Starting with a new year!

It's so cliche to enter into a weight loss promise with the turn of the year, but here I am, doing just that. I've done this before, in fact too many times to mention. But this time is different, I tell myself.
But it is different in a way. This is the first time I have gone this public with it. It's like all the times I quit smoking, by resolving to myself to do so. When I went back to it, no one really knew I had tried and failed, so no real harm was done in my eyes. Once I started telling people I had quit, I had to stick to it or face the wrath of their scorn. It worked, to have the peer pressure working in my favor.
So it goes with my latest weight loss endeavor. I am currently 185 pounds, and not at all happy about it. Normally, that wouldn't be too bad for a 43 year old man, but I am only 5'5", so every extra pound really shows. Short is what I am, and I can't change that. Short and fat is something I don't want to be, and I can at least work on the fat part. Oh, and in a cruel twist of fate, I am also bald. Thanks, Higher Power; short, fat, and bald. Hilarious.
A bit of history would also be good to insert here: I have always struggled with weight, all through childhood. I was never athletic, and didn't want to be. We didn't have the sedentary-inducing distractions kids have today like video games, computers, etc... so we played outside. We were active all the time. I would ride my bike a mile to my friend's house just to see if he wanted to ride bikes, and then we would cover countless miles before returning home. I shudder to think of what a tub of lard I would have been if I were as inactive as many kids today are.
Shortly after getting married 23 years ago, I shot up to 200 pounds. That was at Christmastime, and I had had enough of all the Santa jokes (I had a bushy beard then too). By that following summer I was down to 150. I never felt so good! I did it by eating a bowl of cereal in the morning, brown-bagging a sandwich and chips for lunch, stopping by the YMCA for an hour or so on my way home from work every day, and then eating a Weight Watcher's microwave meal for dinner. If there was to be an evening snack, it was lite microwave popcorn. My wife and I walked around Lake Calhoun often too (3 miles), and sometimes treated ourselves to TCBY. Remember them?
Arriving at 150 was the best. I had done it. Case closed. No need to diet anymore. Bring on the pizza and beer. You know what happened next. I did the classic yo-yo routine, each time gaining 10 pounds for every 5 I would lose. I started to convince myself that this is the way it is, and I should just give up the struggle.
At my heaviest, I was 215. Picture it folks, 5'5" and 215. Eww. Disgusted with myself, I joined a gym, and worked my ass (literally) off. I got down to 160 and was thrilled! That was almost 2 years ago, but the economy forced me to let the gym membership go and along with it, my motivation to shave off those last 10 pounds. Ok, realistically 160 isn't bad for a guy like me, but I was really on a roll and felt great.
Now, 185. Dammit! 25 pounds added just like that. And it's not like I have been feasting on crap food all the time. I just like snacking, and sitting.

Hmmm, active and eating right vs. snacking and sitting.

So I plan to, no I pledge to make weekly entries here, posting my current weight. I don't know who will read this or the comments that will be made, but I'm throwing it all out there to see what happens. This should motivate me to continue and see it through.