My parents also had great success with the book, so I was only really pretending to knock it. I found a lot of good and easy recipes in there, too. They do make for great small meal snack packs.

The easiest way I find to moderate salad dressings is to order it on the side (or at home put it on the side) and just dip your fork in it instead of pouring it all over the top. You get the same flavor but you don't eat as much of it.

I think whatever method works for you personally is great. It's all basically calories in/calories out. How you make that work for you is up to each individual. And what works great for one may not work at all for someone else.

Portion control is a huge problem. Both my Mom and my Aunt have struggled with this for years. They both must consume everything on their plate. No matter what. My Mom will even consume most of the garnish as well. This makes eating out really hard for them because resturant portions can be huge. This is one of the few advantages I see with "diet" tv type dinners etc. They are smaller portions. If you make say Mac & Cheese you are more tempted to eat the whole box. If you eat a lean cuisine there's only a set smaller amount. Living alone is also harder to maintain portion control as it's not so easy to make just one portion of say stew or soup.

Yes, those are great points LS.... I didn't mean to be so annoying and preachy in what I wrote above. It's just that I've yoyoed myself a couple of times in the last year for short periods of time (at my heaviest a few years ago when I was 20 pounds more than I am now), kinda went "uh-oh", and exercised and counted calories to a degree to lose it. So I'm just speaking from my own experience as far as what has worked, for me. Even my little weight gain over December, when I didn't work out often and ate everything in sight, didn't put me up too much (3 1/2 lbs).

Food is an emotional thing. I order chinese take out when I'm feeling like crap. For me, it feels like the last "vice" that I have now that I don't drink or smoke cigarettes. So it is really really hard. But I try and make the eating healthy and going to the gym thing part of my week. If I've overeaten, I add a day at the gym that week. Training my brain to do something that I don't feel like doing is really tough.... but I can honestly say I feel really good on that walk back to my car after 45 minutes on the elliptical ;) At least I know I'm heading in a good direction.

I am torn on this issue. Low sugar foods tend to replace sugars with fats, and low fat foods tend to replace fats with sugars. That said, I have a metabolic problem wherein I am supposed to be curbing both my sugars AND my fats. Without reduced-fat salad dressings and sugar-free options, life would be really dull. For the growing diabetic population, many of the lower sugar foods out there have made life a great deal more bearable.

I really think it's all about exercise.

As an unashamed hedonist, I take pleasure in food and have the waistline to show for it. I wish it were otherwise and fantasize of trips to Paris, where I could eat whatever I wanted, food most delicious leaving me satisfied, smiling and – unbelievable but true – lighter. Fresh ingredients, small portions packed with flavor, I don’t know why but if I could eat like a Parisian I would be most happy and probably healthy.

Sadly, I hear the French are succumbing to our American ways – more processed foods and convenience foods are increasing the size of the average Frenchman.

I think what frustrates me most is the food I eat without pleasure, the fast food lunches I take because I can just drive-thru. I hate the psychology at play where ordering a “small” makes me think I’ll be less satisfied with my meal. Today my lunch dilemma sent me to Quiznos – where I ordered a “regular” sandwich with a Rosemary bread that sounded at least some flavored compensation for the bland meal I would have.

Bread shall be my downfall –oh for the hard crust of a genuine baguette, or the delicate flakey-crispiness of an actual croissant – I haven memories of such foods that trick me into trying yet another ersatzes doughy chew – I would love to eat better, pull my meal fresh from the morning market, or as a little aside in my café lunch – but the Spartaness of steamed veggies returns food to simple fuel.

But I still think back to Paris, where food can be a rarely disappointing pleasure and I have to think that perhaps this should be the next focus of my hedonism – to tease the pleasure of eating back into my mouth and combat the laziness of convenience that tricks me into believing I am fulfilled when really I am settling.

It’s time for a revolution.

I have had success with boxed frozen meals like lean cuisine, but be aware that the salt content in those foods is tremendous! I have noticed that eating less salt definitely makes me feel better...

You know it almost seems like a New Year's Resolution weightloss/eat healthy thread my not be a bad idea. I know I'd like to drop about 100 pounds. Or at least 50. Lol.

*le sigh* You're making me hungry, and poetic, and salivating, and ... and really looking forward to California Cuisine again.

But getting back to HFCS and the argument in favor of sugar...


What we're really talking about here is not so much the population who wishes to lose weight and/or is willing to go out of their way to eat healthier. We're talking about the average American, who is going to continue eating the same crap as ever. These are the people for whom trans fats are getting banned. We know they're (we're) going to eat crap, so we're going to make crap a tad better (and in the process, as luck would have it, better tasting) by going back to the source and away from the stuff we've "developed" to make crap cheaper, which has had the side effect of making it crappier.

Returning sugar to our sodas means that those people who aren't inclined to avoid soda for its own sake will at least be able to feel fuller on a smaller amount of the stuff, hopefully preventing them from getting up for a refill, or causing them to stop eating the fries once they're cold because they're full now. Baby steps.

And that frees up corn for fuel production. Just sayin'.

I am fat because I am lazy and hate to exercise. Oh, and I like good food. Sadly (or not) I'll be exercising more now that I have my Wii. There is no way in hell I'll give up bread, cheese or sugar (yay chocolate and booze!).

I do find that putting a portion onto a smaller plate makes it look bigger, and tricks my mind. I can eat an entire Chipotle burrito in one sitting, or I can make a burrito bol last for 3 meals. Same size, it's all in the vessel it's delivered in.

My big time weakness is pizza.
I stopped drinking sodas for awhile and just a couple days ago started again. I'm addicted. Oh well.
I can't drink non-diet sodas. Too sweet.