I really can't remember a year when I didn't resolve, on Jan. 1, to lose weight.  Well, actually, I can remember.  It was last year. In 2011, I decided, to heck with resolutions. What would happen would just happen. And you know what happened? I GAINED weight last year.

So I'm back to my traditional new year's resolution. This year, however, I have the great good fortune of being joined in this resolution by 40 of my peers. That's right. About 40 of my colleagues here at the City of Kirkwood have joined me in a first-ever "Kirkwood Employee Biggest Loser" competition. We will be competing for hundreds of dollars (at $20 a pop, with 40 participants, one of us could win $800 - I'll have the exact figure this Friday after everybody registers and pays).

But we'll also be competing against the employees of the City of Webster Groves to see who can lose the most weight.  The winner will be he or she who loses the biggest percentage of body weight, so we'll be weighing in - in terms of pounds - but using percentage of body weight makes it more fair to all the contestants.

So if you have resolved to lose weight this year, feel free to follow along with us.  We will have our baseline weigh-in this Friday and we'll weigh in every Friday after that for 12 weeks. I will post updates every week right here in the blog on how we're doing. Feel free to let me know how YOU are doing too!