Instead of focusing on the could-have-done’s, here at Fat Dude, we’re hitting the reset button.

True, Chef Brian and I started the blog over a year ago now and my original plan was to be done with all 52 weeks of cooking, but we’re not there yet. In fact, we’re just over halfway there.

But in the spirit of onwards and upwards (and returning well-rested from vacation), I’m not going to focus on what I haven’t done in the past year. I’m going to take a minute to reflect on the successes.

My biggest problem with food has always been with fast food and sweets. I used to love the stuff. Like, super-sized combo, six-piece chicken nugget on the side and a sundae for dessert kinda loved the stuff. But last November I decided to make the switch from fake food to real food and — aside from a handful of trips to In-N-Out (doesn’t really count), Arby’s, Del Taco and Chic-fil-a in the last year — I’ve done a pretty good job at staying fast food free.

I cut out soda, the majority of factory candy (I try and stick to straight dark chocolate as much as possible) and I eat fewer late night meals. While I planned to walk every night and cook every night at home, I really didn’t. I walked a fair amount, and scattered a few gym visits throughout in the last couple of months, but I haven’t been on a focused routine for any long period of time.

And even though I ate out more than I should have, I made the effort to chose places where I trust that they’re putting good ingredients in the food I’m eating. I also cooked more in the last year than any year before, and it helped me to drop some considerable weight. I went from 258 to as low as 231. In the spirit of finding the positives, I’m happy to say that even though I fluctuated and stagnated, I have been able to sustain weight loss for one full year, something I haven’t done since 2005, which was the last time I truly tried to lose weight.

That time I did it by working out. This time I did it through portion control and healthy eating.

Now I’m ready to combine approaches. If there was one weakness I had in year one, it had to be time management. It’s sometimes hard for the average person to come home from work and cook dinner; I chose to start a blog that had me working sometimes several hours after coming home just to put something new on the site each day.

I’m trying to prep and do things at a slower pace, and in the spirit of trying to cook all of my meals at home, I’m interspersing quick-cook dishes from various magazines, cookbooks and even my own new cooking skills to make things less stressful in the kitchen. I plan to use the extra time in the gym, and will aim to do four nights of cardio, at least 20 minutes, this week and the next.

I plan to figure out a solid routine for working out muscles and managing my time properly to continue with my plateaued weight loss, but all in due time. I started by slowly changing my food habits; now I’m going to change my exercise habits. I’ve gotten this far with some effort, but now it’s time to push it harder and get the job done.

First new weigh-in next Monday. I’ll be checking into the gym on Facebook to stay accountable–if you have workout tips, share them here or there, they’ll be appreciated.

New menu, “Southern Comfort,” arrives tomorrow. See you then!

Before I kick off the next phase of Fat Dude next week, I thought it would be nice to post some of my favorite pictures from the vacation I just returned from in Cancun. It was the first time Wifey Nadia traveled outside of the country, the first international trip we’ve taken together as a married couple and the first time either of us received stamps in our passports.

The people were incredibly nice, the food impeccably fantastic and the country itself, while dangerous in some parts, was beautiful from the sandy beaches to the random towns that lined the roads on the way to and from Chichen Itza, the largest Mayan city in Mexico.

Follow the jump for scenes from our trip. Continue reading →

The biggest challenge in doing this blog has been the time required to cook, shoot photos, write and exercise. Well, really, finding the time to cook and exercise is the challenge facing anyone wanting to live a healthier life style.

Originally I had planned to pull of this blog in one whirlwind approach–52 straight weeks of cooking, writing and walking, in order to craft a skinnier me. It’s been nearly a year (early November) and I’ve made it through more than half of the 52 weeks I planned to cook, though I’ve sidelined myself by failing to stick to plan.

In retrospect, I thought that if I wanted it bad enough, it would just happen. That I would make it happen. And in retrospect, I didn’t really understand what it meant to be healthy. I thought healthy was “skinny,” but it’s a lot more than that.

Health comes from proper diet, proper exercise. There’s a lot of it that has to do with managing mental fitness and teaching yourself how to build a long-term lifestyle. In the past weeks, I’ve been focusing on how exactly to do that within the confines of writing this blog.

It’s not that I don’t want to write this blog any more, but that I never thought through how to manage what has become a part-time job on top of my full-time job. After reviewing how much money I was spending on eating meals out, I knew I needed to change for the better and cook the majority of my meals at home.

When it came time in early October to put up, shut up and get cooking, I started strong but slowly returned to my old ways. In examining why, I realized that it’s because after cooking 27 (28?) weeks of Fat Dude menus, I’ve come to expect the type of dinners Chef Brian creates every night of the week.

Instead of cooking simpler dishes at home, I again became used to eating out because it’s quicker than cooking in. I still have the goal of reducing my outside food budget and filling myself with better-for-me foods, so in that vein, I’ve decided to flip around how I live my food life.

I’m going to try cooking the majority of Fat Dude meals on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays–days where I have more time to experiment in the kitchen, learn new tricks and techniques and properly photograph and write about it all.

I’m also focusing on cook quick, healthy meals on the weekdays so that when I do cook at home, it doesn’t take as long and I have time to do other things including using the gym pass I’ve been neglecting on-and-off for a few months.

I’m also finally addressing the true root of severe muscular pain I’ve been enduring for nearly two years. It’s all tied together, and I’m learning how to manage food, exercise and physical care so that I can live a better life.

In my first few days trying this out, I’m spending less time in the kitchen, the house is cleaner, I’m doing all of my stretches and taking the time to refocus on all of the things stress and an unhealthy lifestyle make you lose focus on.

As I embark on new ways to improve myself, I’m lucky to say I’ll be taking my first out-of-country vacation in nearly six years.

I’m headed off to Mexico in the middle of next week and I’ll be there for about a week. Between now and then I’m going to focus on quick, healthy meals at home and a full menu of stretches from the book “Pain Free” by Pete Egoscue. Wifey picked out the book for me months ago, but I’ve been too sloth-like to really try it out. I’ve been doing the book’s “e-cise” methods for only two days and already I’ve noticed a marked improvement in my muscular pain.

I’ll be back in the kitchen once I return from Mexico around Nov. 10. By that time, I should be rested and ready to go once again.