...Losing Weight

I'm fat, plain and simple.  Nine years ago when my wife got pregnant with our beautiful little girl, I weighed 170 lbs.  Two months ago when Kate was diagnosed with her breast cancer, I was 204 lbs.  This morning when I stepped on the scale I was 226.5 lbs.  I look about seven months pregnant.  I need to sit to put on my pants and my shoes.  When I walk, my spare tire seems to defy the laws of physics by jiggling in multiple directions at the same time.

When I get stressed, I stuff food down my gullet with wild abandon.  My wife's cancer is very stressful, for her, and if you'll excuse the self-idulgence, for me.  Our calendar is filled with medical appointments, so I have little time to fit in a workout.  On top of that, I am suffering from a rather serious and protracted bout of soul-crushing, energy-sucking depression and everything takes a Herculean effort to get done (including blogging, which gets done sentence by sentence over the course of hours and days).  One of the antidepressants I am on (Myrtazapine) is apparently notorious for increasing appetite and I'm afraid broccolli does not have the same appeal as, say, chocolate.  In between appointments I like to sleep eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen hours a day, leaving little time for even modest exercise.  Depression sucks, but that's another blog topic for another day.

Bottom line is that I need to lose weight.  Some vanity is at work here.  I don't like the way I look.  More important, I worry about the impact the extra weight could have on my health.  I gnash my teeth at the thought of getting diabetes, or heart disease, or whatever else carrying an extra 40 pounds could mean.  I'm hoping that by blogging about losing weight I will actually force myself to do something to change by being accountable to my admittedly modest - make that very modest - readership.  So off I go to have nap - upstairs in my bedroom.  At least I'll get the extra twenty steps in.

Stay tuned.  In the coming weeks I hope to write about some work projects:  Sewing a pair of lounging pants (and breaking down some gender stereotypes in the process, I hope), making a tool chest for underneath my workbench, making a wood cane and maybe some carving projects.