If you follow me on Twitter, then this isn’t really news, but I’m going to tell you about it anyway. I’m working towards losing weight. I haven’t shared much about my journey here because the journey isn’t really wine related and I like to keep posts here limited to my wine adventures.

This is more of a thing I’m tired of feeling sad about and I want to change about myself. Instead of feeling crappy, I’m getting up off my butt to do something about it. It’s working, and I want to fill you in on it. I think you’ve earned it (you do read the rest of my ramblings after all).

Here’s my plan. I’m not on a diet because diets don’t work. Well, they do, but not in the long run. Honestly, how many people do you know that can say “I was on _____ diet once and I lost a ton of weight.” Probably a lot. Did they gain it back? A lot of people do. The way I see it, after the diet it boils down to either not being able to keep it up long term or giving up on healthy food (or possibly a medical condition but that isn’t really anything that can easily be helped).

Sweet tangent, huh? Anyway, diets don’t work forever so I’m not on one. I’m just eating fewer calories than I use, thus burning off fat. If you want specifics, I’m eating fewer calories, fewer complex carbohydrates (bread, pasta, that sort of thing) and eating more protein and fat (yes, eating fat does not make you fat). Since the beginning of 2010, I’ve lost 25 pounds and gained a boatload of energy. I’m not at my goal yet, but I’m half way to my first major milestone of losing 50 pounds, and that’s definitely an achievement.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that out, here’s what I really came here to say. I have struggled with keeping wine in my routine. I kicked up my fight against fat this January, losing 11 pounds since the 1st of the year. I started to really focus my entire daily routine on what I ate. Truthfully, that was the only way to figure out what I should and shouldn’t eat. Wine is an extra but had to be cut in the initial eating trial. I needed to know how to eat everything else before I added wine back into my life on any real scale (which is something I have started doing in the past few weeks).

To aid my efforts, I’m using a website/iPhone app to help me track what I eat and this dreadful thing happens when I go over my daily allotment of calories. The bar graph turns red (see the photo). It’s guilt inducing and I try to avoid it at all costs. For this process to work, though, I need to be honest about what I consume. A hamburger? Add it. Chicken and broccoli? Add it. Wine? Yes, add that too.

When I’m trying to stay under a certain amount of calories, wine calories add up rapidly. In the last few weeks, I’ve gotten better control over how much and when. The graph shown is my actual graph from last week. The only day I went over was a night that we went out to a bar and I had some bar food. Not the best, but we’re all allowed a cheat every so often. That was mine last week.

Anywho. I hope this talk mostly unrelated to wine wasn’t terribly boring for you. I think this is a topic often important but rarely discussed within wine. I’m actually amazed that many of the winos I’ve met aren’t even the slightest overweight. Maybe they’re some of the lucky few born that way, or maybe they work their tushes off and have already figured out what I’m only just beginning to learn.

Moderation, with everything I consume. That’s the lesson I’m learning.

Oh yeah, who want’s progress photos? We love a good set of progress photos.

I cut out some fellow winos (can you guess them?) but here’s me close to my starting weight last summer. It makes me sad to look at this, to tell you the truth.

A shot from today, half way to my goal. I’m not even sucking in the gut!