The diet’s going well. Pardon, my health plan is going well. I went to the doctor’s this past Monday for a routine physical. I had made this appointment prior to the coronavirus break out, and I had expected the doctor to cancel it outright, but after one postponement, I was in his office getting checked out.

Surprise number one, my blood pressure was normal. For the past twenty years, every time I had gotten my blood pressure checked, it always came back high. Pre-hypertension. For the first time that I can remember, it came back good.

Surprise number two, my blood tests came back good. I have a health screeening once a year at work, and something is always amiss. Either my cholesterol is bad, or my triglycerides, or some other number. This time everything came back well.

This, I believe, is due in large part to making a few changes in my life. I’ve been overweight for years. Not morbidly, but enough to make me feel horrible. What motivated me the most was a picture I took with a singer at a concert. She’s young and beautiful, and next to her I looked like a broken down Quasimodo.

That was in December of last year. In February I started my health plan. Since then, I’ve dropped twenty-five pounds. I’m down a size in clothes, and they look and fit better. I no longer look old and bloated. I feel fantastic, other than missing the crap I used to eat.

This is being tested at the moment by the onset of Covid-19 and the necessity to isolate at home. Food is comfort, and comfort is love and security. At the moment, sequestered alone in my fortress, I feel neither love nor security. I love to cook and I’m trying my hand at baking.

For instance, today I baked sourdough. Took all day to get it done, and I have to say I did okay. Just okay. There were mistakes made, mistakes that I aim to correct the next time I bake bread, mistakes that I’m not altogether upset nor surprised I made. Mistakes, delicious mistakes.

But this little hobby will wreak havoc on my waistline if I’m not careful. But it’s fine. If I’m going to be forced to seek refuge away from the masses, the least I can do is enjoy the occasional slice of bread, with a bit of marmalade that I bought specifically for this.

On Monday I’ll get back to my health plan, keeping an eye of the scale, ensuring that I continue to lose weight until I hit my ideal range of 155-160 pounds. But there is a joy in cooking and baking that I find soothing in these troubled times.

I’m learning to enjoy new things, introducing other vegetables in the my dietary repertoire. I’m eating squash and zucchini on a regular basis, as well as asparagus. I’m eating tomatoes, something I’m not really fond of but can swallow if I deseed them.

The healthiest change, however, is learning to recognize that food is a means to fuel the body. I can fuel it correctly with nutricious, vitamin-rich meals, or I can revert to eating the heavily-processed, salt and sugar-laden crap that led me to look and feel horrible.

I choose to be healthy. I, however, reserve the right to indulge in the occasional guilty pleasure, sans the guilt. I just have to remember that I cannot indulge too often or an unsightly bulge of the belly will rear its ugly head.