Empyrean Engine

I am back up by .6 lbs today to 376.6 lbs. How sad. I'm still under that 377-pound plateau, though, so I'm going to consider this good. It's not the end of the world. Weight loss is definitely a roller-coaster ride of emotions; isn't it? Tomorrow is Halloween, and I will dress like a panda as I have done for the past 4 years. I have a costume I made for myself. It's basically a giant white sack that I put on like a diaper. It's got two leg holes, and it cinches just under my breasts. It's a drawstring, so I can tighten it to fit. Then I put a black "thing" on over it to cover my breasts and arms. The black thing goes all the way up to my neck. It's nice and stretchy, so it's kind of like the top of a leotard. I made it from a pair of stretch pants, and I simply slit open the crotch just large enough to fit my head through. Then I put in thumb holes to keep the sleeves in place and cover my hands up to the fingers. It works really well.

Finally! Progress! I'm at 376 lbs today. That is a huge victory. It's a new number that I haven't yet seen. I can't be more thrilled. Maybe I finally broke my plateau. I'm still not convinced, but I'm hopeful. I'm not as discouraged now as I was for this past week or so. This plateau has lasted about 10 days, and I'm sick of it. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  376  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I'm glad to see progress finally. I'm not sure what I did to trigger it. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps my body just needed a breather for a bit from the rapid weight loss I experienced recently. I get that. But time's ticking, body. Enjoy the rest, but get back to work. I need a better beach body, and not the one I'm currently sporting! Yep. That's what I look like. Summer is only 234 days away! It is fast-approaching, and I need to be able to fit a bikini onto this body! Maybe not a bikini. Let

Oh, this is much better. It's still not as good as it could be, but I am seeing 377.8 lbs on the scale again. Yay! Maybe this will start a downward trend if I'm lucky. Who knows. I'm not going to count any chickens. They haven't hatched yet, and that just leads to bad planning. I really, really, really, truly, desperately want to see 376 lbs on my scale. It will be a small victory, but it will make me feel a lot better than I do right now. I'm stuck at the high point on my graph right now, and I'm very discouraged. This is a down-blip. I'm happy with that, but I want more. I want to drop lower than my lowest point so far since starting this diet, and the lowest number I have seen is 377.4 lbs. I'm never satisfied; right? Losing roughly 37 lbs is huge! But it's not good enough. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  377.8  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Never satisfied graph: How about a recipe? My hus

Plateaus are discouraging. I'm also really tired. It's my weekend, but I don't feel as though I'm getting any rest at all. I am at 379 lbs today. I'm not surprised. It's a plateau, and I don't seem to be budging much from the range of somewhere between 377 lbs and 379 lbs. I'm just going to keep plugging along and hope for the best. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  379  lbs  ⇧   Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I guess I can be glad that I haven't bumped up above 380 lbs this whole time. That's good. I'm still way under the weight I was when I first started the diet. That's an achievement. I should get some kind of points for that. There we go. I am now validated. No rest for the weary graph:

I finally saw 377 lbs on the scale again today. I'm not going to trust it to stay there, though. This also happened after I dropped off a load of treasure for the porcelain fairy, and I fully expected to see a fairly decent drop on the scale. It's not as dramatic as I would have liked. Also, I'm starving myself again to see if I can get the scale to budge. If a diet is a "battle of the bulge," then would a plateau be a "battle of the budge?" Heh. I amuse myself, and that's all that really matters. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  377.8  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Again, though, I'm not really feeling into posting much today. It's Thursday. It's my weekend. I don't feel like I'm having a nice, restful weekend, though. I have a lot to do. I am also obsessively playing a new XBox One game my husband introduced me to called "Path of Exile." it's fun, but it's occupyi

I don't have much to say today. I thought I had beaten the plateau, but it is still going strong. I'm the same weight today as I was yesterday. This is not fun, but now I sound like a bit of a broken record. I'm not going to say much today, so I'll share a recipe. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight: 378.2 lbs Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Japanese-style Ginger Salad Dressing This goes well as a coleslaw dressing. I've used it with a mix of classic cabbage slaw and Asian-style broccoli slaw. 1-1/2 C chopped yellow onion 1 C peanut oil 1/2 C rice wine vinegar 1/2 C water 3 tsp fresh ginger root, minced or grated 3-1/2 tsp fresh garlic, minced or grated 1 tsp salt 1 tsp pepper 4 tbsp lemon juice 4 tsp sugar 4 tsp soy sauce 4 tsp ground mustard 4 tsp sesame seeds Place all ingredients except sesame seeds into a small food processor and pulse for 1 minute, or until desired consistency.  Stir in sesame seeds. Too

I am back on track. I'm pretty sure I am, anyhow. I really shouldn't count my chickens before they've hatched. Am I right? Yeah. That's never a good plan. I'm at 378.2 lbs today. That's only a loss of .6 lbs from yesterday, but it's a loss and not a gain. This is still not the lowest number I've seen on the scale, but it's going down now, and I'm sure I'll revisit 377 lbs soon enough. I'm in the 370-lb range, and that's fantastic! Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.2  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Any down-blip is a good down-blip. I'll take it! I think I'm back on track with the oil. Going forward, I will be sticking with the Bertoli brand. I don't like it as much as the HEB brand oil, but it's tolerable. Now that I don't have the fear of it being rancid, I'm finding the taste to be much more pleasant than when I first experienced it. It shows how perception

How do you spell "relief?" W-E-I-G-H-T-L-O-S-S. My scale showed me 378.8 lbs today. Although it's over a pound more than my lowest weight to date, it's well below 380 lbs, and that's great. I think I figured out what happened and why I started sliding backwards -- I mean, other than my wonky dietary habits of late. When my husband went shopping and picked up two new bottles of oil, he got a different brand. The oil has been tasting awful lately, and knew something was wrong. I thought it may be going bad -- turning rancid. I looked at the label today, and it was Bertoli instead of the H-E-B brand we'd been using. That's gotta be it; right? I mean, taking a different-tasting oil is tantamount to changing oils completely. And in changing oils, the body takes time to readjust. I'm readjusting. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.8  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs We will stick with the Bertoli brand going f

How does my weight keep going up? What is it that I'm doing? Is the oil losing its effectiveness? I just switched back to taking oil after I get home from work rather than eating first and then taking the oil, so maybe I'm still adjusting. Also, I feel like I have a lot of treasures to give the porcelain fairy. It's been a few days since my last visit to drop off such treasures. I'm not just upset that I gained, but I'm upset that I'm back up to 380 lbs. I was under 380 lbs, and now I'm back to 380 lbs. This is awful! Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  380  lbs  ⇧   Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I can't believe this. I started this month (this 60-day period) at 377.4 lbs.    I somehow gained 2.6 lbs in the past 3 days. That's a rate of about .65 lbs gained per day. I cannot continue to re-gain at this rate. So I am starving myself again. I had a Monster Energy Zero Ultra tonight, and that's it. It is 0 calori

And today I am even higher than I was yesterday. I'm at 378.8 lbs. This is very sad news, but not completely unexpected. I'm back at work tonight. I'm not eating lunch, and I plan to get myself back on track from that horrendous weekend experience. We had lunch with a friend on Friday, and it was good. it was barbecue. I love barbecue. And I was good about it, too. I ordered .25 lbs of brisket and ate less than half of it. I got a small side of green beans and ate less than half of those. We ordered a plate of sweet potato fries for the table, and I ate three (they were really long fries). And I didn't have dessert. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.8  lbs  ⇧   Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Now, I did have to drink a bunch of coffee with a lot of cream and sugar to get myself out of bed and to stay awake during lunch, and I'm sure that wasn't a good choice. Why is all the coffee so strong these days? I can't drink i

I again find myself at 378 lbs today. I saw 377 lbs once. I know what's possible. My weekend was hectic, and my whole schedule has been thrown off. I don't expect to see good numbers today or tomorrow. I've also been a bit remiss in my daily blogging duties. I need to get back on track. I have decided to go back to the oil doses just before and just after work. I get really confused otherwise. My husband can do his when he wants, but he's just going to have to understand how I need to have my routine. I'm sure he'll be fine. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378  lbs  ⇧   Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Thursday morning was a terrible morning for me, and I think it contributed to my wonky weekend. On Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings, I carpool with a co-worker. He picks me up in his truck. At the end of my shift on Thursday morning, I stayed about an hour past my shift wrapping up. This is a bit unusual, and my co-worker sat

Yay! Weight loss! I'm down to 377.4 lbs today, and that's the lowest weight I've seen thus far. That means that I am down 37.6 lbs in total since I started, and I only have 232. 4 lbs to go to reach my long-tern goal. That's awesome. I hope I can keep up this down-trend. I'm not sure exactly what I did to trigger the down-blip. I'm not recording the food diary. Maybe that will make the difference from here on out. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  377.4  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I had chicken wings last night. They were good. i eat plain chicken wings from Domino's Pizza, and each one is about 445 or so calories. I'm not allowed to obsess about calories anymore, though, so that number isn't important. You can just ignore that. It's the weekend, and I was able to weight myself many times. It seems that the time frame to gt my lowest weight is around midnight now. It was around 3: 00 PM before I c

Disappointment. I'm back up to 378.8 lbs today. Why? I'm working so hard! Do I need to go back to starving myself? Maybe the effect of starving myself takes a few days to kick in, and not eating for a single day doesn't reflect in my weight for the next day,  but a couple of days later. If that's what's been happening, then upping the calories to nearly 1,200 a day caused me to plateau at, like, 378 lbs. I seem to be bouncing around the 378-lb mark and not budging. And that started a day or two after I started eating 1.200 calories a day. The drops in my weight began to happen a couple of days after I starved myself on under 1,000 calories for a few days. This is why I'm not s scientist by trade. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.8  lbs  ⇧   Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs My husband thinks I need to stop counting calories and simply go with whatever happens. Eat what I want when I want (when I'm hungry, that is), a

Plateaus are mean. I know that they are an inevitable part of any diet, but that doesn't make them any less mean. I'm at my lowest-ever weight since beginning this diet... again. That's good. I didn't go up again. I had a bump over the past few days, but maybe I am headed down again. maybe I will see a lower number on the scale tomorrow on Day 60. I'm on target now to see 377.7 lbs on the scale on Day 60, but that's a far cry from the 375-lb expectation I had just a few days ago. I am sad. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.2  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs But still, weight loss is not weight gain, and weight gain is bad; therefore, weight loss is good. It is better than weight gain. Here is how that looks like in "math" or logical terms: Weight Gain = Bad Weight Loss > Weight Gain Weight Loss > Bad Good > Bad ∴ Weight Loss = Good I had no reason to do that, but it was fun. Yay logic! I

I am at the same weight today as I was yesterday. That's neither up nor down, so I'll take his plateau as a victory for now. I take 'em where I can get 'em. I'm at 378.8 lbs. My husband is down a bit today from yesterday though. He was "235 lbs and change" yesterday, and today I saw him circling the scale, so I was able to sneak up behind him and catch the number. It was 234.6 lbs. Yay! It's working for him! Starting weight: 415 lbs Current weight: 378.8 lbs   Long-term Goal: 145 lbs Short-term Goal: 359 lbs It's 4:20 AM, and I'm getting ready to go home. There is some delicious Beef Stroganoff waiting for me. My husband may eat the rest of the Paella today. I don't know. The Stroganoff turned out to be pretty tasty even with wine in it. It's the same wine I used for the Paella, so I don't think the wine was the issue. I think it was the method of cooking, to be quite honest. Pressure Cooker Beef Stroganoff 1 1/2 pounds l

I wrote a whole blog post for today, and it was great. Then I just accidentally reverted it to draft and saved a blank page over it. So that's about the gist of my mental state right now after cooking the  Beef Stroganoff for me and my husband. The pressure cooker was supposed to make cooking effortless. It was a lot of work, and it took me a couple of hours just to do the prep. Now it's cooking, and it's 7:00 AM. We haven't eaten yet, we haven't taken our oil yet. This is a disaster. This is a couple if hours that could have been used as flavor-free time after taking oil, but my husband decided he wanted to take oil after brinner instead of before brinner, and now I'm really stressed out. I don't know if I can finish the cooking and feed us with an hour to spare before we have to sleep so that we can take our doses of oil. To top it off, my weight went up. I hate up-blips. They are annoying. I am at 378.8 lbs today. The post I wrote before was much mo

As expected, I am only down by .4 lbs today. I overate a bit yesterday, and I ended the day with a total calorie count of 1,546. I made the Shrimp Paella I was planning, and I had a bit of it with my husband even though I wasn't really hungry. At that point I had already consumed my self-imposed daily calorie limit of 1,200 calories, so that brought me up to over 1,500 calories. Unwise. My husband loved the paella. I didn't. So it wasn't even worth it. I used white wine in the recipe, and I should've known I wouldn't like it. I don't like recipes that use wine. The other recipe I plan to make, the one for the beef Stroganoff, also calls for white wine. I will go ahead and make it, but I'm fairly certain I won't like it. I'll give it a chance, though, like I did with the paella. It's very likely that the ingredients make make a world of difference, and I could enjoy the Stroganoff. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.2  lbs  ⇩  Lo

I have lost a lot in the past two days. In the past two days I have eaten at least 1,200 calories per day. This is about twice as much as on the prior days when my weight barely dropped at all. This is very interesting. On the 11th, I consumed 1,268 calories. On the 12th, 1,245 calories. From the 10th to the 11th, I went from 381.2 lbs to 379.8 lbs. That was a drop of 1.4 lbs. Then from the 11th to the 12th (now), I dropped by 1.2 lbs from 379.8 lbs to 378.6 lbs. I ate a total of 1,368 calories today, and I am very curious to see what I weigh tomorrow. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  378.6  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs If this major whoosh down continues to happen, I may hit my initial goal of losing 20 lbs this month. I'm at 15.2 lbs loss so far, and I have 5 days to go in this 30-day period. If I can continue to drop one pound per day over the next 5 days, I will hit the mark. I'm realistic, though. I am prepared to not see

Yes! Finally! I got some real  weight loss. A major down-blip! I am at 379.8 lbs! That's an amazing 1.4 lbs down from yesterday. I'm not the least bit mad about it. The strange thing is that I seemed to have eaten more calories to lose some weight, and that's a bit counter-intuitive. So I find myself wondering if eating fewer than 1,000 total calories makes my body stop losing weight. While staying under 1,500 calories, and more along the lines of 1,200, I lost 1.4 lbs. What is even going on here? Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  379.8  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I read a few articles I just researched on the topic, and it seems that eating too few calories causes my body to go into that starvation mode that I wanted to avoid. By eating more, but still controlling my  intake so that I'm getting balanced nutrition, my weight loss should continue and happen just as fast as when I started.  I'm going to continue ea

Another .4 lbs lost today. Oh boy!  Now we're cookin' with gas. And if you couldn't tell, that says zero-point-four, not four. I'm sorry. I can't not  be sarcastic about this. It's clearly a plateau. And I will reiterate, bodies are dumb! Today I say 381.2 lbs. It's still down from yesterday, but it's not down enough! I'm greedy! I don't think I'm being unreasonable, though, because I am starving myself. I barely eat. This is not hyperbole. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe i should stop starving myself. Maybe my body wants to keep all the fat it can keep because I'm not eating enough, and it thinks it's about to die of starvation or something. I don't know. This is not fun, though. I need to make a change. Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  381.2  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs I had wanted to eat a couple of chicken wings today, but my husband asked me if they were a binge-trigger,

I lost a whopping .2 lbs since yesterday! Wow! So amazing. Much loss! Very reduce! This is not sarcasm at all. It is, though. It's sarcasm. I can't fool you, can I? I'm disappointed. I feel like I starved myself. Including the two doses of ELOO, I consumed a mere 1,109 calories yesterday. Total. Without the ELOO (as it doesn't really count), I had only 539 "real food" calories. Why, then, am I at 381.6 lbs today down from 381.8 lbs yesterday? Ugh! Starting weight:  415 lbs Current weight:  381.6  lbs  ⇩  Long-term Goal:  145 lbs Short-term Goal:  359 lbs Bodies are dumb! In truth, though, I really need to stop stressing about my scale. *sigh* I do have some treasures piling up for the porcelain fairy. Maybe once I unload those, I'll drop again. I can't complain too much. I am still headed ever downward. I was discussing this with my husband, and he agrees that I need to stop obsessing about this and just go with it. I am continuing to h