Well, ladies, gentlemen and off-planet visitors, I survived the major portion of the holidays with a LOSS! Yippee! And, STILL, I'm not hungry or feeling deprived. Dawn and I were out, taking care of stuff and we dropped into the Middletown Veterans Administration CBOC, and I stepped on the OFFICIAL scale, and...

 And, that ain't hay. I'm hitting an average of 2.3 pounds per week, lost. And walking more, I've ditched the use of my blue "H" tag, and only use it when Mother is in the car. Or, I drop her at the door, and park where I will, then bring the car back around when it's time to leave. I CAN walk, so I DO. (Plus, I'm not going to 'get my steps' if I don't walk. And, Dawn and I have been more regular visitors to the YMCA in Springboro. Village People were right: it IS fun to go to the YMCA. Aiden has basketball practice and games; his Dad gets to coach and play; we get to power-walk and use the machines. Boo-yah! 

But, THIS week...despite my BEST distance measured...despite my most concerted efforts...

I gained. 0.9 pound. Only 9/10ths, but, it's a GAIN! Oh, my hell, the disappointment. PISSED! "How the he** did this HAPPEN?!?"

Dawn asked that same thing, quietly: "What did you do, what HAVE you been doing?"

And, it came to me. It hit me like a load of cold mashed potatoes in my lap.

I 'game the system.' I eat a meager breakfast. I eat a meager lunch.  This way, if we have something really nice and tasty for dinner, I can live large. Oh, yeah, I still have 1500 calories, and it's 19:00!!! Uh huh. And I consume those calories and...

I sleep on them. Which is exactly how I got FAT in the first place. Remember back in August, I was eating dinner, then getting up and eating dinner SECONDS. Then, as I put up Dawn's lunch, I would snack here and there. Then I'd have another snack, watching TV. Then we'd go to bed. I'd sleep a while, get up to read the paper (because I'd set a bad precedent of 'needful eating') and eat MORE dinner. To the point of, "Oh, just one bowl of..." got to be "Heck, there's no sense in putting THAT back in the icebox." So, I'd polish off a container of pasta, or half a loaf of bread with olive oil and nootch (*nutritional yeast) and maybe half a pound of grapes, or a couple of bowls of cereal. No, seriously, look back: it's documented. I think. If not, it is, now. And, then...I'd wash the dishes and dry them, so Dawn wouldn't see how many dishes I'd dirtied in the middle of the night. (A little bit of the old addict coming out, eh?) Thereafter, I'd go back to bed, grunting and groaning silently, like an overstuffed feeder pig. Not pretty. And, true to my alcoholic nature, I'd lay there in guilt. 

Which is exactly what's happened in the last few weeks. Even though I'm under my Garmin and MyFitnessPal calorie levels, and I'm moving, and walking, and DOING more...I'm not happy. I gained. 

Now, my princess is a diet tech (registered.) She had warned me about 'saving calories' and it catching up to bite me in the butt. Did I listen? Noooooo. Me and my big ideas, eh? Then, she asks how much I poured on, and I tell her: just under a pound. To which my pretty baby shakes her head in disgust. See, she's battled self-image and weight all her life (bullying, derision and teasing all do that to a kid.) She's not DISGUSTED disgusted. Just a little laughably tweaked, because 9/10 of a pound isn't a whole lot of anything, in the long run. It's a stepping stone, not a stumbling block. A page, not a chapter. An eye-opener. 

Consider my eyes opened. Dawn had asked if I had any resolutions for the year. I didn't.

Now, I do. "To practice these principles in all my endeavors." Follow the steps. ALL of them. It's all good. God is good, all the time. Elsewise I wouldn't be celebrating another birthday, today. Yessir-ee-Bob, I'm 29 years clean and sober by the grace of God. My AA Birthday.  Until next time...

Be well; practice peace, and I'll see you at the next one.