Body by Andy

I've been losing weight this year in a new effort to make myself a little trimmer and healthier. I've accomplished this by cutting down on fats and sugars, and making an effort to move around more. I walk around two miles daily, which is an increase from where I began with just doing a mile a day at the start of the year. I've managed to drop 20 pounds this year, which I bring up because I want you heap praises and laurels upon me. However, we're now entering into the most delicate time of the year when it comes to keeping on the right path. Food is coming.

In the span between Halloween and New Year's Day it could become very easy to gain back all 20 pounds I lost. Halloween obviously has massive bowls of candy sitting around the house. In my family Halloween takes on a Christmas level importance, there is also a buffet table of food out on Halloween night. Any amount you might have lost to healthy activities could be easily blown in one night. Between grabbing at mini bags of M&M's from the candy bowl that is handed out to trick-or-treaters, to the crock pot full of cheese dip for nachos.

Then comes Thanksgiving, the holiday where nobody gets out not covered in butter and gravy. Weeks, sometimes months of preparation, and it's a family filled orgy of rich foods sprinkled with awkward naps on couches. Naturally, Christmas season follows all of this, and no one avoids a few extra pounds being added on. I'm not against any of this, but I do think this year as part of my new work out plan, I will not indulge in my annual tradition of bathing in turkey gravy while yelling at those who have wronged me over the year via Skype.

Instead I'm going to focus on only indulging myself on the days when we have the family gatherings, and I plan to limit myself on seconds or thirds. Will power will be a big part of how I manage to pull this off, but sometimes it helps to have another person to back you up. That's why I've asked my 11 year old cousin to make sure that if he sees me going for a third piece of pie, he's to slap me as hard as he can while yelling “No! That's not nice!” I suspect he'll abuse this power very quickly.

I think I will win out here, instead of that nightly glass of egg nog, I'll simply have a weekly glass of egg nog, or switch to soy nog. Soy nog is a serviceable substitute for someone who doesn't want to jeopardize a year's worth of hard work. It's these small sacrifices that I am willing to make to not blow a year of feeling better about myself. I think I'll even try to keep up my two mile, hopefully soon to be three mile walks in. Granted on the days when old man winter tries to beat the hell out of us, that might not be possible.

It's on those days when I will fall back on my old work out routine. Doing step aerobics on Wii Fit, while watching “Murder, She Wrote” on Netflix. It's an amazing work out, and let's just hope my face can outlast the slaps of an 11 year old.