The journal

OK, I got a cute little notebook for my food list. It's about three inches square with graph paper inside it. Cool.

And I've written what I've eaten for the last two days. Not so cool. Keebler cookies play a large role. They aren't even very good. Why waste calories on nasty cookies?

And, in case you thought there was ANY hope, this was lunch (from Lizard's Thicket):

• chicken fried steak
• mac & cheese casserole (the kind baked with eggs and extra butter)
• squash casserole (the kind baked with cheese, eggs, and extra butter)
• green beans (cooked with pork)
• corn bread (extra butter)
• sweet tea

I usually drink unsweetened tea, but if you ask for unsweetened tea at a place like Lizard's Thicket, it is sooo nasty it might as well be instant. The only restaurant that has good unsweetened tea around here is the Indian restaurant in 5-points. They make their tea with cloves and other spices so it almost tastes sweet. I need to go there next week...

I'm going to work on the meditation part. I've grabbed a mandala from coloring castle. This idea/exercise is thanks to Dina. I don't think I'll fall asleep while coloring.

Eating the Angel Way --- the blog

http://eatingtheangelway.blogspot.com/

Annie has started a new blog dedicated to Eating the Angel Way, which she is writing with her research assistant. As she says, it's not all "woo-woo," the angels know their science and nutrition.

For those of us who have struggled with weight and food issues, this is a godsend. (No pun intended, I guess.) For me, the guidelines are liberatingly simple.

Of course, sometimes it's easier to follow someone else's strict plan, to eat nothing but grapefruit and rice, or to pop a pre-made meal in the microwave.

ETAW demands personal responsibility. Listen to your body. Eat what you need. Make a decision, for Pete's sake.

Don't blame the mean girls in middle school. (They are all either fatter than you or meth-head skeletons now anyway.) Don't blame your mother, even if she did start each day by asking you "do you need to eat that?" Don't blame Aunt Annie, who embraced you in her size X-to-the-10th-power-L loving arms and offered you cake with peeps whenever you walked into the room.

This is about you. You and that tablespoon full of mayonnaise.

The first step is meditation, to become aware of your body. To feel breathing. To remember hunger. I have trouble meditating because I fall asleep. I had a 5 minute CAT scan and fell asleep on the little tube you have to lie on. That's another issue...

The second step is keeping track of what you eat, plot it, think about it, put it on a color coded Excel spread sheet --- I made the last part up. I love me some color coded Excel spreadsheets. I don't love keeping track of my eating. I lie to myself and my little notebook. That's another issue...

I encourage y'all to check out Eating the Angel Way.. the blog. I'll try to be amusing as I follow along and share my adventure. Let me know how it's going for you. I'm nosy. But that's another issue...

After the rain there's a rainbow

and all of the colors are black... no, that's not what I want.

It's spring, when even the clothes looks like a fruit stand. If that doesn't inspire me to eat a rainbow every day, what will?

The fridge, also called the graveyard of good intentions, needs some serious attention today. There are some things that used to be red, orange, yellow, green, and purple, but are now sort of fuzzy white/green/blue. Science experiments gone wrong.

The freezer is packed full of cooking experiences that weren't quite great enough to eat the second time. I always cook too much and rarely eat or serve left overs. One of these habits has to go.

About half the freezer space is packed with mashed bananas that were about to go bad. I keep meaning to make banana bread or something. Maybe next week.

This week, I'm back to the Angel way of eating. And I'm waiting patiently for Annie's new blog, the Angel Way of Eating. I'll keep you informed...

New day

In the past month I haven't eaten anything that wasn't white or brown food except for some wilted lettuce and soggy tomatoes on my Zaxby grilled chicken sandwiches. Oh yeah, I ate fruit on Easter, but that was a special day.

Tax season stress seemed to demand a high protein high carb diet. Weird, huh? Like a marathon runner carb loading before a big race. Only, I just raced around my office saying, "It is not possible to lose a file in an office this small. It is somewhere. Oh, how did it get in the fridge?"

I wonder if I'm ready for the real world again. Maybe. I do sort of feel like Dorothy stepping into Oz... ooh look at the colors! Did I miss the azaleas? A violet!

On we go...