I have to give a speech tonight in front of about 200 people

There are few moments in your life that you look back on and remember vividly, like your high school graduation or the first time you saw Star Wars in the theater. I'm no expert on these things -- I'm only 27 after all -- but I have to assume my sister's wedding qualifies as one of those moments. As for the ceremony itself, it will probably be like every other wedding, though my parents might be a smidge more emotional at this one than they would be at the other five weddings I'm attending this year. But even if the ceremony is the same kind of rote event every wedding is, when it's your family it's always a different sensation.

It's been 210 days since I first started publicly bugging the world about my weight issues, or at least my attempt to fix them. As I discussed recently I've had to confront and think about what, exactly, failure means to me because there was a very real chance I wasn't going to hit the threshold. I actually began telling people that perhaps 175 was too high a bar, because once I had cracked 180 the momentum grinded to a halt. Fortunately, however, over the final few days I managed to push through. This past Wednesday I, at long last, dipped below 175 and on Thursday and Friday I dipped below it further still.

That's all done now I'm sure. Last night was the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding, which involved a copious amount of wine, hors d'oeurves, dinner and cookies. I imagine most of that has thrown my numbers totally out of whack once again, and at the wedding tonight, I'm sure it will be more of the same.

But that's fine.

Of the numerous things I've learned about weight loss and about myself throughout this whole process, it's that you can't really trust the numbers. After all, they're just numbers. The important thing is about how you feel and if you've maintained the standards of your own sense of dedication and discipline. Considering I'm about to go jog and swim after writing this before it's even noon on a Saturday, I'd say I've done that. But I've also done things and learned things about myself that otherwise wouldn't have been possible, while transforming into a better (and by better don't mean more handsome, but more healthy) version of me.

Do or do not. There is no try.

What does it mean to fail? This is a question I've been pondering for the past few days as my weight-loss plan nears its terminus. See from the moment I set out to tackle this project it seemed I had always been ahead of the curve. Of the 45 pounds I set out to lose I was halfway there with nearly two-thirds of my planned weight-loss term to go. It seemed success was a fait accompli.

But as I noted many times, the closer you get to the end the tougher it gets. The ability to lose weight decreases exponentially when there's less of it to lose, or in mathematical terms, there is an asymptote as the limit on your presumed time of weight loss approaches infinity. In the case of weight loss, like drug addiction or a Rubik's cube, your job is never done, and you'll have to keep on working on it for the rest of your life no matter how close or comfortably settled in you are to that asymptote.

Now, I haven't opened a calculus textbook in 10 years, but the concept of a mathematical limit of a function has started to creep back into my consciousness, not because I suddenly feel as though I missed my calling as an astrophysicist, but because perhaps my body is reaching that asymptote. After all, my rate of weight-loss has declined steadily over the last two months or so and I've seemed almost terminally stuck between 175 and 182, struggling to get ever closer to the finish line while time continues to run low.

Just four days away from the end I have chipped away steadily, bit by bit, and I'm awfully close to getting there, but if I am for some reason unable to get through the last pound that stands in my way before this Saturday I'll have to wonder. It will be hard not to think about whether or not I should have had one fewer beer or if I shouldn't have consoled myself after the Blackhawks lost Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final last night by munching on some black pepper kettle chips.

I will have to ask myself two unsettling questions. Did I fail? Was it possible for me not to fail?

With ten days to go, it's time for the Final Countdown

Yesterday I stood at the front of the line in the Potbelly on the Rockefeller Center concourse and found they've recently added a new "BIGS" option to their menu, in which you can order a sandwich with 30% more meat. I know this was a recent addition to the menu because it didn't exist the last time I was in that Potbelly approximately 48 hours earlier.

I may have a problem.

I'm fine with that, though. Potbelly Sandwich works is a good combination of quality, cost and college-related nostalgia and does so with a relatively low number of calories. However, this "BIGS" option intrigued me. In my head I decided it was best to avoid it, but when I started to order this exchange occured:

Dave: "I'll have the roast beef on wheat with mushrooms."
Employee 1: "Would you like that BIG?"
Employee 2: "YEAH HE DOES!" (Saucy smirk that implies sexual intrigue, but is entirely about the sandwich.)
Dave: "No, I think I'll pass unfortunately."
Employee 2: "Oh come on, you know want the BIG one."
Dave: "I do, but my sister's wedding is in 11 days, so--"
Employees 1 and 2: "OH! OK, NEVER MIND!"

I wonder if that excuse would work in other situations. I'll have to test the theory. In any event, I've buried the lede a little bit like I always do, so let's get down to brass tacks. Low these past 200 days I have been eating differently, eating less, drinking less and exercising a shit ton more all in the name of looking decent in the few dozen photos I'll find myself in on just one of the (hopefully) thousands of days I've got left here. So far it's been going swimmingly, (no pun intended) though there have been fits and starts along the way and obstacles high and low. Oh, and some pretty unfortunate musical references, though one more is coming.

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.

We have 30 days to go, people. It's crunch time.

Which is to say, I guess, I should be doing more crunches. I'm not sure that that's true, really. My stomach is tighter and less voluminous right now than it's been in at least eight years, and probably ever. But that doesn't mean the screws aren't tightening. I've maintained all along that it's those last few pounds that will cause the most trouble and with us just 30 days left before my stated June 22 deadline, those last few pounds are being tricky.

Depending on the day I'm anywhere from 3.5-7 pounds away from that magical number of 175, and getting much closer has proven extremely tricky. At this point, the lowest I've tipped the scales at is 178.4, a number I thought I might break this morning until I saw otherwise. All that said, I'm not beating myself up over it too much, clearly. As I've noted before, any particular number you see on a scale on any particular day isn't particularly trustworthy.

Still, I am human, am I not? I still crave that irrational satisfaction of seeing months of painstaking, deliberate accomplishment boiled down to one number for half a second if I can balance myself on my shitty scale just right. Considering my doctor told me recently there was no need for me to lose anymore weight for health purposes, this seems to be my raison d'être: To see a digitized number on a piece of plastic my mother bought nearly 10 years ago.

I think I need more things to do with my time.

More visual evidence that no one looks good exercising

Oh yeah. That's me right there to the right, looking less like an athlete and more like a cramping sloth whose shorts are way too tight as I make the final turn at a 10K I ran this past weekend in the lovely Newport section of Jersey City. My friend Theresa took it upon herself to snap this shot of me passing the girl I was using as a pace-setter for the final mile and while I would have preferred she didn't share it with the outside world, such is life sometimes. There I am, dragging myself through the last half mile of the longest distance I had ever run with my noticeable green and yellow shoes that are far too snazzy for a man with my fashion sensibilities.

On the plus side, though, it's hard to lose me in a crowd.

So yes, a few weeks after I ran an actual organized race for the first time, I decided to test my mettle again by doubling the distance. This may not have been wise. After all, 6.2 miles, while not an insurmountable distance, was not something I had ever pushed myself to. In fact, I often opt for the elliptical rather than jogging outside these days because I know my ankles and knees have gotten somewhat balky and running on pavement for roughly an hour straight isn't really going to help that. What's more, when you get past three miles or so, it's wise to kind of train for these things and gradually improve your mile base rather than just throwing yourself into the fire. My training involved exactly one run of 5.5 miles a week earlier, which nearly killed me since I may (definitely did) have had too much to drink the night before.

But hey, when you've lost 40 pounds in five months, I suppose you take it upon yourself to prove just how physically fit you are by indulging in these feats of endurance. If you're lucky like I am, the result of this is, well, survival. Beyond surviving, if you can deal with the lingering pain for at least a little while you're ahead of the game. In my case that pain was pretty ever-present, as I could feel some nasty discomfort hitting my right hip about halfway through the race. Fortunately for me, that is gone now, but my legs were extremely stiff for the first 48 hours after the race and just now are starting to loosen up a bit on me. All of those aches made the fact that my shoe got soaked when I stepped in a puddle during the first half mile seem immaterial by comparison.

There was a pretty big holiday yesterday. I did not celebrate.

Far be it from me to judge peoples' logic or reasoning marking certain days. After all, the start of May is just chock full of important, universally enjoyed celebrations such as Cinco de Mayo, May Day or Star Wars Day, but in some cases, I question the rationale, and yesterday a holiday I had never heard of caught my eye. It seems that every year on May 6, the few of us that can't be bothered to celebrate Willie Mays' birthday are actually celebrating the curious International No Diet Day. This particular holiday is actually far less jovial and full of reckless abandon than one might hope for, particularly since I first heard about it while reading an article about excessive ways to consume bacon, but it is actually a celebration of the natural human form in such a way that it intends to lash back at the societal pressure to maintain an unhealthily skinny body.

According to Wikipedia, the key terms involved are body acceptance, fat acceptance and "body shape diversity." Much of this has been spearheaded by the International Size Acceptance Association, which, amazingly, is actually a real thing. Who knew?

Now, on its surface, I can certainly understand or even appreciate the need to boost morale among people that are either genetically predisposed to weight gain are simply have a larger structure and frame than someone who is, uh, "pretty" like Kate Moss. Like everyone else who has been obese at some point of their lives I've been victim to my fair share of teasing or societal pressure as a result of my own weight. In some sense, I can understand or even appreciate the need to reassure people of their own self esteem when they tip the scales a little more than they'd like to. Lord knows I've met more than my fair share of women who think they still need to lose three pounds when there isn't anything left to lose.