Start at the Beginning (What a Novel Idea!)

I'm finally doing it. I've wanted to blog for a long time now, but have always found excuses not to. Even more so, I wanted to start a blog at the beginning of last year, to help motivate me to improve our finances and be accountable for my weight loss goals. The arrival of my third child one year ago today, and the extremely rough first several months of his life, provided an excuse not to blog, and I never got it started.

The ideal weight of TWO 5'9" men
standing on my scale at home...

So let's start with the point of this whole thing - I'm a big fat guy, and I don't want to be anymore. Okay, I'm not fat - I'm OBESE. According to Answers.com, a healthy weight for a 5'9" man (that would be me) is anywhere from 145 to 175 pounds. My household scale rang up at a whopping 354 pounds earlier this week. And no, there weren't two of me standing on the scale. So I am TWICE the size of a healthy version of me.

My goal is - as the blog title states - to become half the Dan that I am now. 175 pounds is an ambitious goal - especially when I've been completely unsuccessful in losing weight anytime in the past, except for during a brief period of time after my brain surgery in 2003 (I'll discuss both the successful weight loss AND the brain surgery in some future post). I have to be successful - I've been blessed with three amazing children, even though weight is an obstacle in producing children (in both fertility and logistic terms).  I don't want them growing up without a father, and I know that if I don't lose the weight, that's more than likely what's going to happen.

I'm hoping to be able to do this in chunks. It's a three year plan - lose around fifty pounds a year - culminating in a trip to Disney World the summer before Noah starts high school and Josie starts kindergarten. And of course, I'm now out of time for today. Trying to keep the blogging time to twenty minutes or less, which I've already failed to do.

Good night, nonexistant readers. And Happy 1st Birthday Maxx!

-D