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The 8,000 Calorie Mancation Weekend


The Perfect Storm: Wings, Beer, Ribs, Bacon, Baked Beans, Donuts, Chips, Dips. If there was a more efficient way to consume that many calories in one weekend, I don't know what it'd be. If I ate any vegetables all weekend, they could have fit on a tea saucer. I barely cracked 10,000 steps the first day, 8,000 the next. Fortunately, these weekends are extremely rare, or I'd probably weigh 400 pounds.

Of course, I'm just estimating on the calorie count. It could be a little more or less, but it would have been about impossible to calculate. Some of the guys were joking about how it's like taking the max stroke penalty on a hole in golf. "Let's just be gentlemen and assign you a somewhat respectable approximation of how much you stuffed your face and move onto the next hole."

The Cheapo Rules require that I step on the scale every morning, and so step on the scale I did. I had crept up a little heading into the weekend, almost as if my body was preparing me for what was coming. I weighed a flat 158 going in and came out at...166 - an incredible 8 pound gain. 8 pounds is 28,000 calories, so I knew it was mostly water weight. Still, it's unnerving to see that kind of staggering gain.

I stepped on the scale this morning and was down to 161.4. I figure I'll know in the next day or two the extent of my flabby gains as I flush out the rest of the Great Salt Lake's worth of sodium I must have consumed over a 48 hour period.

The upside of hosting this extravaganza is that I have a lot of leftover food to get me through the week. The downside is that most of it is the same food that sent my scale numbers into orbit. But, anything can be healthy if you stretch out the portions enough.

Today's lunch is 4 chicken wings, some cheesy, bacon-y potatoes on a bed of assorted veggies - asparagus, onions and mushrooms cooked on the Foreman Grill, which I have to say is becoming one of my favorite cooking tools. The onions I kind of burned this morning because I was trying to get ready while cooking, but if you turn them occasionally while cooking, this thing caramelizes them a lot better than I ever can seem to do in a frying pan.

 
This week is going to require some nutritional ballparking as I eat my way out of the party leftovers, but that's ok since I'm planning to be comfortably under my 2000 calorie targets.


I wouldn't really recommend doing these kinds of weekends as you first start out since the scale numbers can be really demoralizing - 8 pounds is a significant portion of any weight loss goal. I knew what was coming and how my body usually responds to these kinds of events, so I didn't sweat it.

Also, I'm not a pro boxer or a jockey, so I don't have any real weight deadlines. I'd like to still keep my 40 pound badge going into my 40th birthday in April, but as long as I'm hovering around that number, I'll be happy. The Cheapo Plan is like the never ending marathon: you'll never lose to anyone - you'll just miss opportunities that are easily regained. I expect my weight will normalize to around 160 by the end of the week, and the fun I had last weekend made it well worth it.

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