The weigh-in manefesto

Yesterday, I joined WeightWatchers.

It's past time for me to get busy losing weight and keeping it under control. I no longer can put up with the way I currently feel, and if this keeps up, I'll more than likely be dead before I am 55, or maybe 50.

This isn't about maximizing any sort of "chick-magnet" physical assets (something my first ex did after separating with me was to lose 100lbs to maximize her physical appeal -- her plan worked), or "getting back" with ex #2, or proving anyone wrong about me or my capacity to change, or even wearing more stylish clothes. I'm not actively looking for another love (my Femseek(tm) sesnors are entirely on passive mode atm, but if Ms. Absolutely Right suddenly crossed my bow, it's going to be "Fool Speed Ahead!" aboard USS RichO) and I am not about teh stylin clothes. It's about survival past middle age. It's about living long enough to be there if my daughter and her husband one day decide to become parents. It's about being there for my Godsdaughter as well. It's about having my personal energy not bound up in a glacis of fat anymore.

I am doing this for one person and only one person.
Not for Catnyp.
Not for my daughter.
Not for ex#2.
Not for any other friend, enemy, job, cause, ideology, or faith.
I'm doing it for me.

I was shocked when I got the news of my starting point: 471 lbs. I should not have been.

Fortuntely, like life itself, WW isn't about where you start the process, it's about the transformative physical journey, making changes of thought and habit that are for me about about three decades overdue.

Fortunately, I have help in working the plan, someone who has lost 100 lbs on WW and knows how to work the plan.

Weight control is going to be a, uhm, big part my life . . . but only a part of it. I'm not going to turn this into a weight loss-only blog, writing about my every meal choice in soul-rending detail. That's a form of imbalance I'm not going to embrace right now. I'll post progress reports every weigh-in and any blinding insights I get while working the plan.

Goals are important. WW says shoot for 10% of starting weight (for me, 424). Personally, I think I should shoot to get below 399, say 350. Good health guidelines like Body Mass Index put me around 200 as a good healthy weight. I was last at under 200 back when I was in uniform. I'll lose till I feel good and healthy, then work on maintaining it.

And, to incentivize myself . . . FABULOUS PRIZES!! At the 10% loss point, I'm getting myself a Bluetooth cell phone, prolly a RAZR or maybe a Treo. To mark every 5 lbs of incremental loss, I'm buying myself some kind of gamer thing, a supplement or a book off my Amazon.com Wish List.

"Food is nourishment, not a reward, psychological first-aid, social lubricant or idle pastime."