I made it through another week with some successes and some failures, but I continued to bank calories away as most days, I had some left over. I am hopeful that the week ahead will see me do even better, continue to focus on eating healthier, but also forgiving myself when I don’t as long as I keep a strong look at my calorie usage.

Jan 7 – Woke up this morning not feeling hungry at all, despite only having 1,700 calories yesterday. I wonder why some days it is easier than others to eat well, or restrict calories and feel good. Emotionally, I am struggling a bit today. I suffer from depression and anxiety and despite taking medication for depression, I still have bad brain days. I didn’t end up having breakfast again, instead, I had a yogurt and protein granola for lunch. Before bed, I ended up having half a bag of popcorn, but overall, I kept my calories low and was able to use only 1400 calories. At this point, I have banked over two days of calories, and that number is growing. Even if I have some days above my calorie limit, I should be able to maintain this throughout the year.

Jan 8 – I woke up before my alarm again and let the dog out. It is all icy out and I had to be very careful. Even with being careful, my right knee was unhappy. It has been sore since tweaking it a week or so ago. I weighed myself today, and it is unofficial as my weigh in day is on Fridays, but I am currently down over five pounds since starting this challenge a little over a week ago. I love beef jerky. It is amazing how many people are all about avoiding meat and I get it, but the taste makes me feel good and I feel satiated for a long time. It really works for me. We got pizza for dinner which was nice. I feel like it was a smart follow up after going grocery shopping. The last thing I want to do after doing a big chore is make a complex dinner. Usually, I’ll buy something to throw in the oven or make something simple, but the pizza was a nice change. I was able to resist eating half the pizza in a sitting but still ended up using 1,000 calories between my pizza and root beer dinner.

Jan 9 – Who needs sleep? Right? Luna was up most of the night, which we thought she was done doing, but apparently not. That throws off the energy of my day a little. I am going to do something I haven’t done in a while and start my day with a bottle of coke to try to get some caffeine in me since I am not a coffee or tea drinker and it’ll be the full sugar type because I can’t really do aspartame without getting a headache. For dinner, we had steaks and they were good. I used the reverse sear method of cooking them which means heating them in the oven before pan frying them for a minute or two per side. They turned out pretty rare but tasted amazing. I love steak! Today I used the most calories in a single day since starting this challenge as I used almost 2600 calories!

Jan 10 – Got a bit more sleep last night, but still not enough. I definitely ate more yesterday than I would have liked, but still under my 2,739 per day. My hope today is to stay under 2,000 calories. I’m going to achieve that by not having any pop, drinking tons of water, and trying to not eat any candy. At the end of today, I will have three days worth of calories banked for later in the year or left over if I don’t use them. If I can bank an average of 500 calories per day, which is the kind of calorie restriction most diets recommend, I’ll end up with almost 20% of my total remaining at the end of the year with 182,500 calories unused. My wife and I have talked about a little carrot reward of $1 per 200 calories remaining which means I would be able to spend $912.50 on myself in a frivolous manner. In the afternoon, my mood dropped. I suffer from depression and my mind crushed me. I felt like a wave of negative energy smash into me and everything slowed down. It sapped my energy and drained the colour from the world. I couldn’t be bothered to vlog or do some things for work. I ended up taking a nap, something I never do, and still, I felt pretty horrible. I didn’t stay under 2,000 calories today as I went over by nearly 250 calories, but I still think that’s a victory as it is 500 under my daily limit.

Jan 11 – I weighed myself this morning and I was 287.6 pounds. This is down from my starting weight of 295 pounds. That’s a loss of 7.4 pounds in eleven days, which would be scary, except for the fact that I know my body likes to be in the mid-280s. I typically don’t have much trouble getting down to around this weight from the weights I balloon up to. But if each pound is around 3500 calories, then that means I’ve eaten a deficit of 25,900 calories. If my total daily energy expenditure is around 3400 calories per day, then that number almost tracks right. I would have normally consumed 34,000 calories in ten days, but instead only consumed 18,892, or a difference of 15,108. If it was a strict 3500 calories per pound, I should have only lost around 4 pounds in the last ten days. Maybe some of what was on the scale today was based on not drinking enough water today. Maybe there are other factors at play, but I think the whole thing is very interesting. My goal with this challenge was not to actively lose weight, but instead be more mindful of what I eat, and I feel I am accomplishing that.

Jan 12 – I woke up feeling full this morning, and so I was in no rush to eat. I had a small yogurt and the protein oatmeal stuff for breakfast. For lunch, I had more pulled pork in a pulled pork sandwich. It was amazing, but in eating breakfast and lunch, I didn’t leave myself many calories for dinner. For dinner, we had soup because I assumed we would eat appetizers at the sports bar we were going to in the evening. Annie’s friend plays in a band called SweetLeaf and we went to hear them live at the Overtime Sports Bar. Unfortunately, that bar doesn’t do food, just drinks, so I ended up getting us some junk food from the convenience store and using up pretty much all the rest of my calories for that day. It feels a bit like a failure to use all of my calories in a day… Is that weird?