While I'm out here in cyber space, dragging you along on my search for happiness, I'm also going to bore you to tears with my attempts at losing some poundage. It's the traditional pairing of the new year, no? Find happiness, lose pounds. While sounding very cliche, it still sounds like a win-win to me, once I'm able to achieve either/or. You will note, here, that I'm not calling either of these plans a resolution. As a good friend of mine answered someone when asked about his resolutions this year, "I'm not making resolutions, I'm making changes". You go girl!

Relatedly, I was perusing one of my favorite websites today, The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/) and found an article of some interest on this topic: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-02/10-most-effective-diets-for-2011/?cid=topic:mainpromo6

Turns out that my personal favorite place to 'diet' (I hate the word), Weight Watchers, is ranked number three in The Beast's list of top-ten effective ways to lose weight. It's been over two years since I've been to a meeting, but tomorrow morning, at 7:30am (on Saturday, mind you), I'm going to be in the front row. It's time.

My eating habits are horrific at the moment, my visits to the gym have become bi-monthly, and Weight Watchers is the one place I can go and know that I'll get results. The program is do-able. The food is edible. More than anything, the motivating factor for me is that there is a scale. Once a week, no matter what I've been up to, I have to show up and get on that scale. I'm somewhat competitive by nature, more with myself than anyone, and the contest of me vs. myself is nearly always a successful one. If I can't beat me, then who the hell can I beat?

Anyway, first weigh-in tomorrow morning, which means what? Well, out of the gate, it means that I will (1) do whatever I possibly can to take a poop in the morning, (2) I will don the lightest outfit I can find in the closet, and (3) I will pray heavily through the night that my starting point is no higher than a buck seventy-five. I know that's about where I am and I could just kick myself for getting there. Goal: a buck fifty-five. Twenty pounds. That's it. Who can't lose twenty pounds?

Bonus factor here is that (a) I have a million W.Watchers recipes from the last time I did this, and (b) I now live in the ever-abundant United States, where you can virtually diet just by shopping in your local grocer's freezer section. Okay, that's not the answer, but those frozen W.Watchers entrees are going to be my best friend when I'm cooking other yummy stuff for the fam and find myself in a pickle. So...here's to me and my newfound mission. Twenty pounds by April 30th. No problem.