Sometime between the end of last Autumn and my birthday this year, I gained almost 10 pounds. I’m not sure how, exactly, but it might have had something to do with the pies.

There was an apple, a custard, a mince and possibly, but I’m not sure, pumpkin. And the cookies. My daughter-in-law makes these special Italian cookies with a hint of anise that go down like magic. They don’t seem like much, but if you eat half a pound of them, they do what cookies generally do. And I’m pretty sure that someone sent me chocolate. Or maybe they sent the chocolate to Garry. He’s not a chocolate eater, so it’s possible I had to eat it, to prevent it from going bad.

By the time I went in for my spring checkups — regular doctor plus the oncologist, with the cardio guy later this month — it was a bit alarming. The doctors were not alarmed because it wasn’t considered a big weight gain. These days, no one is worrying much about my weight. I haven’t worried about it either because it had been rock steady for years, but that extra ten pounds made me uncomfortable. Being as arthritic as I am, every extra pound I carry puts more strain on my unhappy spine and joints. I felt I needed to do something.

I don’t eat a lot at any given meal, but I can pick all day long. In total, I usually eat just a couple of hundred calories more than the 1200 calorie amount recommended for dieting. This make dieting very slow. I have no metabolism either, so any dieting will take time. On the positive side, that’s the best way to do it. It does, however, require patience and  recognition that a relatively small loss will take a couple of months.

I set myself up on a 1200 calorie diet and five weeks later, managed to lose 7 or 8 pounds, more or less. I say “more or less” because I’ve got one of those scales that never seems entirely clear about the reading. You can get on it five times and get five different weights. So I know I weigh less than I did, but exactly how much less? Not sure. I suppose the next trip to the doctor will tell me.

I do know while I was showering yesterday, I realized I was a bit thinner. A little tighter there, a little less puffy here.

I’ve got another four weeks to go, though there’s not much reason to take a break since this is a very easy diet to maintain. Really, all you need is some kind of tracking software so you know how much you’ve eaten and be consistent. Don’t eat sweets, go easy on the carbs, try to get some exercise here and there. Skip fried stuff. Get very enthusiastic about salad, melons. You can eat a ton of watermelon, cantaloupe, or honeydew and consume virtually no calories. Also berries, especially strawberries. They are so low in calories, you don’t even have to count them. This is assuming you aren’t loading them up with whipped cream or extra sugar. You knew that, right?

Slowly, you lose weight. If you were eating a lot to start with, you’ll lose weight faster. If you were only eating a little more than the diet amount, it’ll go more slowly. But that’s good because you bring your regular eating habits under control and can continue to eat that way pretty much indefinitely. You can buy special diet food — I got a bit — but mostly, you need normal, healthy food and good calorie tracking software.

It’s working. Who’d have thunk it? This is the least traumatic diet of my entire life. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?