As you can see in the chart my diet was flawless for the first four days, maybe a bit excessive on Thursday, but it is to be explained with the 3 slices of cheese pizza I ate at my son’s end of the season soccer party. And even with all that pizza I came in at a respectable caloric intake and if I account for my cardio for the day I was still in deficit. But for Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just have no excuses. I actually do, so let’s take it day by day.

I have already blogged about Friday. It was a day that started out good, even dinner was OK but I should not have let myself eat the two slices of cake (technically one was a piece of pie) and the cheese and chips that night. Saturday looks almost as bad as Friday, it is certainly over 3,000 calories for the day. So what happened?

It was my daughter’s birthday and we got her some awesome chocolate mousse cake that’s what happened. One slice of that stuff is a whopping 430 calories. But given that it was a family event I could not say no to the cake plus I quite honestly didn’t feel like saying no to it either. It was delicious and I felt it was so worth the calories. But how did I end up eating 3,000 calories when all I had was 430 calories worth of cake? Well Saturday we also happened to attend a wedding. My boss’ daughter was getting married and my wife and I were invited. So we went to the wedding and it was great. I’ve been to a couple of weddings and as far as weddings go this one was up at the top of the list of weddings I enjoyed.

It was a very casual atmosphere, the ceremony was outside and the weather could not have been any more perfect. It was a breezy low 70s (22 Celsius) day. The reception was also very casual and the food was pretty darn good. I stacked my plate high with veggies and roasted beef and turkey. So far so good. But I also ate a good amount of stuffed mushrooms which, I think were the highlights of the culinary experience at the wedding. They were splendid. I had some fruit as dessert but I also had to have some of the grooms’ cake, I kind of felt obligated to have a piece. So I did. So not only I had two pieces of cake on Friday, I did a repeat and had two pieces of cake on Saturday. The two slices of cake were over 660 calories so it’s safe to say had I not had them I would have been more than OK for the day.

Sunday I was certainly trying to maintain a more reasonable diet and I kind of did but we had friends visit us and we made some fantastic filet mignon for them with some shrimp on the grill to go with it. I used to enjoy going to steak houses but now I much rather make my own surf and turf. It was a very nice dinner with some quinoa, steamed zucchini and squash, and fennel puree as sides. And for dessert, you guessed it, I had another slice of the leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake. So even with the extra 430 calories that came in with the cake I still managed to eat a somewhat more reasonable 2,600 calories on Sunday.

So with all the “festive eating” , that is properly justified as you can see, you might wonder what my weight had been doing. Well, if I look at my rolling average I have lost 0.9 lbs. If I look at the scale on Sunday morning from a week prior I have gained 0.5 lbs. So the truth probably lies somewhere in between those two numbers. Even on the rolling average my weigh has been climbing for the past 3 days which was a first. So far every single weigh in was below my rolling average but this time the numbers have been constantly higher than my rolling average indicating that my rolling average was going in the wrong direction. I’m still happy with where I’m at, I know that this week was an unusual week with a trifecta of heavy days but the chances of such alignment of events and gatherings in the near future are slim. So eating was not the best, how about strength training?

Well I did go my lifts on Wednesday but I skipped Friday. I had to leave early from work for the company event so I couldn’t stay and put in my workout. I did do some push-ups, 25 of them, on Saturday morning but I would not consider it a workout. But if there is anything this week that I’m particularly proud of, it has to be my running.

I have logged 37.8 miles (60.8 km) with an average pace of 7:57 minute/miles. This is the most miles I had run in a week so far. I am extremely happy with my running. I had a solid 10x400m interval repeat on Tuesday that almost killed me in the 90+ (30+ C) weather. I also had a great 10.8 mile long run with my co-worker again on the same route we did last time and burned over 1,100 calories in the process. This is why I don’t feel all that bad about the cakes. All in all I have burned 4,194 calories with running this week.

Based on the average caloric intake of 2,654 calories and the average daily caloric expenditure of 599 calories my net daily calories were 2,055 calories. Combined that with the estimated weight loss of about 0.7 lbs and you get about 2,400 calories as my BMR. Certainly within the ballpark that I have been calculating all along.

So while the week was nowhere near perfect I still managed to generate a caloric deficit and lose weight even if it was at a slower pace than ever before. Had I not exercised at all this week I would have gained about 0.5 lbs this week instead.

Today I had my first official cheat day. A day when I just said “screw it” and I ate whatever I felt like eating. I haven’t been completely depriving myself for the past 6+ months but I have certainly not been eating everything that I had ever craved. I’ve been very cautious about my food intake and I have results to show for it. So after 194 days I think I deserve a bit of a slack for my falter and going weak and having a cheat day. So what happened? Why the cheat day on an uneventful Friday in early May?

The day started out as usual. I had my morning breakfast which included my usual 3/4 cup of organic yogurt and a serving of Wheaties Fuel. I mix rolled oats, granola or Wheaties into the yogurt so my breakfast was nothing out of the ordinary. I followed up with 2.5 oz (70 grams) of raspberries and headed out to work. 372 calories, 10 grams of protein. So far so good.

At work I had a mid morning snack which was an energy bar. Again, this is what I usually do, nothing special. 170 calories, 9 grams of protein.

For lunch I have grabbed Chipotle. Chipotle is one of my frequent lunch places. They provide great food and very reasonable calories with awesome macronutrient content as long as you forego the cheese, sour cream, guacamole and the burrito and opt for a plain bowl with cilantro rice, black beans, fajita veggies, barbacoa, tomato and corn salsa. A really great lunch for 540 calories with a whopping 38 grams of protein. 38 grams of protein is not that much but it’s a lot when you compare it to other fast food alternatives and the amount of calories it comes out of. Again, I was doing pretty good so far.

My afternoon snacking went a bit out of hand. I was craving fruits as well as something salty. I went to the grocery store right after lunch and bought bananas. But once I was already there I bought some beef jerky, beef sticks, wheat thins and Triscuits as well as some other stuff. And since I had all this stuff in my office at work I could not resist and ate a large banana, a beef stick and one serving of wheat thins throughout the afternoon. 416 calories and 12 grams of protein.

If you had kept count I was up to 1498 calories for the day with 69 grams of protein so far. Not a bad position to be in. I still had 800 calories left over for dinner and I only needed about 50 grams of protein to go with it to meet my goal of 120 grams of protein for the day. Easily doable, I’ve done it many many times before. So what happened after I got off from work? Well, my wife had a corporate event…

My wife’s company throws some pretty nice parties for their employees and this time they invited their employees and their spouses to a nice suite at the Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie, a horse track. Me and my wife hardly get away from the kids so it was a special occasion for us that does not come around often. So we hired a sitter and we went to the race track. Once we got there and walked in the suite there were sandwiches, chips with dips and salsa, cheese platter with grapes and shrimp cocktails everywhere. They also had a full open bar which I did not utilize other than asking for club sodas at a steady pace. I chose not to eat any of these snack foods and waited as long as I could before I got in line at the buffet.

They had a really nice create your own pasta stir-fry station going where I asked the attendant to pour all the oil she just put in the skillet out and make mine with very little oil, if any, and go easy on the pasta and heavy on the veggies. I asked her to put every possible vegetable in there which consisted of broccoli, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, bell peppers, artichoke hearts, onions and garlic. I also opted for the marinara sauce instead of the Alfredo which is the one I would have opted for 6 months ago. After I ate my fantastic stir-fry I went back for more. This time I got a large plate and piled half of it with steamed squash and zucchini while loaded the other half with two slices of roasted turkey breast and two slices of prime rib. Again, I think I did pretty good and avoided the chicken covered in buttery and creamy sauces, the potatoes Au Gratin and the dinner rolls. This little dinner outing comes in at a respectable 926 calories with 69 grams of protein based on my calculations. The only bad part was the 47 grams of fats almost half of which was saturated. So if you add up all my calories so far for the day I’d be at 2,425 calories and 139 grams of protein which is actually a pretty good day. And this is where I should have stopped and called it quits. But I didn’t.

Instead I went back for dessert and ended up eating a slice of chocolate pie and a slice of Italian Cream cake. Yup, you’ve read it right. I actually had two pieces of cake for dessert. It was insane! I don’t know what had gotten into me but I just had to have it. And if this wasn’t enough I kept munching on potato chips and pieces of cheese throughout the rest of the evening while I kept betting on the wrong horses. All in all I estimate I had eaten close to 900 calories of dessert and junk throughout the evening and 60% of the calories came from the 56 grams of fat that I managed to stuff my face with. So my overall total calories for the day were estimated around 3,300 calories. Not exactly my maintenance intake of 2,300 calories. My overall game winnings were a net loss of $9 which is not too bad when you consider the entertainment value I had received for it.

If I could have a do-over I’d probably stop after dinner and maybe have a single piece of cake as an indulgence but I would certainly not gorge on the dessert and snacks like I did. I feel a bit bad about it but I do know that I haven’t had pie or cake for 6 months and I haven’t eaten this much food in one day for a really really long time and I certainly won’t repeat today’s actions any time soon. But on the other hand this experiment just showed me how easy it is to eat a ton of calories without even noticing it. I ate perfect, or close to it, throughout the entire day and I only blew it after dinner yet I still managed to eat 1,000 calories over my maintenance level. And believe me, I wasn’t even the biggest eater at this event. The only difference was that while 7 months ago I would not have thought for a second about all the food choices I made and I probably would have eaten potatoes and dinner rolls with butter bathed chicken instead of the steamed vegetables and roasted meat. This time every single choice was a conscious one even if it was a bad one. I knew full well what I was doing and what it would cost me in terms of calories even before I took the piece of cake and placed it on my plate. I was fully aware of the damage each potato chip was making in my diet and goal.

While I’m not entirely proud of or happy with the choices I had made tonight I’m still feeling pretty good. I also know that I’ll be running a 10 mile long run on Sunday which will burn more calories in an hour and a half than what I ate in excess the entire evening. So I’m still kind of glad that I had my first official cheat day, at least I know what it feels like. It’s not all that what it’s cracked up to be but I’m sure I’ll have a couple more of these in the coming years.