In March of this year,

In March of this year, my physician poked me in the stomach and said, "You've got to take care of this." Meaning, of course, that I've been carrying around a lot of extra weight for a long time. So, as a present to myself for my 40th birthday (coming up in May), I decided to do it.

I started on July 8th (after a Independence Day holiday of french fry and ice cream debauchery). After years of eating a bagel every morning, a big sandwich (and sometimes soup too) for lunch and pasta, or fried rice, or something equivalently carbo-loaded for dinner at least 4 or 5 nights a week, I tried to move from carbos to fruits, vegetables and meats that weren't fried or otherwise slathered in grease. No pasta, no potatoes, no bread, no bagels, no rice, no pizza. So, in otherwords, what I'm calling the "Modified Atkins." It's not that I'm eating meat and cheese every meal, I'm just not eating all the starches that I used to (at every meal!).

Also important (or at least as the medical blogs that I read in the list to the right tell me) is that I started to exercise -- very briskly walking on a treadmill for 30-40 minutes at least 5 times a week.

Results: so far I've lost 19 pounds. I've been able to stick to my slow-go plan of about one pound a week, and I'm only 6 pounds away from my goal of 25 before the end of the year. I'm really proud of that and I think I've permanently changed the way I eat for the better. Happy Birthday to Me.