Bye Bye, Winchell's

I weighed 124 this morning, but I'm starting to warm up to this weight. I like the way I look at 124-125. I'm working out to counteract the effects of Lupron, which makes you lose muscle tone. So between that and my weight loss, I've lost any muffin top I used to have, and my gut is almost gone. I've always been thin, but as we get older, men tend to get pot bellies, and I was no exception. It's still there, but after a few more months of working out, I should be able to get rid of that too.

I asked my wife to give me her honest opinion of how I look this morning, and she thinks I look good at this weight. The most common comment I get when I see people is that they think I look good. When our friend Nikki first walked in the door on Saturday, she immediately breathed a sigh of relief that she thought I looked good. I understand why people say that. It's not because I'm so devastatingly handsome. OK, maybe a little. It's because they expect me to look bad. Nikki was afraid I'd be gaunt. At this weight, you'd think I would be, but I'm not.

So I've decided to stay at 125, and try to gain muscle weight from here. Just packing on calories, no matter how unhealthy they may be, is not the answer for me.

Sharon and I have been very healthy eaters for many years. Some think we're snobs when it comes to food because we firmly believe in eating organic as much as possible. Roll your eyes all you want, but just in my own experience, I went from having heartburn and taking Tagamet every night of my life before eating organic to almost never having heartburn afterward. Scoff if you want to, but that's been just one benefit of eating organic and healthy for me.

By the way, organic and healthy are not synonymous. Just because something's organic, that doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy. You can get organic fudge. It's still fudge. Just fudge made with ingredients with no pesticides or artificial fertilizer. Not healthy, but better than regular fudge.

Lately, since I started to lose weight, I've occasionally thought (and been encouraged by some of you) to eat badly. I talked a couple of weeks ago about stopping at a Wendy's. I did something even worse today. I had to take one of our dogs to the vet this morning, and was thinking I'd like a donut with my coffee. There's a good donut place on the way going one route, but traffic was too bad to go that way. Then I remembered that there's still, unbelievably, a Winchell's right on the way going my normal route. For those not from Colorado, Winchell's used to be the dominant donut shop here in the 70's and 80's. Way bigger than Dunkin Donuts here back then, and we didn't have Krispy Kreme until the 2000's. I can't remember the last time I went into a Winchell's, and I frankly have had a hard time the past few years believing there was still one open. But there it was, so I stopped. As it turns out, there are still several of them in the Denver area. I never see anyone in them, so I'm not sure why, but they're still going.

I wanted my favorite donut, which is a raised, chocolate covered cinnamon roll. Boy did it look good, and boy am I sorry I ate it. It's gonna make me feel gross all day. The calories were not worth it.

I've said all of that to say this. It's not important enough to me to get my weight back up to 130, or even 127, to abandon the healthy eating habits that Sharon and I have adopted over the past two and a half decades. People who don't eat healthy think that people who do are sacrificing something. What they don't understand is, once you break the addiction to fast food and processed food, you feel so much better that you don't want the bad food anymore. A bucket of KFC holds no interest for me whatsoever.

So while I am trying to increase my calorie count and keep my weight up as much as possible, I'm not going to go back to eating junk in an effort to do so. One of my best weapons in this fight is the fact that, other than the cancer, I'm in very good health. Eating Winchell's donuts will not help with that.

When people stop telling me I look good, maybe it will be time for more drastic measures. But for now, I want to see if I can eat the way I want to eat, and still maintain a weight that I'm happy with. 125 is just a number. It's how we look and feel that matters, right?

I know I keep saying this, and keep trying to find new ways to say it, but I can't stop saying how much it means to me you're reading this right now. It's what keeps me going.