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?

I promise I will not be playing any Bon Jovi today

Last Saturday night I stood in a bar with some friends on the lower east side when suddenly "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey started blaring from the speakers. This isn't a terribly unusual occurrence. Anyone who has had alcohol in a public place in their 20s is probably all too familiar with this, but given that it was around 11:30 p.m. at the time, this did seem strangely early for it, as was pointed out by my friend Amy.

Perhaps more curious, though, was that we had not yet heard "Don't Stop Believin'"s companion in the "We always get played at bars so drunk girls can act excited about it as if it didn't happen last week" circuit. That song, of course, is this one. (Ok, I lied. Get over it.) If you're in a financial crunch, you can basically bank your life savings on the fact that at some point Saturday night in any bar in Murray Hill you'll hear four dozen 23-year-olds sing "Livin' on a Prayer" at the top of their lungs -- assuming you can find a bookie dumb enough to offer that bet.

This is kind of annoying, partially because none of these people can sing and partially because the experience ruins what is, really, a pretty fun catchy song. And as a result, it makes it doubly annoying that it was one of the first things that came to my mind as I stepped on the scale this morning.

See as you may or may not remember, while I aim to get myself down to 175 pounds by my sister's wedding this June, my starting weight was 219. That's 44 pounds which means if you passed second grade you can probably deduce that a weight of 197 pounds would be, well, "halfway there." Of course, I don't really think the work to get myself to the halfway point in my weight loss needs to driven by, well, "prayer." Nor is my likelihood of actually succeeding at this as unlikely as, say, achieving the American dream when I'm a striking dock worker and my wife, Gina, is a hard working diner waitress.

Chipotle, Glorious Chipotle

Brown rice. Black beans. Chicken. Sour cream. Cheese. A pile of hot sauce. It's simple really, and yet it brings a surprising amount of joy into our lives. After a while, however, we develop a dependency. It's just too delicious, too quick, too filling, and too easy not to. But the hardest part, always, is accepting and admitting you have a problem.

But here I am. My name is David. And I am addicted to Chipotle.

I accept this as a battle I am going to be waging for the rest of my life, myself against the zesty high-quality faux Mexican that I first discovered a decade ago in Evanston, Illinois. I have no choice but to accept this fight. I have won minor battles along the way of course, changing ingredients here or there. When my addiction went into full swing my regular order was a feisty combination of white rice, a double scoop of pinto beans, a double order of barbacoa, sour cream, cheese (with a little more if you can spare it, sir) and a bag of chips. Take a gander at the Chipotle corporate website and you'll see their nutrition calculator conservatively estimates that at a scant 1,830 calories and 73.5 grams of fat. That's roughly 150 calories more than my current diet allows per day.

I realized long ago that this had to be reformed and over the years the order has changed. The chips have long since been dropped, as has the tortilla for the lighter and more easily mixed bowl option. Brown rice is now the norm instead of white, ditto black beans for pinto and chicken for barbacoa -- and single servings at that. The current order comes in at a significantly trimmer 690 calories and 30 grams of fat, numbers that, really, aren't quite so bad for you in the grand scheme of an average day, particularly since it leaves you with nearly 1,000 calories to spend on breakfast and dinner.

As a result of those changes my addiction is manageable, and not particularly threatening at that, which is good since before I decided to start losing weight my Chipotle intake was operating at a pretty steady rate of one meal per week. This is what happens when there's three locations within a three-block radius of your office. But I have also realized that my regular visits to Chipotle are not just a hindrance to reaching my goals when I could indulge in significantly less fatty fare such as, say, tilapia, but it's also a crutch, one that I lean on to get my fat kid fix every seven days.

Well, I had to find a way to make it into less of a crutch and more of a walking stick. And so I decided many weeks ago that Chipotle was no longer in the diet rotation along with various lean aquatic animals and leafy greens. Not unless I had earned it anyway.