It’s spring, and I’m now two weeks into the spring diet routine and comfortably back into my 31 waist blue jeans again. I realize dieting is very hard for a lot of people, but for me it’s basically don’t eat sugary treats, eat only when actually hungry, and then only those very bland foods I had as a kid and a young adult of very limited means. Dieting is painful to me, only to the degree that I have to go back to food that bores the hell out of me. But I hear this is a common complaint. It also reminds me of how uncertain I was about my future, and that  without the lucky breaks I had I might still be living in someone’s basement eking out a living doing odd jobs.

When I started making a good living as a contract programmer I could easily splurge on all the nice rich calorie laden food I couldn’t have when I was younger. Around that same time the pounds began to mysteriously accumulate. I went from 120 to 160, and a 28 inch waistline to a 33 inch one, and those pants were beginning to feel tight. I put it down to an aging body. Mom was a small, thin as a rail woman before she had me. As she got older, she got heavier. Her dad, according to the photos I have of him, had the same pattern. I figured it was my fate too, and just let it slide.

Then one day I found my high school crush and he asked me for a photo. For reasons unknown around that same time I decided to try and get my slim figure back again. As it turned out what was killing me was mostly sugar, and when I tried to cut back I was surprised at how addicted I’d become to it. When I was a teenager I could snarf down all the candy and cookies and cupcakes I wanted. Apparently you can’t keep doing that in middle age.

So I’m back in my 31s now and feeling good about sticking to the diet the rest of the month. The routine is I get my waistline back  by summer  and I maintain until the end of the year and stuff your face holiday season, which coincides with winter and staying indoors most of the time and being less active season…and so the waistline expands…then it’s back to spring dieting again… So I’m told lots of people subscribe to this plan.