So I wrote a blog post five months ago when everything was going great. I had lost 25 pounds since March and was winning Dietbets left and right although I had already discovered that it was easy to shoot up five or six pound in the blink of an eye. Small yo-yos.  But I was down 34 pounds in total in seven months. And then something changed. Mid-October to mid-November was tough but things really fell apart when a bunch of stresses hit me over the last six weeks of the year. First a Doctor felt a nodule and told me that I needed a biopsy to rule out cancer. It turned out to be a false alarm but I didn't know that for several weeks. A week after that, the San Bernardino shooting happened a few miles from my office. And the terrorist's townhouse with more pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition was across the street from my office. This was disturbing on many levels. A week after that, my son totaled our car although, thankfully, no one was badly hurt. Finally, five days after that, my car was rear-ended on the highway when someone didn't stop in traffic and pushed another car into me. The result of all this was I stopped eating well and exercising every day and put 22 pounds back on over the last 11 weeks. My profile chart which had such a great downward trend now looks like a reverse check-mark. In the process, I lost a bunch of Kickstarters and the three Transformers that I am now almost halfway through may be lost causes. 
 
OK, it happened. The excuses (or explanations or whatever you want to call them) aren't even important. Interestingly, I'm not even all that upset about it. Like John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." I stumbled. And now it's time to pick myself up and dust myself off. I'm excited to begin again!