Day 0

I'm back in DC, away from the land of wonderful, plentiful food and wine (Florida).

Sadly, my trip this time was marked by my lovely chest cold of death. My coworker is going to get an earful from me tomorrow since he was the one who was kind enough to come to work with the plague. I missed out on a huge paella dinner. One thing you don't want to miss out on from a true Spanish family is a paella dinner. I guess I made it just fine to the other million graduation parties that my brother and our family attended.

Regardless, an inhaler, antibiotics, tussin DM, mucinex, and flonase later...I'm stable, kind of. I'm on the upward swing of being better and feeling better. Ever since I saw a few seasons of Gray's Anatomy, I have become entirely too paranoid of every time I get sick. I actually convinced myself the other night that I had HIV. Don't ask me how. I'd have to have contracted it in one of those fwd'd spam mail scare mail ways where you sit on the pin at the movie theater. All sorts of paranoia. Suffice to say, I'm very glad that I'm feeling better.

While it's my first instinct to go to the gym since I got home around 6 today (post grocery, vitamin store, and fish market), both of the N.P.'s that I saw at CVS told me that chest cold + exercise = delayed recovery. I mean, I already knew this, but I figured, unless I want a serious set back, it's time to chill out. This is a challenge in and of itself. If you're like me, once you get an idea and dedicate yourself to it, it's go time.

Its no secret, but I'm unhappy with my job. It's more of a growing displeasure than anything else, but it's making the search for a new distraction ever more imperative. I think things probably would have worked out better if I hadn't had those 6+ weeks of horrible hours. But things are what they are and it's time to move on and just cope until the time is right to make a life change.

For now, I've determined that the best way to combine my displeasure with being back in the same city as my job with my desire to get started on my new plan...is to start on the part of it that isn't exercise relevant--the diet part. Remember when I say "diet," I mean the literal definition: what one eats.

I went to the grocery, and tried something new--buying only food that was on the list (I had to pick up some stuff that was only Chadd relevant). Minus Chadd food, I wound up spending about 10/day--so around $70 for the week. Vegetables are cheap, aren't they? Then I went to the Vitamin Shoppe and picked up a huge thing of low calorie, whey protein powder. I also picked up a high calorie whey protein powder for Chadd. While I'm busy losing weight, I'm tasking him with gaining weight (about 10 pounds...man do I wish I had that task.) I also got a bottle of flax seed oil. I'm skeptical of anything that requires a trip to a specialty shop on par with GNC. But we'll give it a 28 day go round.

My last stop was to Slavin & Sons, the great fish market in Alexandria. I picked up sea bass, tuna steak, and a good piece of flounder. All for around 16 bucks.

The hardest part is going to be doing the smoothie thing. I think I need to rearrange the first two meals of my day. For example, tomorrow has been moved around to look like this:

Meal one:
- strawberry smoothie (with whey powder and flax oil)

Meal two:
- 1/2 cup oatmeal with whey powder

Meal three:
- grilled chicken breast
- large salad

Meal four:
- medium pear

Meal five:
- flounder
- grilled yellow squash

I figure, a week of getting used to this food will ramp me up to being ready to work out again. This week is going to be hectic too. I have a large "extra-curricular" work thing going on that will finally wrap up, after months of work, on Friday.

So, tonight marks the end of my yaay no eating guidelines. I plan on taking care of the rest of the red wine that's looking at me. Hopefully it will end the coughing for a bit, too.

Tomorrow, I'll let you know how flax seed and whey protein powder goes...