After a week battling Johnny Reb, we're back in business

Nine score and 13 days ago, I set out on a journey to bring myself back into shape regardless of what obstacles, hindrances or summertime federal holidays came my way. Those who know me are more than familiar with my zest for July 4th, which is usually accompanied by a BBQ that is probably too much work and certainly too much food. But that's what life is about, right? Enjoying the time we have to relax in the sun, eat, drink, be merry and all those other cliches. Much like St. Kilda's lone Grand Final victory, that's the point of it all.

But when you have a goal in mind, sacrifices sometimes have to be made, and if I were truly dedicated to winning this battle of physical fitness, spending this past Memorial Day chomping on a plate full of sausages (to say nothing of the barbecued chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs) really wasn't the best way to make strides. This is all particularly alarming considering one very important thing.

Time is running out.

My sister's wedding is a mere 17 days away, which means, really, there is no time to dawdle. I ought to be in the gym every morning just as voraciously as I have been the past six months. Yes, I already am basically as thin, generally, as I'm going to get, and while it's not lost on my friends or family, it strangely hasn't been lost on the random assortment of neighborhood characters I run into on a near daily basis. In the past four days both the cashier at my local Duane Reade and this middle aged woman, who uses the gym at the same time as me every morning, commented at how much weight I've lost. This was particularly surprising from the middle-aged woman, whom I was convinced hated me ever since she made a face at me from the other elliptical machine some four months ago.

All of this is reassuring, and it's certainly confidence-inducing. But more importantly, it's pertinent to keep my nose to the grindstone because of how near we are to the end. In the great battle of weight-loss in 2013 we are currently in the last throes of the insurgency. This is a delicate time. So delicate, in fact, that it makes one wonder just how I could suddenly decide to take not just a day off, as I did this past Memorial Day, but nearly an entire week.

For that, I blame yet another insurgency.

See, for those of you who don't know, myself, my brother and my father are more or less a group of history nerds. My father and brother probably are more so than I, unless you count the history of the NFL's western expansion to be on par with General Sherman's march to the sea, but we are all a bit into knowing history facts nonetheless.

This led us to a father-son trip in the middle of last week to the fields of the Battle of Antietam, which was the single bloodiest day in America's bloodiest war, and where John Brown led his raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry, which accelerated the United States' run into the Civil War. Not that you needed proof, but there's my father and I standing in front of Burnside's Bridge, the taking of which effectively ended any real doubt about the outcome of the battle.

The Civil War is a part of American history I really feel I should know more about than I do, particularly since it's interesting to see how many parts of the south still romanticize the dedication of the Confederate rebels, which astonishes me because A) Slavery is bad and B) These rebels were way less cool than the awesomest rebels in human history. That these rebels fought to save an institution now universally considered  abominable is bad enough, but the immediate problem for me is were it not for those confederates getting uppity and turning their guns on Fort Sumter 152 years ago, I wouldn't have been making this trip in the first place.

Lest I give my brother and father reason to worry, don't. I very much enjoyed the trip, and I got to step foot in West Virginia for the first time in my life, which was, of course, a certain highlight. But as I've noted before, eating when you aren't in the controlled environment of your home and its neighborhood supermarket, is not exactly easy. Now, a Memorial Day BBQ one enters knowing the barrage of sugary sauces, salt and beer headed their way, but I had forgotten that a road trip with a father who has never hid his weak spot for coffee ice cream and a brother who subsisted entirely on fried chicken between the ages of 11 and 29 was probably not going to help my dieting plans.

This was all the more tragic considering on Memorial Day I woke up with an all-time low (and clearly symbolic) weight of 177.6 pounds. I was so very close to the ultimate goal with just under a month to go. When that happens you must go full bore until you cross the finish line, but instead I fell back, went to town on the BBQ and then indulged on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque diet murder spree that included country fried steak at Cracker Barrel, a BBQ chicken sandwich and $5.50 pitchers of Yeungling at a small college greasy spoon in Shepardstown, West Virginia, pulled pork in a small haunt near Harpers Ferry and a pile of fried chicken, french fries and buttered biscuits in a Popeye's on the New Jersey Turnpike.

If you hope to lose weight, this is not the best way to do it. Much like Lee's northern campaign that wouldn't be halted until the climactic Battle of Gettysburg, the rebels have been gaining.

By the time I returned home, the concoction of salt, oil, grease and beer over the previous four days had run my weight up to the astonishing total of 186. This number, of course, had to be taken, quite literally, with several grains of salt. After all, this was an embellishment caused by water retention far above my baseline, and one would have to assume that with some hard General Grant-like work, I'd be back to normal soon enough.

Well, it was a hard slog, but after battling the mid-180s for most of the past week, I stepped on the scale this morning to see 178.6 staring right back at me. This is, of course, not my lowest total, but it is close. And it is a reassuring sign that after nearly a week of throwing my body in flux, it appears that I'm back on track. Much like those men in Pennsylvania in 1863, this may have turned the tide back one final time. It was not easy. It required some serious sleep-deprivation and a few long looks in the mirror, but I can still hit 175 in the next two and a half weeks and grab that big Quesarito at Appomattox.

I will have to hope there are no more stumbling blocks, no more skirmishes with rebels trying one last reach into the Union. But if that should happen -- and there are certainly going to be opportunities -- I will do what I can to scorch their Earth and burn the Atlantas in my way.

In the end I will emerge victorious. I will show that this diet gave its last full measure of devotion -- that I here highly resolve that these last seven months were not in vain -- that this body will have a new birth of freedom -- and that this weight-loss plan of the people, by the people and for this person in particular, shall not perish from the Earth.

CROWD-SOURCED WEIGHT LOSS PLAN DAY 193!

Days until sister's wedding: 17
Target weight: 175
Starting weight: 219
Weight today: 178.6