My bestest friend Sra recently gave me a CD with some pictures she’s taken over the last couple of years at various outdoorsy things we’ve done. This particular picture struck me hard as I looked at it though, because it completely tells the tale of why I’m dieting to lose the GIANT gut I’ve acquired.

This shot was taken a while ago when we were up on Antelope Island, which juts out into the Great (WTF is that smell?) Salt Lake. I was at my most massive then, at around 210. As you can see, it’s horrifying. I didn’t have a clue myself until I saw this picture.

At first, I thought that perhaps the wind had gotten up into my shirt and puffed it out. It was a pretty windy day, after all. However, upon closer inspection, my arms are actually pinned up to my sides as I hold the rock in anticipation of some serious (albeit unsuccessful) skippage on the water in the background. So I guess I can’t use that excuse. Also note the roundness of the face and the plump cheeks. Frightening! There is a little wind puffage in the shirt, but 99% of that bulk is pure me. Sad, I know.

Many of my readers are looking at this picture going, “well, that’s just some normal fat guy on a beach.” However, my friends back home and those who have known me in the past are saying, “DAAYYYYYYYYUUM!” I know, I know. It’s pretty bad.

The real kicker came to me a month or so ago during the Bountiful parade up north. I volunteer some of my time as a cadet in the 501^st Legion as a spotter and photographer. The 501^st is a charity costuming organization based on Star Wars characters, and the costumes they wear really draw crowds and put smiles on the faces of many people, and help raise a good deal of money to boot. Typically, I’ll shoot some video during parades to use later in PR and DVD presentations to promote the group, but this time I turned the video camera over to my friend while I took stills. She did a spectacular job too, much better than I normally do, but upon watching the video when I got home I’d notice that on occasion a huge, blobby creature would lumber into frame during the walk at various times. I had to wrack my brain for a second, thinking, when did we get a Jabba the Hutt costume? Until I realized it was me! AAAAHHH! I made up my mind that very day to change.

So far it’s working. I’m down to 198lbs and lost an inch or two in circumference. I can see some definition starting to creep back into the layers of fat, and I feel healthier than I have in years. Just gotta keep it going.  I will be again be a sexy beast!  I just need to buckle down.

No more Humongosaurus!

Ok, firstly… let me apologize for the crappy picture.  I know it’s in my bathroom, and I know the angle is weird, but honestly, the best light is in the bathroom and the angle was an artistic indulgence.  Please forgive.  As for the quality of the picture, well I’ve never been one for self-portraits anyway, so point&shoot blurry with blown-out highlights is the new cool.

The whole reason I took the picture, despite my non-photogenic-ness, is to show you the new color of my skin as of tonight.  I had to restrain myself and forego my usual tendency to Photoshop the shit out of everything so as to give you an accurate representation.  Yes, my neck (and to a slightly lesser degree my face) really is that red.  Bright, shiny, almost pulsating red.  My forearms and my calves are roughly the same color as well, and oh boy is it just as painful as it looks.  No Photoshop trickery.

Wear your sunscreen kids.  Let my pain be a lesson to you all.  Well, those of you that are mutant redheads like me.  Whereas most people can develop a pleasing tan in the summer, my skin is one of two colors.  I get:  Pasty white, or bright red.  Sometimes, like now for instance, I get to be both at the same time!  So much fun!  I won’t be wearing a collared shirt for a couple of days.  (Like I would anyway, sheesh.)

So I forgot the sunscreen.  Kinda sucks, but in trade I got a wonderful day with my friend Sra at the Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake, up behind the University of Utah.  Such a cool place!  There is a botanical garden and arboretum near the front, and tons of hiking trails behind that going up a little ways into the mountains.  You know I love the hiking, and I’ve finally gotten used to hills and terrain, so the exercise benefit is quite extraordinary without all the wheezing (or less wheezing at least.)  Plus, the scenery and the view over the valley is exceptional too.  Exquisite!  After hiking the trails for a couple of hours, we hit the gardens for some shade.  Sadly, summer in Utah isn’t conducive to happy plants, so there was some much needed work to be done, but a few of the flowers were in full bloom and quite interesting to see.  There were also some interesting animal-shaped hedges, some indigenous fauna scampering about, and a couple of rowdy kids chasing ducks.  (I was hoping the kids would fall into the lake, but no such luck.)  A very cool place, and I recommend it highly to anyone visiting Utah.

Just make sure and bring your sunscreen.

Sigh…  Yesterday was a bad day diet-wise.  It started out great, with the revelation that another pound had been shed.  That makes seven pounds now in four weeks, and I’m ecstatic at the progress, but things went downhill after that.

I just got so hungry, you see.  I looked around my house, but nothing seemed appetizing.  I’m at a point in my diet now where I’m sick of eating the same things over and over.  I need to branch out a little bit, but being the World’s Pickiest Eater is definitely a bad point.  Nothing sounded good at all, and I kept torturing myself thinking about food.  I wanted something different.

I tried so hard to ignore it.  I tried so hard to put the thoughts aside, but the pain was too much.  The intense hunger crashed through my previously un-breakable willpower like the Kool-Aid man crashing though a brick wall.  I resisted so hard, but I just couldn’t do it.  I HAD to get some food… I HAD to.  And it couldn’t be a freaking sandwich or a lame salad.  I wanted substance.

Despite leaving a comment on Claire’s blog just earlier in the afternoon about not having been in a fast-food joint in a month, I broke down.  I couldn’t take it anymore, and I needed a fix.  I ended up at Fazoli’s and had me a plate of spaghetti and a breadstick, and damn was it ever delicious.  At least it wasn’t a massive fatty burger.  In the end, I still came in under my max calories for the day, so not all was lost.  It was a close one though.

Why is it, when the price of oil goes up, that gas station employees are immediately on the ladder outside with the little magnetic numbers raising the prices, sometimes within hours of any announced spike in oil prices?  Yet when the price of oil drops, as it has recently, the price at the pump doesn’t even move?

According to the news, the price of a barrel of oil has dropped by record levels twice in the last two weeks.  It’s something like $10 or $12 dollars less than it was a couple of weeks ago.  However, the price of gasoline hasn’t budged at all.  Not one penny.

If however, some news agency reports that the price of oil has gone up even a small amount, like $1.00, the price of gas immediately ratchets up a few cents. 

Tell me again there’s no conspiracy, or that gas prices have anything at all to do with supply and demand.  It’s pure, greedy bullshit.

I believe it’s impossible to flip an egg without breaking the yolk.  I like eggs, and I like them over easy.  They don’t fit into my diet too well, except in extreme moderation.  If I only eat one at a time, and maybe two or three a week, the benefits of eggs far outweigh the downsides.  However, I’ll be damned if I can flip one over without breaking the yolk, which is severely disappointing, because I like to dip the bread in the yolk and eat it that way.  It’s my favorite part of the egg, (although I do eat it all.)  Try as I might, I just can’t do it.  I therefore believe it’s simply physically impossible.  It pisses me off.