5/30/07, 11:30 pm

Here's the rest of the day:

Food:
Four cookies (Newman's own espresso chocolate chip--they are small.)
Water
slice of challah with cheese
Water
two servings of nacho casserole, with picking at cheese in both directions (Z. from my plate, me from the dish--hey, I guess the initials are carrying over)

No ice cream: sad big mama, good big mama

3 pieces Maya Gold (1/2 ozs.)

Exercise: Walked boo back from school, eight blocks (so I did my 16 blocks today)
Heavy gardening--actual spadework, maybe 15 minutes (hard to get going with the boo there
Much weeding

I'm reading the ARC of this book by A.J. Jacobs, My Year of Living Biblically. It's just what it says it is--for a year, he undertakes to live as close to the literal word of the Bible. I haven't finished it, but so far I recommend it. Not sure when it's coming out--probably this Fall. Anyhow, he kind of works his way up, trying to do everything but focusing on one thing at a time.

What I'm focusing on right now is in weight loss is cutting out the empty calories at work. I know that a bagel and cream cheese isn't really nutrition, but it's the actual sugar I'm targeting now, with the bagel as a later goal. I did good today--no candy, no croissant. Other things I need to get to are portion control and having water with me all the time, but those don't seem like they'd yield as much initial gain as eliminating those snacks.

And I'm making sure I get those 16 blocks in whenever possible.

Other health-related projects already underway in my life are getting out and gardening as much as possible, and getting back into weekly therapy with a good therapist. I love my garden, but I've also recently recast it as a serotonin-enhancement device. It's good to move, good to feel effective, good to see beauty emerge from my work right away. The idea is to just start a cycle of feeling better by pushing myself in that direction wherever I have an easy in. My weight is primarily a function of my level of happiness, so even thought shaking the depression is a goal in its own right, I am pretty confident that if I sget it to ease, my weight will be easier to bring down. I don't think I could even have contemplated a project of feeling better before the season changed--I needed the extra sunlight for emotional venture capital. It's been bad around here, folks.

Finally, I'm trying to pretend I'm a functional person and see if that actually makes a difference. I gone back to keeping a messenger bag stocked with the organizational essentials--calendar, address book, wallet, deposit bag (I own a bookstore and I actually lost the deposit earlier this Spring, thus keeping the deposit bag immediately to hand is necessary so that I don't take out a little folded stack of money from my pocket and absent-mindedly nestle it into an obscure corner of my house.) I went through a good period of time letting these items drift with the tides, and I lost count of how many publishers' I stood up through not having written down the appointment.