If it was easy, we’d all be skinny.

Well, I had a pretty good Christmas — with family and friends and fun and plenty of gifts — and a pretty miserable Christmas — with food and food and candy and food and more food and WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE, I’M TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT!

I did not lose any weight over the Christmas holiday. In fact, I gained some of my hard-fought losses back. But I can’t blame anybody but myself. Nobody held me down and made me eat chocolate candies or biscuits and gravy or drink a Coke while watching football. I did those things. The responsibility is mine.

But now it’s New Year’s Eve and it’s the perfect time to get back on the wagon. Even my brother-in-law is getting in on the action, vowing to eat right, exercise and lose a few pounds by May.

And I’m redoubling my efforts to stick to the plan — plenty of fruits and vegetables, fewer empty calories and moderate exercise.

Plus, I got a late Christmas gift in the form of a New York Times article on the problem with tracking weight vs. fitness. Essentially, it says that weight is only a factor in our overall health. A better indicator is how active we are.

I know what you’re saying, “If I didn’t need to lose weight, why would I exercise?” I’ll tell you — those who are skinny and sedentary are at risk for the same problems that plague the overweight and obese.

A study in The Archives of Internal Medicine showed that, in a sample of 5,400 people, half of overweight people and one-third of obese people were “metabolically healthy,” despite their weight.

But about one out of four skinny people, categorized as “healthy” on the BMI scale, had at least two of the cardiovascular risk factors typically associated with obesity.

So get out of that chair, put on some walking shoes and get a move on. Lift a few weights. Do some toe-touches. You’ll be healthier for being active and, as a bonus, you’ll probably lose a few pounds.

No, I’m not starving myself

My boss asked me this morning if I was “still starving myself,” by which he meant, are you still on the diet. Well, as just two weeks in, with another 5 or 6 months to go, he’d better hope I’m still on track.

But starving is no kind of diet. I mean, let’s forget about the modern definition of “dieting” for a minute and remember that the word “diet” means “what you eat.”

Eating healthy can be a challenge, certainly, but it doesn’t have to be miserable. You don’t have to sip broth and nibble on twigs and deny yourself a piece of toast or a sandwich or a steak. You just have to be smart about what you’re eating.

Case in point — my friends called last weekend and wanted to see the new Bond movie. Since my wife hadn’t eaten, we decided to have lunch first. My friend chose Johnny Carino’s, which serves Italian food.

Bread and oil, big bowls of pasta, thick meat sauce, creamy alfredo — this kind of thing doesn’t bode well for a guy trying to lose weight. Luckily, there are options. There are ALWAYS options. In this case, I had pasta with artichokes, olives, tomatoes and some grilled chicken. Delicious. There was more than I needed to eat in one meal, though, so I had them pack up half of it and I ate the rest for dinner.

It’s all about common sense, which is not to say you can’t be a little stupid sometimes. A piece of chocolate cake? I wouldn’t eat one every day and expect to lose weight, but as a rare treat, why not? I love gyros, but I know that if I get one, I need to take a hard look at what else I’m eating that day.

If you’ve got a tip on how to fill your stomach while shrinking your waistline, leave it in the comments.

Diet: Day 5

The funny thing about going on a diet isn’t that you feel bad. It’s quite the opposite. I’m shoveling vegetables and fruits down my gullet and I feel better than I did when it was all burgers and fries.

That said, there are cravings that I have to work to quell. My love of tacos is strong and I know I will eat them again someday. Honestly, though, I think we should all eat the stuff that’s bad for us once in a while. So, in a few days or weeks, when the craving gets too strong, I will get a couple of tacos and I will enjoy them to no end.

Well, not to no end. I will end with two tacos. Then, if I’m still hungry, I’ll eat some green beans or asparagus or squash. That’s been my problem in the past — someone sets a pizza down in front of me and all I think is “must eat all this pizza.” Pizza or a hamburger or a delicious gyro are all acceptable as part of your diet, so long as they’re not the entirety of your diet.

In addition to healthy eating, I’ve also been working out. I’ve gone to the gym for some time on the elliptical machine and I’ve been giving my Wii Fit a real workout (and it’s returned the favor).

As much as I sometimes dread going to the gym — the monotony of working out — I always leave feeling better. Certainly that has something to do with endorphins, but I like to think it’s also psychological. When I choose a good meal, when I sweat my way through 30 minutes on a machine, I know I’m doing something healthy.

Compare that to the feeling I used to get leaving a fast food drive-thru: I knew I was eating too much and that none of it was very good for me, which can leave you feeling pretty down.

Anyway, I’ll be back, hopefully with a video for you to watch, in the near future.

The Diet Cometh

Thursday we begin shooting on the weight loss video and I am both excited and apprehensive. Excited because I’m looking forward to slimming down and feeling better and apprehensive because I don’t want to fall face-first and fail, all memorialized on the Internet.

Here’s my plan, in case any of you want to critique — I’m going to be eating a lot of green vegetables. And some orange and white and yellow and red ones, too. I’m going to endeavor to stay away from processed anything, though I have a feeling bread will be my downfall. I will be eating more fish, chicken and turkey and less ground beef — though I predict a small sirloin may find a place in there somewhere. And I’m going to be exercising. Every. Single. Day.

The key to that, I think, will be moderation. I’m doing 30 minutes every morning, though it won’t start out too strenuous. More walking around my neighborhood and doing yoga on the Wii Fit and less marathon running or intense weightlifting.

I’m also considering an end to all sodas — diet or no — in favor of water, tea, coffee and the occasional glass of wine (though not at work, of course).

How does that sound to you guys? Let me know if you have any tips or warnings. I’d love to include them in upcoming blog entries.

Oh…and one more thing. I’ll be doing some home videos of my weight loss attempts, which will be posted here, so beware.