sub 2... hundred.

Submitted by 8r4d on March 13 2023

If I had ever considered myself a thin guy, I wouldn't be writing blog posts about dieting would I?

I come from thick people.

Growing up, we would be encouraged to "get our money's worth" at all-you-can-eat buffets.

Extended family gatherings were eating contests crowned by rites of passages around how many plates of food the guys could eat.

My aunts would walk around and pat the bellies of their husbands and then turn to their nephews ask how "their family gut" was coming along.

I could go on.

By the time I finished high school, my five foot eleven frame was comfortably sitting around the 190 pound mark. By the time I'd finished university, my weight was a number that started with a 2.

I've alluded to my first diet in previous posts, but in 2013 I decided (for various reasons) to get into better shape. It was tied to vanity, of course, but also I'd been running and wanted to tackle the marathon (for the first time) and knew I couldn't do it with my weight in the 200s.

So I dropped about 25lbs and for a couple years I hung back at about 190. Not thin, but solid. And I hung out there long enough to do crazy things like replace my wardrobe and resize my wedding band and get comfortable being a guy who was under 200lbs for a while.

Life intervened. I've alluded to this progression, too. A pound a year for a few years, then a couple big pushes due to job change, stress, and the infamous covid-15 weight gain. Then a knee injury topped me out over this past Christmas to the point I was like "enough is enough" and have been working through the last month and a half to drop some of that weight again.

This series is called twenty-pounds Canadian, partially in reference to a joke from a sitcom I heard where, dig it, a British guy was hinting for a tip ("maybe if you could stand to lose five pounds") while the American took it as a slight at his weight... and partially to the literal "Canadian guy looking to lose 20 pounds..." even though we weigh everything here in kilograms.

I was trying to get back into the 190s, and specifically a modest target of 195lbs for Easter... when my marathon training-proper will begin.

And so it brings me great excitement to write here that for the last two days I've seen a number on the scale that starts with a one instead of a two...

...which amazingly puts my "confident to report" status at… 15 down, 5 to go, and 24 days until my training starts.

I'm sitting here this morning, getting ready for work, fitting into clothes I haven't worn in a few years because they sat funny and tugged in awkward ways, and pondering that I might be close to nailing this thing as a success story.

I mean, I still have multiple weeks to go, and a couple little hurdles to overcome, but part of me wants to pat myself on the back and say... this, even this, seventy-five percent of the way to my goal is rock solid progress. Because it is. And those numbers, as arbitrary and relatively mediocre as they are, are little milestones of progress for me towards the first step in completing this damn marathon in October: not bringing the buffet with me to the finish line.