I have recently started thinking about the food I eat- more specifically the number of calories contained in the various items I absorb. I've also started thinking (at least thinking is a start) about modulating the types and amounts of stuff I eat.

When one is starting to get fat is the time to do something about becoming fat. Actually, before one even starts getting fat is the best time to preclude a fate of obesity, but it's a little late for that in my case. If I can make some small changes in my behavior and attitudes now I will have a far easier time of maintaining a more optimal abdominal outline.

The trouble is that the habits I need to change are rather difficult to change. I have never smoked so I don't know anything about nicotine and its insidious tendrils of physical addcitiveness. I do, however, know how easy it is to say "A second piece of cherry pie? No thanks, not today!"- not very. Not for me, anyway. And yet that is exactly what I need to train myself to do. This training, of course, is in preparation for the following program of true stoicism whereby I would not reply in the fashion above because I would have not eaten the first piece of cherry pie. This, though, is perhaps further than I wish my plans to take me. All I really want to do is lose my spare tire, not turn into some kind of beanpole food-puritan who shuns the evil of unnecessary consumption. After all, I loves me some snacks. I just need to increase that love by letting abscence make the heart grow fonder, so to speak.

The other side of the coin is that I could drag my lazy carcass outside and just move it around a little bit. I mean really, I go to work and sit all day and then I come home and mostly sit all evening and then I go to bed and lay there all night. Occasionally on the weekends I might actually dissipate some energy if we go to the zoo or something, but that's not very often- especially when it's below freezing and the ground is covered with snow like it is now.

I suppose I could get up a little early each morning and do a few jumping jacks or push-ups or something, but if I had the kind of metabolism that allowed me to get up a few minutes early to do that kind of stuff I probably would not be writing about how to jettison my paunch.

It's a vicious cycle. I don't get much physical exercise, so my body gets soft. Then, when my body gets soft, it wants more sleep and has even less energy for physical exercise so that I do even less which makes me even pudgier which reduces my energy level further which... You get the point.

Which leads me to say that to start off, I guess I'll work on reducing my tendency to 2nd helpings, get medium value meals instead of larges, and last but not least (in fact one of the things I want to give up least but which is probably one of the worst things for my waistline) I need to knock off the while I'm reading just before bed snacks. Loading up the ol' system with a sizable number of calories, more than 1/3 of which might be from fat calories just before I lay down and do nothing for 8+ hours is about the best recipe I can think of for getting the kind of belly I've just written 607 (yup, counting the word "written" there are exactly 607 words before the number 607) words about losing.

That's why when I post this item and log off in just a moment, I'll be going upstairs with a big glass of icewater in one hand and nothing but a book in the other.