So today is the first day of the battle of the bikini.  I read that if you publicize your fitness plans/goals that you are more likely to keep up with them due to the humiliation that is associated with failure.  I’ll try (almost) anything once, so here it goes…

Yesterday, I bought a bikini…  Sure it fits, but am I fit to be wearing it? No. Five years ago in college I started my first stint with ”hitting the gym” in an effort to feel good about squeezing my pasty little body into a bikini and rock out in Negril, Jamaica with the rest of my classmates for Spring Break.  This was a valiant effort, but something that I never kept up with. 

Three years ago, I moved to Dublin and thus began an adventure to see as much of Europe as I could in twelve months.  This resulted in another go at the gym in an attempt to compete with the hot (and topless) bodies lining the sand on the beaches of the French Riviera in August.  Still pasty, but this time while clad in Burberry I had dropped a couple of pounds so at least my belly wasn’t hanging over my bikini bottom.

Today, its summertime in Munich where I now reside.  After two years of countless liters of beer and hearty German food the weight begins to creep up to an all time high.  Today I weigh 123 lbs. (56kg). 

I’m advertising my weight in the mindset that if other people know what it is I will be forced to reduce it, otherwise face public (read: internet) humiliation.   I understand that 123 lbs. does not sound like much to most but in fact I am a mere 5′0″ tall and when there are 6′0″ supermodels in the 120s range you can imagine that I’m not quite in the range that we’d call “fit”. 

…Yesterday I bought a bikini, and today I’m going back to the gym.