Even with GWAVAMan out of the way, my plate is still pretty full. The Penguicon folks need some artwork from me this week, as do the Aegis folks. There are still five birthday pieces to crank out, too.

Oh, and the buffer has dropped to 12. It needs to be at 21 or better by April 18th, so I can relax at Penguicon.

And then there are the desktops I’m doing for the GroupWiseR guys, a T-shirt commission for My Buddy Mike At Novell, and a stack of Warning Signs for this dude at Microsoft.

Ideally, I’ll get it all done this week. You know, if I sit RIGHT HERE and crank until it’s done, I can lose all the weight I want to just by virtue of not eating. I’ll call it the “I’m too busy to get fat” diet, write a book about it, and my money troubles will be a thing of the past.

Time to stop typing and start dieting.

–Howard

It occurs to me that many of you may be envious of my 187.5lb weight, and might be wondering why I’m stressed about it.

1) My lean weight is closer to 155. And that’s not “0% fat” lean. That’s “healthy” lean. I’m carrying 30 lbs I shouldn’t be.
2) I’m only 5′ 6″. I may seem larger-than-life on the internet, but I’m really a small guy. You could fit three of me into a Chris Crosby, and still have room for the puppies he claims to be made of.
3) My father was overweight for the better part of 15 years, and died from a heart attack back in 1988. He was 5′ 11″, and never got his weight below about 210 (at least not during my lifetime). It never got much higher than 230, either, so it’s not as if he was grossly obese. He was a very active guy, but never took very good care of himself. This killed him, and left him unable to take care of ANYBODY.

So… I’m not going to let that happen to me. I could still get hit by lightning, or assassinated by sapient racist koalas, but the reaper is going to have to go out of his way and WORK for it if he’s going to claim me early.

I’ve already had a heart attack. It wasn’t congestive, so it “doesn’t count” as a heart attack. It was 1999, and I’d been dieting and exercising a LOT that year. Then I got the flu, and the flu virus infected the myocardium, causing it to swell up, and I checked myself into the hospital with chest pains. It turns out that myocarditis typically kills guys my age, because they have a little bit of blockage that nobody is worried about, and then the swelling puts them way past the threshold for congestive heart failure.

At the time of my little visit to the hospital, my cholesterol was nice and low (100, 75/25) and I was “way too healthy to be in here” (according to the nurses). I need to get back to that level of health so I can have a little more piece of mind. I don’t want to shuffle around the mortal world forever, but do want to stick around long enough for grandchildren, and maybe a great-grand or two. That’s something neither of my parents managed to pull off.

I’m not looking for sympathy here (“You poor orphan! Here, have some more gruel.”) I’m just explaining things so they’re a bit clearer. And with that out of the way, it’s time for a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and crispy bacon. Gruel is too high in carbs, even if you leave out the sugar us orphans never learned the taste of.

–Howard

My previous diet-and-exercise regimen, which ran for three weeks this January, was successful from one standpoint: I demonstrated to myself how effectively I can diet-and-exercise, provided I stay healthy. The low-carb regimen works well for me, and helps me select healthy foods (homemade, with lots of vegetables) rather than fabber-crap from the Post Industrial Land of Empty Sugars. I have to be exercising, too, but there’s nothing wrong with doing both diet AND exercise. Duh.

My weight, which had peaked at 187 (as measured immediately after waking up in the morning, before eating anything) had dropped to 180, and I felt great. Then I got sick for three weeks (rhinovirusocerous), and got out of the habit of healthy living. I haven’t been to the gym since mid-February. The only exercise I’ve gotten in 5 weeks, and I’m not making this up: three rounds of Disc Golf, some walking around at BrainShare (walking between “place to sit” and “place to eat”; I’m not sure that counts) and exactly 20 push-ups.

This morning my weight hit 187.5. A new high! I feel like the 1997 DOW Industrials!

(Bloated… artificially larger than I should be… doomed to catastrophic collapse… pick one)

So, I need to get back to the gym, and back on the low-carb wagon. I’ve got decent self-discipline these days — in past year’s diets I haven’t just fallen off the wagon, I’ve leapt from the wagon into the ditch, and then fled naked into the woods to dance with the elves… the KEEBLER elves, and their pet Nesquik Bunny. I’ve broken my Nesquik addiction, though, and my carbohydrate cravings can now be satiated with a really robust salad, some wild rice, and a diet soda.

Which brings me to breakfast this morning… I enjoyed a “last meal” of fried eggs, toast-under-sausage-gravy, grits, and a (admittedly token) diet drink.

The drink: It’s this stuff called “Slim Lite” that they sell at Sam’s Club. It’s a little more expensive than the Diet Vanilla Pepsi I typically resort to, but it has some natural fat-burning stuff in it, including Chromium, and some patented blend of don’t-ask-me-what called “Citrimax.” And it’s a product of a company which uses the word “nutraceuticals” in their company name without batting an eyelash. It’s GOTTA be good for me, right?

Right. Bah. It’s got acesulfame potassium in it, a chemical whose aftertaste has led me to refer to it lovingly as “that ‘mouth-access-denied’ crap.” It’s also got Splenda in it, which is the reason I picked up in the first place. I thought maybe the de-carbed sugar molecules they’re calling “sucralose” would mask the pump-fake-the-taste-buds action of the acesulfame.

It’s been 20 minutes. My mouth does NOT taste like a sugar-plum-fairy used it as a toilet, so I guess I’m okay on at least one count.

Tomorrow — no carbs, and a round of Disc Golf. The day after… well, Tuesday is as good a day to show up at the gym in my fat suit as any other, right?

–Howard

Honestly, up until a day or two ago I thought that everyone who reads my Live Journal also reads my comic strip, Schlock Mercenary. That turns out not to be the case. This raises a couple of interesting questions, and I’d love it if as many of the (*gasp*) four-hundred-and-thirty of you as possible would answer…

Thanks for your participation. Hopefully the results will be informative (or at least marginally entertaining) for everyone.

–Howard
p.s. please note that this is NOT an attempt to lure more of you into reading the comic. I’m much less subtle with those attempts. Also note that I’m not going to be offended if it turns out that lots of you do NOT read the comic. After all, more than six billion humans are in that same category… getting offended at a group that large would be inane.