Something like an introduction - Prologue

So I've set up this blog to track my progress with my terror diet. I don't imagine many folks will read this, but you never know in this connected age.

Anyway, the idea for this diet sprung from a question of motivation. The new year came, which of course lead to another "get in shape" resolution. This is not a new thing, it's become the norm for me over the past several years. I've pretty much always been heavy. I can remember my father teasing about the "husky" clothing I had to wear as a child.

In college I played a ton of intramural sports and generally was quite active. I was just dragging around an extra 20-30 pounds. Once I graduated from college in May 2002, my weight soon peaked at something close to 220 pounds, which is obviously heavy for a 5'7" man just getting out of college. After being horrified by pictures from a baseball road trip that summer, I decided to shed the weight.

I committed to the Atkins diet as well as a gym-going routine. I very often would take weekends off to drink beer and eat pizza while visiting friends, but was obsessive about getting back on the diet come Monday. Over the course of about 9 months I spoiled myself on steak, but was also able to bring my weight all the way down to 162 pounds.

Around this time I met the girl who I would end up marrying. When you're young and naive like I was, not to mention inexperienced, young love can be quite exhilarating. My gym routine was sacrificed in the name of spending more time with her, and of course courtship involves dinners out, and takeout order in. She was also a professionally trained chef and a foodie, so we both enjoyed the finer things. By the time our wedding started to approach a year and a half later, I had ballooned back up to 200 pounds.

Another determined stretch of the Atkins diet got me back down to 180 pounds, and barely into the swim trunks she'd bought for our honeymoon. After that it was a slow reappearance of the pounds. In April of 2007 I came to Mobile, AL for what was supposed to be 6 months and left her up north. Left to fend for myself in a land of good fried food, I packed on the pounds quickly, from 225 all the way to 247.

A "Fat Elvis" drivers license photo sparked another serious diet that got me back to around 220 pounds. In the time since, I've stayed in Mobile as my job assignment was extended. The wife and I divorced, as absence did not make the heart grow fonder. I've dieted off and on, but have pretty much oscillated between 220 and 230 pounds since then. So that's the past.