$2 a day: overall review

Sorry about the delay one day of this post, yesterday got pretty hectic. I’m in a little three piece acoustic group and we got asked to play a last minute show at a local pub in town so between class we were practicing and on top of that I had two basketball games last night.

I weighed in yesterday morning at 256 pounds, netting a total loss of 24 pounds for the 30 day experiment. I feel great for the most part, but am still excited to have a bit more freedom in what I can eat. I have around 20% of the peanut butter left, barely any butter left, apples, around 40% of the mayonnaise, around 1/3 of the ketchup, 1/3 of the pancake batter, and 2/3 of the syrup left. Everything else was eaten including all the eggs, tuna, bread, etc.

I have four receipts from Wal-Mart for the food I purchased which carries a running total of $52.44, plus the $4.50 I spent at Taco Johns totals $56.94. This is much less than I anticipated due to me just not being as hungry as I thought I would be at times, especially on weekends when I would sleep in really late and have a few beers at night time.

After updating my meal plan chart (which I will upload) here are my final average nutrition facts per day:

• Calories – 1738.73 (2000)
• Fat – 62.64 (65)
• Carbs – 234.48 (300)
• Sugar – 37.63 (0)
• Protein – 56.49 (50)
• Sodium – 4090.18 (2400)

Everything looks solid, and if you measure by unit prices I see I used $44.86 in food at an average of $1.50 per day.

I continue to have people notice how I look slimmer and they say I’ve lost chub in my face, all of which I’m very grateful to hear. I went back this past week and worked on some of my maxes in the weight room because I could tell I had lost a bit of mass in my biceps. I found out that if I lost any weight off my maxes it was no more than 10 pounds and in a few lifts I hadn’t lost any strength at all.

This is a meal plan/diet that I could suggest doing to handful of people but it really takes an amount of discipline to stick to eating these same things on such a regular basis. I love to cook and the amount of creativity I had in the kitchen throughout this experiment was far less than I wish I had. However, I stuck to it and I’m grateful because this has really got me focused and motivated to continue on with the journey. This experience combined with some forums I’ve been reading and advice of friends of mine who are knowledgeable about nutrition have helped me formulate a better idea as to how I can continue counting calories and what kinds of numbers I should be looking to hit if I want to continue shedding a few pounds. It’s nuts to think that if I were to continue on in this fashion (however I think ideally for my body weight and amount of activity I do that even my cutting calorie mark should be higher than 1800) I could lose 35-40 or even 50 pounds in the span of my second semester.

I’m excited to carry forth, and it was good yesterday to eat different meals such as chili and a homemade pizza. I got to marinate some chicken and for the first time I cheffed up a chicken and pineapple pizza which was one of the better homemade pizzas I’ve made. It’s good to be done but I’m not at all disappointed with the experience and certainly not with how it’s affected my mentality, motivation, and weight.