Day 10

Kyle 277.4 day -1.4 total -17.2

Jenny 159.4 day -2.2 total -7.2

I would love to talk about how wonderful I felt this morning, how wonderful we both felt. I am down over 17 lb.s, and Jenny dropped over 2 lb.s today after two days of stalling, putting her at over 7 lbs.! I felt so great at church this morning, especially when a few friends asked how the diet was going. But ultimately, today was marred by poor choices.

We did not fall off the wagon today. Jenny and I got off, loaded the wagon with 4th of July fireworks, then blew the whole thing into a million pieces.

I was hoping some cute joke would make me feel better about it all, but it didn't.

We had a decent plan, and we knew we were going to fudge a little bit, but we'd keep it under control and minimize the damage. For lunch, we'd have our healthy burgers. After lunch, we'd play outside or in the pool for a few hours, then head back in. Since everyone was ordering pizza for dinner, we planned to make our own little healhy pizzas, as close to protocol as possible. Sounds fine, right?

But we helped ourselves to a few things here and there throughout the day, and it all started slowly adding up.

Our friend and host, Kala, bought peanut butter M&M's as a table treat/snack, just because they're my favorite! She didn't know we were on the diet, and how strict it is. I started counting how many I had, so I could enjoy just a few. After a few hours, I stopped counting in the 20's. Jenny brought her delicious homemade salsa, which requires tortilla chips, which I had a little of with my burger, and then more bites here and there throughout the day. I also "tried" some sort of mixed up potato or something salad, with healthy stuff like onions, mayo, cucumbers, Fritos, stuff like that. It was very yummy, so I munched on it a bit more throughout the day.

We enjoyed our 2 or 3 hours in the pool (and sun), then made our way back in for dinner. Jenny made us our little pizzas while us guys went and picked up the real pizza for everyone else. When I got back, the look on Jenny's face said it all. "These are not good," she said with a frown. I tried them, and agreed. So, what should we do? Wouldn't it have been better to just skip dinner at this point, maybe munch on some veggies or something, even fill up on water? Yes, it would have been, but my mindset at this point was, "Well, we've already gone off protocol. We might as well enjoy ourselves!" And we each had a piece of pizza. Which wasn't even that good.

At this point, I was experiencing some familiar feelings that I had not been missing since I started the protocol. My stomach was bloated. I was out of breath when I had to bend down or do anything halfway strenuous. And I was getting tired and lethargic. Maybe that was the 3 hours in the sun, maybe not. The bottom line was, I wasn't enjoying it.

So, I figured I'd celebrate that by drinking the last 8 oz. glass bottle of Coke. I'd watched my friends enjoy them throughout the day, so I snagged the last one and sipped it down. And that was the proverbial straw. The carbonation and sugar made me sick within 10 minutes. Within 20 minutes, I was in the bathroom throwing up the Coke, half the pizza, and some delicious homemade salsa! Since I'd already started, I was actually wanting to throw up more. But that was all that came out. And, no, I didn't make myself throw up.

It was here that I realized I had made a big mistake today. And it was here I knew that the price I'll pay tomorrow will be much, much higher than what today was actually worth.