Main

What?

Why?

Nouns

Old Stuff

Mail

I first want to say that the snow today was wonderful, and if I hadn't gotten behind someone who thought 15 mph was a good speed in the 55 mph zone, it'd have been even more wonderful.

But there's something I have to admit. First I admitted it to myself, and after some internal struggles, I told my wife. Now, I'm going to tell you, my mass of loyal readers.

I'm... I'm... I'm on a diet.

This is hard for me to say. For as long as I can remember, I've been graced with the frame that is usually described as "like a stick." I entered college at about 170 pounds, and by the time I'd graduated, I'd worked my way up to 185 on my 6'2" frame. My senior year, due to some charming money problems that don't bear repeating, I was basically eating about a meal a day or so, and since I didn't have a car, while I took a bus onto campus most of the time, I walked (or ran) everywhere else I needed to go, especially when the bus decided not to show up. I wondered how I was able to eat whatever I wanted and not really gain weight. IDIOT! How about because I wasn't eating a lot in general, and was getting a fair amount of exercise in walking all over campus.

And then I graduated.

Well, I had to get a car to get to and from work, and, well, now that I was drawing a real paycheck, I ate at least two meals a day, and I stepped all the way up to three meals a day about two years ago, once I decided that breakfast wasn't that bad of an idea. So, now that I wasn't getting any exercise (what, me, exercise? I can eat whatever I want and not gain weight!), I slowly began to expand my personal horizons, if you get my meaning.

So, I've crept my way through a couple waist-size expansions (I used to be a 34/36, and now I'm a generously sized 38/36), and I finally came to the stunning conclusion that unless I wanted to redo the pants section of my wardrobe again, I had better do something about my weight. The fact that I ran into a freshman hallmate of mine last Friday who, the first thing he said was (basically) "You've really porked out, huh!?" (Yes, that is made more polite for the reading audience. The original phrase was much crasser, and I'm trying to forget it completely), might have been a minor incentive as well.

So, I've started on The Hacker's Diet, subtitled Losing Weight and Hair through Stress and Malnutrition. Yes, the fact that it has a sense of humor is an endearing quality. It's kind of got a geek appeal to it, what with lots of measurements and charts and graphs with neat sinkers and floaters and stuff for my Palm Pilot.

The diet itself is fairly basic -- it's essentially calorie counting, and you can exercise if you want to hoe that row. You guesstimate about how many calories you should be using, and decide how much you want to undercut that by to lose weight. That'd be the malnutrition part, which reminds me I want to pick up a jar of multi-vitamins the next time I'm at the grocery store.

Anyway, I've started out at 223 pounds, and the goal is (roughly) to not have my stomach swell out the front of my tuxedo at my brother-in-law's wedding in July too much. Wish me luck!