After a few frustrating days (and some very helpful words from my wife, who talked me down from the precipice of pizza-consolation), I came to the conclusion that the problem may not lie with output, but rather the input side of the equation.  While the diet worked wonders in February/March/April, it wasn’t working now.  I needed a change of pace in order to wake up my system, and to start getting results again.

I looked (briefly) into a complete change of methodology.  Luka has been having success lately with the “Green Faces” diet, wherein you eat nothing but meat and green leafy stuff for three weeks.  Sounds ok (sort of a variation of the Atkins/ketosis approach), but I’ve seen Luka tuck into a cold tub of browned ground bison for lunch, and the lack of variety would be my downfall for sure.  At the far end of the spectrum is the Velocity Diet.  Sure-fired results, but who wants to live on 6 protein shakes a day (bonus-one solid meal… a week!).  My dedication would soon be trampled under the jack-boots of monotony.

Because I have had success with the Warp-Speed diet before, I have decided to fine tune the portions and some of the menu plan.  It is apparent that my base metabolism isn’t anywhere near as high as is assumed by the diet planners, nor anyone that makes those gawdawful formulas that “predict” how many calories I burn sitting on my ass in front of a computer all day.  The diet plan I was working with before was targeted at about 2,100 calories a day.  I’m going to shoot for 1,750 – 1,800 on non-workout days, and about 2,000 on workout days.  Will it be hard?  Youbetchurass.  I’m in a mental place right now that the frustration of not being able to feed my oral fixations is far outweighed by my frustration at the lack of weight change.

I re-read “300 Opinions” this morning, and it makes for a nice reinforcement of my resolve:

If you weren’t given the gift you can’t get the gift so the best you can do – if your goal is important – is work as hard as you possibly can, pay attention every hour of every day and then maybe, maybe if you’ve done enough and been smart enough you’ll emerge from the muck of mediocrity to shine a bit brighter than you shone before.

I had a 2 pound “pop” this morning, but that may just be a water-retention thing.  I should know by Friday how this is working.  If this doesn’t bear fruit, the next step for John is the Alpo Diet.

They didn’t even bother to clear all the tables before the abandoned ship.  Hopefully, something nice will open in it’s place.

I’m a numbers guy, so I track and fuss about digits.  Probably too much for my own good.  I figure that if it helps to keep me motivated, what the hell.

The graph above is from FitDay, tracking my weight loss goal that I set back in early December.  Notice how the (red) line of the target weight loss made it’s linear plunge to goal-weight, while John wandered around in the stratosphere, just to make things more challenging.  I started the personal training at Hocevar Performance in late January, where the blue dotted line starts to head southward.

My problem now is those little blips upward you see every 7 days.  “Treat days”.  Not that I’m downing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s or anything, but I’ve been known to have a beer at lunch on Saturday, or a few glasses of wine that night.  It would appear to be counter-productive, and keeping my little blue blips above, rather than below the line.  I think that the degree to which I treat myself needs more careful consideration.  I’m still on target, however.

Staff in these places either have had hours cut, or maybe soon will. Empty tables means empty tip jars, too. If you haven’t been to your local “joint” in a while, please do… and leave a tip!

My latest discovery is weekend breakfast at the Copper Falls Restaurant at the Auburn Golf Course. They start serving at 9 a.m., and the chef makes the greatest breakfast potatoes I’ve ever had. While there are a couple of other famous and not-so-famous breakfast places in Auburn, this one deserves better patronage because of the quality of the food, the excellent service, and it’s the only one of the three that can serve you a bloody mary!

Last night I thought we’d try the Zephyr Grill and Bar. Terri and I ate there once, shortly after they opened. We were underwhelmed (as I recall), but I chalked that up to the establishment being relatively new. I think that they have been open for over a year now, so my hope was that we’d have a better experience. Silly me.

The server was a bit intense, asking us at least 4 times in 5 minutes if we were ready to order. A simple observation that we were all still squinting at the mouse-print menu might be a good indication that we were not ready to order. Terri and Brendan both opted to have the duck. “We don’t have any duck… in fact, we’ve never had it since it was put on the menu.” Brendan’s fall-back position was a braised lamb shank, Terri opted for my choice of veal saltimbocca served on a bed of white beans. We also ordered an appetizer of artichoke-gruyere dip.

The dip was actually ok.

The saltimbocca was very much like eating pork-and-beans, only less flavorful. The bonus was the very chewy pieces of meat. Brendan’s lamb shank was a giant bone with a big hunk of meat at one end, served in a bowl with a little broth. Once he managed to extricate a bite of meat from this beast, it was apparent that it had been boiled to the point of having zero flavor. He sent it back to the kitchen, and to their credit they did take it off the bill. All dinners were served with tonight’s vegetable, which was a hunk of broccoli that had been steamed to death.

The atmosphere is pretty upscale, as are the prices (entrees range from $15-$25 or so). The service and food, somewhat less so. Visit Kent Station, and eat at either Duke’s, The Ram, Fondi, or Zao. I’d recommend giving Zephyr a wide berth.

Saturday I headed out in the morning from home to get in a “long” ride. From Auburn I rode out to Lake Sawyer, 4 corners, Landsburg, Kangley, Kanaskat, Cumberland, Green River Gorge, and back via Green Valley (a.k.a “Over the river and through the woods“). I ended the day with almost exactly 60 miles, and a pretty good case of “bonk”. I ate poorly at breakfast, and snacked on a single Clif Bar during my ride. By 1 p.m. when it was time to head up the hill to my house, I threw in the towel. Lessons learned on this day were:

• Eat and hydrate properly before a big ride, starting the day before.
• Stop for lunch, dude.
• If you ride almost every ride at 20 miles in length, your body will become accustomed to riding 20 miles. 60 will be 3 times farther than your body will want to go.

Sunday was far more low-key. We met a local group of riders at Mountain Bike Outfitters in Kent, and had a leisurely ride out to Green Valley for a little of their outstanding beef jerky.

Have I told you about the beef jerky at Green Valley Meats before? I thought so, but I’ll tell you again. They make it there, in more flavors than I care to count in the middle of a Sunday bike ride. There are fruit flavors, Jack Daniels flavor, thick, thin, turkey, elk, and buffalo to name a few (and, lest we forget, a flavor called “MyAssIsOnFire”). This is not your “Oh Boy” kinda mass-produced mystery meat. This is the real deal, crafted by people that know how to make it, and served by people that care if you like it. Their meat is damn good as well. In the summer I’ll take a small folding day-pack, and end my ride with a run down Green Valley. I’ll stop 1 mile up the road at Mosby Brothers’ Farm for some veg to grill, then stop at Green Valley Meats for the main course. All their meat is natural, and delicious.

60 miles Saturday, 20 on Sunday (there’s that 20 miles again), 904 year-to-date. Big Billy-Jim-Bob Carson has pointed out what would be obvious to anyone other than me, so I’m now shooting for 1,000 miles in the 1st Quarter of 2007 (double last year’s effort).

The Gran’s brought pie, for cryin’ out loud! There was this pumpkin-praline number that was to die for, which I may do. Restraint was in short supply, but I restrained myself to a single plate of the mainline food, and a single piece of pie afterward.

Now my esophagus is on fire. Really. I haven’t had a real case of heartburn in years, but I’m burning up tonight, folks. I went upstairs a while ago and rummaged around in a drawer long enough to find an old roll of Tums, almost as old as the Alka Seltzer ad to the left. Tossed a couple of those bad-boys in my pie-hole and chewed them up. Moderate relief has been obtained, but I have a strong feeling that I will be popping a few more before the sun rises tomorrow.

The Inlaws and outlaws all behaved. No one felt like fisticuffs. We didn’t sing kumbayah, but it was close. Everyone wants to come back at Christmas. I guess that’s a good sign!

Tomorrow is a day of rest. No riding, no spinning, no nuttin’. I may do a little programming while the house is quiet, but I’m not counting it as a work day. Four days in a row is just too good to pass up.

The purpose of today’s mission was to

• give Terri an opportunity to test our the superior gripping power of her new salmon brake pads, and
• test out my latest fix to my skipping chain problems.

I changed by chain out a couple of months ago, after about 4,000 miles. Perhaps too long to wait for that. I started to develop a chain-jump phenomenon on the back cluster, so I took it in a week ago to have the cassette upgraded. It was then fine in the larger gears, but I was still jumping on the smaller cogs. I took it back in to Angle Lake, and Dale diagnosed that the derailleur hanger was bent OUT, causing it to jump on the smaller outboard cogs. Apparently if the derailleur is bent IN (as is usually the case) the chain will have problems on the larger, inboard cogs. Bottom line is that it appears that Dale diagnosed correctly, and all is smooth in the shifting department.

The ride itself was uneventful. Sunny, but the winds were blowing from North to South at about 14 mph by my calculations. We rode North first, which was tedious to say the least. The ride home was WAY better!

We capped the day off by trying out yet another of the fine restaurants at Kent Station, this time the Zao Noodle Bar. Ab Fab. This whole complex is genius. So far we’ve had great success at:

• Dilettante Espresso
• Duke’s Chowder House
• Pizzeria Fondi
• The Ram
• Zao Noodle Bar

Plenty of parking, public restrooms, a theater, shops, etc. The is the ultimate place to start and end a bike ride.

Well, someone flipped on the air-conditioning this week, and it’s 22 degrees at the moment. It’s been windy as well. Riding my bike in sub-freezing temperatures with a 20 mph crosswind isn’t my idea of a good time. Call me a slacker, but there it is.

I went to spin class on Monday and Wednesday, and will be going again in a couple of hours. It is no substitute for pedaling my ass up some of the hills around here, however. I also need to do some rides to concentrate on improving my pace, as I hope to do the STP in one day. Kind of a big nut to crack for Mr. Moderate Pace.

I’m down about 6 pounds since Jan 30th, which is pretty good progress. I’m still somewhere near a bag of cement to go toward my goal however, so I better start getting creative with my exercise regime, stat.

A couple of goodies for you on the food front:

Yesterday the Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer arrived in my mailbox, and it mentioned these “Handful of Nuts” almonds. I’m a sucker for nuts, and would gladly munch nuts or trail mix while riding my bike, if only it were practical to do without stopping. They’ve divided roughly a pound of roasted unsalted almonds into individual serving packets. These packets can easily go into my jersey pocket or seat bag to give me a satisfying crunch during a long ride. I’m thinking this will be a nice change from all the other stuff you eat while riding, which tend to be mushy (like bananas) or chewy (like bars).

Last night we had store-bought crabcakes with a batch of chipotle mashed sweet potatoes. These spuds are really easy to make, satisfying on a cold winter’s night, and nutritionally sane to boot. Basically, you peel, cube, and steam a couple of sweet potatoes for 15 minutes. When fork-tender, throw them in a bowl and mash them with 1, 2, or more chiles from a can of Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce (chopped up). Add a spoon or so of the adobo sauce from the can as well. Salt, pepper to taste. Add butter if you must, but it really isn’t necessary. Mash the whole mess & serve. Absolutely delicious. Props to Alton Brown, the ultimate geek chef.