This blog has quite a lot to do with the sermon at Church today. That said, what I write here isn’t going to be particularly churchy, but I was definitely struck by the message today in a way that I haven’t been for quite a while… and it kind of spurred me to action.

The main thing that was compelling to me was the audible illustration used to demonstrate the point… playing music without any sense of rhythm… and then also without any rests. It really struck me for some reason.

I’ve often heard people who have accomplished a lot say that they plan their days. For some reason, that’s something that I’ve always resisted. I don’t want to be locked into anything, I just want to take things as they come and do whatever it is I want to do in that moment. I’ve always considered myself to be spontaneous, and I’ve always sort of taken pride in that. But I think that I’ve been wrong about it.

It’s far from the first time that I’ve thought about this idea, which I guess we can say is the idea of living intentionally. I’ve tried to do it in narrow aspects of my life before… most notably with dieting, etc. One of the things that always struck me back when I was in and out of jobs while doing the TV thing out in Burbank, was that when I wasn’t working I seemed to get less “personal work” done than I did when I was working. Having no structure at all I think led to not achieving any meaningful results.

It stands to reason then, that my lack of any kind of real structure in my personal life is likely the reason that I’m not achieving some of the things that I want to do. And I do want to do them, but, based on the things I actually spend time doing, you probably wouldn’t know it. And so I’m trying to change that.

Today I went out and bought a weekly planner… which is something I have absolutely never done before. Earlier this evening, I wrote out fairly detailed schedules for what I will be doing this week. Of course, there are some blocks of time in there to just relax and do what I want to do in that moment, but most importantly, I have at least an hour scheduled to work on writing my novel every day this week. In fact, I just finished spending slightly over my allotted hour working on it before writing this blog. This blog is another thing that I have time allotted to on a daily basis (30 minutes). So we shouldn’t have days where I forget to post anymore, because I have a specific time I am meant to be writing them. It is conceivable though, that I will have a day where I have some special event going on and so planning in a scheduled time to blog that day may be impossible. But in general, you will probably be able to tell how well I am doing with sticking to this by simply looking at how regularly I am blogging.

I’m kinda looking forward to it, but I’m also nervous about it… it’s so contrary to the way that I’ve always done things. I’m simultaneously worried that my schedule is too detailed and also not detailed enough. I’m sure I’ll learn how to adjust things as time goes on… and I guess that’s the important bit… not to let myself discouraged if I mess things up a bit early on. I’m happy that I got writing done tonight… when I sat down to do it because I had just written it in this book about an hour beforehand, I really wasn’t feeling like I was in a place where I could write, but I wrote about 1100 words – plus some notes.

Here’s hoping that I can start to do that on a regular basis… and maybe on a night where I feel like I’m really in a good writing place I can crank out 2,000.

Anyway, I wish you all a great week! I’ll write some more here tomorrow.

What era? The era of eating only meat and vegetables.

I ate a lot today that I could not have had before, but I stayed at my allotted calorie range.

Breakfast? Greek yogurt with strawberries.

Lunch? 2 slices of pizza

Snack? Brownie

Dinner? Ahi Tuna, asparagus, and spinach

I came in basically right at 1500 calories by my best estimates – those were assisted by the Lose It app.

I am really interested to see how this affects the scale tomorrow. I kind of anticipate an increase? Which I don’t look forward to. But I think the carbs and such will increase water weight a bit… it won’t be REAL weight gain, but I think it will be an increase on the scale.

This morning I was still not back to my lowest weight since I started trying to lose, but it was headed back that direction. Ultimately, it will be whatever it is. I’m going to give this a try at least until the end of the year and if I’m displeased with the results, I can reassess then. Of course, I’m not making any kind of additional commitment here. My commitment is to keep trying to lose weight until I see the scale display my goal: 165. The method I get there through at this point is just going to be whatever I decide to try… so if a few weeks into this I feel like it’s going completely awry, I might change it earlier than I intend to. But I hope not. I hope this way works well for me.

I’m going to do my first run in awhile tomorrow as well. That will maybe earn me some bonus calories if I want to use them. I’m hoping that I’ll start to see my run performance improve now that I’ll have some carbs in me for fuel. We’ll see.

These will stop being diet related at some point, I swear… But it’s what’s on my mind at the moment, so… you’ll have to deal.

…99 …100!

Ok so I could play it off like I meant to not post yesterday, but that’s just not true. I forgot again, and this morning I had no time to do a post, so, I’m just combining them into one… and… as a special surprise, I’m cutting the diet off a day early.

Why? Well, continuing through the end of the month was sort of an arbitrary decision, and I had debated a lot if I would go to 100 or the end of the month. Since it was only a matter of 1 day, I decided why not just go to the end of the month.

Well, at the time, I hadn’t realized there’d be a Halloween event at work, and, well, I’d like to be able to indulge a little bit there. So I’m ending things a day early.

Now, I will most definitely still be on a diet… calorie counting will be the name of the game though, not outright bans on most foods. I will still follow some rules I’ve got in my head most days (like generally I’m not going to eat things like chips), but I’ll make the occasional exception, mostly on the weekly cheat day where I’m allowed some extra calories.

I guess the idea is, slow down the weight loss a bit and migrate a bit more toward a sustainable way of eating. I think my goal will cease to be 2 pounds a week and start to be 1 pound a week. If I see those results I’ll be happy.

I was sort of scared of changing up because weight loss had been going real steady the last 3 weeks or so, but then this week it’s pretty much halted. Changing up the diet may help.

Let’s see here… Things I haven’t had in 100 days:

Pizza
Beer
French Fries
A Sandwich
Bagel
Donuts
Chips
Cheese (kind of a lie, some small bits slipped in)
Latte/Cappuccino
Milk of any kind
Soda
Juice
Fruit
Anything with added sugar or sweetener (probably messed up at some point on that, but generally)

There’s a lot more things. I’m psyched to get to have some of them. Korean BBQ is coming my way soon. Beer is coming my way on Thursday. A couple slices of pizza are coming my way for lunch at work tomorrow.

Anyway, blog posts will continue… but no more of this number nonsense. 100 days is enough!

98! Only a few days left now, and then this diet will be left behind… at least until 2019, at which point I may revisit it, depending on how things go. But, if I can settle into something where I continue to lose weight, but more gradually, and I can eat a bigger variety of things, well… that will be worthwhile.

I downloaded Mars Edit to start typing up my posts on, this is really the first time I’m using it. I’m only sort of getting a first glimpse, but I kinda like it. Seems like it integrates with WordPress really well. I’ll have to play with it a lot more in the coming days.

After Day One Hundred and One, I will be changing up what I do here. Hopefully it will be more interesting… and also hopefully it will be consistent. I’ve worked hard to try to make sure I post every day. Obviously, it hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve gotten pretty close to it, and I at least made up for the missed posts the following day.

I suspect that less people are reading these now since it’s no longer being posted to Facebook. Perhaps no one is. If you’re out there still, let me know!

Alright, week 2 begins!

Temptation was about as strong as it could ever be at work today in terms of what was available, but I didn’t really have to try to resist it. I’m not always good at sticking to things, but when I really make a decision to do something, most times it’s not too hard to stick it out. So, sure, I wanted a bun and cheese for my burger… and also some french fries to accompany it. And maybe a margarita and 2 or 3 beers… all of which were available, and free of charge. But, I wasn’t going to throw in the towel on this just a week in. I knew if I did it, I’d just cheat more tomorrow. And reading over that, that’s a lot of calories I saved myself. And I had forgotten to mention the funnel cake I totally would have had as well. Man, I wonder if anyone will ever solve the mystery of how I gained all this weight.

Otherwise it’s more of the same for me today – feeling pretty good.

So I can tell you… adding bulletproof coffee to the mix didn’t seem to make things any better. Most of today was still pretty rough in regard to how I’m feeling physically. Still tired, brain still mushy. I will say that I’m starting to feel a little bit better over the last hour or so. Hopefully that transitions into tomorrow.

I also have been feeling a bit lightheaded today, which means my blood pressure is probably a bit down (which is good, it was up when I went to the doctor on Monday). That’s one of the big motivators here – I’ve tried a few times to get to a point where I could come off the medication altogether (I think I was pretty close once), and I certainly don’t want to have to increase it. There’s also the fact that I’ve been starting to close in on my highest weight again (though I think I’m still in better shape at this point then I was then regardless – think I’ve got a bit more muscle mass making up some of that).

So here is what I’ve been eating:

Breakfast: 3 hard boiled eggs

Lunch: Baked chicken breast w/ onions and mushrooms

Dinner: On monday it was more of that chicken breast, yesterday it was a pork chop and sauerkraut, tonight… remains to be seen. It’s not a terribly diverse diet.

Today was the first day that there were “temptations” in the office aside from the things that are always there (chips and the like) – but free meal-like food was there. I didn’t feel any strong temptations to get it, so I think I’ve got sufficient motivation for now.

So I’m only at day two, and already I’m really feeling the change of diet at the physical level. Yesterday and today both I have felt my energy level decrease quite a bit. What is new today is in the late afternoon my brain started to get what I’d call… muddled. Definitely not thinking as well as normal at the moment.

I was thinking about it today and I’m guessing that in following this diet I am likely to be doing the whole “ketosis” thing, though that wasn’t a conscious choice… my carb intake is certainly going to be low enough that it’s going to happen. I’d also assume that’s probably what it is that I’m feeling right now – the “keto flu” as they call it. The internet tells me it can last about a week – hopefully it’s not any longer than that. I do have some keto strips I bought awhile back when I was about to take a stab at the keto diet, so, I’ll have to check after awhile to see if I do in fact achieve ketosis.

Tomorrow morning I will also be adding in bulletproof coffee to the mix, as when I was using that before I was finding that I felt a lot more energetic – so I’m hoping that will offset this lack of energy. I would have liked to have remembered to do that this morning.

That’s it for day two – we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

So for probably about a month now I’ve been plotting some sort of diet plan to get back to where I need to be weight and health-wise. I toyed around with a few ideas, and listened through Penn Jillette’s book on his weight loss, in which he did crazy things like eat nothing but potatoes for 2 weeks. Crazy things kind of appeal to me, but, his book isn’t really a how-to, and also the guy who I guess guided him through the diet doesn’t seem to have put out a book with his diet plan in it yet, so, while I’m sure I could use Penn’s book and the internet to piece together what to do, it would be a lot of work. Combine that with the fact that it leaves you on a vegetarian diet, and it really stops appealing to me at all anyway. Also, it’s questionable if getting such low protein and losing muscle along with fat is really a good thing (FWIW, Penn claims the muscle comes back fast after you finish the weight loss phase of the diet).

I also was recently listening to Jordan Peterson discuss his carnivore diet with Joe Rogan recently. So he’s literally only been eating meat. So that’s kind of crazy too. I thought about it briefly, but, again, there’s not really any evidence regarding how this will affect a person (as of the podcast I believe he hadn’t yet had bloodwork done since starting that diet). So, I’m not going to go quite that crazy.

Anyone who has listened to Joe Rogan on a regular basis will know that he typically promotes just eating meat and vegetables, which seems to me to be a pretty good place to “reset” a diet to, and that’s the one thing that I sort of got out of Penn Jillette’s book… that I need to sort of hit reset on my diet and how I relate to food.

I’ve known for awhile now that I have a bit of an unhealthy relationship with food… If I get sad, or stressed out, or have a bad day, that is where I tend to turn. Eating a cheeseburger and fries, or a pizza, or a donut, etc, will surely make me feel better. And I mean, they kind of do, at least for a bit. But I’ve also recognized that it’s self-defeating, as doing that long term will lead toward feeling kind of crappy.

Of course there’s also what is the typical American bad relationship with food, which is just sort of… “Hey, want to hang out? Better get a lot of food. Maybe some dessert and snacks too.” Any time anything good happens, we tend to celebrate with food. So if you eat crappy food when you’re sad, and you also eat it when you’re happy, you’re pretty much eating crappy food all the time. And so that’s why I need a reset. I’d like to get myself where I start to think of food as nothing more than what it is… sort of a “fuel”. I thing I need to survive. Not something to make me feel better, not something that I have when I’m celebrating. It’s just food.

And so my plan is this – For the next 90 days, starting today:

I will eat only meat and vegetables. I will allow most seasonings, butter, and some sauces  – as long as they’re very low in calories (such as hot sauce). The carb heavy vegetables will be kept to a minimum.

I will drink only water, unsweetened tea, and coffee (w/o cream or sugar, which is how I mostly drink it anyway). So that will mean no cappuccinos, no soda, no beer, no wine, no liquor. Mostly the idea is “don’t drink calories”, but also I’m going to avoid all artificial sweeteners for the duration. That said, if I happen across a different drink that has no calories and no artificial sweeteners, it would theoretically be allowed.

The final bit of the diet is, I’m going to allow the option for a cheat day after every 30 days. If I use a cheat day, the cheat day doesn’t count for the next set of 30 days, and while I don’t have to use the cheat day on “day 31”, for the purposes of acquiring another cheat day, it will reset the counter whenever I use it. For my first 30 days, I will have a strong motivation to really not use the cheat day, because I know I will want to go to the fair, and due to the timing of starting this, using the cheat day would make the very last day of the fair the only day I could eat there. Or maybe by then I’ll no longer desire fair food. We shall see.

Oh yes, and I plan to post a little something here every day, with a subject line of what day it is, and… I dunno, probably something about how I’m feeling, maybe what I ate. I’ll certainly require myself to post about any screw ups, as that will help with motivation a bit.

So, here goes.

At about this time, 2 weeks ago, I was preparing to drive with my mom up to McClure, PA to pick up a Shiba Inu puppy from a breeder. She was just 8 weeks old, and she had the most adorable picture posted on the online listing I found.

The breeder was calling her Molly, but I changed her name to Yuna.  The breed was an older Mennonite woman, and so when we drove up to their house it was a bit like entering another world.  We went inside and saw all the puppies, Yuna and her brothers and sisters.  We looked out the window into a fenced area and saw their mom.

As we were leaving, she started to cry.  I know that she was scared, but I knew that I was going to be really good to her.  We put the sock monkey toy someone (I’m still not sure who) had sent to her back with her and it seemed to help.  She slept for most of the drive.

We stopped at Super Pets to get her a harness and some padding for her crate.  We also got a bunch of toys.  The employees in the store loved her, especially the guy who was checking us out.

When we got home she spent a lot of the evening lying next to me as I sat on the couch.  I started taking her out for walks in my parents’ back yard that night, and she was already doing an amazing job of waiting to go outside to go to the bathroom.  I’d never seen another dog do as good as her.  That night when it was time to go to bed I put her in her crate and she started crying again.  I didn’t want her to cry and so I took her out and brought her into bed with me.  She pressed herself right up against me all night.  I didn’t sleep very well that night, but I know it made her feel safer.

As the days went on she came out of her shell more and started to be more independent and rambunctious and want to run around and play and get to places she wasn’t supposed to go.  She really liked to chew.  She wasn’t immediately all that interested in any toys or treats, but the bully sticks I had ordered for her were the first things that I found that she loved.  She’d chew through them really fast. Then she’d chew on anything else she could find… including my hands, arms, and feet.

We had pretty good routine down during the week.  I’d wake up, make my coffee and get dressed for work, then I’d take her outside to go to the bathroom and walk to my car.  One morning, we ran into a guy with a couple of dogs off leash and she played with them for a bit.  He asked to hold her and so I let him for a minute or so.  After we’d get to the car I’d drive her to my parents’ house where she’d spend her days so she didn’t have to be alone.

She continued to sleep in my bed with me the first few nights.  She was really good.  She started to sleep a little bit away from me instead of right up against me.  Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and lick my neck and wake me up.  When I would wake up in the morning she would lick my face and paw and bite at my beard.

I took her for walks downtown, and even if it was a time when there weren’t many people out, it was hard to get her even around the block without at least one person stopping to comment on how cute she was or ask if they could pet her.  At a busy time I could take just a couple steps out my door and tons of people would stop to say hi to her.  Everyone loved her, she was a very popular puppy.  She was afraid of walking on the metal doors and grates on the ground.  I made her walk on them sometimes because I wanted her to see that it was ok and she didn’t have to be afraid.

She would try to play with Malcolm, my parents’ Alaskan Malamute, but most of the time he didn’t want to.  He was getting better at tolerating her, and they did play together in the snow.  She liked to bite at his hair, and his tail.  He liked to growl and bark at her, and then she liked to just keep doing what she was doing anyway.

I transitioned her from sleeping in the bed to sleeping in her crate, because I thought it would be better long term.   She did really good with it, I think she was starting to like it.  She would only cry in the morning when she realized I was awake.  So I’d try to get up as quickly as possible to let her out.  She was always really energetic and would jump up and lick at my face if I was low enough, just like she did when she was sleeping in the bed with me.

On St Patricks Day, I took her for a walk in Baker Park and her harness came loose and she got out.  I was really scared.  She started running and I had to chase her until she hid in a bush near the clock tower.  Later that night, after I took her for another walk, one of my neighbors came out with her visiting family while I was standing with Yuna outside.  As we went in, she invited us to come into her place for awhile.  I sat and talked with her and 2 of her (I think) cousins.  Yuna  and my neighbor’s bulldog interacted a bit, but unfortunately the bulldog was a little too aggressive with his approach so Yuna was scared and he had to be held back.  We were over there pretty late, and Yuna went to sleep underneath her couch, so I decided to take her home.

On Thursday she had her first appointment at the vet.  The receptionist and the other employees there all immediately fell in love with her.  When the vet examined her, he found that everything looked good.  He gave her a dewormer and a distemper vaccination.  Before I left, he told me that he believed Yuna would have a bright future.

After walking her from the car to the apartment, where she was still being fawned over by passersby and even some drivers, I could tell that she was feeling tired.  She laid on top of me while I watched TV for awhile and she slept off and on.  I eventually got up and put her in her crate so that she could sleep.  She cried a little bit because I went over to the other room, but then she was ok.  I thought about letting her sleep in the bed that night.  I wish that I would have.

We went through our routine that morning, a little rushed because I was running late for work.  I let her out and she followed me around as I got ready and made coffee that ended up spilling all over the counter.  I quickly got her away from it as it dripped and cleaned it up enough so it wouldn’t keep dripping onto the floor.  We went outside to walk to the car and it was much like any other morning.  She went to the bathroom on the way, and then we got in the car and I brought her into my parents’ house.  She was running along and biting at my Dad’s pant legs.  I left and went to work.

This is what was supposed to happen:  I was supposed to come to my parents’ house after work ended.  She was supposed to be jumping up at the gate that kept her in the kitchen, excited to see me.  I was supposed to pick her up and let her lick and bite at my face.  Then I’d put her down and watch her run around, and throw her ball for her a few times until she decided not to bring it back to me but instead just lay down and chew it.  Then I was supposed to take her home, and she was supposed to irritate the hell out of me chewing on everything.  And then I was supposed to play with her some more, and then lay on the couch with her watching TV, and then we were supposed to both go to bed, and then wake up this morning and start our third week together.

This is what did happen:  Yesterday around noon, Yuna died.  We aren’t 100% sure of the cause, but it appears she suffocated, either due to choking on a piece of her food that may have been drawn into her esophagus, or possibly due to a reaction to the distemper vaccination she had received the night before.  I don’t know what the latter scenario would look like, but my mom, who was there with Yuna when she died, and did everything she could to try to save her, believed that she was choking on food.  She was rushed to the vet, and they performed CPR, but there was nothing they could do to save her.

I missed my Mom’s phone call because I was on another phone call, but she sent me some texts after she tried to call that I saw immediately after I got off of the phone.  I hurried home as quickly as I could, never returning to work after my lunch break.  And then I sat with Yuna, petting her and holding my face up against her.  She was still so soft and fluffy, and looked so sweet and peaceful.  I held her in my arms and I didn’t ever want to put her down.  It’s strange the way the mind works, because I felt like if I put her down I would be losing her, but the truth is she was already lost.  But then the longer I held her, the more dead she seemed, and I knew I had to put her down.

I wrapped her in a towel, and I placed her out on the enclosed deck behind my parent’s house.  And that’s where she is right now, directly behind me, as I type this.  Soon I have to call to have her cremated.

Two weeks and a day ago I had nothing less than what I have now, but nonetheless it is a great loss.  All I can do is think about the things that I was supposed to do with her.

I was supposed to:

• Enroll her in a puppy class, and teach her to sit, to lay down, to stay
• Help her learn to stop mouthing people and biting up their hands and arms.
• Teach her that it’s ok walk on those metal grates.
• Help her learn to walk better (but she did pretty good for a puppy)
• Set up her puppy pen that had just recently arrived
• Feed her treats through the pet camera I got her while I was at work
• Go on jogs and hikes with her as she got older
• Have to take care of her for years and years

I don’t have that many pictures, because I was supposed to have a lot more time.  But I have a few pictures, and a few videos.  I don’t want to forget her.

I wanted someone who depended on me and who I had to take care of, someone to come home to after work and who would be happy to see me, and who would love me no matter what.

And for just under 2 weeks, I had that.  And then it was taken away.  No person is to blame… everyone did everything that they could have done, and what they were supposed to do.  Even if it was a reaction to the vaccine, we couldn’t have known that it would happen.

And so in just 2 short weeks I grew to love Yuna with all my heart and then she was taken away from me.  She wasn’t quite 10 weeks old.  And so today I have to say goodbye.  I miss her.