Not. For the past 3 months I've been on somewhat of a diet, but for the past 3 weeks, I really started pursuing "thinness". My goal is to be at 170, or lose 30 pounds, by the time I reach the age of 30. I think it can be done, and I've put a lot of money into making sure I can do it. First I bought a blender. The BlendTec Total Blender. It was expensive but it really works like all those videos of that guy blending iPhones say it works. I bought a digital scale. I bought a lot of fruits which I'll do every two or so weeks. And I bought a lot of granola, which will get me through the morning and will be half of my dinner every day. So far I've seen a steady decrease in my weight on my new scale. Here's my plan:

Eat not a lot of calories a day. A granola bar, a salad for lunch, a granola bar and a small dinner every day. Those granola bars are 150 calories and they fill me up for a good four hours.

Work out a few times a day. Since I still smoke (another part of my weight loss plan), I can't do 30 or 40 pushup or pullup sets every two hours. In fact, I can still only do about 4 pullups in one set! I'm getting a lot stronger though. 10 pushups right now is my max. Take the dog for a brisk walk and do 10 pushups right afterwards. Then watch tv for a bit, go upstairs and do my normal amount of pullups.

From Thursday of last week up til Monday morning, I was losing a pound a day! Then Labor Day happened and I gained 2 pounds! I had a hamburger, a hot dog, some corn, and lots of chips and salsa with cream cheese. But after a short nap (it was the most I've eaten in 3 weeks, I was tired!), I did 10 pushups. Then got my hair cut.

If you want to try this diet out, it's open source! Eat a Kashi GoLean bar with coffee, half and half, and sugar (I won't make any sacrifices regarding coffee!). This is also delicious since coffee and chocolate are brilliant together. For lunch get a small chicken Caesar salad (don't skimp! Dressing, cheese, bread crumbs). For dinner, have a turkey sandwich on one slice of 12 grain bread cut in half and another Kashi. Basically, I could give a flying f%#@ what food tastes like, or how varied my meals are. Really, I don't care. They're just something to get us through the day, not part of the day.

Workout schedule: When I wake up, I do my pullups and get a shower and go to work. At work, run up stairs and walk briskly to go pick up your salad. Usually I get a diet iced tea with lunch. When I get home from work I spread out the workout like I mentioned above. Walk in the door, pullups. Rest for 20-30, pushups. Before bed I do 10 upbeat pushups and my regular pullups (I try not to mention more than once how many of these I can do right now :) It's embarrassing), although I might do less because I just did 10 exhausting pushups. And of course take the dog for a brisk walk. It's good to get a fast dog.

That's it! Before I really started this, I was at 210 in mid June before Jamaica. Thursday when I got the scale I weighed in at 198. Monday morning I was at 193.5. Then I gained 2 pounds at the barbecue! Oh well, as long as I stick to the workout.

The real method behind my madness is to not have to work out too briskly and let my lack of previous binge eating (I would never eat between meals or eat fast food or anything really junky, but I would eat a lot...) replaced by very light but satisfying eating lose the pounds for me. It's really a mix of the two. Since I smoke I wouldn't have the breath right now to work out enough to lose the weight if I kept on my normal eating habits. That's really all I have been trying to say :) Enjoy.