One of the ben­e­fits of train­ing for this marathon is that I’ve been los­ing a lot of weight. Unlike my Philebri­ty Fit Club expe­ri­ence, this has been a grad­ual, grat­i­fy­ing process, rather than a sprint to the fin­ish. I’m much hap­pi­er with the results.

Why? Los­ing 16% of my body mass in two months did­n’t do won­ders for my health. As an added bonus I was laid off short­ly after win­ning Fit Club. The wear and tear from run­ning and diet­ing, plus the added stress of need­ing to find a new job was just too much. I came down with some nasty bronchial some­thing that the doc­tor swore was­n’t pneu­mo­nia. I was cough­ing so much I bruised my ster­num. It was bad.

As I peel away the pounds this time, I’m find­ing that my biggest prob­lem is that I have no clothes to wear. When I start­ed train­ing, I looked in my dress­er draw­ers and was sad­dened by what I saw. I still have clothes from my days as a St. Joe’s under­grad! They are nei­ther pret­ty nor do they scream “media pro­fes­sion­al.” It’s time for a major update.

Last night I took a bold step and bought a pair of jeans. I’m back down to a 34″ waist after push­ing the lim­its of 36″ two months ago. They’re noth­ing fan­cy, just a pair of deep blue Lev­i’s I found on sale at Macy’s down­town. I did­n’t want to go too wild as I have thir­teen weeks of train­ing before the marathon and I fig­ure that I’ll prob­a­bly keep slim­ming down until the race. That got me think­ing: what should I get when I reach my goal?

If you have any sug­ges­tions, leave them in the com­ments, or, if you use Delicious.com, send me sug­ges­tions here. I’m look­ing for places to shop as much as pieces to buy, so all sug­ges­tions are wel­come. In the mean­time I’ll be the guy wear­ing a bar­rel to work. If you see me around 17th and JFK, be sure to say hi!