FYI, if you live in Indianapolis, you can get a free 16-ounce Orange Mango Banana or Banana Chocolate Vivanno on Tuesday, August 5 and Tuesday, August 12 - from 2 to 4 p.m. All you have to do is flash your gym membership card or Starbucks card at your local Starbucks. I've had theses smoothies and they're fairly good, though almost anything that's free tastes good to me (says the girl who eats her way through Whole Food's free sample trays whenever she shops for sushi.) Here's the nutritional information for the Banana Chocolate Blend and the Orange Mango Blend. I have no idea if they're doing this in markets outside of Indianapolis, but it might be worth calling your local Starbucks and asking....continue

"10 seconds, move, move!" the stage manager said. I dashed across The Early Show set so fast that I didn't notice that I'd scurried within three feet of Rick Springfield, let alone have enough time to lick him. I was so focused on reaching the white chairs that I tuned out all 80's pop stars and heartthrobs in the vicinity. Then I tried to smile cutely for the camera, pretending I didn't have an odd electronic device stuck in my ear, as they did a live tease of me before my segment. Then the delightful Maggie Rodriguez was interviewing me and I can't even remember what I said, though I noticed both Maggie and I were wearing black tank tops and I FINALLY got to say the name of my book on national television. CBS is kick-ass when it comes to Half-Assed, and I mean that in a good way....continue

Sometimes I feel like a Magic 8 ball because readers ask me a lot of questions. (At least they don't shake me for the answers.) I don't mind answering, but by far, the most popular question is, "How is your skin?" (In second place is, "How did you start running?" and a close third is "How do you stay motivated?") I've written entries to address all of these questions to save everybody some time, but recently I've received a couple follow-up questions on the skin entry. People want to know if my skin has tightened up any over the past year. The answer? I don't think so. It's hard to be completely certain since a change like that would be subtle. I don't think I look any older than I did a year ago. And a year ago I didn't think I looked any older than the year before. However,...continue

When I respond to e-mails asking me for diet and exercise advice, I always note that I am not a doctor or a nutritionist. I have a friend in med school who is working her ass off for that official doctoral degree. (She's doing it figuratively, not literally like me.) I'm not going to pretend I crammed the name of every bone into my brain like she has. I tell people to consult a doctor or nutritionist dietitian in addition to whatever advice I give, stating that I am just a girl who happened to lose a lot of weight. But I wonder, does anyone really ask their doctor for weight-loss advice? Many overweight people avoid going to the doctor because they don't want to talk about their weight problems. They don't want to see the number on the scale when they're weighed. They don't want to deal with it....continue

It has been so nice not weighing in publicly this month, not updating my sidebar, not having to explain any loss or gain to the masses. I still weigh myself every day in the morning (after I've gone to the bathroom and before I've eaten my oatmeal to ensure the lowest number). I still keep my fancy charts and spreadsheets. But it's been nice moving those numbers into the "Thou-shall-not-blog-about" category. I have however been slightly worried about accountability. When I went to San Francisco for the BlogHer convention I told myself, "Eat whatever you want to!" which my brain interpreted as "Gorge yourself!" I tripped a mental switch that made me think I could eat whatever I wanted to as long as I was in California. I found myself wandering around the airport before my midnight flight looking for an ice cream stand because if I had a cone...continue

My friend Elise has started a Semiuseful online magazine. (That's not a mixed review, that's the name of the site.) Elise and I worked together many years and many pounds ago, so when she asked me to write an article about Fad Diets 101 I said, "Sure." Actually, I typed "Sure" because she emailed me. Anyway, she's worked hard to put this endeavor together, so check it out if you have some time....continue

Every month I eat fruits and vegetables that I've never tried before. Well, I did eat new fruits and vegetables every month until I ate my way through the Kroger produce section. I've been on the lookout for exotic fruits or oddly colored vegetables, but it's taken me four months to collect three new items. Never fear, though! I recently located an international supermarket that sells such oddities as corn and cheese flavored ice cream from Asia. They have all sorts of scary, prickly, fruits and vegetables that I can try or die trying (hopefully they don't have any poisonous bits). Until then, here are my three latest discoveries from Kroger and Trader Joe's. Casaba Melon The casaba melon looks like a yellow pumpkin in this picture, mostly because I have a crappy camera. All the food bloggers at BlogHer had fancy schmancy cameras that would make this casaba melon...continue

The sign on this tractor-pulled shuttle says, "The few. The proud. The ones who stick to their diets." As you can see, I am not on this train. Instead, I am being lured to the deep-fried Pepsi stand by a wood cut-out of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. At the Indiana State Fair they will deep fry anything, from fresh cut broccoli to cookie dough. I bet they would deep fry a rat, and I can't guarantee you the carnies haven't done so after hours. The fair only comes around once a year, so even though I knew this was a very bad, no-good, awful idea, I paid way too much money to split some deep-fried Pepsi and deep-fried cookie dough with my friend Jenny. The deep-fried Pepsi was very disappointing, since it's essentially balls of deep-fried Pepsi batter. The deep-fried cookie dough was much more delicious. The guilt of...continue

Vote for Rachel's food blogging session. (There will be cupcakes!) My fellow Seal Press author and cupcake blogger, Rachel Kramer Bussel, has proposed a food blogging panel for the annual SWSX festival next year entitled, "Nom Nom Nom: The Secrets of Successful Foodblogging." Go vote for her. If she gets in and you attend, you will get a free cupcake. Bitch about sportswear and get a free bra MizFit is hosting a contest where everyone who leaves a comment about what bugs them about athletic apparel will get a free sports bra. (Looks like the bra is for A/B size runners, so busty women be warned.) Be sure to read the post, because you have to email the sponsor after leaving a comment. Only runs until midnight tonight! ETA: MizFit commented below that "It's HIGH IMPACT for A/B and low impact for larger cup women. My sister is a C...continue

American Nastia Liukin won the all-around gymnastics gold medal, last night/morning (depending on your time zone). Watch out, Nastia, I totally could have been a gold medalist too if I'd stuck to my gym classes as a kid! (Never mind that I am 5'9" and would be a lumbering giant on the mat.) When I watch sports on TV, I sometimes wonder if I could bike a century in record time or be a world class volleyball player if I'd only had a love for the sport and dedicated myself to it for over a decade. Or are some people's bodies just naturally designed to be better at certain talents than others? I used to wonder if I could have been a world-class pianist if I hadn't dropped my piano lessons after three years. I don't regret giving up gym classes. Going over the uneven bars was SCARY. And the...continue

The one-way street in front of the parking garage did not head the one way I wanted to go, so I had to loop around New York Street to try again, when suddenly I found myself in the middle of a triathlon. I always run into unexpected events downtown. As I sped alongside the bikers, I had an urge to speed up and try to beat them, as if I was competing. However, the increased police presence kept my speedometer safely under the speed limit. I yelled, "Yeah! Go!" to the competitors, even though they couldn't hear me from inside my air-conditioned car. Ever since I participated in the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon, I have a lot of respect for people who train and compete in long-distance events. I've been rolling around the idea of competing in a triathlon myself, however I don't know how to swim and I don't own...continue

I ate Splenda straight out of the bag a couple nights ago. Considering how frequently I ate Tang crystals or hardened rocks of brown sugar as a kid (and an adult), it's odd that it's taken me this long to consider eating the artificial sweetener straight up. It wasn't as good as sugar or Tang. After all, Mary Poppins didn't sing, "A spoon full of Splenda helps the medicine go down." However, it had the same texture as cotton candy, which I found to be surprisingly delightful. I'd stick a spoonful in my mouth and as my saliva seeped into the bulked-up mix of strange chemicals, it would collapse into a clumpy, ball of sweetness on my tongue. Why hasn't anyone ever mentioned that before? Am I the only nut who has eaten the stuff raw? I wonder if Splenda could develop a zero-calorie cotton candy. I'd try that at...continue

Back in January, I set three goals for this year. 1) Promote my book as well as I can. 2) Meet new people and nourish current relationships. 3) Secret goal I'm not going to blog about. I set three goals because I read that is the number of goals you can realistically achieve in a year. Many people fail to reach their goals because they try to do eight things at once. They want to keep their house clean and lose weight and organize their finances and become the Parcheesi world champion and get a promotion and learn to sew and volunteer more in their community and invent a cloning machine, because that final task is the only way you will ever be able to make so many changes in a year. There is only so much time, so it's better to pick three big tasks and concentrate on those....continue

I cannot read your mind, but I try to. When I write blog entries I try to anticipate how my readers will react. I try to avoid writing words that will unintentionally piss people off. I try to counter-argue objections in advance. I try to avoid analogies that might swerve the conversation off topic. I think about the unexpected ways people reacted to entries in the past so I can avoid mistakes in the future. I call it defensive blogging. Still, I'm a long way from putting a sign on this blog saying, "Readings from PastaQueen, certified psychic." Sometimes I post entries about vulnerable issues and I'm scared to check my email because I don't know whether I'll get a "Hell, yeah!" or a "Yeah, you're going to hell." Sometimes I read an old post and wonder why the hell I didn't anticipate the ways people reacted. Here are some...continue

As I was standing in the hallway at the Blog Indiana conference last week waiting for a session to end, two men were chatting next to me about burning down the place where I work. "Yeah, I hate PastaQueen's workplace," one said. "They're evil." The other man got out his business card and said, "I agree. I'd love to take them down." He handed his card over. "I'll help you go down there and torch the place some night," the first man replied. Wow, I thought as I stared through the glass door willing the session to end. I'd better not mention where I work. And next time I'm at the office I'd better take careful note of the fire exits. Despite this flaming start, I enjoyed hanging with Hoosier bloggers last weekend. I wasn't sure what to expect from a first-time blogging conference where the main focus was...continue

After a high-stress day, I came home to a box of ice cream in the mail. Was the universe sending me hate mail or a love letter? I couldn't tell. I was sent the ice cream so I could sample it and write about it on the blog. I usually turn down offers like these because I don't want to be seen as a corporate shill. However, she among us who can turn down chocolate fudge brownie is a better woman than I. Only, the ice cream wasn't at my front door. It was at the FedEx depot. All I had was a claim sticker stuck to my door and the knowledge that a box of dry ice was sitting on a shelf somewhere near 90th street and I-69 (the highway of love). So, I drove about 8 miles, missed my turn and got lost in a corporate office park...continue

I subscribe to the ProBlogger Twitter feed for blogging tips, but they also post job listings. I just saw that a site is looking for a blogger to recap The Biggest Loser after each show. I doubt it is for the official NBC site and is instead probably for a TV blog. I don't watch the show, but if there are any fans who want to be paid $12 per post for a program they're already watching, you can get the details here....continue

On my recent Blog Indiana post, Casey commented about meeting me: I loved LOVED that you have a book out about losing more than half of yourself and yet you ate. Food. Like real food. Silly huh? No, it's not silly. Of course, not everyone is happy to hear that I don't subsist solely on salads and rice cakes. Last year I posted about eating half a Dairy Queen cake on my birthday and one reader sent me a really angry email. If this blog had a door, she would have slammed it as she stormed off in a rage. The ire ice cream inspires on this blog surprises me. (BTW, I just searched for "Dairy Queen" to find that entry and found 10 entries. Maybe I should change my nickname from PQ to DQ?) I'm not ashamed to eat food. When I was losing weight, I was hyper-aware of...continue

When I was overweight, I never understood skinny girls who looked at photos and complained, "I look so fat in that photo!" I always looked fat in photos because I was fat. The skinny girls looked skinny. Perhaps the camera didn't catch them at the best angle, but they looked thinner than I ever would. Then I lost about 200 pounds and I totally understand where they were coming from. I present exhibits A, B, and C. These three photos were all taken on the same day, which is odd because it looks like I gained 10 pounds and then lost it again before noon. I ran a half-marathon that day, but running 13.1 miles does NOT burn 35,000 calories, nor could the lasagna I had for lunch make me that much fatter. In the first photo, I'm striking the "skinny pose." I have one foot placed in front of...continue