Minus 14.4

Last week's weigh-in was kind of a bummer because of what I've come to think of as The Stromboli Aberration. This week's was better!

I've lost 14.4 pounds, and I am finally noticing a bigger change in the way my clothes fit. I'm not down a whole size yet, but my clothes are looser. Hootie-hoo!

I have selected Tuesday Lunch to be my "indulgence meal" of the week. Since I weigh in on Tuesdays, if I indulge slightly at lunch, I have a whole week to work it off. So far, it's working well. It gives me something to look forward to, and it gets me out from behind my desk for an hour -- I am REALLY tired of eating at my desk every day. Eight weeks is a long time to forgo eating out.

Anyway, Tuesday Lunch isn't THAT much of an indulgence, but I get a grilled chicken salad and use -- gasp! -- the restaurant's vinaigrette dressing. I also eat -- double gasp! -- at least three pieces of French bread with -- triple gasp!! -- REAL BUTTER. At this point, real butter tastes like chocolate to me. I don't get dessert, but having a normal portion of salad and lots of bread is sort of LIKE dessert now.

I've mentioned before how small Jenny's portions are ... here's an example. The outside of this box makes it appear as though there are two halves of a good-sized sandwich (yea for bread!) in there:

You will have to overlook the fact that once it's microwaved, the BBQ looks like Alpo. (I was going to say it looks like Jake's diaper after he eats corn, but I thought that might gross you out.) It was hard for me to take the first bite once I got a look at this sucker warmed up. Note that -- at its longest point -- the sandwich is four inches long. BUT THAT BREAD IS CURVED. You do NOT get four inches worth of sandwich, mark my words.

Once you stack the pieces together and slice it in half -- as pictured on the box -- you end up with two 2.5-inch pieces of sandwich. TRAVESTY, I SAY. (I wonder if ALL the dieters out there are whipping out their wooden rulers from third grade to measure their food every day. Perhaps not. They are missing out.)

And clearly I'm missing all of the sandwich area that WOULD exist in that curvature if this were square bread. I may have to start a grass-roots movement for square-bread sandwiches. Only then they might do two-inch square bread, which would be like eating BBQ between twin reduced-fat Triscuits.

HOWEVER, all I have to say to myself is, "FOURTEEN POINT FOUR POUNDS."

Curved bread and Alpo it is.