Well, I'm taking a week off to go celebrate my birthday then Thanksgiving with family and friends. That means a lot of cake and pie and mashed potatoes and late-night Turkey sandwiches and everything that's not conducive to losing weight. But there are times when losing weight isn't my #1 priority. There are times when my #1 priority is gravy. Yum.

Hope everyone reading this has a great Thanksgiving and I will be back with some new stuff at the beginning of December.

There are very few people I have a whole lot of respect for in the fitness business. But one person who I could not possibly feel more affinity and affection for is Jack Lalanne. A few years ago I was on my couch at home and I was either sick or just exhausted from a late night, I can't remember now. As I was flipping around the channels looking for something to zone out or fall asleep to and I came across ESPN Classic which was doing a marathon of Jack Lalanne's daily TV show from the 50s and 60's. I was completely captivated by him. Part of it was because I enjoy almost anything from the that time period, but beyond that I loved his attitude and his philosophy and his boundless energy. It's not so much that I agree with everything he says, but he embodies an enthusiasm and "can-do" spirit that I really admire. He talks a lot about vim and vigor and intestinal fortitude and a lot of other words your rarealy hear these days. Even when losing weight wasn't a concern of mine I used to love to watch the show which I would tivo every morning.

Here are some Jack highlights.

Jack's 10 Steps for self-improvement:

Jack shows you how to lift 1000 pounds (or accomplish any impossible task):

Jack's dog Happy who meanders in and out of the set during filming:

Sadly, ESPN Classic stopped showing the show in the morning, I guess to make room for some Shamwow commercials or something. The good news is there have been a few DVD releases that you can find at Jack's site. I highly recommend his "Collector's Edition" DVD's Vol. 1-4. If you buy them as a package they're dirt cheap. They're probably the only exercise videos I'll ever watch because they're the only ones I enjoy watching. The exercises are scored by an organ player right in the studio! The shows seem a little bizarre compared to what you see these days, but I think they're perfect.

What you see in this blog is not just my attempt to lose weight, but also my attempt to quantify the process of losing weight without following a diet. As I struggle through that, you will get to see the touchstones that I come upon during that search. So this post covers an idea I had this weekend.

To summarize:

My idea is that you know what you need to do to lose weight. You know that if you have a 14-egg omelet with sausage and chocolate-chips for breakfast that you should take it easy for lunch and dinner. In fact you know better than anyone the best way for you to lose weight because you're you and you know what your issues are. The idea that the answers are out there somewhere is actually slowing you down. You don't fail to lose weight because you lacked some knowledge that would allow you to lose weight, you fail to lose weight because you lack follow-thru. The ideal situation is that you are not constricted by any rules but you are still losing weight. This doesn't mean that you're eating like a pig and still losing weight, what I mean is that there are no particular types of food that are prohibited and no times of day that you have to eat or can't eat.

I want eating in a manner that allows you to lose weight to be incredibly important to you, but I also want it to be so second nature that you don't think about it or stress about. It's like taking a shower. You wouldn't usually go more than a day or two without taking a shower, but at the same time you don't spend you day thinking about showering. Showering is so important that you engage in it almost every day, but so automatic that you don't worry about it. This is what not eating too much can become, but we have to beat it into you.

People hate counting calories and exercising. Do you hate counting calories and exercising? Good, then we can use them as leverage.

Weigh yourself tonight. Okay, now let's imagine you're on diet probation and the scale is your probation officer (It's a dumb metaphor, but it seemed to be the easiest way to describe my idea). For the next two days you can eat and exercise as much or as little as you want. You can have 1 meal a day or 100. You can eat celery every meal or drink hot fudge. It's up to you. But at the end of the second day you have to check in with your probation officer again. Have you lost weight? If so you get another two day pass. Wake up in the morning and remind yourself that you're trying to lose weight that day, but beyond that do as you like.

However, if you don't lose any weight you've violated your probation and you're going back to diet jail. And in diet jail, you're MY bitch.  For your first violation you will be in diet jail for two day and you have to exercise at least half an hour day. Once those two days of strict calorie counting are over you're free and you're released out into the public again. But you still have to check in with the scale every two days.

And you can keep doing these two days with no rules over and over as long as you're losing weight after every two-day series. But the second time you fail to lose weight you're going back to the joint for three days of strict calorie counting and 35 minutes of exercise. And it will keep going like that. Each time you "violate probation" (fail to lose weight over a two-day stretch)  you add another day to your sentence and another 5 minutes to the amount of time you need to exercise per day during the calorie-counting period. So the fifth time you fail to lose weight during the two-day no-rules period you will have to count calories for the next 6 days and exercise for at least 55 minutes per day each of those 6 days. And you're not allowed to estimate calories during the calorie-counting. Everything needs to be measured and weighed or come from a source where the calories are already listed. But that's a pain in the ass, you're saying. Yes, that's the idea.

The theory is that the prospect of counting calories and mandatory exercise will be so unappealing that you'll curb your eating and get in a little exercise during the course of each two-day diet even though it's not mandatory. If you keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble then every time you weigh-in you'll have lost a little something and you're free to live without any rules in place. But if you act like a douchebag and eat like a pig then you're going to the pokey.

Ideally you would find that every two days you had lost at least a little weight, even just a percentage of a pound, and then you would never have to count calories or mandate exercise at all. Your goal during those two-day periods would be simply to not eat like a maniac (or, even better, eat like you're on a first date) and maybe get some exercise in when you can and keep yourself out of jail, the big house, the pokey, the graybar hotel, Old Stoney Lonesome, the pen, the can, the hoosegow, and so on.

Still not feeling well.

Here's a picture for you from my kitchen.

This is a jar of about 1300 Mike and Ikes.

Oh, really, Andy? How do you know there are about 1300 Mike and Ikes in that jar?

Because I counted them, dummy, how do you think? Get off my back, I'm sick.

This is one of a few visual representations of my weight loss that I have in my home. You see, there is a piece of candy for every tenth of a pound I want to lose in this jar. And for every tenth of a pound I lose, I eat a piece of candy. When I eat the last piece of candy it means I'm at my goal weight.

I don't know why I do this. I guess I like seeing my progress measured in something other than looking in a mirror or measuring my waist. I also like the dichotomy of measuring weight loss in candy. But just in general I think it helps to have visual manifestations of your progress on a goal. It's kind of like those posters you see where it says, "We're raising  $5000 for Leukemia research!" and there will be a big thermometer that they shade in to show how much they've raised.

I don't know if this is a personal thing or if other people think this way, but seeing my progress measured in other forms than just my weight on a scale makes it resonate more with me. It's also its own little reward mechanism too. And you can do it with anything.

• If you have 20 pounds to lose you may decide to put away $50 in a special account for each pound you lose and then when you're done go blow the $1000 on a weekend getaway.
• Buy a big fishtank and get a new goldfish for every pound you lose.
• You could put notches in your bedpost for every pound you lose, then when people see it they'll think you're some big stud.
• Every time you lose five pounds, kill a drifter and stack their bodies up in your basement.

They're all dumb ideas, but that's okay. Subconsciously it's just another thing that is changing because of your dedication to losing weight. It can serve as a way of tracking your progress and a subtle push to stay the course (more subtle than those ladies who post women in bikinis on their fridge). And it's a small added pressure to keep you from your old ways. You'll think, "Sure, I'd love to fall off the wagon for a week and just pack the pounds on, but I don't want to have to start a whole new collection of dead hobos."

Hello. I'm sick and in no mood to write a post. In fact, I've never been in less of a mood to write a blog post. Once I recognized that, I realized that I definitely needed to go write a blog post. It's a good precedent to set. Now, the next time I'm not in the mood to write something I'll think, "Hey, you did it when you were suffering with a sinus infection headache so there's no reason you shouldn't do it now." So I'm writing this post more for my sake than yours. So here it is.