Did I Hold the Line?

For weeks now, you’ve thought of little else. It has been on your mind as you went through each day’s activities. You wondered about it when you turned in for the night, and it was the first thing that you thought about in the morning when the alarm went off. You and your friends discussed it at Christmas parties. Newscasters speculated about it, and it was the rage on Entertainment Tonight. Why, just the other day, I got a personal note from Tiger Woods thanking me for taking over the news circuits. He invited me to ride on his yacht, he was so grateful. It has been on your mind nearly every day: did Art hold the line?

I can now answer, with a sense of grief and a little embarrassment, that the answer is an unequivocal, unavoidable “NO!” I came close, but my weight, as measured on the same scale in Bank of America as my holiday period baseline, wearing roughly the same kind of shoes and clothing, crept up by a pound. It did not stay the same. It did not go down. It increased, by one pound.

What tipped the scale the wrong way? Was it the incredible brownies and fudge around Christmas? The oh-so-many snacks at work? The boxes of chocolate given to us by friends? A holiday drink or two (or three)? Desert after a couple of lavish dinners in restaurants? Too little exercise? All of the above? Muscle mass gained while working out in the weight room? Actually, that may have accounted for an ounce or two but that’s it!

Well, it doesn’t change my goal to get back to a more ideal weight for me, which seems to be about 170 – 172 pounds - dressed in business casual clothing, that is. It makes it a pound more difficult to reach that goal, and it means I failed in my holiday quest. But it not the end of the world. I’ll do better! Well, I’m off! I am meeting friends in a nearby Mexican restaurant. Hey, can you spell “Margaritas?” How about “nachos?”