Rolf Danner

I just reread my first entry from back in April. Such enthusiasm and commitment. Well, I said it, wrote it down and I’m sticking with it. Again I’m approaching the half way mark, in good spirits and, I believe, without gimmicks. Will I make it beyond the so far elusive 180-pound barrier? Will I take strength from the Olympic games, that opened today to do what every athlete needs to do? Stick with the plan even when it gets hard? With a dinner party planned for tomorrow, will I politely nibble on the wonderful fare we are planning to provide and sip the wine that we will have? Right now I’m asking for a one-day waver from my promise to forgo alcohol and desserts. It’s a social obligation.

The big difference between April and now is that six months have shrunken to about two and a half. Not much time left for detours but still doable. If I kept up my rate of two pounds per week I should be there in about six weeks. Which leaves about four weeks to spare. If you read back to my first article, you’ll also see that any weight of 177 or less would be in the goal range. And no, I didn’t go back and edit the entry. That’s only 4 pounds from here. Even closer. While I’m at it, I should probably come clean by mentioning that my starting weight of 190.5 in April was not the highest I came in at recently. Some time in February the scale registered around 195. And that was after I eased off on the chow for a while before I dared to step on the scale. Today I’m 14 pounds lighter and 56 percent towards my goal. Calculating from the official 190.5 point I’m 46 percent there. Let’s call this about half way.

Looking for a bit more of positive feedback I wanted to know how much 14 pounds really were. I picked up a footstool from the bedroom, hoisted it on my shoulders and stepped on the scale. I hope the neighbors weren’t watching. The thing is pretty hard to hold up like that. 20 pounds. That’s a little too heavy to represent my progress but a pretty darn good image to illustrate the goal. I’ve set out to drop a footstool! I imagine having this tied to my back at all times and I swear never to touch sugar again, or at least for a while.

Abandoning the search for the perfect piece of furniture, I turn to my bookshelf. Some careful experimenting yields that so far I have lost a boxed edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s Kosmos, Landscape Plants for Western Regions together with The Lord Won’t Mind by Gordon Merrick. Yes, I am a geeky gay guy who once wanted to plant a garden that sucked up less water. They are all good reads and references in case you are interested. The remaining eleven pounds could be a two-volume encyclopedia of astronomy, Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World and The Chicago Manual of Style, all in hard cover. I did go for the heavy hitters on the shelf. Paperbacks would have been just too awkward. Besides, I’m not ready to admit publicly what I read on long airplane rides.

By the way, the hardcover version of The Abs Diet weighs in just under one pound and four ounces. So I’m to lose between 1 and two copies a week to get to 170 in six weeks. I think I’ll leave at that for now. Next week, the measuring tape comes out.