As I biked to work today, my head was chockablock with troubling thoughts, all revolving around the following two facts:

• I was cold. It was the first day of September, and I was cold. I shouldn’t be cold on the first day of September, even early in the morning. It’s still supposed to be Summer. I’ve been cheated out of 20 days of Summer!
• I was fat. My weigh-in this morning showed that while I had managed to erase the pizza/chocolate chip cookie/fresh mozzarella hedonism of the previous day, I was still at 166.4 pounds.

It’s really the second point that’s got me bugged, although the first point is there for more reasons than simply to help me avoid having a single-item bullet list.

Hibernation Instinct

It’s getting dark earlier. It’s cold in the mornings. I have a nearly irresistible urge to eat as much as I possibly can, climb into a cave, and go to sleep. Pastry – which hasn’t interested me at all for about three months – suddenly sounds like the perfect food.

Historically, I know that every autumn I put on weight, some of which I will shed during spring and summer. This year, I’m betting money and dignity that I can buck this trend and lose weight, rather than obey the part of me that just…wants…to…sleep. The thing is, my weight trend for the past couple weeks shows that this isn’t happening. In fact, it looks like I’m all set to actually have a weight gain at the weekly weigh-in tomorrow.

I therefore choose to blame my weight gain on the season. I’m just working up my layer of winter blubber. Pure, unavoidable biology.

Weight Plateau

I’m now in the mid-160’s, which is the low end of where my weight naturally sits. Which means I’ve lost all the weight I’m going to easily lose. The easy combination of trimming my bad habits and exercising more has pretty much hit its limit. If I want to continue losing weight, I’m going to need to go from "No more chips after 6:00PM" to "No more chips."

My weight has hovered in the mid-160’s range for about a month now, so the fact that my weight isn’t going to drop in big leaps and bounds doing the simple things should have occurred to me by now. And yet it hasn’t. I blame you, dear reader, for not calling this to my attention. What do you think I’m paying you for? Well, evidently most of you believe your job is to tell me it’s easy to ride down a flight of stairs. And while that is certainly useful information that I’m happy to hear six or eight times per day, you’re going to have to do more if you expect a raise.

Tomorrow, This Blog Will Probably Cost Me

I’m going to need to lose 2.4 pounds by tomorrow’s weigh-in (possible, but not probable) or face giving someone a $75 amazon.com gift certificate. The temptation is to pay up, accept that it’s not easy to lose weight when it’s getting colder and I don’t have a big race ahead of me, and shut the sweepstakes down. But I’m not going to. I’ll either start losing weight again, or I’ll keep ponying up $25 / week.

That said, I’m eating reaaalllly light today.

Today’s Weight: 166.4lbs.