Playing the Numbers Game

Some people trying to lose weight weigh in every hour. They weigh in every time they eat a doughnut or a double bacon cheeseburger and a supersized order of fries, or a giant tub of popcorn. They get on a diet rollercoaster where they actually gain weight.

I got off the diet rollercoaster and onto a lifestyle program that works — Younger Next Year. Each week I like to weigh in. I do it first thing in the morning, before I take on water weight, without clothes, so that I can make an accurate comparison from week to week. I am no longer trying to lose weight. Maybe I never was. I just want to see where the Younger Next Year program will take me if I exercise hard six days a week and quit eating crap.

This morning I weighed 177.6 pounds. At my peak weight in life, in 2004, long before I discovered the Younger Next Year program, I weighed 240 pounds. That's a lot of weight to pack on a 5-foot-11 frame, but not uncommon in America, which is in the midst of an epidemic of obesity. I was at about 200 pounds when I discovered Younger Next Year in the summer of 2009.

Chris Crowley and Dr. Henry Lodge advise not to go on a diet but to just follow the program as closely as you can and the weight will take care of itself. They're absolutely right. Diets don't work. Lifestyles do. As the authors say in the "Younger Next Year" book, losing a pound or two will take time, but it will happen. I can live comfortably at 180 pounds. Anything below that is gravy on the cake — err, make that olive oil and vinegar on the spinach.