How to Lose One Pound Each Year

I’ve gained one pound every year since I got back from Korea. I weighed 165 pounds when I got home. I was 20 years old when I got home and now I’m 74 years old. Take one pound per year and you add 54 pounds. That makes 219 pounds. That’s about what I weigh most of the time.

I’ve decided that it is better to gain one pound each year than to lose one pound each year. If I had lost one pound each year I would now weigh a mere 111 pounds. That couldn’t be good. I’d be all skin and bone like an injured lion that can no longer hunt. You know what happens to injured lions.

My lowest weight in the last five years was about 187 pounds. I can reduce to that weight if I follow the Big Fat John plan. The Big Fat John plan has changed with time. At first I printed up a sheet that I could post on the refrigerator door. There were columns to list the name of the food, the calories, and the fat content. I had a little table at the bottom with the properties of common foods so that I didn’t have to look them up in my calorie book.

I tried to stay below about 1350 calories a day until I had lost some weight. Then I would go as high as 1550 calories some days and not gain weight. I wouldn’t lose either. Not regaining weight was what I was after.

The plan became a little tedious. I tabulated my intake and then I would plot my weight and calorie intake on the computer. I would take these charts to my cardiologist and he would say, “Good Boy!” Those words made me want to keep at it.

However, I petered out and gained the weight back. The doctor told me that he could see a difference in my cardiac response when I lost weight. It was all for the good. He said, “Get back on the Big Fat John plan.”

Looking over my daily tabulations I learned that I didn’t have to record calories and fat content. I could just list each food item and forget the rest. I had to stop eating when I reached the end of the sheet. The larger my handwriting, the more weight I would lose. If I wrote tiny, I would turn into the Goodyear Blimp®.

Well, that didn’t work. I had to go back to the original Big Fat John plan if I wanted to lose weight and keep it off.

I had to at least count calories.

The alternative was to weigh the food. There are about 9 calories in each gram of food so you can take a guess at the number of calories from that. It’s best to stay away from fatty foods and count calories.

That’s my present theory.

You probably wonder why I’m back up in weight when I have the Big Fat John plan. Well, it’s because I’ve been experimenting.

Wild animals don’t eat every day. Carnivores kill once or twice a week. Snakes eat once a month or so. Bears sleep most of the winter and eat nothing. They live on their fat. I’ve been cutting down to one or two meals a day. You would think that would do it. That’s called the Starvation Plan.

Well, the Starvation Plan doesn’t work.

It works until 10:00 P.M.

After that it doesn’t work at all.

That’s when what is called a feeding frenzy cuts in. The refrigerator door turns into a super magnet with a magnetic field that reaches out of the kitchen and into the living room where I’m watching television and reading a book or doing a logic puzzle.

The door says, “COME! COME! COME!”

That’s when everything goes to hell. Out comes the bread, the peanut butter, the jelly, and the milk. This must be topped off with a Twinkie® or two or three. Then one must have a banana and a glass of juice. I go to bed with a huge guilt complex.

Well, something has to be done about it.

It’s back to the original Big Fat John plan.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.

John T. Jones, Ph.D. ([email protected], a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”

More info: http://www.tjbooks.com

Business web site: http://www.dumbincome.com

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