So here we are, a couple weeks into my grand adventure of doing the weight loss journey on my own, and I've already started finding skeletons in my mental closets.

Take Monday, for example. I ate cereal for breakfast and a couple of Lean Pockets for lunch, then spent two hours in the afternoon working in the yard. I got plenty of walking, lifting, bending and stretching in, and worked up a good sweat despite the cool temperatures. I was feeling pretty good about my progress for the day.

I made my lunch to take off to school with me for my evening classes: a Buffalo chicken breast sandwich with a slice of pepperjack and two different mustards on whole-grain bread, a serving of reduced-fat Pringles, a banana and a couple of Weight Watchers one-point snack bars.

After my first class, I decided I needed something a bit more sweet to finish off the meal, so I stopped by the vending machine. I bought a "king size" Whatchamacallit and a pack of M&M's. I couldn't begin to tell you why I bought them both. Even after the purchase, though, I figured I would still break even for the day.

Then it hit me: THAT has been a LARGE part of my problem for the last nine months or so. I've been playing to tie, not to win. And as any football coach will tell you, when you play to tie you lose a large part of the time. Try to balance your intake with your calorie burn exactly and you'll almost always err on the side of the intake. It's part of the overweight person's deviously brilliant ability to rationalize.

I still ate the candy. But that was the last time I'll do that for a very, very long time. I'm not going to get anywhere unless I remember how to tell myself "no." Somewhere along the way I've lost sight of that, becoming more focused on the occasional indulgences than on the discipline needed between them. Playing to tie is not an option, not if I want to be around to see my son graduate high school and to grow old with the woman I love.

Look at your own eating. REALLY look. How many times do you tell yourself that you can eat that extra doughnut, that candy bar or that second helping because you've been good? How many times have you rationalized that "everything will even out" only to find that the scale sees through your self-deception? It's not easy to do. That devious weasel in your brain will try to convince you that you can still lose weight just by making minor tweaks here and there. Maybe eat the regular size of M&Ms instead of the king size, or some other idiocy.

Be honest. Be brutal. Get back on the trail with me.

As promised, the weight graph returns this week! I'd like to thank Master Image Wizard John Harsdorf, an Internet Broadcasting co-worker who is an artist of serious talent, for the nifty new design.

Got a question? Comment? Problem? Drop me a line, anytime!