Whoa...I totally pigged out. Didn't I? Wait...maybe not.

Yesterday was my son's 4th birthday and I prepared a feast for him with lots of treats. Pancakes in the morning. Bacon. Real maple syrup. Eggs, then Doritos later in the day and tacos and juice boxes and juice and actual Coca Cola which he never ever gets to drink but once or twice a year...

Chocolate cake and ice cream...

...and of course I partook of ALL OF IT. Plus some wine in the evening. I felt like a real glutton. Like I had stuffed myself. Once again I was excusing myself for having a day of celebration with more calories than I should have had.

But when I sat down and tabulated all the foods and calories I had eaten for the day...it was merely 100 calories over my daily allotment to maintain my current weight. And probably turned out to be a calorie deficit if I add in the running around and house cleaning and child wrangling we did during the birthday party.

I think the point here is...I've been trying to teach myself what a sane portion is for about 4 months now. Every day I tabulate my calories trying to get myself accustomed to healthy quantities of food. After 4 months, I may actually be learning a thing or two. Neat!

For folks out there trying to shed some pounds, I highly recommend counting calories. I'm not gonna lie...it's a pain in the ass. But there's really no other way around it. It's too easy to have a warped sense of what constitutes a Portion.

It's helped me out immensely to teach myself, over time, what is Enough Food without being Too Much. I can't stop counting calories, though. Not for a while. I'm going to try to stick to counting calories for the next year. Every damn day. Even when I've met my target weight. Because I've come too far, now, and I don't want to have to do this again and be fat again.

Time warp..wonder if it's got anything do do with the diet

It's been a weird time warp over here. Suddenly it's four or five days later from last time I've really visted any portion of the blogosphere. I'm wondering if the time warp sensation has anything to do with the weightloss itself.

I've made pretty good headway with my weight over the past week, but man am I currently feeling tired, and my mental capacities seem to be somewhat diminished, particulary focus.

I'm thinking this week I'll look up the effects of weight loss on the brain.

It's time to go back in time and tell past you to stick to the diet.

Today I am down 24 pounds since October. So says my new scale, which shall henceforth be known as Desiree, and the scale at the gym, known as Fatz. I can definitely see the weight loss in my face and head area. I can't stop looking at my neck in the mirror. There's some actual detail to it. I can see my adam's apple and some vague shapes of muscles or tendons in my neck as I turn my head side to side. Apparently it was all eclipsed by a layer of fat, or as I like to call it "energy."

Now, of course, the most important part of ANY modern diet plan is to find a time machine, prefereably a telephone booth or police box, and go back in time and tell my past self to stick to his diet or I won't be down 24 pounds today. It was a diet plan pioneered by the most excellent Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan.

I remember the day clearly. October 31st. The kids and I trick or treated with our friends, and when everybody else had their backs turned a steaming red phone booth fell from the sky and I popped out looking all svelte and thin and I said to me "Dude...I am YOU from the FUTURE. And if you just eat right and exercise a little more you'll look like THIS...OH! And REMEMBER! Your phone is under the easy chair at your parents' house. And say Hi to the princesses for me...*wink, wink*"

And then he was gone. Future me.

So that's why I was able to lose 24 pounds with so much resolve. Now I need to go back in time and be that me that says to me "Hey...this was all worth it." It will be most non heinous.

Aha! Take Body Fat Measurements With a Grain of Salt

False alarm. Maybe.

My fancy new body fat scale and I are still getting acquainted, apparently. Yesterday evening the scale told me I had a body fat percentage of 34%. That seemed a bit high. This morning it's saying 28%.

After some research I arrived at this conclusion: When using a body fat scale, use it at a standard time of the day, like in the morning.

As it turns out, body fat scales measure your body density, which can change throughout the day depending on if you have food in your tummy, the amount of water you have in your body at the time...poo. Anything in your body.

So, just like a regular scale, what you're really measuring is a trend rather than exact weight. That cheers me up a little bit. 34% seemed like an awfully high body fat percentage. 28% isn't great, but it's better. So I'm somewhere between 28% and 34%, give or take.

The point is, I still need to lose weight.

Here's a page which has some great information about body fat scales and 10 tips for standardizing your body fat measurements.

Got a New Scale: Some Good News, Some Bad News

BLARG!

I've finally done it. I invested in an actual scale, instead of the spring operated one my tiny wife thinks is sufficient. I was tired of the scale telling me radically different weights several different times in the same 5 minutes.

"You're 230 pounds! You're 235 pounds! You're 232 pounds! You're 240 POUNDS?!?!? GAH!! JUST TELL ME what you want me to SAY so you'll STOP STANDING ON ME!!!!"

My new scale is steadfast in its opinion. I am now 227 pounds!

Yay! That's consistent with what the fancypants scale at the gym tells me.

I've lost about 23 pounds so far. And that makes me crazy happy. Not sure if I'll make my 10 pound goal this month. I ended December at 233. I'm down 5 pounds. For sure I could wring a couple more pounds out of myself in the next 8 days.

But my scale had some unfortunate news for me as well. I got one of them there newfangled (in my house, anyway) bodyfat scales and it tells me I'm at 34% body fat. OUCH.

To get down to an average healthy body fat I'll need to lose another 25 pounds to get down to 202 pounds...which I guess is sort of my general goal weight for this year anyway. So what am I crying about?

Way back in 2003 when I weighed 220 pounds I was about 24% body fat, so apparently I've lost some muscle between then and now.

I need to hit the gym. Or get out and move around more. Or go back in time and be 10 years younger.

Bundle Up and Move Around

Ice skating is a wonderfully human activity. To go from "WHOOOOAAAHH ooohh nooo...gaaah...it's COLD and this ice is SLIPPERY!" to "WOOHOOO! It's COLD! And this ice is SLIPPERY!" is just about as optimistic as a mammal can get. It's cold, it's slippery, we're stuck inside....let's strap some steel to our feet and slip around on the lake for a bit.

That's what we did yesterday, the boys and I. Except it was more of a parking lot than a lake. We rented skates. The bigger boy got into it right away. The smaller boy kept falling on his bottom. Me, I gracefully stumbled around the rink like a massive drunken cupie doll. Good for morale for the boys to see their father as uncertain on the ice as they are....or maybe more uncertain on the ice as they are. At least that's what I told myself.

Anyway, the point is, it was a concerted effort to get out of the house and move around, and darnit...it was fun. I burned about 500 calories and spent some quality time with my wee boys.

The notion of working out at a gym is great and all. And I highly recommend it...**cough** for myself, as well. But it can be intimidating for some of us who are a bit on the doughy side.

Even in the winter there's stuff going on:

- sledding, which is free if you get creative with the sleds. Or you can get a nice plastic one for under $8.
- ice skating, often for the price of skate rentals - used skates can be found at the local second hand stores if you shop around for a bit.
- trudging through the snow
- ice fishing....which...is really more about drinking beer while sitting on the ice than exercise I guess.

Bundle up and get out there. I'm going to try to do the same.

Warning: Your Tolerance for Alcohol Will Drop as You Lose Weight

Ooooooooooooohhhh...hello....

So, why am I wearing a bag of frozen peas on my head?

It's because I am not a smart man. As it turns out, when you lose weight, you become less tolerant to alcohol.

I went out with some friends last night for some beers and did not have more than my usual Evening Out amount. What I didn't take into account, however, is that there is about 25 to 30 pounds less of me than there used to be, and the beer hit me harder than I expected. Fortunately I hadn't driven there.

I feel awful this morning.

Uuuuuggh...so, if you are losing weight, keep that in mind. Your tolerance for alcohol is going to drop.

A Fast, Easy, Decorative and Macho Hot Sauce

As you may know, I've been experimenting with spicy foods as a way to lose weight. It hasn't exactly been a controlled experiment, but so far I'm losing weight and I've come to really enjoy spicy foods. So I can't vouche for spicy foods as a cure for fatness, but I can vouche for its deliciousness with the added benefit of having very few calories.

Lately I've been cooking with hot and spicy vinegar of my own creation. It's very delicious, and it looks pretty, and it's so definitely NOT a GIRLY thing to do. In fact....it's quite macho. So.....shut up.


I found an asian market in my town that sells bags of dried Thai peppers for cheap. I've been cleaning out various glass containers after they're empty (in the case of the picture here it's an empty maple syrup container), then I stuff the glass with dried hot peppers and fill it up with pure vinegar. Then I cap it off and put it somewhere decorative...like........er........

.....like on my gun rack. Yeah. **sigh** By which I mean to say, the piano.

Anyway, it's delicious and low calorie and an easy and fast version of hot sauce.

For actual hot sauce I take the same peppers, grind them in very manly coffee grinder, put the powder (DO NOT BRETHE IT) into a small glass container and mix vinegar with it until it's the consistency I want.

Dude, Weightloss Seems to be Totally About a Morning Plate of Veggies

Okay...this is worth noting:

If I eat a HUGE PLATE of vegetables in the morning, I'm not terribly hungry for most of the rest of the day. I'm talking a full dinner plate with a mound of fried vegetables for breakfast with a couple of over-easy eggs on it. Huge.

And then, come dinner when I'm finally hungry, I eat just about anything in moderation, and I come in at a healthy caloric intake.

Vegetables are so low calorie but so high volume and filling that it seems to keep me full for most of day.

I had a massive pile o' vegetables with eggs this morning coming in at about 450 calories and I had a very light lunch around 2:00 of 7 tortilla chips and some guacamole and some rice and beans, bringing me to about 750 calories.

At about 6:00, after bringing one of my boys home from daycare I had made him some cookies and we each ate some cookies. I had around 4 cookies, bringing me to about 1100 calories. I had a couple of beers, bringing me to 1400 calories, then I made some home-made pizza and ate three slices bringing me to 1900 calories at 8:00 PM.

And I'm feeling pretty darn stuffed.

Consider that 2100 calories is the intake I need to be 178 pounds instead of 228 pounds and you can see how 1900 calories at 8PM seems prettey impressive to me.

So far as I can tell, the major factor is that HUGE plate of veggies in the morning. It's not like pizza and beer and chocolate chip cookies are terribly low cal. I'm eating them in relative moderation...but still......if not for a low calorie breakfast that keeps me full until after lunch, I could EASILY eat more calories than I need.

Hopefull I can keep this up.

Sleep Them There Pounds Right On Off With the Power of Sleep!

One thing I haven't spoken much about is sleep.

A healthy amount of sleep is important for tons of reasons. Blood pressure. Memory. Good skin. Sanity. And of course maintaining a decent weight.

Think about it for a moment. On the most basic level it's pretty simple, the less you're awake the less time you have to cram stuff into your face. When you're awake more, you eat more. When you feel your energy level tubmle bacause you have horrible sleep habits, you're going to eat more food to drive the energy back up. And more likely than not, you're not burning significantly more calories.

One change I've struggled to make is to try to get a healthy amount of sleep every night. This is a huge change I've been making toward living an overall healthier life.

If you have trouble getting to sleep, here's a nice lullaby;



I've always had lousy lousy lousy sleep habits. Always. Not sure why. I, persoanlly, blame a lifetime habit of procrastination. I keep putting it off until it's 3 AM. Oops. Then the kids, or work, or school woke me me up at 7AM. Day after day. Year after year.

I used to take some warped sense in pride in my ability to get little sleep and wander around the world in a half-awake zombified state. Used to.

But one can be fairly sure that if the human body begs and pleads for something naturally Most Every Single Day day, it's most likely for a good reason. Your body needs it. Things like Breathing, Eating, Crapping, Blinking, Getting It On, and of course Sleeping.

Seriously...being proud of ongoing sleep deprivation is tantamount to proving your machismo by going around all day every day minus a pint blood....that you didn't donate....to...the...blood bank, cuz if you DID then you SHOULD be proud that you donated blood....

...okay it's not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

The body and brain need sleep.

Now...some folks out there have to work two or three or fifteen jobs and come home to a house of wee little kids who need attention, and dinner, and some mommy/daddy time, and if you're in that situation you've got bigger challenges in the world than not getting enough sleep. Ya do what ya gotta do.

But for the rest of us, if you're like me and you have simply neglected your body and it's basic sleep health for no good reason...ya may want to re-think that. You'll feel more alert, you'll eat less, you'll be a less grumpy person, your memory will improve, your blood pressure will drop. You'll just FEEL better. And you'll probably LIVE LONGER. And you'll lose weight.

Arrrrrr Matey, I Met Me Dietary Spirit Beast

Ahoy Matey!

I've finally come out of the deep fried carb induced coma I got while at Long John Silvers yesterday. The whole meal: 1460 calories. Obscene. And that's WITH a diet beverage: Fried fish, fried shrimp, fried hushpuppies, fried potatoes, and fried Diet Pepsi. All fried. And of course my three year old had the good sense not to eat any of his food, so I ended up eating some of his.

While I was under, I found my spirit animal (a giant newt), breaded and fried on a bed of golden brown fried gluten chunks. He told me of the yin and yang of weight loss.

"The good and the bad are intertwined" he said to me, sucking on a Big Gulp Cola Slushy - "The depravity of unhealthy foods finds its kernel in the **BEEEEEEELCH** and the likewise depravity of pure health can be found in the matchbox Twinkie vendo-man...the one who lives in your peachcloak. **BEEELCH**"

And that's when I awoke, renewed and enlightened.

I'm not the type to question the wisedom of a talking, deep fried giant newt.

After most of two weeks doing quite well at my diet and my weight loss, I indulged in one of my horrible dietary vices...Long John Silvers. And it was great. And then I felt physically miserable for most of the rest of the day and during the evening. And isn't that exactly the sort of reminder folks like me need that shit like that is just plain awful for my body?

Aye, matey.

My New Weight Loss Photo-Update

Today is my birthday, and I'm starting off my own personal new year with a photo-update after losing about 22 pounds.

Old Picture:



New Picture



In retrospect I'm not sure why I've only taken head shots. My FACE hasn't lost 22 pounds. Perhaps I'll take a whole body shot of myself today (CLOTHED...I'll save you guys the horror and do it clothed) and make a comparison to it in a month or two.

Also...I'm not sure why I look so grumpy in my pics. I'm just trying to look normal, which makes me wonder, now, if I always look disgruntled. Geesh.

Also, I normally wear glasses. And apparently I never comb or cut my hair.

Damn. I need to use a mirror more often.

I do clean up well, though. Or at least I THINK I do......

Anyway...as I said, it's my birthday and I'm going to make my three year old take me out to Long John Silvers. Yes! I said Long John Silvers. DEAL wid it homies.

I Weigh Less Than I Have For Nearly Two Years

Today I weighed in at 229.somethingsomething. But who's counting? Other than me, I guess. The point is, I haven't weighed below 230 pounds for over a year and a half, meaning that my current weight is the least I've weighed in well over a year, and maybe two.

That makes me happy. Ive approached the line of 230 before, but never quite crossed below it. I'd lose resolve, lost interest, some holiday would come along, the summer would come and I'm not sure what the hell I'd do because that's when I was supposed to have been exercising more...

...ah wait. I remember what happened this last year.

I had gone to a gym every day for a couple months out of a resolve to lose weight and I lost quite a bit, almost down to 230. That was last winter. And I told myself, that as soon as the weather was warm and the snow was gone, I was going to become a Running Guy!

"YEAH!" I thought "I'm gonna become one of those RUNNING GUYS!" You know! One of those GUYS you see RUNNING at 6AM downt he street with spandex and special running shoes. I'd become one of THEM. So as soon as the weather warmed up I stopped going to the gym.......................but I never ran. I never became a Running Guy. Never had the shoes. Or the spandex shorts. And I never got up at 5:30AM to get prepared to run.

Never happened. Instead, I slept until my boys woke me up...climbed in bed with me and rolled and rolled and rolled until I got up and made breakfast for the boys. And that was my morning over the summer. I gained quite a bit of weight over the summer. Probably in addition to not exercising enough I ate way too much. Too many grill outs with the friends. Too much summer-afternoon Sangria.

Anyway...to make a long story short, today I am about 1 pound less thatn I was after working out daily for most of a month.

So...huzzah. After this point it feels like progress...weighting less than I have for years. Pretty encouraging. Just gotta keep it up.

My Weight Loss Plan Is Easy! Er...EasiER than a Quadruple Bypass

Chorizo Uptade: I survived the 33 cent per pound chorizo. And it was GOOD.

In other news I've been hankering for sweets, lately. At the moment I'm tiding myself over with a can of Diet Rite but not sure how long I can hold out. I did have a bit of avocado and a massive bowl of leaves. Plus some delicious chorizo.

Losing 50 pounds...it's hard. But I need to get through it. I need to get through it and then maintain, and make sure I never go back again.

And sure, it may be hard...but it's a lot easier than a quadruple bypass, right?

Yeah...YEAH! It's a lot easier than managing diabetes. Sure...yeah! That's how I'll think of it. Sure...sure....ugh...this is hard.

Mmmmmm...pork........something.....

My Lose 10 Pounds in January effort is somewhat on and off. I seem to do well keeping within my calories during the day. Then in the evening I somehow manag to pig out. Last night I slipped up quit a bit and ended with a calorie deficit of just 200 calories instead of the 1250 I need. So I need to double down.

Yet somehow I still made what was probably an unfortunate purchase today.

I bought chorizo sausage from the local meats market, and I'm a bit terrified of it...it was 33 cents per POUND. Cheaper than bologna. Cheaper than hot dogs. Cheaper than a bag of fat and "cracklins" (that's fancy talk for cartilage). 33 cents per pound.

Terrifying. I don't even want to know what's in it, really. So of course I bought two pounds of it. I intend to eat some of it this very evening once the kids are in bed...I don't want to give them nightmares. Pork something....

Nothing Warms Your Heart Like a Cage Fight

My father had a small stack of free promo tickets to a Grand Rapids cage fight and he passed them out liberally in the parking lot, and so it came to happen that I had a seven year old companion and his mother, also from Muskegon, sitting next to me and my wife. The boy's father was a cage fighter and it seemed the boy knew everybody in the place: the ring girls, the referees, the fighters. Men dressed in T-shirts with the word MEDIC in red block print gave the boy a high five as they passed by the table. In fact, the boy's father was paired with the boy's uncle in the first match. We could not have asked for a better companion.

Stocky, rosy cheeked little boy with a spiked up mohawk and a front tooth missing. Much like my own son. Surely the tooth fairy had been kind to him.

I joked with him "Wow! Look at that tooth! Looks like you got into fight yourself!" HA HA HA!

He laughed too and nodded, "YEAH! It was on the SCHOOL BUS! My friend and I got into a fight and he KNOCKED my tooth RIGHT OUT!"

"OH! So you DID get into a fight?"

"YEAH! It HURT! I'm not gonna get into a fight with HIM again! HEY! I THINK I see my DAD!!!! SEE! He's over THERE! He's got the....the....YEAH! It HURT like HECK! My TOOTH! It was DANGLING by a tiny piece of SKIN and the DENTIST just PULLED it off and that HHHHUUUURRRRT!!!!"

"Geeze...well...so, are you thinking maybe it wasn't a good idea to fight?"

"I don't know...but not with him! He's huge! HEY LOOK! It's my DAD!"

A huge man strode out into the ring, a gigantic pink mohawk spiked up high, with a bright pink Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon tattooed onto the top of his half shaven head.

"YEAH DAD! GET UNCLE M!!!!!!!!"

I cheered too, clapping for the boy's father. He won. The fight ended extremely fast compared to all others with the father lifting up his brother and squeezing...and the brother "tapping out" to indicate concession. It seemed, more than anything, a display for the boy...the one audience member who mattered in the audience of hundreds. A 5 second fight that involved merely lifting and a Tap Out and cheering from one...just one...very tiny section of the audience. But the section that mattered.

The boy and I cheered together and exchanged a high five.

Retractions, Additions, and I FEEL LIKE CRAP! 10 Pounds in a Month is Hard

Well, I stand corrected on the avocado thing. PikkuManda of Twitter fame tells me that PikkuManda, PikkuManda's self has lost weight AND has consumed an avocado per day, and possibly BECAUSE of it instead of in spite of it. However I still maintain that high volume, low calorie foods are working best for me. And they may work best for you if, like me, you are a frumpy, middle aged man with a dimming metabolism, fading energy, and who has been beaten down by the whips and scorns of time and had all the joie de vivre sapped from the grind of his humdrum, empty existan..........what? To much?

Moving right along.

N8Armstrong
of True Fitness Fanatic fame offered some counter-mayo-clinic information about Negative-Calorie-Foods. At the end of a diary I wrote a few days ago I added a link to a lame Mayo Clinic blog entry that raised the question of negative calorie foods and then ended the post with a shrug and a "I guess we'll never know" sort of let down answer. INCONCLUSIVE, they said. Well...better than the Mayo Clinic in my opinion is SNOPES, a well respected website that was basically doing the Mythbusters thing Before the Mythbusters. And that's where N8Armstrong got his source from.

Celery, according to the Snopes article, is in fact a negative calorie food. Good enough for me.

Anyway...I'm on Day 4 of my trek to lose 10 pounds by the end of January and I FEEL MISERABLE. To lose 10 pounds I need to have a calorie deficit of 1250 calories per day. I've done that for 3 days so far. But MAN I can barely THINK. It's like my mind is all muddled, and I'm hungry all night long. This probably isn't a good thing. BUT! I'm going to do it. I've gone 3 days, I can go 25 more.

I'm a 230 pound fellow trying to get by on the equivalent of 1500 calories per day to reach my goal - more if I exercise, but same difference. I think. There's still gonna be a 1250 calorie deficit.

I'm avoiding the breads and the carby things, more or less, had bacon this morning and a large pile of veggies again. Before bed I fill that void in my tummy with leaves, like.......like...............

....see, I can't even think. That stuff Popeye eats. I eat that.

Anyway, I've publicly committed myself to this and I'm going to do it.

Why did I publicly commit myself to this? Because right now I'm 230 and if I lose 10 pounds I'll be at 220.

And 220 is a milestone for me. I've been around 220 for most of a decade. Sometimes a flabby 220, sometimes a burly 220...but 220. If I can get down below 220, that will be a long-term accomplishment. If I get below that, all other weight loss will feel like a major improvement in my life, long term.

Another thing. 220 is the point at which I technically cross over from the O word (Obese) to merely the other O word (Overweight). I want to get THERE this month.

Warning: Avocados in Moderation

I'm going to stand up and buck some low carb dietary establishment here:

Avocados are not particularly weight loss friendly.

One standard avocado has just about 300 calories in there. Eating a WHOLE avocado is like doing shots of olive oil - gulp, SLAM, gulp, SLAM, gulp, SLAM. And it's so easy to do, because they taste fantastic. I love avocados as much as the next guy BECAUSE they're like doing shots of olive oil.

But if you're like me and you go down the list of examples of good, low carb foods with healthy fats and you say "oh! Here's one with HEALTHY FATS AND it's a VEGETABLE! I'll balance out the meat! I'm going to eat these ALL THE TIME."

I find I'm having more luck with High Volume, Low Calorie (like carrote, cabbage, cauliflower) foods supplemented with fats than I have had with eating Low Volume, High Calorie foods supplemented with veggies.

If I didn't know avocados were basically a beautiful green fat, I'd never know how energy dense they are.

Moderation, grasshopper.

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Photo by Muffet

This Month, I Lose 10 Pounds. Here I Go

I'm feeling jaunty today. I'm feeling ambitious. I'm going for losing 10 pounds this month. I'm gonna do it! Gonna get below 225 by the end of January. I've got 28 days.

That's a calorie deficit of 1250 calories per day, 3500 calories per pound times 10 to equal 35,000 calories, divided by 28. Oof. That's a spicy meatball. NO! Wait! No spicy meatballs. Well..if they're low carb then it's probably okay. Anyhoo...

Let's see here...gonna do some calculating...that's.....hold on here...that's...

At 225 pounds I'd be going through 2700 calories per day (225 pounds per 12 calories burned per pound per day for normal body functions).

So...so if I eat 2000 calories of food per day that's 700 calories of my calorie deficit right there.

I still need to make up 550 calories per day lost. That's gonna require some....**gulp**...exercise. No two ways around it. Time to pull up the list of calories burned Per Activity chart from the Mayo Clinic. Just about any of these will do it. Maybe not Tai Chi...I'll have to reserve that one for another time. And dish washing...I'd have to do FOUR HOURS or dish washing to make 550 calories according to some other chart. While we do hand wash, I can't say I'm up for a daily 4 hour dish washing sprint.

Hiking. That looks about right for me. Though it's snowing quite a bit, and cold. But it's for the smaller good, right?

Oh hey! Here's a cool article on the Mayo Clinic site: Negative Calorie Foods: Diet Gimick or Weight Loss Aid?

Conclusion...incloclusive. BOOO MAYO CLINIC. BOOOOOOOOO....

Clumsy Ode to the New Years Resolution Dieters

I admit that I have a smugness problem. It took me years to admit it to myself, but it's pretty debilitating. The smugness. And I try to suppress it. But it's a deep down smugness. The kind that really only can be resolved by getting a well deserved punch in the face or vicious verbal slap from time to time.

The secret, but punchable smug-du-jour I'm having is because I started my diet in November. So my diet is not technically one of those New Years Resolutions we all have, that so many of us make with a steely resolve but then abondon with frustration or, more often than not, a well earned "screw it" after Hurculean efforts have been spent undoing years or decades of...let's call it "stress". Today I call my fatness "stress" only because I found myself reaching for a bag of Doritos left over from the New Years party whey my kids had their damaging way with our household furniture.

Anyway, because I started my diet in November I have some twisted sense of self satisfaction that I got into the annual weight-loss trend before it was cool....or maybe 10 months after it was cool if we're looking at 2011...that's the problem with circular years, really.

I never said my smugness made sense.

I oughtn't feel terribly smug, though, because I did, in fact, have a 2011 resolution to lose weight. I just gave up on it after trying like hell. It's frustrating. It really is. It's so hard. And it commands pretty much a daily focus. Who on earth can sustain such a thing? There's work to be done. House to be cleaned. Family matters to attend to..births, deaths, sicknesses, Lions games and a luke warm Redwings season. It's hard to keep up that level of commitment to something that seems to come so slowly.

The one meaningful thing some random dude said to me during my short period at the gym was this "It's a marathon, isn't it? Not a sprint."

I didn't give the statement much thought at the time. Just sort of two fellows sharing a nod and a smile and a pithy comment in passing.

But it really is important to think of it in terms of that. We none of us got fat overnight. We're not going to lose our fat overnight. We're really in this for the long haul. It's a permanent life change.

Blarg.

Daunting for me to think about it like that. But I suppose it would follow that if I'm taking on a dietary practice that I don't think I can sustain long term...maybe I should find one that I can. Paleo, Low Carb, Atkins, Grapefruit and Pomegranite, All Fruit, ultralowcalroie, South Beach diets are great and all. Unless you just can't eat like that forever.

Cuz that's kind of what this is, isn't it? It's something we gotta maintain forever...and if you're not that into coconut milk, maybe it shouldn't be the keystone of your diet plan.

One thing, though, that make sense is the conditioning the body to eat smaller portions. Heck..that's just gonna be a fact no matter what. And theoretically...THEORETICALLY...if I'm smaller my body will need, and hopefully ask for, less food anyway.

I do wish all new dieters the best of luck. Good god, I wish you the best of luck. I'm pretty much right there with ya. It's hard as hell and we gotta stand by each other.

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Image from Ravensmagiclantern via Flickr Creative Commons

Fatlessness-Treking Across the Universe

Stardate: 1.1.2012 -- I have entered this land through...what appears to have been a...dimension of...strange life forms: Matador brand corn chips, O-Kee-Doke Cheesie Popcorn, and... beer.

They sapped the very strength from me making me...helpless to their...powers. And since the...Prime Directive forbade me to make contact with these primative life forms or...introduce them to our technology I...had to eat them...in order to...escape.

I seem to have come through the...vortex however feeling...somehow renewed. As though...I had a new beginning. The last week and a half merely a...bump in the road to...my mission. To seek out...fatlessness and a greater state of...heatlh