Do or do not. There is no try.

191 pounds

I was talking with some co-workers at lunch today about what kind of sports and physical activities we were involved in as children.

The fittest person in our group, a man who might not have a single ounce of body fat on his extremely lean build, confessed to us that he had been overweight as a child and only passed gym class because his P.E. teacher took pity on him.

This from a man who now works out every single day and wanted to walk the two-mile roundtrip to lunch even though the hill we work on top of is so steep that our college's sports teams is actually called the "Hilltoppers."

It was definitely a surprise to hear about his heavier past, but when I thought about it, I had to admit that he's not the first person I've known who was overweight as a child and then decided as an adult that they no longer wanst to be bigger than everybody else. Some of them, like my co-worker, even go so far as to decide that they want to have a nearly perfect physique.

So what I want to know is, what makes this work for them? How do they do it??

Because when I decide I want to have a perfect physique—which I admit I sometimes do in my weakest moments—nothing really changes. Yes, I keep improving my health and losing small amounts of weight, but why is it that when I wake up on an unusually bad day and decide I want to be 150 pounds, it doesn't happen? Do these people have some special powers I don't have? If you're overweight as a kid, do you get a pass on being that way when you're older?

For God's sake, what is their secret?!!