Welcome to Walking the Walk, a feature that takes a deeper look at commonly shared diet and fitness advice. Every other week, I'll choose one piece of advice and practice it for seven days. Then I'll report back on what I discovered about making it work in real life and how it affected my own personal fitness -- and how it ultimately can affect your own efforts.

For the first time ever, I can proudly say I didn't pack on weight over the holiday season. In fact, I've managed to lose about eight pounds since Thanksgiving. I owe it, mostly, to my ban on sugar and chocolate.

Still, I have a lot of work to do. Take, for instance, my abs. They are very sad abs, abs that must be stuffed into too tight undergarments to look good in holiday wear. They're just crying for attention.

We all know that spot training alone doesn't work. After all, you could have the most gorgeous set of six-pack abs in the universe, but if they're covered with a thick layer of flab, who's going to notice? True spot reduction comes from a healthy diet, aerobic exercise and strength training.

That said, I'd really, really like to squeeze into something nice and a little smaller on Christmas. But that's just over a week away, so I'm going to work these abs like crazy every day as an experiment and see what happens. If it works ... hurray! If not, well, a lesson learned for all of us.