Less than a year ago, I resolved, as part of a much larger list, to start on the path to get­ting back in shape. And while I may have started well on some of the items on that list, this is one that I've neglected and avoided almost exclu­sively since the words were written.

And save for one attempt (and a bad one at that), that's how things have remained.

This is no longer accept­able. I must do something.

I'm going to do something.

Announc­ing the Stop Being A Fatass Cam­paign 2005!
(You can call it SBAF for short.)

Basi­cally, here's how it works …

As the first phase in a much larger pro­gram of my own design, I will resolve to eli­mate fast food and soft drinks from my eat­ing habits for the next thirty days, start­ing tomor­row (Mon­day, August 15, 2005.)

For the pur­poses of this pro­gram, I will define fast food as any com­mer­cially avail­able prod­uct from any chain restau­rant, includ­ing McDon­alds, Burger King, Sonic, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, in addi­tion to other numer­ous chain restau­rants that serve pre-processed food. I am not cut­ting out restau­rants alto­gether, mind you. Just the evil ones. Heh.

(This will prove espe­cially dif­fi­cult on days that I work, because the major­ity of food places in the mall serve noth­ing but crap, but there are a cou­ple that will do just nicely. And it gives me an excuse to try out more of those menus.)

Soft drinks will be defined as any car­bon­ated drink that does not con­tain real juice. So basi­cally, Pepsi is a no, but a 20 oz. orange juice drink is ok, as long as it's actual juice.

The Goal

I have been utterly depen­dent on fast food since I was a small child. I believe that these habits, cou­pled with years of under-exercise, have con­tributed immensely to the weight, energy, and gen­eral health prob­lems that I now face. This is some­thing that I am no longer sim­ply okay with. With that said, my goals are sim­ply these:

• To suc­cess­fully go thrity com­plete days with­out con­sum­ing the fatty foods and liq­uids that com­pose the major­ity of my "diet."
• To increase my energy lev­els so that I can start spend­ing time doing phys­i­cally chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties, such as actively exercising.
• To begin a pat­tern of healthy behav­ior that I can build on in the com­ing months and years.

I am not attempt­ing to get to a cer­tain weight by a cer­tain time or any­thing of that sort. This first step is an impor­tant one towards a much larger goal of phys­i­cal self-improvement. I rec­og­nize that I am not able to start a full-blown exer­cise rou­tine yet — that will come later. And at this point, I know that I'm also not entirely capa­ble to rad­i­cally change my eat­ing habits. But this is a start.

My goal is not one of con­stancy, but merely one of improvement.

I will make no assump­tions about this process. I real­ize that I am not a health pro­fes­sional, and I am not start­ing with all of the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents for any sort of long-term solu­tion, but I must start small and work from there.

For The Record

I have not con­sulted a physi­cian about this pro­gram, and at least for the time being, I do not intend to.

I will keep records of weight changes, but I have not decided whether I will pub­lish them or not.

I do not know my cur­rent weight, but I will make sure that I get a num­ber within 48 hours to note as a start­ing point.

I don't know of any way to do this but with the honor sys­tem. There will be no admin­is­tra­tor guid­ing me, and no one to watch my eat­ing except for me. But those of you faith­ful read­ers that know me (and why would you be read­ing this if you didn't?) know that I can be incred­i­bly stub­born when cir­cum­stances dic­tate, and I believe this time that they do.

To ween myself toward the direc­tion of an exer­cise pro­gram, I will begin walk­ing laps (at least for the moment) every other day. As of this writ­ing, the num­ber of laps is two and the loca­tion is the park­ing lot of Fort Collins High School (which is across the street from my apart­ment), but as my abil­i­ties increase and time and energy per­mit, I will grad­u­ally increase the num­ber of laps and area. For prac­ti­cal rea­sons, some days the laps will be done while I am at work.

This ini­tial pro­gram will last for exactly thirty days, end­ing on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2005 at mid­night MST. Depend­ing on how I feel, I may extend this and move into Phase II — if I fig­ure out what that is by then.

This pro­gram does not extend to store-bought food. How­ever, this is some­thing I'm try­ing to look at as well, and for the last three foodtrips, I have replaced my req­ui­site hot­pock­ets with Healthy Choice meals. Again, it's not much … but it's a start.

Caveat

One heavy obsta­cle here is that I will be at dragon*con for approx­i­mately one week dur­ing this trial. The food pro­vided will be home­made and should not affect the pro­gram, but in the event of a sugar crash or other unforseen event, I may have no choice but to drink a caf­feinated, car­bon­ated beverage.

Also, much because of dragon*con, alco­hol is not being included in this pro­gram … because if I can't have a fat­burger when I want one, then I'm at least going to get damn good and drunk.

So, Yeah?!

Wish me luck, peo­ple. This is some­thing I've never done before, and I'm excited … but I'm also scared. Got a healthy food tip or have a bit of info that I may have over­looked? Please post it in the com­ments. I'd like to hear what's worked for other people.

Viva la revolution!