PastaQueen is not giving away butter. Find out what she is giving away behind the jump.

The Superbowl is not until Sunday, but the residents of Indianapolis do not care. Our local news crew is already on the ground in Miami covering every movement of the team. My neighbor has proudly hung a Colts banner outside his front door. Kroger has blue frosted cupcakes and cookies on sale. And yesterday the city dyed the canal blue. You would think water would already be blue, but it wasn’t ELECTRIC BLUE, now was it?

So, when I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter contacted me about giving away a gift set for a Superbowl party to me and one lucky reader, I decided, what the heck, let’s do it. As a resident of Indianapolis, I am practically mandated by law to watch the game, so I may as well throw a little party while I’m at it. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is giving away a gift set as part of their Reach Right campaign, which encourages people to make smarter food choices while also satisfying cravings. The gift set includes:

• Tasty appetizer and dessert recipes to help you plan your meal
• A serving dish for your Super Bowl spread
• $30 gift card to purchase your ingredients

No doubt there are some of you who prefer butter to vegetable spreads like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. That’s cool. I understand. You don’t have to enter. You can peruse the ingredients for ICBINB here and make your own informed nutritional decisions about the product.

To enter, just leave a comment on this entry. I’m a little late in posting this, so the contest is going to end at 11:59pm on Wednesday, February 3, 2010. The winner will be selected randomly and the prize will be shipped directly to the winner by ICBINB, hopefully in time for your own Superbowl party.

ICBINB also wanted you to know they are on Twitter @ICBINotButter.

BTW, if you are waiting for my thoughts on week 3 of The Beck Diet Solution, I have fallen a bit behind on that due to personal health problems, but I will try to get caught up by next Monday.

I was cleaning out my desk a couple months ago when I found a list of goals I’d written six years ago. Usually it is embarrassing to find lists like those because I either haven’t accomplished anything on the list or I realize I used to want some pretty lame things. In high school, I had to write a letter to my future self and an inordinately large segment of it was devoted to wondering whether Mulder and Scully would have gotten together on The X-Files by the time I read it five years later. The funny thing? I can’t remember if they ever did.

I think I shredded the goal list I found, along with all my credit card statements going back to the 90′s, (must declutter!), so I can’t type it for you verbatim. However, item number one was (of course) “Lose weight.” Cool! Mission accomplished. The next item was something like, “Start a writing project.” Score again! I write on this blog all the time. I was really rolling. Third item, “Get a scholarship.” Oops. Probably should have done that before I graduated. Too late now. Fourth item, “Get an apartment.” Signing a rent check every month is kind of depressing, but if it makes me a success goal-wise, it’s worth every penny. Fifth item, “Visit Europe.” Still haven’t done this, but because of the blog (see goal number 2), I now know several people to crash with if I ever do go.

I was amazed. I’d accomplished almost everything on my list. This was unprecedented. For once, I was someone with accomplishments and not just potential. It made me feel really good about myself, and it made me realize that’s a key to building self-esteem – you have to do things for yourself. Everyone wants to love themselves, but it’s tricky figuring out how to do that outside of an adult toy shop. Everyone wants to like themselves, but it’s not something you can buy. It’s not listed on the credit card statements I was shredding. I get e-mails sometimes for people wanting to know how you build that self-respect. Well, you have to make yourself into someone you respect.

When asked, most people will say they are nice. Buy how do you know if someone is nice? The guy who held the elevator for me even though I was halfway down the hallway, he was pretty nice. And my mom sent me a Valentine’s Day card even though I’m an ungrateful daughter who couldn’t get off her ass to the Hallmark store in time to do the same. That was nice. And someone let me into the right lane of traffic on the snowy ride home this evening, even though he could have been an asshole and blocked me out. That was nice. These people are nice because they did nice things.

So, if you want self-esteem, you need to do things that earn your esteem. Figure out what kind of person you want to be. Then figure out what kind of things that person does. Then start doing them. Eureka! Self-esteem! Okay, it might not be that easy, just like eating less and exercising more isn’t all that easy. But the basic philosophy is true. You might want to think of yourself as a nice person, but if you haven’t actually done anything nice lately, are you really nice? And you may want high self-esteem, but have you actually done anything lately that you hold in high esteem?

The odd thing about weight loss is that if you gain back the weight, people act like you never lost it at all. They pretend everyone had a mass delusion and all that time you spent on the treadmill never happened, no matter how worn down your running shoes are. Last year the Indianapolis Colts won the Superbowl. This year, they did not. However, no one raided their houses and took back their Superbowl rings. We still had that parade in below-freezing weather last year. Even if those players never play football again, they will always be able to say they were Superbowl winners. No matter what happens with my weight, I did at one point in my life lose 200 pounds. Even if I were to gain it all back, it doesn’t undo the fact that I lost 200 pounds. It happened. It shouldn’t be any less of an accomplishment if I one day stop running half-marathons and start eating lots of Cheetos. I hope that never happens. I’d like to stay thin, healthy and happy for the rest of my life and will do my best to stay so.

However, when I step on the scale and see that I’ve gained some weight, it isn’t pleasant. But at least I’ve got a blog entry to post if that ever happens again.