Introduction

The other night while walking my dog, I was thinking about lots of things. One of these things was what I eat. And I like to eat. When I visit a city for the first time, one of the things I do is figure out where to eat. Zagat is my friend. Luckily, I've been blessed with a good metabolism, so I've never been really overweight. But, I've definitely been (and still am) out of shape at various times in my life.

I'm 6 feet tall, and at my heaviest, I weighed about 200 lbs. That was about 2 years ago. My weight and "fitness" have drifted around over the years due to various reasons, including lack of exercise, diet, stress, knee injury (and surgeries), laziness, commitments to family & work, etc. I won't bore you with the details. Most recently, I've lost about 35 pounds. The only reasons I can come up with are that my last job was stressful, I sort of started eating better, and occasionally exercised. I didn't diet, or anything really drastic at all. However, in the last year, my cholesterol has stayed about the same, most recently at 228. My blood pressure is ok, hovering around 120/80.

So, I decided to try to cut back on meat. I didn't want to go vegetarian (because I like meat), and I didn't want to get all strict about it. So I decided to try to limit myself to some extent, but stay flexible if necessary. Turns out, there's a name for that: flexitarian. So I decided that in my version, I would try to eat poultry and meat only once each every week. I decided that I can eat as much seafood as I want, since I think fish is good for you. I also hope to walk the dog at least 5 days a week. Our usual walk is about 2 miles.

This blog is for me to track the process and record what I eat, how I feel, and what I think of the whole thing. I unofficially started last week, and I was pretty successful, but I didn't record what I ate. So, I'm starting now.