I hopped on the scale yesterday morning and was gratified to see it read 183.4 lbs. That’s down from 200 two months ago.
You’re asking yourself, “But how did you do it? Atkins? Starvation?” Neither. I’ve identified three key areas that resulted in my successful bid to shed my winter weight gain:
- No beer
- More biking
- Smaller meals
Well, maybe not no beer, but I cut way back, sad as that prospect is. I’ve been biking to and from work, sometimes even over the lunch hour, as much as possible.
But the smaller meals is the real foundation of the plan. As I pointed out to Leah’s family when we were sitting down to a meal of Mabe’s pizza in Decorah recently (imagine a bunch of Norwegians trying to replicate a Totino’s frozen pizza by hand, and doing a poor job of it), instead of ordering myself a large pizza and consuming it all in one sitting, I’ll just have three or four pieces. I eat more veggies and fruit. Cup of green tea every morning and a banana or whatever else is around and quick; I fried up two XL eggs this morning and had half a banana.
In the end it’s really just a matter of discipline. Did I really need to eat eight hot dogs at a sitting? No. Of course now that the biking has kicked my metabolism up a notch, there’s more room for indulging now and again if I feel like it. I’m just glad that it’s summer and there’ll be so many good things to indulge in when the mood does strike. I think I could probably eat BBQ chicken for every meal and not get tired of it.
The most important development to arise from this process has been Leah’s banishment of my “Big Boy” pants to the deepest, most remote reaches of our closet. They’ve been replaced by what I’ve dubbed my “Little Boy” pants, which Leah picked up for me recently at the mall. They’re exactly like my Big Boy pants in every way, save they’re two waist sizes smaller.