The diet simplified, the running app for my droid...

Okay, I got on the scale this morning and was at 192.  The scale is notoriously inaccurate, but that would be an all-time low for first thing in the morning weight. 

I'm settling into a phase of the diet where I follow it when I can and don't sweat it when I don't.

If I were diligent about it, there are a lot of foods I WOULD eat.  However, I think the bulk of the diet is done by avoiding the following:

1.  Dairy, and this includes creamy anything.
2.  Bread.
3.  Processed Sugars.
4.  Deep Fried Anything.

I don't always succeed, but this gives me a good rule of thumb for when I want to be good.  As for what TO eat, I figure at this point, if it's not on the 1-4 above, whatever, it's okay.

Obviously, stick to some common sense stuff. Chicken is better than red meat.  Lean beef is better than fatty cuts.  Almost anything is preferrable to pork.

It amazes me how, when I go too far off the reservation on 1 thru 4, how it affects my appetite.  For instance, when my son was trying out for his baseball team, I ate a big mac value meal.  The whole time during the tryout, I craved a hot-dog.  As soon as we left, I went to a gas station and got one.

I was just hungry and craving, and I think it's because of that bread. 

In any event, the closer I stick to the diet, the better I feel.  The farther away I get, the worse I feel.  I've got some upheaval in my personal life that makes it hard to cook at home, but a diligent person can follow the diet, more or less, if they want to.

I figure I'll lose a pound or two every now and then, and that's fine for me.  I'm in the low 190s, now.  A really good weight for me would be in the low 180s.  Good marathon running weight would be maybe 170 or a pound or two less.  I think I was in the low 170s when I ran my first one.

I'm on the right trajectory and don't feel much angst about how fast I get there.  It'll happen.

Obviously, the more religious you are about the diet, the faster you're going to lose weight.

I have another incentive for some of the things on the diet, though.  I have a history of a lot of sinus/allergy issues and I think it may have been related to dairy and glutens.  So, the closer I am to the diet, the less I use of my allergy meds.  In fact, I haven't used any of my allergy meds since starting the diet. 

Running is obviously going t account for some weight loss, too, now that I'm doing between 24 and 30 miles a week.  I'm shooting for 6 miles, 5 days a week, but lately it's been more like 2 on, 1 off. 

Went for a run with my droid last night and the Endomondo application.  It uses the phone's GPS to give you data on your run.  Sorta neat.  Every mile, a voice comes on and tells you how many miles, your total time and your last mile split. 

The USA Track and Field route mapper worked really well.  It said the loop around my neighborhood was 0.75 miles.  The GPS in my phone probably put it a shade over 0.73. 

I was curious how accurate the GPS would be.  The ones in phones aren't usually as accurate as the ones that operate off of satellites.  However, it overlaid my path on a map and it was pretty much spot on. 

My phone is a battery hog, though.  I need to get spare batteries, which aren't available because the phone just launched.  If I had kept it on a charger when I was at my desk at work, I'd have been fine, but the battery got low after a lap or two and then it still worked, but wouldn't play music.  Apparently, that hogs a lot of battery.  I was able to complete the entire run before the battery died completely.

You can order a bluetooth heart rate monitor that works with this application and the data display is so awesome, I am probably going to do that.  It's $100, which is pricey in a way, but frankly, a cheap HRM costs $65, so it's not so out of the question.

I also need a better holder for it.  My old iPod video arm-band holder didn't work very well... it was just a tad too small. 

Today is more Arabic, for which I am not prepared.  Then packing for Fort Worth for the weekend, for which I am also not prepared.  However, I'm going to get to see a lot of old classmates from my 4 years at Texas Wesleyan University and it's going to be a blast. 

I'll also get to see my main man, Patrick.  He served in the Army with me as well as going to school with me and playing keyboards in my band at the time.  Haven't seen him since we went to the Mississippi Delta in our search for the crossroads.