Over the last 30 years, I have had a variety of careers: dentist for 10 years, software entrepreneur, computer geek for a museum — that was a cool job — and most recently a salesman for a defense contractor. The only constant through all my career changes was my gradual weight gain.

On my 49th birthday, I decided I was in a boring job that was smack-dab in an even more boring life. So with a tub of ice cream and a box of red wine, I decided it was time for a bit of reflection. As both containers began to empty, the contents were working their magic. With hands clasped behind me, I stalked around the den, planning and scheming. I stopped in front of a large mirror for a self assessment, and looking in my reflection, a couple of things became apparent.

Clearly, purple teeth were not a good look for me. More importantly, someone needed to write a book explaining to anxious, middle-aged men that their body’s changes are natural.

First there is the hair. It disappears from the scalp and reappears in the most unexpected places. Then there’s all the drooping, and those parts that don’t droop can hardly bend anymore. While I’ve never been very flexible, at that moment I was slightly less limber than peanut brittle.

With the clarity that an empty box of wine brings, I made a new life plan: lose weight, get hair plugs, quit job, buy ear-hair trimmer, ride bicycle across country and stretch. I figured pedaling a bike for months on end would put some adventure back in my life and drop the weight. And if I was lucky, by the time I could see my toes again, I might be able to touch them.

My cycling trip started out according to plan, and about halfway through I could see wrinkles in my clothes again. I was indeed losing weight. Then things took an unexpected turn. Some clown hit me from behind at 50 miles an hour, landing me in my sister’s spare bedroom for six months of recuperation. Not exactly the kind of adventure I had wished for.

But onward I pressed. With a new bike and all my weight gained back from a steady diet of junk food and indolence, I set off again. In something of a surprise even to me, there I was several months later standing before the Pacific Ocean. After a month-long orgy of self-congratulation with old friends on the West Coast, I got a call from my cousin. He was taking his family overseas and asked if I would sit in his house and feed his cat in a place called Vashon.

“Hmm,” I thought. “This would be the perfect opportunity to write the book that’s been rattling around my brain.”

So I agreed, and two weeks later I opened the door to a dark house and a surly cat.

One of my first acts was to step on the bathroom scale only to find out that after 4,000 miles of riding my bike, I had lost exactly 2 pounds. While the execution of my life plan had some success, it was not without its flaws. I was still overweight and I still needed hair plugs. But on the upside, my ear hairs were nicely trimmed.

Now it was time for life plan 2, Electric-boogaloo. While gathering my thoughts for the book, I instituted a sea change in my daily diet. I focused on three key elements.

The first was little or no processed food. The food giants have scientists working day and night to make food as addictive as possible, and up until then, I had been a willing victim.

Second, no dieting. The thing I have learned about “miracle diets” is that it’s a miracle the authors aren’t in jail for fraud. Crash diets are a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

And three, cook my own food. This is a big one for me because I loathe cooking. To me, salt is an exotic spice, and I need three cookbooks open just to boil water.

For the next 18 months, I bought and cooked simple foods from the perimeter of the grocery store, i.e. fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy and some grains. That describes my diet all in one sentence, and it worked. However, it wasn’t without hiccups.

I found that I could go about six weeks without the need for a food and drink bender. These food-fests were planned with military precision. For instance, one weekend revolved around candy from my youth, the 1960s. This sated my love of sugar and nostalgia and reminded me that half of the candy from the 60s mimicked tobacco products. There was the licorice pipe, the bubble-gum cigar and the sugar sticks that looked like Lucky Strike cigarettes. Ah, the good old days. Inevitably I would have to re-lose the weight from these episodes, but the anticipation was fun and the treats a welcome reward.

The regimen of ordinary food worked slowly but predictably. I began seeing weight loss milestones: 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, until I finally I hit my goal weight of 100 pounds lost. If I had to describe my diet in a word, I would say, “invisible.” It was just what I ate. For me at least, simple and sane became my miracle diet.

And, oh yes, I did finish my book, two in fact, with one of them a satire on the diet industry.

— Chris Austin is The Beachcomber’s circulation manager and a cycling instructor at Core Centric. He has two ebooks, “Forever Fat” and “The Bottom Bracket (The Bicycle Mysteries)” available on Amazon.com.