Feed me.

I'm very excited about eating.  And I say this with sincerity after polishing off my evening ice cream.  I think about food nearly constantly - I don't know how those anorexics do it!  This evening I've been pondering whoopie pies and blueberry muffins, all the while prepping the first 3 of many scanty meals to come.

Well I should say 4 meals.  Or 3 and a half?  Or really 4 and a half, but technically... anyway.  No sense getting hung up on that.

For dinner tonight, I whipped up my version of Penne with Chicken and Broccoli Rabe.  I didn't have the forethought to take a picture, so you're just going to have to imagine it.  I swapped out the chicken sausage for canned clams (I didn't have any chicken, much less chicken sausage, handy) and broccoli for the broccoli rabe because seriously, that stuff tastes like some sort of bitter lawn clippings.  And I subbed out the penne for rotini because I'm just cuh-razy like that!

Picture is unrelated.  See?  Cuh-razy.

Not only was it delicious and pretty filling, but the volume of nommification was far greater than I had estimated.  I highly recommend this nonsense.

Breakfast, lunch and snacky-snack for tomorrow leave me a bit suspicious, however.

That's Oatmeal, I promise.

First, breakey-fast.  This one looks pretty tasty, and if the bits I licked off the spatula were any indication, it is!  Here we have the Chocolaty Oatmeal.  My version looks a bit less tasty because it's in a plastic container, and I haven't drowned the whole mess in skim milk and floated ground flax atop it like the instructions say to.  I figured it's best left until morning when I'll actually be face-stuffing this glorious sludge.  No, really, it's quite good.  There's banana in it!

So perhaps breakfast doesn't have me suspicious...  I'm much more worried about lunch.

I don't get to eat this all at once.

Since I'm lazy, lunch tomorrow is going to be Peanut Butter and Apple Sammy (uh, I think they didn't get the memo that the correct term is sammige).  Pretty straightforward - peanut butter, sliced apple, cinnamon:  throw it on bread.  Slice DIAGONALLY (this is my addition but I feel it's the most critical bit of the recipe) and wrap in plastic.  Yeah.  I get to eat that with baby carrots... or carrot sticks in my rendition because I know the truth about those baby carrots.  Plus I like messing around with my chef's knife.

Those aren't my knives.  They're my chef's knives.  (slow clapping)

My snack for tomorrow afternoon (four o'clock precisely!) is one medium (or in my case, one and a half really small) orange(s), and a low-fat cheese stick, for which I've substituted a bit of gouda, because it's so gouda.  (no, there's really no end to my terrible jokes.)  All in Hello Kitty bags because I am a Professional Adult.  (serious look.  adjusts glasses.)

Seriously, this looks pretty paltry.  I think my mom packed me more in 2nd grade lunch box.

"and if ye gaze into the brown bag, the brown bag also gazes into you..."

I can see that someone could lose weight on this plan, but I'm not sure how I'm going to handle it without regularly punching anyone.  There are two things working in my favor, though - I take Kung Fu (no, seriously) and the Drop 10 Challenge allows me 250 "happy calories" a day.  You better believe I am not sacrificing my coffee with sugar & milk in the morning, or my precisely 66 grams of mint chip in the evenings - otherwise there may be casualties.

Chances are good I return from work tomorrow and devour the entire contents of my fridge (including 3 cartons of eggs, a half gallon of milk, a brick of miso, and half a pound of lard.  Yes.  There is lard in my fridge.  I don't mess around.)

Yep, this looks challenging.

What am I doing.  WHAT.  am I DOING?

I hate diets with a passion and love cooking - mostly healthy foods, but there's no way I'm turning my nose up at a whoopie pie.  Hence, my current situation.

Yeah but you gotta figure a couple pounds for the chucks, and that droid weighs what, a quarter pound, and....

Ladies and germs, that's not such a nice number when you're 5'2".  Sad but true, when you have that little area to spread it over, every ounce shows.

It wasn't always like this.  There are size 4 suits languishing in my closet, skinny jeans that haven't seen the light of day since sometime in 2007, and I'm sure my clubbing attire would look nicer without the muffin top, thankyouverymuch.

(Un?)Lucky for me, and as you're likely well aware, I'm not the only girl with this conundrum.  Like many others, I regularly thumb through practically the entire canon of fitness periodicals: Women's Health, Oxygen, Shape, Fitness.  I call it my vicarious exercise - once I'm done reading through the workout routines some smiling fitness model offers up every month, I'm exhausted and ready for my nap, or my mint chip ice cream.

Do not mess with my ice cream.

WINNING - As Advertised?

This month, I saw something in Self that piqued my interest.  I'm usually not a fan of this mag, what with the parade of celebrebimbos on the cover dishing up their secrets to the perfect body (sure, I could spend 5 hours a day in the gym with a personal trainer if my job was to look great, too!), but I saw this spring's Drop 10 Challenge, and how much variety - and normal-ness - there is with the menu... Heck, I have most of this crap in my cupboard or fridge.  I saw that alone.  My lazy little heart skipped a beat, and I thought, "I might be able to do this."  And I cannot stress that "might" enough - I've tried and failed at this fitness thing so many times.  The only time I thought I had it, I was cycling 6 miles a day to and from work and living off Lean Cuisine (eew).

Anyway, I'm going to try this.  If you want the details on the plan, make clicky on the links above.  If I succeed, hooray, I can wear those size 7 jeans again.  If I fail, at least I can fail big and y'all can laugh at me drowning my sorrow in ice cream.