First of all….Merry Fucking Christmas…..if you still have any holiday cheer left after dealing with the crowds and traffic since the holiday season started (I believe it officially kicked off the day after Labor Day this year), then you deserve some time to unwind and forget about all of the mouth-breathing mall dwellers….. I personally didn’t have to suffer too much, since I chose practical and pain-free gift shopping this year…booze, gift cards, super premium beef, homemade stock/demi-glace and home roasted coffee.
I think I’ll make it through the whole season this year without racking up more than a couple hundred bucks in debt. I owe most of that feat to surgery; no extravagant dinners (Bluestem Happy Hour is king), no excessive drinking (we did get pretty hammered last Friday night, but that was it), and no “the hell with it, it’s the holidays” eating binges (my one vice in this cold weather has been homemade Plaza III steak soup). Being single again has also helped to reign in the credit cards.
HOWEVER, I have gotten sucked into too many sales at Casual Male Big and Tall. They send out all kinds of coupons, rewards, etc., to get you to come in and shop. So of course since I’ve lost so much weight so quickly I’ve needed clothes. Some of my purchases have just been for fun…novelty boxers with Scarface or pints of Guinness on them are just too ridiculous to pass up. But most of my shopping has been to supplement the clothing I can still wear; new pants, shirts, etc. I haven’t bought that much, just enough to have a couple of pairs of decent pants for work, and shirts or sweaters that aren’t one of my gratuitous lazy-guido fleeces.
As of TODAY, even the peripheral clothes shopping has been halted until further notice. I had some downtime this afternoon and went through some storage containers full of old clothes, and managed to find about seven brand new pairs of pants that I’ve never worn. There were a LOT more than that stored away that were way too big, these are just the ones I could fit into. If you’re a big guy, you know how it goes….you hate shopping and trying on clothes, so at different points in time you’ve taken clothes home that are too small and you’re too lazy to take them and trade them in, you keep gaining weight…..so after about ten or fifteen years you have a ton of new clothes that you have forgotten about. None of the clothes I’ve found so far are fantastic, but they are definitely decent enough to keep me from buying any more new stuff until they are all too big for me. As I stockpile clothes that are too big for me, I’ll keep an outfit or two so I can do one of those “before” photos in giant pants, but other than that they are all in great enough shape to donate.
The weight loss is still happening even though I’ve been too lazy to go out walking in this cold weather, but it has slowed down a bit. I’m right at 85 or 86 pounds lost so far, which is significant in 4 months, but I think as I stick with whole proteins vs. soups or stews I can really kick it in the ass so it comes off a little faster. Also, I’m finding that my New Whey protein supplements (best creation EVER…..42 grams of protein packed into a 3 ounce test tube) really offsets my hunger for a few hours. Before I start drinking 2 of these a day so that I can use one as a breakfast replacement I’ll definitely talk to my doctor, but if I do that I know I’ll never skip breakfast (which is a problem for me, especially on the weekends) and I’ll stay full for the rest of the morning.
One more huge container of clothes to go through before I sit on my butt and finish my “Arrested Development” marathon………
Unsaved Loved Ones 