SEMI-PRO/DEATH SENTENCE

I am fully aware that at the end of my last blog I was going to review Death Sentence. But recently, I was offered a chance to prescreen Will Ferrell’s new film, Semi Pro and I decided that this would be a better choice for a review seeing that it is more timely.

For those of you who were looking forward to my review for Death Sentence I’ll give you the abbreviated version. Death Sentence is about a father who goes after a gang after his son is brutally murder by them. It is the basic revenge flick – Think The Punisher, The Crow and Boondock Saints. I’ve always enjoyed Kevin Bacon and I thought he did a wonderful job at playing a tortured, vengeful father and John Goodman plays a decent bad guy but I wanted to see him more . The foreshadowing and symbolism in this film was at an all time high, it worked really, really well but seemed a little over the top. The directing was done really well and had great atmosphere, and there is a pseudo-twist at the end that is very James Wan-ish (he directed and co-wrote the first Saw film). There is one very memorable scene that is the required chase scene for any action movie and it is done damn near in one single shot. It was beautifully done and might have been my favorite part of the movie. The first two thirds is really intense and and great, the last third, however, felt rushed and lacked the intensity that the rest of the movie provided. It is jam packed with action, (some) intensity and gore. If you are into this type of thing it is definitely worth checking out if you have nothing else to do with your evening. I give it 3 out of 5 ridiculously bloody, bullet-riddled, vengeful deaths.

 

Now for Will Ferrell’s new flick, drum roll please…, Semi-Pro. In this film Ferrell plays the owner, coach and star power-forward of a down and out semi-professional basketball team that is trying to make the cut for the big league before their program is discontinued.

This film provided plenty of laughs and a few memorable moments. The thing that ruined it for me was that I saw a R-rated version of the trailer on the Internet and that spoiled a lot of the BIG laughs of the film. Take that into account while reading this because that makes me sort of biased towards this film.

I absolutely loved Anchorman and I really disliked Talladega Nights and didn’t much care for Blades of Glory. Semi-Pro lands somewhere in between all of those films. It is nowhere near the quality of Anchorman but it made Talladega Nights look like Gigli in my opinion.

The direction on this film was very standard and typical, which I didn’t expect Citizen Kane going into it, so it’s all good. There are a few shots that make things seem really intense and powerful which makes it even more laughable. So kudos to you Mr. Director Man!

The story line is a very typical underdog sports movie. It has reminiscent elements of Anchorman with Will Ferrell being extremely cocky and phenomenally dumb. There is a cool part toward the end of the movie that I thought was really cool, I won’t go into detail so I don’t spoil it, but I have faith that if you catch this film you’ll see it an think “that is awesome.” The downside is that there are a few really, serious moments followed by some ridiculously, outlandish moments and I thought that it didn’t mesh very well. It really should have picked one or the other.

All in all, Semi-Pro is fun and entertaining with some refreshing R-rated, vulgar humor, but it really isn’t anything to write home about – I’m happy that I got to see it for free! I give Semi-Pro 3 out of 5 Jive Turkeys.

 

Stay Young, You’ll Live Longer  –
          CODYmcfly                                                                                                NEXT REVIEW: VANTAGE POINT???

 

Cloverfield

“Some Thing Has Found Us.”

 

First and foremost I would like to apologize for the absence of movie reviews I have posted lately. Things have been getting a little ridiculous around these parts for me. I have a full schedule of classes, work, relationships, an internship and partying to work with right now. I’ve also just started a new month long calorie counting experiment with Steve. I’ve had my plate rather full and often don’t feel like eating much. I realize that these aren’t very good excuses for not delivering something that I have promised to the site, but I will try to work harder at bringing more reviews in a timely manner. Now that that is taken care of, let’s turn our attention to this new issue of At The Drive in.

I first watched Cloverfield a few weeks ago, it’s not completely fresh in my memory but I still remember exactly how I felt about the film. It was simply AMAZING. I would argue that it might be my favorite Sci-Fi movie of all time. It is definitely up there and would have to compete with Stephen King’s The Mist for the number one spot. The realm of Sci-Fi is looking pretty good as of late. In the last six months or so 30 Days of Night drained my blood, I Am Legend was more than decent (not to mention a serious acting buffet from Will Smith), The Mist was an incredibly powerful masterpiece and now Cloverfield, which was stunning. Usually Sci-Fi movies don’t turn out this well in this quantity.

Simply put, Cloverfield is about a group of friends who are having a going away party for one of their other friends. Everything seems like another hazy night in New York until a monster begins to attack the city. Their night becomes a quest for survival and finding a way out of New York before the city is reduced to rubble.

I am fully aware of how ridiculous, lame and Godzilla sounding this movie is, but I assure you, dear reader, this movie is anything but. Cloverfield is by far, let me repeat that so that I am not misread, Cloverfield is BY FAR the most intense film I have seen in a very, very long time. The action that is packs, the emotions it throws and the thrills it damn near chokes you with are of a breed that I have never seen the likes of in a film before.

The entire film is shot from a first person point of view on a hand-held camera that anyone with about $500 could purchase at Best Buy. This, of course, gives it an incredible shaking and as far from a polished and produced look as you can get. In fact, it gets so shaky at times that a few audience members of the screening I was at left in the middle of it ( I would assume to motion sickness, but maybe they just didn’t like the movie ). The camera work and the lack of a lot of studio lighting gave the film a really great, and what I would assume to be realistic, atmosphere for when a monster is attack a major city. It really adds to the intensity, even though there were times when I just wanted the camera to move two inches in one way or another.

I can definitely see what a lot of people disliked Cloverfield. It is something totally new, that as far as I know has only been seen in The Blair Witch Project before. It is not a smooth film by any means, it is very gritty and raw and let’s face it…it’s about a monster attacking New York. It is nowhere near a typical Hollywood blockbuster and it is not by any stretch of imagination a happy, feel-good movie. I don’t mean to give anything away for those of you that haven’t seen it yet – so don’t read into this too much, but the ending is fairly ambiguous. This is something that I know drives people bonkers and I absolutely love it. Hitchcock would be proud!

I only have two grievances with Cloverfield. One is that the battery life of the hand-held camera was absolutely ridiculous. My camera dies after like forty-five minutes if it isn’t plugged in and they were running around for most of the twilight hours. My other problem was that I’m entirely convinced that If a monster was attacking my city if I would have the fortitude to keep a hold of a camcorder, especially for that long and after a few things happen. My own rebuttal to that would be, how can we know what anyone would do if a giant monster was laying waste to our city?

A few people have mentioned how they didn’t think that people would act the way that they did in the film. Again, I would tell them to refer to the end of the above paragraph. I would also say that different people have different ways of coping with stress and extreme situations. Some people will try to take control of everything that is in their control to compensate for what the can’t control and others might crack jokes – the list could go on for a very long time.

I thought Cloverfield was very realistic. If they would have shot it like any other normal Hollywood blockbuster, it would not have worked out and I would probably be telling everyone to riot, burn buildings down, punch babies and curse the film makers instead of making sweet passionate, cinematic love to it. I cannot recommend this film enough, especially if you like great movies. I hope that this film sets the bar for future Sci-Fi films and that they continue to meet this bar. I give Cloverfield 5 out of 5 really awesome party nights turned into really awful nights filled with monsters and fighting for survival!

Until Next Time – Stay Young, You’ll Live Longer.

NEXT REVIEW: Death Sentence

Carlorie Count Extravaganza!

What’s up Party People?!?! As your tour guide through this next month I plan to see a whole lot of attractions, a few sweet rides and maybe even kill a few of these fatty archenemies.

As you may know, if you’ve been following the site the past few weeks, STEVEmcfly has just finished a 30 day experiment with eating on $2 a day, and actually ending up eating on about $1.50 a day. That is pretty crazy in my book. This month I will be his companion on another great endeavor that might not be as exciting but hopefully equally informative: Calorie Counting. “OOOOOOOOOOH YEEEEEEEEEEAH!” says the Kool-Aid Man, as he nonchalantly exits back through my living room wall. I think STEVEmcfly and my plans will vary throughout the month but the foundational idea will be the same. We will be counting calories and finding ways to eat healthier without giving up the foods we love and without starving ourselves.

My schematic for this experiment is as follows: I’m going to keep eating what I normally do. I may swap a few items for healthier alternatives and I will be focusing on portion control as well. I also plan to work on not eating because I am bored, as this is something that I am so repulsively guilty of that I might as well strap myself down to Old Sparky, the electric chair, and say, “Let ‘er rip, Johnny!” because no jury would ever let me off the hook for this.

My goal for this month is to simply maintain and possibly shed a few pounds without changing my way of eating too drastically. I won’t be doing anything too fancy and I won’t be starving myself (much like the Special K diet is really doing). I want to take in somewhere between 1800 and 2000 calories per day and I plan on exercising regularly – again nothing too extravagant but just something to keep me somewhat active.

I’ve a feeling that this is going to work out well for me and really show that it doesn’t take much to start attacking that dreaded freshman 15, or sophomore 25 or junior 35…yikes. However, if I am wrong, I will nobly put my foot in my mouth and hop away with my tail between my legs and eat nothing but celery for a month.

I’ve decided I won’t be blogging everyday during this month for several reasons. One being that I simply don’t have the time and another being deathly afraid of monotony. I will try to write a new blog two or three times a week depending on how exciting life gets around these parts.

I’m excited about this and I hope you, dear reader, are as well. So if you will please keep all hands and feet inside the car, the ride will begin soon!

STAY YOUNG, YOU’LL LIVE LONGER – CODYmcfly.

new meal plan outline/thoughts

Beginning this past Monday I have begun a new experiment as I have stated in a few previous blogs, but now I want to talk a little bit more about my goals as far as what I’m shooting for and what I want to accomplish over the coming months with regard to my weight, my body composition, and how I feel. I weighed in after the weekend at right around 261.5, gaining 5-6 lbs over the weekend which is about what I expected for what I ate and what I drank. For the record I ate out twice, once for a breakfast having a sausage and egg biscuit from McDonald’s with a small coke and then again I had HyVee’s Chinese Buffet, having 2.5 plates of rice, chicken, egg rolls, and a few crab rangoons.

I have devised a meal plan which is much looser in composition, allowing me more freedom to enjoy cooking the things I enjoy to cook and allowing for the possibility of fast food or a soda from time to time. The goal is to keep my daily intake in a certain interval for the nutritional facts of calories, fat, carbs, and protein. In doing this I will keep a spreadsheet of what I’m eating daily and it will help me reevaluate where I’m at and if I’m losing/maintaining/gaining weight should help me find a place to tweak my diet to something I would better prefer. Here are some intervals of values I’ve settled on:

• Calories: 2150-2500
• Fat: 50g-80g
• Carbs: 250g-350g
• Protein: 120g-160g

The reason I want my calories around this is because I was playing around with a maintenance calculator which suggests an amount of calories you should have to maintain weight based on your current weight, your body fat, and how active you are. I’m not exactly pinpoint accurate with what my body fat is but I had an idea, and juggling a few different kinds of active (I thought I was in the middle of lightly active and moderately active) I came up that I needed around 2550-2900ish calories to maintain my weight. Since I’d still like to drop weight they suggest your cutting calories be 500 less or so. Now, I’m not going to go nuts if I don’t hit this 500 less mark right away this week because the calculator could still be different than my body make up so either way if I hit certain numbers it will take a bit to see how I do with my weight and then I’ll have to readjust accordingly. If I find I’m not dropping weight like I want I can increase activity and/or I can cut a few more calories.

I am still fairly active, playing basketball a few times a week and refereeing once a week, but the city basketball league is almost to an end (and we’re finishing strong). After this I’ll have to make a more conscious effort to get into my college’s rec center to play some pick up games there and/or get into the gym to run more (damn it’s cold outside to be running there as of now).

A few side notes, I’ve read in a forum that if you’re counting calories not to count a majority of the fruits/vegetables because they have too many positive effects on your diet and on top of this are largely composed of water. I plan to be eating quite a bit of fruits and vegetables incorporated with my meals I fix on a daily basis (salads, stir frys, pizzas, etc), but take for instance yesterday where I had around 2/3 of a small bag of carrots, this would’ve equaled approximately 110-130 calories. Again, a few people on forums suggested this because as people do weight/fat loss diets they tend to still not get enough nutrients from fruits/vegetables, and especially people for some reason are worried about the amount of sugar in fruits. They encourage you to not count these to supplement the idea that these things are by far and above more healthy than they are ever harmful (and are rarely counterproductive to your goals) and that we should all be eating more of them.

Here is my spreadsheet of the first two days I’ve counted calories:

$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.

$2 a day: day thirty

Well I’m about to the end, I weighed in Monday morning for my own knowledge but since this is a short week and I’m about done I’m going to wait til Thursday morning when everything is said and done to post my final weight.

I am running low on food but I have plenty to eat today. I won’t go through all the pancake mix but should eat all the ramen, turkey, eggs, and may have a slice or two of bread left. The butter is about gone and the mayonnaise is a little under half left. I’ve been working on eating peanut butter randomly and it’s around 1/3 left.

I feel good, but I am glad this is going to come to an end. I’m getting real excited on what I’m going to attempt here again starting on Monday and right now I plan to give everyone a little background on what I want to do.

The meal plan I begin on Monday will be similar in the fact that I’m going to be eating the 5-6 regular meals a day, only I’m going to be eating a lot lot lot more fruits and vegetables. I plan to buy heads of lettuce and break them up for salads which I’ll put things like carrots, imitation crab meat, and light dressing on. I will be buying plenty of yogurt (even though it pains me to pay something like $0.50 a cup), and there’s a discount bread store not far away that they sell loaves of semi-old Sara Lee bread for $0.75 a loaf. I still plan on things remaining relatively cheap, but the difference will be I’ll be intaking more calories, a lot more protein, and much more variety in my meals.

I’ll have a comprehensive post coming on Thursday as to how I feel about the entire experiment, my weight, and more of the changes that are coming with my meal plan beginning the following Monday.

$2 a day: day twenty eight

With four days left there is still plenty to talk about in relation to my experiment. The food I have is still plenty to eat but I am around some decisions about whether or not to get more. Here’s what I have left:

• 3.5 cans of tuna – 7 sandwiches
• 0.5 jar of peanut butter – plenty to randomly take spoonfuls
• 0.5 box of pancakes – 6-8 pancakes depending, plenty of syrup left
• 3 eggs – 3 sandwiches
• 16 slices of bread – 8 sandwiches
• 1 meal of spaghetti left
• ~18 meals

I had planned on buying one more loaf of bread and another dozen eggs. Right now I’m 4 pieces of bread short of the bread I’d need to make the rest of my tuna/egg sandwiches, but I could always just eat half a can of tuna without the bread, I still have light mayonnaise left. I think I am going to try and finish out on this amount of food only because of my peanut butter I have left. I have plenty to fill me up randomly throughout the day for a few meals. I still have some crappy apples left as well (but I just hate how mushy they are) and not to mention plenty of oatmeal.

The amount of food hasn’t been a problem with this experiment simply because of how much my stomach has shrunk. I can’t imagine going to a buffet right now, I’d be worthless. This is quite the way to portion meals to train yourself to eat less.

As far as next month I think I’ve come up with some tentative goals as far as what I want to shoot for, which are as follows (2000 calorie RDI intake in parenthesis):

• Calories – 1650-2000 (2000)
• Fat – less than 75g (65g)
• Carbs – 250g (300g)
  
• Sugar – less than 40g (0g)
  
• Protein – greater than 65g (50g)
  
• Sodium – less than 4000mg (2400mg)

In comparison, 8 ounces of mountain dew has 31g of sugar. Also, a value meal at most restaurants is going to pack from 1500-2500mg of sodium in you (assuming you’re not adding extra salt as well). The more and more I think about the amount of sodium in American’s diets it seems pretty ridiculous.

I am excited to be done with this so I can make myself one of my homemade pizzas and have my own chipotle night (I make burritos with rice, black beans, corn, marinated chicken, and sour cream). I’ll be excited to add variety back in next month, which should be plenty interesting to see how it correlates with my goals of what and how much intake.

Mr. Brooks

“Why do you fight it so hard, Earl?”

Mr. Earl Brooks has an addiction. This is not your run of the mill, “I have a drinking problem” addiction though. His addiction is to killing. He loves murdering people at random in clean, artistic fashions and so does Marshall, his intelligently diabolical alter ego. After his urges were suppressed for two years, the love for cold blooded killing rises to the surface once more – but someone is watching this time. Someone that wants in on the next kill. This proves to be difficult when a detective that has been chasing the “Thumb Print” killer for years is now grasping at their coat tails.

Mr. Brooks is by far one of the most intelligent, original thriller I have seen in years. Kevin Costner is the lead in this film and plays Mr. Brooks very convincingly (outside of a few lines at the very beginning that didn’t sound natural or believable, but I think they could be chalked up to his character being nervous). If this film truly is the first of three films, like Costner claims it to be, he is looking to be the Hannibal Lecter of this decade.

William Hurt plays the role of the murderous alter ego, Marshall (don’t worry, this isn’t a big twist, it is presented within the first five minutes of the film), and does an absolutely phenomenal job. I would venture to say that he almost overshadows Costner’s performance. They really did amazing work together. A lot of the physical action that Mr. Brook and Marshall do are the same and at the same time ( I picked up on this during the second viewing) and even their laugh is almost identical. It is really disturbing and really incredible. I think it adds another level to film even though it is a real subtle thing.

Dane Cook is also in this film, and believe it or not he does an excellent job as well. He provides his own dark comedic dialog that brings a sense of relief in times of the intense drama. If you have seen his stand up shows, you probably know that he is really over the top with his movements and voice but none of this shows up in his role. He plays a normal, everyday guy with a morbidly curious dark side. Dane Cook’s character is Mr. Smith and without him, the story wouldn’t be as creative and original as it is.

The film has an overall glossy, yet dark look and feel to it and is highly stylized. Almost every shot in the movie was done with a tripod base or some form of steadi-cam unit, giving it an extremely smooth, flowing look. There are a few hand held shots, mostly when someone is in a car or during some of the more action filled scenes. It was nothing that was extremely new (I mean not every movie can look like 300 can it?) but it was fitting with the genre the film is in and it complemented the story very well.

There is a scene in Mr. Brooks when Mr. Brooks and Mr. Smith are driving around and scouting out a victim. This is a particularly disturbing scene. It kind of gave me a real sense of paranoia that anyone at any given time could be looking at me and waiting for the perfect chance to spill my guts onto the floor and turn me into a lamp shade that would go nicely with their recently purchased, and ironically leather, wrap around couch. I think that is part of what the makers of them film wanted to do with it. It’s scary not because it’s jumping out at you and extremely gory (though it does have its moments), it’s scary because it seems real and it seems like it could happen to you. I loved that aspect of the film

There really isn’t much I can say that was bad about this film. I enjoyed it a lot and it is a movie I am going to have to add to my collection sometime in the near future. My only real grievance with Mr. Brooks is that the ending felt rushed. The movie is already two hours long, so I don’t know that it needed to be any longer, but possibly some editing could have been done to trim it down a bit and that way there could have been more time to space the ending out a bit.

This is definitely a movie to see for fans of psychological thrillers. It has to be one of the best ones I’ve seen in recent memory. I can only hope that Costner wasn’t lying when he said there might be two more films to this story on the way. I give this movie 4 out of 5 perfectly crafted murders.

Until Next Time – Stay Young, You’ll Live Longer.

NEXT REVIEW: Cloverfield

STEVEmcfly: thoughts on personal motivation

Today I’m going to write a bit about the keys to this diet that I very much want to maintain in the following months to track weight loss and things of that nature. I’ve read a handful of various “how-to”s so to speak on the internet for ideas on how to encourage yourself to lose weight and continue losing weight, all of which I believe have put ideas in my mind that I’ve used or used in some fashion to create my own form of motivation.

First, let me speak in terms of personal motivation. This seems to be the hardest thing for all people trying to lose weight, or accomplish anything such as writing papers, doing a project, working out, etc, to get started and maintain. I have tried watching what I eat before, I’ve tried cutting sodas (I don’t think people realize the magnitude of a soda drinker I was before this experiment), and I’ve tried other crazy ideas on top of all this.

My first experience where I was really happy with how I followed through with a personal experiment or a target of my personal motivation was a few summers ago when a few buddies and I started a blog to chronicle our experiences with polyphasic sleep. We did this fairly successfully (a few lapses, but the experiment I still suggest was a vast success) for around 45-50 days before I had to stop for external reasons (I was in a local band who had an 8-10 day road trip/gigs where I couldn’t continue the pattern), but I learned a lot from that experience in the fact that because we started a website to blog about our experiences, I felt like that helped structure the experiment which ultimately led to our success. What I’m getting at is the structure was the key to the success of the first experience and what I would say the key is to the success of what I’m doing right now.

When you structure an event in your life it gives you a better chance to latch on to it. Think about this, when you’re trying to climb a tree, sure, some successfully climb that tree by crawling up the branches, but most people can’t climb trees and merely by allowing some kind of structure to help can only increase your chances. If you use a stepladder, you’re going to be that much closer. If you were to grab a standard painting ladder, you can probably get anywhere you want to go on that tree. I would suggest this is the same with structuring events in your life as far as being motivated. I want to keep a balance of spontaneity with some forms of structure, finding that wonderfully successful middle ground. I would suggest the reason I’ve done so well with this particular meal plan is allowing myself be on the middle ground. The meal plan has plenty of structure, I know what I’m going to eat for the most part, but like in the middle of the experiment I allowed for a slight deviation of spontaneity to have a nice meal with a good relative of mine.

Next month I intend to continue in this fashion with slightly more spontaneity in the sense that I still want to structure (for the most part) the meals I’m going to eat, and plan on them, and continue to calculate the things I’m putting into my body. The keys to some simple weight loss right away is merely watching what you eat. You don’t have to go off the deep end in some crazy miracle diet. It appears to me that simply if you watch what you’re eating and set goals of approximate numbers you should be around, and if you can keep track of the numbers (even loosely), then you should be able to drop weight. I merely set a goal for my calories from (guesstimate) over 3000 calories a day to around 2000. I’ll end up being slightly under this even because of some waste and leftovers.

There are plenty of ways to keep motivated and on track with your goals. How about what we did? We started a blog. You can start a blog too! Think about this for instance, if you feel like other people are watching and double checking you at work you’re going to be more cautious about the quality of the work you do. It’s the same with the blogging experience. There are plenty of sites in which you can start a blog simple and easy and by blogging about it you feel a sense of responsibility to follow through.

On top of this, as far as watching your food, buy a palm sized notepad to carry around and write down what you’ve eaten throughout the day. If you start keeping track of things on a daily basis you’ll see what you’ve eaten and you’ll think twice about eating that extra roll, or even about eating your first piece of candy.

A thing I’d like to keep doing to keep my weight down throughout my life is sticking to the multiple meals throughout the day. It’s so simple to do. Even without cutting many calories, this could even cause weight loss. Merely by making portions smaller and eating every so often you will keep your metabolism working throughout the day, burning more weight throughout the day.

The last thing I’d like to mention that I’ve been forced to do by way of this $2 a day meal plan is portion sizing. We’re a nation that will eat whatever is in front of us. We totally disregard what our body says about how “hungry” we are and we eat whatever is on that plate or on that tray. By eating meals on smaller plates, or merely by not loading the plate up (and not going back for more) you can cut some calories effectively. I was forced to do this in fear of having to go over my allotted amount of money for the month, which has taught me this very important lesson.

We’re all in this together, there are a myriad of people trying to do the same thing you and I are. Find friends, engage yourself in a community, and help each other.

$2 a day: week three recap

Again, it’s Monday and I hopped on the scale to find more good news today. I weighed in at a cool 260 pounds this morning, putting the running total at 20 pounds thus far. This is great news for me, and it’s nuts to think about how my weight continues to drop in spite of eating decent and drinking a fair amount.

I have been looking through my cupboard and I realize I have a fair amount of food left still. I may have to start scrambling eggs possibly to use them up and I have to really pay attention that in these last days I am eating frequently. I don’t want this food to go to waste, and after it’s all said and done I don’t want to look at what I have left, do some math, and find out that for some reason I was taking in not enough calories/nutrients. It shouldn’t be too hard to keep this up, but I could see it hindering my weight loss a small amount as well.

I am going to make up my last main meal batch today which is the last half of the spaghetti. It’ll be interesting to see how the ½ pound of frozen sausage held up in the freezer this whole time. It’s been in there quite some time so we’ll see how well the flavor is.

I think after I look at the food I have left over and calculate all my average calories, sugar, protein, etc per day thats when I will be able to make a more accurate association of what I want to shoot for in terms of my plan for next month. Once I know more clearly what I can intake to continue dropping weight I should be able to devise a more precise meal plan and present that online.

It’s nuts to think about how I’ve dropped 20 pounds. I feel really good and I moved up a belt loop. Everything feels good to me, I continue to not have problems with hunger and am surprised at how I can eat this little relatively to what I was and be completely okay with it. Things are going well and it’s also crazy to think how close to 30 days it is, the last week really flew by.