State of Play, the 2009 movie with Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe, should be avoided.

Why?

Because the 2003 BBC miniseries it’s based on, also State of Play, is far superior.

State of Play is a story of a group of investigative journalists looking into two seemingly unrelated events: the murder of a druggie in London’s west end, and the apparently accidental death of an MP’s researcher. Obviously, it turns out that there’s more to the story than what there appears to be.

How you compress six hours of brilliance into a two hour movie, I don’t know. While the American version is filled with big name stars, it’s important to note they’re rather bland. The miniseries is headline by Bill Nighy, with James McAvoy, David Morrissey, and John Simm as the lead characters. Filling out the cast is the gorgeous Kelly MacDonald, who you might remember as a Texas redneck from No Country For Old Men, but who has a beautifully thick Scottish accent on a petite redheaded frame.

Anyway: my point is, save your bucks, and Netflix the miniseries. You won’t be sad you did.

The thing about losing weight, is you’ve actually got to alter, pretty much, your entire lifestyle.

Sadly, running around the Bookstore on weeknights looking for “that book … with the blue cover … by that guy …” does not count as exercise. Neither does sprinting a quarter of a block for the bus at night. Especially when I still spend the majority of my free-time not exercising. Well, okay, I exercise my brain, but that’s hardly the same thing.

Saturday I was up in Hunt Valley hunting an elusive W2. “Man, you got fat,” my former boss said when he saw me.

That’s not true, or at least, I haven’t gotten fatter: my weight has consistently been in the 245-255 range for most of the last couple of years. When I first started the Office job and was commuting down to Bethesda from Timonium for three months, I lost a lot of weight — but I was eating a granola bar for breakfast, a granola bar for lunch, and was passing out the second I got home and skipping dinner. I probably dropped 20 pounds, which I packed back on when I moved to DC.

I was torturing myself looking through Giant’s online circular. Bryer’s ice cream. Frozen pizza. Yummy.

A few years ago, I got serious about weight loss. I didn’t do any strenuous exercising, a few jumping jacks a night. A friend who was on Weight Watchers copied the information for me, so I knew what my dietary restrictions were. And I kept with it. Over a period of three months, I went from a waist 44 to a waist 36 (I’m currently at a 40). I tracked my weight on graph paper taped to my bathroom wall, weighing myself every Tuesday morning. I lost 10 pounds that first week, most of it, I’m sure, water.

But I kept it off. And while the weekly losses ranged from four pounds to one pound, I got smaller, and smaller.

I really don’t know how I did it.

Well, I mean, of course I do: I watched what I ate. I did jumping jacks.

I cut ice cream and frozen pizza completely out of my diet. I snacked on rice cakes, pretzels, and pickles. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches became my lunch standard.

I’d probably be a svelte 200 right now if I’d stuck with it. At 5’10, my “ideal” weight is 175. Someone told me that, I think, or I read it. I can’t imagine myself at 175, I think I’d look like a stick. I like having some meat on my bones … I’d just like to have less of it.

I made a resolution at the start of the year to lose weight. I haven’t, not really. One week I dropped twelve pounds, but again, that was water weight, and an unusually warm Saturday had encouraged a fairly long walk — from Woodley Park to the Library of Congress.

Walking is great exercise, and shouldn’t seem like a chore, or a work-out. And now that the weather is warmer, I really have no excuse not to walk. Certainly, I’d rather walk than go down to the gym in the next building.

Truthfully, I’m just tired of my pants being tight. I own belts and I want to put them to the use for which they were designed for. So: I’m going to eat better, and I’m not going to eat as much. I’m sure this will be a graduated scale, but I’m going to try to meet it. While I won’t cut my milk consumption any, I’m going to switch to only one mug of hot chocolate in the morning, and I’m going to drink a lot more water.

As for walking? I’m going to leave earlier on Sunday mornings and walk to work. I’m also going to go for walks on Saturdays, and maybe, on weeknights I’m not scheduled at the Bookstore, I’ll get off the Metro at Friendship Heights of Tenleytown and walk the rest of the way.

I can do this.

Now, if I’d only bothered to weigh myself this morning before leaving for work …

Well, that’s okay. I’ve got lunch plans and free food at Chipotle. I can do this, starting tomorrow.