I am down another 1.8 lbs this week, but it has been a bit of a struggle. Last Monday evening, I was invited for a posh dinner at one of the Oxford colleges, which involved 4 courses and lots of wine. Actually the meal was quite healthy, soup, fish, vegetables, potatoes, whole grain rolls. The dessert, or shall I say "pudding," was some sort of delicious Bailey's cheesecake though which started the generally downhill slide for the rest of the evening.
After this annual dinner, it is apparently traditional to head to the college bar for a "Pongo," which is a sickly sweet, pint size cocktail which contains no less than 7 shots of different kinds of liquor and an unknown, but I'm sure exorbitant, amount of sugary, fruity substance. They come in red or blue and I was lucky enough to get the red, which was slightly less disgusting than the blue. At this point I was totally drunk, so it seemed like a great idea to go on for a pint of beer at a different pub after that one closed. Then, it seemed like a shame to end the night that early, so we went on to my friend Alex's for a bottle of THE WORST WINE IN THE WORLD. It was needless to say a big disappointment because this wine had been brought back to England the week before from the south of France….go figure. It was far worse than the Pongo, completely vinegary and unnecessary, but yet we nearly finished the bottle. The evening ended in a predictable fashion, with me not wanting to ride my bike the 2.5 miles home and instead sleeping on Alex's spare air mattress. I woke up a bit hungover, especially for a Tuesday, but the Pain au chocolat that Alex went and got us helped me feel a bit better , even though it was far from South Beachy. Yep, didn't get much work done that day.
That was really my biggest setback of the week. I ate really well most other days and never drank more than a glass or two of wine. I did have a one beer and about 5 cookies on Friday at work, but I still think I was less t han 1600 calories for the day.
Anyway, I'm very encouraged by my steady weight loss. My goal is to lose 1.5 lbs per week, and I have been keeping a very detailed excel spreadsheet of my progress since my most recent return to the Beach on March 27th.
Looks like I am on track to be at least 166 lbs by my trip to Australia on August 25th. That would be so fantastic. I would be so much happier to wear a bathing suit in front of my co-workers…must keep this in mind. It is the best motivation ever.
