So I started doing this challenge where by the end of six weeks, I’m supposed to be able to do 100 push-ups…

If you’re anything like me, the thought of doing 100 of just about anything is enough to bring sweat to your brow and make you reach for another cold can of Diet Coke in defeat, but in the name of fitness and weight loss and not being mistaken for Santa Claus whenever I wear red out in public for the next two months, it seemed like as good of a shot as any with New Years rapidly approaching and one particular resolution about an unfortunately large waistline that could still use a little work to wrap up.  The idea is actually pretty simple – you start off doing barely any at all, and then slowly add a few more reps each week until six weeks later you’ve got triceps the size of Christmas hams and you’re able to woo all the ladies through three layers of flannel with your amazing pecs!

Anyways, the concept was enough to intrigue me when I first came across it because just between you and me, I’ve never really been very good at doing push-ups.  Sure, we were expected to do them in gym class throughout the years, but not for nothing, we were also expected to be able climb that giant net that hung from the ceiling thirty feet up in the air, and yours truly probably never saw more than the first five feet of that sucker before slumping back to my spot on the floor to watch as my superior classmates who were actually born with upper body strength shimmied to the top like it wasn’t the scariest thing this side of catching cooties!

Surprisingly enough, not being able to climb a net hasn’t really held me back all that much in my adult life as my balding gym teacher would’ve liked me to believe…

Of course, my first week started out a bit modest, which is the polite way of saying laughable – you begin by taking a test to see how many push-ups you can do already to determine which “rank” you fall into going forward.  I did a whopping 4, which categorized me in rank #1, aka Rank “Are you sure you actually took the test?” Still, believe it or not things are actually looking up at the end of said week, with my final set boasting an impressive 6 push-ups in a row, not to mention a jaw-dropping 23 push-ups completed over the course of 5 sets!

Hey, a week ago I doubt I could’ve completed 23 push-ups over a million sets, so at this point I’ll take whatever progress I can get.

Who knows – another five weeks from now, you might not even recognize me anymore, as my Popeye-esque mus-cles skyrocket me into a world where t-shirts fit just a little bit tighter in a good way and guys no longer have to ask their wives to open pickle jars for them, where there just so happens to be a gun show happening every day, and where if I just so happened to wander by my old elementary school and ran into that old fart of a gym teacher of mine, I could totally climb that cargo net now if I really wanted to!

Tomorrow officially marks the start of week #2, so if you hear a faint cry from elsewhere around the globe that sounds like a guy whose arms are disintegrating under the weight of his own bulk, know that it’s just me toiling away at the challenge that is destined to either make me or break me … well, probably break me, but in the off chance that it makes me, then it will have all been worth it.

Have you ever noticed that 100 is a really big number???

I should’ve known better than to go outside this time of year!

But no, no – I had to be a hero, taking it upon myself to walk our hyperactive puppy around this quaint, suburban swampland of ours in the wee nighttime hours, completely oblivious to the fact that it’s during these times in the dark of night amidst a torrent of sweat and sore muscles that the bugs, they prey upon the weak and the out of shape.  Flying swift like miniature porcupines out for blood, they strike from all angles in a coordinated attack the likes of which this humble pincushion has never before seen, ultimately leaving behind a broken and very itchy shell of a man who’s now no doubt got a lot of calamine lotion to look forward to in his immediate future…

Here I thought I was safe walking around after dark, when that harmful sun of ours is off pestering the other side of the world and our temperatures here in Florida more closely resemble those of a simmering slow cooker as opposed to the blazing inferno that they tend to be during the day!  Besides, in theory exercise is always a good thing, both to try and burn off some excess energy for a wild and crazy beagle and of course, also to burn off a little excess me for, well, me, but little did I know that with every step towards a skinnier Scott and a calmer Cleo that we took, it also drove us forever deeper into the mosquitos’ nest where they would proceed to eat us alive with few regrets, except maybe that they didn’t each have multiple mouths with which they could’ve bitten us all the more!

Mind you, I don’t really know if dogs actually get mosquito bites or not, but just in case, I think it’s safe to say that I managed to get enough for the both of us … along with all of her brothers and sisters, as well as any random dogs that she’s “greeted” during her extensive puppy journeys throughout life thus far…

Something that would’ve been wonderful information to know ahead of time ­- apparently nighttime is actually feeding time for mosquitos, so that was strike one.  We walk right past a swamp, and really, Florida itself is basically just a giant swamp with strategically placed beaches and theme parks anyways, so our location of choice was strike number two.  Oh yeah, and I guess that sweat – you know, like the kind that a guy like myself tends to generate buckets of when he’s out walking for miles on end – sweat is pretty much the most potent of aphrodisiacs to these stinging, little sons of bitches, so you might say that being generally drenched in mosquito love bait ended up being strike 3, and that, as they say, was the last mistake that we would have a chance to make!

Back when I lived up in the vast forested woodlands of Northern Michigan, I used to think that the mosquitos up there were pretty bad, on account of having to be concerned about hitting them with your car and whatnot, but down south it’s a completely different story – instead of them being the size of BMWs and packing enough punch to eat through both your skin and the insurance deductible on your car in a single meal, in Florida they’re super tiny and as a result there are literally bajillions of them, hurtling their bloodthirsty brethren at unsuspecting victims like a handful of darts all lobbed haphazardly at the target in one fell swoop!

And don’t even think about those so-called “bug repellants” – as far as I can tell, all that stuff does is makes ‘em angry, and the only thing worse than a mosquito in general is one that for whatever reason happens to be angry with you…

Like walking through a wall of pain, their retribution was swift and merciless, sucking what seemed to be every last drop from my feeble veins like it was the only thing that stood between the lives of all generations of mosquitos present and future.  Swatting was futile, and at best also very messy when I might happen to catch one of my attackers just after filling up, but before actually flying away!

I laugh, partially because of the rewarding sound that they make as they go splat, but mostly because the sudden anemia makes just about anything seem funny right now…

Did I mention that we recently found WiiFit under our tree this Christmas?

Now I know I’m a little late to this Mario Party because it first came out in 2009, but for what it’s worth, I’ve just been really busy these last couple of years … binging on pizza and potato chips and all sorts of other horrible foods that have made me the super-sized hero in desperate need of exercise that I am today! In a way, you could say that I just wanted to be able to give the WiiFit a true workout, but let’s not kid ourselves … it is what it is, and now I’ve got a lot of virtual jogging ahead of me to get back to the original, 8-bit me that I strive to be…

Anyways, whatever the reason for my previous lack of digital encouragement, I’m here now and I’m ready to try video games as a means of finally getting off my butt and getting a little exercise.  It still sounds crazy even saying it now – video games, the same thing that has brought me hours upon hours of couch-based entertainment on a daily basis all of these years, is now supposed to turn face and become this magical motivator to get me off the couch and actually moving around to burn calories as well???  Then again, maybe it makes sense – after working with Mario and Link over the years to help save princesses and restore order to their own respective kingdoms, maybe it’s time for me to enlist the help of a virtual trainer to nag me about exercising everyday so that I can finally get my own kingdom in shape once again!

At least, that’s what the box eluded to anyways, although for what it’s worth, it didn’t say a thing about how round and Weeble-like my Mii was going to look…

So far I think I kind of like WiiFit, though – my personal trainer is really upbeat and positive, and she has yet to once criticize me for eating peanut butter straight out of the jar during my workout … for that extra burst of energy, you know.  Every now and then, the other trainer does show up and says that he needs to “fill in for my trainer,” though, which admittedly seems kind of weird, as if she’s up front grabbing another Gatorade or busy encouraging some other virtual client about the importance of not neglecting their virtual yoga or something!  Still, at the end of the day it’s nice to work with a trainer who’s only programmed with a limited number of ways to hint that I “need improvement,” unlike those muscle-bound jerks down at the gym who apparently “take their workouts seriously” and “don’t have time for goof-offs like me who just want to send stupid tweets about funny names for all of the positions.”

The Downward-Facing Dog?  Pelvic Tilts?!  I mean, come on – these things basically write themselves!

Besides, just looking at the huge variety of activities that I can do in WiiFit, it’s simply got so much more to offer a feeblish, new athlete like myself than the real world does!  Only in this virtual world do I get the opportunity to:

Jog Leisurely Around My Favorite Golf Courses
And by “favorite,” I mean the ones in WiiSports where I can often be found driving balls at random into the stupid waterfall, even though I checked the wind direction, like, three times already…

Tight Rope Walk
…between two really high buildings … without a safety net … and apparently halfway across, there’s this chompy thing that I have to jump over, too?! Seriously, I’m pretty sure that even those crazy guys in Cirque Du Soleil don’t train this way!

Hula Hoop
Trust me – nobody wants to see these hips make those motions in the real world!

Sure, just like in any workout, there are some things that you have to be careful for, like watching out for Goombas while you’re jogging or remembering to dodge left when those jerks start throwing their shoes at you in the soccer heading game, but in my book those virtual risks are still a lot more tolerable than anything with teeth that I might run across “outdoors!”

That said, it’s actually about time for another session right now – that’s one thing I will say about my trainer, she’s definitely a bit of a stickler for me being late!  Just as long as one of these days Bowser or Donkey Kong doesn’t show up to “fill in” for her, though, I think I might be able to get used to this after all…

Pardon me for just a moment…

29:58 … 29:59 … 30:00 – workout completed!

Whew – another job, well, done, anyways!  I’ve sweated, I’ve groaned, I’ve ached trying to crawl out of bed the next morning after working my body into a sore and exhausted mess, but of course, it’s all just another day in the life of a guy who recently bought a new exercise machine after feeling exceedingly guilty about never going down to the gym by conjuring up such brilliant excuses as “I can’t go now – it’s raining!”, “I can’t go now – it’s much too nice outside!”, and my own personal favorite, “Zzzzzzzzzz…”

It’ll all be different this time, though … at least that’s what I told myself when I was signing the credit card slip, and then again while wrestling its beastly box out of the car, and maybe even once or twice while we were sorting through the roughly 83,000 pieces scattered across the living room floor during the torturous “assembly process.” Buying a new piece of exercise equipment is like a new beginning – a chance to start over and make amends for previous weight loss transgressions, to get back in the ring and show those calories who’s boss, to finally prove to the world that maybe you’re not destined to always buy your pants from Olaf the Tentmaker after all – at least as long as this one doesn’t break like the last stupid piece of junk that we bought, anyways…

Oh, don’t even get me started on that embarrassing waste of money because it too seemed like a great idea at the time … right up until the night when it tried to buck me off halfway through an otherwise invigorating evening of hardcore elliptical’ing!  Conveniently just outside of its meager 1-year warranty period, it would’ve been more buckazoids to patch the wretched beast up than it would be to just buy a new one, so ultimately I had to put her down, and yet here we are again years later, still somewhat less than a model of physical health, ready and willing to plunk down even more money than ever to re-ignite that faint glimmer of hope for six-pack abs, buns of steel, or maybe even just not getting winded on my way to the kitchen for a second helping of dessert!

For what it’s worth, though, and feel free to call it flab-inspired wishful thinking if you’d like, but honestly this one does feel exponentially different than my last wild trip down the Slip ‘n Slide of home exercise equipment ownership.  It hasn’t broken and thrown me on my ass yet, which for starters is a big plus in my book.  It seems to be sturdy enough to actually support my jiggling stature, and on top of that, it even has all sorts of neat statistics that it can track while I’m working out – you know, like length of stride, effectiveness of gait, rate of wheezing – tons of useful stuff! (no pun intended)

It’s also got this neat built-in computer that has the ability to critique you while you’re working out – walk faster, try a harder incline, put down the Twinkie while you’re working out … it’s really only a few steps shy of one of those creepy, science fiction endings where they fade out to people getting whipped by robot overlords who’ve enslaved the human race.  But you know what?  I’ve been trying to lose this weight for years now – maybe it’s time to put my health in the hands of an emotionless Robo Motivator whose only desires are seeing me lose weight and a fresh jolt of 120 volts every now and then.  Frankly, at this point if it means finally being able to drop these unwanted pounds and say goodbye to snug swimsuit scenarios once and for all, I’ll be the first to line up on the treadmill and greet my deadly mechanical motivators with open arms!

Aside from the eventual carnage and destruction when they finally gain sentience and put us all on fitness programs that gravitate from treadmills and cardio towards mining and dying from exhaustion while mining, what’s the worst that could happen?!

I don’t know about you, but for this fair-weather fan of robotics, beach season has never felt closer – thanks, technology!

Ahhh, screw it – I’ll just do a few extra sit-ups tomorrow!

If you’re anything like me, you were one of the geniuses who triumphantly decided to take a stand this New Years and put taking better care of oneself on your list of resolutions, right between “Get really, really good at foosball” and “Figure out where that stench in the garage is coming from.”

Then again, if you’re exactly like me, you’re probably also finding yourself getting exceedingly frustrated by the lack of progress that you’ve been seeing as a result of said dietary and cardiovascular tortures, from the crunches and incessant jogging to the unyielding self-restraint in the delicious face of everyone else’s Chinese takeout lunches and overflowing hot fudge sundae desserts. All that hard work and dedication, and still we’re here just a trudging along with the figure of an inner-tube at best? I mean, seriously – what’s a guy gotta do to lose a few stupid pounds around here, anyways?!

Yes, that is the age-old question, far more important to our ever-bloating society than why the chicken crossed the road (to avoid getting eaten by fat Americans) or why hotdogs are sold in packages of ten while hotdog buns are sold in packages of eight (to remind us that we’re going to need extra to make up for that damn chicken getting away). Sure, it’s easy to put on a couple of dozen pounds by binging on cheeseburgers and pizza and hot wings and every other fast food staple that this overindulgent country was founded on – heck, your average over-eater doesn’t even need the holidays to round out that girlish figure, but then come swimsuit time, heaven forbid those pounds melt right back off like the butter did over tub after tub of movie theater popcorn in the several months prior. It’s like somebody stacked the deck in the tentmaker’s favor, I tell ya!

I guess if there’s but one thing that we can take from said savory sufferings in the name of seeing slimmer sizes, it’s the idea that while we may not necessarily be dropping massive amounts of actual weight while we’re sweating to the oldies and then subsequently forcing ourselves to eat food that really only appeals to people from that very same era, then maybe at least we can learn some valuable information about what sorts of things we can’t do to lose weight. I know that I sure have over the last eleven weeks, and call it trial and error … even if it does happen to be a bit heavy in the error category, but if merely one positive thing has come from this diet aside from all of the frequent flier points I’ve earned on my credit card for buying all of this so called “diet food,” at least I can now officially vouch that, among other things, the following do not help yours truly lose weight:

• having potato chips around the house
• living within a drivable vicinity of any establishment that makes, sells, or even rents potato chips
• writing the words potato chips over and over again in a column until my mouth is literally watering to the point of toweling requirements
• eating chocolate cake for breakfast…
• …and for lunch…
• …despite following it up with a reasonable dinner
• making what may seem to be justifiable excuses at the time to skip a day of exercise
• skipping a whole week’s worth of exercise with the intention of eating nothing but grass and working out 24 hours a day non-stop the following week to catch-up
• swearing off exercise in its entirety and vowing to remain fat forever after stubbing my big toe like the dickens on the corner of the elliptical, while also subsequently being a bad influence for children within shouting distance who don’t really need to be learning such 4-letter words at their age
• cashing in a 401k at what could be its lowest possible value to help gather the down payment for a shady, amateur liposuction treatment that seemed like a pretty good deal at the time on Craigslist
• sobbing uncontrollably for hours into the night at the sarcastic, offhand suggestion that it’s really better that I don’t lose weight because otherwise the planet might shift off balance and roll into the sun
• spending so much time putting together this stupid list instead of doing something a bit more physically demanding than typing and being hilarious on the Internet

Alrighty, folks – we’re officially in panic mode!

And boy, am I tired. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t even be taking the break to write the here column, but the way I see it, there’s only so much time that a guy can spend on an elliptical before his legs have officially turned to pudding, after which his ability to burn calories via exercise is greatly diminished because scientists have proven that one needs to be able to physically move for exercise to really be effective. My current goal is just enough to bring my legs to that pudding status, but not so much that it drives me into the kitchen in search of pudding because that actually does sound quite delicious right now. But alas, my current diet limits me from anything that sounds delicious, yummy, scrumptious, or even late at night, just plain mediocre. Have I mentioned lately that I hate my diet?

Of course, all of this was prompted by the fact that I’ll be getting married now in roughly a little under four weeks, which I suppose is as good of a reason to lose a few pounds as any because I can definitely see the potential otherwise for a slightly awkward conversation long after the actual party has passed and we’re taking a look at the photos from our wedding photographer for the first time…

“What’s that? My bulbous ass is blocking the view of my lovely bride in nearly every shot?! Well, that’s understandable with the way they had us standing at the altar, what about later when we were dancing? You can almost see a little glimpse of her white dress there around me… How about during the cake cutting ceremony? Oh dear – we certainly won’t be sharing that photo with anybody else…”

That would be bad! And the problem is, frankly, that I’ve kind of let myself go lately, and by that I mean that I’ve consistently let myself go down to the local Chinese place for lunch instead of making something in my own kitchen that isn’t packed with approximately 350,000g of sodium and enough calories in each sweet, delectable bite of that delicious sesame chicken of theirs to warrant building a memorial to each customer’s health right there on the spot next to the complimentary duck sauce. Coupled with whatever amount of effort it takes to physically walk out to my car, into the Chinese place, and then back to the office as my official exercise regiment, I suppose it’s not too difficult to see just how I got myself in this sort of gargantuan predicament.

But I’ve tried the whole diet and exercise manifesto before – you’ve certainly read about those little bits of misery now and then scattered throughout my years like chocolate chips in a moist and chewy cookie fresh from the oven, just like Mom used to make. Eventually you get to the point where you start to wonder if you’re better off just being the fat guy instead of going through all of this thankless sweat and toil. I mean, hey – what doesn’t sound great about no more forcing yourself to go to the gym after a long day workin’ for the man, or forcing yourself to believe that the 6” subs at Subway are just as filling for lunch as their foot-long counterparts, or even not ordering dessert after dinner because the restaurant’s Super Chocolate Death Chocolate Cake Deluxe actually has more calories than the entire meal that you just ate?! Of course, on the other chubby hand of yours, there’s nothing like being told that you exceed the maximum weight limit for your favorite theme park rides, and those pesky little things called stairs are certainly going to be a bitch, and there’s just something a bit demoralizing about only being able to special order your clothes from Olaf the Tent Maker that really takes a toll on one’s self-esteem after a while…

Do you really want to be the guy who wears a t-shirt that can also sleep a family of six???

I, for one, certainly don’t, and so it seemed only fitting that I attempt to finally rid myself of this excess lard in time for my big day, but so far it saddens me to report that my attempts have been almost entirely futile. And at this point, I’ve tried a lot of different alternatives…

Recently I tried Slim-Fast, which boasts right there on the can that it “controls hunger for up to 4 HOURS.” It controls your hunger, alright, but not in the way that you’d either expect or welcome back on a regular basis. After drinking a couple of swigs myself, I figured that I could probably concoct the stuff just as easily in my own kitchen by cracking a couple of raw eggs into a glass of chocolate milk, and then just dumping the whole thing down the drain after a few whiffs of it removes my desire to consume just about anything for the next few hours!

I’ve tried all of those different kinds of healthy, 90-second meals like Lean Cuisine and Smart Ones and Healthy Choice, which again seem to follow the Slim-Fast diet method of make it taste like burnt plastic and they’ll settle for a very small portion of this crap. And that concept might actually work if I was trapped on a deserted island with nothing to eat but one lone Lean Cuisine at a time, but when there’s a full cupboard of supplemental snacks right around the corner, suddenly burnt plastic is just a speed bump on my way to real food.

I’ve even tried counting calories for every single solitary thing that I ingest, which seems to work for about three days until I find myself unable to figure out just how many calories are in that low-carb, whole-grain turkey wrap that I picked up for lunch. Sure, it works for a while, but let me tell you that there’s just something demoralizing about counting out exactly 13 potato chips onto a plate as a single serving that impedes by ability to be able to tolerate that dieting lifestyle for long!

Of course, when each of these individual efforts has failed me, I tend to revert over to my fall-back diet plan, which currently consists of saying, “Man, I’ve really got to start focusing on this diet…” and eating a salad for dinner that night, then repeating this process about every 2-3 weeks while eating whatever I want and watching loads of TV in between. The time for procrastination and shuffling of feet is over … the way I see it, I’ve got approximately two options left:

Scott’s Last-Ditch Attempt to Losing 21 Pounds in Four Easy Weeks:
1. Stop eating.
2. Choose least favorite limb, just in case step 1 doesn’t produce adequate results.

Boy, is it going to be interesting trying to figure out how to carry my bride over the threshold with only one arm…

If you’re half as tired and sweaty as I am, then that makes me twice as tired and sweaty as you…

Our numbers may be falling faster than the remains of President Bush’s so-called approval rating, but there are still a few of us out there who are still chugging along with that particular New Years resolution to stop being all fat and chunky and disgusting! Don’t get me wrong, many of us have tripped a time or three, waking up in a strange place surrounded by containers of Ben & Jerry’s or enough takeout boxes to seriously make it worth considering opening up a Chinese restaurant, but we’ve still got that end of being moderately attractive in sight, and no amount of super-high-fattening food can take that away from us! *

* Note: Not actually true…

Now I’d bet a family-sized bucket of KFC’s mouth-wateringly delicious popcorn chicken that I’m not alone in the crazy notion that this isn’t the first time I’ve taken on the great weight loss challenge in resolution form. I attribute my own personal faults to being lazy, and … well, yep – that’s pretty much the gist of it! Sure, I’m a big fan of Good Eats ™, and more times often than not even Mediocre Eats ^not-yet-™, but once I get into the swing of things I can usually keep the calories under control more or less. Dragging my lazy butt down to the gym? Now that’s another story altogether…

Mind you, when I do manage to indulge in a bit of said self-inflicted torture, I use the small gym that we have in the subdivision where we live – I just can’t do those big, commercial gyms with personal trainers and spotters and all sorts of people that look absolutely nothing like me. You know, the kind that seem to have muscles just popping out of every pore; that have never had an ounce of fat on their intoxicatingly-lean bodies; that likely actually get paid by the gym just to stand around and flex and intimidate the unitiated like myself. Maybe they could have a “fat people” night when all of the rest of us can come in and work up a sweat just in attempting to fill out the 47-page membership contract, but in the meantime the beautiful people club probably isn’t going to be the best environment to keep me coming back at this point.

So instead I try to make use of our local community gym whenever I can, but even that presents its own different set of challenges, at least for me. You see, I’m sure it comes as a surprise from a guy who spends roughly 87 hours a day online like I do, but I’m not exactly the most social of people and while when properly “lubricated,” I can usually endure the random wedding reception or small office party, there are some things that I just prefer to do on my own and working out is certainly one of those things! And actually, much in the same way that it’s not everybody that I don’t like being around at parties, there are some types of people who I have absolutely no problem sharing a gym with … trouble is, it’s mainly people just like me and over time I’ve come to learn that folks like me aren’t exactly a dime a dozen!

Feel free to entertain that notion however you’d like…

Namely, and I know it makes my normally-bubbling personality sound a bit curmudgeon-like, but I prefer to workout around people who just shut-up and focus on working out during their visits to the horrible torture that is the gym! You know, just come in, put on your headphones, and do your time on the treadmill or the elliptical or whatever … but rarely ever do I get to exercise with those charming individuals. Nope, instead I get stuck with the girls who blare hip-hop on the gym stereo so loud that I can feel my teeth thumping, or the guy who grunts everytime he lifts a weight…or releases a weight…or takes a drink from his 128-ounce jug of gatorade.

There are just so many obnoxious characters, it’s hard to keep them all straight and even harder to rank them! Who’s worse – the guy who applied so much disinfectant to his exercise bike that my own machine isn’t likely to have a bacteria problem well into the next century, or the guy who absolutely ruined Eye of the Tiger for me as the most motivating workout song ever by singing the most feminine, falcetto version of it ever while he ran on the treadmill?! I almost fell off my elliptical in tears, I was laughing so hard, and that certainly ain’t gonna help me burn any calories, that’s for sure!

Don’t tell my doctor I said this, but with company like this, it’s almost worth considering just learning to accept being fat. It may not be the best thing for my health, but if I have to hear another full-grown man “lip sync” to Britney Spears while he’s cardio-blasting, my sanity trumps my health anyday…

As if working out wasn’t hard enough already…

So I finally got off my butt and decided to give this whole weight loss thing another try. Some of you may recall a few columns months ago about my impending diet of doom and all of the trials, tribulations, and tortures to come out of that experience. While absolutely horrible, I must admit that it was moderately successful, in that I ended up dropping about fifteen pounds and moved a few inches closer to my goal of eventually weighing in at a “healthy weight,” or at least one that permits me a bit more confidence than that of the majestic beluga whale at the beach! Sadly, however, it wasn’t long after that fateful weigh-in that my progress was abruptly halted by this thing I like to call “laziness” and as far as I can remember, the last time I even entertained the idea of exercising was possibly mid-summer … although it was pretty hot outside!

But nevertheless, after many failed attempts and countless “I’ll start tomorrow!”’s, I’m happy to say that I think I’m officially back on the horse now and with any luck, in no time I’ll be losing pounds faster than Britney Spears lost her remaining shreds of dignity last weekend during her “comeback performance” on the MTV Video Music Awards! I know what I have to do – namely, get off my lazy tuckus and work it on a regular basis – and in several consecutive instances, I’ve actually done exactly this, not to mention the fact that I still plan to continue in the future! And while that scale she hasn’t gone a tippin’ just yet, I’m fairly certain that I’ve got that drive back which anyone who’s gone the distance will agree is the most vital to their not simply giving up and establishing residence inside their local Cold Stone Creamery when the going bypassed tough and skipped ahead to excruciatingly exhausting! I’m rearing to go, psyched up, and on track, except for this one eentsy, wientzy little thing…

I’d forgotten that I live in Florida.

Correction: I’d forgotten that alligators live in Florida.

And seeing as it’s simply not cost effective for me to hop on a plane to rural Northern Michigan every other day to get in my required exercise, I’m pretty much required to conduct my evening walks right here in the great state of Florida, where our motto is: “Run for your life – that log has teeth!” Of course, I used to think that the alligators and crocodiles living in Florida all stayed down in the Everglades, sort of like a retirement community for giant, prehistoric lizards who prefer their meals live and thrashing. Mind you, that particular ideology abruptly changed not long after I moved down here and realized first hand that, “No – they’re not isolated to South Florida at all! In fact, my buddy read in the paper that they recently caught one at the bank…”

Now I’d heard the stories about these beasts wandering into backyards and even taking a dip in the neighbor’s swimming pool before eventually getting hauled away by animal control (note to self: alligator removal technician definitely goes on the next list of Worst Jobs in the World!), but not just hanging out at the bank! Maybe banking laws are a little different down here, but we had a strict policy of not giving checking accounts to animals back in Michigan … what in the world could an alligator be doing at the bank?!

After hunting down the article for myself, I learned that the truth of the matter was that this little fella had just sorta wandered into the bank’s parking lot – probably in the evening when it was cooler and they tend to be more active – and had taken refuge in the hedges along the bank’s drive-thru area. No biggie – they came and caught him soon enough, and ever since I’ve walked around these streets every single day wondering if there could very well be an alligator hiding in the bushes around the corner, just waiting for me to drop my keys or fall behind the rest of my pack, thus providing an easy lunch of sorts for him and his no doubt lingering nearby alligator buddies.

Of course, it kinda goes without saying that as much as I might wonder if I’m about to get jumped by a gator in a random parking lot in the middle of the afternoon, the worries are approximately one bazillion fold when I’m out exercising in the middle of the night! Sure, I technically live in one of those pretty, gated communities where everyone drives gas-guzzling SUVs and paints their houses all the same color of bland, but do you really think that’s going to hold back good, old Mother Nature and her army of all things green and slimy? Needless to say, when I’m out walking the sidewalks in the evening hours with only the company of my iPod and a starry sky, who could help but wonder if that nearby hedge or drainage pond could very well be hiding something capable of rapidly increasing my weight loss efforts in the worst and most painful of ways! Those little beady eyes the only thing visible in the night – it’s enough to make this writer reconsider the treadmill after all!

That’s one thing that I certainly never had to worry about when I used to go for walks at night up in Michigan – maybe a stray skunk or raccoon once in a while, but you never see signs warning people to stay at least fifteen feet away from skunks and raccoons … at least not on any of the trails that I used to walk, that’s for sure! Sure, there are technically bears up north, but after seeing any of a number of documentaries on the Discovery channel where alligators and crocodiles took down freaking bison like they were merely candles in the wind, as far as I’m concerned the battle would be over before it even began! And we need not even mention that as necessary as this diet may be, my stature still doesn’t exactly compare to that of your average water buffalo…

They’re out there, I know they are, but with only one treadmill in our community gym and even that being broken more often than not, it seems that my only chance at losing this belly is by sucking it up, both figuratively and literally, and braving these suburban sidewalks despite whatever scaly menaces may lurk just beyond the shadows, licking their lips hungrily as I speed-walk past to the tune of Van Halen’s Running with the Devil. And that said, while I’m not even entirely sure that alligators even have lips, I do know one thing – they’re out there, and they’re hungry.

Anything to put a little more motivation in those exercising steps, right?!

Why couldn’t I just be born skinny?

Oh, that’s right – I was – but then I grew up, left my adolescent metabolism behind me, and it’s all been downhill from there, like a fat man chasing frantically after a runaway jelly donut…

…with caramel frosting…

…and chocolate sprinkles on top.

So I’ve put on a little extra weight over the last couple of years. It’s certainly not one of those things that I did by choice, like cutting my long hair of seven years or finally cleaning out that green, oozing mess that’s been lurking in the back of the refrigerator, but nonetheless – here I am, and now it’s time to deal with it. Of course, the trouble is that unlike out-of-style hair or fungal atrocities from beyond the freezer section of your local grocer, fat is one of those things that can’t exactly just be cut off on a brisk Thursday morning or swept into the trash only moments before the garbage men arrive to whisk it off to its new home deep within the center of the Earth. If weight loss was something that could simply be done on a whim, I’d have just done it this morning and opted to instead write this column about flying kites or reality television or something far less emotionally-painful than my own personal battle with overweight-ed-ness…

But ultimately that’s ok because if there’s one thing I like nearly as much as a heaping plate of sesame chicken with crab rangoon on the side, it’s sharing my flaws with my devoted readers for the greater collective good. If just one person out there reads this column and thinks, “Hey, maybe it’s time that I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned that disgusting, furry blob out of the fridge that the wife has been threatening to divorce me over…” then that’s good enough for me.

Now that said, my method of choice for attaining said weight loss is dieting, namely because it’s primarily the most non-physical method of reducing one’s circumference. Of course, despite being a lazy man’s way to weight loss, that’s pretty much where the ease ends because simply watching what you eat becomes a bit more difficult when it’s made clear that you not only have to watch, but in fact also use restraint during that process as well! It’s one thing to say that you’re going to be a little more conscious about your eating in an effort to wean yourself away from a repulsive, borderline cardiac arrest-ish physique, but it takes a whole ‘nother echelon of discipline to step away from the buffet line after only your fourth plate, especially when the waitress just brought out a fresh platter of crab legs and those little, Chinese donuts that are covered with sugar and somehow serve both positions as teriyaki chicken supplement and dessert feature equally well.

So to answer the question that you’ve all been dying to ask and bring you up to speed on my own latest diet craze, you should know that currently I’ve been fighting my latest battle with obesity for a couple of months now and, well, at this point I think it’s safe to say that I’m doing depressingly good. And by that I mean that while yes, those ridiculously high numbers on the scale are decreasing in somewhat of a reverse-jackpot-like fashion, all too often do I find my self pondering, “At what cost am I toning this Buddha-esque figure of mine???” Over the past months, many a snack-rifice have been made – I’ve passed on double chocolate fudge brownies around the office, I’ve chosen salad over pizza (an ethical dilemma, that certainly was!), and I’ve even gotten to the point where I find myself rationing out what non-healthy foods I do try to sneak by in an effort to ensure that the Doritos company doesn’t just up and go completely out of business on my behalf! Let me tell you, in a man’s life there is no act more humbling than watching oneself count out a serving size of precisely fourteen potato chips onto a plate where previously three heaping handfuls once stood…

“But it’s gotta be done…” I try to tell myself, whether I’m “enjoying” my delicious, non-fat, non-flavor yogurt for breakfast or sheepishly passing on that new hamburger joint that just opened where if you can eat their largest creation in 20 minutes, they’ll gladly foot the bill while you wait for the paramedics to arrive. If there’s one things I’ve learned thus far in this whole dieting process, it’s that the quicker you’re able to stop enjoying food and learn to embrace being miserably hungry all day long, the less likely you’ll have to spend the next summer at the beach constantly explaining that it’s not necessary for everyone to quickly roll you back into the sea before you dry up.

That’s really my goal, anyways – lose enough weight so as to not be mistaken for one of the largest mammals in the animal kingdom. Anything else is just gravy.

Mmmm, gravy…

Exercise sucks.

Allow me to explain – I’m sure it will come as a huge shock to you all, but I’ve never really been much of the athletic type. Fresh air and exercise for me pretty much faded away in 1989 when my parents first introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System into my life, and it was all downhill from there! Well, actually even in a downhill scenario one would still probably manage to get some kind of exercise, so maybe something more along the lines of a sturdy, flat surface would be a little more accurate for the picture that I’m trying to paint here. You know, kind of like the sturdy, flat surface that was the area of matted-down carpet in front of my TV created from approximately one hundred million hours of playing video games throughout my childhood! Needless to say, you get the idea – I’m not much of a fan for the running and jumping and playing…

Which becomes a problem in this day and age because what I apparently did have going for me as a kid was one of those child’s metabolisms, meaning that even without exercise, I could still manage to eat roughly my own bodyweight in candy on any given night without noticing any pudgy fluctuations the following mornings by means of fat. Sadly, I must profess, it is that things simply aren’t the same these days – my video games have been replaced with a computer, I still really don’t get out all that much even when I’m not glued to the screen, and attempting to consume even half of my weight in chocolate would likely put me into a diabetic coma, the likes of which would likely even baffle fictional medical genius Dr. Gregory House! Sure, it’d be amusing to hear afterwards just how he mocked me and the possibility of waking from my coma to Dr. Cameron is quite appealing, but I think we’re getting just a tad off topic here and I’m getting closer and closer to my word count for this column with every tangent!

As I mentioned in the last column I wrote about my current bill of health, I need to start taking better care of myself and a big portion of that comes from exercising on a regular basis. Note that I said regular basis because apparently although extremely energetic and good-intentioned, my current half-hour sessions every other week just aren’t cutting the mustard … which actually has few calories to begin with, by the way. Point blank, the doc told me that I need more physical activity in my weekly routine, and that’s proving to be rather difficult for me because, well, I don’t want to do it.

It’s always easy for the “athletes” to critique us “non-athletic folks” because they get their exercise in doing something that they love! And I say it’s not fair because although I may just absolutely love surfing the Internet, it’s just not the right kind of surfing to actually burn any calories – a critical goal in our efforts at this point. Maybe if I actually enjoyed something like tennis or rugby or whatever it is that you healthy people are doing for exercise these days, the whole effort would be just a tad easier for me, but nope – we’re going to have to do this the hard way…

My main source of physical exertion thus far as been the ever-popular exercise machine – you know the type because you’ve probably got one or two of your own sitting in a spare bedroom or tucked away in the closet from that six-month period in your life when you, too, actually cared about trying to improve your own health! The specific machine that I chose to take up space in my home is the elliptical, which I believe is Latin for “hurts like hell, in a circular motion” – your experience may vary, but my personal experience has been that after merely an hour on said device, I’m relatively convinced that my legs hate me and would like to see me dead. No pain, no gain indeed.

Of course, I spent $400 on an exercise machine of my own because unlike some purveyors of physical fitness with considerably more self esteem than moi, I just can’t bring myself to exercise in public, and really that’s ok because just as much as I don’t want to do it, I know that nobody else wants to see that, either! I can accept that the local gym was really created for people who are already skinny – not couch potatoes like me looking to shave a few extra pounds off of their posteriors. Besides, having to go someplace else just adds one more obstacle to my list of excuses not to workout on any given day – at least having the thing right around the corner from my bedroom, I’ve got that lovely feeling of impending guilt for not using it overhead as I enjoy my morning buffet of pop-tarts and chocolate milk!

Aside from exercising indoors in the sporadic fashion that I currently do, I also have been trying to enjoy a little of the great Floridian outdoors every now and then, but for lack of a more colorful expletive, exercising outdoors around here can be dangerous! I’ve tried just walking around the subdivision in the evening hours after the sun has gone down, but there’s always that little voice in the back of my head wondering if some dude is going to jump out of the bushes and mug me, or if I’m going to get eaten by something, or even if something is going to jump out of the bushes, mug me and then eat me! We’ve got all sorts of sneaky predators here in Florida – the alligator, the crocodile, the armadillo – and at this point I’m not letting my guard down for anything! Lest we forget that all those knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail did was let their guards down for a brief moment and before long, they were bunny food. I’m not falling for that trick…

So I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated on my exercising throughout the upcoming months, assuming that it actually ends up happening one of these days, that is! In the meantime, however, if anyone happens to come up with some easier ways of losing weight than exercise, do let me know because I always like to keep my options open! Preferably nothing involving needles, surgery, not eating, or anything more unpleasant than, oh say, watching an episode of the Gilmore Girls – I don’t think I’m asking too much, really.

Oh, who am I kidding – if anybody needs me, I’ll be out doing laps around the block. If I’m not back in an hour, either call an ambulance or animal control…