They say addiction starts with a broken promise. You promise not to have a third drink and then you wake up the next morning with no memory of falling asleep in your own barf. You promise not to have a cigarette and then you’re bumming just one more from a friend. You promise not to overeat on Thanksgiving and then you go back for four pieces of cake and a piece of pie.

The fact that you have to make the promise shows that you have a problem. I’ve never had to promise not to take another drink because I don’t care much for alcohol. It makes my headache worse and I’ve never thought the buzz was worth all the calories. There’s a bottle of vodka that has been in my freezer since July and it will probably still be there next year. That’s how I know I’m not an alcoholic. However, I have often promised myself that I will only eat half the meal at a restaurant and then eaten the whole plate. I’ve promised [...]

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I’m not afraid of food anymore. I was never scared by chocolate cake or candy bars in the same way I was terrified of the Gremlins, but I’ve definitely been exercising caution and hesitance around those substances the last couple years. Two Christmases ago I went to a Christmas gathering with my own grilled chicken breasts because, oh my God, there would be cheesecake there, and I might eat it. Aaaaah! This Christmas I went to the same gathering looking forward to all the sugar and refined carbohydrates I would be eating.

What’s changed? I know I can handle it now. When I was first learning new habits I was worried that any deviation from my plan could knock me off course. I wasn’t ready to knowingly indulge in pies and cookies. It was too early. But I’ve been doing this for awhile now and I know that eating a pumpkin roll and Italian Crème cake and the richest fudge brownie in existence for lunch one day is not going to doom me to a life [...]

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I’m glad I took a picture of 170.8 because I ain’t nowhere near that number this week. There has been some stress at Casa de Pasta during the past two weeks. It involves things that “Thou Shalt Not Blog About,” so I can’t get into the details. As a result I haven’t read any blogs for two weeks, so hopefully no one has eloped or died or opened a salt water taffy shop without me knowing. However, I can assure you that everything is all right now. In retrospect it’s all worked out for the best too.

Except for the part with the three pints of ice cream.

Don’t worry, I didn’t eat them all in one night. I still have some restraint. But when I stare into the vortex of uncertainty, I like to imagine the swirling vortex is a chocolate marshmallow Pinwheel cookie and then I devour it whole. Twelve times.

I’ve read a lot of blogs over the years and I’ve always felt bad for the bloggers who gain weight when their life takes an [...]

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My hostel friend Adrienne, who writes Baby Toolkit, has tagged me with a meme. That’s my “hostel” friend, meaning I met her at the youth hostel during the BlogHer conference, not my “hostile” friend. I don’t think I could be friends with a hostile person whether I met them at a hostel or not. Here’s the rules:

Meme Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

I’ve spilled my guts on this blog so much I sometimes feel like I need my own biohazard waste bin to clean it all up. But here are eight health and weight-loss related things about me that you probably did not already know.

1) I don’t care if artificial sweeteners kill me, I’m eating them anyway

I know some people don’t like to use aspartame, sucralose, saccharin or any of those sweet, sweet, chemicals that end in [...]

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If my August weight was a person, it would be the twin sister of my July weight. I averaged all my weigh-ins for August and the calculator spit out the number 179.325. The average for July was 179.5. Given at least a 1/8 lb margin of error, I’ve been holding steady.

From the optimistic, “What’s that hanging around my cloud? Oh, it’s a silver lining” perspective, it’s cool to know that I can maintain my weight by doing what I’m doing right now. I know there is a lot of debate in the fatosphere and the scientific community about whether people are genetically doomed to be fat or if you can do anything about it by manipulating your environment. I’ve only lived in my own body, so I can’t speak about anyone else with 100% certainty, but I know that when I show up and do the work, I get paid. Fifty percent of success comes just from showing up.

For example, I recently read an article in Newsweek about the social networking site Facebook by Kurt [...]

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