The Football Fan’s Diet

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – Hit down on a new level this Wednesday on The Wild Card Round of the FFD and my healthy side is going hog wild. It is really, really great news to see a new less-flab mark reached after jumping on that scale. Whereas I used to crush those scales, now I top them off a like a feather wafted from the sky.
Yes, a gross exaggeration but I am feeling lighter. Lighter. Yes. Give me a lighter because I need to set June on fire.

There is time to do something great here this month in June. It won’t be easy. In fact, it would seem improbable and insane that with all that is booked on our social calendar in this June for a Loon, that I will not only stick to what I have done to date, but even take it up a level. However, sometimes I thrive on a sticking it to the fat man. It won’t be easy.

Monday did not start off easy as I had to sit and watch the family enjoy General Tso’s, probably the one Asian cuisine weakness of mine, as I sat there and “ate” a freaking Diet Coke. I was ready to put duck sauce on the freaking Coke can and eat the delicious mouthwatering aluminum. I made it through my delusions of caloric grandeur.

Now, I guess, to regulate my caloric intake, I am falling back on the ubiquitous “five dollar footlong” for lunch slash dinner, several of which I have worked down my pie hole like feeding tree branches into a wood chipper.

Disregarding my fear of becoming the next “Jared” I like that Subway has all that weird green fresh stuff, which you can pile high on a sandwich bun. Put some spicy mustard on it and viola, you got yourself a submarine sandwich that is easy on the beltline and heavy on stuff rabbits love to nibble on.

For some odd reason, I wanted to shoot some basketball this week. Not sure why, really, other than when we were walking into the Chinese place in West View, across the street, a bunch of high school types were knocking them down, driving to the buckets, hitting some outside jumpers. It’s been a while since I ran the court. You know I did have a wicked three at one time. Hey, what the heck: this is a football fan’s diet.

So, we are in the middle of the Wild Card. Two days are done. A new level has been reached. June will be grueling but the promise of a much, long needed respite in July looms as the ultimate trophy. Check back on the FFD as the all out assault on my Inner Fat Slob continues and prepare to put salt and pepper on Coke cans.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – It is here. The playoffs have begun. I have my game face on baby. I am out of the gates this morning and ready for healthy. That is it. It is June and playoff FFD is a whole new level of healthy stupidity. In fact, that is what I liked to think I have been pursuing all along—healthy stupidity. So, essentially, I have one month to finish this baby up.

In doing so, I must make the playoffs difficult. For the Wild Card Round, if I go over my DGO, there will be no forgiveness. I will give up a TD. If I exercise I will get a FG. If I don’t, I will give up an FG. If I have a beer or any alcoholic beverage – each one will be an FG (Maybe a TD was too much punishment for the allure of the hops and barley). I think that is pretty restrictive—especially the calorie part about staying under my DGO. I will have to cut back a lot of breakfast calories. I will also have to cut back dinner too.

Now the past weekend, I got some serous exercise in and even yesterday I was almost ready to say the round of golf at the Highland Country Club in the North Hills was something to be a positive health experience. On Saturday, I walked 3 ½ hours at the Pittsburgh Zoo. Man, that took a lot of energy. Then, in the evening we had the Polish dance at Pulaski’s, a Polish club in the McKee’s Rocks section of Pittsburgh. There I danced horribly for about at least an hour. In the morning I am sure I shed some calories getting my daughter ready for soccer. What healthy endeavors await the first week of the wild card round?

So the extraganza begins. Hang on to your hats. Grab your socks and grab your… Let’s go. Playoff FFD is here!

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – Yesterday it seemed as if I walked forever. I mean, I walked at Schenley Park in Pittsburgh immediately following lunch. That took about 50 minutes. Then, I walked for an hour and a half in the evening, with Coconuts as my faithful companion. We wandered off into some nice neighborhoods, where she promptly took a dump on a sidewalk. Yes, I didn’t have anything to clean it up with. I manage to use some large plant to the effect of a popper scooper and then pitched the doggie do into the woods. And, so I keep on walking.

Doing all that walking makes you think. You think about a whole heck of a lot about what is going on in life and all that. You think about what you are doing, where you are going, and what you will have for diner the next day. The mind wonders. And, so sometimes, when we are the busiest, is when the mind wonders from health and lets your emotional mechanisms commandeer your need for food. I have kept all that in check as of late and I am having an outstanding week to date. However, I know from past experience, that despite all the confidence of Cloud Nine, I can be at the McDonald’s drive through window at 1 AM, this evening. So I have to guard against the big let down in the final month. I keep telling myself that if I can make it just one more month, then something special will truly have happened. Then, I will go to McDonald’s.

The last month is a full month of social activities too. Each weekend it seems there is some food related event. Tonight, we have a Polish dance to go to in the McKee’s Rocks section of Pittsburgh. Here there will no doubt be plenty of booze and food. So that is challenge 1. Golfing with a good chum tomorrow will be challenge 2. You see normally we pound beers for a couple hours after a round. I have teased the fact that I am on the wagon for a while. Challenge 3 will be a pizza party next week followed by an evening at a friend’s place, where a mutual acquaintance was first initiated over the emptying of many bottles of microbrew back yonder in December of the previous year.

The following week we are to see a couple and their new baby. Oftentimes, my and the man over there, have this penchant for the “sweeping alluvial plains of the great Murray River Basin” which is a passage from text wrapped around a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz. Oh, after that, we have a relative flying in on the 19th of June.

Making it through all of this, I hope to land on July 4th having dropped more weight in a June knee deep in all the trappings of summer joy. It will be hard to do. But, it was hard to do back in January and now I am getting very, very close. I have to remember that. With those thoughts, the last weekend in May begins.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – June 1 is here Monday and so too is the playoffs. Another good day on the scale this morning—could I potentially get my first shutout week of the season? That remains to be seen, but if today is a dry run of the playoffs that mean a cigar could be my only recourse during happy hour today. That and Diet Cokes.

A lot going on in life too. An old friend from college recently looked me up on LinkedIn and next thing you know I am designing a web site for his energy consultancy in W.Va. Furthermore, he wants to partner on other endeavors and future projects. The Summer Institute at the University is about underway and that always means more work. As all of this continues, I must still stay devoted to my goal. That is what I want to focus on this Friday, which is a bit rainy and overcast. I have no idea what the weather holds today, but am moving forward likes it calling for sun. Enjoy your Friday.

Before I go, should add a small note on the FFD Super Bowl II Weekend. Word around the FFD campfire is that the Commissioner (me, for the uninitiated) is going to proclaim the Season officially over as of the last day of July 3rd. That makes sense doesn’t it? I mean, why even bother with July 4th and 5th. That will be a much, hard earned enjoyable Holiday weekend. We can all it the Pro Bowl or something.

In any case, I have a wedding to go to that weekend. So, given that and the Holiday, makes sense to wrap the FFD Super Bowl Weekend on July 3rd. That being said, I better make it there. You may recall a small rule about the FFD: if you lose in the playoffs, that is it. Season is over. Right now, I don’t want it to be over. I am doing too well. All that being said, enjoy what is left of May.

PITTSBURGH – I can’t really believe there is not that much meat left on the bone. Season II on the FFD is almost kaput. On that note, I can’t believe how much tail I have kicked against my Inner Fat Slob the last several days. It has sunk in, I suppose, that this Season II will not go on forever. Like all Football Seasons, they come to an end and we are left to do the rest of life stuff that is non-football related. Stuff, like work and raise kids and paint household objects.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself here but, man, if I can put the wallop down for just a little over a month, I will have truly accomplished something special here. That is the remarkable thing about this Season II on the FFD. And, curse the whole damn Season, it will surely be weird not having this damn diet hanging over my head each day of my life, much like it has for the past 5 months. 5 Months. I can’t believe that. I really, really can’t. I will have to live like a normal, healthy-dude or something. But, I will.

When it is time to look back, and now is not, I will remember that this diet, which I had committed to as the number one priority back in January, has remained in first place ever since. Okay, did I just look back? But first place it still is: jobs be damned. Clients be damned. Home Improvement projects be damned. Family be damned. Friends be damned. World Peace be damned. The environment be damned. Pope John Pau… Okay, I think I made my point here. And that point is this: we crazy Americans can think of something stupid to solve any problem be it weight loss or how to inject cheese into the crust of a pizza.

Dare I say I am already waxing nostalgic. This posting will be one of the few remaining Regular Season postings and then I have to and must put it into a higher gear. Now, keep in mind, this past Monday, I spelled out exactly how I was planning to do that, but I never posted my thoughts to the FFD. That posting is simply part of the secret Word document collecting pixel dust in my computer fat hard drive ass. So, I supposed we will call such blathering “The Lost FFD Posts” and repackage the trite material into some book I can pawn off on as a stocking stuffer.

I don’t know where exactly I go after the Season is completed. I suppose it is never too early to start planning because if you don’t plan, you are planning to have something really contrived happened as such. After—and only after—I give it my best here on out on the last morsel of meat left on the bone, I will have to meticulously monitor my weight; Maybe not each day, but surely each week.

Having gained the weight seemingly overnight (a night which, eh, lasted 4 years), I will have to make it a integral part of my life to get on the scale regularly. When I start to slip, I make up for it somehow: get back on that bike, stay on that bike, run it off; maintain that Super Bowl trophy you worked so hard to get. If I do indeed get it. But, I will.

Still, over a month left on this bone. Some meat, I must still chew through on the Season II bone. The playoffs mean I must work extra hard and avoid the temptations. Easier said than done, but done easier when I am aware of the hurdles ahead. Can I do it? Can I finish what I had begun way back on a snowy day in February-nursing a Steelers Super Bowl hangover?

Man, I still remember that day fresh as that cold winter day. That was the walk along Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, during a sunny and pleasant day in winter. I had been doing the FFD for about a month with only lackluster progress to report. Than it happened. That day, kicked off an unprecedented drop in weight, healthy lifestyle choices and what have you. Yes, I hit another month or two of a plateau, where I stayed at same level for nearly weeks, for which now I am only emerging. But, I maintained what I lost and now I am losing again. I am almost there. It will be tough to meet the challenges ahead in the playoffs. But, I will. You can bet my fat rear on it—if you can find it.

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – I can’t believe Memorial Day is here already. The FFD is basically finishing up its fifth month and I am still here doing it. I would be lying if I said I was confident way back in January that I will be standing here now, still plugging away at it, still knocking the weight down. I am.

On this Memorial Day, I will remember how hard it was to do. I have six weeks left before I can finally put Season II on the FFD to rest for good.

I have recovered from my 19th Hole bout on Thursday. This is good and somewhat of a rarity because one thing is painfully clear: losing days come in batches (same with winning days too, I suppose). Only once in the past 5 months, did I have a losing day that was isolated. Why is that? It is like the pendulum goes swinging back the other way when I lose and it is tough, or at least a long time, before we reach the end of the losing swing and get back on course to winning.

I should add that I knew thing I am doing now is using all these work projects around the house as exercise in which I can burn calories. I have for the longest time put all several retaining wall repairs that need made on our property. It is tough work. Carrying new block and digging out piles of dirt with picks and shovels. I should have done this last year, but had no motivation to do so. Then, it dawned on me. Do I really need to go the gym when I can kill myself here with a pick and shovel?
So all this week I worked laboriously on my retaining wall project and I am surprised. My weight has gone down and the wall doesn’t look half bad.

Although, my block corner retaining wall has somewhat diminished my fascination with the Great Pyramids.
After all, if architecturally challenged me, can make a reasonable straight wall out of blocks, then surely ancient masons given the choice to either build a Great Pyramid or get the old heave-ho into the Asp pit, could throw up the Pyramids….

Today, then, I aim to tear down one last leaning retaining wall and in so doing rebuild it while rebuilding my health in the process. I will remember that at the end of the day, I will not have a Great Pyramid. Then again, the Great Pyramid’s were not build in a day where they? Happy Memorial Day everyone!

By Matt DeReno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – Okay, I had a great time golfing yesterday and though I was ready to give my clubs the old heave ho into the woods on the front nine – I started feeling like I actually golfed okay on the back nine. But, then, I am in the proverbial dog house because I spent far too long on, eh, the nineteenth hole, where I am Tiger Woods no doubt.

So, today is Friday – Memorial Day weekend. I think I had enough fun for the weekend already and will chill out, do more work in the yard—I still have a good bit of retaining wall stuff to finish and move on. Somewhere along the course of the day, I would like to get out and get some exercise in.

I must still remind myself – there is Friday, Saturday and Sunday to go, even though it feels as if the week is over already. I aim to win it out, just like last weekend. I have to stay focused then. Easier said than done when barbecue beckons.

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – The week is going very well. I hit a new season low today and the numbers are dropping like I haven’t seen since my big winning streak earlier in the season. Am I awake now? Did I finally make it out of the doldrums, because in some ways, that is exactly where I felt I have been in the past six weeks.
Today is slated for another beautiful sunny day in Pittsburgh and I surely aim to take advantage of it. Of course, this means getting started early for my work at the university, but then, later in the day, I plan to hit the golf course. Speaking of golf, is riding around in a golf cart really exercise? It seems it would be cheap to count it as such, but I think I have learned to count everything because it does ad up – at least in terms of meeting my Daily Game Day Objective.

True, riding around in a golf cart does not burn a whole lot calories in an hour, but then again, it takes 4 and a half hours to play a round of golf. And if you are at least on your feet for that many hours, well, that is much better than sitting behind a keyboard typing a way for an equal amount of time. Slowly, that activity ads up. Big things can happen in small steps and I won’t even pretend to think that is some kind of revelatory insight into the human condition. I will intone that I will count the 4 and half hours of golf as proper DGO compensation for the best work I do all day on the golf course, the one hole, where I can hang with Tiger Woods. Yes, that is the 19th hole.

Maybe you are not a golfer and don’t even know how many holes are on a golf course. If we discount all gopher holes and the ones are human bodies come built with, there should be 18. The 19th is usually in the club house in a well air condition lounge – beverages aplenty. Now, how many hours at the 19th hole, will it take to wipe out the slowly built caloric equity of my riding around in a golf cart? The only way to find out, is to try it out. Fore!

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – There is an old Sinatra tune “It started all over again…” Or, something like that. Maybe I am completely butchering the line, but you know what? It looks as if “it” started all over again. I was surprised this morning when I logged my weight and noticed that I was down a good bit this week. In fact, I a down more today in a week the likes of which I have not seen since about a month or two ago. Could this be the next and final big push? It needs to happen. It has to happen. It will happen.

I won’t pontificate like I did in my last posting, but then again, what is this whole damn site anyway if nothing but one big pontificating blog about football and beer. You know what. I have noticed as of late, I really don’t even talk about football that much. Maybe I shouldn’t because it is offseason in the real NFL. Though on the FFD, I wonder if there really is such a thing as the offseason. In fact, what should I do once this thing is over? That is going to seem a little weird. Hmm.

I don’t know if I will feel like logging in and updating my weight and stuff every day. After all, doing this stuff everyday is really no way to live. I am open to suggestions.

Perhaps I will edit all this material, which it probably needs badly. I don’t think I will “moth ball” the site, but I will probably update it less frequently. Perhaps I will work on developing a tool where you can log in and keep track of your scores and stuff? That would be cool. Or, maybe I will update photos by zapping them from my cell phone to this site as I am kicking back on a beach with an ice cold beer in one hand and the ladies (my wife and daughter) simply gawk at my washboard abs? I don’t know. Who knows. Nobody knows. The Big Cheese knows.

Now, would somebody please slap me?
It is no time to be filming a Super Bowl videos, coining a new season theme song or giving myself a self-proclaimed and vaunted nickname that will ring throughout the ages. It is no time to be planning what I will say to Barrack Obama on my inevitable trip to the White House. By the way, can you believe mean-as-a-hell (and NFL Defensive MVP) James Harrison is not going with the Steelers to meet the President, which is the honor of every Super Bowl team since time immemorial? To me it is no big deal whether it is because he is not interested or he doesn’t like to fly if he doesn’t have to. Either way, he can do what he wants. It is America after all. Still, sort of funny and cool in a counter kind of way. Yes, Steelers rock.

No before I go too far wondering off on some dumb tangent (too late for that), I should talk a little about what I think “is” really starting this all over again. It could be yard work.

Ugh. Yes, that stuff I really don’t like to do but which I am forced to do out of necessity. You see there is this snaking block retaining wall I am trying to build around the side of the old homestead. It’s tough work and I started this dumb project back in October and quit before the winter set in. Now, however, I look at stuff like yard work as “opportunities to exercise.” In fact, everything is a chance to exercise now. This changes the mundane chore list. Nonetheless, carrying big retaining wall blocks doesn’t get any easier and the blocks don’t magically get lighter simply because you labeled the chore something else.

I felt like what an ancient Egyptian probably felt like lumbering big blocks to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Can you imagine how many calories those Egyptians burned building those Pyramids (of course when the aliens weren’t helping them). Man, that was hard work.

Yard work is hard work. The FFD is hard work. Yard work is the FFD. Being healthy is the FFD.
Call it want you want— and The FFD is my way of calling it— but it doesn’t get any easier no matter what you call it. You can call it The FFD. You can call it Weight Watchers, The Fat Farm, The Tennis Ball Nutritional Approach—whatever—it doesn’t get any easier. Yard work is hard work.

On another little side note: I wonder how the ancient Egyptians were able to finance such massive undertakings such as those freaking pyramids? I mean, don’t they realize they were the victims of the world’s largest “pyramid scheme”—can I get a rim shot! Can I get a shot of anything, something?

Okay, I have mentioned Egyptians, Steelers linebacker James Harrison, Aliens, President Barrack Obama and Super Bowl videos. If it isn’t time to shut my key-boarding yapper now, I don’t know when that time will come but usually I know what it has long passed. Okay, it has long passed. Not really, I am just out of coffee. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of blocks to be carried. And so this Wednesday morning in May on the FFD gets underway.

By Matt De Reno
On The FFD

PITTSBURGH – We all wrestle with problems in life and it is easy to get consumed with one’s own—after all, we are the only survivors of a universe uniquely called “I”. Speaking of I: I was perusing LiveStrong.com’s message boards the other day and found myself reading support forums for those that struggle from alcohol abuse. I believe this was the “stay sober” forum. Reading the comments got me thinking about my lighthearted use of beer drinking, which I sort of play with like a shaggy happy dog.

I suppose my jocular use of beer as a standard of living to be enjoyed moderately with massive doses of Football to help us get bye, could, for the life of those wrestling with alcoholism, constitute an egregious annoyance at best, a trigger for demons at worst. Man, if that isn’t the crux of our problems with our lives on this here Earth, I don’t have a clue what it could be: one person’s co-pilot is another one’s demon. I am not waxing moral relativism here but rather cold realism.

Yes, I have said, Beer is my co-pilot but it should be noted that there are many people for whom a TD or a FG is simply staying sober for a day. I am glad I don’t’ have that problem. I empathize with anyone that does. I have a food problem. Even my food problem is probably not a “problem-problem” by most standards in the great annals of problems. I simply want to get healthy although I have to admit I did soar up there to 270 lbs. Now, I am in the 220s with weeks to go before I rest. But, I digest… But, I digest.

Food and unhealthy living no matter what guise it takes can be deadly.

What if I were to suffer some kind of heart attack and die because of simply eating too many cheeseburgers? No different than wrapping a car around a pole I suppose on some level. On a more realistic level, overeating and using food to self-medicate is probably considered by some to be a “smaller” problem compared to drug addiction or alcoholism. But, like I said, what if you have a heart attack? A stroke? Develop diabetes? All, as a result of what you eat?

I am not lobbying for food disorders, be they mild or major, to be on some equal, greater or lesser footing than, say, alcoholism, but to have food, obesity and unhealthy living as a demon is for many a cross to be bore silently. Many probably would not put such a problem on the same level as drinking. Maybe that is okay? I never heard of anyone having a few too many cheeseburgers and then veering into the oncoming lane and taking out a young family of football fans.

Then again, I am sure some accidents have been caused because some dufus is busy eating a burger while driving? Could be that happened—I don’t know. I have heard of mother’s breast feeding kids while driving. I am sure eating while driving then probably has caused a fair share of accidents.

We all have our demons and co-pilots. By the way, a “co-pilot” is something that rides this race of life with us that helps us get bye. I like to say humor is a good co-pilot to have and even then humor should be doled out in moderation (lest you don’t want to be gainfully employed).

Laughter never killed anyone they say. Then again, someday, I could be laughing so hard at some joke on satellite radio that I veer into an oncoming lane of traffic or wrap my car around the trunk of a tree. A demon on the other hand is something you fight in life. It is a special burden that you seemed to have had the luck to get. I think no matter what you fight as a demon, you have a right to your co-pilot.

Speaking of co-pilots: I have not heard a beer in a week.

I had a great day healthy living wise yesterday and the scale is beginning to shake the dew from its Lilly (whatever the heck that means). I still got seven weeks. I am hoping I can catch the winning streak one more time. Here’s hoping I do (imaginary beer cracked open). And, here is hoping our co-pilots defeat our demons and never the two shall be confused for the other!