Academic

199!

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

Earlier this week, I stepped into a Barnes & Noble in Salt Lake City, and the first book I saw on the shelves was Valerie Bertinelli's Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time. Though I watched my share of One Day at a Time in the mid-1970s -- give me a break ... we had two channels on our rabbit-eared TV, and I lived in Osseo, Wisconsin for crying out loud! -- I can't imagine reading this book. Still, I was a little curious about that weight loss angle ...

So I opened to the Preface and saw this sentence: "Since going on Jenny Craig in March 2007, I've surpassed my original goal of 30 pounds and set new targets for myself."

Good for you, Valerie! I happened to be in that bookstore on March 31, and I had set my own goal of getting below 200 pounds by that date. I didn't quite make it (200.2 according to my digital scale), but today, for the first time in at least a decade, I saw the number "1" at the beginning of the weight on the scale. If you are keeping track, that's 40 pounds down since last August.

I am not planning to write a book about this experience, but if I did, it would go something like this (with an acknowledgment to Tom Lee for crafting the precise words):

Eat less. Exercise more.

That seems like a sure-fire formula for success.

Full post as published by Conglomerate on April 03, 2008 (boomark / email).