Two 10 pound bags of sugar

I haven’t made new years resolutions for several years. Just never got up the enthusiasm for that sort of thing. My weight has been creeping up ever since I stopped doing the treadmill every morning. I’d started it to control my weight after I stopped smoking. After a year or two, the extra sleep in the morning seemed to do me more good than the sweat and effort of walking a couple of miles before I was really awake. My back has been sore for a while, you know, the kind where you get out of bed and have to walk bent over for a while until you limber up enough to straighten out. I concluded that the problem with my back was that it was too far away from my front. That and the fact that I stopped wearing belts because 1) my pants weren’t about to fall down and 2) the belt buckle tended to dig into that part of my stomach that hung over it.

The company I work for, Applied Materials, is big on employee wellness, with weekly and monthly Wellness Tip emails, discounts at health clubs and the like. It was through one of those programs, a company discount at www.selfhelpworks.com that I stopped smoking. As part of the run up to last new years the Wellness Tip email offered suggestions and support for the various, generic resolutions people tend to make. It mentioned a discount for the Living Lean program at that same web site. I signed up before I could talk myself out of it. I started the program on New Years Day, and I am happy to report that I have lost 20 lbs and am well on my way to my target weight. The program consists of 12 short audio visual segments you access from your computer. The key is to recognize that you have a choice every time you go to eat something. You work on recognizing the choice and reinforcing the desire to choose what is best for your short and long term goals. It works for me.

In other news, some one was out enjoying the nice weather we've been having lately. Here is what Bailey and I found on our walk yesterday


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