Editor’s note: For the next year, Jason Campbell will provide weekly updates on his efforts to lose weight and improve his heath. Next week  when Jeanette Balmut wraps up her Year of You challenge, Bulletin readers will find out how they can be one of two readers picked to be teamed up with a Manteca fitness center for a year to make lifestyle changes. 

It’s not necessarily a New Year’s resolution per se. 

But my decision to finally commit myself to a workout routine that I can stick to and make the necessary lifestyle adjustments that will ensure that I’ll be around this earth for a very long time – fingers crossed – is something that I want to tackle in 2016 and stick with for the foreseeable future. 

But I’m skeptical. 

You see, I’ve written in the past about wanting to finally get myself back into shape. I’ve gone to gyms and enrolled in boot camps and made trips to health food stores only to fall off within two months. Last year at this time I had completely cut out all soda, but slowly returned to the point where Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi had become my regular source of liquid intake. 

I would say that I’m cutting out fast food and instead get a teriyaki chicken bowl with extra rice and extra chicken and end up suturing it with enough sweet and sour sauce to drown a large animal. 

And it was okay, I told myself, if I slipped up periodically because it wasn’t easy to make the sort of profound life changes because it would be such a radical departure from the horrendous habits that I picked up just as my life became more sedentary. 

It’s easier to play video games than go to the gym. It’s easier – and cheaper – to pick up fast food and easy-to-prepare grocery store junk than it is to cook protein and vegetables every night for dinner. It’s easier just to not do anything and accept whatever a high-carbohydrate diet and nature’s wrath will do to your body. 

But I’m not going to do that anymore. 

The people closest to me will naturally say that they’ll believe it when they see it. And some of them have already seen it – I’ve lost more than 40 pounds over the course of the last year with just simple changes and very little actual standard exercise. 

Now, however, I’ve decided to reach out to those around me who know a thing or two about successful weight loss and fitness instead of taking the “know-it-all” approach that drives my wife absolutely insane. 

While it was technically her that reached out to former football teammate (for many years, actually) Alex Avila to inquire about his FuncFit Boot Camp class as CalFit, it was initially my idea to do so. Telling somebody that you used to wear football pads with that spends literally all day working out and honing his physique that you have somehow lost your way is a sobering experience – almost like an admission of defeat, which is something that my stubborn self can’t easily verbalize. 

I’m tired, however, of having to rock to get up off of the couch. I’m tired of not being able to walk into any store and pick out my size. I’m tired of wondering whether I’m actually going to do anything to help myself, keeping my fingers crossed that good genetics (I have surprisingly good cholesterol despite my diet) will keep me chugging on forever. 

I had the craziest excuses for why weight loss isn’t for me. I have an ample supply of clothing – high-end jeans that were purchased after I’d gotten much larger that would soon be worthless to me, I told myself, if I actually followed through. Am I really willing to spend all of that money on new clothes? 

Crazy, right? The truth of the matter is that I would find any reason not to do the things that I know that I need to do, and hopefully through accountability and support I’ll be able to get through the self-imposed mind tricks and actually make a difference. 

This isn’t going to be easy. I’m the kind of person who skips breakfast, loads up at lunch and then eats a late dinner – rarely snacking throughout the day. But when I sat down with Avila to give him my food diary for a four-day period that included New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, he lined up a schedule and a plan that, if followed, will create some semblance of normalcy in my diet and when combined with the practical exercise in his class, will help the pounds melt away. 

I know that it’s possible. Another old friend is also part of the class and has dropped more than 30 pounds since signing up. It has to be all or nothing if this something that I’m going to commit to, and to make sure that happens, I’ve decided to advertise the process and the results through The Bulletin’s annual “Year of You” series that highlights local people in their quest to once again be healthy. 

I’m not 20 years old anymore. I can’t eat whatever I want and rest on the laurels that my body will somehow magically burn off 4,000 calories of ingested food without so much as a wink. And I need to stop fooling myself that this sort of lifestyle will be conducive to anything but an early grave. 

So here it is – my resolution of sorts. 

I keep hearing that “the struggle is real” and I’m about to find out for myself how real it is.

So next week I’ll give you all the hard numbers — my peak weight, where I’m at now and what I need to do.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.