The First Setback

It's like a switch.

I have noticed something about my commitment to dieting. It's like a switch. Either on or off. I am either totally cruising, no sweat, minimal effort, everything's good - OR - I'm off kilter, starving, and feeling frustrated and deprived.

Which is how I felt last night, when I had my first "off track" moment so far.

Fortunately the damage was pretty well contained. We scarcely have any "bad" food in the house, so my infractions were largely limited to diet food. I started with a 1/2 cup of fat free frozen yogurt, which was supposed to be my last snack of the day. But for some reason that didn't satisfy the beast, so I went on to wolf down:

• 3 Quaker Apple and Cinnamon Rice Cakes
• 2 Stella Doro Anisette Sponge cookies
• 2 Snackwells Devil's Food Cake cookies
• A few bites of Edy's Butter Pecan ice cream

Not so bad, right?

Well, not so bad from a caloric standpoint. But I was feeling quite glum afterwards. This was a bit of a psychological/emotional setback for me. Up until that point, nothing had passed my lips except for the exact amounts of the exact foods on my well planned menu. So here we are on day 8, already off-roading.

On one hand I should not be so hard on myself. I can't expect to execute the plan perfectly.

On the other hand, this was a binge, however small, and I want to eradicate binge eating from my behavioral repertoire. I am fine going off plan, provided I plan on it. Like, for instance, tonight. Susan and I are having dinner out with some dear friends. Now I will not take this opportunity to go off the rails on some indulgent rampage, but for heaven's sake - I'm going out for dinner, I expect my meal will contain more than 15 grams of fat and 400 calories. That's fine, I'm planning it. What I don't need to do, EVER, is sit here in my house, thinking to myself I'm hungry dangit and I'm going to eat whatever I jolly well please. That is a loss of self control. Not good. Not good. That is how I ended up where I'm at.

Anyway, enough flogging myself. I am looking forward to a terrific weekend with the fam and have lots of fun stuff lined up. I just need to take it one day at a time...

Adipose

My adversary has a name, and that name is adipose.

For some reason I have been fixated this week on how fat loss occurs, physiologically speaking. As though known that will somehow help me lose weight. Uy.

Actually, I have this irrational (well, not totally irrational) fear that I will hit an untimely plateau in my weight loss efforts, fall off the wagon in a fit of disgust, and yo-yo back and beyond my peak weight. If that happens, again, I have a feeling it'll kill me this time. Like my heart will just up and keel over with an anticlimactic whimper.

Anyway, I've done a bit of reading this week, and learned the following:

• Fat is stored in the body in the form of lipoproteins (triglycerides) stored in cells known as adipocytes aka adipose tissue
• Fat is "mobilized" (released from fat cells) through a process called lipolysis
• Excercise helps lipolysis (interesting!)
• When you lose weight, adipocytes shrink, but don't necessarily go away. Thus you can be left with a panniculus (literally: apron of skin)

So that last item perturbs me somewhat. It is a bit depressing to think that I will go through all this trouble to lose weight, and still not look so hot with my shirt off. Oh well I guess I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it. At least I'll be healthy.

It was also interesting to learn that bit about how exercise helps lipolysis. It has something to do with how epinephrine stimulates lipolysis, and how this process works better when there is an increase in body temperature and concentration of epinephrine in the bloodstream. Makes me want to go for a walk!

Meanwhile all of this is somewhat academic, and doesn't really answer my nagging question about hitting a plateau. I still think the answer to that lies in maintaining (or increasing) your metabolic rate, by avoiding loss of lean muscle tissue, or - even better - gaining lean muscle tissue. This is reminiscent of the Mike D philosophy of why strength training is so important to dieters.

All of this leads me to the inevitable conclusion: it's time for me to get off my fat !@#$ and get to the gym.

Yeah baby yeah!

Break out the champagne! (Actually, I don't drink, so break out the chocolate milk) Wooooo hoooooo! Oh yeah, oh yeah!

So, my weigh in went pretty well this morning. I'm down to 319.5, a massive one week drop of 10.5 pounds! Hah!

Ok, ok, I know it won't last. But I get to enjoy this moment. It's the exact mental nourishment I need right now to prepare me for the impending death march which I will surely tire of in short order! So, I will savor this fleeting moment while it lasts!

Rationally, I know that most likely, much of this is the oft-discussed "water weight" that is shed at the start of a diet. The geniuses at GlaxoSmithKline need to figure out how to apply the "water weight" loss mechanism to fat, so that instead of your body releasing water, it releases fat. Wouldn't that be swell if we could just void away all the excess fat instead of having to metabolize it all? Metabolism is waaaay too slow!

Food Prep Blues

Now I remember what I hated about my last diet: all the food prep.

Truth is, I love the food I'm eating. It's delicious and healthy. Not sure if I mentioned it already but the food plan I am following is basically taken (almost verbatim) from the The alli Diet Plan by Caroline Apovian. The menu planning was a tad tricky, but mostly because I am trying to synchronize my 1800 calorie per day plan with Susan's 1200 per day plan. The book makes this pretty simple since all the sample diet menus have 1200, 1500, and 1800 calorie versions - however there are differences between them which are sometimes big (like different foods for the same meal). Anyway I was able to rationalize the menus pretty easily by making some reasonable substitutions so that Susan and I are eating the same food (BTW we are also subjecting the kids to the same menu - so far, they're buying it!).

So like I said the food is great. Today's lineup was as follows:

Breakfast

• Two Eggo Nutrigrain Waffles with Lite syrup
• Dannon La Creme Yogurt
• A cup of OJ

Lunch

• Grilled Shrimp with Corn-Tomato salad (really tasty)
• Dinner roll
• 1/4 of a cantaloupe

Snack

• Jello fat-free pudding

Dinner

• Chicken Paprikash
• Egg noodles
• Peas

Dessert

• 2 Stella Doro Sponge cookies

All in all very satisfying. But here's the rub. I must've spent 2 hours on meal prep today. I am a father of six kids and run my own IT business. I don't have 2 hours per day to prep food. Who does?

Now I remember. I noticed this last time. I was totally hummin along with the diet, but it frustrated me that I needed to spend so much time thinking about food. In fact I think I am spending substantially more time thinking about food now than I did when I wasn't dieting. Between the menu planning, the shopping, the meal prep, etc. - sometimes it seems I am always thinking about food. Aren't I supposed to be moving away from obsessing about food?!?!

I guess I already know the answers. First off I guess if I do this long enough it will become the way I eat, so I won't have to think about it as much. Along the way, I'll need to find shortcuts that save me time. For example I can't be cooking lunch and dinner from scratch every day. No can do. I'll have to get smart about advanced prep e.g. making double portions and saving, repeating the same menu 2 or 3 days a week, etc.

Meanwhile I guess I have to slog through it. Oh well, at least I'm eating well.

p.s. big day tomorrow: the first official weigh-in since liftoff...

Wow We're FAT

Holy cow we are fat.

I just read this article "Obesity rates climb in most states" from the AP newswire. Among other SCARY statistics, I learned that obesity rates climbed in 31 states last year. And Mississippi bears the dubious honor of being the first state to crack the 30% barrier. Thirty percent!!! Nearly one third of all adults in the state of Mississippi are obese! YIKES!

The sick and twisted side of me finds some solace in this news. Like hahaha guess what tubbo's, who's fat now? Everyone!!! So buzz off and quit looking at me like I'm weird!!! And then there's the misery loves company angle. Like: yep, we're all fat. Sucks, huh?

But seriously this is really bad news. The article goes on to call this a public health crisis. Uh, like, yah! You think?

Question is, what to do about it. Politicians will soon be falling all over themselves to fix this problem. But this isn't really like big tobacco, is it? There are no smoking guns this time. Well, there are, but what are you going to do, prosecute ALL the food suppliers? And for what? Because M&M's or Big Macs are addictive? Can't wait to see them try to prove that one in

Unlike cigarettes, which were proven to contain addictive chemicals, food is not chemically addictive (except maybe Doritos). The bigger problem is fixing the addictive behavior. Now I consider myself pretty well off: I'm well educated, great family, decent income, good support network, etc. - and I've tried and failed to correct my eating problems for at least 25 years. If a guy like me can't do it, how are we going to fix 30% of the population?

Well enough save-the-world blather. Let's talk about my favorite subject: me. On day 6 of the diet, and still going super great. The diet is totally mint - nothing has passed my lips except what is on my 1800 calorie per day menu. I am getting by without feeling overly hungry, and am feeling very good about the food I'm eating. I even sat around while my wife made homemade Toll House Cookies for the kids on Sunday and didn't even sneak a taste. Definitely a major accomplishment for me. Anyway I am hoping this lasts for awhile. I am dreading the inevitable onslaught of temptation and the slipperly slope of the little cheats. May these unholy phenomenon never again come to pass!

I Feel Good

I feel good.

I know everyone hates dieting, and it is EXCRUTIATINGLY hard at times, and you have days (like my wife did yesterday) where you're starving and have a headache and your kids are eating all your diet food and you're ready to raid the pantry and eat anything in sight.

And I know there are long stretches where it feels like you'll never lose weight and dieting sucks and the scale isn't moving and you feel like it's TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT.

And I know there are cheat days when you just couldn't help yourself and you were at that party and boy don't those little meatballs look yummy and pretty soon you've plated up a dessert "sampler" plate with "just a little taste" of everything and by the end you're all "whoa I blew it life is over".

Which is precisely why I need to make this post. I need to remember this feeling, right here, right now. This is the ever-evasive "feeling good about dieting" feeling.

Contrary to popular belief, dieting has its moments. I'm not talking about all those people ranting and raving about how they "did it" and lost hundreds of pounds years ago and kept it off and are now fitness buffs and blah blah blah and how their diets were so easy and great. (Those people make you want to eat a dozen Krispy Kremes and then vomit them up all over them. Incidentally, I want to be one of those people).

No the diet moments are few and far between, but a good weigh-in, the loose clothes, fitting into long lost skinny clothes -- those my friends are the moments we cherish.

But here's another one. Whenever I first start a diet, assuming it's a real diet and not another who-am-I kidding diet, I almost always experience this epiphany of physical well being. Within a few days I can already feel a subtle boost of energy, a little spring in my step. I feel less bloated, less, well...full of food. With evenly spaced, nutritionally balanced meals, my energy level feels less erratic. When meal time arrives, lo and behold: I'm actually really hungry! No sugar highs, food comas, etc. All of those negative consequences of poor eating are real - but over time they become really hard to discern because you get used to them. But cut over to an actual healthy diet, and your body rewards you. Unfortunately, the reward becomes really hard to discern as well, because you get used to it as well. And there's the rub. And for me, it is the evil enabler of relapse: forgetting how crappy you feel when you eat like crap.

So lest I ever forget again, let me emphatically declare this simple truth: eating well makes me feel good. Amen.

"Morbidly Obese"? Sheesh!

I'm morbidly obese.

In perusing a few blogs from fellow soldiers in the weight loss battle, I came across a great idea on Oinkstop - Adventures in Weight Loss. In her sidebar, this intrepid lady has courageously posted her mini-goals which consist of her weight targets in terms of BMI categories.

BMI stands for Body Mass Index, which is basically a height/weight ratio calculated by dividing your weight by the square of your height. The resulting number is your Body Mass Index, which gives a rough idea of how fat you are.

The World Health Organization has created a set of categories for BMI, which are as follows:

• A BMI less than 18.5 is underweight
• A BMI of 18.5–24.9 is normal weight
• A BMI of 25.0–29.9 is overweight
• A BMI of 30.0–39.9 is obese
• A BMI of 40.0 or higher is severely (or morbidly) obese

Isn't that special?

Well I'm 6'1" tall, so after some quick arithmetic I've calculated by BMI is 43.5, which, according to the WHO, makes me "severely (or morbidly) obese" (in layman's terms: WICKED FAT).

Man talk about wicked depressing. I mean who ever came up with "morbidly"? Dictionary.com has the following definition for morbidly:

1. suggesting an unhealthy mental state or attitude; unwholesomely gloomy, sensitive, extreme, etc.: a morbid interest in death.
2. affected by, caused by, causing, or characteristic of disease.
3. pertaining to diseased parts: morbid anatomy.
4. gruesome; grisly.

Oh ho ho, gotta love that. Let's see: "unhealthy mental state": check. "Unwholesomely gloomy": hmm, sometimes. "sensitive": surely. "extreme": always. "gruesome": hah - sure!

Anyway, taking a page from Oinkstop's playbook, I've come up with my own list of mini-goals based on the WHO categories. Here's the skinny:

Weight Categories for a 6'1 Person

Weight	BMI	Category
303 and up	>40	Extremely Obese
302	39.8	Obese
227	29.9	Overweight
189	24.9	Normal

So the first mini-goal is 302. If I can keep blazing at a clip of 2 pounds a week, I should be there by the 28th of November. Well Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to me, I'll only be Obese!

Oh, one other realization: my 200 pound goal, while a nice round number, still leaves me "Overweight". It'll be another 11 before I'm "Normal".

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeew. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

p.s. day 1 went swimmingly and day 2 is proceeding equally well; feeling very good about myself, more on that tomorrow.

We Have Liftoff

Well here I am, it's launch day. Day 1. The Big Drop officially begins today.

Above is the obligatory "before" picture. This shot was taken 2 weeks ago whilst I was on vacation with the fam in upstate New York. Fortunately it's not a full body shot, so it shouldn't crash your browser. One can clearly see the massive second chin and missing neck, indisputable evidence of my fatness. At some point I will take the embarrassing and hideous full body bathing suit before shot, to be promptly encrypted with a secret password nobody will ever know until I am wicked buff and can reminisce about my "old" self. Conveniently our camera is busted at the moment (there is a God) so that photo will not be weighing down my hard disk anytime soon.

I'm feeling good. I've got my food plan totally set - menu done, shopping done, everything locked and loaded. This is key for me. From past experience I know, the NANOSECOND I open the fridge or the pantry not PRECISELY sure what I'm looking for, I'm TOAST. I know myself. Browsing leads to tasting leads to grazing leads to a major problem. With a plan (i.e. a menu), I'm safe. If it ain't on the plan, I ain't eatin it. Hungry? No problem, I know when and what my next meal is. I'm good.

Exercise plan is still not totally baked. The crabby manager at my old club wanted to charge me a $199 "joining fee" to resume my membership, which - by the way - I had only cancelled THREE MONTH AGO. I asked her if they could waive the fee - she said they'd reduce it to $99 bucks. Sorry, not doing it, on principle. Health clubs perplex me. Here I am ready to pay them $75 bucks a month and having been a member in good standing (really good from their perspective: I paid my dues and never went!!!) and they want to rip me off. Forget that, I'll go to Gold's for $44 a month and no joining fee. Gold's isn't as cushy but who needs cushy, I'm there to sweat, right? Anyway I'll get this on track later this week. Friday. I'll do it Friday.

By the way, I did my first official weigh-in this morning. Dumb stupid scale registered 330 pounds. Remember all that stuff I said a couple days ago about scales? Forget that, this frickin scale is evil. Anyway whatever I'm not going to get hung up on it. 330 it is. Get ready to rumble...

Equilibrium

It's weird. As I've been gearing up for The Big Drop, I've been thinking about my past efforts, and one thing I've noticed is that I always seem to start from the same spot. For awhile, around my high school/college days, my weight seemed to gravitate around 309 pounds. I distinctly remember that weight because it was my weight the first time I ever checked in to Weight Watchers, which must've been right after I graduated high school. In the ensuing decade, I yo-yo'd down and right back up several times, but my peak weight hovered around that magic number. Then, sometime in my thirties, my weight started peaking out in the 320-330 range. In fact as I wrote yesterday, 326 seems to be my new magic number.

This strikes me as weird. Nutritionists and exercise physiologists will tell you that losing weight gain or loss is a simple equation of calories in minus calories out. If you consume more calories than you burn, then you gain wait. The other way around, and you lose. Simple enough.

But here's the weird thing. If this were true, then why would I ever reach any kind of equilibrium weight? Why wouldn't I continue to balloon? It's not as though, on the "upswing" part of my yo-yo'ing, I'm building any muscle. In theory, if I'm chowing away and layering on the blubber, my base metabolic rate shouldn't be changing. For example, last time I was on a serious diet, I lost 60 pounds and dropped to around 245. When I went off the plan, I (depressingly) gained it all back, in probably 6 months or so. That's a clip of about 10 pounds a month, or 2.5 pounds a week, which equates to 8750 excess calories per week or roughly 1250 (excess!) calories per day. Sounds about right, I was probably eating around 3000-3500 calories per day during my upswing. But I'm certain I kept going at that rate for another six months. And similarly, I'm sure I've eaten similarly over the last six months leading til now. Why haven't I gained another 60 pounds in the last year?

I don't know how this works, but it intrigues me. Not because I want to plan my next 100 pound weight gain (although that would be fun, wouldn't it?). Rather, I am concerned about hitting a plateau during my weight loss. I remember how difficult this was last time it happened - I ended up quite discouraged and if I didn't have a personal trainer hammering on me the whole time I might have gotten off track. I don't want to get off track this time.

I suppose I should do a bit of poor-man's research on metabolism. I kindof already know what I'm going to find. The answer, to avoiding plateaus, will surely be to build lean body mass along the way, which should increase BMR (burn rate) and accelerating (or at least sustaining) the pace of loss.

Ok no problem then. I'll just build lean body mass along the way. Is there a pill for that?

Cleaning House

Today's mission: purge. Out with the old. Clearance. Everything must go!

I pretty much went through everything: pantry, cabinets, fridge, upstairs freezer, downstairs freezer, storage room.

Actually while I did end up throwing out about 2 trash bags worth of stuff, alot of it was just old. Some of it was contraband, but not much. So the purge mission turned into more of an exercise in organization, which is good, because we haven't done that since we prepped the house for showings about nine months ago. And with eight people in our household, things get disorganized pretty quickly.

Anyway, mission accomplished. I now have a pretty good handle on what we have in terms of staples / ingredients, and should have plenty of room for healthy foods.

The next task is to make up a menu and a shopping list. I think I'll base the menu on the The alli Diet Plan which I picked up yesterday, mostly for the menus and the recipes. Not exactly groundbreaking material, but I like the menus so it's one less thing I have to think about. A couple things I like about the menus are 1) there are 1200, 1500, and 1800 calorie version of each day, which will make it easy for me and Susan to be on the same plan; and 2) for every recipe-based meal, there is a no-cook substitution -- which makes it nice for dealing with hectic days.

On an unrelated note, I worked out my weight loss goal yesterday. Funny, when I was first thinking about this last week, I thought hey - I'd like to get down to 200 pounds (nice even number, close enough to my "ideal" weight whatever that means), and I think I can do it before my 40th birthday. Given that I wasn't sure of my current weight or the exact number of weeks until then, I wasn't totally sure it was doable. Well, lo and behold, it is. I figure if I start on Wednesday (the day Susan returns), and my starting weight is 328, and I lose exactly 2 pounds per week, then I will hit 199 pounds on November 12, 2008, exactly one day before my fortieth birthday. How's that for serendpity?

Full Scale Attack

So, today's mission: find and purchase a new scale.

Dieters have a love/hate relationship with their scales. Mostly hate, I think. Fat people love to complain about how the scale is evil, how they are slaves to their scale, etc. Personally I have never had such deep rooted feelings for the scale. It's a tool, one of many in the weight loss arsenal. Obviously it is the ultimate judge of weight loss. Its report is the stark quantification of your progress. You either weigh less than you did last time, or you don't. In that respect, I love the scale.

But there are lots of reasons I don't put too much stock in the scale. For starters, anyone who has done any amount of dieting knows that your body weight fluctuates, sometimes pounds at a time, for a wide range of factors: day of week, time of day, what you're wearing, the impact of your diet and exercise on water retention, etc. Folks who weigh themselves every day are nutso. Day to day readings are not meaningful. What is meaningful is the trend, over time, of your approximate weight (plus or minus a pound or two or three).

And another thing. Except for your doctor and your trainer and physiologists, who cares how much you weigh? Honestly I could care less what I weigh. I am profoundly more interested in how I feel and how I look. Do I feel tired, or energetic? Do my clothes fit me, or am I bursting at the seams? What about my skinny clothes, do they fit me yet? Can I actually remove my shirt at the swimming pool without causing a wave of disgust and terror?

So, that said, I still need a scale. In my view the most important function of the scale is to tell you whether your diet is working or not. Waiting for your pants size to drop takes too long. I need to know week to week whether I'm on track. And for that, I need a scale.

For me, the key factor in selecting a scale is (duh) whether it can tell me my weight. This isn't as easy as it sounds. For one thing I weigh over 300 pounds (egad!). Try poking around at your local stuff mart. The vast majority of scales selling commercially max out at 300 pounds or less. To me this is crazy. While I am certainly massively obese, I am just as certainly not alone. Hello, Earth to scale makers: Americans are fat pigs. We don't need dainty little bathroom scales with glass tops or leopard skin motifs. We need scales that can actually weigh fat people (who, by the way, are probably your most important demographic).

Call me crazy, but another thing I insist on is that my scale tell me my actual weight, not my weight depending on the position of my feet within 10 micrometers or the relative humidity or alignment of the planets. I can't tell you how infuriating it is to use an inaccurate or inconsistent scale. My old gym had this doctor's office style balance beam scale that was only precise within + or - 5 pounds. So one week I'd be 323, then I'd be 318, then up to 322, arrgh!!! Damn you, you trickster scale, how much do I weigh???

So the best I could do was scour the web this morning to see what was for sale at my local retailers, find the ones that could weigh me, and read user reviews to discern what I could about accuracy.

What I came up with was the Weight Watchers Memory Precision Electronic Tracking Scale at Bed Bath and Beyond. This baby weighs up to a beefy 380 pounds, and most of the user reviews I found say it's accurate. Evidently it has some kind of special balancing mechanism that makes it more accurate. We'll see.

I got the scale this morning and excitedly unpacked it and took it for a test drive. First weight check in probably a year. Result: (drum roll please) . . . 326.8 pounds. Fat, to be sure. But not as bad as I thought. Oddly, I've been close to this weight before (actually I think 326 was my weight when I last started with Mike D) -- but my clothes seem way tighter than they used to be. I wonder if, when I regained this weight, it was distributed differently. Hmm. Well, no matter. It's all gotta go, no matter where it is.

The Last Hurrah

It happens every time. During the gear up to any new diet, there is always a "last hurrah" period. It is a time to bid farewell to stalwart friends you may never see again: donuts, pizza, nachos, brownie sundaes, etc. Often this concludes with a "Last Supper" meal of profound indulgence. The mood on such days is bittersweet: excitement and anticipation for the impending life change, mixed with dread for the deprived feelings and intense battle of willpower known to lie ahead.

For some reason I always engage in this charade, and this time is no exception. Yesterday I threw caution to the wind and ate, among other things, two bowls of cereal (one of which was Froot Loops), a slice of pizza, and a plate of kung pao chicken, and a whole box of toffee popcorn. Then late last night I picked up Bill Philips' book "Eating for Life". In the cover inset, the following question is posed: "Were you truly happy with the food you ate today?" As I pondered this question, I quickly reached my answer: decidedly, NO. Except for the slice of veggie pizza from Whole Foods, none of the food I ate was particularly good. So why do I do this?

I think it has something to do with freedom. As in, I now have the freedom to indulge in whatever I please, but I will soon be giving up that freedom. I need to take this chance to exercise my freedom while I still have it. So I will eat whatever I darned well please, whether it's good or not, thank you. Because tomorrow, I'm going on a diet.

This is moronic. I mean seriously, am I a child, or what?

For starters, the concept that favorite foods will be heretofore banished is dumb. Every contemporary diet author worth their salt will tell you that it is OK to indulge, from time to time, within reason.

Second, the idea that I have freedom now but will be losing it soon is backwards. This reminds me of a great talk I once heard about debt. The idea is that if you own too many things (i.e. beyond your means), the things will end up owning you. The same is true with eating, or any type of addictive behavior. What seems like freedom is actually the opposite. While I am "free" to eat whatever I please, the consequences of my behavior make me a prisoner to my weight, and I forsake many other freedoms, such as the freedom to have a good body image, the freedom to wear whatever clothes I like, or the freedom to live a long life.

Finally, there is the obvious: the 800 pound gorilla which illustrates how idiotic this behavior really is. Why, for the love of Pete, would anyone eat anything that a) isn't needed for energy/nutrition, OR b) doesn't TASTE GOOD? It is mindless eating. Eating for the sake of eating. Now this is neither news, nor unique. Everyone does it (well, "everyone" meaning the vast majority of modern-day Americans, who are in general overfed). That's fine. But when you are morbidly obese, like me, you've got no business doing it.

So, a resolution. I hereby have to KNOCK IT OFF. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for a little indulgence before and even during (gasp!) the Big Drop, but from here on out, it needs to be worthwhile indulgence. If I'm going to indulge, it had better not be for the sake of indulging. It had better be worth it. For example, I love brownies. But why would I splurge on a convenience store cellophane wrapped sad excuse for a brownie, which I know is going to taste like tree bark. If I'm going to eat a brownie, I'm going quality, homemade, from scratch (by the way, super easy, and waaay better than boxed brownie mix).

So for my Last Hurrah, I will go ahead and make the Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp with Grilled Corn & White Cheddar Cheese Grits and Chipotle-Tomato Butter Sauce, which I saw Tre make on Top Chef and for which I picked up the ingredients yesterday. Heck I may even make some brownies for dessert. Because I know it'll be worthwhile.

The Gift

I've just been given a gift. Susan has just departed for a 6 day road trip to North Carolina. With all the kids (her sanity is a topic for another discussion). Of course I will miss everyone - our household is eerily silent when the kids are absent. But my gift is tranquility, and time. I expect to use both to ponder and plan The Big Drop. By the time my family returns, I will be in full swing.

My first task is to figure out my plan of attack. A threefold strategy is required: food, exercise, and "psychops".

On the food front, I first need to figure out what plan I need to follow. There are lots of "branded" diet plans out there - Weight Watchers, LA Weight Loss, Body for Life, South Beach, etc. I doubt I will choose any of these, they either require too much time and money or are too restrictive. Then there is the "Mike D" plan, personally customized for me by the world's best personal trainer Mike D'Angelo of Body Evolver in Boston. I lost over sixty pounds following the "Mike D" plan about four years ago. The Mike D plan kicks butt however it scares me. Its guiding principle is totally no frills, take no prisoners, no mercy, food as fuel. I am not sure I am prepared for the kamikaze approach, but I'll consider it - maybe that's what I need. Finally there is Alli, which Susan is doing, which is basically a lowfat diet with calorie counting.

Once I pick a food plan, I need to put my house in order - literally. Out with the bad, in with the good. Fridge, freezer, and pantry will get a good whoopin. Then, I need a menu plan, and a shopping list, and I need to stock up.

On the exercise front, there's not much to ponder. Exercise is mandatory, and I need to do it. I just need to figure out which gym to join, and put together a workout schedule. The only things to figure out are what my strength training regimen will involve, and whether I want to sign up for a cardio class (like spinning).

Then there's "psychops". Psychological operations. Mental health. This may be where I need the most help. I need tools to keep me going. I know myself, and I know how easy it is for me to get off track. Committment and willpower is not enough. I need to be invested. I need motivational tools, checks and balances, and support. I have started assembling a mental inventory of the things that will help me here. I need to survey all the tips, tricks, techniques, and suggestions that I can find out there, pick the best ones, and execute. I want to create a "Big Drop Board" bulletin board in my home where I can post goals and progress reports, articles, tips, words and images that will motivate me. I need to communicate my plan to family and friends and coworkers who can encourage me and help keep me on track. I need to take the dreaded "before" picture (uy). Maybe a doctor visit is in order. Needless to say I need prayer, and divine guidance and support.

I am thankful for this gift of time. I have a good feeling about this. I have been here before, countless times, planning my next weight loss regimen. But this time feels different. I finally feel like the right pieces are coming together in the right way at the right time. My optimism has never been higher. I think I can really do it this time.

The Calm Before the Storm

I think I may finally be ready for The Big Drop. That is what I have decided to name my impending metamorphasis.

For all of my adult life now, I have been fat. Not big boned, not chubby -- fat. I don't think I've weighed myself in over a year but I must be pushing 330 pounds if not more. None of my clothes fit, even my 18-1/2 36 shirts which have pretty much always fit me through all my yo-yo weight changes. My weight loss failures are too numerous to discuss, actually too numerous to even remember. I think my hope my hopelessness has finally reached its pinnacle.

But this is it. I am turning 40 next year and I think I had an epiphany yesterday. My fortieth birthday almost exactly 15 months away. That is almost exactly enough time for me to achieve a big honkin goal: to get down to 200 pounds. If I put my shoulder to the wheel and grind it out, and lose 2 pounds a week, then in 64 weeks I should be able to lose 128 pounds. Depending on my current weight, the exact number of weeks, etc. - I think I can just about make it. How huge would it be for me to nail that goal? HUGE.

Susan is in a similar (albeit much smaller) boat, having recently figured she's heavier than she's ever been before in her life. She has decided to take the plunge and try Alli. I think her decision to get started is just the spark I needed to ignite the considerable kindling gathered under my butt and light my fire.

So I spent a few minutes last night and this morning checking out a few web sites and thinking about how to do this. One thing I've decided is to give this "program" a name: The Big Drop. Corny, perhaps, but I figure maybe giving a name to my pain will help me stick to it. Kindof like when kids that live on farms give names to their animals - they say once you name it, you can never slaughter it or eat it.

Meanwhile on a total whim, sitting here in the office, I decided to create this blog. Again, I figure the more I invest, the harder it will be to quit. So for better or for worse, I will use this outlet to chronicle the long journey on which I am about to embark. My sincere wish is that I will be sitting here in 15 months, marveling at this first entry and proud of the achievement I've made.