Back blogging again and bye, bye potato oles

       I haven't written a blog in awhile. Almost a month, actually. I wrote a short entry just prior to leaving on my weekend vacation to Phoenix in early February, but it didn't save. It's somewhere out there in cyberspace, one blog in search of an author to claim it.

       A lot has happened since then, so I'll probably do a couple entries today, one with a focus on catching up on my caloric countdown to 100,000, and another blog highlighting some of the latest news we've received.

       While my workouts have not been as often as I'd like, they haven't disappeared either. I have had five workouts since my last blog, with the following calories burned: 344, 705, 580, 1,008, 459, 345. That adds up to 3,441 calories burned via exercise. Calorie count for 2011 now stands at 19,051. I have lost 8.5 pounds this year, which is great, but admittedly it's been slow going since the week before the Phoenix trip. Good news is I gained a couple pounds in Phoenix, but lost them right away with a return to more normal ingesting habits combined with what I am referring to as my "Guilt-induced workout."

       That 1,008 number above is not a typo. I walked on the treadmill for 90 minutes and burned 1,008 calories, mostly because I was angry about giving back a couple of the pounds I'd worked so hard to shed. Within a couple days I was back to my pre-vacation weight. I am currently standing on the precipice of 220 pounds. Can't quite get under it, but I'm going to work out today, which will be another guilt-induced workout after a less-than-stellar caloric weekend, full of pizza and fast food while cleaning our house in preparation for the babies.

       So this seems like a good time to use one of my trump cards to keep my caloric dispatch on pace. I have eliminated Taco John's meal #6 from my 2011 life. Well, to be more clear, I have expunged all Taco John's food from my diet, but that's the same as the previous statement because I always get meal #6, which is a grilled burrito, with the option of chicken or beef (no option necessary … I always ordered the chicken), plus the heavenly-est side in all of the fast food kingdom, potato oles.

       Oh, and of course a diet soda pop to maintain my girlish figure.

       Sometimes I'd order a large, sometimes a medium (in shocking fast food honesty, small was not an option). Grilled burrito: 580 calories. Oles: 600 for a medium and 770 for a large. I ordered the medium more often, so for our stats we'll go with that. (I went on a roll for awhile buying a churro for dessert, but not regularly enough to include in this calculation.)

       1,180 calories times 3 meals per month (I would say that's on the low side, if anything) times 12 months = 42,480 calories. Boom, baby (er, babies).

       Total calories eliminated (assuming I avoid Taco John's for the remainder of calendar 2011):

61,531 calories … adios mi lovely Oles.

       To finish, I must confess one thing. In December my wife delivered Taco John's to a work night at school. This was a fairly regular occurrence. We'd have Taco John's and watch all the cable channels in my classroom we are too cheap to pay for at home. But this time my grilled chicken burrito was a tad bit cold and tasted odd. Just not right at all. I can't nail down what was so odd about the taste, but something was different. I got sick shortly after, but not super sick. I think I may have made myself sick thinking about how my favorite fast food meal was not good this time. Much like someone who threw up from their last shot of tequila often says "Yuck. I can't drink that anymore," I now say "Yuck, I can't eat that meal anymore." In fact, the thought of ordering that meal now makes me a bit nauseas.