FatMan Returns (again)

So... um... long time no see. Yes it's been about a year since I've updated this blog but I think it's time to start updating it more frequently to serve as some sort of motivation for my never-ending attempt to look less hideous than I currently do. But before we discuss the present or the future, let's do a quick recap of my past and what the FatMan has been up to over the last year:

In July of 2012 I tipped the scales at a portly 260 pounds. I couldn't walk without pain, I was wearing XXL clothes and I was often mistaken for a beached whale. Enter my doctor who instructed me to go on a diet of 1500 calories a day. I immediately thought two things:
1.) He's nuts
2.) I bet I don't eat THAT much more than 1500 calories a day

I was wrong on both counts... a lot. By Thanksgiving of 2012 I was under 200 pounds for the first time since high school. I looked good, I felt good, life on the whole was heading in a positive direction. Then 2013 happened. Here now is a brief synopsis of my last 16 months in no particular order:

I developed a bad case of panic attacks, I visited the emergency room twice and something called the Crisis Stabilization Unit once. I went to see a cardiologist, a neurologist, and a psychiatrist. I got really cool brain scans, and eventually I was diagnosed with a mental disorder (yay me). I left my old school, started working at a new school, then lost my career all together before finding two brand new careers that are far less stressful. I was in court twice, paid a law firm an insane amount of money, was publicly smeared in a scandal that actually made the nightly news, and completed a rather ambitious home improvement project. I surrounded myself with lots of new people that made me feel good, got rid of a lot of people that made me feel bad. I got angry, got depressed, got really depressed, got insanely happy, then got depressed again... then the next day I would start all over again.  I got involved in community theater again, appeared in 5 shows, won an award, got a lot of compliments and made a ton of new friends. My relationship status fluctuated between "happily married" to "it's complicated" to "are you f-ing kidding me" and hit virtually every stop in between. I ran in (and completed) 4 5K's, lost 10 pounds and for one shining moment was under 190 pounds, before gaining 20 pounds and landing on the wrong side of 200 pounds again. Hence the reboot on this blog.

As you can see, it's been a rather eventful ride and yet somehow I'm still standing upright and smiling (occasionally). But I have a few lofty goals that I want to reach and I'm hoping that by sarcastically updating this blog on a semi-regular basis I can stay on the straight and narrow.

Goal #1- Lose 20 pounds before I fly back home to NH on vacation at the end of July. As of this morning I weighed exactly 210 pounds which means I want to be 190 pounds when my vacation starts. This means I will actually have to pay attention to what I eat from now on (dammit), make a concerted effort to work out more often (dammit), and somehow avoid temptation despite the fact that I'm now working at a restaurant that serves the best Italian food in all of Cape Coral (double dammit).

Goal #2- To run in (and complete) a 10K. As a few of my running friends have told me... "If you can run 3 miles, running 6 miles is easy." As a former math teacher I am largely skeptical of this statement but I will defer to their experience on this. There is a 10K in October that I am tentatively looking at, which means I have 5 months to round myself into some kind of shape.

Today I made it to the gym and so far I've only eaten a fairly healthy PB&J sandwich. And I'm not working at the restaurant tonight so I won't be tempted by cake and bread and pizza and basically every enemy my diet has. So that's a start.