Day 341 Chocolate Lava Flow and The "In-Progress" Picture Mission

Day 341

Chocolate Lava Flow and The “In-Progress” Picture Mission

I have to say that last night's blog was a real tough one indeed. If I follow your blog, then you're worthy of that award. If I don't follow your blog, that just means I haven't found you. Picking 15 was too tough on me mentally. Someone suggested that I should award more, considering that I received a few of these awards---another 15 each. Let's just leave it like this: If you support me and I support you, then let's just be confident that we both think highly of each others blog. I hope you'll accept that. It just occurred to me that maybe I'm taking this blog award stuff way too seriously. You thinking the same thing? OK---let's move on to some fun stuff.

Last night I talked about wanting a single play mp3 player along the left hand side of my page, but I didn't have the computer know how to get it done. I also mentioned my friend and colleague Gayle Williams and how she could probably help me out here. Well, look what we have in the top left hand corner. Gayle is absolutely magic! And her partner in awesomeness, Anne, is also a wizard at this stuff. I had Gayle load a recent radio commercial as a test run. It's a Dominos Pizza local radio commercial that I had to write and produce recently. The spot features the voices of me, Gayle, and the announcer at the end is Ryan Diamond. If you haven't already, click play. If you're a chocolate cake lover you might want to think twice about listening to this one.

You see, I'm a radio guy. And if a restaurant wants me to do a commercial for them, I do. It's my job. It does sound funny to some that know me around this region—knowing how much weight I've lost, then hearing me gush about the deliciousness of a chocolate lava crunch cake, or a new pizza, or a bread bowl pasta, it must sound contradictory. I couldn't help but write this commercial with a comedic twist on calories. Just in case you're curious: One Chocolate Lava Crunch Cake checks in at 350 calories, turns out they're not calorie free. Maybe half one with somebody for 175 calories if you just can't resist. That's what I would do if I really wanted one.

Long before I started losing weight, I endorsed an Italian restaurant on my radio show. Every morning at a set time I would talk live about their wonderful food and service. The owner of the restaurant wanted me to really be sincere about what I was saying on air, so he offered to feed my family of four anytime, free of charge. Free Italian food anytime? Yes. And yes, we took advantage once or twice a week for several months. And it never failed, every time we would visit---he always prepared more than we ordered, plenty of other menu items, so I could try them and then talk about them on air. I'm so glad that arrangement doesn't exist anymore. I would certainly handle it differently now, but still it might be hard to convince a proud Italian chef that I loved the food, but I just couldn't fit everything in my calorie budget, sorry!

Speaking of Italian food, Irene fixed an amazing spaghetti dish for dinner before she jetted off to work. It was prepared with 93/7 lean ground beef, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and a tomato sauce. I enjoyed a normal portion for a surprisingly low 350 calories. We decided against anything to go with the dish, who needs the extra calories of bread or corn on the side? This dish had meat, veggies, and pasta---it was incredible.

After dinner, Irene flew to work, Courtney had Friday night plans with friends, and I had a date with the weight room and fitness center at the YMCA. I took a three pronged approach to my workout tonight. I walked/jogged a mile on the treadmill. I tore up the racquetball court for a really nice sweat. And then I headed downstairs for some upper body weight training. I'm embarrassingly weak in the weight room. I think that's one of the reasons that my weight training has been mostly talk in the past. As you know, I completely understand the importance of consistency in obtaining wonderful results. I have no clue why I haven't put that consistency to work for me in the weight room. I can do cardio all day and night long, but for some reason I've allowed weight training to be a completely different animal. Tonight was a very nice turn in the right direction. By the way, I ran into Scott Hayes and his lovely wife at the Y. They were both on the treadmills, both taking charge of their weight loss missions. They're good people for sure.

My wonderful wife Irene posted a picture of me last night on her blog that I would rather forget. It's got to be one of my worst “before” shots. I may have posted this pic before, or not, can't remember...it is just horrible. It was taken a few years ago when I was suffering from horrible sciatic nerve pain. It was so hard to walk that I decided to do something I had never done before: I used the electric scooter at Wal-Mart. Amber was with me, camera in hand, and she kept making me laugh. I'm smiling from ear to ear in the shot, but believe me—I was in pain, that messed up very different nerve kind of pain. I've posted that shot below even though it makes me sick. BUT--- I decided if I was going to post this shot, then I wanted to re-create the picture, 204 pounds lighter, this evening. I called Courtney after my workout and asked her to join me on this “in-progress” picture mission. She accepted and we discussed our strategy. Wal-Mart doesn't necessarily favor people taking pictures of any kind inside their stores, we would have to be careful---not to get anyone else or any prices in the shot---and we had to be quick. Then it hit me. I honestly do not need one of these carts in the least, but there are many who do. The thought of someone not having one when they needed it, just because we were trying to shoot an “in-progress” picture would be completely inconsiderate and unacceptable. So we decided that we would only go through with the mission if they had an adequate supply of scooters and even then we would hurry with this job. Well, they had six of them charged and ready for use, so we were on! Nobody questioned me about needing one. I asked if I could use one and they said alright, very simple. We hurried back to the same isle as the “before” shot, snapped a couple---and then hurried the scooter back to the front doors. Then, we grabbed a basket and made our way into the grocery section for some water, coffee creamer, and mozzarella cheese. The nice greeter lady didn't even question why I no longer needed to ride and we were not sticking around long enough for her to get curious. The “in-progress” picture is also posted below with another big smile, this time for very different reasons.

Even after dinner, I still had nearly 600 calories remaining. I killed off 150 of those calories with a low fat soft serve from McDonald's, then I returned Courtney to her friends house before heading home. I decided to try to catch up a little on blog reading while enjoying a low calorie homemade flat-bread pizza. This tasty treat was so easy to make and it came in at a super low 230 calories for the entire thing! I used one of those 90 calorie whole wheat super thin flat-breads, some tomato sauce, some onions and green peppers, a few wafer thin slices of roast beef, and an ounce of the thin mozzarella slices. I put it all together and baked it up perfectly. The picture is below. It was awesome and for 230 calories, what's not to love?

I get to sleep in tomorrow morning, and believe me, I will!! Tomorrow night I'll have a different audio clip loaded into the player. Until then, The Dominos cake commercial is ready for listening. Goodnight and...

Good Choices,
Sean


Before at over 500 pounds


“In-Progress” 204 pounds thinner


Only 230 calories in the entire thing!