Summer Goals

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s usual, things are getting hectic and beginning to catch up to me. I can't believe that it is already the latter half of July and that August is coming on strong. There were so many things that I wanted to do this summer, but am afraid I will be unable to accomplish my main goals: lose weight and finish my paper. So I have refocused myself the last two weeks.

Firstly, I have been watching what I eat. No chips. No cookies. No *gulp* chocolate. No snacking--okay, okay, I had 12 itty bitty M & M's last night, on the weekend I drink my beer!--has resulted in a smaller appetite during meals. I'm no doctor or nutitionist, so i do not know the cause and effect values of this. I still eat whatever I want for meals, and will eat as much as I want, but the amount of food needed to satisfy my virtually insatiable appetite has subsided appreciably in a little over a week. I have some cookies and corn chips sitting on the dining room table screaming voicelessly, like a seductive siren--O-man, eat me, I am here for you. I AM only because I know you will eat me. Please come and satisfy me and yourself... I swear, it is a daily struggle...

I have also been exercising like I used to exercise. Actually, more. I used to run about 4 times a week, but in the past ten days I have run on eight, often twice a day--once in the morning and once at night. I've also been lifting weights, and all this added activity cuts into my time--on average, about 2-3 hours a day in the basement where I have a treadmill and a wet of free weights. Of which, the net result has been, amazingly, that I have lost about 5 pounds (little more than 2 kilos)

Further, these past few days, I've been focusing on the paper that I need to write and so have had little time to devote to Xanga. I hope to visit your sites soon as I miss you all very much. But duty calls.

Speaking of eating healthy

As I was running on the treadmill, I watched a little Emeril Live on the Food Channel. Is it me or does he use a lot of salt. He was making pimento cheese. What this is--besides the pimento (roasted red bell peppers)--is shredded cheese mixed with pimento and other things you might like. Well, Emeril mixes in mayonaise and bits of rendered bacon into his cheese. Now the best I can remember is that these all have salt in it, no? but Emeril does his famous seasoning joke, grabs a healthy pinch of salt and "BAM", he tosses it into the mixture. I mean, isn't it salty enough? This dude is gonna die pretty soon if he is eating what he makes...