Nine Steps Forward, Six Steps Back

Dieting sucks.

Seriously.

I mean, how was I supposed to know that you actually had to, y'know, work at it?  I didn't really have to work at getting fat, so getting thin should be just the opposite.  Of an easy time.  That I didn't have to think about.  That...

Oh.  "Opposite."  Ri-ight.

The good news is that I'm still three steps (or so) ahead of where I was when I started this mess.  The bad news is that instead of eight steps to go, I now have about fourteen.  If only I had kept on track, I'd be finished and at my goal (given previous milestones).  If only I had re-started every single time I swore I would.  If only I hadn't let my daughters de-rail me.  If only, if only, if only I hadn't gotten fat in the first place.

There's nothing to be done about that now, though.  All those ships have sailed off into the North Atlantic and met their respective icy ends.  It's the ship I'm on now that matters.  And I am back on that ship, and it's sailing full steam ahead--although the soda craving still sends icebergs near enough the ship that I sometimes wonder.

And while I had hoped to usher in the local hockey team's new arena with a slim, "hey, my butt can actually fit comfortably in these seats" look, I must content myself with knowing that the end of the season may well see that goal realized. At least I fit better than I used to, and the seats are supposed to be plenty wide.  I may even have room to spare by the end of this!

That's all good news.

But that's not the best news.

The best news is that this time the wife is going along with me on this journey, and we'll both be the better for it.  We're not on the same exact path (I'm a meat-eating, carb-counting carnivore) and she eats lots of rabbit food (Weight Watchers), but we're near enough to each other that we don't have issues keeping the other company.

Except maybe when she hoards her points for ice cream.

Seriously? You Call this a Blog?

Well, so much for that plan.

The plan (one of many, actually) had been to post a couple times a month as I started getting back into gaming.  Gaming was to have been the focus, with occasional side-trips into health, other areas of geekdom, and just randomness.

Boomerang kids, though, tend to get in the way.

Diets fall apart.

Motivation and devotion fail.

Temporarily.

The boomerang kids have all moved back out, now married and building their own lives.

The diet is still kaputt, and I've gained about half the weight back.  But I'm still trying.

The motivation and devotion are still lacking, but the tide is turning.  Hopefully it's not just spring fever.

All things change, it's the only constant in the universe.  Time to start rebuilding.

Will I post again in another few weeks?  We'll see.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

I picked up my first comic book when I was a wee tyke.  I still remember it pretty clearly.  It was Hanna Barbera TV Stars #1 with Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels and Grape Ape.  At the not too inexpensive (for the family at the time) price of 35¢.

I picked up some newsprint a few years later with a couple GI Joe comics (including #1).  Both are now long since destroyed and devalued.

Another couple years passed and a friend introduced me to the X-Men.  I clearly remember that issue as well: Uncanny X-Men #171.  Welcome to the X-Men, Rogue.  Hope you survive the experience.  She did.  And I had a new hobby that lasted for the next twelve years (give or take a year or two).

But in my early twenties things changed.  I had bills to pay, college to pay for, and a brief period of unsteady employment.  Comics fell by the wayside and didn't even get back onto my radar until I was almost thirty.  I started picking up various compilations/graphic novels from the local big box book retailer.  It was a nice way to drop a few dollars (and introduce me to some neat new series) and not feel guilty about buying comics.

Fortunes changed again, and I had to stop buying them.

Fast forward a few years until this August, when I had an urge to watch my DVD of "The Shadow" again.  Hell, I've watched it half a dozen times in the last two months.  I'm not a huge fan of The Shadow as a character, although I enjoyed the movie more than a little.  But I'm not what you might call an aficionado.

Sure I went to a Halloween party as The Shadow (including a six foot red silk scarf sewn by my indulgent wife), and I've found a company that makes replica rings (I'm pretty sure they have a license) that I'll probably buy before next summer, and I did get caught up on the movie related news which all seemed to dry up two years ago.

That led me to do something a little weird, though.  On a complete whim, I searched for not only "The Shadow" but also "Grendel."  I shouldn't have done that because, completely unbeknownst to me, and it's been many years since I last picked up a comic or any comic news, Mr. Matt Wagner (creator of Grendel, writer of the many more books including "Sandman Mystery Theatre"--my first experience with Wesley Dodds) is writing a Shadow/Grendel crossover, and wrote a "Year One" story for The Shadow, and there's an ongoing monthly series.

Shit.

As long as nobody does a "Big Trouble in Little China" follow-up...

Dammit.

Just when I thought I was out...

Eight Months

Eight Months?  More like sixteen.  But I guess that hardly matters.

What does matter is where things begin and where they end.  I know where things began, but am no seer.  Where things will end is more difficult to ascertain.  So let us begin, unsurprisingly, with the beginning.

Pre-November, 2013

Events and time have been condensed, but this is largely how I remember things.

Some time around 1981 or 1982 my life changed, and not for the better.  I don't know how or why, and truly doubt that it matters, but I started gaining weight.  I went from a relatively normal looking kid to a marshmallow quite quickly.

As the years passed on, I would "stretch out" a bit but still remained chunky.  By the time I was in junior high, I was a little shy of 200 pounds.  Things would remain like that (luckily there were growth spurts in the future) until my senior year of high school.  The pounds still kept coming, about ten a year, but there was more growth "up" than "out."  But it was in that final year of high school that I had my first accidental encounter with low carb dieting.

Work was exceptionally busy before Thanksgiving.  That is just to be expected when working at a grocery store.  The side benefit was that my meals quickly turned from "home cooking" to "this is quick, and I can do it myself."  While not ideal in most circumstances, this led me to a diet of chicken patties, American cheese, and yellow mustard.  I was still eating plenty of junk, but the activity at the store meant that I was burning most of that off and managing to make headway on my own.

I dropped twenty or thirty pounds, although I was still North of 200, and then stalled as the school year wound down.  That is the way things remained until after graduation.

Once graduation had passed and my friends had left for the military, their own new lives in new cities, or simply just drifted away, I was left with little else to do.  I focused on working (and spending money) instead of going to college straight-away.  The side effect of that was my sleep habits improved dramatically, my mood-swings became less frequent, and my stress level just about disappeared.  I wasn't able to see it myself, but the few others I was around were noticing that my weight was dropping.  I dropped another fifteen pounds and fell below the 200 mark for the first time since my early teens.

Working at the store kept me at that weight, and I didn't worry about my diet even though it was mostly junk food.  I tried various things to keep my weight loss going, but did not succeed.  I thought weight loss was just a game of calories, and was happy having a 36 inch waist and wearing medium or large shirts.  So if I didn't lose more it was OK, too.

And then I turned 21.

Alcohol, unsurprisingly, does not normally help a person lose weight.  The weight gain was minimal even though I was known to drink somewhat heavily.  I put on ten or fifteen pounds and held steady.  Not too bad really.  Not great, but not too bad.  

Then my life changed, and not for the better.  Life threw me a series of curve balls that I simply didn't want to deal with.  So I drank more, quit my job, pigged out, and just generally became a slob.

That lasted until I neared graduation.  I needed to get a job and working again.  I had put on an unknown amount of weight, perhaps up to 60 pounds by my best guess.  As luck would have it I knew someone who was putting together a small team at the warehouse where he worked and I was on the short list.  It wasn't glamorous, but I was working again.  Working in a warehouse keeps you moving and a hot summer keeps you from getting very hungry.  Within eight months, I was down to the 200 mark again.  I was still eating garbage and drinking, though less heavily, but activity kept the pounds from packing back on.  My weight went up, my weight went down, but didn't stray far from 200.

Even after I went back to work at the grocery store things did not much change.  Even after I did some temp work for an office things did not much change.  But once I went to full-time office work, the weight came screaming back with a vengeance.

Things would likely have been much less severe had I not developed a crush on the bartender at a restaurant across the office.  That led to me constantly having a sizable lunch and a dessert.  Without the warehouse or grocery store to help burn off the pounds my weight skyrocketed again.  I was, to my best knowledge, around 280 pounds.

Thus began my first conscious experiment with low carb dieting (Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution).  It wasn't easy.  Luckily, I had help.  My mother would end up often cooking two meals so I could eat low carb.  Things at the office weren't always so great, though.  Birthdays, service anniversaries, and other special occasions are celebrated with food.  Bagels, cinnamon rolls, and doughnuts are common in the morning.  Pizza is a common lunch treat.  There's easy access to a vending machine and there was more than enough frustration to drive a person to think that a package of cookies or a candy bar will make things better.

I believe I had taken forty pounds off before the frustration (and cake) finally wore me down.  I put twenty pounds back on.  Many attempts were made to start dieting again after that.  None were successful for more than a few days.

My life changed again, for the better this time, when my girlfriend (eventually to become my wife) and her daughters moved in with me.  Weight kept creeping back on, though.  This time there was no stopping things.  By the summer of 2012 I was well over 300 pounds.  I didn't have any jeans that fit.  I had difficulty sitting in seats in an arena or theater.  Back pain which had always been problematic was now almost constant.  It seemed as if I would do something to aggravate my back as soon as it started to feel better from the last problem.  Sometimes I needed a cane to be able to walk without looking like I was impersonating a pretzel.

And, with little variation, that was how things went for the next year.  I managed to skip my second annual doctor visit during 2013.  Things really hadn't gone very well in 2012, so it was easy to forget.  I decided to drown my (assumed) medical bad news during the month of October by just absolutely binging on sugar: Ice cream, cake, cookies, or anything else that packed a sweet punch.

I do not recommend doing that for any reason, especially if, like me, it is really just a matter of time before a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes comes.  One day the wife and I were talking about dieting.  We had talked about it before many times.  It usually ended with us deciding to do something later in the year or even the year after.  But this time was different.  Instead of suggesting, as I expected, that we begin our expected diets a month early (December) she suggested I start in November.

I agreed.

I Just Had One of Those

Stuff accumulates.

Over thirty years (off and on) in the gaming hobbies (RPGs, miniature painting, wargaming, etc.) and things can really start to accumulate.  The horror of it is, though, that items are also continually disappearing.

Take, for example, the simple and ubiquitous box cutter.  Dozens of these bladed contraptions roamed the confines of many a teenager's bedroom, but a grown man can't find a single one.  They were never thrown away, and yet only a single cutter remains in the junk drawer of the computer desk.  The same thing happens with hobby supplies.

A pay stub from 2002 is easier to find than the most recent hobby knife.  Spare phone numbers, perhaps from a business associate or blind date--it's impossible to say which without actually calling it, are more common than a once treasured (and still much desired) board game!  It's as if there is an inverse relationship determining how likely things are to disappear; the more likely an item is to be useful or treasured, the more likely it is to disappear one day.

At least DVDs and CDs stay mostly on shelves specifically for them.  Those stay in place (mostly).  There may even be a couple that reside on those shelves through undetermined means.

But where, oh where, is that hobby knife?  It's at the store waiting to be purchased.  Now it has a new home with other hobby tools of its ilk.  Maybe this one will decide to stay.

Three reviews are being worked on, I hope to have the first posted near the end of the month.  Reviews four and five are in the planning stages but might make it before review two or three.

Introductions

Who am I?

"Strawhat" is as good a name as any.  I've gone by other names in other places, but this one suits me now.  I'm a nerd, and proudly claimed that title long before anyone thought it was "cool."  I used to do many of the usual nerdy things: play Dungeons & Dragons, read comic books, watched just about every sci-fi or fantasy show on TV, etc.  I didn't stop those activities because I wanted to change my life.  I stopped because I had a family and obligations, and no more room in my life for other things I enjoyed.

What do I Want?

To re-ignite my nerdy nature, and possibly to corrupt the wife and any future grandchildren as well.

Why am I Here?

Nerd + Internet + Empty Nest.  It's really not that complicated.

Where am I Going?

Where the journey takes me, be it near or far.  

This is likely to involve miniatures (some reviews, building, converting, and painting), wargaming, ice hockey, low-carb dieting, and other generally nerdy things.  I expect that I'll update once or twice a month as the mood takes me.  There might be reviews, project logs, general rants/praises, or any number of things.  If somethings chapping my hide, stuck in my craw, or otherwise becoming a such an obsession that I just can't see around it I'm probably going to go on about it here.