I hate belts

So last night as I was getting ready for bed, I naturally removed my belt from my jeans. It's a nice brown leather belt that I purchased in Tallahassee, Florida years ago from a now defunct store called "The County Seat". I stretched the belt from left hand to right hand and looked at the little clasp holes at the non-buckle end of the belt. There are eight holes in total. I noticed there are permanent crease marks worn into the belt next to several of the holes indicating use.

The sad thing? The latest crease is on the second to last hole - or the seventh hole to be exact. What that means is, I get any fatter and I'm maxing that belt out on the last, or eighth hole. There's an unwritten fashion rule that says "If you're anywhere near the last two holes of the belt, you need to upgrade. Fatty."

The really sad thing? Is that when you look at the belt, you can tell that at one point in my life, I was wearing that bad boy on the FIRST HOLE. Now, each hole is approximately an inch apart. So for those of you with amazing deduction skills, YES, that means that I indeed have grown six inches around my waist since I first bought that belt. I bought it in 1996 when I was 26. Now, I'm 39. Thirteen years I've had that belt. So, if you're following along, that means that each year, I've expanded my gut by 1/2 inch. I currently wear a 38 in jeans. At my current fat-man rate, you can safely say that in ten more years I should be a 43 waist. In another ten years (if I survive that long), I should be pushing a size 50 waist. Good gosh. And in all actuality, in the 13 years I've owned this belt, my guess is that in the past four years I've gained at a faster rate than the previous 9 years before, which means at the current rate, I will reach that size 50 waist MUCH faster than the above calculations.

I will be forced to wear those powder-blue expandable jeans which for some reason never have back pockets (probably because the designers of fat-man jeans realize at that point, my chubby arm wouldn't be able to access anything in a back pocket of my big bubble butt anyway).

So what am I saying? Am I saying that I am on the road to suspenders? No. Am I saying that I will soon only be wearing sweat pants with my t-shirts tucked in? No.

I'm saying I will keep this belt. It will be a motivation marker for me. At the end of 2010, my goal is to be wearing that belt in the third hole - meaning four inches off my gut. In fact, I hope that at the end of 2010, I won't BE EVEN ABLE to refer my mansection (I mean midsection) as a "gut". I will then have made the transformation from using the word "GUT" to "ABS".

If I didn't need any further motivation, my wife, as I pointed out how the crease marks on the belt's holes have nearly reached the tip of the belt, said "Wow, it's like a growth chart!". Nice.

The bad thing is that it's been two weeks since my last post, and I haven't made any real progress. But that ends tomorrow! I plan to buy a weigh scale (our current one doesn't work) and start losing one pound a week. That's right: one pound a week. That will be my goal. It's as simple as that.

How? Well. I joined a gym. That will be the next story I post. For now, let's all revel in the thought that The County Seat, the store that sold me my belt of fatness in the first place, is out of business.