Skinny Skinner

Many, many years ago, that was my nickname – skinny Skinner. I was the proverbial 98 pound weakling. Even after entering the work force, my weight stayed at 125 pounds.

Looking back, I remember eating a lot of meat and vegetables but practically no bread, pasta or other grains. Mom and Dad would occasionally push some of those “Weight Gain Guaranteed” concoctions but they never seemed to do much.

And I can remember drinking lots and lots of soft drinks. In those days they were loaded with real sugar. Coupled with what I now know to be Hypoglycemia, they probably contributed in no small part to my energetic highs and moody (!) lows.

But three decades of world travel, expense accounts and nice restaurants “fleshed me out” to nearly double that weight. For years, my overweight doctor has been telling me I should lose weight but I’ve been kind and never asked him to bandage the tongue I kept biting.

So now, I read labels and count calories.

I’ve given that approach a mild attempt or two in the past but it neither stuck nor seemed to make any difference. I see now that was because I wasn’t giving it enough attention to make it stick.

And on all of my gadgets, I can run MyFitnessPal. It’s an Android app, an iPad and iPhone app, and I can connect to their webpage from my work notebook, and they all talk to each other. So, no matter which gadget is close, I can look and see how I’m doing today and whether or not I’ll need 30 minutes walking fast on the treadmill to afford that 70 calorie chocolate square for dessert.

Tracking every meal and every bite would be annoying if it weren’t for MyFitnessPal but, at least so far, just about everything I’ve had for the past several weeks has either been in their database – the “apps” all take a picture of the barcode and automatically look it up – or can be “assembled” by listing the constituents as we do when my wife makes up a salad.

Tracking calories with an “app” always within arms reach is what I think is making it work.

The tough part is foregoing the snacks. For that, I think I’m gonna have to find more attention-filling distractions.