Two things make me loathe to set foot on my scale today.

One: I exercised once this week. I guess I figured I broke the plateau and it was going to be easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy for a bit. I was down another pound mid-week, but I had three cheats that I don’t want to see the results of.

One was a simple cheat. I had a California roll and some potato chips for lunch. But when I checked my blood sugar before dinner, it was higher than it should have been. I took some extra insulin and ate a lite dinner. That had me groping for the apple juice a couple of hours later as my body reacted to the insulin more intensely than I expected.

I had better luck when I took a little before going to the movies with my wife on Friday. I hadn’t had any candy since those chocolates on Valentine’s Day, so I let myself gobble a bag of Skittles.

But the worst was Sunday night. Our anniversary is this week, so we got a babysitter and went out Sunday for dinner and some time geeking out at a bookstore, which has been our basic anniversary date since our oldest was born. I had chips, salsa, and steak fajuitas (with beans and tortillas) at dinner, then a brownie and frappucino at the bookstore for dessert.

I’m feeling so bloated right now, and not just in my belly. My watch band had been getting loose, but it’s just a comfortable level of snug at the moment. I don’t want to get on the scale, because I’m probably holding onto a lot of water I’m going to drop next week when I’m better about my diet and exercise. I just don’t want the psychological effect of going back up again only to then drop a net of two pounds but a gross of 5 or 6. So I’m not going to weigh in this week.

I promise I will weigh in next week and I am going to be good, both on the diet and exercise fronts, so hopefully we’re going to see better numbers at Week 9.

So, today at Costco, I bought some pants. I’ve been bouncing around between a 44-inch and 46-inch waist, but my wife noted that the 46-inchers are looking cinched like the top of a bag when I belt up. So they’re about to get dumped. The 44-inchers are also a bit loose, so the next step down is 42-inchers. I’ve got a pair of 40s in the closet that I was somehow reluctant to throw away, and they’re a pair of goal pants too, but I decided that I’d get the 42s for a more attainable goal and to have at least one pair of pants that isn’t bunching up under my belt as I move toward the 40s.

The eventual goal is to get down to a 34-inch or 36-inch waist. Based on when I went from 237 to 182 when I was 18 (and 18 was the last time I saw my 180s), I wear a 34-inch waist in my 180s. Of course, that was 22 years ago, summer of ‘87, when I had absolutely no dating skills to go with my newfound hotness. Sigh.

Of course, now I have dating skills, but I’m married, so all that rediscovered hotness will be wasted on a woman who already wants to sleep with me. But, then again, I’ve been lagging behind her in the hotness department for some time now, so even if the hotness balance tips in my favor, I’ve got years of hotness indebtedness to pay off.

Anyhoo, I’ll try on the 42s after next week’s weigh-in and let y’all know how they fit (or didn’t).

After feeling like I’d been fighting a plateau, this week’s diet was different than previous weeks. Instead of maybe having one small cheat, I had a few cheats. I cheated on four dinners and two lunches, having meals from McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s (mmmm Baconator), and my favorite Mexican roach coach… among others. I didn’t give up on the diet, I was just trying to shake my body out of the diet rut it seemed to have entered.

I went a little beyond what I’d planned. I planned to cheat until Thursday, but let myself cheat into Friday. Bad, bad Greg. But the idea was to cheat more than just once and in fairly rapid succession, then go back to some of the stricter rules from the outset of the diet.

For example, when I started the diet, I’d cut myself down to two cans of diet soda a day, trying to drink more tea and water. But in the last couple of weeks, I’d been letting myself drink anywhere from 4 to 5 cans of diet soda a day. So I cut back there.

Another thing was that low carb flatbread. It had become a mealtime crutch. Almost every day, one or even two meals would consist of a flatbread, some cheese, and some lunch meat in a sort of quesadilla. In the beginning, it wasn’t affecting my weight loss, but when I ate that, I didn’t have to think as much about incorporating fresh vegetables or vary my diet as much. I think that monotony and cutting down on my consumption of fresh veggies gradually contributed to the plateau.

So, this weekend, I ate more low carb. Lunch generally had some celery and bleu cheese dressing incorporated as a side dish. Saturday’s dinner was some thin-sliced rib-eye I got at the Korean market which I marinated in a mixture of lime juice, lime zest, curry powder, fresh mint, fresh ginger, salt, and a little oil. I tore that into smaller pieces and sauteed it up with some red onion and sliced garlic, then served it with tomato. My wife and son got it on bread as a loose meat sandwich. I had it without the bread.

I had some leftover meat, so I browned that up all by itself on Sunday morning and made flatbread quesadillas with it for Sunday brunch. Sunday dinner was savoy cabbage sauteed with garlic, yellow and green onions, and some kielbasa, quickly braised with a little chicken broth and a pinch of white vinegar, then hit with some lime juice at the end to brighten the flavors. Didn’t come out quite how I wanted. It was edible, but nothing I’d do again. Still, it provided a lot of veggies.

I also got more exercise this weekend, so that probably helped too.

I’m going to continue the soda restriction and the attempts to include more veggies while backing off of the flatbread quesadillas. Hopefully that will help deliver some good numbers for next week. And this week’s numbers, while not staggering, still put me at an average of 3.5 pounds per week over the 7 weeks so far.

I can live with that.

While 260.5 represents a 3.5 pound loss from last week, and 2.5 pounds from the week before, I think I’ve hit a plateau. I know I’m not supposed to weigh myself daily, but curiosity often gets the better of me.

Last week, when I weighed in at 264 on Monday, I’d weighed in at 261 on Sunday and then again on Tuesday. Basically, I’ve been stuck at 261 for about 10 days. I don’t think today’s weigh-in of 260.5 represents breaking the plateau since it’s easy to fluctuate by 1/2 of a pound.

I’ve been pretty good this week. My “cheat” was going out to a Mexican restaurant on Friday. I ate about 5 or 6 chips with some salsa, then ate all my shrimp and mushroom fajitas plus a couple of bites of the refried beans which made me feel a bit like I’d overeaten. I was actually very proud of myself for how I was able to just eat a few chips. Normally, I’ll eat most of the basket and then I’ll use more chips to scoop up my beans. On a previous visit to a Mexican restaurant, I just avoided the chips altogether, afraid that if I started, I’d have a hard time stopping.

Thinking about how I’m going to break this plateau… I’m still not getting as much exercise as I should, so I need to rededicate myself to that, despite the amazingly crappy weather we’ve been having. On Saturday, my toddler didn’t want to go out, so to get him to get some exercise, I put on some music and we danced for a while. I realized that I have to do something like that more often, just on my own. Just put on some music, start moving, and don’t stop for 20-30 minutes.

As for what I’m eating… I got this case of 1.875 ounce bags of El Sabroso pork cracklins. Basically, they’re like a pork rind, but with more fat and crunch. And there have been times in the past week where a meal has consisted of a bag of them and a can of Diet Pepsi while I sit at my desk and type. Yes, I said “times,” plural. Used to be I’d grab a handful of almonds or some celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing when I needed a snack, but these pork rinds are convenient and sooo tasty. I think that could have been a contributing factor.

Luckily I polished off the last bag while writing this and I have fresh new celery sticks and a recently-opened jar of almonds in the kitchen. With a little luck and a little hard work, I can break into my 250s by next week… I hope.

I’m up a pound this week.

I didn’t fall off the wagon this week. Didn’t even drink that whole bottle of Diet Orange Crush with high fructose corn syrup in it. Had my one cheat on Wednesday and I didn’t even eat the whole thing.

On the other hand, after 4 weeks of steady weight loss, I’m probably due for a plateau. On top of that I’ve been fighting a head cold that’s been coming on for the past few days.

So am I happy that I’ve gone up a pound at this week’s weigh-in? Nope. It’s a lot easier to stick to a diet when you’re getting that regular positive reinforcement. But after what I’ve seen happen in the first four weeks, I can endure a blip of one pound. When I stop retaining three pounds of snot in my sinus cavities, I’m sure I’ll see positive movement again.