Should I Lose Some Weight? No Diggity!

HOLY CRAP I ACTUALLY DID A PODCAST OF THIS
After typing up what follows below, I dusted off my recording equipment and made an audio version of this post. It's not a word-for-word reading of the transcript, so it will be somewhat different than the text, but it will still be 15 minutes of your life that you'll never get back. Click to listen — at your own peril!

AND NOW, THE ACTUAL POST
I weighed myself this morning: exactly 163 pounds. As 2010 ended I came close to breaching the 170-pound barrier, a barrier made of dark chocolate peppermint bark, but I've kept the fat at bay. I decided to buckle down and exercise more and eat a little better, and the fruits and vegetables of my labor have resulted in my hovering in the 161-163 range rather than the 165-167 range. Not a huge difference, but not bad for a couple months.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, unless you're the type who shouts your thoughts while reading a blog, "How dare you complain about your weight?! I would kill someone to weigh 163 pounds. That is, I would kill someone and then fight the urge to eat him!"

WHO ARE YOU CALLING FATTY?
Granted, I'm not morbidly obese. I'm not chubby. I'm not corpulent. I'm not Rubenesque. I'm not Peter Ustinovalicious. But often I feel as if I'm — to paraphrase the band Blackstreet's best-known (and to my knowledge, only) hit, "No Diggity" — rolling with the fatness. Spelled not with a PH, but with an F. For Fat.

A DIGRESSION
When I consulted Wikipedia to get the correct spelling of Blackstreet (and learned that the band name is "often stylized as BLACKstreet"; thanks for clearing that up!), I was amazed to learn two things, neither of which had anything to do with the two spellings of the band name, a fact I'd classify less as "amazing" than as "huh...whatever":

• The band is still active
• "No Diggity" is 13 years old

No doubt.

According to Wikipedia, the band has released four "regular" albums plus a greatest hits album, called No Diggity: The Very Best of Blackstreet, the contents of which, for all I know, is "No Diggity" a dozen times.

The band expects to release a new album this year, which the Wikipedia author is calling 5th Studio Album. I really hope that that's not a placeholder, and 5th Studio Album is the actual name, and it's the actual name only because someone wrote down 5th Studio Album as a placeholder and the cover went to press by accident before the real name was written down.

And when you consider that their first four albums were titled Blackstreet, Another Level, Finally, and (I'm not making this up) Level II, you could argue that 5th Studio Album would be an improvement.

(Why didn't Level II directly follow Level? And shouldn't it be Level III because Another Level was actually the second level?)

(Plus, having an greatest hits album called "The Very Best" kind of lowers the bar for anything afterward, no?)

I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THOSE POUNDS I HAVE TO LOSE
Anyway. The start of Lent is compelling me to make some more changes in my life. Truly obese people will hate me for saying this (and for the fact that I can beat them in "fastest one gets the donut" competition) but I think it's easier to drop weight when you start off with more to lose. That is, when you've got one fat foot in the Grand Canyon-sized grave, you are forced to make drastic changes in your lifestyle, and even if you take baby steps, like eating six Baconators for lunch instead of your usual 12, you will see some results.

When I watch The Biggest Loser, which I sometimes call And I Thought *I* Had It Rough, the most successful contestants realize that incremental steps just ain't cutting it, and it's time for a complete life overhaul, and not just in terms of how much mayonnaise they can scrape out of the jar with a stale crust of garlic bread.

That's why losing weight is just the first step, a doorway that opens (and that you can now fit through) to reveal that you can make other important changes in your life.

As for me, I'd like to lose 10 pounds and finish one of my writing projects. I'm not saying that those 10 pounds are causing procrastination or writer's block, but I think if I'm able to use discipline in my diet, I will build up the discipline to keep my ass in the seat and write, not waste my time doing non-writing things.

(Note: This blog currently counts as writing! I think.)