The Contest Is Over...

It's been nearly a week since I wrote anything, and I still haven't gotten around to the "thank you" post I promised. It's coming, but not right now.

 

This first week post-ABL has been very busy for me. I never got around to eating that steak I said I would eat in my last post. I've not had any beef yet - still a little afraid of what effect it may have on my beefless-for-six-months digestive system. I've eaten fairly close to what I was eating during the competition - not quite as much tuna, and added some carbs back into my diet. I have actually eaten out a few times since the finale, but I had chicken twice and grilled pork tenderloin once. Last Saturday we had lunch with our best friends, at my insistence. They have been so supportive and encouraging throughout this whole process, as everyone's friends have been, and I wanted to start making up time with them. That was a trip to Cracker Barrel, where I had a grilled chicken sandwich. Tuesday night we went to O'Charley's with my parents (a late Mother's Day dinner). My normal fare there would have been an appetizer of fried cheese, two or three rolls, a triple-cheese bacon burger, and regular fries. This time, I had a grilled chicken sandwich (notice a common thread here?), sweet potato fries, and a side salad.

 

One of the prizes we all won as Biggest Loser contestants was $25 to French Market Grill West. I'd never been, but we had the certificate, so we might as well use it, I figured. The food was good; the waiter got a little perturbed with me when I asked for "lite ranch dressing". He tried to tell me that there was no such thing, that it's the exact same dressing, just labeled differently so people would buy it. I wanted to say, "Buddy, I've been reading nutrition labels every day for the last six months - don't tell me there's no difference." He wouldn't let it go, so I said, "just bring me regular ranch, then... I'm not going to argue with you over salad dressing." As it turned out, there wasn't enough dressing on the salad to argue about! (For the record, regular ranch is 148 calories and 15 grams of fat; lite ranch is 48 calories and .3 grams of fat.) But the food was good - pork tenderloin, carrot-broccoli vegetable medley, and a scoop of garlic mashed potatoes (yes, I ate the potatoes. At $16 bucks a plate, I'm not leaving four dollars' worth of food sitting there! Besides.... the contest is over.) Had a wonderful date night with my lovely, shrinking-waistline wife! My plan for this morning was to make her breakfast in bed, but she got up anyway, so we ate at the table. Breakfast was bacon-egg-cheese burritos. Lest you become concerned about my breakfast choice, the tortilla shells I found this morning were just about the best ones nutritionally that I have seen - the contents are almost identical to one slice of wheat bread. Same carbs, nearly the same calories, everything. The filling was a scrambled egg, a chopped-up slice of turkey bacon with the grease drained off, and a dash of fat free shredded cheese. Thought we had some green peppers, but got home and didn't find them. It was a little bland, but still very good, and only around 200 calories. Even with the constraints of the contest off of me, I still check the calories, carbs, fat, sodium, and protein of everything I eat. Hopefully, a habit for life.

 

The contest is over. THOSE words are taking some getting used to. For the last six months, we have had the structure of daily workouts (with our trainer on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; on our own on the other days) and regular appointments with PHC. Since Mark and Donna Plants usually came to work out with us at least twice a week, it was almost like having four PHC appointments a week - two at their place, two at Omni. In talking to some of my fellow teammates, "a little lost" or "disconnected" is the general feeling that is floating to the surface. I have stayed in touch with PHC this week, not for an appointment or anything, just staying in contact, seeing what their plans are for my future, etc. Because of an extremely busy (and largely sleepless) week, I did not go by Omni to get my membership put into their system until lunchtime on Friday. I have been doing some running on my own, and when I went to the gym Saturday morning and hopped on a treadmill, I discovered that one week off does not mean I have to start from scratch. I was running intervals at the exact same speeds I was running the week before the finale. Actually, this has been a week of letting my body rest and re-hydrate thoroughly, and I think it has done me some good. Is my weight up? Of course - it took some dehydration to get down to 199 in time for the final weigh-in, and a gallon of water weighs eight pounds. My weight is currently hanging around 210, which is about what it was in the picture I posted as my official "after" picture - the one in the black shirt and khaki pants in my green office. I was discussing via e-mail with Donna at PHC what weight I should look to maintain, because obviously 199 was an aberration - my face looked horribly sunken in when I saw the pictures from the finale. She told me to check the BMI tables and see what I needed to weigh to have a body mass index of under 25. Well, the number I came up with was 189 pounds... I wrote her back and told her no way was I going to try and maintain my weight that low. She agreed that was probably not a healthy weight for someone of my stature, and we settled on keeping it around 210. I suggested 215, but 210 is doable. I may eventually end up a little lower, but it will be the loss of body fat over time through healthy eating and exercise habits, not a mad rush to hit a target by a deadline. I may also end up a little higher, if I start adding some muscle. Bottom line is, I want to look healthy, BE healthy, and fit comfortably into the clothes that I am wearing right now.

 

(Programming Note: If you live in the Augusta, Georgia area, you can see the first half-hour of our finale this Tuesday night at 7:30 PM, immediately before the finale of "The Biggest Loser". It airs on channel 26-1 if you are using rabbit ears (yes, there are still some of us); channel 8 on Comcast and Knology.)