My weight is down to the upper 220’s – which means that I have dropped over forty pounds since January. (I started out at 271.) I will take a picture of the scale when I get to the magic mark of 50, but today I feel like posting a picture of my good buddy Jared Fogel.
Actually, Jared and I haven’t even met, but if we ever do, I will feel like giving this guy a BIG HUG. He is the reason I managed to lose 60 pounds a few years back, and he is the reason why – barring unforeseen circumstances – I will do so again.
First, a lament. . . When I started out on this quest, I opted to have a turkey breast wrap rather than sub almost every day for lunch – believing that it would be in my best interests to avoid so much bread. Imagine my shock when I went on Dottie’s Restaurant Zone to check the Weight Watcher points of those two things and found that the sub is 6 points and the wrap is 9. Arrrrgh! So I quickly reverted to my beloved subs. . . always ordering either the turkey breast (double the meat) . . . the oven roasted chicken breast. . . or the sweet onion chicken teriyaki. (The last is Jared’s favorite, but it’s just a little bit too messy for my liking- but it’s delicious and filling, and on those rare occasions when I’m not eating lunch in the car, this is what I order.) I order the chicken breast sub if the Subway in question has barbecue sauce (not all Subways do) – adding lettuce, tomato and onion. For the turkey, I stick to lettuce, tomato and lite mayonnaise. And when I’m feeling extravagent, I might order the Cheese Steak – because by skipping the cheese, it ends up being pretty close to the others. I get it with lettuce, onion, and yellow mustard. And for bread? Either plain old whole wheat or honey oat. (I just realized that this blog entry is a staggeringly self-absorbed exercise in personal trivia. Who the heck cares what I order at Subway?)
Second, I need to say that this Subway thing is probably not the very very best way for everyone to lose weight – but it’s the way that works for me because it works with my life. So I guess my advice for anyone who wants to lose some weight is this: find the means to do it that will work for you and do not let anyone try to impose their method on you. If you’re someone who’s going to go stark raving mad eating the same thing every day, this is not for you. But if you’re someone who thrives on a predictable and workable routine, go for it.
I wish there had been a video camera handy to capture an interesting mishap I had at Subway today. I was taking Mr. Noble out for lunch about two and a half hours after that, but I knew I couldn’t last that long without eating my own arm, so I stopped for a snack. Perhaps Someone Up There was punishing me. What happened is that while they were bagging up my sub, I grabbed the cup and dispensed myself a diet coke – and somehow in my haste to grab a lid my hand slipped and my just-poured medium diet coke shoved itself right into my face and then plummeted to the floor, leaving me with diet coke on my face, in my hair, all over my shirt, and all over the floor. It was one of those amazing moments when the only thing for which I was grateful is that I hadn’t been carrying fine china at the time – or a container of nitroglycerin. The clerks were really nice to me, helping to wipe me off, getting me a new soda, etc. – and when I sputtered out a thank you, one of them said “are you kidding? You’re our best customer.”
pictured: the Jared figure in the Subway by our house. I love how that hanging plant is so close to his head that he appears to be wearing an exotic botanical hat, a la Carmen Miranda.