Happy New Year from All of Me.

"Dad, you're not fat, you're just overweight."
-Zoe, my seventeen-year-old daughter

January 1, 2013.

I slowly awakened, exhaling gratefully. My relief was palpable, and I mumbled a silent oath of gratitude that I hadn't actually attended a Styx concert in my back yard, naked on a blanket while spooning the stubbly scapulae of a bearded Taylor Swift.

Rolling onto my back and propping my head on a second pillow, my hands rested comfortably atop my belly. I looked across at my fifty-year-old fingers, interlaced at an equal altitude to my crusty eyeballs. Performing some rudimentary calculations, I quickly surmised that my hands lay approximately twelve inches above the surface of the mattress.

Everything in between was me and my DNA. Nothing but fella flesh. A heapin' helpin' of Tim loaf.

I woke this morning a year older, a year smarter and about six years fatter.

And honestly, my credibility is shot. A couple of years ago I proclaimed a new healthy tack after the doctor labeled me as obese while pointing accusingly, his latexed finger still moist with my shame. Last year, I again threw down the gauntlet and announced that enough is enough, it's time to whittle off some of this lard or forever live in Elastica, land of sweatpants and football jerseys.

I  realize that as we age, things become increasingly difficult—losing weight, covering up bald spots, making people under forty laugh at a joke about Richard Nixon or pet rocks. However, some tasks actually keep getting easier, such as eating an entire sixteen-inch sausage and Canadian Bacon pie. Twenty years ago, I might wimp out a slice and a half short, whereas now I can choke one down with the prowess of a human anaconda.

It's also become significantly easier to watch football for hours on end. In the past, I may have gone out to throw the ball with friends at halftime. Now, I rise only to stave off involuntary couch voiding or to fend off the dangers of sedentary bed sores and perilous clot migrations.

About three years ago, I lost twenty pounds simply by counting calories, but I seem to have lost that discipline. Repeated forms of motivation, like countless "biggest loser" competitions at work have rendered my efforts fruitless.

So now, it's time to dance with and old friend. I joined Weight Watchers this morning, the same organization I graced with my presence forty years ago, one hand grasping my mom's palm and the other a doctor's note.

I want this to work. I want to stop grunting when I get out of chairs. I want my knees and back and ankles and feet to stop fighting back and return to my squad. I want food that misses my mouth to fall to the floor, rather than a conveniently located chin crevice.

It's time to leave Limbaugh and go Gosling.

Welcome back, 2012.

Hello, 2012. Or, should I say, "Welcome back."

For many of us, it's our first day back—to work, to school, to daycare, back to pants which fit better on the last day before the first day of the vacation which led up to the first day back.

Huh?

Naturally, the first day coming back to something isn't quite like a day where we begin something brand new.

That first September day of school can be nerve-wracking, yet exciting—new clothes, new classmates, occasionally new facial hair or other body parts which can lead to shock and dismay in the locker room.

At a new job, day one is also exhilarating, yet the information onslaught prohibits our ability to process much. We return home knowing how to look busy with nothing to do, where the bathrooms are and that we'll never again have lunch with that guy Bob who brings to the restaurant his own jar of chipotle mayonnaise.

I'm not sure what the initial day of prison is like, but it's got to be similar to a sorority rush, with diverse social groups vying for your affection, the relentless pressure to always look pretty and all that throwing up after meals.

So, as I mentioned, today is not a first day—it's a first day back—to work, to the gym, and to most of us, to a life of reacquainting ourselves with behaviors which don't encourage an early demise.

It's a return to earth from the festival of lard and sugar which commenced with Halloween, a two-month orgy which begins with seven or eight fun-sized Kit Kats and ends with one supersized...me.

Awakening this morning in the predawn darkness for the first time in ten days, I stumbled out of bed, threw on some shorts and dragged my rotting carcass to the gym.

I mounted the elliptical trainer with an enthusiasm equal to sliding into a dental recliner and tuned my portable radio to the sports talk station. By the time the morning host's voice grasped control of the airwaves, I had gained some valuable knowledge from the advertisers:

My excess belly fat places me at considerable risk of heart attack and stroke, so I should buy this supplement to halt this lurking danger.

My advancing age puts me in substantial peril of decreased libido, increased fatigue and magic eight ball-sized man melons, so I should buy these pills to differentiate my testosterone level from that of a female kitten.

My intelligence and affluent station in society position me in need of a luxury automobile, so I should buy this car and screw the first two products.

As I worked my aging body into an anaerobic lather, I resolved to do none of the above. I'm not going to start something new, I'm simply returning to something that's been there all along.

I'm pretty sure it's in there somewhere.

Playing Adam to New Year's Eve.

Okay, then. The stained dry erase board of another lame duck year is finally wiped clean.

As Dr. Faux, I mean Dr. Phil, is fond of barking at teenage mom meth addicts, it's time to "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" (insert authoritative Texas drawl here), and move on into 2011.

I don't really consider myself middle-aged anymore, since it's improbable that I'll live to be ninety-six, so from here on out, I'd like to be labeled as "accumulaged." This is the period in my life where stuff begins building up: Christmas ornaments, computers, belly fat, trips to the bathroom. I've even imagined a way to promote this golden, new era—"Try the new Tim. Now with a third more prostate tissue!"

One of the benefits of witnessing my forty-ninth New Year is the slow mellowing of New Year's Eve expectations. As a young adult, we all expected to have the party of the year—to sing, to dance and when the ball drops, to passionately engulf the face of either your soul mate or whomever was closest at the time.

New Year's Eve, 1984, was my watershed party experience. I'd had a girlfriend for about a year-and-a-half, and things weren't going so well. She suggested getting dressed up and going to Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle to usher in the new year, shoulder-to-shoulder with throngs of drunken strangers. After that, we'd hop in a cab, basking in the glow of a re-kindled, re-dedicated relationship.

It looked good on paper, so I reluctantly agreed. From our earliest days together, this girl had tried her best to transform me into a GQ cover guy. She pressed hard to rid my wardrobe of t-shirts and jeans; a trip to campus meant checking my loafers to make sure the pennies hadn't slipped out, popping my collar and tying a pastel colored sweater around my shoulders. My friends had teased me relentlessly, but I had brushed them off, lamely contending that she was "improving" me. I do wish, however, that they hadn't run into me buying that blow dryer at the drugstore.

Anyway, yes, I now realize—red flags, all. Relationships shouldn't be contingent upon one person "fixing" the other. And even then, I felt like a buffoon as we rode the cab downtown. It was freezing cold, but I was firmly instructed not to deviate from the winning polo shirt/ torso wrap combo. By the end of the evening, I could no longer feel my nipples. I was afraid they may have simply broken off after bumping into someone, and I'd find them the next day, looking like little pieces of turkey jerky in the waistband of my Jockey for Hims.

We each did our best to pretend to have a good time, but I think we both realized the absurdity and futility of our situation.

That night twenty-six years ago, I vowed to never immerse myself among a mob in an attempt at manufacturing fun. By the following year, my girlfriend had been replaced by a companion who's stuck by me, in the comfort of my own home, every New Year's Eve since:

Dick Clark.