Not thinking about food

I am hungry. I'm starving. I'd kill for the tiniest bite of a hamburger, or a couple of oil-and-salt-drenched fries. I want the feeling of an over-processed calorie bomb of a milkshake sliding down my throat. No junk food until I reach 190, though. I stand on the scale and wait for it to stop beeping. I consider shaving my beard to lose a few extra ounces.
I've stopped drinking, but only recently. In fact, today is my first day. No, I didn't have any alcohol yesterday, but we'll still call this the first official day. Because I said so. 6 months without a drop. This post is my reminder a lot more so than my announcement. I'm going to read it again and again in the coming months and think "what the hell was I thinking," or "maybe if I convince myself that a rogue blogger hijacked that post and I never promised that, maybe then I can have a martini."
I've found alternatives for eating. I exercise. I work. I sleep. I play video games. I do anything I can to take my mind off of my growling stomach. I've done this before, and after a week, the growling has gone away, and so has the hunger. The question is, did I get used to it all those other times, or did I start lying to myself about how much I was eating. Maybe I was hallucinating that there wasn't an entire box's worth of pasta in that bowl.
All those other times. Those are some scary words. I have a wall of failure looming behind me, parts of it built with the photographic evidence in this very blog. I have every reason to give up. All of the men in my family are overweight, as many generations back as there are pictures. One problem, though, they get that way in their forties. I'm twenty four. At twenty four, they are lean, mean, strong, and mustached. I am a wreck of a man who gets winded going up a flight of stairs, sweats uncontrollably when lifting his backpack, and considers his daily easy 2-mile bicycle commute a feat of extreme strength and endurance comparable to the Ironman triathlon.
My friend and one-time roommate, the one who convinced me to keep riding when the weather got crappy and the temperatures dropped below zero (thank you) once gave me some advice on getting better in a sport. Not to say that this is the only time he gave me advice, it's just likely to be the only time I really listened. He said that if you keep riding one speed day in and day out, you'll never get better. You have to push yourself, make it hard to make it home. Add a mile per hour and when that gets bearable, add another. I never really thought about that seriously until I started thinking about this post. So I'm going to push harder, not just when I ride, but in how often I ride, bike, swim, lift, diet, cook, clean, everything. The intensity has to stay level in everything I do, or I'll never make it. Next time I'll write about something more pleasant, like how Olivia Munn keeps me motivated. This time, though, it's the cold hard truth. I am going to sign up for the 2011 Hy-Vee triathlon, whatever fitness level I manage to get to. I am going to finish it.