Today marks the end of the third week of being on this diet. I am one week away from my four week mark (see even when I am not playing with a full stomach I am still able to do simple mathematical problems). I’ve now started to get into a routine of eating every 2.5-3 hours. I am getting used to the powdered food that make up the meal replacements for most of the day.

I’ve become accustomed to having a protein and green vegetables for dinner and ending my day with a calorie controlled snack. I’m building a pattern of good choices and have remained committed to this eating plan to remain on track. I’m not officially supposed to weigh-in until tomorrow but I snuck on the scale this morning to see I had dropped another 2.5 pounds bringing me under 195 in a long time.

Today is also Groundhog Day. It’s an interesting holiday where the world turns to a small furry rodent who comes out of hibernation to look around for his shadow. If he does not see his shadow it is to signify an early spring. If he does see his shadow that means there will be six more weeks of winter.

As you might imagine, Groundhog Day is a rather minor holiday especially for those who live in the Sunbelt states such as Arizona where today’s weather is to be sunny and a comfortable 70 degrees. If the groundhog is suggesting that we have six more weeks of this I am completely onboard with that. Go groundhog!

In 1993 Columbia Pictures released a Harold Ramis film called Groundhog Day. For those of you who might not have seen it, the story is about a self-centered weatherman who is sent to cover Groundhog Day. After having to endure a miserable day covering the “weather-forecasting rat” the weatherman finds himself in an endless loop of reliving that day over and over.

Groundhog Day the movie is a favorite around our house and each year we celebrate the holiday by watching the movie and eating our traditional dinner consisting of ground hog. It is important to note the space between “ground” and “hog”. A lesson I have never forgotten after hearing the comedy routine of Bob & Ray.

A year never goes by that I don’t secretly wonder, what if that happened to me, what if I was stuck repeating the same day over and over and over? What would I learn? Well for one thing I would not want this to happen while I was on a diet that’s for sure.

I found myself carefully considering what exactly I would be eating today. What if I woke up in the morning and found myself repeating the day before? Would I really want to start my day off with a plate of powdered eggs that make me gag with every spoonful? Not on your life!

At one point this morning I seriously considered breaking my diet and running down to Denny for a Grand Slam breakfast followed by lobster and steak for lunch and ending the day at PF Changs for Chinese food ending with a big slice of the Great Wall of Chocolate dessert. Oh sure eating that every day would likely kill you but if I were reliving the same day over and over that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

Instead, I didn’t break from my routine. I had powdered pancakes, a chocolate shake, chicken noodle soup, an energy bar, shrimp with a green salad and broccoli and ended with a brownie. It wasn’t quite the same but my theory is that if I keep reliving that day over and over then by tomorrow I will have reached my target weight.

When I was first considering going on this diet I was aghast to learn that it required homework. My initial reaction was akin to the reaction Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76’ers basketball team gave when he was benched for missing practice. We’re not talking about weight loss, we’re not talking about losing weight, we’re talking about homework! Not the way I’m eating, not the food, we’re talking about homework! Yeah I know it’s not just about what kinds of food you eat. I know it’s about making a change to my health habits but we’re still talking about homework!

After a bit of soul searching and reflection I understand why there’s homework. I know that I need to learn how to make better choices and the only way to do that is to become more educated about what goes into living a healthy life. So reluctantly I picked up the Habits of Health book and began reading. To be honest, it was a lot more interesting than I had expected.

I had anticipated the text to be riddled with reminders of how my poor health choices had resulted in where I am today. I expected to be chastised much like the dentist does when he learns that your whole life does not revolve around flossing 24-hours a day. Instead I found the text to be fascinating describing the aspects of human nature and the changes in society have all empowered us to lose control of our health.

The book itself is 377 pages long and while I would not classify it as a page turner like those from Tom Clancy and John Grisham it has held my interest. My intention was to read the book from cover to cover but during my weekly discussion with my health coach Amy she was asking if I had read Chapter 14 or Chapter 1 or Chapter 2. I began to wonder if there might be some secret reading schedule with specific chapters spelled out for certain weeks.

Sure enough, Amy explained that there was an order that would help me in my journey to becoming healthier. Ok, obviously my logical side would have to relinquish the fact that this book was not a progressive story but more of a reference where I would bounce from subject to subject instead of a linear progression.

So I picked up the book and begin reading the chapters in the order Amy suggested. I have to admit, I was very confused. It seemed like the message was disjointed. Chapter 14 began discussing using movement in your life to becoming more active. Just when you started to buy into the concept the chapter ended. According to my reading schedule I was not to go to the next chapter but to instead jump back to Chapter 1. I was just not getting it.

During our last weekly call I expressed my confusion around the reading. On the other end of the conversation there was a distinct pause. I was reading the wrong book! No, are you serious? Yeah sure enough, instead of the Habits of Health I was supposed to be in the “workbook” Living a Longer Healthier Life.

So basically I am back at square one. I now have the right book to work from and in reading the first assignment it is sending me to the Habits of Health in different chapters. So like Allen Iverson I understand the importance of listening to the coach and maybe, just maybe I should practice a little more if I want to be successful in the game.

When I signed up for this diet I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Being a diet rookie I had no clue what an eating program meant or what the logistics were around my commitment. While my health coach was very good at outlining the program I had no frame of reference to put the information into the proper context.

The first item of business was to order food that is vital to the success of my diet. I was presented a web site with pictures of exciting food that I could choose from. After careful consideration I selected what I would eat for the first month.

I’m not exactly sure what my expectation was but when the food arrived I was somewhat surprised. The food came in powder form and required preparation. It wasn’t just add some water. There was very specific preparation steps.

You had to properly measure each ingredient and then follow a specified sequence of steps that told when to stir, when to heat, the type of cooking vessel to use etcetera. I had no idea powdered food could be so technical.

This type of thing could be intimidating to some as the instructions seem rather precise. I mean really does it matter whether powdered chicken noodle soup is heated for 2.5 minutes followed by sitting for a minute then stirring and heating for a minute then letting stand 5 minutes before stirring again?

From the very beginning I decided to take this seriously and follow each instruction to the letter. Before long I started envisioning myself in some sort of evil laboratory filled with glass beakers, bubbling multi-colored liquids and of course safety glasses.

I have on more than one occasion considered buying a white lab coat and completing cooking each meal with an evil and maniacal laugh as I vocalize my intentions of taking over the world. No one warned me of this dangerous side effect to the diet.

According to the UPS web site, my diet food is to arrive today. If that happens then tomorrow will be the official beginning of my weight loss journey. I am approaching this with equal parts excitement and fear. What if the program doesn’t work for me? What if I absolutely hate the food and the regimen? What if my order gets mixed up with some kind of government funded science experiment and instead of losing weight I become a mutant who can shoot laser beams out his eyes and fly? Ok, that last one would be pretty cool except for the fact that I would need to get a cape and wear a suit of spandex, which would not look cool unless I lost some weight.

As of late afternoon I still had not seen the package and I wondered if there was some overweight delivery driver that had absconded with my order and was at this moment enjoying a nutritional shake high in protein and facilitating weight loss while tasting good.

After going to watch my son’s soccer game I returned home to find a box sitting on our front steps. A glance at the return address showed it was indeed the food for my weight loss program. Looking over the box I was surprised how small it was. I guess I expected to see a semi pull up to my house to deliver a month’s worth of food. Instead it came in an 18-pound container that was smaller than a Little Tike’s kitchen set.

Trina and I still need to go out shopping for the fresh ingredients for my daily “Lean and Green” meal but otherwise it looks like I am ready to go. I guess this makes today my last no-holds-barred-eat-whatever-you-want-and-thumb-your-nose-to-the-world day. It’s the last time I’ll be unregulated.

I feel like the condemned man who is ready for his last meal. If you were going to go on an eating program where you only have limited choices for the next few months until you can get to your optimum weight, what would your last meal be before beginning the journey?

On the one hand I really have been trying to eat healthy the past couple of weeks to get my body prepared but this is the last meal and I sure didn’t want to waste it on a couple of celery sticks and a low-fat low-taste salad. No, if I’m going out, I’m going out big.

I loaded Trina in the car and went to Pei Wei where we had chicken lettuce wraps, Vietnamese spring rolls, lemongrass salad (my one healthy choice), and Mongolian Beef with brown rice (ok my other healthy choice was the rice). To top it off I had a fortune cookie. My fortune read, “You are about to begin a long and rewarding journey that will bring happiness – in bed”. Ok, I added the last two words, which got me smacked by Trina.

While I am waiting for my food order. it’s time to focus my attention on my homework. I have the before picture out of the way so I don’t have to worry about that. The articles that my health coach Amy sent me were interesting but without a lot of context its hard to see how everything fits together. I suppose once the program starts I’ll understand it better so for now I just need to be content and trust this is going to work.

The last item on my pre-diet homework was to take a beginning health quiz to determine my Current Health Score. This will provide a baseline of my health from which to build on. I get why this is important since you cannot measure progress if you don’t know where you started from.

The quiz was online and was divided into eight sections covering: What you eat, How much exercise or activity you get, Stress and work, Smoking habits, Weight and body mass, medical tests such as cholesterol, Medications and pre-existing conditions, and finally Family medical history.

All of the questions are multiple choice and the quiz went fairly quickly. They summarize all of your answers to the first sets of questions then multiply that by a factor as a result of your family medical history. The upper end of the score is over 100 while the lower end I thought was zero.

I say I thought zero because in actuality I somehow managed to get a negative score on my health quiz. If over 100 means I am Ultra-healthy, my score of -25.76 should classify me as clinically dead. The makers of the test did find some leniency and described my condition as “Sick”

That definition describes how I likely have significant medical conditions that are affecting my health and I have made a series of unhealthy choices that will impact the longevity and quality of life. Great, like I didn’t feel bad enough now I have some computer quiz telling me that the new next door neighbor in our neighborhood is the Grim Reaper and he may be coming over later for a donut, a can of beer, and to watch the Andy Griffith marathon on television.

Not exactly the picture of health which I probably should have expected given my before picture in the diet. So it looks like not only will I be changing my eating habits but I have a few other things I need to do to get my life back in order. Oh and I am going to see if Richard Simmons will adopt me since my slacker parents and ancestors aren’t doing my health any favors either.

Now that I know the exact date when the UPS guy is going to drop the F-bomb at my house (food bomb) I can start to get prepared for the official beginning of my new diet. I have exactly two more days to live.

Part of me feels a little like the death-row inmate whose cell is exactly outside the room where they are testing the electric chair. Even though you know that the lights flickering are just them testing to make sure they’ll kill you when they throw the switch you secretly hope that the governor will call and give you a last second reprieve.

Any day now the doctor is going to call and tell me that they made a mistake. That fatty liver wasn’t mine it belonged to that guy who was in for a physical before beginning his new career as a sumo wrestler.

I guess I really do need to take this more seriously (since according to Trina there is no way I can take this diet less seriously). So begrudgingly I began doing my homework in preparation for my first Parent-Health Coach Conference this week.

I began reading over the documents that Amy sent me to try and understand what this program is about. One of the things that immediately caught my eye was the requirement to drink half your body weight in ounces every day.

Wait what was that? The example they gave was for a 220-pound man he would need to consume 110 ounces of water on a daily basis. That is nearly 14 8-ounce glasses every day! Holy bathroom Batman!

Just for fun I filled up 14 glasses of water to see what I was up against. As near as I can figure I will be drinking the equivalent of a small children’s swimming pool without the life preserver. No good can possibly come from drinking that much water.

I’ve been married for over 30 years now so I know a thing or two about water retention and I can tell you no one wants to see fat people filled with water. It would be like a giant water balloon just waiting to be popped.

From a curiosity perspective I dumped the water in a gallon jug and it nearly filled it. I then set the water jug on the scale and it weighed just over 8 pounds. So let me get this straight, they want me to drink a gallon of water a day introducing roughly 8 pounds into my body in order to lose weight? Am I the only one that sees the mathematical flaw in this theory?

I decided to give this a shot. The next two days I will attempt to try and drink that amount first because I don’t think it’s possible and second because I am just plain curious to what my body will do when I introduce that much liquid into my system.

If you hear the equivalent of Niagara Falls coming from Arizona you’ll know that this experiment went awry and I have begun to resemble Violet Beauregarde the little girl from Willy Wonka when she ate the gum during her chocolate factory tour. Please make sure they send me to the taffy pulling room to help me regain my previous shape.

At some point during the day I received an email notifying me that my food shipment for my new diet plan is on its way to me and that I should have it in my hands by Thursday this week. This news was met with equal parts excitement and dread.

Looking around the pantry it was going to be a teary good-bye to several of my closest friends. Ah the wonderful mornings I spent with Lucky the leprechaun protecting the colorful marshmallows from those pesky kids who kept trying to steal them.

And what about my poor friend the rabbit? Without my help who was going to give him a bowl of Trix goodness? It surely would not be those selfish kids who seem to think there is an age limit on colorful round sugar-filled cereal.

Farewell sour dough bread, your tangy taste will now be but a memory as my diet goes to some regulated portion-controlled blob. Alas, it seems like everywhere I turned it was going to be an emotional farewell to the things I loved. Curse you evil fatty liver!

What I didn’t realize though was how my diet would affect the universe. Having raised five children I was well aware that once you reach your teenage years that the universe itself goes through some kind of cosmic puberty where in the planets cease to revolve around the sun and instead the teenager becomes the center and everything revolved around them. It is obvious that Copernicus never had any kids otherwise he would not have suggested such an obviously erroneous theory.

At first I just assumed that teenagers were wrong (despite their objections that they are never wrong). After today though I am beginning to wonder if the center of the universe really does revolve around each of us.

Shortly after receiving a shipment notification of diet food I received another email stating that the Hostess company maker of magical chocolate cupcakes, indestructible Twinkies, and my personal favorites HoHo’s was filing for bankruptcy.

Oh what have I done? Because of my stupid fatty liver I may have jeopardized an entire generation of children who will not be able to partake of the sugary goodness that was a Ding Dong. How could I have been such a fool as to believe that my decision to lose weight would not have an adverse effect on those around me? This was not the kind of loss I was expecting when I decided to go on a diet.

Shortly after joining “the program”, I received my first email from my personal health coach Amy. She gave me all of her contact information so I could contact her whenever I needed. I’ve decided if I ever want to become a stalker I am going to go out and join diet web sites and get people’s information. Not only do you have access to people they are likely in better shape than you are.

At first I thought this was the standard welcome message then I realized that this email had a purpose. Attached at the bottom of the email were three documents. I had to go back and re-read the message to find out that I actually had homework!

Nobody told me there would be homework. I had to go back and check the web site. Did I make a mistake filling out the forms and put that I was going to take this diet for credit? The last thing I need is to flunk diet; that would be embarrassing.

My first inclination was to suggest to Trina that maybe she should do the homework since she was the one who thought this was a good idea. But then I remembered the last time Trina helped one of the kids with their geography homework. Let’s just say Trina’s license plate “IBLOST” is not a coincidence.

The homework didn’t look too bad. There were two PDF files that talked about fat burning and getting started on a diet plan. Those two weren’t too bad. I was kind of thrown for a loop when the third document was Lesson 8 from some book and it referred to other chapters of the non-existent tome. I was about to call foul when Trina explained that the book was coming as part of my “Welcome kit” that was being shipped to my house.

The final part of the homework was to go out and take a quiz. Wait what? First homework and now quizzes; this is not good. I figured I better nip this in the bud right now before I was asked to write a research paper on fat or something.

A quick email to my personal health coach and I was told that it wasn’t really a test as much as it was a baseline to understand my weight loss goals. Hopefully one of the test answers is that I am being forced into this by a nagging liver and a wife who never gains weight.

I was beginning to feel a little better about this until Amy suggested that one other item I would need would be a before picture. I’m pretty sure we have all seen these pictures that look like someone just swallowed the yellow short bus with a marshmallow chaser.

This is not good at all. It is an absolute no win situation for a person beginning a diet to provide a before picture. If the diet is successful you will forever see the before picture as a constant reminder that you were one fish away from being Shamu’s roommate at Sea World.

On the other hand, if the diet is not successful you will have that before picture that looks the same as the after picture except that at least in the before picture you have the look of hope on your face whereas the after picture looks like you are depressed to find out you are having fish for dinner and Shamu is still looking for a roommate.

Neither of these two options sounded like a good idea for me. No what I needed was a picture that no matter what the outcome of this diet may be I would at least feel better about myself. And since I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop and Google I have all the tools I am going to need.

After a quick search, a download of a file, and a couple of small edits I had the perfect before picture for my diet. If at the end of this adventure the diet works I am going to look amazing compared to this picture. If the diet fails I can be content knowing that it could be worse, I could look like that guy in the photo.

After my edits I was ready to unveil my picture to my family. A couple of things to note, never show pictures like this to anyone drinking milk or if you do be prepared with a camcorder to get a great video of milk snort out their nose. These kinds of pictures also seem to cause involuntary spasms in children especially teenage children.

Trina of course had to pretend to be the responsible parent and chastise me for my photo selection. She exclaimed that it didn’t look as though I was taking this seriously. I had to look around at whom she was talking to; it couldn’t be me could it? Of course I’m not taking this seriously it’s me.

It’s not that I am not taking losing weight seriously it is that it doesn’t have to be that serious. I mean I’m trying to lose weight not my sense of humor. I seem to remember a similar conversation we had after one of my doctor visits when I was asked whether I had any side effects from a particular medication and my response was, “other than hair growing on the tops of my feet and the ability to speak telepathically with dolphins things seem normal”. Hey they’re the ones asking, not me.

I’ll probably end up having to have a photo taken but for now I’m really thinking of going with this one.

I’m beginning to think that selecting a diet program is a lot like buying a new car without getting the new car smell. Now I have already readily admitted that I am an absolute novice at this diet thing and am basically relying on Trina to kind of deal with this. If you ask Trina I do that with pretty much everything not just diet programs.

One of the positive aspects of the program is that they kind of do all the heavy lifting (no pun intended; oh who am I kidding I have been waiting to use that). From what Trina has explained to me I am given five small “meals” a day then I get one home cooked meal referred to as “Lean and Green”.

That sounded simple enough. The next step was to pick the items that would make up my small meals. The web site had all kinds of choices and each was eloquently described. Of course their definition of a meal versus mine seems to be different. A bowl of soup could be a meal, a shake could be a meal, a brownie could be a meal. Hey, if they are telling me I can eat 5 brownies a day and lose weight that’s cool.

So Trina and I sat on the couch and surfed web site creating meal plans. I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work since Trina had the Food Network playing in the background. I have a feeling that I may be disappointed to find out my brownies are not being made by Chef Duff and the Ace of Cakes staff.

I’m now committed. I have a user ID on a web site, a personal health coach (heaven help poor Amy) and the UPS guy is bringing me enough astronaut food to last to a trip to the moon and back. I guess things are on hold now until the food arrives and I get started on the “exciting journey to a healthier you!”

Now that I’ve decided to lose weight, well more accurately now that my wife and my liver have decided I needed to lose weight the question becomes how? Trina was of course all over this. It’s amazing how helpful people can be suggesting how someone else can lose weight.

A quick tour of the bookstore showed that the number of titles around weight loss were taller and weighed more than I did. This was obviously not going to be as simple as getting a book, eating some celery, and exercising more than walking from the couch to the refrigerator.

After a little bit of reading I was even more confused than when I started. It’s not quite as simple as eating one thing versus eating two of those things. And the information seems to contradict itself. One diet tells you to eat zero carbohydrates while another says keep carbs to below a certain percentage. Yet another one says proteins are the answer while still another says becoming a vegan will erase the extra weight. I have to admit I had no idea what my religion had to do with it but Trina quickly corrected me that vegan meant no meat not what God you prayed to. That was a relief, I think.

While Trina was doing her research which I will admit seemed a lot more scientific than what I was doing. I had narrowed it down to finding a book that weighed less than I did and had to have at least one picture of a guy that didn’t look like Jabba the Hut in his before picture. The other theory I had was that if I hacked off a leg I would immediately lose 20 pounds without changing any other life choices. Somehow I didn’t think that was what the doctor had in mind though.

Somewhere in the midst of this research I got an email from Trina’s niece in Indiana. She had gone on a program and lost over 50 pounds and looked great. Trina and I talked and wondered if this program would work for me too.

I asked a few questions and Trina asked a lot more and it had a web site. Yeah I know, if it’s on the Internet it has to be true. At first I was reluctant. Couldn’t we just make a couple of changes and be done?

Trina began recounting all the things that needed to happen based on her research. After about fifteen minutes that sounded a lot like the teacher in a Charlie Brown cartoon my head and fatty liver glossed over and I stopped listening.

The next thing I knew I was going through web pages and looking at typical menus. I think I can safely say that to someone who has never been on a diet none of these menus were typical. Nowhere did I find Lucky Charms cereal, steak and onion rings, or a milk shake.

Trina of course countered everyone one of these arguments and even showed me where this diet allowed shakes it just so happened that the shakes were made with powder, ice, and a piece of Tupperware with a steel whisk shaped like a ball.

Trina went on to say how easy this would be. There were 5 meals a day and those were taken care of by “the program” with one “Lean and Green” meal at night. Seriously, if they wanted me to jump on it they should have called it the “Sedona Red Special” meal and I would have been all over it.

Still, this seemed better than carrying around a deck of cards with pictures of food, go through hypnosis, or go to weigh-in meetings with other people who wished they didn’t have to be there. After a couple of phone calls and more information we decided to give it a shot.