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One Hundred Best Days of My Life - Part II, Day 5

I have been on a long journey with one of my sons -- , well with two of them actually this year, now that I think about it. A space opened up for Richard and me to go walking every morning from 6 am to 7 am. The exercise alone was fantastic. But the chance to talk for an hour as we walked – that opportunity can hardly be measured when any two people get to spend that much time together.

Now just to have that happen with a son is a bonus. But then to go with another son to the Calgary Weight Loss Management Clinic – now that was another opportunity I would not have wanted to lose. It was not just the conversation on the ride to the meetings and back, but I got to sit in the classroom and listen to the lessons – a set of six of them, each two and a half hours long. I would not have wanted to miss that opportunity.

Kelvin and I bumped up the value of the classes by talking about the classes with a self-selected group of other family members on email. If anyone was interested, they could join the group – emails went back and forth about what he and I were learning at the lessons, but as well, about anything anyone wanted to talk about that had to do with the topic of good health…or any other topic, I guess.

Charise Bates has known that we were going to this clinic. She hasn’t been in on the emails. But she told me that she heard an interesting fact about weight management, so here it is, since I have thought of it a number of times.

She heard a health professional say that a study had been on people who had significant weight loss and then kept those pounds off for more than seven years. Here are the two facts Charise learned. This group had two things in common. The first is that they picked up the habit of eating their meals off of a six inch plate, and then continued that habit for seven years. Alright. I raised my eyebrows on that one – not in suspicion but in admiration of a group of people who can do that – get a habit and then continue with the habit for a lifetime.

The second commonality among this study group was this one: whenever they wanted seconds, they gave themselves a twenty minute window from when they had finished their first, to when they went to pick up their second plate of food. Many of them reported that after 20 minutes, they no longer wanted that second plate.

Now one might ask, why this information might stay with me as part of one of my best hundred days. My answer would be, sometimes I pick up a fact that is so amazing to me that I return to think about it over and over. And this is one of them everytime I try to reach for that 6 inch plate.

Arta