You can't spell diet without d-i-e...

I made myself a promise at the begining of this week - that I would get back to taking care of myself, to going to the gym (almost) daily, to start eating right again, to lose some of the weight I've put on in the last year or so and more.

So far I'm not doing too well. I made it to the gym on Monday and Tuesday, skipped Wednesday to go to an auction (that sucked), skipped Thursday to work until 11:30, skipped Friday to go to happy hour with coworkers, made it Saturday but had to shave a few minutes off my workout, and made it today.

Eating-wise, I'm probably doing better, except for the beer and deep-fried macaroni and cheese at the aforementioned happy hour.

So where does madanthony stand, weight-wise? By goverment standards, I'm overweight.. I'm short - around 5'6" - and weigh about 165. The CDC says for my height, anything above 154 is overweight. Now, I'm not as fat as I once was - this was me in 2004, when I was closer to 250. I like posting that pic, because losing that weight is one of the few things I've actually succeeded at. I don't have a decent recent pic of me standing up, where you can see that I still have some gut left.

Ideally, I'd like to get down to around 140, but I'm not sure I have the dedication to do that - I've never gotten below 150, and for the most part have hung around 155.

While I shouldn't be blaming my inability to keep myself from stuffing my face and then taking a nap on external factors, my work schedule is definitely giving me an excuse for my poor behavior - it's tempting to eat fast food and skip the gym when I'm at work late. Of course, if I really cared about my health, I'd find a way around it - go to the gym at 6am when it opens, before work, or use the seldom-touched treadmill in my basement at midnight. But I'm lazy, I want the benefits of weight loss without actually having to put the work in.

And what benefits do I hope to gain? I probably should give up on the idea that losing weight would make me more attractive to women, given how much it's helped me so far - but hope springs eternal, and there is a certain level of confidence that succeeding at something gives you - even though it's a pretty stupid thing to be proud of - look, I actually can eat like a normal human with some self control! And it would be nice to fit into those slim-fit jeans I accidentally bought on sale, and those athletic fit shirts from shirt.woot . But most of all, losing weight gives me something to focus on besides the vast wasteland that is my social life.