Today was the last day of the first week, and overall things felt good.  I had to navigate a happy hour and a dinner, but came through squeaky clean.  I also started doing some analysis for the first week and realized I needed to balance out some vitamins and minerals, but that was fine since I still had more eating to do by the end of the night.

After nearly a week of barely being able to eat up to my daily calorie burn, although we are still talking about an average difference of about 500 calories a day, I decided I needed to try to eat at least my calorie burn on this eating plan while still maintaining strict adherence to it.  I was able to accomplish it, but believe it or not, it was quite a challenge.

As much as I’m starting to get into the swing of things on some matters, others still cause me a struggle. For example the shakes are constantly giving me little annoyances, like forgetting an ingredient, or not having a big enough container to take, or forgetting to put the coconut milk away when I leave. The same goes for the snacks I like in the morning and afternoon. I just can’t seem to get fully down to not forgetting some or all of them. That notwithstanding, I’m starting to do a lot better with the diet and it’s now just a question of a little self discipline.

I was a little bit better prepared today than I was yesterday.  Maybe that was because I was tired of being tired and hungry, or it was because I actually had several dreams last night about “accidentally” eating the wrong food at restaurants.  Despite my best planning I was still ending the day hungry, so a second dinner and some light snacking made up some of the difference.

To say that the preponderance of available foods at the store and food establishments have the 7 food groups I’m avoiding would be an understatement.  I’d say they all do, but that would be a stretch too, just not as bad.  That unfortunately makes recovering from lack of being prepared pretty difficult, especially three days in.

Day 2 of the Virgin Diet was the first real world test case for me.  The previous times I’ve tried it I’ve either been doing a little trial run or was home-bound.  The real world test proved to be a bit more difficult, especially with no means of just “skipping” it for a moment and then going back to it again.  During each of the diet experiment phases I’m going to try to have zero slip ups.  I am not planning for cheat days, cheat meals or whatever.  A slip up is bound to happen, but those should be accidents not on-purposes.  With that in mind I was able to navigate the landscape but it definitely wasn’t completely carefree or pleasant.

The first day of the elimination diet is now in the record books.  I was never concerned about being able to get through the first day, and there were no real surprised except for the need to really plan ahead for the next week’s food.

Today is the first day of the N=1 experiment, which is starting off with the JJ Virgin Elimination diet.  Elimination diets are basically removing foods that may potentially be causing problems for you from your eating lifestyle.  Over time you can “challenge” these foods to see how your body reacts to them.  JJ Virgin, a nutritionist with some media history that has been making her way around the podcast universe the past few months, has put together just such a diet that I think creates a relatively simple plan to follow.

Yesterday was the last day before the grand diet experiment begins.  I made some conscious decisions in terms of practicing for the big shift, but I still granted myself some last minute indulgences while I still had the chance.

This has come across my attention a few times this week, and the more I see it the more frustrating this topic becomes.  Here is the punchline: a severely obese sedentary person goes on a 2000 calorie a day eating regiment, adds 45 minutes of walking exercise to his daily lifestyle which leads to him losing 37 pounds and improving his cholesterol.  That doesn’t sound radical does it?  The punchline we see however is, “Man Loses 35 Pounds Eating McDonalds” as some big FU saying McDonald’s food is now healthy for you.  Is it?  Let’s find out.