Rudy Giuliani recently gave a speech that I found personally inspiring and applicable to my diet adventure.  While he will always be known for his strong leadership in September of 2001, the former Mayor of New York City also helped to rebuild and revitalize many of New York's neighborhoods during his tenure as Mayor.  What he found was the key to the revitalization was not some economic theory or political connection (at least at first), but vision that made it happen.  Giuliani said that he would regularly close his eyes and think about a particular neighborhood, then think of what it could be.  Literally, he would try to picture the stores and the traffic ect. 

Since I haven't worked out much lately except for my weekend softball league, I thought that today I could write a little about my favorite exercises to see if I can get myself motivated.  In general, I prefer to play an actual physically demanding sport instead of being in the weight room.  Basketball, baseball/softball, soccor, gymnastics, flag football, anything that involves the actual joys that come from moving, interacting, and being creative is always my first choice.  When I play sports I don't feel like I am "working out" but I am basically doing full force cross training. 

In practicalily, the toughest thing for me is not playing the sport, but finding the time to get involved with something that is actually organized, challenging, but not filled with a bunch of guys that get all crazy when they lose a game and such.  Note to those guys out there who think that yelling, screaming, or getting down on your teammates in an adult recreational (or competitive for the matter) league is ok - "It's really not that important whether you win or not because you are not earning your living playing sports, you were not good enough to play as a pro, you never will be, and everybody else would just prefer that you were fun to be around, so get a grip!" 

As you may have noticed, I have not listed my weight in my journal lately.  This has a very simple explaination; I haven't weighed in.  The reason for my not weighing in is a bigger issue - that I have not been working out in the gym very much.  It's a combination of alot of things; 1. work keeping me busy, 2. being tired from too much sun at my softball games on the weekends, 3. being lazy, 4. being bored with the gym workout in general, 5. wanting to eat out for lunch instead of working out, 6. craving some chinese, mexican, pizza, or chocolate chip cookies, 7. having the dread that I was going backwards after so much success in losing 9 pounds at my best point. 

There are two reasons that I love goldfish (the crackers); 1. They have a cheesy taste and 2. they have a salty taste.  While those are great reasons to love goldfish, I have a better reason: they are baked instead of fried!  This is a perfect example of executing on my "do one level better" than you normally would do in order to kick up the weight loss.  Normally, I would love to have Fritos, potato chips, or some other thing that is not good for me.  When I eat goldfish, I don't feel like I am sacrificing that much, but I am eating less fat and less calories. 

The key part that I often fail at is moderating how many goldfish I eat.  In my house, we buy the jumbo sized box because it's cheaper and I don't have to worry about missing my cheese fix if I am really craving it.  My downfall is that I take the box with me to sit down in front of the tv.  One thing I need to improve on is grabbing a small bowl or cup to portion my goldfish so I don't eat too many.  This will be my one little improvement that I will work on this next week. 

I hope you found my tips from last week helpful.  Just putting them in writing has helped me so much that I have decided to give you some more tips:

1.  Substitute water as much as possible. Being dehydrated is often confused with being hungry.  

2. Don't load up on "healthy" calories.  Fruit juices are loaded with nutrients, but they are also loaded with calories and they absorb must faster in your body in the liquid form.  Eat fresh fruit instead of fruit juices.  You wont feel like you are sacrificing much and your body will look better for it.

3. Drink skim milk.  Skim milk has all the nutrients of other kinds of milk, but without all the fat and calories.  If you think skim milk is disgusting because it is more "watery" than 1% 2% or whole milk, then just work yourself down the fat chain.  For example, if you use whole milk today, buy a half gallon of whole and a half gallon of 2% and split the recipe into half "whole milk" and half 2%.  I promise you will not notice.  Once you get used to doing this, then make it more and more 2%.  If you do this gradually enough, you will be down to skim in a few weeks and refuse to drink whole milk at all.  I even go so far as to use water and skim milk on my cereal.  If it cuts 50 calories off my milk intake and I don't notice much difference, then that's great for me.

"Everything in moderation."  "Patience is a virtue."  "Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder..eh hem...beholder."  We have all heard these phrases a million times, but have you ever spent any time really thinking about them.  There is some real wisdom in these phrases.  As I continuously state that the weight loss game is really a mental game and not a physical one, today I will give you some of my tricks for eating moderately.

1. Carry out chinese food - Avoid the fried foods and always go for white rice over fried rice.  Eating carry out chinese food makes it tough to stay on a plan, but substituting the white rice for the fried rice will save you a bundle of calories and a couple hours on the treadmill.

    While I have been poor about hitting the gym the last few weeks, one thing that I never miss is playing on my softball team.  Sure, it's co-ed recreational league (i.e. you don't have to be any good to play), but I have a great time.  My baseball/softball career began with me playing one man baseball as a four year old in my front lawn.  I would toss the ball up, hit it, then run after it and try to touch or throw the ball and hit the tree (first base) before I could count to 10.  Needless to say, I didn't play many innings with all of this running around. 

When I turned 8 years old, my parents signed me up for Little League and I was in heaven.  My "serious" ambitions in baseball ended when I was a Junior in high school and was the last person cut from a very good high school team two years in a row!  This coming after a summer league season in which I led an underdog team to an upset victory for the district championship by batting 1.000 in 12 at bats (3 games) with 3 outfield assists.  The team we beat twice had 9 players from my high school team and we had only 4, including myself. 

Since I am totally not in the mood to write about my eDiets plan today, I thought I would give you a little insight into another challenge I am taking on in my life right now: being a working professional in a highly competitive corporate environment while wearing braces.  Yes, I did say braces - like the ones you wear on your teeth. 

This does have some relevancy to my diet plan since I cut out soda, coffee, and tea from my diet not because eDiets suggested it, but because I don't want to stain my "clear" braces (along with the other negative effects of those drinks - like stomach acid and more).  So far, I have only had 1 glass of ice tea since the 3rd week of January - and that was because I requested water at a business lunch and they never delivered it. 

After my failure over the last week and a half to come close to anything resembling the eDiets plan, I have avoided scales and writing to the Weight Loss Posse (my supporters) in hopes that a little time to refocus might help me climb back on the horse.  At no point did I make a concious effort to come off my diet plan, but other priorities came up and here I am trying to get going again.  I may even break down and call the eDiets help line service to see if they can give me some good advice on how to get motivated now that I have lost most of my positive momentum. 

My energy level is not as high and I am rather irritable when I am failing at something and right now I am both tired and irritated.  Little things have made me get into mini arguments with my family and close friends.  This is the mental side of the diet that I always talk about in my journal.  Being the competitive person that I am, my passion can be my biggest asset or my biggest liability. 

This week it happened.  I knew it was coming and warned all of you about it as well, but it still happened.  Work meetings, pressure, and temptation made me fall off the diet wagon.  All my haters out there can finally rack one up on the loser column.  My week included: lots of beer, lots of margaritas, lots of snacks likes chips and cheese, big dinners and lunches, little sleep, and no excercise (except to walk around the event I attended and get more margaritas).  I am avoiding weighing in until I get back on track a little. 

If you are a regular reader of my journal you are thinking "I can't believe he just lamed up after he has done so well and been preaching mental toughness ect."  Well, I am back to reality and it doesn't feel good.  Today I am cranky because I am tired, my appetite is huge since I have been eating more lately, and I feel down because I have taken a big step backwards.