Dan;
I was an Olympic power lifter and ate for power! Definition was never an issue or concern. Unfortunately, I was hit and ran over by a fleeing felon about 16 years ago, ended my career in law enforcement and I've put on about 165 lbs since. Discipline plays a big part, it's a choice to be healthier and live longer perhaps, knowing full well, I can reach my goal weight and drip dead the next day. I'm not a fatalist, but I realize that life and death is a lottery, we control the things we can and the rest... well we plan. I'm also was a Special Forces Ranger (before it was cool.) with two tours in Vietnam, wounded twice when your number is up, it' up.

I'll share with you a old family aphorism... "We Plan and God Laughs!". Living without a plan is totally irresponsible for yourself and your family, so I plan to be around for a long while.

I stunned myself the other day when I was shopping at Home Depot, I picked up a 50 lb. sack of sand and was surprised just how much weight I had taken on with 165, of fat, of course there was some muscle mass but most is fat and with each pound of fat the heart has to pump blood through an additional 9 miles of blood vesicles and capillaries.

We each make decisions daily that can make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others, hopefully for the better. When I stepped on the scale and it read 398, I experienced an immediate shift in my paradigm of reality. I mean it shook me to the core. I immediately started making choices that have really impacted my life, that’s for sure.

I can remember the other times in my life when and where this happened, they are truly life changing and reaffirming, all in an instant in time. Really magical if you ask me, because our brain's basic mechanisms are normally hard to update, the type of event I’m talking about bypasses these normal channels (guard stations) and goes directly to the heart of things and changes our messages and tapes to such a degree, change then becomes possible, really possible.

Dan, you must understand exactly what I’m so desperately trying to put into words that are understandable. Sorry if I’m not communicating this concept well, it almost an emotion than anything else. Be well. Jim