The Final Fifteen Pounds

  Last night, a funny thing happened... But first some background... 1) I don't eat corn due to inflammation issues. 2) Due to a winter storm, our power was out for 36 hours and counting. It's cold even with a fire going.  Last night, I was the first in the family to go to bed. I said goodnight to my three boys and wife. I opened up my iPad and got in some reading before going to sleep.  Just as I was about to turn over, I realized that I had a question for my wife. I walked out and was met with four pair of guilty eyes. I knew they were up to something, but I didn't know what. I looked and saw the large bowl of popcorn unsuccessfully covered in the middle of the four huddled ones. They felt bad.  I was overjoyed. One is this... they waited until I went to bed because they cared about my feelings. That's love. But also, I didn't have a craving for the popcorn. Popcorn has been the hardest thing for me to pass up this last year of intermittent fasting. The hardest. 

  I'll tell you about the push up challenge in a minute, but first holiday eating... It wasn't pretty. Okay, the food was great. And I didn't go hog wild, really. But somehow I picked up about seven pounds in the month of December.  Back on the straight and narrow. Already lost three of it.  Now the push ups. I had an idea to do a push up challenge with my boys for a month. Six of us began the challenge. One dropped out the first day. It's not because it's too hard for him. He's already crazy fit. He builds pools for a living and much of that is him on the business end of a shovel.  Another one did it only once or twice. He too works a full day in construction.  The boys who still live at home all are doing it with me. We are just over half way through.  The challenge is this: Do 50 pushups a day for a month. Take Sundays off.  The eighteen year old, who practices karate and ballet, immediately decided to take on more than 50 each day.  The other two are hanging