So when I was in to surrender my semiannual tube of blood last week, I told my doctor I was ready to get aggressive on my weight.  “Good for you!” she said.  “What are we thinking about?  Lap band?  Prescription?”

I said “no, I want to try just setting regular goals with you first.”  So then she jumped out there, smiling her big smile, and said “all right, there is absolutely no reason you can’t lose ten pounds your first month.”

(Yipes.  I thought she’d say five.)

She spent ten minutes with me at my lab follow-up this morning giving me guidelines for good nutrition, and outlined an exercise program for me.  I appreciated that, but of course, my problem’s never been that I just don’t know what to do.  I don’t need more knowledge.  I need discipline.  I need to step on her scary-ass scale once a month.  See, when the interval is just thirty days, there’s never any “oh, I’ve got plenty of time” mentality.  I’m always just about to go back to the doctor.

I think I resisted asking for this because there’s something about it that feels phony to me.  I need to get back to a healthy weight for me, not for my doctor.  Now my thinking is “dude, you’re quite literally dying here.  Whatever works.”  I’ve recently demonstrated that I can lose 32 pounds on my own, but I’ve also recently demonstrated that I can give almost half of it right back.  Let’s see what I can do with three or four monthly physician visits as Part One, and we’ll figure out Part Two on the other side of them.