Day 5

Today was grocery day. My wife and daughter left around 9:00 this morning with a shopping list that included everything I'll need for Week 2. What else she brought home almost had me in tears: three of the largest peaches I've ever seen, a big bag of seedless grapes, a basket of apples, and a big box of Oreo Cookies. The fruit is diet approved, in moderation, but I need to stay away from the Oreos, which happen to be my favorite brand of commercial cookie. Fortunately, she also got a fresh pound and a half of steak. Yes, I know we just had that on Monday, but I love steak.

I feel as though I'm finally into a groove with this plan. I'm almost never hungry anymore, even when it's time to eat. As I did yesterday, I had to force myself to have my 3:00 snack. The book doesn't mention anything about skipping meals or snacks one way or the other. However, as part of my agreement with the authors, I promised to stick to the plan as best I can.

Tonight's dinner was the aforementioned steak, of which I ate almost half, or approximately 12 oz. I grilled it with just a bit of sea salt sprinkled on it. With the grill just touching 400 degrees, the steak was almost a perfect medium/medium-rare after 22 minutes. Eaten with the steak was a salad of romaine lettuce, baby spinach, real bacon bits, and a little olive oil.

I don't have too many weeks of grilling left, I'm afraid. As the summer comes to a close, keeping the grill at a decent temperature after dark gets more difficult. The outside temperature drops quickly as soon as the sun drops below the treetops. The grill takes longer to heat up, and requires a lot more fuel to keep the temperature high enough for grilling. Once the winter rolls in, the outside temperature can dip into the single digits. At that point, it's almost impossible to use the grill, even if I do shovel a path through the snow to get to it. Oh well, that's life in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire.

FitDay's breakdown of my nutritional breakdown is as follows:

	Grams	Calories	%-Cals
Calories		1,926
Fat	86.2	774	40	%
Saturated	33.4	301	15	%
Polyunsaturated	11.7	105	5	%
Monounsaturated	29.2	261	13	%
Carbohydrate	29.8	118	6	%
Dietary Fiber	3.7
Protein	259.5	1,063	54	%
Alcohol	0.0	0	0	%

It appears that no matter what I do, I'm going to end up around 1900 Calories. Notice that protein was 54% of my total, and carbs were below 30. This seems to be a pretty good balance.

Even though I'm only on day 5, I can already see results. My clothes and wedding band fit looser and I seem to have a slightly slimmer profile in the mirror. I'm looking forward to Saturday night's weighing and measuring. The book recommends weighing yourself only once a week, so I'm sticking to that.

I've also started noticing something non-weight-related. My knees and knuckles often have pain on and off throughout the day. I'm told it's the beginnings of arthritis, which runs in my family. Since starting this plan, I've experienced no knee pain at all, and my fingers feel much better too.