Major Milestone: I am down to 1/8 of a ton

I haven't blogged on Back to the Well, in...well, ten months. But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

For the first time in five years I am back down to 250 pounds. How did I do it? Writing down everything I eat and tracking Weight Watcher points. Like Charles Barkley. Also walking and doing the eliptical.

What's next? First, 240. Then 230. After that, 220. Then 210. My ultimate goal is 208, the highest weight allowed by the Marine Corps for a man of my height and age. Why 208? That's a long story. I'll save it for another time.

So here's the plan:

• Write everything in the food journal
• Have 38 points a day
• Walk, run, lift with high reps

I'll write something more entertaining next time. For now, get ready to go out and buy my new novel, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S GUNFIGHT, coming out in May. I'll write more about that too.

$500 for 5K

Okay, forget everything I said about bets being bad.

Bets, good.

My younger sister Rosina L. Hunt, Esq., a successful Rhode Island lawyer and ultracompetitive sibling like myself, has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged me to a race. In October, we are running in the Run for Bob in Franklin, Tenn., sponsored by the Hockamock YMCA.

Because she's a woman, she insisted I give her the same time differential that the Marine Corps gives women: three minutes. So if a man has to finish the race in 30 minutes, a woman has 33. To get a perfect score on the running portion of the fitness test, a man has to do three miles in 18 minutes, and a woman has to do it in 21:00. Can't argue with that. If it's okay with the Marine Corps, it's okay with me.

I've been trying to follow the Couch to 5K program at coolrunning.com. Its a three-day-a-week, walk/run program that is definitely doable. Not easy - not for me, anyway - but doable.

Weight is 261, mile time is 11:12 for one mile.

I'll keep you posted.

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. :)

Day Two

I am on the train from Boston to Franklin, my fingers sticking to the keyboard with each keystroke. I took the Red Line to Park Street and then walked from there to South Station so I could pick up an orange and a grapefruit from the sidewalk vendors in front of CVS. I ate them en route (the fruit, not the vendors) and, despite the earnest use of napkins taken from Au Bon Pain inside the train station, my fingers are still sticky with fructose.

I wrote a great blog entry this morning on the train, but I tried to post it at the exact moment my Sprint card lost signal, and the entire piece -- brilliant, as I recall -- disappeared into cyberspace. I have been trying unsuccessfully to recapture its brilliance, but alas, I have failed. Oh well.

So here's the problem with blogging: it's hard to think of something meaningful to say day in and day out, week after week, month after month... [Wait. This is only my third entry... Not a good sign.]

Well, I've stuck to my 38 points so far. I know, women on Weight Watchers are slamming their laptops closed in anger, since men get so many more points than women. Well, we get more heart attacks, too. And we lose our hair more often. And you know those ads with the stupid-looking guy who walks around smiling and waving at everyone? Well, you get the picture. Don't begrudge us a few extra points.

For those of you unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, Points are sort of like shorthand for calories with both fiber- and fat-content taken into consideration. To get a rough estimate of a food's point content, take the total calories and divide by 50, then round up the nearest whole number or the nearest point-five (e.g. 3 or 3.5). To get a closer approximation, take the total calories, add 4 1/6 calories for each gram of fat, then subtract 10 calories for each gram of fiber up to 4 grams. Then divide by 50 and round up.

Here's an example:

Let's say a bag of chips has 150 calories, 12 grams of fat, and 2 grams of fiber. That's 150 plus 12 times 4 1/6 (or 50) minus 2 times 10 (or 20). That's 180. Divide that by 50, and you get 3.5 or 4.

In The Healthy Elvis Diet, a diet I made up based on healthy versions of Elvis Presley's notoriously unhealthy favorite foods, you can use L's instead of points. Since L is the Roman numeral for 50, just divide a food's total calories by 50 to get the total number of L's. (L's -- El's, get it?)

I'll share more about The Healthy Elvis Diet in later posts.

Okay, enough for now. Eat light and prosper.