Fitness Challenge Update #3

I was walking through the Walmart, picking up stuff from my wife's list last week, when I wandered past the candy aisle. I discovered something that at once both thrilled and terrified me. There on the shelf was a bag of one of my favorite candies of all, mint M&M's. Normally, mint M&M's are only available at Christmastime.


I usually see them at Target somewhere near the middle of November, just after they've placed out the bulk of their Christmas merchandise. I make sure to buy a few bags then and there, because within a week or two, they are gone, and they never get replenished. The peanut kind, the plain, the almond...all of those are replenished seemingly daily, but the mint ones--once they're gone, they're gone.

Again, as it always is at Christmastime, there was only one bag of these mint M&M's left. I considered my diet, and the fact that indulging in my favorite candy is not likely to do me much good in my quest for progress. But I also thought about the fact that mint M&M's disappear so quickly, and never come back, the one and only bag left on the shelf seemed to be ample evidence for this happening again.


So, I bought the bag.

Now, here I was, with the ability to destroy at least a week's worth of progress in the palm of my hand. I thought I could keep them down in the cold storage room in the basement, and perhaps out of sight would be out of mind. Maybe I could manage to only revisit them when the fitness challenge was over.

Who was I kidding though. I ripped open the bag, and had a small handful of them. Damn, they tasted so good. Just as I remembered. I made sure to savor each one of them. Eating them one at a time (something that I never did with candy before). Then, to make sure that I ate no further, I put them into the trunk, and drove home.


I've been nursing that bag along for the whole week now. Taking a handful, and then locking them back in the trunk. I really think it's working out well. Eating 6-8 M&M's once or twice a day is not something that will destroy a diet/fitness plan. In fact, I think it helps keep me from going off the rails. I mete out a little love here and there, and then I don't feel like their is no joy in Mudville.

It was another up and down week for me. I ate several things here and there that made me wish I hadn't, and I couldn't help but weigh myself every day, even though I had vowed to stop torturing myself like that. But in the end, I weighed 262, which is a little down from last week, and brings my total to 20 lbs. It's only been one month, of three, so I feel pretty good about myself. I think I could possibly lose 10 lbs. a month for the next two months, which would put me at a better weight than I've been at since I started getting fat in the first place.

Several of the guys at work were saying that if after three months, they weren't at the place they wanted to be at, they'd be happy to throw in another $20 and do a second round of the contest. I think I might have to do that. It would be so nice to be back at the weight I was when I got married fourteen years ago. And I'll have the $200 dollars from winning the contest, so why not, right? What's $20 then, am I right?