Okay, party people, there’s good news. There’s bad news. And there’s definitely ugly news.

The Good: First week of tracking weight loss and nutrition, and I’m logging my first weekly loss since probably 2009. I weighed in at 418.8 last Saturday, and 415.8 this week. Remembering to record my daily nutrition has been a chore, and even though it’s something I’ve been cognizant of minute-to-minute, I don’t think I’ve logged anything since Wednesday.

The Bad: Those three pounds probably could have been five. I only went to the gym once this week and walked away from it thinking, “Now why do I spend so much time worrying and stressing and repeating to myself over and over again how much I hate the gym? That wasn’t bad at all…” and then proceed to not go back at all. However, I was down to 414.somethings Thursday, but the combo of no gym, mediocre nutrition, and – worst of all – throwing caution to the wind last night by eating Pad Thai and throwing some empty party punch calories on top of it all at a Christmas party. I paid the cost by bumping up to 415.8 today.

The Ugly: My old friend from Oklahoma, Randy (@landyrane) challenged me to an “over-the-net challenge.” The basis is simple: weekly weigh ins started last week, and I have to lose 20 or 25% more than him each week to win. Nothing on the line other than pride and trash talk. Well, wouldn’t you know he’s calling for a mulligan on this, our very first week! Please feel free to hassle him as you see fit, internet strangers.

Now, off to the gym.

I don’t consider myself to have much of a sweet tooth (really, I’ve got more of a meat tooth), but damn, I do love cookies. My grandma always had the Keebler M&M ones in the cookie jar, and Mom always keeps those store-brand Oreo knockoffs stocked back home.

My choice of sugary fat guy kryptonite? Fresh Safeway jumbo cookies, Two for 99¢. Multiple times a week. At my down low, worst stretches of time this year, it wasn’t entirely rare for me to devour an entire twelve cookie package of these delicious monsters over the course of a day and a half.

My eating’s been calorically on target for the most part this week, and I’m down a few pounds. Late last night I walked across the street to the aforementioned Safeway to pick up some groceries and decided to take a calculated risk by forgoing my last meal of the day in exchange for some of these cookies. Four of them, in fact. I was running barely under target for the day, and figured it was a gamble I could make without hurting myself too badly.

Now, Safeway doesn’t publish the nutritional data on the labels of their bakery items. So, I had to make a guess (for the first time out of the literal years I’ve been devouring these things) on how many calories they were each. My suspicion – largely out of left field – was around 200 calories each. Conservatively. So, 400kCals per pack and 800kCals total. Ain’t gonna kill me.

According to an employee on their blog, “All of our nutritional information can be provided at the store level by asking a Bakery associate, or by contacting our Corporate Brands department directly at 1888SAFEWAY.” So that’s what I did. Frustratingly, neither the bakery department nor customer service desk at two different Safeways I called had any data, much less knew about such a thing.

So I went ahead and called corporate. Twice. And got two very different (not necessarily a problem given regional supply chain differences, but frustrating nonetheless), exceptionally suspicious numbers in reply about my jumbo Snickerdoodle cookies (UPC code 227 984 801 199). Keep in mind, that these figures supposedly reflect two cookies:

• 90kCals, 4g fat, 13g carbs, 1g protein
• 180kCals, 8g fat, 21g carbs, 2g protein

45 or 90 calories per cookie? Even if there’s a doubling error in there as it seems and we go with the higher figure of 90kCals, that’s still…awfully suspicious. These are big-ass 70g cookies, after all. Some of the calorie counting sites around the web seemed to agree with me. LiveStrong suggests 330kCals, while MyFitnessPal is at 340kCals.

That sounds a whole lot more likely than 90kCals each. And a whole lot more than the 200kCals that was my guess. Which means my final meal of the day yesterday was a whopping 1400 calories! Nearly three times the 500 calorie meal goal I have.

I’m still down 0.2 pounds from yesterday (and sore from the Tuesday night trip to the gym), so as I guessed, the cookies didn’t kill me, but at possibly 350kCals each, that’s a welcome eye opener not to mention a dangerous game to play. They’re just not worth it to me most of the time, now.

Gotta keep in mind: food is for fuel. And those cookies aren’t going to get me very far.

I haven’t gone to the gym this week.

I haven’t eaten very well.

But, there’s baby steps, if you’d like to make the argument, and I would.

For most of this week, I’ve been tracking my food intake. Now, not adjusting, for the most part, but keeping track of what goes in my mouth – along with daily weigh ins – and let me tell ya, brothers and sisters, it’s been a re-opening of the eyes (eg WTF do you mean that was 900 calories?!). Huge caloric loads, and I don’t even want to imagine the numbers I’ve been posting on some of my worse days.

Like I’ve mentioned before, the “buffalo mode” has taken up residency, and of late I’ve been gobbling up anything and everything that strikes my fancy. Whole pizzas ($10 at Pizza Hut), boxes of cookies, fast food for 75% of my meals, and Chinese & Indian buffets have served to feast me as a king regularly.

I’ve become a stereotype, and I continued the pitiful trend today. I was eating calorically on target, roughly, and had gotten my gear together for the gym. I was ready to rock and roll. Until one of my earbud rubber pieces came up missing. This, of course, predicated a sidetrip to the supermarket to buy some replacements, which in turn lead to me standing in the cold, looking at the neon lights of Panda Express, making the explicit mental decision to go pig out instead of going to work out.

It was two thousand calories worth of Chow Mein folly. The meal pushed my caloric total past 3,000.

I would say “Damn you, Panda Express!” but clearly it’s me that deserves the damnation.

I don’t get it, really. I’m sitting here on my couch – still in my gym clothes – typing away in a haze of mild befuddlement. Was it willpower? Was it the fact it was 6:00, and except for the banana, I hadn’t eaten since noon, and so my metabolism was kicking in? Was in subconscious sabotage? I’m baffled right now, but all I can do is learn to pick myself up, cook the bag of chicken that’s been in the fridge the past few days, and make damn certain I get to the gym tomorrow.

In keeping with the promise of transparency, I’ve uploaded my food log for this month so far. I’ll be trying to keep the uploads updated. The missing Thursday and Friday entries were equally bad as the rest.

Download the Food Log here.

PS: Damn you, Panda Express