MediFast, Day Two

One hundred sixty-six more days.

I'm going to stick with this for 6 "months" (measuring a month as 20 boxes of MediFast food, or 4 weeks worth). If the 40 days/30 pounds ratio that J's managed holds true, 168 days should be sufficient to drop about 120 lbs.

Goals:

January 15 (start): 350
March 12 (56 days): 310 (-40 overall)
May 7 (112 days): 270 (-80 overall)
July 2 (168 days): 230 (-120 overall)

If, when I get to 230, the diet's still working and I feel like I need to get down under 200, I'll push the extra two months.

August 27 (224 days): 190 (-160 overall)

By then, I'd have lost nearly half my body weight. I'm 6'1" on a muscular frame, so I've always told myself "I'll never be a small guy", but I think that's limiting. If I'm going to get rid of this fat, I want rid of all of it. I don't want to settle for getting down to "just a little pudgy".

So, about the food. Ugh. You'd think for about $10/day worth of powder and oatmeal, you could find a flavor that could mask "nutrient". Every nutritional supplement I've tried has had that unmistakeable "artificialness" to it. No matter how much chocolate you try to hide it under, it's still there. But, I like this diet because I know what I'm having. There's no guesswork, it's quite strict. If I have something not on the diet, I'm not just bending the rules, I'm breaking the diet.

There are a few things that concern me. One, I'm not sure how I'll do on roughly 800 calories a day. The diet says to add moderate exercise (walking, etc.) but I'm not sure how a weight training regimen will work with that (I don't want to bulk up, just don't want to lose what I have). I was a little surprised at Thanksgiving how much more I can butterfly than my brothers.

The other thing that worries me is that unspoken consequence of massive weight loss. Will I have a bunch of hanging skin? Will I have to have it surgically removed? It's certainly not great skin (and God knows I could do without the stretchmarks on my belly and shoulders), but I think I'd be defeating the purpose if I gain a healthy, fit, attractive body and have yards of loose skin making me look like a Shar-Pei. Definitely one of those "not a bad problem to have" kinds of things.

Enough navel-gazing. Future diet posts will be shorter, I imagine, mostly related to progress (or lack thereof). Stay tuned.