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.

We're entering the home stretch, and it will not be easy

I love my family. Most people love their families. But most people can also understand the complexity of family overload. I know I do. Strangely, though, for me "overload" isn't really so much about the quality time of finding out from each of your family members that they have some girl they want you to meet -- though that is its own special kind of overload. No this is about food.

And in my family, you get overloaded with food almost every time you see them.

That's fine. As my grandmother has put it, if you're going to go out to eat, you may as well eat well, and if the discomfort I felt wearing all of my old pants over the last five years is any indication, I agree with the sentiment. However, there is one positively brutal stretch of the year that includes so many family gatherings it makes people's fears about gaining weight during late December seem like child's play. Every year from mid-March until Mid-May if you try and fail to make plans with me on a weekend it's a good bet it's because my family has taken me hostage, and I'm busy consuming all of the food that comes with it. To wit, all of these fall within a span of roughly eight weeks:

My uncle's birthday
Passover
My mother's birthday
My father's birthday
Mother's Day
My step-mother's birthday (which this year is the same day as Mother's Day)

I should note that this stretch also includes two cousins birthdays and has in the past included the birthday of more than one person I have dated, fortunately for me though, both of those cousins do not live in New York and I'm no longer dating any of those women, which eases up the docket a little bit. The long and short of this, however, is that over this period there is a lot of eating. And my family has never been one for the light crackers and cheese hors d'oeurves, either. When we barbecue we serve diced up sausage and skirt steak before you've walked in the door, let alone sat down for an appetizer. This is made even more complicated by the fact that my mother, father, step-mother and sister-in-law all happen to be tremendous cooks, so generally speaking, even if you're full, you don't want that brisket at the passover seder to go to waste.

Your scale is a drunken mess

Power, liquor, it doesn't really matter what your bathroom scale is drunk on, but you ought to know that it is jumbled indecisive disaster. All of us have that friend who just can't seem to make up their mind when they've had a few. They might want to go to this bar or that club or get that slice of lasagna pizza or those cheese fries, but the point is that they really don't know what they want and even if they do they can't decide how they're supposed to articulate it.

The scale in my bathroom isn't all that different. Now, I know many think this is somewhat indicative of mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, but with my scale working again and my weight-loss plan in full swing I've taken to weighing myself just about every time I enter my bathroom. For most people these probably sounds like a problem. Some weight-loss gurus believe you should only weigh yourself once a week to avoid driving yourself crazy and most say to only do it once a day and at the exact same time, but I have problems with both options. As far as weighing myself once a week, one of my big problems has been being able to keep myself in check by keeping regular track of my body. Once a week, in my mind, leaves too much time to inflict damage with a bucket of fried chicken if I don't know the next day that I'm three pounds heavier. Once a day, however, can be too random because weight fluctuates over the course of a day.

So where does that leave me?

I have decided the only rational conclusion is to weigh myself at every possible opportunity, not because I'm petrified of not knowing if I lost 1.5 pounds of water weight during my jog, but because if I see the scale often enough and see how much the numbers can vary over the course of a day on a regular basis, I will learn that my weight is difficult to pinpoint and is likely just going to fall in a slight range at any given time. And if I do that, I take those three digits on the readout far less seriously.

This leaves one problem, though. What if your scale gives you different numbers within a span of five seconds? What should you make of that?