On Thursday I met with the nutritionist. She’s very intense, very downtown core. I’m coming to find people who work in the downtown core seem to be cut from the same cloth. They’re fast, direct, cut and dry. Very business. While I enjoy working there for now, the more time I spend there, the more I wonder if that world is really where I want to be forever.

But that’s another post.

She ran me through her plan. For 12 weeks, I’ll see her twice a week. She’ll weigh me, take a look at what I’ve been eating, make some suggestions and…that’s it. It does sound deceptively simple, doesn’t it? Deceptively is the key word there.

I learned something interesting about my ideal weight. I had myself pegged as having 75 pounds to lose. Now, if you’ve ever met me, you’ll probably be shocked at that, say I’ll be a skeleton at that. I’ve heard it all before when I’ve shared weight goals (even the numbers, people think, are crazy). No one can believe how much I weigh now, nor how much I want to get down to. This will sound a bit immodest, but I carry it well. I’m lucky in that way; I don’t have some gigantic pot belly or man boobs, or carry it all in my neck or anything like that. It distributes itself nicely across various parts of my body. But I’ve had it for most of my life. My frame, the shape of my back, my neck, none of that is really the way you think it is.

I think I’ve always assumed that under all of that, I would be this skinny person with a small frame. But I discussed this with her, and really, that isn’t the case. My shoulders are fairly broad for a guy my height and I’ll never be small. So she set my ideal weight about 15 pounds heavier than I thought it was and what the internet says it should be. The internet says I’ll still be overweight at my current goal weight, by about 10 pounds. Eh. I’m okay with that. I don’t think I’ll ever be super small. Don’t think I’d want to be, anyway. After deciding on a weight, she quickly started rhyming off what I should be eating.

The meal plan that’s been designed for me is…well, it’s the wrong word, meal plan. And diet is not a word I like; it implies eventually I just drop it. It implies some kind of temporary denial, or a temporary adjustment of how I eat that I can just drop later. It’s not that simple. This is about lifestyle change. 

The plan is fairly simple. 8 servings of protein, 8 of starches, 4 fruit, 4 limited vegetables (more sugary/calorie-heavy veggies) and 3 servings of fat. These are her servings, not a standardized thing. They’re a bit lighter than what I’d have initially thought of as a serving. One thin piece of rye bread, for example, is a serving of starch. 1 ounce of lean protein (chicken, pork, fish) is a single protein serving. It’s very easy to get half your protein for the day in one serving.

When I first saw it, honestly, I walked out of that office scared. This seemed so ridiculously restrictive. How could I ever eat like this? The number of things that were fully off limits (lest they consume a day’s fat and protein in one sitting) made me depressed. Is this how everyone else ate? Was this the rest of my life, constant denial and vigilance? I’ve generally taken a “you could die tomorrow” approach to eating and, while I know I can’t continue that, it seemed like this was the polar opposite, designed to extend life well into the 100s by consuming bland and uninteresting foods. Was that a life I wanted to lead? 

I binged the day before I started, that Thursday. Had a last hurrah at McDonald’s, guilt free and happy. It felt like my last day as a free man. And admittedly, that Friday I started was not pleasant. I felt this kind of dull ache of hunger all day. My breakfast was fine, but my lunch was ridiculously light, and my dinner violated all the rules (especially the 5 beers afterwards…).

But I got back on it on Saturday. Ate a good breakfast and a healthy dinner, kept myself busy and, while the dull hunger was still there, I felt…sharper. You know when you hear a loud, sudden BANG and the adrenaline kicks in? That minute or so, as you continue about your day, when everything is heightened? It was like a less intense version of that. I was tired (though that week was insane, so that’s probably to blame) but mentally, I was…sharp. I don’t know a better word for it.

Sunday had the same basic experience, with an indulgence of a piece of cake, which I worked out that…yes, I could afford. And that brings us to today, my first of my check ins. I stepped on the scale, and heard the triumph in my nutritionist’s voice if she asked me how much I thought it was (I’m crap at reading those medical scales with the weight thingies). I guessed 4 pounds, cause that’s what my scale at home said.

Hers said 6 pounds. In a few days.

Now, obviously, there’s a few things to consider. The first time I was weighed I had eaten a heavy lunch, this was before lunch, and there’s always that water weight and all that jazz. However, this was the same time of day. I was wearing the same amount of clothing. In a few days with this, I’d dropped to a weight I hadn’t seen on the scale in months.

She corrected some mistakes I’d made, advised me to make sure I was getting my protein and starches (as my meals had been light in general over the weekend) but overall she seemed pleased with my progress. And I am too. I know that that sudden drop was a little much, and that I can’t continue at that rate. I’ll be at my ideal weight in 10 weeks and dangerously underweight in 15.

But I’ve found something that’s WORKING. The pessimist in me wants to say there will be ups and downs but, quite frankly, fuck that. It’s all down from here baby. Because you know what? It’s not getting harder yet. Maybe it will. Maybe I’ll have a week of going out and be forced to make tough decisions. But I know how to do it now. I get it. I’m so quickly seeing all the little bad choices I’d make, and how they’d add up. And I’m learning the things I’ve feared are not nearly as bad as I thought.

There’s more I want to say and rant about. But I’m going to use Tumblr’s lovely queueing feature, write that now, and post it later. Look for it on Thursday.

I’m doing it. I’m fucking doing it.