It has been three full weeks since I have drank a beer. I have found that even the smell of it is a bit repulsive, but I guess it always has been, I know that I hated the taste of it the first time I tried it. It took a lot of drinking it to get to the point where I found it drinkable, even longer to get to the point where I became a bit of a snob about the taste of it, longer still to get to the point where I didn’t give a damn about the taste so long as it was beer. What a horrible existence that was.
The type of beer that I drank had 100 calories and 5 carbs per twelve ounce serving. I drank between twelve and eighteen of them a day. That means that if I ate nothing at all I was consuming between 1,200 and 1,800 calories a day, with between 60 and 90 carbs (I have never put much stock into carb counting as a factor in weight gain or loss though, I am merely putting it her for facts sake). Of course I did eat though, a stick of jerky when I got home for 360 calories, then usually chimichangas, usually three, for a total of 1,050 calories, plus I always topped them with a generous portion of grated cheese, I don’t know how many calories that added but I am sure it was a couple hundred at least. So I was on a 2,800 to 3,300 calorie a day diet. That is a lot of calories.
My diet for the last three weeks has been nearly exactly the same. I still have a beef jerky snack and still eat chimichangas. I no longer top the chimichangas with cheese, or maybe once a week I do. Also sometimes I have two of them and sometimes I have three, depending on how hungry I feel. Even at that my caloric intake has gone from the 2,800-3,300 range all the way down to the 1,000-1350 range. Yes, I have been taking in about one-third the calories I did previously for the last three weeks. It certainly shows.
I have lost 25 pounds in the past 21 days. When I quit drinking I weighed 195 pounds, now I am just under 170. This is the least I have weighed since I was 19 years old. My slimmest in twelve full years. That is pretty amazing. My pants and belt are far too big for me now, forcing me to punch additional holes in the belt to keep the pants up. The pants also bunch up when I tighten the belt, as they are at least two or three inches larger than my waistline. The ultimate weight loss plan indeed.
Unfortunately I don’t think that it is necessarily healthy for me to be losing weight so quickly. I can’t put my finger on why it would be bad for me, per se, but I do often begin to get quite light-headed towards the end of a long shift at work. I nearly passed out today, likely would have at least fallen down were it not for a handy bench to grab onto. I think I need to start eating a second meal. Not having breakfast or lunch sure leaves me feeling pretty drained by the time I have a jerky snack after work.
I hope I can get something worked out where I can continue to shed pounds without feeling so physically exhausted all the time. Perhaps a granola bar or a piece of fruit in the morning would do the trick.
Completely as an afterthought, I never liked to weigh myself when I was drinking. I know that it was because I knew that the number was just going up. I weighed myself once a month at best. Now I am weighing myself on a daily basis, mostly because I was waiting for/anticipating the day when the little dial stopped short of 170. Hell, if I was to wipe the dust off of the scale I might lose an additional pound.