While cutting the cost from my $375 annual member fee was cited as an incentive, I declared my goal was nothing less than becoming Cooperstown’s Biggest Loser.

One-third of the way through, I thought it’s time to give a progress report, both to encourage my fellow losers and to prod myself along with the red-hot poker of publicity. And possibly in hopes of having alert readers (especially any Bassett docs who might be reading) point out tragic deficiencies in my routine thus far.

Rather than just spit out how much I’ve lost so far, here’s a rundown of what I’ve done so far. For you slackers who wish to skip the meat of this column, the number is in the second-to-last paragraph.

Knowing my past failures in the fields of dieting and exercise, I decided that jumping headfirst into a relatively serious program was my best bet. In order to both lose significant weight during the three-month period of the Sports Center program and to build the momentum I’ll need to make some lasting changes.

Thus, a two-front war on my waist: eat better foods and burn more calories. For the past two and a half years or so, I’d basically raised white flags in both departments and was eating whatever I wanted and exercising infrequently. Occasionally I’d get motivated to eat healthier food or exercise a little harder, but never at serious levels in either department, and definitely not at the same time.

That changed on Jan. 2 when I officially weighed in, clocking in 43 pounds heavier than what I measured in May of 2003, the last time I recorded my weight in a little exercise notebook. A shocking average of more than 10 pounds a year added slowly, day by day, one cookie at a time.

Exercising more was the easy part which I tackled immediately by setting an every-other-day routine. I adhered to that schedule fairly well, tallying 13 sessions for the month. [an error occurred while processing this directive]