I reckon I may be supposed to wait until next week’s show airs, but I’m excited enough to want to tell y’all about what happened this morning at Matteo’s weigh-in.
He did it. He reached his goal weight. He even overshot it by a pound.
I told y’all that we had balloons and confetti ready, just in case, and they put me and Dr. Peterson in charge of them. (Did y’all see the video of the dude who shoots himself in the oompa-loompas with the confetti bomb? Dr. Peterson and I joked a lot about that, since we both had to set one of those things off. Trust me, we were very careful to hold them upright lol.) Ethan and the cameras caught the whole thing, and there was lots of hugging – we forgot all about social distancing for a few minutes. Matteo even hugged Dr. Peterson.
Then we all went to have breakfast. Belen gave Matteo a big kiss when she heard the good news, and we all sat down to bacon and eggs.
Then Robert got up and came back with a binder.
“Here you go, kiddo,” he said.
“What is it?,” Matteo asked.
“It’s your new menu plan. 1250 calories a day. You can start right now and have a second piece of bacon.”
Ok, so y’all can probably guess what Matteo’s reaction was. On the one hand he was visibly glad about the bacon; on the other, I could tell he wasn’t very pleased that he was still in some way going to be on a diet. I kinda thought that making his goal weight would mean the end of him having to measure his food and shit. I reckon I was wrong: he’s still going to have to measure…but at least it won’t be starvation rations.
Robert explained the “maintenance plan” over breakfast (not only did Matteo get that extra piece of bacon, he got to have a banana too, which he ate as slowly as he was eating things when he was on the 850 calorie diet.) Now that Matteo’s lost the weight, the worry is that he maintain it. The nutritionist isn’t sure about the 1250 calories, and that’s subject to adjustment depending on how he does on his weigh ins. Those are still going to happen every Monday, but it doesn’t look like they’re gonna be on television. Personally, I hope they adjust the calorie intake up. Sloppy Joe said that he thinks Nutrisystem gives him around 1250 calories a day, and he’s losing weight, not maintaining.
And what happens with my department, exercise?
They’re still expecting Matteo to stay active, but it’s going to be somewhat less structured. Yes, he’s still going to have the 3 days a week in the gym, but they’re cutting his cardio by 5 minutes a session. (He absolutely hates the treadmill, so that’s gonna go over well.) The good news as far as I’m concerned is that the other three days no longer have any set routine, as long as Matteo goes outside and is active for half an hour. What I’d really like to see him doing is moving around and being kinda athletic because he enjoys it, not because I’m supervising some lameass exercise plan no 9 year old should be on.
I think Matteo was pleased to have made his goal weight – he’s sure to appreciate the extra food, since they really were starving him. (I don’t even want to tell y’all how little he got to eat now that it’s over. And maybe we’ll have normal salad dressing instead of that grossass tomato and lemon juice bullshit me and Jacob have been eating along with Matteo so he wouldn’t feel too bad that we were getting normal rations.)
What sucks – and I’m gonna go on record and say it really sucks – is that they’re still gonna be helicoptering his food intake and that he’s still on a diet of sorts, even if he’s getting more food. I thought he’d be back to a normal life (at least foodwise) once he hit his goal, but it looks like they got other plans for him.
Still, there are signs of improvement: Belen is baking cookies with the three of us after dinner…and Matteo’s gonna get to eat some of them. I don’t know how many, but one is one more than he’s been allowed to have since the diet began.
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