It's safe to say many of us have gained a few pounds during quarantine and are aching to lose them as we inch closer to normalcy following the rollout of vaccines.  When the fridge is within close reach, it can be awfully difficult to resist the chips, ice cream, or whatever else we deem Covid comfort food.  But here's the good news: Losing weight is more mental than anything else. If we're in the right frame of mind, we can achieve results -- sometimes far quicker than anticipated.  And here's even better news: You don't have to starve yourself to shed those pesky pounds.  Two keys to success, both of which are easy to recall (as they begin with the same word), are: 1. Exercising moderation when it comes to one's eating habits. 2. Exercising physically.  Though I've done a pretty good job at maintaining my weight the last couple of years, it's been a mission to drop an extra 15 or so pounds I've been carrying around. I thought that as long as I ate ...

You exercise. You lower your food portions. You eat healthy. You do everything you know you're supposed to do in order to shed some pounds. And yet, you step on the scale and, to your dismay, your weight doesn't go down; in some cases, it even goes up! Doesn't make any sense, does it? I have found myself in a similar conundrum over the years. Eventually, it dawned on me that my near-obsessive habit of drinking Diet Coke was probably working against me. When I probed even deeper, I realized that depriving my body of water was likely making it more difficult to lose weight. I mistakenly assumed that drinking more water would make your body retain more of it. But the exact opposite is true: The less water you drink, the more your body hoards whatever water you have in your system, thereby making you heavier.  I learned years ago that my dark yellow urine likely meant I was dehydrated. (A pale color with a tinge of yellow, on the other hand, suggests the bod...

How great does it feel after losing 10...15...30 pounds?  No one would dispute that it feels phenomenal. However, I've observed that such feelings give way to cockiness in some people. Admittedly, that happened to me when I lost 25 pounds a couple of years ago. My face looked thinner. My tummy had all but disappeared. Some of my clothes was looking huge on me, forcing me to go a size or two smaller. Now that I was wearing more fitted clothing, I noticed more looks from women -- whether at work, restaurants, or the mall. This is what gave me the ultimate high and motivated to continue working out and losing weight. Now, I'm a happily married man and never even entertained the thought of doing anything more than smiling at these women. Still, the fact they were fancying me in this way -- a confirmation that they were digging something about my physical appearance -- made me feel really good about myself. My self-worth must have hit astronomical levels that year. I sta...

Does it surprise you that many men say their top New Year's resolution is to sleep with as many women as they possibly can? Not only have I heard a few guys say this firsthand, but I've seen many cite this as their primary aim in 2016 in message boards featuring topics on New Year's goals. All I can say is...wow. Of all the things these guys can do to improve themselves in the New Year -- from losing weight and finding a better job to spending more time with loved ones -- they're only thinking about adding to their sex partner tally. Maybe it's time they aspired to something greater, like actually finding someone to settle down with. Sleeping with as many partners as you can hardly seems like a New Year's goal; rather, it's something you can really set out to do, well, whenever. I see the New Year as the opportunity to start with a clean slate. Upping your sex partner count merely seems like an effort to perpetuate an old habit -- one that should h...

Ironic that I would create a post about this on Thanksgiving of all days, isn't it? But I find it a germane topic in light of the fact that many of us won't be happy when we step on the scale tomorrow morning. In fact, studies show that many people decide to go on diets the day after Thanksgiving as a way of mitigating the damage. Whether they keep the diet when Christmas and New Year's come rolling around is a different story. Here's my trick to losing weight: The best way to exercise self-control is to ask yourself how many calories eating that scrumptious slice of pizza would set you back. The key is to mull this over before you even put the food on your plate. If you do it the other way around, you'll feel as though you've committed to eating it ("it's on my plate already -- might as well eat it) and will feel bad putting the slice back in the box. Now, that doesn't mean you can never "cheat" once in a while. After all, experts...