Leo Babuata has posted a wonderful list of easy (and sexy) ways to lose 50 pounds in a year.

And when he says “easy”, he means it: some are as simple as substituting veggies for chips just one snack per day. Oh, there’s not a lot of ground-breaking info there, but it’s still good, solid weight loss advice.

My favorite:

If you can get 15 minutes of sex in a day, you can burn 150 calories.

Honey, if I could get fifteen minutes of sex in a day I probably wouldn’t find half of my favorite foods nearly as attractive.

Ever since Sunday, when we through a somewhat “impromptu” neighborhood BBQ party, I’ve been mostly flat on my back. This, of course, is due in part to the combination of incredibly bad allergies and overexerting myself, something that a person with fibromyalgia should know better than to do.

But never in my life have I experienced the kind of incapacitation I endured yesterday. We’re talking pain, serious pain: the kind that left me literally in tears most of the day as every joint in my body, from my ankles to my neck, felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and whacked me. Repeatedly.

At one point just getting to the bathroom left me in such agony I seriously contemplated asking my husband to bring home a pack of adult diapers because, let’s face it, I wasn’t about to risk his back by asking him to carry me to the toilet.

By evening I felt quite a bit better thanks to the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals, which is to say that I’d stopped begging for death and had merely resigned myself to another night of excruciating discomfort. And what was my husband’s response upon seeing me finally stand upright as I hobbled my way to the bathroom? He suggested we go outside to join our neighbors for cocktails on the front lawn while our children all played in the cul de sac.

Uh-uh. No way. That kind of “summer time fun” is precisely what landed me on the sofa all day yesterday and I wasn’t about to put myself through a repeat performance. So out he went to mingle with the neighbors while I remained indoors where both the A/C filter and a generous dose of Benadryl kept me, if not wholly comfortable, at least mostly symptom-free.

Later, after the sun went down and all the kiddies (and their parents) had gone back into their respective homes, my husband casually said it was a shame I “didn’t feel like” joining everyone else to socialize. Like it was a choice I’d made freely. Like I’d somehow spurned their company. Like it was utterly selfish of me to not want to spend yet another day gasping for breath and ignoring the feeling that someone was slowly pushing an ice pick through every joint in my body at the same time.

Yeah, I’m selfish, all right: the only thing I accomplished yesterday was rolling from one side to the other while managing not to bite through my own tongue as I tried not to scream from the pain. Silly me. Next time I think I might have to find my own ice pick and give my husband an object lesson just so he knows what it feels like when he volunteers me to throw a party at which his only responsibility is remembering to put his beer down before turning the meat on the grill.

It’s hot. I’m sweaty and sticky. With energy costs what they are — along with the high price of everything else — I’m trying to leave the air-conditioner off as much as possible. By noon, though, I can barely stand it: every movement means some part of my body is rubbing against some other part and by the end of the day all of the parts feel like raw meat.

So now’s probably a good time for some retro-Chubby: my advice from last May about how to prevent that rash caused by thighs rubbing together.

Another tip for surviving the summer: don’t be afraid to apply an acne treatment to summer breakouts wherever they happen. I learned this the hard way years ago after getting a pimple on my ass. That’s two miserable weeks I’ll never get back.

My son’s summer day camp is wonderful about planning activities to keep the kiddies entertained. Wednesdays are field trips; Tuesdays and Thursdays they spend in the pool; Fridays always involve some kid-pleasing theme. Next Friday they’re throwing a costume party and, because my son is firmly convinced I must be sitting at home bored out of my mind while he’s at camp, he signed me up to be a Parent Helper.

In other words, I’ll be spending the day surrounded by fifty-six children wearing their Halloween costumes from last year, all of them hyped in eager anticipation of busting open the candy-filled pinata they’ve been making all week. As far as my son is concerned this is the coolest thing ever.

Me? I’m freaking out. Unlike my son, I don’t have a variety of costumes in storage. I don’t have a Superman outfit or a Darth Vader mask and cape in a drawer. I don’t even have a cowboy hat and pair of plastic pistols (not that his camp would allow such things).

Last Halloween I was too sick to bother dressing up and spent most of the evening in bed. The year before? I hadn’t thought to dress up just to stand there passing out candy to sugar-addicted kids until my son insisted that “Mom, you’ve got to do something neat!” So I grabbed a green turtleneck and hot glued an ashtray, a few playing cards and some beer bottle caps on it and declared that I was going as a poker table. He wasn’t amused.

Since I don’t want to embarrass him around his little friends I’ve been looking at Halloween costumes which, let me just tell you, are impossible to find in stores this time of year. That’s okay, though: stores pretty much stock boring costumes designed for skinny women determined to show their inner skank in front of the kiddoes. I’m not about to do that.

The great thing about looking online for costumes is the huge variety are available. Variety in designs, yes, but also in sizes. Who knew they made plus-sized Halloween costumes? They look surprisingly comfortable, too: the Geisha one in particular (which comes with a wig, even) looks like one I could see myself wearing for a more, ah, intimate party of two.

Besides, I’m pretty sure neither my son nor the camp’s organizers would appreciate if I showed up in the Supa Pimp Mama costume, although it is tempting if only to teach them to never, ever look to me to be a Parent Helper again.

For the overwhelming majority of my life I despised hot, spicy foods. Oh, I love layered flavors: a dash of cinnamon in a bowlful of chili, a few drops of pure vanilla in my French toast, even chocolate flavored with a hint of cayenne. (Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.) But truly hot foods? No thanks.

Part of the problem, I think, is that when it comes to cooking most people mistake heat with burn: they pour Tabasco into a sauce and call it “Cajun-style” or toss chopped jalapeños into a dish — seeds and all — and call it “Southwestern”. No thanks. I value my tongue and my palate sufficiently to protect them from such tortures.

A few years ago I started getting serious about home cooking. (Subscribers to my Home Helper Newsletter, which provides weekly dinner menus, new recipes and grocery lists along with lots of other goodness, know that I clearly love to try new and interesting foods.) One of the first things I learned was how to make my own spice blends for soups, dry rubs and other dishes. After mixing them together, I began storing them in magnetic spice jars stuck to the side of my fridge where they’re out of direct sunlight and away from heat. (Here are my favorites, by the way.)

Turns out maybe I shouldn’t just use those blends while cooking, because research has shown that the addition of certain spices or flavors can lead to weight loss by increasing an eater’s satisfaction.

The study of “tastants” — substances that can stimulate the sense of taste — included 2,436 overweight or obese people who were asked to sprinkle a variety of savory or sweet crystals on their food before eating their meals. They used the salt-free savory crystals on salty foods and used the sugar-free sweet crystals on sweet or neutral-tasting foods. The participants didn’t know what the flavors of the crystals were, other than salty or sweet. The hidden flavors of the savory tastants were cheddar cheese, onion, horseradish, ranch dressing, taco, and parmesan. The flavors of the sweet tastants were cocoa, spearmint, banana, strawberry, raspberry and malt.

A control group of 100 people didn’t use tastants. Both groups continued their normal diet and exercise habits during the study.

At the start of the study, the treatment group had an average weight of 208 pounds and an average body mass index (BMI) of 34, which is considered obese. After six months of using the tastants, the 1,436 people in the treatment group who completed the study lost an average of 30.5 pounds, and their BMI decreased by an average of five points.

In the control group, the average weight loss was two pounds, and the average BMI decrease was 0.3.

Thirty pounds lost by simply adding a few flavors isn’t something to sneeze at (unless you’re allergic to onion or strawberry, I suppose). In my own experience I’ve noticed myself eating less when a food delivers a big taste in the first few bites, but I’d never really thought about the connection.

Could it be that many of us eat more than we should simply because we’re searching for something more flavorful than, say, the benign squishiness of a Big Mac or the bland waxiness of most chocolate bars?

I’m down in Texas visiting my mother, and it feels like I haven’t stopped eating since the moment we stepped off the plane yesterday. Southern food is my weakness: fried okra, fried catfish, fried… anything… all topped with jalapenos, poblanos, gravy or all three.

Yesterday, I overdid it on the peppers: scrambled eggs with jalapenos and tomatoes for breakfast; a chile rellano and Spanish rice for lunch. By the time dinner rolled around I wasn’t in the least bit interested in food. In fact, I went to bed a bit early (we’d had to catch a 6 a.m. flight, after all, so I was exhausted) and wound up having those crazy post-spicy food dreams.

Today I’ve decided that even though I’m on vacation I shouldn’t let it completely blow my diet. So I’ve grabbed one of the hotel’s promotional pens and a little pad of paper so I can keep track of calories I’m consuming. In theory, this should help fend off overindulgence. In reality, I suck at math, so I won’t be surprised if I get home to find I’ve gained two or three pounds.

On the bright side: it’s smoking hot here. The temps reached 105 F yesterday, although today they’re expected to be a comparatively chilly 99 F. So if I do manage to get home without gaining any weight, it’s probably due to the water weight loss with all the sweating I’m doing.

Well, I did not miraculously lose 30+ pounds this week. No, I didn’t really think it would happen but, hey, it would’ve been nice to have lost at least one pound, but that didn’t happen, either. Which is frustrating, to be honest, because I’ve been pretty darned good at eating right.

In fact the only thing in my household that seems to be lighter is my wallet. Since I’d received a Starbuck’s gift card for my birthday, I decided to head there around lunch time. In our town, Starbuck’s is really just a kiosk inside a grocery store, and not surprisingly my stomach got to rumbling while I stood waiting for my double-shot non-fat Venti latte. So — and here’s where I was proud of myself — I headed over to the salad bar with my low-cal Starbuck’s treat in hand.

Five minutes later I walked out $7 poorer. Seven dollars! And, no, that wasn’t for the latte: I’d paid for that with the gift card. That little plastic box holding my salad cost seven freaking dollars! I could’ve gone to a restaurant and had someone else put my salad together for me at that price.

Figuring I’d save more money by making salads at home I asked my husband to stop at the commissary on his way home to pick up salad-making stuff. Ordinarily, it’s far less expensive to shop there than at a civilian grocery store. But when he came home with a mere bag of fixings (mixed greens, carrots, celery, black olives, chickpeas, green peas, grape tomatoes and chopped turkey) the bill came to $14.75.

Holy crap! At that price I could buy two weeks’ worth of side salads — or 14 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers — from Wendy’s. So, really, as if it wasn’t already hard for us chubby folks to make healthy food choices, the expense of it’s now making it even more difficult. Which kind of makes me wonder if the makers of appetite suppressants like hoodia are making a fortune these days as people seek ways to keep their grocery costs down. I know I’m finding that tempting, at least.

Speaking of which: here are web-savvy ways to help keep your grocery costs down. Not that using online coupons or ordering in bulk is all that revolutionary, mind you. My favorite web-based way to save money at the grocery store? Order pizza online.

On a more frequent basis than I care to admit, I say a little prayer asking God to bless the makers of Preparation H. If you’ve given birth, or ever left a bathroom feeling as if you have, then you know exactly what I mean. It’s the kind of relief to which nothing compares (except, perhaps, finally giving birth or leaving a bathroom feeling as if you have).

I have several tubes of the stuff myself: one in each bathroom, and another in my make-up box. My what??? That’s right: my make-up box. Stuff’s invaluable for shrinking zits and those puffy morning-after bags under your eyes. It’s not the only butt-medicine that does double-duty on the face, either (please, resist the urge to make wise cracks): those Tucks pads they dole out to new mothers are soaked in witch hazel, a well-known natural astringent.

Apparently, Preparation H has another use I’d never heard about until now: body-builders are said to be using Preparation H to shrink fat deposits. Of course, non-butt uses aren’t condoned by the ointment’s makers, but I still can’t help wondering: when the hell is someone going to make a body lotion containing this stuff?!

Jae’s been doing a weekly Wednesday Weigh In, and I’ve been meaning to participate. Except that might involve actually stepping on a scale, and I’m trying to avoid that.

What’s that, you say? Why would I eschew weighing myself if I’m trying to lose weight? Because I’ve been overly-obsessed with my scale of late and I’m trying to break that pattern.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep my scale in the kitchen, not the bathroom. The reason’s not as nefarious as it sounds: we simply don’t have a place in our bathroom where I can put the scale without tripping over it. So moving it into the kitchen seemed to make sense at the time. Besides, I figured, if I’d weigh myself before binging on a snack it might actually give me a little more willpower.

And that’s when the problem started.

Every time I thought about snacking I’d step on that scale and groan. Then, instead of foregoing the snack I’d actually eat more: out of frustration, out of disappointment, out of a feeling that I’ll never, ever, ever lose weight so why bother.

A week ago I decided to take a break from daily weighing. It’s kind of like putting myself on a scale diet, I guess you could say. We have a trip to my mom’s house planned for the middle of this month and I’d started really obsessing about my weight. (Translate: freaking out. Big time.) It’s not like we’re going to to be staying at one of those Outer Banks rentals where I’ll need to be seen in a bathing suit or anything. We’re going to my mother’s… but since many of my weight issues started in childhood, perhaps that’s just as bad.

Which is why I decided that until we’re back from that visit I’m just not going to weigh myself. Judging by the fit of my clothes, I’m guessing I’ve neither gained nor lost but I don’t want to know for certain. I don’t want to think about it. I want to trust that my visit with my mother and my enjoyment of our time together has nothing to do with my weight, and to ensure that happens I’m just not thinking about it right now.

But Jae is doing awesome — she’s lost almost 30 pounds since January, so go congratulate her!

It’s that time of year again: the dreaded allergy season that makes me a prisoner in my own home where the windows and doors are shuttered tight and everyone is reminded — loudly — to take their freaking shoes off rather than track pollen and other allergens into my house.

Not that such measures completely remedy the problem. My eyes are still red and weepy. My nose and ears itch insanely. I sneeze so often and so hard that it’s a wonder I don’t have 6-pack abs.

Personally, I’m convinced that I’m not fat at all, I’m swollen: these flappy thighs and ample abdomen are allergic reactions. Yeah, that’s it. Just so happens I have year-round allergies which cause me to look fat, well, year-round.

Of course, this is the only time of year when I actually get miserable enough to start popping allergy medications like they were Tic-Tacs. Well, maybe not quite that often since medical science has yet to invent an allergy pill that doesn’t leave me groggy, lethargic and with a worse case of cotton-mouth than any hippie ever had.

One thing I do like about allergy pills, though: once you’ve built up a tolerance to them so the suckers don’t knock you out, they do almost as good a job as weight loss pills at appetite suppression. And, sure, they also make it impossible to sit still for more than two minutes at a time and my hands get a bit jittery and I walk around clenching my jaw all day and snapping at people who ask why I’m so edgy because, darn it, I’m not edgy I’m on allergy pills and can’t they tell I’m feeling so much less miserable even if I can’t sleep at night, dammit?!

But, hey, I’m not sneezing so what’s the problem, right?

Last night while scrolling through program guide the title of one show on BBC America caught my eye: Super Skinny Me. Obviously, it’s a play on the now-infamous documentary ‘Super Size Me’ which chronicled one man’s month of living on nothing but food from McDonald’s, including every “super size” serving offered to him.

Only the BBC documentary works in reverse: two reporters seek to slim down to a U.S. size 0 (yes, zero) within five weeks by trying numerous extreme weight loss techniques, including food deprivation and over-exercising. Both women began the experiment at normal weight, apparently free of eating disorders. Five weeks later, that wasn’t true of either anymore.

Although both women lost 14 pounds each, only one of them reached the size 0 they’d both been aiming for. (Size 0, they explained, is currently the ‘dream size’ in Hollywood… it is also the same size of jeans that an 8-year-old girl would wear.) The woman who reached the goal was glad to go off the extreme diet, and two weeks later had re-gained 7 pounds… something which she was glad for, having decided that the super skinny look felt unhealthy.

The other woman? Well, she won’t be able to celebrate having reached size 0 but, instead, will be dealing with eating disorders triggered by the 5-week experiment. Evidently, the mental mindset required to pursue that kind of drastic weight loss in that short period rekindled psychological issues from her teenage years when she’d been overweight and miserable.

I must confess to being appalled that the show claimed it was trying to prove the dangers of extreme dieting while carefully documenting, almost in a how-to fashion, how each woman managed to lose so much weight in such a short period. Oh, sure, one of the women got teary as she described how “awful” she felt for girls who seem to celebrate their bony, super skinny frames… and yet that same woman threw a party to celebrate having reached size 0 at the end of the trial.

I’m not sorry to learn this show is over: as far as I’m concerned it was just one more way of continuing to promote size 0 as desirable, one more way to encourage women to deprive themselves until their bodies resemble those of prepubescent girls. The sad thing isn’t that one reporter whose eating disorders were triggered by the experiment — she, at least, got counseling throughout the process and had finally recognized, by the end of the show, that the whole pursuit of size 0 was “a crazy game” that negatively affected her health.

No, it’s the women and girls who watched that show and didn’t receive the counseling that I worry about, because you just know there are plenty of viewers who are now following the same methods the reporters used in their extreme weight loss experiments. Only, unlike those reporters, there won’t be anyone watching them day-to-day to stop them when it gets out of control.

Audrey Hepburn once remarked that she resented food because it controls us; that, unlike other substances one might abuse, food isn’t something you can completely cut out of your life. Those who abuse alcohol or drugs can seek help from places specializing in adult addiction treatment where they’ll learn through counseling that, for an addict, there’s no such thing as “just a little bit”. You want to break an addiction, you have to go whole hog and never touch the stuff again.

With food, that’s simply not possible. Hepburn, after all, tried that approach and wound up suffering from bulimia and anorexia for much of her adult life. So, too, do many people who share her resentment of our bodies’ need to eat, a drive that for many of us has become less about necessity and more about gratifying pleasures or insulating against pain. In that sense, overweight people share a trait in common with those who abuse other substances: we use food to comfort or anesthetize us, giving it an added power over our lives beyond mere fuel for our bodies.

Like people suffering other forms of addiction, many overeaters refuse to see their addiction to food as a substance abuse problem. They claim to be “big boned” or to be baffled why they can’t lose weight (while secretly binging, as if those calories don’t count). Others blame thyroid or hormonal problems which, so they rationalize, means they aren’t personally responsible for being fat. I know: I’ve cited those same reasons myself.

And, as with a drug addict or alcoholic, people with food addictions often fail to see the dire impact their problems are having on their lives or the lives of those around them. I’ve been there, too. I’ve come up with one excuse after another to avoid taking my son to the water park, to the playground, to activities that would inevitably force me to confront how out of shape and overweight I’ve let myself become. The impact doesn’t stop there: it’s affected my marriage since I no longer feel comfortable allowing my spouse to see me undressed, no matter how much he assures me that I’m beautiful.

One thing I’ve recently learned about dealing with food as an addiction is that it can be treated in many of the same ways as other substance abuse problems, starting with a form of family intervention. With many substance abuse problems, that’s really the first step toward recovery but it’s best performed by counselors trained in drug intervention, people who know how to navigate around defense mechanisms, denial and cycles of co-dependency. When conducted by a professional, interventions have over a 95% success rate of prompting the addict to seek treatment.

Ours was less formal: over the Mother’s Day weekend my husband wanted to take me to a swanky restaurant in town. (See the co-dependency there? Feed the addict.) I refused to go, however, and I came up with all sorts of reasons: it was too expensive, I didn’t want to leave our son with the sitter, I was tired, etc. The truth? None of my pretty clothes fit, and I didn’t like the way I looked in the stuff that did. Fortunately, my husband saw through my rationalizations and pointed out how much I’ve been missing out on due to my self-consciousness about my weight.

“Do something,” he said. “You can’t get this time back that you’re missing out on. Yes, it might be boring to exercise. Yes, you might feel deprived going without chips or burgers for a while. But it will be worth it to you once you’re back to a point where you can feel good about yourself again.”

That hit home. Hard.

Hence my decision to streamline my life in a number of areas to reduce the stress which prompts me to turn to food as a source of comfort. Likewise, by reducing the number of demands on my time, I’m eliminating excuses to avoid exercising, the most important key to weight loss.

I’m using another tactic that’s important to other forms of substance abuse treatment, too: I’m cutting out the stuff that I know is harmful to me. Were I in a trained facility with licensed professionals, they’d call it drug detox, a period of time in which the body cleanses itself of toxins and breaks its physiological dependency on harmful substances while the addict works on understanding their emotional and situational triggers.

For me, that’s involved tossing out all forms of temptation in our house. Out went the chips, the crackers and candy. I even cleared out my secret stash of gummi bears. I’m letting my husband do the grocery shopping for a while so I’m not tempted to buy replacements and hide them for “just in case”, and I’ve informed my family that, while they’re welcome to have a burger or fries, they’ll have to do it when I’m not around. And, meanwhile, I’m exercising. A lot. In fact, I’m turning to that now for my source of stress relief and comfort, and the results are already beginning to show.

Why am I sharing all of this with you? Well, because that’s yet another thing that recovering from a food addiction has in common with other forms of substance abuse: the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

My name is Kate, and I’m a food addict.

Now, let the healing begin.

Despite my best-laid plans to keep healthy snacks in my purse, I often find myself tempted by fast-food restaurants while running errands. No doubt my failure to restock the granola bars in my bag has less to do with this than my love of burgers. So when I first read about NYC’s city ordinance requiring food sellers to display calorie counts next to the prices on all menus, including fast food signs, I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Now, ordinarily I’m not much of one for such governmental interference, but let’s face it: keeping track of the calories in various foods could challenge even a math whiz’s memory. And, sure, even if you don’t live in NYC you can still ask for a restaurant’s nutritional information, but that’s no help when you’re sitting in your mini-van with a cranky kid who’s demanding French fries now. That’s when I tend to just order and hope I’m guesstimating the correct calorie count.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s run into such problems, because the folks at Coheso have developed a brilliant little food calorie counter that lets you carry nutritional information for over 35,000 foods in a portable calorie calculator which features a full QWERTY keyboard and number pad. That includes over 500 brand-name items you’d find in the grocery store as well as 250 menu items from restaurants and fast-food places.

As if that’s not already helpful enough, the device not only tracks your calories in, but it serves double-duty as a calorie counter tracking those you burn through exercise, too. With the ability to store up to 12 months of a food diary and enter 1,000 of your own food items’ nutritional info, it’s a powerful aid to weight loss and fitness. And, for you techno-geeks, you can even export your data to your PC to report and chart dieting progress.

Now that’s a brilliant solution to a lazy dieter’s problem!

I’m exhausted today. Come to think of it, I’ve been exhausted for a couple of days but this is really the first chance I have to do something about it… as in doing nothing at all. I walked from the bed to the sofa, and despite drinking a cup of coffee en route I’m still pooped. (Heck, I was so pooped I had to use safety cutters just to open the package of coffee.)

I know I should get up and wash the dishes, do some laundry, exercise on the treadmill and take a shower. I know if I switched out of my PJs into clean ones and ran a comb through my hair I might feel better. But I’m so tired that even thinking about such things is draining.

Bad fibro days suck.

Has anyone caught an episode of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew? I’m not a fan of reality TV or VH1 (I’ve never forgiven them for following in MTV’s footsteps and abandoning music videos), so until recently I hadn’t realized how shady the show really is.

Take, for instance, the list of various celebrities appearing on the show. Notice something? Almost all of them read like a resume for people more interested in rehabbing their careers than their bodies.

(One notable exception is that of Daniel Baldwin — not to be confused with Baldwin locks — whose bio mentions his cocaine addition no less than three times as well as his arrests for an auto accident, driving on suspended license and grand-theft auto.)

Meanwhile, two of the three womens’ bios mention their weights. The men’s? Nope, no mention at all… which is odd because, of all of them, Baldwin was the only one who’d previously tried rehabbing his career with an appearance on Celebrity Fit Club (an effort which apparently failed due to his repeatedly-mentioned cocaine addiction).

All of which gets me to wondering why people watch these shows in the first place. Are they hoping to see how it’s done — how to kick bad habits or lose weight? Or are they tuning in just to enjoy watching other people fail?

Not long ago, I noticed a strange thing about the dreams I have at night: I’m always thin in them. Not model thin, mind you, but pretty much with the same body I had before I gained weight. (Read: before I began blogging.)

Back then, of course, I still thought that I needed to lose weight and I obsessed over it. I’d dress in clothes designed to disguise my figure, hated being caught in a bathing suit and would rather have had a root canal than get undressed without first dimming the lights.

Nowadays? I’d love to go back in time and kick my much-skinnier-self’s ass. “Lighten up,” I’d say. “Think you’re fat now? Look at what’s waiting a few years down the road! Now doesn’t that swimsuit look a bit less intimidating? I thought so.”

Recently, however, I began having dreams in which I’m not thin. Not anywhere near it. As a matter of fact, I look pretty much the way that I do now — which is to say, fairly ample.

Oddly enough, I didn’t begin having these dreams until I started using my treadmill, so perhaps this is my psyche’s way of saying it’s accepted that I have a whole lot of dieting and exercise ahead of me? Like my dreams are some kind of spy camera into my subconscious?

Last night, though, I had a truly strange one. I started out dreaming about myself in my current state of ampleness… then I dreamed that I went to sleep and woke up thinner overnight. Still not model-thin, mind you. Not even skinny by, well, most people’s standards. But I’d dropped enough to get back to the attractively curvy body I’d had back when I was younger.

I’m not sure what it means, to be honest. But after dreaming of myself looking that hot in a pair of shorts and a halter top, I’m quite tempted to start sleeping a heck of a lot more.

Ever been running errands and find yourself so hungry that you’re tempted to blow your diet on fast food even though you don’t know how many calories or fat grams you’ll be buying? Well, wonder no more. If you’ve got a cell phone, Diet.com’s Nutrition on the Go service is just a text message away.

To use it, send the name of the restaurant and the name of the item you’re considering to DIET1 (34381). For example, you could text “Mcdonald’s BigMac” and Diet.com will send a text message back telling you calories, fat, carbs, and protein in one of those suckers (as in, 540 260, 45 and 25, respectively.)

Sure, at some point it’s likely that every restaurant will begin posting that information on their display so you know it before ordering, but with fast-food restaurants trying to diversify their appeal so much these days by offering everything from DVD rentals to car insurance online quotes at the drive-up, it’s likely you won’t actually read that data if you’ve got a screaming car full of kids.

So go ahead, add them to your cell phone’s contact list: Nutrition on the Go - diet1 (34381). But don’t tell them that I sent you.

Now here’s an idea whose time has come: a walk-up kiosk which administers eye exams. No more appointments and no optometrists with bad breath leaning in your face asking “this one or this one”.

Instead, you merely step up to digital signage which administers tests using various visual stimuli for both near- and far-sightedness, then the thing issues a printout with your eye health and prescription recommendation (along with advice to visit local eye professionals for a more thorough exam, of course).

So, here I’ve been all smug about finally working out, making an effort to get in shape instead of merely typing about it, and actually watching what I eat. (Not so much on the latter.)

Then today I decide that, because my workout was so hard and the weather was so nice, I’d dig out my swimsuit and go for a dip in the hot tub. Hadn’t I earned that kind of pampering, after all? Wouldn’t my sore muscles love the opportunity to sit and soak in warm, balmy waters?

Yeah. Sure. But then I saw the one thing in the mirror — other than my butt — that truly grosses me out: backne. You know, the zits you get on your shoulders, back and, yes, sometimes even your backside… a/k/a back acne?

Which, incidentally, is not something I dealt with prior to exercising. And it’s not a pretty side effect. Oh, sure, I’ll spend a fortune on weight loss pills that don’t work, but having to shell out for the best acne treatment and then apply it to rear end? Well, that’s one side of exercising nobody ever warned me about.

I’ve been telling you for a couple of weeks how easy it is to blog from my treadmill, but I figured maybe I should show you how little effort it really takes to trick one out so you can, too.

First off, mine is a Weslo Cadence C44 treadmill which, despite what other Amazon reviewers claim, works beautifully. (I just posted my own review saying as much.) I chose that model for its price — having paid a fortune for other exercise equipment that I wound up not liking, I didn’t want to shell out big bucks for something that might also become a dust-gathering coat rack.

Second, my little treadmill desk isn’t nearly as fancy as those created by some other folks. I haven’t added fancy fans or chrome accessories (although I am thinking about getting a clip-on battery-operated fan to keep my face cool). But it works, and it’s perfect for my laptop — which is the computer I use primarily. I imagine, however, that I could just as easily mount a monitor and wireless keyboard on it if I so wanted.

So how am I managing to blog while on the thing? Well, it’s all thanks to my husband’s inventiveness, as you can see here in the photo of the little wooden platform he rigged up to hold my laptop.

Sure, it looks — as one of my friends points out — awfully tacky since I haven’t painted the platform but I’ll probably get around to that at some point. Right now I’m just too busy enjoying it and the nearly 200 calories I burn per hour while using it.

Can you say six pounds lost? I can. And I’m loving it!