Giving up Oreos and losing nine pounds...

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

John and I were talking about his recent trip to Fenway Park and our last bike ride when he mentioned his weight. “I’m down nine pounds in nine days,” he said. I know this seems impossible unless you know John and his addiction to Oreo cookies. “Dude…I sit down to the computer around 10 p.m. every night and eat an entire package of them…with milk, of course,” he told me recently. “Seriously? Every night? An entire package?” I found it hard to believe, but he assured me it was true. And we’re talking one of those packages with three rows of cookies…I don’t know…60 or so? Why the guy isn’t a diabetic I don’t know. Why he doesn’t weigh more than 160 pounds when he IS eating them…I really don’t understand. Anyway…he hasn’t eaten any in nine days and I sense a crash on the horizon.

Then I’m riding home with my nephew and his two friends last Friday and they get to talking about Chicken McNuggets…the 50-pak. “Wait…what? Did you say you ate a 50-pak at one sitting?” Matt responded that he’d been challenged by Nathan and had to answer the challenge. They’d been at Cedar Point and stopped after leaving the park. He was given the ride home to Mentor to complete the task…which he did as they were exiting. I looked up the nutritional information on a McNugget…and it’s ugly. Each piece has 46 calories, 2.9 grams of fat and 101 mg of sodium. That’s 2,300 calories and 145 grams of fat in one hour! Oh…and the guy’s a rail, though I don’t think he eats this way too often. Still…I’m gagging thinking about it.

I got back to the park for the Survival Workout and was pleased to do nine pull-ups at the start. Double digits just around the corner. I’d had a couple of days away from the routine since losing my car so I figured to be fresh and pop off some big numbers on my lifts. Instead, I found that because of the rain, the rocks and logs were too slippery for me to keep a good grip and I was doing fewer reps, instead. My knee has been feeling really strong of late, so I did work in the picnic table hops…though I kept it to only 10 repeats to see what tomorrow brings. I also managed to break my three-set push-up record with 142 repetitions.

Later that night, I discovered Jack had consumed the last banana…which I’ve found to be critical to the smoothie recipe. I needed something though, so I started loading the blender. I put in an orange, a mushy apple, yogurt, some blueberries and apple cider. I figured the combination of fruit would be a bad taste but good for me and was surprised to find that it was really tasty. Maybe I don’t have to have bananas.

A final note: Kim texted to say she was riding through canyon lands and desert near Hanksville, Utah. She has five more days on the bike before going to Las Vegas to catch a flight home. If there not already, they’ll soon be over 3,000 miles of riding.

Survival Workout duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 600