The When

So, how long do I plan on doing this? How long am I going to be eating shakes, working out, dieting? Forgive me for using a quite, but it's a really powerful line from one of my favorite movies from one of my favorite actors.

"You're not going anywhere, you thick lump. You stay until the job's done."

Did I just quote Brad Pitt on my supposedly serious diet blog, while simultaneously revealing him to be one of my favorite actors? You're damned right I did.

But yes, I plan to stick with this until I reach my goal. In a lot of ways, I'm always going to be on this diet; it's not about hitting a certain goal and then slowly ballooning back up to my current size. It's about a complete and total life restructuring, curbing my negative tendencies while replacing them with positive ones. Will I always be on the shakes? No. Will I always focus on being healthy enough to live a "normal", active life? Yes.

Now, if you're looking for some hard and fast dates, there are some specific events I'm hoping to slim down by.

Foremost on this list would be my cousin Cathy's wedding. She's been my closest and best friend since early childhood and she's finally getting married. It's going to be a huge shindig and she's invited me to be part of the wedding group. I want to look good, slim, proper and downright smooth in the wedding pictures. I'm not saying that heavyset people can't look good in their own bodies, but I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror that morning and know, confidently, that I've done my best to look suave for my cousin's big day. Whether I do that at 180 or 350 is irrelevant.

So, as for her big day:



Another goal is that this summer Archer's coming out and he's really excited to go to Disneyland. Now, you'd think this would eb nothing but good news, but at my size it's really nothing but... stress. I don't know if I'll fit in those rides, or if I'll have the energy to run around BOTH parks all day long. So, to that end, I'm trying to lose as much weight as possible and at the same time raise my energy levels to make sure my son has as much fun as possible that day. Last time I was on the shakes, I slimmed down enough to fit in the rides, and it was in roughly the same amount of time I'm going to have now.