I’m not into social media, so I’ve never seen anything actor Ethan Suplee posts on Instagram.

I’m not much of a television viewer either, so I’ve never watched a single episode of the shows where he got his start, “Boy Meets World” and “My Name Is Earl.” Same for movies, so I’ve never seen a single film in which he’s appeared: “Blow,” “Unstoppable,”“Remember the Titans,” “American History X,” and “Motherless Brooklyn.”

I’ve only come to know him because Dr. Layne Norton, an expert in nutrition, muscle gain, and fat loss - who’s also won seven bodybuilding and six powerlifting titles and done a world-record squat - mentions Suplee when Dr. Andrew Huberman asks him on a Huberman Lab podcast what’s the key to long-term weight loss.

Norton says it’s developing a new identity and that Suplee has done just that.

As a result, the actor’s nearly 300 pounds lighter than he was 22 years ago - and “jacked.” Suplee, in fact, has coined a clever phrase to remind himself that developing a new identity is an important and ongoing process.

When he posts pictures of his now powerful and very muscular body, he often adds a caption, “I killed my clone today.”

So Norton asked Suplee exactly what that phrase means to him. Suplee explained that there’s no way he could lose and keep off the weight if he didn’t, in a manner of speaking, assassinate his old self.

So every day - with a special emphasis on every - Suplee sees the battle as being the same. He must exercise and eat in a manner so dramatically different from his 550-pound days that it’s the equivalent to killing his clone each day.

Now your health situation may not be so extreme as to require metaphorical murder. But what you may need to acknowledge is that you have an unmotivated, overweight twin held captive inside you - and he or she is always looking to escape.

One way to keep him jailed, my friend, is to keep a journal.

For nearly 40 years, such jailhouse journals have allowed me to control my weight like a prison warden presiding over the killers housed at Alcatraz, yet they are is as bare-bones as solitary confinement. In other words, I don’t spend too much of my day being a jailer.

My journals only list the foods and supplements I consume and when; when I go to bed and wake up; the exercise I do; and an occasional brief, albeit important, note.

Like the one I added to last Saturday’s page about my dead-legged and depressing three-hour bike ride. I felt so bereft of energy and motivation for just about the entire time that it reads: “Is there a reason besides a sense of guilt - or excessive pride - NOT to ride easily for an entire week?”

My tendency, you see, is to always do a little bit more, always go a little bit harder. It’s probably the biggest reason for any success I’ve had - but such success has a shelf life of six, maybe seven weeks.

After that, doing a little more, going a little bit harder makes that strength of mine morph into a major workout weakness. My workouts plateau and then regress.

It’s a weakness I’m loathe to admit - and will only acknowledge, it seems, once I reread old journal entries and see with my eyes what I feel in my legs feel.

So right now, you may be interested to know I just finished a seven-day stretch where I limited myself to four bicycle rides consisting of 10 hours of relatively easy pedaling.

Or you might not.

After all, what are the odds you share my problem of not always knowing when to, or ever wanting to, moderate exercise? But the odds are much higher, my friend - the CDC lists them at seven in 10 - that you’re at less than an optimally healthy body weight.

And past studies show journaling to be a great way to engender and maintain weight loss.

In 2008, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a thousand-participant-plus, 30-month study performed by Kaiser Permanente on overweight American adults. It found keeping a food diary doubled weight loss.

In 2017, the Journal of Diabetes research published a study nearly as large but 12 months long that found “consistent tracking [of food intake] is a significant predictor of weight loss.” The subjects who did so lost seven pounds more than those who didn’t.

In 2019, Obesity published a relatively small study that revealed the more frequently participants wrote down what they ate, the more weight they lost. The paper surmises “the frequency of self-monitoring is significantly related to weight loss.”

It also mentions that the time needed to journal effectively diminishes. The process that took participants more than 23 minutes at the onset took less than 15 minutes by the study’s conclusion.