So where is my choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus? Where is my orchestra playing the 1812 Overture? Huh? HUH?

Could there at least be some confetti?

Man, sometimes life can be such a disappointment.

Four years ago my doctor looked me in the eye and said that with blood pressure readings like mine and blood sugar levels like mine that if I did not lose 60 pounds I was a prime candidate for a stroke, heart attack or diabetes.

Three years ago my trainer at the time told me that 150 pounds would be an excellent goal weight for me if I also got my body fat below 20 per cent. I'm 5'9" and he told me at 150 pounds with a low body fat reading I would be lean, muscular and strong.

It has taken me three years to get there but for the last month the scale has held at 150 pounds. My body fat is at 17 per cent. So today, Women's Fitness Day, I'm officially 150 pounds.

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. Yes, I made my goal weight, dropped 14 clothing sizes, and brought my blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar numbers back to normal readings. The woman who could not run a block can run 4 miles in 40 minutes.

Even better, it has been four years since I've known depression. Four years. Oh, yes, I've had my bouts of sadness like everyone else, but depression? Nope, nuh uh. I am the granddaughter, daughter and sister of suicides. I have wrestled with depression almost all my life. My one remaining sister will be on anti-depressants for the rest of her life. That now, at this point in my life, I find myself free from depression is The Best Gift Ever.

Here is the hard part. To keep myself healthy I have to live exactly as I live now�eating properly, exercising, making sure I get enough sleep. It has taken me four years to grasp the point, but now I realize that there is no time off for good behaviour. I have to make a permanent lifestyle change.

I'm telling you, it's hard not to be bitter.

Because I did a little waltz with anorexia in my early 30's, dieting my body down to 108 pounds, it has been stupidly hard for me to shed the fat that put my health at such a big risk. When you starve your body you do many things, among them consuming muscle. Muscle is what sets your metabolism and without a lot of muscle you have a very slow metabolism.

After you throw your body into starvation mode for a very long time, when you eat normally it reacts by hoarding every calorie possible and turning those calories into fat. Not only is your metabolism slowed, it shifts into creating as much fat as possible because by golly you may have starved your body once, but it won't let you pull that stunt on it again.

So even when high blood pressure, worrisome cholesterol numbers, soaring blood sugar levels and a lump in my breast told me that my warranty had expired and it was time to throw a little maintenance into the aged carcass, at first the maintenance was extremely difficult.

I moved more, I ate less, but my body and my health readings did not change at first. I watched Bev drop 80 pounds in a heartbeat when she went on her own fitness challenge. Kat was fat shedding machine, dropping two pounds a week like clockwork. Doyce was doing the same thing.

And me? Turtle woman.

Weight lifting is what finally turned things around for me. Every pound of muscle I put on speeded my metabolism by 35 calories a day. It took a year or so for me to build enough muscle that I coaxed my metabolism back into the normal range. By my second year I sped it up.

That 35 calories a day might not seem like much, but my trainer's best guess is that I have added at least 15 pounds of muscle to my frame�just lounging around I burn at minimum 475 more calories a day than I did when I began this project.

To every woman who's afraid that adding muscle means bulking up, I have two words: pish and tosh. I weigh 150 pounds and at 5'9" I wear a size 8. I don't have a perfect body, but I have a strong body. I use heavy weights for a woman�20 pounds for bicep curls, 170 pounds on the abductor or adductor machine and I squat my body weight. Despite that, unless I'm flexing, my pretty little gym muscles aren't particularly noticeable.

Along the way I explored many dead ends. For those of you starting out I would like to suggest a few things that really made a big difference for me, in the hopes that if you're facing similar challenges you can do it more efficiently than I did. A lot of what I'm going to tell you came from my three loyal readers, who shared what they learned.

First off, as you know cardio (running, biking, elliptical machine, rowing, walking, etc.) helps peel the fat off and get your heart and lungs in great shape. However, our bodies are wonderful machines and they quickly learn how to do cardio efficiently. To shake your body up, try interval training.

Interval training means that you either speed up or go uphill for a set period of time and then slow down again for another set period of time. To give you an example, here's the interval program that got me to the point where I could run 10K/6.2 miles.

Secondly, within half an hour of finishing your strength training/weightlifting program, munch a snack that is two parts protein and one part carbs. Why? The carbs raise your blood sugar enough that your body will absorb the protein efficiently. You need this protein to build muscle.

The whole point of weight training is to make microtears in your muscles by taking them to failure. Your body adds new muscle by repairing these microtears and to do that, it needs protein. If you want to get the maximum bang for your weightlifting efforts, get that snack so your body gets the protein it needs at the time when it will use it most efficiently. I do it by drinking a protein drink that's a mix of soy and whey powder and by snacking on a piece of fruit.

If you work out at home or live close to your gym, you can figure out other ways to get the protein and carbs into your system.

Calcium. Oh, man, if a woman doesn't change anything else about her life, she really needs to make sure she gets enough calcium. We all know about how it helps with bone density, but other studies show it helps big time with weight loss, relieves depression and anxiety associated with premenstrual syndrome, controls high blood pressure, and wards off strokes.

Eat enough. Seriously. Eat enough. If you put yourself on some sort of starvation diet your body will respond by throwing itself into starvation mode. It will slow your metabolism and instead of burning fat it will jettison muscle. You can prolong your weight loss struggle by not eating enough. How do you figure out what eating enough is? This site gives you a number of formulas to consider.

And finally, the glycemic index is your friend. It's not just the number of calories you put in your body, it's the type of calories. If you gradually (gradually being the operative word) shift your diet away from processed foods and towards the low end of the glycemic index, you'll not only make losing weight simpler, you'll make maintaining your weight loss simpler, too.

Plus, dude you'll automatically be eating healthier food because it's the unprocessed stuff that's at the low end of the glycemic scale.

Will I be able to keep this up? Ah, now, that's the $64,000 question. I'm not sure, but I hope so.

I think that if this had just been about weight loss, getting back into my small jeans, the answer would be probably not. But for me, it's about more.

I am older than dirt and health risks are a lot more tangible to me than they are to the zygotes who make up the vast majority of my three loyal readers. I have lost friends to heart attacks and cancer. I have friends who are very sick from diabetes. I feel as if I'm out of my warranty period now and I have to take responsibility for myself.

I love it that I can live depression free without medication.

And, to my great personal shock, I have come to enjoy the challenge of trying to make myself into an athlete. Notice that I did not say a "good" athlete. No, no, that is never going to happen. I am never, ever going to be particularly good at any of the sports that interest me, but I have learned the pleasure that can come from the words "personal best".

So, let's see where I am a year from now. It will be interesting to see if I can hold on to the habits that got me to this point.

Oh, and if there is a Higher Power? Would it kill said Higher Power to let me take two minutes off my mile time in the next year? Huh? HUH?

I'm just sayin' ...

--Marn

P.S.�If you have a few bucks to spare, please consider donating to the Jog for the Jugs. Remember, all your donations are going to help in the fight against breast cancer and they're in Canadian dollars, which are only marginally more valuable than monopoly money. The most recent Bazonga Boosters (or Bustiers) to their friends are:

Mileage on the Marnometer: 1016.47 miles. Over half way there. Oh, man, please let this be over