Let me check. Yup, still fat.

So, as our regular reader(s) may recall, I foolishly entered into a fat pact with a couple of other fat-asses to try to lose some weight by March 9, 2008. We started a couple of days before Thanksgiving (idiotic) and the ending date is based upon a Vegas trip to be taken by some of the participants. The deal is you lose 10% of your body weight by the deadline or you pay the others.

My "progress" so far: I chubbily weighed in at a whopping 234.5 on the opening day of Nov. 24. Now, 4 weeks into it, after a brief dip under 230, I am sitting at a morbidly obese 231.5. So, I've lost 3 pounds in 4 weeks, with only 11 weeks to go. At this rate, I would lose only about half of the 23.5 pounds I need to drop by March 9.

Still, I haven't really done much to help myself. Holiday parties, boozing, not working out (other than snow removal). I have changed my eating, especially for breakfast and lunch and small snacks, but spending time after work clearing snow, Christmas shopping, slow traffic in the snow, etc. has rushed dinner and had us grabbing Q-doba or Chinese food or whatever a couple of nights per week rather than cooking healthy food, and that will have to stop. I've kind of told myself that I just need to hold the line and not let it get away from me over the holidays and then really get off my ass for those last 10 week after the holidays.

I earned being fat the hard way. Large pizzas. Couch time. Swilling booze. I'm still committed to making the contest weight, but in the grand pageant, I really don't have a problem with a new scheme that drops 3 or 4 pounds per month. I'd be down 40 pounds in a year, feeling pretty good by next Christmas.

Let's be honest, no matter how much weight I lose, I'm way past thinking anybody wants me to take my shirt off. It's not about getting back my youthful swagger. My biggest motivator is that I don't want to be Fat Dad to my kid. The guy who is too tired and lazy to get off the couch and play some ball in the yard. The guy who teaches his son, by example, to eat until the pizza box is empty and then have a snack and a twelver on the couch. The guy who has a heart attack and dies before age 63. You know, like my dad. And his dad.