I am not a doctor.  I don’t play one on TV.  I’m just a normal, if not cheap, American citizen trying to be healthy, feel healthy and stay healthy.  

A few years back I cracked the scales at my doctor’s office at a prodigious two hundred and eight pounds.  For the past couple of years my weight has hovered between 173 and 178 pounds. 

Part of my motivation to shed the tire was that I had lived a Dilbertian existence in corporate America for 18 years.  The most exercise I got at work was walking too and from the parking lot to my office.  About the only running I did was running my big fat mouth.  I was tired of feeling tired.  One day in the fall before I stepped outside of corporate America, I was out raking leaves and I had to sit down because I thought I was going to drop dead.

Before I left my job, I bellied up to my employer’s smorgasbord health plan buffet and had a full blown physical.  The leaf raking thing scared the crap out of me and I wanted to be sure if I started exercising for real, I wouldn’t drop dead for real.  My doctor confirmed I was fat and lazy but the rest of me was in fine shape if not a little round.  Prior to any dramatic changes in your lifestyle, I highly recommend a visit to the doc, to make sure you are well enough to really take control of your health.

You can pay huge money for all kinds of diet advice, but let me tell you, advice won’t lose you an ounce of blubber.   But you will lose weight if you can wrap your brain around cutting your caloric intake in half. 

You don’t need to go out and buy and special calorie counting cards or gizmos.  You don’t need to go out and buy special foods (unless you want to).  You don’t need to read the calories on the side of every box and can at the supermarket.

What you do need to do is to cut every meal in half.  Fix half as much.  If you are dining out buy one meal and split it with a friend or significant other.  Not only will you cut your calories in half, but you will save 50% on your food bill.

That’s your starting point.  You won’t starve.  You won’t be forced to eat crappy stuff you don’t like.  You won’t have to keep a log.  You will know in your head, each time you sit down to eat if you are following the plan or not.   The other important advice to go along with this is drink lots of water.  Substitute it for anything with sugar in it when you can and you will cut down your calories even more.

Once you get into the habit of eating less, then you can begin to focus on eating better.  Eat a little fruit, a few vegetables.  They won’t kill, you and they beat the snot out of that stuff the dude on Man vs. Wild eats on the Discovery Channel.

Lastly if you want to really start feeling better, get some exercise.  Make that a habit too.

In summary Elvis, here were/are the benefits for me:

• I feel better
• I lost weight
• I look trimmer if not better (my face, sadly, is one only a mother could love, so losing weight did nothing for me in that department)
• I cut my food bill significantly
• I don’t crap as much which means I have more time to do other things (like exercise)
• I sleep better
• When I went to get life insurance, all of my vitals tests put me in a health range that lowered my insurance premium
• I became far more aware of what goes in my body and over time made some changes in what I ate in addition to how much I ate
• I changed some bad habits into good ones

If you read all of this, good for you.  Now go take the first step baby.