Final FWSW Entry

Well, it's the day after the mid-season finale ... and my wife and I went to Spiece and worked out together this afternoon. The excitement from the weekend has died down and we're still overweight. We've not crossed the only finish line that matters, which is getting to a truly healthy weight. It feels good to have a lead in the competition, but you don't get medals for holding a lead at half-time. I fully intend to play the full sixty minutes.

We've had a long weekend with uncharacteristic food choices. There was a wedding rehearsal dinner, wedding reception and the FWSW finale after-party. We repeatedly found ourselves trying to figure out what the heck we were doing with our calories. I could talk to wait staff and ask for exceptions in how they prepapred my food, but there was no bar code for myfitnesspal to make it easy to calculate what I actually ate.

The food was good, and was actually healthy. The real surprise for me was that "eating out" wasn't as much fun as I remembered. It was far more hassle than it seemed to be worth. On top of that, I think my wife's flank steak tastes better than the expensive fare I ate at a posh restaurant. Don't get me wrong ... it was good food and I enjoyed both the meal and the company. It just was a lot of extra work trying to track things, and I'm finding that I appreciate a home-cooked meal so much more than I would ever thought possible.

Before FWSW, I routinely ate fast food meals at least ten times a week. Seriously. Just about every lunch was McD's, Culver's, Qdoba, etc. and dinner was rarely any better. I hadn't packed a lunch for work more than once or twice the entire time I've been married. I always ate out, and I did it for the convenience. Over this weekend, I found that all the extra work now entailed in successfully eating out breaks my cardinal rule ... to do as little possible.

If you want to lose weight, you've got to watch your food. If you're going to watch your food, you've got to keep a journal. If you're going to keep a journal, you've got to do it right. Eating out makes that ten times more difficult. As crazy as this sounds, preparing your own meals is not only healthier, but far less stressful.