Like a lot of people my age, I've been fighting to keep from gaining too much weight and trying to eat healthy to keep good health as I get older. Oh, how I miss that white-hot metabolism I had when I was 18 and could eat whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted, and it would never stick to me at all. Oh well, I know that it happens to everyone, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I weigh more than I'd like to but I know that others have it much worse. Right now, my BMI is right at 30, which is right at the border between overweight and obese. I don't want to be obese! When I quit playing WoW my weight was around 260. Since then, I've made an effort to exercise more and eat a little better, and have managed to drop around 30 pounds. I'd like to drop another 40 or so and get down to 180. My diet plan is pretty simple - first, I cut out almost all of the sugary soft drinks that I was previously drinking. I do still have a couple of diet sodas in a day, but I mostly drink tea, Crystal Light, and just plain water. I think that by itself helps a lot. I also have tried really hard to cut down on the between-meal snacking. That's been a little harder, especially since my son's annual Cub Scout popcorn came in this week and now I have a big box of it sitting in the kitchen, calling to me. I keep raisins and peanuts in the house for when I need something between meals - it's certainly better than Ruffles or Twinkies! For main meals, I eat basically whatever I want to, but I always change one thing about the meal to make it healthier, for instance having a diet drink or water instead of regular soda, or going without mayo, or not using salt, etc. I'm not going on any strict diet plan or making major wholesale changes to what I eat because I know I'd never be able to stick with it. That's what trips up a lot of people, trying to do too much too quickly. It's not the kind of weight-loss plan you see people pushing on health-related web sites, but it seems to be working for me so far. I recently had my blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol levels checked and they are all within acceptable limits, if maybe a little higher than ideal on the cholesterol.
Since I've been out of WoW, I've started a new reading project. I got ahold of a copy of "1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die (2006 edition)" back in April, and I've decided to see how many of them I can get through. I'm currently reading my 19th book from the list and have enjoyed most of what I've read so far. I've read a lot of books that I would have never picked up on my own because they aren't the genres that I usually gravitate to on my own. As I make entries on this blog, I'm going to briefly review the ones I've read so far and also review each new one as I finish it. I'm basically going through the list by author name in alphabetical order, though there are a few exceptions.
I figure at the rate I'm going now, it should take me around 35 or 40 years to get through the entire book.
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