By Pam Walatka

I’ve been losing some ounces. I am decades beyond the age when I could drop pounds at will, but I can do ounces.

Pounds are too big a unit. Losing a pound is too hard. An ounce is doable.

Roughly speaking, to lose an ounce, you only need to eat an ounce less fat. Everyone’s metabolism is different.

Fats contain 219 calories per ounce. If you eat an extra ounce of fat, or any 219 calories that you don’t need, your body will store those calories for you - as an ounce of fat! The numbers are different for different people and in different circumstances, but, rounding off the averages, you can think of an ounce of food fat corresponding to an ounce of body fat.

Do you need to lose weight? People in this stylish town are more likely to have anorexia than obesity. If you are already thin, stop reading this and go do something more fun. Still reading? Then here is my Ounce-for-an-Ounce Diet.

Rather than making drastic changes in your eating habits, try making tiny changes. Eat just a little bit less every day. Take smaller portions. Eschew seconds. On fixed-size portions, such as a sandwich, learn to recognize when you are full and throw away the last two bites. In a restaurant, order less.

Don’t be afraid of a little hunger. Your stored fat is sitting there, waiting for you to need it for fuel. The primary purpose of fat is to store calories until you need to burn them for energy. If you are not hungry, you don’t need to burn those stored calories. You may find that after half an hour of being hungry, your hunger goes away because your metabolism has switched to burning fat. When you are hungry, pat your biggest fat deposit and tell your metabolism, “Eat this!”

Are you asking yourself, “Do I have to exercise?” Yes, dear reader, you do. Just a little bit more than you already are. Adding a 10-minute walk, four times a week, could (depending on various factors) burn up about an ounce of fat a week.

For many years, I was weighing my age plus 100 pounds. In other words, I was gaining a pound a year. About six years ago, I started eating less breakfast and putting more effort into my daily exercise. In those six years, my regular-normal weight (as opposed to daily fluctuations) went down 22 pounds.

You might be saying, “I need to lose 22 pounds in a month, not six years.” But is that working for you? Is that something that actually happens in the real world?

Doing the math, I figure that 22 pounds in six years works out to just over an ounce a week. Losing an ounce a week is something you could do if you want to. Life is long. There is plenty of time.

Summarizing: Every extra ounce of fat you eat gets stored in your body as, roughly, an ounce of fat.

To lose fat ounce-by-ounce, consistently eat an ounce less of food fat (or 219 calories of anything) and consistently add 40 minutes of exercise to your week. It all adds up. Or subtracts.

For more information on mind-body health and fitness by Pam Walatka, visit www. wildhorses.com.