Stats: Days 1-3

Day 1

Weigh-in: Target weight + 11.2 pounds

Breakfast: Eggs and toast with butter. Because it didn't say I can't have butter.

Lunch: Salad

Dinner: Chicken with veggies

Snack: I admit it. I am weak. I was supposed to have 11 almonds, but I cheated. With a sweet, moist, delicious pumpkin muffin. Pumpkin is healthy, right? You really can't expect me to give up sweets cold turkey.

Hmmm...turkey sounds good. Pumpkin muffin sounds better.

Exercise: Does vacuuming count?

Day 2

Weigh-in: Target weight + 9 pounds

Breakfast: Eggs and toast. This toast would taste a whole lot better smothered in Nutella.

Lunch: Chicken wrap

Dinner: Steak & green peppers

Snack: 11 almonds. These almonds would taste a whole lot better atop a mound of coconut, smothered in chocolate.

There was also one minor indiscretion today. My husband came home from work with an Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea with Sweetener from Starbucks because he's sick and tired of hearing me whine so sweet and thoughtful. He also handed me a Hershey's Cookies and Cream candy bar. But I only ate 2 squares. And only a teeny, tiny sliver of the Boston Cream Pie he picked up at the store.

Exercise: Huh?

Day 3

Weigh-in: Target weight + 8 pounds

Breakfast: Cereal. The healthy kind that tastes like cardboard. Not the kind with delightfully bright-colored marshmallows, or crispy miniature cookies, or sweet and airy chocolate puffs.

Lunch: Steak wraps

Dinner: Mediterranean Pork Chops, broccoli, quinoa

Snack: 1 mini Babybel cheese wheel. These remind me of France. France is in Europe. Europe makes the best CHOCOLATE!

Exercise: So I finally decided it's time to get on the treadmill because I know diet lifestyle and exercise go hand-in-hand.



Even the makers of those magic diet pills you see advertised on TV know this. Not a one of them says, "Lose 10 pounds a week while you sit on the couch vegging out to your favorite soaps with a bag of chips beside you and a soda in your hand." No, they same something along the lines of, "For effective results, use with a balanced diet and regular exercise. Oh. And may cause excess gas, kidney failure, and possibly death."

So there's really nothing magical about those pills. And there is really no easy way out of dealing with the consequences of having eaten too much chocolate. I don't know how much longer I can go on feeling like I'm cheating whenever I sneak in some chocolate without chocolate.

Annual Cliche Blog Post

I know. It's so cliche. But if I am to be held accountable, it must be shared: I have a New Year's Resolution. I've put on a couple of pounds since we moved to the Arctic. And by a couple, I mean several. Something must be done.

Now, before I start getting hate mail about how, even with several added pounds, I am not that fat, let me explain. After all of the hats, gloves, scarves, coats, jackets, mittens, long underwear, socks, snow boots, and regular boots we have purchased for Life in the Arctic, quite honestly, there is not enough left in the clothes budget for me to buy larger-sized britches. And larger-sized britches are where I'm headed if I don't do something.

In so doing, I do not intend to toss the D word about. That would just add cliche to cliche. So I am going to stick with the word lifestyle. Better, right? I am going to follow Dr. Connie Guttersen's The Sonoma Diet Lifestyle. I have loosely followed this book before because I like it. I like all of the science behind the food she offers. I like the foods she uses. There are no avocado (blech!) and tofu (double blech!) smoothies I have to make to start the day. Instead, her recipes are sensible and use ingredients any picky eater would like.

The only thing that is kind of odd/funny/comical is the snacks. On Day 1, my snack allowance is "11 almonds". I am not sure what would happen if I ingested 13. Perhaps I would bloat up like a beached whale (there's another cliche for you) and finally bust right out of my Levis. I'm not going to chance it; I'll stick with 11.

The d-, I mean, lifestyle is divided into 3 waves. The first wave is the hardest because it does not include even a teaspoonful of sugar. Even fruits are forbidden. This phase lasts for 10 days. Without chocolate and Starbucks, this phase will be the H word for me.

Wave 2 technically lasts only until you reach your target weight, but there are 14 days of menus provided. I intend to follow the 14 days. Wave 3 has no menus; it is the phase where lifestyle truly takes over. I haven't figured out yet what I want that to look like for me, but I do know I want us to be healthier as a family, so I'll give it some serious thought while I am enduring Sugar De-Tox.

So that is it. Now that it's out here, I have to stick to it. I'm not starting 'til Monday, though. In the meantime, I will be grieving the departure of many of my best friends: Betty Crocker brownie mixes, Christmas chocolate, baking chocolate, everyday chocolate, Starbucks. And I'll be shopping for things that don't contain chocolate.

And since I haven't started yet, I'm afraid I'm going to have to eat some more of my Christmas chocolate. It's for my own psychological health because good-byes are simply too difficult.