As a once, er, CHUBBY person, who successfully lost the excess poundage (90 pounds) and have kept it off for well over 10 years now, I feel qualified to provide some weight loss tips. I didn’t go on one of those weird liquid diet diets. I didn’t join a weight loss program and have food delivered to my door. I didn’t have my stomach stapled or liposuction. I’m too poor to hire a personal trainer. Nope, I was on my own — but I did succeed!

Here is how I did it:

1. Weigh yourself once each week at the same time of day. Do NOT weigh any more often than once a week, and if you stand the suspense, two-week intervals would be better. (Success breeds success! If you lost two pounds without going hungry this week, you gain the confidence and believe that you can lose two more pounds next week.)

2. Buy yourself a good calorie-counting book, or find a place on the Internet where portion sizes and caloric contents for all kinds of food is listed — including fast food.

3. Keep a journal! This is possibly the most important tip of all. If you don’t know where you’ve been, you won’t know where you are going. Plan your meals in advance and then list what you actually ate, when you ate it, why you ate it, and how eating made you feel. (When you know yourself, you can control yourself.)

4. Embark on a reasonable exercise program. “Reasonable” is the key word. If you can walk 15 minutes every day, that’s great. If you walk longer, further, and faster, that’s even better. But you do have to actually DO it.

5. Set goals! Goals come in two varieties — long term and short term. A long-term weight goal is the total number of pounds you want to lose buy a given date (you must be reasonable). A short-term goal is the goal you set for yourself each week. A long-term goal might be “lose 30 pounds in 5 months.” A short-term goal is “lose one pound this week.” As long as you keep meeting your short-term goals, you will make your long-term goal!