194.6 Day 4 Cheat Day
So this is the day I've been waiting for. I follow the nutritional rehabilitation all day and then at dinner, I eat what ever I want, as much as I want, in one sitting.
The morning started off as usual. I decided to finish off the Shredded }Wheat biscuits that were left over from the spring. Blegh! How did I ever eat these! I gave them to the rabbit. He thinks they are a culinary delight. I settled for Frosted Mini-Wheats instead. The rest of the day was pretty much as usual, until dinner.
I didn't know what to have for dinner. Neither did my girlfriend. (She won't eat salmon. She won't eat tofu. She won't eat cottage cheese or yogurt. She can't eat crab cakes, because she's highly allergic to shellfish, which I found out when I finally succeeded in getting her to try something new, calamari! Four hours in the hospital preceeded by a 10 minute drive breaking just about every traffic law in the book.) So she decides she wants pizza. That's cool in my book. I ate three slices. (Find me one other diet that will let you eat three slices, three oversized large slices none the less.)

195.4 Day 5
As you can see, that pizza did have a small effect on me. That's all right, though. Pizza is loaded with all the good stuff, sodium, cholesterol, saturated fats, grease. Now it's back to business. Two poached (egg-beaters) eggs, toast and a glass of grapefruit juice. I have a microwave egg poacher, they're relatively cheap, very easy to use and add nothing other than water to the eggs, so it's about as healthy as it gets.
For my snack, I had salmon salad sandwich and a pickle. (The pickle wasn't on the menu of course, but you can bend the rules on this and still have decent success.) I next ate my lunch, cottage cheese and fruit. My second snack, a protein shake, was later in the afternoon. Dinner was salmon with rice and corn. The recipe calls for broccoli, but my girlfriend decided instead she wanted sausage with beans and corn, so that's why I went with corn.

193.6 Day 6 official weigh-in and Bob's House of Cookies
Well, today's the day. Shortly after I get up, I jump on the scale. 193.6 Woo hoo! I then pull out the measuring tape, 38 3/8ths.
Almost an inch and a half. I'm pleased. I've also decided that I'll document this in photos as well, you can see my not-quite-before photo to the right. I'm starting to doubt my tape measure reading abilities. But since I've almost completely removed sodium from my food, there's going to be a lot less water retained and as such, it's possible that I could have dropped that much. I've also noticed a few other things with my body. My flab has gone from a jello firmness to more of a pudding firmness.
So it's time for breakfast, Frosted Mini-Wheats, but we only have half a cup. I put it in a small bowl, so that I don't have to pour a huge amount of milk in to cover the cereal. I then stick one egg beaters egg in the poacher to make up the difference. Today is supposed to be bacon and eggs day, but I don't have time. I got dressed and since it' Monday, I didn’t go to my part time job, so I have to put our five year old on the bus.
Other than having to scrape frozen snow-rain mess off my car, everything is going swimmingly. And then I got to work.
I put my lunch in the fridge and there they are: The annual holiday tradition from our marketing director, Bob's House of Cookies. They're good, there's enough to feed an army. Mmm mmm. I take one.
That's the problem with doing what I'm doing this time of year. It's the most fattening time of the year. In a way, it's the best time, because if I consciously resist Bob's House of Cookies, then I won't have to take it off or work it off later.

But it sure is tempting. So I go to the fridge and get the cottage cheese I brought with me, and a cup of apple sauce. I usually keep non-perishable snacks in my desk to cut down on the amount of money I spend on food at work. Lunch and post lunch snack now gone, I head off to Bob's House of Cookies. So far I'm at six, or maybe it's eight. Damn good cookies. The cookies come up between 70 and 134 calories each. 8@70 is 560 calories.
So to make up for this, I'll be on the treadmill tonight. Three miles ought to do it.
Maybe five. And then a little time on the weight bench. You can determine the number of calories you burn walking or running to the right. This is approximate, your body composition affects the accuracy of this tool.
I never did get on the treadmill. On top of that, my girlfriend is sabotaging my efforts -- she baked a cinnamon swirl cake, which I haven't tried yet. At least I can resist some temptation.
I also put a little time in with 60 sit-ups, 48 knee-ups and 48 oblique-cruches.

Day 7 A comedy of errors
I woke up late. Just enough time to jump on the scale, get dressed and head off to work. Barely. I worked till 9:00, which is about an hour later than I expected to and 2 and 1/2 hours later than usual. I expected to have time to run home, take a shower and eat breakfast, raisin bran and a tangerine, but no dice. I ran home, got a shower, got dressed and grabbed a huge cup of cappuccino, the kind made from cocoa powder and flavoring at the local convenience store. Then I got to work, a whopping 2 hours and 45 minutes late. At least I didn't get fired.
I had to skip my pre-lunch snack, so I'm now eating a roast beef sandwich and a turkey sandwich and later I'll have yogurt and I confess, one of Bob's House of Cookies.
I'm surprised that my gut isn't killing me from the piddly little workout I did last night. The first time I worked out after years of neglect, almost five years ago, I did 17 sit-ups. My gut hurt for a week. If this happens to you, work it the following day and you'll get rid of the pain. I don't understand how doing something that hurts more can make things better, but in this case, it does work.
From here on out, I'll only be reporting once a week, on Mondays, so as not to bore you with mundane details. If anything significant happens, I'll insert it where appropriate.