282 - gained nearly 40 lbs in the past year - and will lose the final 100 lbs this coming year, you just watch me!

Looking back a year at my first blog post of 2017 (a year when I posted only eight times altogether, versus 107 blog posts in 2016) I see I weighed 243 lbs. Events at the end of 2017 were a bit chaotic but the last "official" weigh-in had me at 282 lbs. My ultimate goal is to reach 178 lbs by the end of this year. Based on past performance (losing about ten pounds a month) I think it's totally possible.

My friends who are familiar with my story know that I am currently in the process of moving back from Belgrade to my "spiritual home" of Missoula. I am already feeling more optimistic about the future, and about regaining 100% control of my diet and exercise. Sadly, my bathroom scales are packed away at the bottom of a cardboard box. It'll be another three weeks before they see the light of day again. In the meantime, I am sticking more closely to my former low carb diet and avoiding (as much as possible) sugar and wheat and corn. My new pants (the ones I had to grudgingly buy from the "Big & Tall" [a.k.a. fat people's] store a couple of weeks ago) feel like they're a bit loose now.

I'm looking forward to plenty of four-season hiking in the Missoula area on Mount Sentinal and Mount Jumbo, the Rattlesnake trails, Pattee Canyon, the Riverfront trail and the Blue Mountain trails. As the warmer weather returns, I'll be taking my motorbike with me on backpacking trips further afield. I'll also be scouting out sections of the ACA Lewis & Clark route (Highway 12) from Lewiston, Idaho, back to Missoula, in preparation for my 600-mile bicycle ride from Portland, Ore., in 2019. I'll be taking my camera(s) with me a lot more this year too.

I anticipate that there will be more opportunities for me to share the details of my progress and more news and photos in 2018 than in the year before. I'll be doing a lot more reading about the evils of added sugar and the virtues of a heavily plant-based (more vegetarian) diet. With so much of our body's energy expenditure (70%) going towards maintaining our basal metabolic rate, the marginal amount of extra energy burned through vigorous exercise is so small as to make extra exercise far less important than diet in our quest to lose weight. Exercise does have many other positive benefits though - it's just that it doesn't directly affect weight loss so much ("Abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym!")