Hey there, I’m Dwight, nice to meet you!

I’ve always had a sweet tooth, so a serving of fig newtons for me was the whole sleeve! After all, isn’t that what they mean by a serving size?

If there were a few cookies left in the package, I would think endlessly about them and rationalize it was better to just finish the package and not have to think about those remaining few. That kind of sums up my mindset to eating for quite a number of years.

After I finally graduated from college (I was one of those studious types who crammed a 4-yr degree into 7) I started a engineering job which provided a steady paycheck, meaning more money for eating out, more donuts and potlucks at the office (which was mostly desk work, and business meals with clients, and traveling for business, hotel buffets, etc. ) which all resulted in gaining more weight.

I got married, and with my new wife cooking good things for me, and children started coming along to keep distracted from healthy eating, the pounds kept adding on. Get this: I had gained 90lbs in first 3 years of marriage, just hitting 245lbs (I’m 5’11”) – I realized I had been gradually moving up from pant size 32 waist to 34-waist, then 36-waist, then 38-waist, then 40-waist, and even bought 42-waist shorts (I told myself I liked the baggy look, so I wanted them big. Good excuse, huh?)

So what made the change? How did changes start to happen? What made me decide enough is enough?

One day my uncle made a comment ‘when are you going to do something about that?’… and I thought ‘about what?’ – Then I looked in the mirror and realized how big I had become, and how much I was huffing and puffing and out of shape when doing anything more than walking on level ground.

So, I did what a lot of guys do in my situation: I bought an exercise machine, which I used mostly after work each day – (one cute memory that I have from this time in my life: my 4-yr old daughter pantomimed my movements on this machine by looping her jump rope around the patio post.) But you know, I never felt like I was really getting anywhere. I found it harder and harder to stay motivated and the machine started going unused.

Someone suggested to me that I should motivate myself with a ‘thing’ I wanted, so I set a goal of losing about 45lbs, getting down to 200 lbs, and with that machine and eating less, I did it(!), and re-warded myself with a $200 Swiss Army Watch. Cool.

My weight loss, however, wasn’t particularly structured or planned, and my meal habits still were un-healthy. I then somehow fell off the exercise wagon (maybe because I had hit my target but had to no plan to continue to an even better level of health?), and I started going back up in weight.

Seems like I added on about 20lbs before I realized I was headed in the wrong direction again, but had no plan to get back on track to health, and didn’t want to get back on that boring exercise machine.Something my brother said to me clicked, and I then I figured if I could just stop snacking between meals, eating only at meal times, I’d lose more weight.

Amazingly, 15 of those 20lbs went away in a matter of months. However, I didn’t eat particularly healthy meals, mostly heavy meals, so the pounds didn’t continue to drop off.

I hit a plateau, and stuck at 200lbs for a long time (a number of years) and basically forgot about healthy attitudes… but then my back strain from my college years (loading trucks at UPS) surfaced in a big way when I was moving a sofa I was donating to a single mom, straining to stuff it up a staircase by myself.

There goes my back, and hello to chiropractor visits and a sudden desire the ‘get back in shape’, so here we go again.

Since I’m an engineer, I analyze, scrutinize, and optimize things – and I started to research online what I needed to do to get in shape, to keep it simple, to keep it manageable, to keep motivated and make it slightly ‘mindless’ (sort of like the idea to simply stop snacking between meals – that was easy and mindless: just don’t eat if it wasn’t mealtime!

But that idea had it’s limits, and I was still waaaaay out of shape. Just not quite as heavy anymore.)

After going down the fitness rabbit hole of fitness DVDs, exercise gadgets, and other equipment which were all expensive and complicated and so on, I discovered a very simple ‘hold in your hand gymna-sium’, and developed a smarter approach to eating right that wasn’t focused on “building a beast” and getting “shredded”, like young guys do. I focused more on a guy like me who was looking back at 40, fast heading towards 50, who just wanted to be around in decent health to enjoy his time with his soon-to-be-arriving grandkids.

Ultimately, I needed to get out of the old roller coaster of starving, then regaining, and instead get a lifestyle and mindset of long-term health – not with a goal of being crazy ripped (which will distract you

from everything else) sort of program, but rather a healthy start at 40 and onward, and a plan to follow a method to not drop back into old bad patterns.

What I eventually developed is a system that allows me to consistently get up each morning at the same time, get the brief workout done as often as I should (and feel waaaaay better each day after I complete it), allows me to track my progress easily, and to keep on the right path of eating (without depriving myself of all the goodies my adult daughters bake for me) – and hey, I already feel great about the years ahead.

So why should you trust me? Why listen to me? Well, not just because I am getting consistent results in my own life, which I suppose should be enough in itself, but also because I am pretty nice guy, well-regarded by my many neighbors and friends and family as a reliable, consistent, level-headed person, striving to remain above reproach with others, serving (along with my wife) in many volunteer efforts for several non-profit organizations, all with the purpose of improving the lives and futures of children and youth. And it improves my life, too!