Malcolm Peralty's Ramblings

March 4 – Today, like most days, I woke up early to take care of the puppy. I didn’t really eat breakfast, instead, I had a lunch of Cool Ranch Doritos and some Coke. I know I can do better, but I’m really not feeling all that great mentally. I spent time today editing last weeks big update video, so I’ll be posting that soon along with my notes. I have to eat better tonight… I tried to eat better in the evening but ended the day eating McDonald’s. I stayed under my calorie limit, just barely.

Feb 25 – We tried out a Shawarma place in Kingston today. I was worried it would suck, despite the good reviews on Google and recommendation on Reddit, but it was actually really good. One large meal from that place has enough food to feed two people, so if Annie and I can go in there agreeing on something, we will probably split one order next time.

Feb 18 – Why does Cobs Bread have to taste so good? It is Family Day here in Ontario, and while I’m not off from work today, pretty much everything is closed, so there were limited breakfast options. I ended up getting myself and my wife some scones and her a drink from Starbucks. Overall, I know I didn’t eat as good as I was intending. I tried to make sure to have a large serving of sugar snap peas and made sure to put spinach on my pepperoni pizza at Score in the evening. I need to do better if I’m going to stay under 280 pounds. That’s right, I weighed myself this morning and was under 280!

Feb 19 – Woke up this morning feeling super down. My brain is very unhappy today. I still struggle with depression and anxiety, and when I have days like this, I either want to eat all the junk food or like this morning, I want to eat nothing. I now have two weeks worth of calories at 2200 calories a day that I’ve banked for the future. I still have yet to have a day where I go over my calorie limit. Sometimes, I end up feeling pretty hungry at bedtime due to how calorie dense some food is, and how little it fills up my belly.

Feb 20 – I got a good amount of sleep, had a breakfast of mini-wheats and coca-cola and tried to get used to my new glasses. I spent some time studying for my SCRUM exam that I want to take at the end of this month and didn’t do well. I need to spend more time studying. We had ice cream in the evening from Marble Slab, and while it was good, I forgot how expensive it is both in calories and in money. I used up pretty much all of my calories for the day and didn’t even have a real supper. I’m not complaining as I didn’t go to bed hungry thanks in large part I’m assuming to my beef jerky.

Feb 21 – Woke up and weighed myself in anticipation for tomorrow’s official weigh in and I’m doing okay. I am still under 280 but I was hoping to see a continued drop since my last unofficial weigh in on Monday. I have this idea that I’ll be a certain weight by the end of February, but with seven more days, I’m not sure if I’ll make it. The whole thing is pretty silly since the primary focus was never about weight loss.

Feb 22 – I was so focused on work today, but in the evening, as a nice celebration of my wife starting her reading week, we went to get a Beaver Tail. It was so good, and not as expensive in terms of calories as I was expecting. I thought it was going to be 500+ but my cinnamon and sugar one was under 400. Overall, it was an okay day, but I did use up far more calories than I was intending. I still struggle with not beating myself up over using all of my calories.

Feb 23 – Even on the weekend, the puppy wakes up at seven and needs out, and while Annie offered last night to do the morning shift, I know that the puppy would wake me up and there is no way I’d go back to sleep, so I might as well get up and let her have the extra sleep. I weighed myself this morning and I feel bummed. While I’m still under 280, I was really hoping to get down to 275 by the end of February. I have been so focused on work, Annie and the dog that I really haven’t been eating as well as I should be. I feel very bloated this morning. I now have between 12 and 15 days of banked calories available.

Feb 11 – I woke up with a sore neck to take care of the dog just after six this morning, but thankfully, Annie and I went to bed by around 10:30 PM, so I got a fair amount of sleep. I skipped breakfast today, and I am in the process of having a snack instead of lunch. We will likely have lupper in another hour or two as Annie has an evening class at school.

Feb 12 – It wasn’t a great day for eating and I had way too many carbohydrates and simple sugars, but it was needed. I didn’t sleep enough and needed caloric energy to make my brain go. I hate feeling that way.

Feb 13 – I ate like crap today. I had junk for breakfast and junk for snacks in the evening but we did go see Alita: Battle Angel and that was cool.

Feb 14 – How does a bowl of cereal end up being 700 calories! I know it was pretty big and heaping, but come on. We had my cousin over for the evening and ended up having Thai food again. I really love the local Thai place. Beef, veggies and rice with their sauce tastes so good but uses quite a bit of calories. I was less than 100 calories away from going over today.

Feb 15 – I really tried to be careful with my carbs and calories today and thanks in part to my snack of mini Twix bars, I used up far more than I had intended. I still ended the day with over 400 calories remaining but I can’t help but beat myself up over the 450 calories I used eating chocolate. I was down 1.4 pounds versus last week, and 0.8 pounds since my lowest recorded. If I have a good week this week, I’ll be exiting the 280’s for the first time in a long time.

Feb 4 – staying at my aunt’s this week means that there won’t be as many video clips and my normal patterns are a bit thrown off. I am using up almost all of my calories today and got pretty close yesterday.

Feb 5 – I spent the night giving my food to the toilet through the entry hole after getting a bad migraine. So that was less than fun. It took me until supper time to be able to eat. After dinner, I watched Adam Ruins Everything’s season three premiere episode and found a great stat that lines up with what I have been feeling: processed food is cheaper per calorie. They reference a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79.1 (2004) that shows that you can get 1200 calories of chips and cookies for a dollar or 250 calories of whole foods like carrots. That’s almost a five times difference.

Jan 28 – Woke up super early. My shoulder has been in pain the last couple of days, but today is the worst by far. I think I pinched something or tweaked something. I don’t know, but it isn’t fun. Just like most things in my life, being in pain affects my eating. I used up almost all of my calories today, but that’s okay, I’m still trending towards banking around 300 – 500 per day.

Jan 29 – Another 5 AM wake-up, but thankfully, I was asleep by 10:30 PM, so I got more than I have been getting. My shoulder is still in a huge amount of pain. I’m not sure what is up with it and I’m getting tired of it hurting. I ate a bag of cheese curds today and used up over 600 calories. It filled me up pretty well, but I can’t really call it a meal.

Jan 30 – As I finish out this first month, I think about all of the people that have already given up on their New Year’s resolutions and how easy it would be for me to give up on this challenge. Tracking food and portions is boring. Remembering to write and vlog can be difficult. Between the company I co-founded, our puppy and spending time with my wife and family, I am a busy person. Do I want to be concerned with everything I eat for a year? Then I look at the scale and see some progress in the right direction. I looked up what the various tools say is the weight of a person of my height and age to match the calories I’ve given myself with a near sedentary lifestyle, and it is someone around 250 to 260 pounds, or around 25 pounds lighter than I am now. I haven’t been in the 250’s for a very long time and the idea that I could, through this challenge get to that point is super exciting to me. But this morning has been rough. My shoulder still hurts, I didn’t get much more than five hours of sleep, and I have a busy day to get through. My willpower is low, and I need caloric energy to make it, so I’m making poor food choices to start my day. It might be the first time that I go over my calories in a day and that feels like a setback. Mixed feelings today.

I didn’t go over my calories! I had less than half an apple’s worth remaining, but I stayed under. I am also over 7 days worth of banked calories at this point. I’m super pumped. I had a day where I went a bit crazy with food, but I stopped just short of my limit. That took a ton of willpower.

Jan 31 – Woke up this morning after almost eight hours of sleep. Amazing how refreshing eight hours is after consistently getting less than six. I am so focused on work stuff this morning, so I’m not really hungry. I’ll probably only end up having lunch and dinner. This afternoon, I go to my mom’s to help her with some tech stuff and to visit. I didn’t eat breakfast, and by the time I realized I was hungry, it was time to help my mom with tech stuff. We ended up going out for dinner at six in the evening, so I didn’t eat from around ten the previous night until six in the evening, so that’s a 20 hour fast I wasn’t planning for. It all worked out though because I got to have a bacon cheeseburger with some amazing french fries. I can’t complain too much.

Feb 1 – I am down again, only 1.2 pounds, but that means I lost 13 whole pounds in January. I have more than 7 and a half days of calories banked at my maximum daily usage. I used, on average 2062 calories per day during the month. If I were to need to burn my banked calories at that rate, I’d have around ten days worth. My lowest calorie usage day was January 1st, and my highest was January 30th. I only ate breakfast thirteen times during the month. I skipped lunch six times, never missed dinner and only had three days with no snacks. I used a total of 63,927 calories over the course of January. According to MyFitnessPal, I only went over 300 grams of carbohydrates eight days over the month. This is pretty huge for me as I’d estimate that I would probably go over 300 grams of carbs twenty to twenty-five days a month before I started this challenge. One of the things I know I need to do is continue to work on cutting back on my carbohydrate intake, especially sugar. Another stat from MyFitnessPal is that I only met my 137-gram protein marker two days out of thirty-one. That’s not great.

I ended up going to bed pretty early as I had a headache and was super tired. It was needed.