Well, folks, here we are, it’s 2025. Or a quarter century into the 2000s. Turning over the calendar for a lot of people means a chance to change, and start something new for the better. I don’t normally cotton to such things, but this year, since it’s going to be my 60th birthday this July, I thought I might try to start eating healthier, and maybe shed a few pounds so as to keep me from maybe not having knee replacement surgery to go with the kidney stone surgeries I had last year.
To that end, I took the plunge and started using a new app called Yazio. It can be used as a free app, but like all apps, if you pay you get more bells and whistles. Just the nature of the beast, right? So instead of taking the bait and paying for a year up front, I opted for the 3 month plan, making sure it didn’t re-up automatically, so I could test it out and see if it worked for me. 2 weeks into it, and I’m still using it. It’s not intuitive, you have to do the vast majority of the legwork with it, inputting your meals, what you ate, drank and so on. The water tabulator is a little clunky as it expects you’re drinking it at least 8 ounces at a time. Currently I’m thinking about changing the measurements to metric since the imperial measurements aren’t all that accurate.
I haven’t yet tried to weigh myself to see how much progress I’ve made in that regard, but it does seem like my pants are a bit bigger than they were when I started this whole thing not 14 days ago. Certainly, I’m getting a better idea of what I’ve been eating, and making better choices in a lot of situations. Not just at home, but at work as well. I’ve even taken the initiative to bring lunch with me a couple of times, using a thermos that I purchased from work for that purpose. Soup isn’t a bad lunch, and when you make it yourself, you have a better idea of what you’re putting into yourself, rather than going the commercial route. Baby steps.
At any rate, I’m not expecting miracles here, just a different method of doing business for me. If I can get to my first goal of 235, then it will be the lightest I’ve been probably in about 40 years. I remember gaining a lot of weight when I was in college, mostly due to being away from my mother’s sphere of influence, and I wasn’t very smart when it came to picking what I wanted for meals. I vividly remembering her saying “your father and I spent a lot of money on the meal plan (I was living on campus) so we want to be sure that you’re making good use of it!”. Yeah, famous last words. I gained like 60 lbs my first year at school. And sort of never looked back. Even joining the crew team didn’t help much. By the time I graduated, I was tipping the scales at better than 250 lbs. Pretty much been a big guy ever since.
But, now I have a chance to do something about it. And I’m going to give it a good go. We’ll see how it turns out. Again, baby steps.