The Second Weigh-In: The Diet Bet Dilema Continues

This is just a quick update on, yes, another diet bet. And no, it's not "my friend," it's me. And yes, I have to drop an unrealistic amount or weight to win, thereby violating healthy weight loss rule #1, never try to lose an unrealistic amount of weight.

Be that as it may, here's the scoop: I have to weigh 247 1/2 by Tuesday, July 5. Last I weighed, I was 258. So once again, it's 10 pounds (10 1/2 actually) with 4 days to do it. It reminds me of a line from a Bob Dylan song:

"Here I sit so patiently,
waiting to find what price,
you have to pay to get out of
going through all these things twice."

I guess I'll go with the winning strategy from one of my earlier entries.

After this, though, all bets are off. Seriously. For a while anyway. The goal is to lose slowly and to keep the weight off. Crazy diets and diet bets are not the best way to achieve that. So this is it. The last diet bet.

Weight Loss as of 7/21/2008

Back to the basics: losing weight and getting in shape

Okay, so I got a little carried away with the making money part of blogging and forgot my mission: eating right, working out, losing weight, and getting back in kick-ass shape. My original goal was to motivate myself and anyone else who wanted to come along for the ride. And that's what I'm going to get back to.

"But what about the how-much-money-I'm-making-from-this-blog posts?" some of you are wondering. "I liked that part."

Not to worry. I've spun that off and created a new blog called Blogging for Fun and Profit. In that blog, I'll let you know how much your clicks on my Google Ads and purchases from my Amazon.com recommendations have netted so far. In this blog, I'll let you know how much weight I've lost and what my body mass index (BMI) has dropped to.

Also, some of you have asked that I include the weight I lost prior to starting the blog. On December 23, 2007, already stuffed with holiday feasting, I tipped the scales at a hefty 280. At 6'1", I had a BMI of 37.

At last weighing, I was 260. So I've lost a total of 20 pounds and my new BMI is 34.

My long-term goal, as I've mentioned before, is to get down to 208, the highest acceptable weight for my height according to the United States Marine Corps. That would give me a BMI of 28.

I'll look at the whole crazy subject of weight charts and BMI another time.

Eat right. :)

Pounds pouring off, payola piling up

Perhaps I am easily impressed, but I can't believe I have made $22.30 by writing about my battle to get back to the lean, mean Jason Hunt of my youth. It took me years to write my two mystery novels about Deke Rivers, and yet my blog earnings have already outstipped my novel earnings...by $22.30.

Maybe I almost missed my true calling. Think about it. All America has been transfixed on the Herculean efforts and phenomonal transformations of contestants on NBC's The Biggest Loser. Maybe, just maybe, I am meant to at last attain my fame and fortune not by writing hardboiled classics, and not by matching the weight loss heroics of those biggest losers, but rather by endlessly struggling for merely meager results -- and writing about that.

Maybe I am supposed to be America's Most Moderate Loser. Or America's Least Impressive but Funniest Loser.

Hmm. I'll continue to comtemplate the possibilities, and you can continue to click on the ads, and together we'll see just how far this thing goes. If any of you have other ideas for how to make this blog into even more of a cash cow, please post a comment.

And yes, with $22.30 of revenue, I think I am now successful enough to once again dust off and reveal to the world my secret weapon in the battle against pudgacity and out-of-shape-itude. Yes, beginning with my next post, I will start sharing the secrets of "The Healthy Elvis Diet."

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

Till then, eat moderately, exercise enthusiastically, and click gratuituously.

Blogging and jogging for bucks

Okay, so let's make this interesting for my homies in Corporate America. It is not enough that I am slogging through the early morning fog, knees throbbing and sweat raining down, in an effort to shed unwanted pounds. (If the slow, steady tedium of diet and daily exercise is agonizing on the participant, how much more so must it be for the spectator.) To keep readers, I need to spice up this blog, add some hard numbers and inject massive doses of motivation, to make it more engaging for you -- and potentially more lucrative for me.

So I've added stats. I've started with the birth of this blog, and I am tracking the following figures:

• How many days the blog has been up


• How many posts I've published in that time


• How much weight I've lost


• How much money I've earned from people clicking on the ads


• The rate in lbs./wk I'm losing


• How much money I've earned in $/lb.

Goal-setting

My goals for this little experiment are as follows:

• Lose 60 lbs.


• Maintain a rate of 1.5 lbs/wk


• Earn, via ads, $10/lb.

The last goal seems the most ambitious, but that's where you come in. Everytime you check out my latest, ever-more-motivating entry, click on all four ads in the upper righthand corner. (You have to use the down arrow each time to get to new ads -- a usability faux pas, if you ask me.) Then send a link to the blog to everyone you know who is even remotely interested in losing weight and getting in shape -- and remind them to click on the ads. You can explain to them that it is an experiment in grassroots e-commerce.

I know $10/lb. sounds tough. But together we can do this. :-)

What's my motivation?

Let's see. I started this blog on June 9, 2008. In the 36 days since then, I've made 9 entries, lost 7.5 lbs., and earned $11.00 from people clicking on the ads. That's a pound a week and thirty cents a day.

I am getting neither skinny nor rich.

So what's missing? Is it motivation? I have the bet. (Yes, if you didn't see through the pathetic charade, my friend in the bet is me.) I definitely have the desire to be lean and Adonis-like. I wouldn't mind Armstrongian stamina and buns of steel. So what's the problem.

It's hard.

Yes, losing weight and getting in shape -- particularly after a decade-long hiatus -- is no piece of cake. (Ah, cake....) Let's face it, being half-Italian, and growing up to the battle cry of "Mangia," makes everything short of a plateful of pasta look like an infant's portion. Three ounces of something is meant to be mopped up with an extra piece of Italian bread. And why drink 6 glasses of water a day when you can just as easily swill down that much chianti.

But I am hanging tough. I am down 20 pounds from my all-time high of 280. Despite an aching right knee, I still hit the road four or five mornings a week. I even scaled Mount Monadnock last weekend (hence the sore knee).

So I just keep forging ahead. Slow -- painfully slow -- and, for the most part, steady.

So what's my motivation? I am just too damned stubborn to throw in the towel. I am headed for 208, and I intend to get there one painful pound at a time.