On Saturday, I hadn’t eaten.

I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

It was midnight and I realized I had not put any food into my system besides a coffee and the shake I’d had early in the morning.

It’s time to do better.

Committing to this program has become increasingly tougher. I am still doing it. Instead of getting it right 100% of the time, though, I’m batting about 80%. And not because I’m eating cheat food, or not weighing, or not measuring, but because I’m struggling to find the time to sit down and eat.

Over the next week, the objective is to redesign everything I thought I knew about how to eat and lose weight. The next week is going to see me rejigging my current meal plan into equal meals through-out the day. Instead of saying: I’m sitting down for lunch, it’s going to be: I need two meals that equal to lunch. One I’ll have midmorning. The other midafternoon. Because I don’t have time to finish a meal right now if we get busy, or if a customer needs me, or I’m in a meeting.

Losing weight is math. Simple math. Calories intake by calories burned by time of day, etc. And if I want to keep being successful – or lose the weight in a healthy manner – I have to reprogram everything I thought I knew the last seventeen weeks.

That said – the stress is showing up on my hips and on my bust as the scale promises to feature a 50lb weight loss. I’m literally knocking on its door. Over this weekend, my sister’s scale read 181.8. A ludicrous number I actually don’t know was the last time I really weighed for a duration of time. It’s no flash in the pan, it’s giving me strength to believe that the 170s are right around the corner.

50 lbs. Perspective: That’s a large bag of dog food. A typical bag of fast-setting concrete. A small bale of hay. An average male bulldog. Ha! Okay, that one made me laugh. But the point is, I’ve finally got myself a mere 1.2 lbs away from 50lbs gone. And it’s hard to believe that my bones even had enough strength to carry it at all. Progress. For every beer I didn’t drink, every cake I didn’t enjoy, every piece of Jack Astor’s garlic bread I sacrificed – 50lbs. We’re at the half-way point.

Again – I’m getting worse at showcasing my food. But here’s what I had for lunch.

And here’s where I am today.

You can if you want to.

☆ c