The Sort of Amazing Soup Diet

I made it four days on Good Housekeeping's Amazing Soup Diet. The recipe is indeed delicious, as were most of the variations, but four nights in a row was all I could take. When Little Rock temperatures dipped into the single digits last week, and the call went out from the emergency homeless shelter that soup was needed, I was only too happy to donate the spare gallon I had in the freezer. So that was amazing. And then some girlfriends were interested in trying the recipe, so we got together at my house Friday night to make a double batch, and had such a good time, that no one noticed that I didn't have to peel or chop a single vegetable. And that was also amazing.

I froze my share into small containers, and haven't got around to thawing a single one. I did lose four pounds though, which took me back to where I was before the holidays, so for a short-term reboot, it was a success. Just don't expect to be able to keep it up very long. I like the 300-400-400 calorie meal plan formula, (breakfast, lunch, dinner) augmented with one or two 100-calorie snacks, so I'm keeping that up, using the Livestrong journal.

Diet or no diet, it's a terrific soup recipe, and great for a quick, nutritional calorie reduction plan. I'll take it over lemon juice and cayenne pepper any day.

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If Jillian Calls, You Didn't See Me

You may need to turn the volume up. Or all the way down.

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Actually, I'm In Space.

My vlogs are so bad, I think I might have a future with youtube.

I like how my eyes blur into my forehead when I toss my hair (which, evidently, is a lot). Also how I flub the Shredheads blog address at the end, explaining that I'm not very good with "those things."

Yes, "those things" the kids are calling URLs. Of which I, myself, have two or three.

Doesn't it seem like you'd have to pass some kind of basic test before they let you drive on the internets?

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Perspire-y is TOO a word.

This is my first-ever vlog, as you can tell by the excellent production values. I actually spoke it in Japanese, and then dubbed it in English, which explains the utter lack of correlation between my lip movements and the audio.

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Spandex Can Only Do So Much

The week before last, I bought a sixty-five dollar pair of underwear. I did it because Isabel said they'd be well worth it, and because I was going to Houston, and I had not dropped the ten pounds I've been swearing I would since before I was going to Blogher last summer.

The sixty-five dollar underwear performed admirably for the occasion. But then I went to New York, and Tremblant, and New Orleans, and really, it's asking too much of the Spanx to contain a solid week's worth of four-course dinners and pastry breakfasts.

Thank God, Kristen had mentioned a few weeks earlier that she wanted to try Jillian Michaels - 30 Day Shred, which I bought months ago in an earlier round of good intentions.

I'm in, I twittered back to her. Let's blog about it to hold me accountable.

It all seemed like a very good idea until tonight. In a moment, I have to jump up and sweat for 20 minutes, when really, all I want to do is curl up on the couch with the pralines I picked up in New Orleans for my mom.

But I'm committed. Twenty minutes a day, thirty days, progressing through three difficulty levels in ten-day stages. I'm also going to get serious about reining in the eating. I've put on ten pounds in the last year, and while I'm actually okay with those ten pounds, it's the next ten, and the ten after that, that I worry about.

So I'm going to use an online calorie counter to recallibrate my intake. Nothing spartan. 1400 calories a day. More whole foods. Less refined carbs. More water.

I wrote in my Facebook 25 Things Meme that I'd like to wear a bikini one more summer, but that I'm probably not willing to suffer for it. But maybe I am, just a little.

I'll be reporting on my progress weekly, here, Monday nights until March 31. You can keep up with the whole gang, now gone way beyond me and Kristen, over here. Better yet, join in! Misery LOVES company.

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This review is independent and unsponsored.

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