Week Three- The Devil's Truck Stop...

Well, this week has been pretty brutal, all in all. I was able to stay on the diet all seven days, despite some major food related trials. This is essentially my third full week on HMR, and the first where I left town and hit the open road. Let's just say that HMR doesn't travel very well...

On Saturday, we took a trip down to SoCal to play paintball in the mountains between Santa Clarita and Palmdale. You could certainly debate whether it was wise to drive 8 total hours in order to play paintball for less than 5 hours, but we had a good time all the same. The brutal part was stopping at the Tejon exit at the base of the grapevine to eat on the way home. Having to stare at a sign featuring all of my key players: In-n-Out, Panda Express, Chipotle, and Del Taco was hard enough, but actually sitting in In-n-Out surrounded by shiny, happy people all blissfully eating double-doubles with grilled onions and steak burritos from Chipotle was excruciating. I dutifully ate my meal replacement entrees, unheated, in the midst of the food bacchanalia. Brutal...

Then on Sunday, I made good on Tiff's Christmas gift by taking her to the Tenaya Lodge at Yosemite for an overnight and winter spa treatment. Beautiful 4 diamond hotel- totally devoid of microwaves, however...

After church, Tiff had a nice turkey burger and sweet potato fry meal. As for me, I had a diet coke, and just tried to focus on football highlights. And then back in the room, I attempted to consume unheated HMR lasagna. Awful doesn't even begin to approximate it... It was abysmal. So bad, in fact, that as Tiff was sleeping off the effects of working the night shift the evening before, I drove back down the hill to my parents place in Oakhurst, where our kids were staying, to heat up my dinner. I know, I am just that type of romantic...

At any rate, at today's weigh in, I was down 3.4 pounds. Frankly, after the last two weeks, I expected a bit more, but in a reality check, if you made me choke down 3.4 pounds of butter, I would definitely hurl. All in all, it is pretty good- that is 16 total pounds down in 17 days on the program, but I saw today's result as somewhat lackluster.

There are other great signs of success, however. Just had to add a third handmade hole punch into the dressier black belt, beyond all of the pre-drilled holes. Furthermore, ten or so folks today also indicated they could see positive results, or asked me if I was losing weight, which felt pretty excellent. And my blood sugar last week remained within the 85-133 range, only going above 117 on two occasions, even though I drew my blood to test the glucose levels 21 times...

So we are getting there. Just stay away from the Tejon exit with the skagnasty unheated lasagna...