It’s New Years. and I bet that on 95% of all  Resolution lists is: Lose Weight.

And it can be called: Diet, Cut Calories, Enroll at a gym,  walk every day, and it doesn’t matter, for they all boil down to two  words: Lose Weight.

I’ve watched others fight that fight, for there’s a proclivity toward overweight in the Bradford genes.  My sons are free of it, but I’ve seen others fight the fight.

Jake, my brother-in-law, was one who broke the curse,  and in an odd way, and now that he has stepped into ‘The Next Room’, I feel safe to tell his secret, and anyway, I don’t think he’d care if I told his method.

He had gone to a Doctor for some malady, and in the last moments, the Doc asked him if he’d ever thought about losing weight, and Jake truthfully confessed the thought was always on his mind.

The Doc smiled and said, “I know.  It was the same with me,” and Jake was surprised for the doctor was not overweight and wondered if he had some magic pill.

No, not any magic potion, but here’s what that Doc said had worked for him, and they’d  learned, and laughed over, in Med School,  and needed no Prescription, either.  Only he had not laughed, but used it.

“Go to a grocery store,” he said, “and pick  up a 10-pound sack of Sugar.  Hold and feel its weight.  Heavy, but not too bad.

“Well”, the Doc went on,  “hold that ten-pounder in one arm and pick  up another ten-pound sack.  And  that, will be a bit  harder, for twenty pounds can be cumbersome.”

And then, the Doc told him that he (Jake) was  sixty pounds over normal, and Jake was shocked, for he was no dummy and immediately saw what the good doctor was telling him.

“Jake”, he went on, “you’ll find that two ten-pound sacks are not easy for you to hold,  but keep going, because every second of your day and night you are carrying  the weight of SIX ten-pound sacks of Sugar.  No matter what you’re doing, you are coping with those six sacks.  Sixty pounds of Sugar sacks.

Jake told me he was in shock, for he said, I knew I couldn’t hold six Ten-pound sacks of Sugar in my arms,  “And  yet,” the Doc continued, “you are doing it.  It’s spread out over  your body, around your intestines, heart, liver, lungs, everywhere under your skin, is spread the weight of those six ten-pound sacks.”

Jake said he wasn’t laughing as he left the Doctor’ s  office, because his mother, Gram, did a lot of home canning, and he had bought and carried many sacks of sugar from car to kitchen for her, and knew exactly how much they weighed.

Six ten-pound sacks of sugar.

 He told me he didn’t  have much appetite that evening for dinner and his mother asked if he were ill.  No, just not hungry, he answered, but he began that very afternoon in getting rid of ONE ten-pound sack of sugar, and in a month or more, he went at a second ten-pounder.  Said he never aimed for more that one ‘sack’ at a time, for his knew his weaknesses.  but in a couple of years he was no longer carrying around ‘six  ten-pound sacks of Sugar’.

Jake said  he couldn’t get over  how heavy even one sack of sugar is to  hold, and that, if he bought two of them for his mother, he had always taken two trips from car to house, to get them to  where they were needed.

And then to know that he, every second of the day and night, was carrying six of them. It worked for him.  No pills, no exercise, not one thing, except the shock of  realizing how heavy just  ONE ten-pound sack of sugar had been.  And it worked for him for the rest of his days.