And so it begins.

Holidays and eating a ton of stuff go hand in hand. It's going to be pretty interesting to go through the next several months while on a diet and surrounded by those temptations.  There's a traveling salesperson from "Mountain Man" who drops by our office once a month to sell snacks, assorted little novelty items, etc.  Today she was here and of course, that means people have bowls of all sorts of candy littered around the office like snacking land-mines now.

No problem. I'm not interested and very focused on what I am doing, but it's the first of many temptations to come.  October brings Halloween and lots of candy and dessert items, along with multiple parties where there will no doubt be plenty of food around.

Then we get Thanksgiving, which is the most notorious pig-out day of all. Luckily I have an easy out there - turkey is on the 'yes' list for me, and I can just make sure there are a couple of veggies I can do too. No mashed potatoes this year. Nooooo mashed taters.  Starchy.

Contemplate that and tell me if it isn't one of the saddest things you can imagine. Here, let me help with this shoddily-constructed illustration:

Assuming I don't cave in during Thanksgiving, we round the corner to Christmas, when there are more parties and festivities, though luckily we do that at my place, which means Dawn and I cook and we can be sure I have Mark-OK stuff.

Then New years.. which honestly, we haven't done a damn thing during for the last couple of years. Maybe that's no biggie.

What I'm most worried about is being cooped up indoors more due to the weather and darkness, and being tempted to snack.  Also, it's much easier to motivate yourself to head out for a walk or to the gym when it's 75 and sunny.. than when you get home at 5:00pm and it's pitch black, 40 degrees and pouring rain.

I'm glad I got started in August. I don't know how people START new diets in the middle of winter.

No wonder New Year's (dieting) Resolutions fail so often.

On another note - I don't seem to be losing any weight this week, but that's fairly normal around this point in a new diet. You retain water when you re-introduce more veggies, and fat loss keeps happening like a ninja in the background.  I expect to see a few pounds drop off next week.