Don't Eat Candy, Chips, or Chocolate At Work

This is obvious. It just shouldn't be done. It's a very momentary pleasure followed by an afternoon of feeling like crap until you can leave work and exercise. And yet, here I am, fresh off consuming two-thirds of a sour patch watermelon container, dealing with a low-level headache and the general lethargy of a sweets hangover. Idiocy!

The worst part is that before I leave, I'm going to throw the rest of the candy out or give it away to prevent myself from eating it tomorrow. I'm really big on teaching myself lessons in advance. When I make my sandwich for lunch the night before, I'll refrain from adding mayonnaise or mustard in order to keep my tomorrow-self free from the fat of condiments. But when I take the sandwich from the fridge around noon the next day, I'm always pissed at my last-night-self for being such a stingy dick. And so I'll give in to the temptation and buy a bag of sun chips or sneak into one of the manager's offices to help myself to four miniature Snickers bars. If only future-Shane was as steadfast as present-Shane, I'd probably be some kind of American sex icon.*

*Highly likely.

To be fair, I've been getting better at this. But it still pisses me off around 3pm when I realize that instead of sticking to my normal lunch, I caved and created "extra" food to work off. My yoga class could have been all bonus, I think, all weight loss and wellness gain. Instead, I'm contorting my body and sweating gallons of weight just to work off the corn-syrupy sugar concoctions shaped and colored like a tiny watermelon wedge.

On that note, not a day goes by when I don't thank God I'm not a girl. I would have so many body issues that I would have gone nuts by the time I was fifteen. I'm not sure whether I'd have ended up emaciated and bird-like, pecking at pieces of mueslix, or bloated to 900 pounds, stuck on a couch and waiting to be air-lifted, but definitely one of the two. Either way, I'd be on Oprah for sure.

And in this way, we can understand the plight of the Phoenix Suns, who...

Just kidding, I don't have a sports connection to this. Except that it's time for this aging dude to get healthy. I was motivated by reading Drew Magary's piece on his public humiliation diet yesterday, and while I'm not quite at the chunkster level of his before picture, I could stand to drop twenty pounds. Like Drew, I have no problem exercising on a consistent basis. It's the eating!

That being said, I'm going to follow his example and list my fighting weight at the bottom of every morning post. It'll just be a number. As of this morning, I clocked in at 216 (I'm 6'1"). The goal is 195. It's on, baby! Target date is July 4th, when I will hopefully celebrate my independence from weight that I put on during the second semester of my junior year at college, and have never shed (except for a short period four years ago when I had mono and didn't have full meals for a good two months...but that's cheating).

So. 216.