Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

	On top of all the noise, someone slammed into the car. I was really getting miffed until I think I knew what those noises were…

Good morning!

There are three weeks left on my diet – errr…Vision Quest for a smaller belly.

To recap our last four ‘Rick the Stick Diet’ posts:

Water – Drink plenty of it.
Eating – Smaller portions. Use your ‘sane brain’ to your advantage.
Motivation – Set a goal and find the mechanism that gets you going – and keeps you going.
Focus – Remember where you started, where you’re going and why your headed there.

Last week I pointed out how my not-evil wife will have bread with dinner and I’ve abstained. I don’t need the bread. Don’t need the extra calories. I miss it, but since I’ve prepared myself with my sane brain, I realize I don’t need it to enjoy my meal. Yay for me – I’ve taken an obvious add-on out of my life. Temporarily. Remember, I’m trying to lose weight now. Soon I’ll have to transition to maintaining my weight. As always, do what’s right for you and check with a doctor. I think I have to say that. Meh.

Today I’m going to point out how I’m confident that I aided my huge losses by identifying the hidden traps in my daily diet. Each of these may be small, but accumulated, they make a big difference.

Bread: I’ve mentioned how I don’t have it with dinner anymore. I don’t have it much anymore – at all. I used to wolf down a loaf or two at restaurants. Big trouble there. Before I even got to my entree, I used to have a couple loaves of bread, an appetizer and occasionally a small salad. Wow. You may have heard how complex carbohydrates metabolize throughout the body slower, yadda, yadda, yadda. I don’t know about all of that, but I can tell you that I rarely have bread anymore. Not by singling it out as much as by choosing to eat different foods which coincidentally don’t include bread.

Cheese: Awesome. Love it. Can eat a whole brick of it on anything. I eat vegetable chili. I like my chili spicy and I like to add a little non-fat sour cream. I used to have a boat load of cheese on it, but I realized that with the spices, I didn’t taste the cheese. And if you’re not tasting it, why have it? I love turkey sandwiches from deli meat. Boar’s Head is the best and has some great flavored styles. The problem was that I was having four slices of cheese on a regular sandwich. 2 American, 2 Swiss. Something I started when I was 18. The difference between then and now is about 20 something years of metabolism slow down. So I cut out the sandwiches for now. My cheese intake has been greatly reduced. If I had to put a number on it, I would say by 80%.

Alcohol: I used to drink with my wife every Friday night. For 14 years – every Friday night. Sometimes more than others. We’d play drinking games – often just the two of us. We weren’t/aren’t alcoholics, we just enjoyed having some beer, along with each other’s company and drinking games. Did I mention before that I’m competitive? She loves to beat my ass as much as anyone else. Regardless, I cut down on my Friday night consumption. I’ve stopped drinking on Friday’s about three months ago. I’d have a couple of glasses of wine during the week. But as I started to lose more and more weight, I wanted to make sure I hit my goal – so I quit the wine as well. Full disclosure – I had 2 beers this past Friday and Saturday (each night). WIth three weeks to go, I wanted to get it out of my system. No beer until July 31st night – after the final weigh-in.

So there are three things. I didn’t go cold turkey on anything. I’ve phased it out. By making decisions with my sane brain, my hungry brain hasn’t had to make many of those hard decisions. Even if I slip up, I use it as motivation to get back the focus. If you’ve noticed, I’m using all the components of everything I’ve previously discussed. This is for two reasons – the first is because it makes me look really smart and like I planned it (not at all), and second, is that it is actually how it has worked out.

This has been a process. Nothing has been easy, but nothing has been really hard either. Like I said last week – I got myself into this mess, and I’m getting my tubby ass out of it.

One final note: my clothes. I bought 3 pairs of jeans in February and when I got them, I was afraid I had gotten them too small. Now I can barely keep them on. I had to buy a smaller belt, which is now down to its second to last hole. I may need a smaller one – and that would be okay. A coworker (RAlonzo) said it looked like I had clown pants on. For the last couple of years, tucking in my shirt was not an option (thankfully I have worked at places with accommodating dress codes). Now I love tucking my shirt in every morning. Good for me. It feels great when people call me skinny and I love it. The truth is, I’m not skinny. I’m skinnier, but I’ve seen me nekked and that is the next train wreck to be fixed.

So I feel good, I look better and I’m closer to my goal. I have to go to bed now, I have to get up in 4 hours to go play basketball. Sleep is way overrated.

Thanks for dropping by!
Ken

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