Saturday, May 5, 2007
Weight: 235.8, up 1.4 lbs. from yesterday, and back squarely on my plateau, which so far has only lasted 11 days, so I'm not sweating it.
Food intake yesterday was humungous - 3,421 calories. I was doing really well until dinner time. Marlene signed us up for one of those "free dinners", put on Hilton if you listen to a 2 hour sales pitch about their timeshares. The real prize was a $100 gift certificate to Macy's and 2 nights free at their hotel in Sedona Arizona, where we've wanted to go for some time. So we figured we could stand a pitch for 2 hours in exchange for $400 of gifts and a free dinner.
I did my cardio around 5 pm, and fortunately made myself a protein shake before I left, half of which I consumed before we got there. When we arrived, there were soft drinks and stale chocolate chip cookies, but nothing else in sight. Around 7:15, the first pitch man came on, explaining how the concept worked and showed us a 15 minute video. By this time my stomach was grumbling.
After the movie, they paired us off with their "sales counselors." This was a sorry looking crew if ever I saw one. It looked like the cast and all the extras from "Death of a Salesman." Ken, who was our "counselor" started off by trying to sell us the medium priced time share. We asked about dinner, and he assured us that once we were done, they'd serve us. Then he pitched the high price package, showing how it gave us twice as much, but was only priced 30% more. All we had to do was put down $3,000 that night, and commit to a payment of $330 a month for 10 years, along with $70 per month for maintenance fees.
I was really getting hungry now -- it was 8:30, and no food in sight. Ken saw that we weren't biting, and we told him so. He brought over the "manager" who didn't introduce himself, addressed me as "Bob" even though I had a big name tag on, and threw in free air tickets to Hawaii. Well, that sounded nice. The manager started filling out his "worksheet" with all the info on it, and pushed it over to me to sign. I asked him if this was a contract I was signing. "Sure," he said. "It's the best deal we can give you." Marlene and I told him we never signed anything without sleeping on it. The manager looked disgusted.
Ken was getting exasperated with us. He tried to sell us his lowest price package. No. So he packed up his suitcase and walked away -- no thank you, no "nice to meet you", no handshake. He simply told us, "Karen will come over and give you your gift receipts."
It was 8:50 now. I wished I had taken the rest of the shake with me. Karen tried to sell us yet another package, for only $1,295, which would "lock in" the deal from that night. This went on for another 10 minutes, and we finally said, "Look, we're not signing anything tonight. No. No. No. " She reluctantly gave us the sheet of paper that entitled us to our gifts.
Now we were really hungry. We went downstairs, figuring, "this is Hilton; they're going to have a nice dinner." Wrong. They had a BBQ out by the pool with stale hotdogs, burgers, and potato chips. I was so hungry I asked for a hamburger patty with lettuce leaves, and wolfed it down. I swear it was worse than the chicken wings I offer up to GOM.
On the way home, we passed our favorite Greek restaurant, and I was really hungry by now. Once inside I saw the leg of lamb and went for it. Marlene had saganaki and salad. The meal was delicious, but about 1,600 calories. That, plus the miserable Hilton hamburger, put me over the top for the day.
Fortunately, I worked off 1,050 calories in my cardio, so I actually ended the day with only a 6 calorie surplus. I have a feeling that since I didn't eat until 10 pm, some of the weight gain is actually reflecting the weight of the food I ate at night.
Lesson learned: If you ever go to one of these sales pitches offering a free meal, either eat first and skip the meal, or bring along lots of nutritious snacks in a cooler.
