My size 38 Levis are falling down. I’ve got my belt on the last buttonhole, cinched like a nerd, but they won’t stay up. I’m a long way from the 54 Levis hanging on the wall in my home office. Geez, they look like the Goodyear Blimp, floating there above my desk. Not a bad New Year’s gift, huh?

What absolutely blows me away is that I can walk into any store and buy clothes, right off the rack, like I’m a regular guy. I can even reject some stores if I don’t like their styles, like J. Crew, where I returned a bunch of things for their poor quality and odd fit. In the old days, I had to take whatever the folks at Rochester Big and Tall gave me. It’s a great feeling.

Still, I live in fear that I’m going to balloon back up. I have this recurring nightmare where I wake up one morning and none of my clothes fit. I slink out to Rochester wearing old sweatpants and the way-too-tight Atari t-shirt my best friend Jack gave me back in high school. Sometimes, especially late at night, when everyone in the house is asleep except for Scout and me, and I’m worried about the fight I had with my mom, or anxious about finding a job in this shit economy, when all I want is a juicy cheeseburger and fries. Sometimes I’ll walk into the kitchen hunting for leftovers – pizza, Chinese, carbs. Sometimes I’ll even have a few bites. But then I remember the bruising battle I went through to get this still-not-quite-svelte, 220 pound body.

I stop and use the In-Sink-Erator.

It’s not easy to keep my mouth shut. Weight loss surgery is a tool, not a cure-all. Yeah, I’ve lost over 100 pounds, my blood pressure is way down and my knees and hips don’t hurt anymore. I can run – well, jog/walk – almost two miles. But the surgery was nothing more than a physical remodeling of my insides. It didn’t directly change my mind, and there are times when I still want to binge. I’ll probably be fighting that impulse for the rest of my life.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about a jog and some smaller jeans.