Return to Las Vegas March 9-14, 2024 and a Weighty Decision

I almost can't believe that it has now been over six months since I have been to Las Vegas. A variety of circumstances have led to this half-year break. They included having a colonoscopy, a trip to Greece, my wife's trip to help her sister, my wife's trip to assist our son in moving here, actually having our son here, a mystery respiratory illness, a trip to the Grand Canyon, several Phoenix Suns games, a Seattle Mariners spring training game, various concerts, driving my non-profit's clients to several medical appointments ...

It sounds a little busier than it has actually felt. Unfortunately, I have also been running extremely bad in poker, which started right at the end of my last Las Vegas trip. Either that, or suddenly I now really suck at poker. It has been a very frustrating (in poker) last six months. I am hoping that a trip to Las Vegas will help get me back on track.

I decided not to write a Part II to my last post. However, I will speak here of one of the two things I was going to write about. With several things serving as motivation, I decided that I needed to do something about my weight if I hope to live several more years. It is funny sometimes to look at the perspectives that we have integrated into ourselves. I was a skinny kid. My siblings were also pretty thin. However, I've had a huge appetite almost my entire life. In high school, I was very active in sports. I was a victim of the freshman 15 when I began college. I was pretty slim when I began my first professional job after being poor during graduate school -- which certainly helps keep weight down -- but over the years, my weight went up. The glory era of online poker didn't help as I played poker almost every night back then. Anyway, after hemming and hawing after deciding not to pay $1,100-1,500/month to get semaglutide shots, I decide to man up and cut out sugar and carbs from my diet. I am not following any particular name diet plan and am not feverishly counting my carbs, just cutting out all the bad stuff. Monday, March 10 will be the two-month mark since I began. As of the morning of March 7, I have lost 26 pounds. the first 20 came off pretty rapidly the first month, but things have slowed down the past four weeks. However, what I am doing is very reasonable. I was surprised that I have not missed many things I regularly ate, but the temptations seem to be coming a little bit more the past couple of weeks. However, I am a stubborn dude and have largely stuck with my plan. In the past two months, I've had two days when I ate a lot of carbs, usually due to some life circumstance, but they actually seemed to help me bust through some weight plateaus I had been stuck on. So ... a slimmer version of lightning36 will be invading Las Vegas this coming week.

I plan on playing some poker with some friends and maybe doing a few meals with some. Hit me up if you want to fling a few cards together or grab a drink/meal (keto in my case, of course). I have felt pretty bored the last few weeks. I am really looking forward to this trip.

Thanks for reading!