My friend Robin is going to be *PISSED*

It's time to strip away every conceivable facade of who I am.

I stand before you naked (sorry for the visual) and alone, stripped of all pretense.

I am willing to expose every raw nerve on my body. Some of you (hopefully) will find a grain of inspiration in this post; others will be disgusted, others will read this, continue on with their day and forget it 5 minutes afterwards.

I've decided that it's time to let go of every category I've created for myself: husband, employee, American, father, son, boss, blogger - et. al. Every single one. If any of you hear me refer to myself in the context of a category again, you have my explicit permission to beat the crap out of me.

Belonging to a category (consciously or unconsciously) might give you comfort, but if your life isn't working, then they don't mean shit.

And let's face it - wars, violence, oppression - all can be directly attributed to people unwilling to accept values and ideas that don't fit in with one (or more) of their categories. Most people are so willing to fight for their categories, they never stop to think if their categories even make sense. Only the bravest of public souls ask us to question if we even need categories at all.

For a *long* time, what was the category driving most wars and human misery? Religion. It's sad but true. Guys like Christopher Hitchens have devoted their lives to pointing out this fact (while I agree with much of what he says, his hatred of people like Mother Theresa turns my stomach). Even now, what would most people consider the world's hot spot? The Middle East, with it's millenium-old conflicts of religious identity, which, let's face it, with all of the "accords" and "peace summits" and "peace treaties" will NEVER be resolved.

Here are some public figures who actively encouraged us to re-think and/or let go of our categories. Ask yourself what they all have in common:

Martin Luther King

Robert Kennedy

John Lennon (google the lyrics to "Imagine")

Ghandi

Jesus Christ (and I don't give a shit if you're an atheist)

Common trait? People were so threatened by them, bullets (or nails) were the only answer.

Why the focus today on categories?

I've tried to strip away all of the bullshit stories I've told myself over the past 30 years and see every aspect of my life for what it is - not better than what it is and not worse that what it is. So many of the stories I've told myself (some people might call them "reasons") revolve around the categories of my life.

For too long, I've treated the symptom (the stories) and not the disease (the category).

Here's the cure:

I'm a human being - that's it.

I'm not a father, I'm not a husband, I'm not a son - I am a human being who is consciously choosing to direct his mind and actions towards improving the quality of his life and those people in his immediate sphere of influence.

That's it.

Anything else, and I mean *ANYTHING* is nothing more than a bullshit story you're telling yourself because one of your categories is being threatened. That's it (stepping off soapbox)....

Here's the truth: I'm fat (an observation - not a category).

I know this - my friends are nice enough to dance around the issue, but I know I'm not really fooling anyone.

The worst part is that I've actually been fooling myself. I've lost about 18 pounds since 1/1 - not setting the world on fire, but not bad. But here's one way (of many) I've fooled myself - when I look at myself in the mirror, it's easy to very subtly shift the view of yourself (whether it's straight-on or profile) to accentuate the good points and minimize the bad points. I've done this over the past 6 weeks unconsciously and started to actually think I was something special - what a complete crock of shit.

You know where you can't subconsciously alter the image of yourself? In a picture (Photoshop is cheating). I looked at myself in a couple of recent pictures and was brought right back to reality - I've lost some weight, but I am still, quite clearly, a soft, doughy tub of goo.

All of this is not a statement of pity. I'm not particularly sad or depressed about it - it's more of a observation of my current situation. I've evaluated the variables regarding this and drawn a logical conclusion:

I'm fat

I'm not overweight, I'm not husky, I'm not rotund, I'm not weight-challenged - I'm fat. Every measure of health points to this. The not-so-pleasant facts:

Age: 44

Height: 6'0"

Weight: 234

Waist Size: 42

BMI: 31.7 (>30 = obese)

LDL (bad cholesterol) = 58 (should be less than 100 - Yay!)

Total cholesterol = 136 (should be less than 200 - Awesome!)

BUT:

Triglycerides: 262 (should be less than 150)

and *here's* the one that absolutely scares the living shit out of me:

Triglycerides/HDL ratio *should* be 3 or less.

Mine?

9.7 - holy shit!

My friend Robin is going to be pissed at me. Big time. Beyond my immediate family, I love and respect Robin more than just about any other person on the planet.

Why is she going to be so pissed at me? I'm going to try to lose 30 pounds in 30 days.

"Don't do it; it's unhealthy - THERE IS NO WAY YOU SHOULD DO THIS", I can hear her say (Robin does not suffer fools gladly) - but as my friend Brad Brown likes to say, we all need a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal).

At first glance, it seems totally impossible (although people *have* done it), but let's take a closer look and break down the math:

To lose 1 pound, you need a calorie deficit of 3500. Let's stick with round numbers to make things easy: if I ate 1500 calories a day, I would need to burn 5000 calories:

5000 - 1500 = 3500

Can you live on 1500 calories/day for 30 days?
Can you burn 5000 calories/day for 30 days?

Can Chris do it?

Tonight (2/17/Thursday), we're going to Texas De Brazil for a last blowout (if you have a Texas De Brazil anywhere near you, I really encourage you to try it) and I'm going to spend most of tomorrow crapping out the excess protein I'll consume tonight. Can I lose 30 pounds in between 2/19/11 and 3/20/11?

Stay tuned.....