I’m pretty sure I mentioned that I went on a diet a few months ago. But I haven’t really talked about it too much. Well I am still dieting, and trying to exercise regularly.

Well I must be doing something right. Check out this picture of me from about 4 ½ months ago. I took this during a hike down to Tarzan Falls. This was about two weeks after I started my diet. At this point, I’d only lost about 5 pounds off my starting weight.

Let’s just say I was pretty damn rotund and leave it at that. Here’s a picture of me from today, also taken at Tarzan Falls. I’m wearing the exact same clothes as in that first picture.

No, I’m not sucking my gut in or anything in that second picture. That’s just me after losing over 55 pounds. I have to say I am pretty damn impressed with myself. Of course I am still a fat fuck, but I’ve made some real progress here.

So what did I do? That most fad-tastic of diets, Atkin’s. But let’s get this straight, I didn’t go into buying all their low carb food, I just read the book and did it all by myself. No potatoes, no bread, no rice, no candy, no soda and no beer (and that has really sucked the most). Basically I’ve been eating a lot of salads. People are always obsessing on the protein that comes with this diet. Well, I have certainly been eating meat, but I am certainly no rampaging carnivore. Mostly I eat a salad with a can of tunafish, or maybe diced up bits of turkey cold cuts. I can’t say that I’ve really been starving myself either. But by cutting out all those carbohydrates, I’ve steadily lost about 2-3 pounds a week since Memorial Day.

I saw my doctor this week and my overall cholesterol is fine, but my HDL (the good cholesterol) is a little low. So I need to exercise more, he says. Guess I better start paddling again, not that I might be able to fit inside a canoe again. I am actually pleased with the results, I expected to find butter coursing through my veins. Otherwise the lab results were good, so I’ll be sticking on this diet for the foreseeable future. I want to lose another 60 pounds, which seems almost ridiculous to me, but I think I can do it.

A couple more exciting space probes are gearing up for launch in the next few months.

• The European Space Agency’s Venus Express is ready for launch on October 26. Modeled after the agency’s successful Mar Express probe, Venus Express will head to our inner neighbor in the solar system to explore the secrets of that hellish inferno of a world.
• From blazing inferno to frigid iceball – Heading in the opposite direction of Venus Express is the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which just shipped to Kennedy Space Center from its construction facility. The spacecraft will be mated to the lift vehicle and undergo final testing prior to a launch window in January 2006.
• Speaking of the Mars Express mission, ESA recently decided to extend the mission of that probe for an additional Martian year.