wrestling for control
January 30, 2006, 6:04 P.M.

My bro-in-law, JR, is a funny guy.

He�s a freak for Vegas. He�s out there 4-6 times a year, he knows a lot of folks in the Casino industry, he subscribes to all kinds of magazines and newsletters that keep him on top of what�s what out there. But.

If I ask him straight out for Vegas recommendations�stuff to do, shows to see, etc., he acts all burnt out on the subject and isn�t any help at all.

However; if you tell him that you don�t want to go, that you�re sick of Las Vegas, and there isn�t anything to do there but smoke and drink and gamble and eat?

He becomes the frickin� Chamber of Commerce.

He recommended several afternoon shows, filled me in on who all will be in town when I�m there, and tipped me off to some great entertainment values. He even offered to call his buddy at Wynn and get me VIP seats for �Avenue Q�.

I heart my funny little bro-in-law. He is helping me turn this trip around into something I might really enjoy.

AND there were phone calls involved. CONFERENCE calls. Not something I take kindly to under normal circumstances, and certainly not when I have zero preparation.

Oh, I took it on, handled it, and generally tried to be Miss Helpful. But?
Memo to GTTMP: Telling me that you got this stuffed on you at the last minute doesn�t in any way give you a pass to dump it on me at the last minute.

I light of this decision, I need to first come clean with myself, face the scale, and face the music:

264 pounds.

That number represents several months of depression and binge eating, carbo-craving, daily chocolate fixes, and refusal to exercise. But I don�t want to play anymore. I want to get back to work. No blame, no recriminations, no looking back on what went wrong. I know what went wrong, and am taking action to fix it. It's time for a fresh, clean start.

And I want to re-focus on my original goal from August 2004: I want to feel better.

25 pounds. Just 25 pounds, so I can feel better. Where I go from there, I�ll worry about later. My �long-term goal� is 25 pounds. Because I need to pick a number to work towards.

But the real goal is just to physically feel better!

(My more immediate, vanity-based goal is to lose 10 pounds between today and the day we leave for Vegas 26 days from now. I want my swimsuit to fit, dammit.)

And I decided to keep a daily food/water/exercise diary (in another location)because I'm only successful when I'm keeping track.

The appetite seems to receding on this stuff. The constant, overwhelming feeling that I need to eat!eat!eat!eat!eat! all the time? Not so much.

Which leads to a new, and different feeling. The feeling that something�s amiss, or something�s a-missing. When you are used to feeling something, and you don�t feel it anymore, it seems like something�s wrong�weird�off-kilter. Even when it is a bad thing you were feeling. So I feel just as empty, and at loose ends, but for a different reason. I think I�m just in a period of adjustment where a void has been created, but nothing has popped up to fill it yet.

As for side effects, the stuff doesn�t make me dizzy, and it doesn�t make me drowsy, and it doesn�t make me hyper. (Yet, anyway.) But it does give me, almost immediately upon taking it, sharp and nasty stomach pains. But they don�t last long.

And it may be constipating, but with my history in that department, that symptom could be purely coincidental.

I have yet to feel like I don�t want to smoke, however. But that may be because it takes less of this drug to successfully treat depression than it does to get folks off smokes.

I know I�m supposed to wait a week or two before I evaluate results, but I�m impatient. And disappointed, even though I know it�s too gawdamn early to make a judgment.

Because I just don�t notice anything yet in the perking-up department.

22 Minutes
1.12 Miles
157 Calories
Weekly weigh-in (baseline): 264 lbs.

Woof. That treadmill session took more out of me than I'd expected. Cripes, am I out of shape.