Presently I’m weighing in at 183 pounds.  This is down from 205 at the start of my diet a little over two months ago (July 11th, to be exact.)  I’m three pounds from the goal weight I set for myself, and I’m feeling and looking much better.

There are a couple of issues though, and I’ll address them here.  One, I look much thinner, especially in the upper body area.  Shirts tend to hang on me now, whereas they used to sort of “form fit.”  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s disappointing to me because I spent much of my 20s ridding myself of the “skinny” look.  It was to be expected, I guess.  The second issue is that all my pants are loose.  You might laugh, but this is a real problem.  I don’t like wearing belts, and I actually have a couple pairs of shorts that literally hang down all Gangsta Rap style now, unless I belt them up.  It sucks, because I don’t want to buy new pants.  Of course, I surely don’t wanna be fat again either, so I suppose it’s either new pants or a belt.  I’ll have to adjust.

Phase one is almost over.  Phase two is to up the calories considerably (from my average of 1700 per day now to about 3500) and hit the gym.  The goal now is to replace the 20 or so pounds of fat that I lost with lean, sexy muscle.  I’m looking forward to this part immensely, because I get to blend up some tasty protein shakes, consume mass quantities of pizza, and sling some iron.  Of course, I need to think it through better this time.  When I was 19, it was nothing for me to do a workout, play basketball (badly) for an hour, go to class (maybe), and come back the next day for more.  Now that I’m almost twice that age, it won’t be quite so easy.  For one, my body chemistry has changed, so I need to re-think my supplementation routine.  I intend to use creatine and an amino stack, and I gotta get the numbers right.  It’s not as simple as it was years ago.  Two, I don’t recover from workouts anywhere near as fast as before.  I also need to consider that my testosterone levels have probably dropped severely in the last 17 years.  I won’t build muscle as fast or retain it as well.  I’ve never seriously attempted to build muscle as an old man, so this should be interesting.  Perhaps I’ll log it and blog it.

I’m not aiming to be the Hulk.  I just want a nice, lean body with a decent chest and well-defined arms and shoulders.  That’s not so bad, right?  According to recent measurements, I’ve lost a little over two inches on my upper arms in the past ten years or so, so I’d like to get that back.  They were just over 17 inches before, so maybe I can hit 18 this time!  Three inches can’t be that hard, and that would be cool.  My chest is a different story.  It was never that big to begin with, so I need to do a lot of work there.  We’ll see what happens.

Can you tell I’m excited?  I want desperately to be in good shape again.  In four years, I’ll be 40, and I intend to be in better shape at 40 than I was at 20.  I think I can do it too, I just need to keep it up.  I shall again be a sexy beast.

I can understand pants shrinking soon after you buy them.  Usually a wash or two produces a slight variation.  Generally, it’s not enough to make a noticeable difference, especially after you put them on and wear them for a little while.  My pants don’t shrink after the wash though, it seems like they loose some size every week or two for unfathomable reasons.  I can see that some of them are ripped a bit at the bottom of the legs and have patches that are a bit worn, and that’s fine because pants are supposed to have a “lived in”, comfortable feel.  But my pants just feel tighter somehow.

Perhaps it’s the mountain water.  Maybe mountain water has some sort of shrinking effect on pants.  Shirts and socks and everything else seem to be mostly immune, but pants are the targeted victims.  Every couple weeks or so, they get a little bit smaller around the waist.  It’s a conundrum, to be sure.

Damn, I’m hungry again.  I’m going to go get something to eat while I ponder the mystery of the shrinking pants.