People always say they can tell I have lost weight. Unfortunately, I usually have not lost any recent weight, and even worse I often know for a fact I gained weight since last time they saw me. So what does that mean? It means that their lasting impression of me is an even fatter version of me!

So, once again I have made the resolution to get in better shape, but this time I feel I have a realistic shot at being successful. Recently, it has dawned on me that I really need to get more fit in order to be around for my girls as long as I can.

I am not one for full-fledged diets because they are usually to demanding and restrictive, so that once I end them I will just gain it all right back anyways. Instead I am designing my own common sense diet, which is basically one I used before to lose weight but then fell back in to old habits.

So here is how it will work:

• Exercise – all diets will ultimately fail without exercise. Y membership here I come.
• Get More Sleep – I simply do not get enough and at my “advanced” age, this can lead to all kinds of problems
• Drink Water – do you realize we are supposed to drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water a day? That is half a gallon and I come nowhere near drinking that much. So my goal now, is to drink 100 ounces a day – and it is tough!
• No soda or sugar drinks –  High fructose corn syrup is my enemy. I have cut way back in recent years, but would still drink a lot of non-soda sugary drinks and would always get large buckets of soda when I was out at restaurants or the movies – no more.
• Eat Breakfast – food just does not sound good to me in the morning, so I don’t eat anything until lunchtime. Well, it is a fact that eating breakfast helps your metabolism burn 200 to 300 more calories a day, so I need to eat something in the morning. My answer: Bananas. Have you heard of the banana diet craze in Japan?
• Eat Veggies and Fruit – I am going to try and default to eating veggies and fruit whenever I need a snack. I actually like them, but its always just been easier to grab some candy, cookies, or chips instead of carrots or pineapple. So I need to make it easy to go green.
• Eat Smart – No more blatantly bad food and no more huge portions. And I will make substitutions when I am cheating, so if I do get that cheeseburger, I can certainly not have fries and a coke with it. If I do have a cookie, I can not follow it up with 3 more cookies. You get the idea.

So that’s it. We’ll see how it goes, but so far I have been pretty good in 2011, and hopefully I will be saying that same thing a year from now. So next time someone asks if I lost weight, I can say “yes, I have” instead of wondering just how fat they think i used to be.