So my doctor said that with everything saying my heart was perfectly healthy, the next thing to do was to lose weight. She wants me to target 180, which remains overweight by the book yet is almost inconceivable to me. I'll have to see how things look if I get close to that. The good news, for me, is that she turned out to be an enthusiastic supporter of Atkins. I got a little lucky in that respect, but also take minor credit for picking someone with a slightly interesting background rather than the first generic doctor that could see me.

I did Atkins successfully for about a month in 2002 or 2003 — can't remember which. I was in the Induction phase that whole time, because after two weeks I was more interested in continuing to lose weight at the speed I saw than in getting more variety in my diet. I was losing about a pound a day. Then I went in to the office on a Saturday morning when I expected to be done by noon. Work turned out to take longer than that, and by mid-afternoon I was starving for anything I could obtain. Naturally, nothing handy was low-carb, so I was off the diet. In his books, Dr. Atkins described exactly what to do in that situation.

It took 8-9 years for me to get back to it, but I'm here now. This time, I have a different promise to myself. I won't guarantee I won't be bad again. Instead, I guarantee I will log it in this space.

I started on 6/1. The previous night I got some measurements:

• Chest: 44"
• Bicep: 14½"
• Stomach: 46¼"
• Waist: 41¼"
• Hips: 45¼"
• Thigh: 20½" - 28"
• Neck: 18¼"

The morning of 6/1 my official starting weight was 250.4#. (I get weights after waking, before breakfast, wearing whatever I wore in bed. They're reasonably consistent.) My weigh-in on 5/26 with the doctor was at 256#. (Better scale, but wearing seasonal clothes.) For additional reference, since I don't have any pictures, my height is 68½" or 68¾".

So far I have resisted the urge to use the scale again, which is what you're supposed to do although I didn't last time. I'll get weights weekly and measurements monthly. She has me getting blood sugar measurements twice daily. Those might be too boring even for this blog.

I'm going to have some posts here that are just quick updates on measurements, etc. For that reason I will use the category feature of Zinnia, which isn't something I like to overuse. If you are following along for the occasional bit of daily wit, you may want to follow the feed for the "inanity" category only. Boring health updates will be under "health", which will be included in the overall feed. This post is in both.

I didn't get around to writing all this until 6/5, so I'm past the worst detox stage of Induction. Still working on breaking the habit of eating every 2-3 hours, but when I do, it's allowable stuff. More updates soon.