill the easiest is something kinda silly. When we first got the treadmill, I tried music, and that worked for a while. But, about half way through I was looking at the clock and wishing it was done and counting all the things that hurt. Then I tried aiming the living room tv at the treadmill. This worked, but it's loud and the remotes don't easily work from that far away and if I want to work out while Steph is sleeping or studying - this method is right out.

So, for Xmas, I bought Steph one of the new video capable iPod Nano MP3 players. She was jealous that my iPod played video, although it doesn't have much battery life in video mode. About two hours with the brightness turned down to the point where you can barely see it. Her new Nano will do about 5 hours, it's tiny and dare I say sexy. Now I'm jealous. I have now commandeered the Nano I bought her last year as my music player. I was going to buy myself an iPod Shuffle because it was small and had the neato clip. So, instead, I found a good case with a clip for her old Nano and I'm happy as a clam - until they bring out a 16 gig Nano - then I will sell anything I can and buy one. This, however, left my larger iPod that does limited video with no purpose in life. I went out and found an inexpensive hard plastic case. I put Velcro on the back and attached it to the treadmill. We now have a dedicated video player on the treadmill that I can remove and use as a music/video player for trips or whatever.

So, on days I work out, my routine has been to get up at 5:30, put on shoes with no socks. (Why no socks? I'm trying to keep it VERY simple. The simpler, the more likely I'll do it.) Then, I take my meds. I'm back on my Metformin/Glyburide. Since I am back on that med, I need food or else I get a wicked stomach ache. So, I grab my water bottle that I have prepared the night before and a Slim Fast shake out of the fridge. I jump on the mill, set myself for 1.5 MPH, gulp down my shake and then find an episode of Red Dwarf that I have ripped from my DVDs to my iPod. About a half hour later, I haven't looked at the clock, the credits are rolling and my work-out, such as it is, is over. Not a bad deal. I hit the Cool Down button. Five minutes later I'm off the mill to ice my knees. I read in a men's health magazine that if you ice your knees and other joints directly after exercise, the enzyme that breaks down cartilage, causing damage and pain, doesn't get a chance to form. Then, off to a shower, dressed and out the door to work. Simple, simple, simple and I didn't spend a half hour looking at the clock.

With all the equipment we own and knowing how to successfully diet, it finally feels like I have all my ducks in a row. Today is the end of week one and I was a good boy all week. I'll weigh myself tomorrow - even if it shows I've gained weight, I know that I'm doing good things for myself and I want to keep it up. I'll try to keep you guys up on my progress.