The Bling! Button

Filmmakers Jamin and Kiowa Winans posted an insightful update (A 360 View on Internet Piracy) on their experiences so far about having their feature film downloaded 400,000 for free. This section in particular caught my fancy:

If the download community wants to send a real message and be recognized as an audience, here's how:

• For those out there who download because you want easy access to something you can't otherwise get (i.e. you're outside the US and movies take forever to get to you, which we completely understand), then please do the download community a favor and track down the filmmakers and give them a few bucks.
  
• For those of you who only want to pay for what you like, please find a way to support your favorite artists as best you can. This will also send an extremely strong message to Hollywood to make better films and not just expect everyone to keep digesting a huge cafeteria of re-makes and franchise films.
  
• For those of you who expect things to be free, please consider how flawed that thinking is. Do you expect groceries, clothing and other commodities to be free? Making Ink is the single most difficult thing I've ever done and I can guarantee that every artist who crosses the finish line with a completed project feels the same. If the answer is truly that people expect things for free then the logical conclusion is that no one will take any financial risk in this industry and eventually there will be nothing to pirate. Talk about the law of diminishing returns.

This is a new era and no one knows which end is up right now. If instant file-sharing is truly the next step in film distribution, then there still needs to be a financial model in place that works. All anyone wants to do is to be able to move on and make another movie. That will be impossible if the world expects things for free. Or, all our movies will be paid for by huge corporate sponsors and littered with product placement - is that really a better alternative? Do we really want The Storytellers in Ink to be eating a Big Mac and swilling Coke after every fight? Probably not. I'm not claiming to know any answers here, I just want to put it up for discussion so please share your thoughts below and we'll continue to provide updates.

Everyone is hunting around for a way to monetize file sharing so that indie filmmakers (and studio filmmakers) can continue making movies without having their hard work taken with no hope of any financial recompense. So the Winans' appeal to our better nature to buy legally is, though well-intended, misguided. The actual barrier to consumer donations is not moral in nature—at least not largely moral—but technological. If P2P applications like BitTorrent and various media players like Quicktime, WMP, etc. were improved to make it dead simple to donate directly to producers, money would start flowing. Narrowing the action required to donate from two clicks to only one click is the kind of thing I'm talking about here—it should be stupidly easy and quick to donate money—a child should be able to figure it out. It should be fast, secure, reliable, omnipresent, and probably even anonymous, too.

Let me offer an anecdote. IAlertU is a third party application for my laptop. It uses three of my MacBook’s utilities to provide one kick ass app: the remote control “locks” the laptop so that nobody can use it while you step away (and makes a cool car alert sound when you push the remote’s button), its motion sensor detects if the MacBook has been illicitly moved, and the laptop’s camera snaps a picture of any thieves and emails that photo to you. Really, it’s briliant! Rarely do I find an application which such ingenuity. It is the third party software developers like this whose products are bought and then integrated into Apple's next OS iteration.

Anyway, iAlertU is is shareware, so I downloaded it for free to try it out. After seeing just how cool the application was, I felts this sudden wave of gratitude. I said to myself, “If this guy has made it super-easy for me to pay him, I’ll gladly reward him by give him $5.” Without too much surprise, I did indeed find a Paypal link in among the menus and less than 60 seconds later, I had given him my $5 donation. Had it taken longer than 60 seconds—or more accurately, if I had thought it might have taken longer than 60 seconds—I can’t say I would have bothered to donate.

Be it a song, a software app, or a movie, consumers are often struck with such overwhelming gratitude as this are very willing to show that appreciation with their hard-earned money... but that moment can often be fleeting. However, if the coin bucket is always there, I guarantee you coins will be dropped into it. As the Winans have said before, if just $1 were donated from every download they had, they'd be easily put in the black again.

Somebody needs to get the software people behind all media players and P2P apps like BitTorrent in the same room with Paypal and Visa. Gobs of money can be made here if a simple button is added to all media players and P2P applications. The button might say something like, “Reward the Artist”, “Donate”, “Give”, “Help Out”, “Tip”, or even “Bling!”. Whatever its iteration, the gist is the same—the consumer needs to know that when they click that button, the money they assign will go directly to the artist with zero hassle.

Embrace the Future, or Perish

Something extraordinary has been happening this week. The film that Jamin Winans has been working on the last few years, Ink, was released and suddenly exploded all over BitTorrent: 400,000 downloads as of today, and counting. But that's not even the extraordinary bit—the filmmakers, independent filmmakers at that, aren't mad or resentful that hundreds of thousands of people are watching their film without their permission, for free... instead, they're ecstatic so many people are watching their movie.

I've been studying piracy with great interest over the last four years, and I've arrived at a few conclusions...

Counter-intuitively, the filmmakers behind INK have sold way more DVDs and ticket sales as a result of this "piracy". It's worth emphasizing that they haven't sold INK to a distributor and only built word of mouth by four-walling and promoting/selling DVDs through their web site (and from riding the publicity off their amazing short, Spin), so when their film got 150,000 views via BitTorrent in only 72 hours, this increased exposure could only have helped their film and company.

After carefully studying DVD piracy and BitTorrent file sharing, here's my own take on piracy:

1. It's morally wrong to copy or download music, movies, and software for anyone other than the person who purchased that product. I've always thought so and will always continue to think so. Piracy is like forcing a musician to busk against their will, and that's not what he agreed to.
   
2. It's currently impossible to stop the masses from engaging in piracy. If you stop them in the US, they'll do it elsewhere and now anyone can watch movies by going online. For example, right now, I can watch any movie I want—100% free—by going here: watch-movies-online.tv or surfthechannel.com. The quality can be bad sometimes, but if all I want is to see a film, then it's good enough for me.
   
3. Piracy is the market pushing back against too much control. Nobody would accept producers of furniture, automobiles, toys, or confectionaries to tell consumers how to use their product after it was purchased. Can you imagine selling me a car and then telling me not to hang dice from its rear view mirror? Yet that is exactly how producers act when you "share" an MP3 with a friend. In China, only 20 foreign movies are distributed every year—is it any wonder piracy is so rampant there? Wouldn't you resort to piracy if also presented with the same authoritarian control?
   
4. Piracy is usually about convenience, not cost. Consumers simply want to watch the film right now and they resort to piracy to get around any obstacles to that need. The obstacles are not often money, e.g., a movie is not out on DVD yet, or it's released overseas months before it's released domestically, or the duplicated DVDs are being given away for 25 cents, or for free.
   
5. Piracy does not necessarily equate to lost sales. In an information age where content can be infinitely duplicated without degradation, a pirated viewing is probably from a consumer who wasn't going to spend money on your product anyway. However, if they see/play/listen to your product, they might change their mind and buy your product, or tell their friends who might then buy your product.
   
6. For an unknown production company or film, piracy can be fantastic and inexpensive word of mouth. Sure, you can spend time and money trying to stop it, but you will ultimately fail and you just get frustrated and resentful in the process. Instead, it's much better to be happy someone is watching your film and—this is the key part—telling all their friends about it.
   
7. It is still possible to compete with piracy. Tap water is ubiquitous and free and the bottled water industry remains extremely profitable. Musician Trent Reznor gives away all his albums for free and still makes a ton of money around the unique ways he packages his music, e.g., selling a limited edition boxed set for $1500 (he made $1 million in less than 48 hours selling just those boxed sets).
   
8. The emerging business model (thanks to techdirt.com) to counter piracy seems to be:
   

   CwF + RtB = $$$

   
   This stands for Connect with Fans and give them a Reason to Buy. iTunes offers convenience at almost no cost, and that's a great reason to buy instead of resorting to piracy. Reznor goes out of his way to cultivate and reward his fan base... then he offers them options to buy scarce goods like physical merchandise that cannot be pirated.

In 1999, I thought that all music piracy should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, over time, I've come to see (as have the heads at ABC and Disney) that piracy is an informal business model and, as such, it's a more efficient use of one's resources to simply compete with that model rather than trying to fight against it. Look at hulu.com and abc.com as choice examples of how big Hollywood producers are effectively competing with piracy.

For all these reasons, I'm not so worried about piracy as I once was. Yes, it is a financial risk for producers if not approached properly, but as long as producers keep in close contact with their fans and give them a good reason to buy by making a great product, piracy will just give producers great exposure (like INK) and end up adding more value to their product.

If you want to read one of the most lucid and insightful interview about piracy, check out this interview of Eric Garland, Big Champagne's CEO (thanks to Sheri Candler's tweet.). Garland points out:

I don't want to sound like the armchair pundit. You end up sounding not very empathetic. You sound like some ass who says "This is how it's going to be and if you don't like too bad." I'm not trying to be dismissive. I'm not trying to be glib about this. I understand the implication may well be tens-of-thousands of jobs lost, billions of dollars pouring out of the industry, shutterings, downsizings...I'm not trying to make light of that. I'm just telling you that in the final accounting i think some things we now know. Some of them are very unpopular even in concept and some of them are very hard to incorporate into strategic thinking, but that doesn't make them any less avoidable or inevitable.

Then later:

We'll spend some number of months—I'm just essentially recounting the music industry's journey—filing vast numbers of infringement notifications, letting everybody and their granny know you're infringing our content. They'll take the temperature and they'll do surveys and collect data and they'll try to convince themselves that this is having a real effect in reversing the tide and then after some period it will just not have been convincingly demonstrated to have worked. And they'll realize that by any number of measures the piracy problem has only grown worse. But they will have to exhaust all of those things and more. They will have to chase legal remedies, legislative agendas, all the way to what they view as being the end of the line before they say "OK, so this really is the landscape we're stuck with. As much as we didn't want it, this appears to be it. Now we have to just dive in and make businesses that work here."

As Seth Godin put it, "...how will this new business model support the world as we know it today? Who cares if it does? It is. It's happening. The world will change around it, because the world has no choice. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient, but it's true."

I will not read your fucking script

Below is one of the best articles I've ever read about what it's like to be on the receiving end of an aspiring writer soliciting feedback on their screenplay... and why that person is in the wrong to ask their professional film friends to offer feedback as a favor. Josh Olsen states it exquisitely: "...when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you—gratis—the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours."

I get a lot of people asking me for my opinion on their scripts. Actually, I don't mind reading their work—especially if I know they can handle brutally honest criticism—but the sad fact is that I'm a slow reader and I've got about a gajillion things on my plate at any given moment. So I started offering free feedback on just 10 pages and anything more than that I charge a hefty consultation fee. That cut out almost all feedback requests, presumably because when people see how much I charge for the time I spend on their work, they start respecting my time by not intruding on it, either.

My favorite section from this article:

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

I can always tell in the first sentence or paragraph whether the writer really appreciates the technique of writing and the storytelling craft—and I'm never wrong. If the first sentence—the very first thing introducing the script—is clunky, has typos, or rambles incoherently, then what hope is there for anything that follows? The first page, the first paragraph, the first sentence, even the first few words are the most important things the reader will read. Will these few words propel the reader to the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page? For half-hour TV dramas, you only get three pages before your script gets shitcanned.

Everyone can write, so everyone thinks they can write screenplays... but to write well enough to maintain a reader's interest? Extremely difficult. I'm no master, by any standard, but I wish more "writers" would embrace that same degree of humility. It would make it a shitload easier to give them the kind of feedback they so desperately need.

I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script
Wednesday, Sep. 9 2009 @ 10:00PM

We know you've been working very hard on your screenplay, but before you go looking for some professional feedback, you might keep in mind the following piece by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson.

​I will not read your fucking script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fucking script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

You're a lovely person. Whatever time we've spent together has, I'm sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II.

But I will not read your fucking script.

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I'm a dick. But if you're interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who are the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That's right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

I was recently cornered by a young man of my barest acquaintance.

I doubt we've exchanged a hundred words. But he's dating someone I know, and he cornered me in the right place at the right time, and asked me to read a two-page synopsis for a script he'd been working on for the last year. He was submitting the synopsis to some contest or program, and wanted to get a professional opinion.

Now, I normally have a standard response to people who ask me to read their scripts, and it's the simple truth: I have two piles next to my bed. One is scripts from good friends, and the other is manuscripts and books and scripts my agents have sent to me that I have to read for work. Every time I pick up a friend's script, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring work. Every time I pick something up from the other pile, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring my friends. If I read yours before any of that, I'd be an awful person.

Most people get that. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the guilt factor is really high, or someone plays on a relationship or a perceived obligation, and it's hard to escape without seeming rude. Then, I tell them I'll read it, but if I can put it down after ten pages, I will. They always go for that, because nobody ever believes you can put their script down once you start.

But hell, this was a two page synopsis, and there was no time to go into either song or dance, and it was just easier to take it. How long can two pages take?

Weeks, is the answer.

And this is why I will not read your fucking script.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

You may want to allow for the fact that this fellow had never written a synopsis before, but that doesn't excuse the inability to form a decent sentence, or an utter lack of facility with language and structure. The story described was clearly of great importance to him, but he had done nothing to convey its specifics to an impartial reader. What I was handed was, essentially, a barely coherent list of events, some connected, some not so much. Characters wander around aimlessly, do things for no reason, vanish, reappear, get arrested for unnamed crimes, and make wild, life-altering decisions for no reason. Half a paragraph is devoted to describing the smell and texture of a piece of food, but the climactic central event of the film is glossed over in a sentence. The death of the hero is not even mentioned. One sentence describes a scene he's in, the next describes people showing up at his funeral. I could go on, but I won't. This is the sort of thing that would earn you a D minus in any Freshman Comp class.

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn't actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn't require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don't regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

So. I read the thing. And it hurt, man. It really hurt. I was dying to find something positive to say, and there was nothing. And the truth is, saying something positive about this thing would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here's the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you're not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I've done you a favor, because now you'll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.

To make matters worse, this guy (and his girlfriend) had begged me to be honest with him. He was frustrated by the responses he'd gotten from friends, because he felt they were going easy on him, and he wanted real criticism. They never do, of course. What they want is a few tough notes to give the illusion of honesty, and then some pats on the head. What they want--always--is encouragement, even when they shouldn't get any.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone that they've spent a year wasting their time? Do you know how much blood and sweat goes into that criticism? Because you want to tell the truth, but you want to make absolutely certain that it comes across honestly and without cruelty. I did more rewrites on that fucking e-mail than I did on my last three studio projects.

My first draft was ridiculous. I started with specific notes, and after a while, found I'd written three pages on the first two paragraphs. That wasn't the right approach. So I tossed it, and by the time I was done, I'd come up with something that was relatively brief, to the point, and considerate as hell. The main point I made was that he'd fallen prey to a fallacy that nails a lot of first timers. He was way more interested in telling his one story than in being a writer. It was like buying all the parts to a car and starting to build it before learning the basics of auto mechanics. You'll learn a lot along the way, I said, but you'll never have a car that runs.

(I should mention that while I was composing my response, he pulled the ultimate amateur move, and sent me an e-mail saying, "If you haven't read it yet, don't! I have a new draft. Read this!" In other words, "The draft I told you was ready for professional input, wasn't actually.")

I advised him that if all he was interested in was this story, he should find a writer and work with him; or, if he really wanted to be a writer, start at the beginning and take some classes, and start studying seriously.

And you know what? I shouldn't have bothered. Because for all the hair I pulled out, for all the weight and seriousness I gave his request for a real, professional critique, his response was a terse "Thanks for your opinion." And, the inevitable fallout--a week later a mutual friend asked me, "What's this dick move I hear you pulled on Whatsisname?"
So now this guy and his girlfriend think I'm an asshole, and the truth of the matter is, the story really ended the moment he handed me the goddamn synopsis. Because if I'd just said "No" then and there, they'd still think I'm an asshole. Only difference is, I wouldn't have had to spend all that time trying to communicate thoughtfully and honestly with someone who just wanted a pat on the head, and, more importantly, I wouldn't have had to read that godawful piece of shit.

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.

There's a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he'd pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, "One million dollars, please."

"A million dollars?" the guy exclaimed. "That only took you thirty seconds!"

"Yes," said Picasso. "But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds."

Like the cad who asks the professional for a free read, the guy simply didn't have enough respect for the artist to think about what he was asking for. If you think it's only about the time, then ask one of your non-writer friends to read it. Hell, they might even enjoy your script. They might look upon you with a newfound respect. It could even come to pass that they call up a friend in the movie business and help you sell it, and soon, all your dreams will come true. But me?

I will not read your fucking script.

Josh Olson's screenplay for the film A History of Violence was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award and the Edgar.Link.

0 (∆ -0.6) || 21.8%

Yeah!! I did it: I lost it all. (Pic to come.)

This is the end of a long journey, and I'm sort of shocked I really lost all the weight I set out to—a total of 33.5 pounds since January 19th. I overshot of my original target deadline by two and a half weeks, but given how many years I've been trying to lose weight, who cares!! Over seven months, I lost an average of 0.1 pound/day and 1 pound/week. Sweet.

Currently, I have 21.8% body fat, so I'm aiming to bring that down to under 20%, and then later to around 17%. No deadline for that per se. Just living healthfully now... after seven months, my eating habits have been firmly established, so it shouldn't be too hard to get slimmer and more fit as time goes on.

From this point forward on, I'll be using my body fat percentage as another central indicator of my progress.

No matter what—the race is over, and I won. Huzzah!!!

+0.6 (∆ -1.2)

It took some extra effort in the last stretch, but I finally dipped under 160 lbs., which technically makes me 25.0 BMI and thus... Normal Weight! Woo hoo!

I should go celebrate by binge drinking all night... or maybe not? Heh heh.

As far as I can tell, since weight can be either muscle or fat—which both fluctuate—the more important measurement than BMI is body fat percentage. When I started this whole program, I was at 28.9% body fat (according to my scale which isn't a highly accurate measurement), which means I was carrying 55.6 pounds of pure fat. Now I'm at 21.9% body fat, which means I'm still carrying around 34.9 lbs of fat, a net loss of 20.6 pounds of fat. According to the BMI, 34.9 lbs of fat is a normal amount of fat, but the BMI is a bit of a hack. According to the American Council on Exercise, body fat percentages break down like this:


So my next goal is to get my body fat percentage below 20%, and then to 17%. I don't have dates for that yet, just whenever I get to them. I have faith now that I'll get to them eventually. If I hit a wall, I might get more regimented in my approach.

Either way, I think I'll celebrate... by losing more weight. Truth be told, when you finally figure out a method that works to shed weight, it's a little addictive. And almost fun.

+1.8 (∆ +0.4)

Well, the day is finally here—the end of my seven month plan to lose weight—and I can unequivocally say it's been a success. Not only am I celebrating my birthday, but I'm literally lighter than I've been in years. Huzzah!

If you've been with me since the beginning, then you already know I was over 30 pounds overweight at the beginning of this year. With a BMI of 30.1, I was technically obese... and that was, pardon the pun, the straw that broke the camel's back. It was time to take back ownership over my weight. I had allowed things to get out of control. Me. Nobody else. No more excuses.

Admittedly, it was a difficult road to take, especially in the beginning. I had to stare down my late night hunger pangs, finally face the stress and dormant feelings I'd been sedating with food, get a realistic grip on just how caloric fast food is, and accept the disappointment from not getting results fast enough. There were ample opportunities to quit. But I stayed on it. I'd been trying for over a decade to get to a slimmer and healthier version of myself and after years of knowing (and even advocating) the simple math behind losing weight—eating less food and working out more—I decided to take my own advice. Maybe I just needed time to let go of the delusion that eating recklessly would let me remain happy. Who knows? What I do know is that my original plan has worked.

So how did I do it?

I used a lot of aides to track my progress: a scale, my blog, spreadsheets, a thorough understanding of nutrition labels, but above all were a few crucial applications on my iPhone. I used three apps in particular every day—Weightbot, VitalsView, and Lose It!. (I'll post reviews and screencaps of VitalsView and Lose It! later.)


Of the three, my favorite app has been Weightbot, which you can buy at the Apple's iTunes for only $1.99. Given how often I've used it, and how much value I've gotten out of it, it has surely paid for itself a thousand times over.

Weightbot is simply designed, easy and fun to use, and delivers all the essential stats to track weight in both numeric and graphic formats. The first thing I've done every morning since January is make a trip to the bathroom, step on the scale and input my data into Weightbot.

Below is a slideshow of actual screencaps from my iPhone:

Note how Weightbot automatically updates the graph's top weight number—at first this seems to skew the results from month to month but (I think) it also gives you more motivation because each month illustrates an increasingly drastic weight loss as the weight comes closer to the goal line.

As you look over each month, you'll also see how my weight drops slowly. As I said on Tuesday, it's far more inspirational to visually see a month's worth of data because it shows how the weight is slowly sliding off. The ideal goal should always be to lose weight and keep it off, although this is a common trap many fall into: everyone wants to lose as much weight as possible, so they'll go with some random diet and then a few months later, go off the diet again... and usually back into their old eating habits. That kind of see-saw dieting is a horrible way to have long-term weight loss—instead, it's way better to shoot for only 1 pound of weight loss per week. That's a small change, but a feasible one. It might take some perseverance and resolve, but if you really want to lose weight permanently, then you should be prepared to accept that the process will not be a series of quick sprints, but one long marathon of small steps. Which is better, really, since it's more realistic to go from 3 doughnuts a week to 2, than from 3 doughnuts to none at all.

If there were one key to this entire program, it was not thinking too much about the end goal. I've changed my eating habits so drastically since January that if you had told me in January I'd be eating mostly produce for lunch now, I'd have flat out rejected it as a lie. More importantly, it could have completely demoralized me—I might have told myself that I wasn't ready to give up my guilty pleasures like beer, butter, sour cream, and cheese, and abandoned the program before I even started it. But I still have beer, butter, sour cream, and cheese. I still eat doughnuts and Chipotle burritos. Last night, I even had ice cream. So my eating hasn't changed from January—I still eat all the things I used to, just in more appropriate portion sizes.

Here, for the record, are the final statistics. I'm sure this is what you've all been waiting for:

Time Span: January 19, 2009–August 21, 2009
Total time: 7 months (214 days)
Starting Weight: 192.5 lbs
Goal Weight: 159 lbs
End Weight: 160.8 lbs
Total Weight Loss: 31.7 lbs
Difference between Goal Weight and End Weight: +1.8 lbs
Average Weight Loss per Week: -1.0 lb
Average Weight Loss per Month: -4.4 lbs

And finally:

+1.8 (∆ -31.7 lbs)

It's not magic. There is no One True Diet. There is no wunder-pill to make the fat melt off. I can say from personal experience that the key to losing weight and living a healthy life is simple math:

Eat Less. Work Out.

The hard part is 1) accepting that axiom as true, and 2) be willing to figure out how much you really do eat.

So, if you're feeling inspired and want to lose some weight yourself, I offer you a simple challenge to make a step in the right direction.

1. Don't change your eating habits for 1 week. Don't do any exercise or activity you wouldn't normally do.
   
2. Record everything you eat—everything. Record the portion size (buy a measuring cup if you don't have one), and record the calories per portion size from the respective nutrition label (go here to find a good online calorie counting site). If you're feeling extra diligent, maybe record when you eat, too. Don't change what you eat because you're measuring it... that will change your results; your job at this point is to just sit back and observe your eating habits with a detached scientific eye.
   
3. Don't feel guilty about anything—this is a crucial point. It's easy to get depressed when you're faced with how many calories you actually eat (and depression tends to make us to eat more), so stay cool. Knowledge is power, and you should feel satisfied that you're gaining new knowledge about yourself, no matter what that knowledge is.
   
4. Go here to find out your BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate). Your BMR calculates how much energy you expend by doing nothing at all.
   
5. Go here to calculate how many calories you should be eating daily to maintain your current weight (this is called your TDEE, or Total Daily Energy Expenditure. If you're eating more calories than your TDEE, you'll gain weight. If you eat less, you'll lose weight. If your goal is to lose 1 pound a week, and 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories, the end goal is to reduce your TDEE by 500 calories (i.e., 500 calories X 7 days = 3500 calories / week).
   
6. Choose on your own what can be nixed from your food that will get you closer to that daily calorie intake. You don't want to go cold turkey just yet (although if that's more to your temperament, go for it)—just make small steps. Above all, keep educating yourself about what kinds of food are overly caloric and gradually weed them out. If you're going back for thirds, can you go back for only seconds? Once you're used to only going back for seconds, can you not go back for seconds at all? It's a gradual shift. Don't try to run the whole race in one day.
   
7. Over time, aim to get your calorie intake closer to that TDEE. Once your calories dip below that TDEE, you'll start to lose weight. If you can get your TDEE reduced by 500 calories per day (on average), then you will lose a pound a week.
   
8. Remember that weight fluctuates by as much as 4 pounds in a day. You will only see measurable results over time, and the longer the time period, the better.
   
9. Find a gym that you really like. Choose a simple workout—5 or 10 minutes at first. Go once a week, then twice, then three times, etc. Go just to get in the habit of going. Reward yourself by sitting in the spa for 30 minutes. Once you're ready to do more challenging workouts, you will; your body will know when it wants to do more. The important thing is to go slow enough that you aren't disappointed if you stop. Can you walk for 10 minutes at a snail's pace? If not, how about 5?

If this has been useful to you in any way, please let me know by shooting me an email to ross AT rosspruden DOT com. And, you know, pass it on to others, too. :)

+1.4 (∆ -4)

I've lost four pounds in 24 hours. I wish that were a joke, but it's not.

Oddly, those four pounds weren't my body's actual weight, but that excess slough which fluctuates one's weight from day to day. This sort of sudden ebb and flow ought to perfectly illustrate the insanity of putting too much importance on your weight from one day to the next. If you're trying to lose only 5 pounds, an error margin of +/- 4 pounds yields unpredictable and unsatisfying results.

Today's quote goes to Renée, whom I caught complaining about her weight on Facebook: "Now, how does this work? I decrease food & alcohol intake, exercise regularly, eat LOTS of fruits & veggies...and still hover around 135lbs. Gaack! WTH? And don't say it's because I'm getting older!" When I asked her if she'd been counting her calories, she said, "I will NOT count calories! That would take the fun right out of eating and drinking."

Well, I dunno... this weekend, I had at least four beers, 3 chocolate chip cookies, an ice cream scoop, and some of the best dining I've had in months. Okay, maybe I wasn't bingeing as much asdaisy, but it was still fun.

Despite all that, I can relate to Renée's plight: we all secretly know what our problems are, we simply choose not to face them because our newfound knowledge would logically dictate we change. Change is painful, change sucks. The old way is more comfortable—we purposefully choose ignorance because we like having fun. I know. I've been there.

But, Renée—don't be so brazen to complain about trashing your car when you won't even look at a map.