Dailyness and Diets

After an inadvertant hiatus in posting, I wanted to post a little update about the dailyness of my life:

The last few days I have been spending a lot of time on She Reads. We are revamping She Reads so that now we will offer a selection per month instead of 3 selections per quarter. I know that sounds like semantics, but I think it's going to streamline things for us, and allow us to more effectively focus on one book/author at a time. Having 3 at once was confusing for us and readers, we were finding. So you asked and we answered. Now if you want to host a monthly She Reads book club, you can do so! We will provide you with the book selection and the opportunity to get to know the author. We've got some exciting features coming up in February, so keep checking over there to see what we're up to. www.shereads.org

I just got my copyedits back on The Mailbox. These newest edits are due Feb 1 so I have some work ahead of me in the next ten days. I have also been working on endorsements and writing some other parts of the book and trying to start some marketing efforts. June will be here before we know it!

We've had some warm days that were a teaser for spring. Oh how my soul leapt at the prospect of spring! Green! Warmth! Sunshine! We also got our vacation on the calendar (thanks Uncle Bob, as always!) and that made me long for those days on the beach and the exhilaration of running with my favorite music in my ears, inhaling the sweet beach air as I do. Sigh. Today is supposed to be 40 and raining. January and February (and some of March for that matter) be gone!

Yesterday was my daughter's tenth birthday. We will celebrate this Saturday with a party at a local cake decorating shop, where each of her friends gets to decorate (and eat) their own mini cake. She can hardly wait and I am just grateful the mess is not going to be in my house! My daughter is also getting her ears pierced. She was very disappointed that I didn't take her on her birthday, but weekdays are hard to fit anything else in. I struggle with pulling off birthdays-- sometimes they sneak up on me no matter how much I try to plan in advance. Anyone else have this problem? Last night found us eating a storebought chocolate chip cookie cake and ice cream. Thankfully, this child does not feel like her birthday is complete unless she gets a storebought chocolate chip cookie cake so I don't think she felt cheated.

Finally, I am back on THE DIET. Which means I was not eating the cookie cake or the ice cream last night. Ok, maybe I had a bite of ice cream. Why did I go back on it? Well, I gained 4 pounds over Christmas. Between not being able to work out as regularly and sitting so much as I was going through the edits for the book and then the bad eating habits associated with Christmas, I gained weight. And that did not sit right with me. I realize 4 pounds isn't a lot of weight, but it was a direction (up) I wasn't willing to go. So I determined it was time for some offensive action. I had to get back on track with my eating. I started on Monday. While everyone was talking about Martin Luther King and his dreams of freedom, I was dreaming of being free from worrying about my weight! I am so happy I took those 30 pounds off last year. It is my serious intent to not put them back on. And I just might be aiming to lose a few more this go-round. I think it would be fun to hit the weight I was when I got married by the time I turn 40 in May.

What am I eating you may be wondering? Well no fun stuff-- no whites-- flour, sugar, etc. Not even whole grains. For this particular diet, I have basically the same thing every day.

Breakfast: grapefruit or cantaloupe, 2 poached eggs or 2 strips of turkey bacon

Lunch: a big salad made from field greens, cut up deli turkey, cut up strawberries and dressing I make myself from 2 tsp balsamic vinegar and 4 tsp evoo with a generous amount of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. This salad is one of the reasons I was able to go back to the diet with some amount of excitement. It tastes so good and refreshing and it is very filling!

Dinner: some form of meat-- chicken breast, hamburger patty, etc. and some steamed broccoli or cut up watermelon

I am only drinking water or herbal tea. It's Thursday as I write this. I started the diet Monday and I am already down to only 2.5 pounds gained from the 4 I was trying to shed. I love quick results!!

I will also promise you this-- eating this way does make you feel better. And that was one of the main reasons I was able to psych myself into going back on the diet. Once you detox off sugar and caffeine (I never went back to caffeine so it was much easier this time), you do feel much better-- more energy, you sleep better, you think clearer, etc. I was noticing over Christmas that I was having trouble getting up in the morning, and was waking a lot at night. This week I can already tell I am sleeping better. This morning I was up wide-eyed and raring to go at 5am! So I can testify that, while eating this way isn't the easy way to go, it is very beneficial to your health. Isn't that always how it is? Anything worth doing isn't going to be easy??

If any of you are dieting, I hope you will take heart in knowing you are not alone. I worked hard to shed the weight from 6 pregnancies, and I don't intend to let the weight creep back on. I know too many people that happened to and the only thing I can think of to do is to be proactive about it now instead of lamenting about it later. So keep up the good work if you are resolving to lose weight in 2010. And if you started out well but have fallen off, get back in the game!

Trust me, if I can do it, anyone can...