Shop healthy, cook healthy, eat healthy, be healthy

I lost my way back in October and gained a lot of weight instead of losing it. I may well be above 300 pounds, which I plan to check this evening (I just ate lunch).  

So, instead of losing weight, a series of injuries and a little "eating fills a hole in me" sadness has resulted in The Biggest Chris Ever.  

I feel like I hit bottom when I attended a wedding last week in Cartagena des Indias, Colombia, and I couldn't find a beautiful linen Guayabera shirt for the wedding anywhere that could button down my ample belly.  

The wedding went great but then I did a self-assessment and discovered that it's not easy to get up from chairs, that I am carrying a lot of weight on me -- probably 100-110 pounds extra, so every step is sort of like doing a full-time Farmer Carry with a 45kg kettlebell.  

So, here's how I am eating. And I am not drinking any more wine, liquor, beer, or anything, except during Very Special Events (such as second destination wedding in one month that I'm attending in Liberia, Costa Rica, on the 11th -- I will be celebrating there).

My secret is to always have either high-quality canned tuna on hand as well as always keeping raw chicken breasts and salmon on hand as well.

I also make sure I keep huge bags of baby spinach, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts on hand, even if I'm totally afraid of seeing them go bad on me.  

What you'll see here is a typical meal I'll make for myself: butter-sauteed salmon and oven-roasted Brussels sprouts marinated in butter. Yes, there's butter in there, and also salt and pepper used only during cooking.

I use shears to cut the sprouts in half (I have a tiny cluttered kitchen at work -- yes, I cook at my office because my girlfriend is vegetarian), and I brush everything in butter and then cook it in it, too.  

I'm not afraid of some fat in my diet, or some salt, because at least I know how much I am putting in and where it's from (you would be appalled as to how much better, salt, and sugar they put into your meals in processed foods and even at the best restaurants!).

Also, something that I had stopped doing back in October that really threw me for a loop and set me into the wilderness: I stopped logging each and every single meal, every single piece of food that hit my lips, on the MyFitnessPal app and via web. It changes everything! Everything. Now, I can easily keep my activities up and my calories well below 1,800 calories-per-day. 

So, you'll also see my omelet from yesterday: sauteed mushrooms and spinach, a little bit of a mixture of Swiss and Gruyère cheeses, and of course eggs, salt, pepper, and a slice of nova lox salmon with some capers. I drink a lot of black coffee and tons of water (even more water now since I have killed beer and wine).

I'll oftentimes make panfuls of chicken breasts or salmon all at once so that I can have them at-hand and to make sure that all the salmon and chicken I bought the week before that isn't frozen is cooked up so that it doesn't go bad (I'll be cooking a lot of chicken up today in addition to all the salmon I cooked this morning).

Hopefully, though, I will eat this cleanly, this healthily, and this carefully over the next 10 days, hopefully I'll be able to fit into some Guayabera shirt or another before I leave.  

That said, I really want to start off right so yesterday I ran with my girlfriend for four miles in a complete loop around the National Mall -- 4 miles -- and I plan to actually use my treadmill desk every day, get at least 10,000 steps in every day, and I'm going to be starting a new cool training studio that just opened up near my office called 9Round in Penrose, Arlington, Virginia. 

Anyway, it's really tough.

I will surely write a post soon that will go into why and how I gained all this weight even though I own a professional Concept2 Indoor Rower, a treadmill desk, a pull-up bar, a dip bar, a step, loads of kettlebells and medicine balls, a TRX strap, resistant bands, and all that fun stuff. I even have a really nice sandbag and a Bulgarian training bag (I don't use). 

Spoiler: you need to use them, not collect them!

Wish me luck! It's not easy to start over, especially when you're carrying a permanent 100 pounds with every step you take, every move you make.