A few weeks ago, my friend Jen was down here in Cayman on vacation. On her last day here, we were sitting on the beach with John (the rest of the Sunday crew showed up later) and Jen took a few pictures before she left. A few days later when she got home and uploaded them to Flickr, I caught a glimpse of my beluga-like self in one of the pictures and nearly had a shit hemorrhage. NOT GOOD. It was so nasty that I put down my fork, grabbed my helmet and went to the gym to renew my membership.

I also asked one of my co-workers, who happened to be in Florida that night, if she could run over to Target and pick me up a yoga mat. (they were $15US on Target.com and they're about $35CI here) She laughed and said sure.

I started doing Pilates in January, at the old apartment. I had a video I found online and was working along with the video, getting used to the positions and the procedures. It was pretty good, the workout was about 25-30 mins and had a good mix of positions that werent friggin impossible, and even had alternates if you were a beginner on how to make it easier or more challenging if you were further along. I stopped doing it when I moved, since the floors here are tile, but now with a mat, it's doable again.

I didn't really restrict my diet at all in the past few weeks, but did make more conscious choices. It's tough to stick to a diet when you're on a tight-ass budget because you lost $400 cash out of your pocket one night, but aside from a couple jr cheeseburger deluxes from the 99 cent menu at Wendy's, and the pulled pork sandwich that wasn't as good as it used to be at Aqua Beach on the weekend, I've been eating 'more healthy' than I normally do.

Today I went to the gym after work for a quick 30 mins on the elliptical trainer (had an appointment to fix a computer that I missed last night) and just for grins I stepped up on the scale in the locker room and lo and behold... 160.0... My fighting weight. Anything less and I start looking emaciated like when I first moved here and had to figure out "oh yeah, I have to COOK for myself" and dropped to 135lbs.

I managed to stay around 150 that year, mostly because my bicycle was my only means of transportation. When I got Betty, I went up and stablized at 155, and then I moved to Texas... and *I* got Texas-sized. I shot up to about 170 during that year, and coming back to Cayman as a fat bastard, I only managed to maintain 170. By 2003 I was up over 180, and when I weighed myself in the spring of 2004, the night before HazMat Jenny and I started the South Beach diet, I was 187lbs. I was starting to look like Tony Soprano! The SB Diet worked for me, and in about six weeks I was back down to 158lbs. After that I sort of let it go and went back up to about 165 and held there. Then I started getting fat again recently, just due to being sedentary. SO that's over now, Im doing pilates three or four times a week, and going to the gym on days that I don't do pilates.

This weekend I'm getting back in the water to do some Open Water checkout dives (yes! I'm actually teaching a scuba course!) so we'll see if i can lace my boardshorts up all the way.