A Pound of Flesh, a Grain of Salt

I've never thought of myself as heavy, but absolutely no one would say I'm thin, either. Since high school, my weight climbed from 125 lbs to 137 lbs. It's not an abnormal weight gain, really, but since I'm only 5'1, it wasn't hard to tell. When I went to my doctor earlier in the summer, he told me that I needed to reduce my weight, at least to 130.

I've always viewed diets and exercise regimes with a grain of salt. I refused to give up eating junk food, or fast food, or any kind of food, and I refused to do intense exercise more than once or twice a week, and I definitely didn't want to pay $80 per month for a gym membership. But I had to lose the weight.

So I decided to actually listen to something my mom always tells me: Everything is alright in moderation. I cut my fast food eating to twice a month. And although I miss random Taco Bell runs, I do feel better because of it. I tried to keep my candy consumption down, with only one major candy binge every few weeks. I started doing a little bit of exercise every week, sometimes with my brother and sometimes on the treadmill.

It's been a few months now, and I've lost about 5 or 6 pounds. Is that a miracle? No. It hasn't been easy and it hasn't happened quickly, but I'm getting down to my target weight, one pound at a time. Sometimes, taking it slow and easing into it works better than jumping on a dietary bandwagon. If I want to keep off this weight, I have to maintain a lifestyle change, not just a temporary fix.

To calculate your own body mass index (BMI), use this calculator. The cool thing about it is that it compares you to the national averages for the U.S., which looks pretty bad to me.