The diet is still working, I think. I'm down to 114, though I've been stuck here for days. I suppose I'll have to work harder for it now. Anyway, I've lost about 10 pounds, and I feel really great. I can fit into all of my pre-baby clothes now, except for those black pants I've saved from when I was 19. I can actually even button those pants, though. They just make me look like a street walker, so I'm holding off on wearing them out. I'd like to lose about 4 more pounds. This sounds low, I know, but I have a very petite frame. I'm still thick around the middle.

Anyway, I thought I'd make a little case for dieting. These days, it seems like "intuitive eating" is all the rage, but that never worked for me. Losing weight never worked for me until I hunkered down and looked at the cold numbers: the honest, simple math of weight loss.

The reason, I think, that intuitive eating doesn't work, is that we train ourselves to overeat. We don't even know what intuitive is, we have no idea how much is enough. In fact, I've always seen "intuitive" as a sketchy theory - I would imagine (and I'm no scientist) that we humans have actually evolved to overeat when food is readily available, to store up fat for the months when food is scarce. This theory comes to me after years of observing our dog Charlie. He would happily eat himself into morbid obesity, if we didn't take the food bowl away. I'm thinking, isn't the problem of our generation that food is so plentiful and affordable? Our ancestors had no choice but to make do with less. Charlie, in the wild, would make do with a lot less. And he would work harder for it.

So I eat 1400 calories a day, and that is the extent of my diet. No fads, no forbidden foods, just whatever I want, In reasonable quantities. Oh, there are some foods I avoid, because they have a lot of calories, and don't leave me satiated - namely: chocolate (very, very caloric) bread and most all pies and similar desserts. In the beginning, I recorded every single calorie - there are a lot of counters on the net for this purpose. In recipes I would do some simple math, to determine how many calories were in the whole dish and how much I could take. It was hard at first, I definitely felt hungry a lot. Now I'm used to it, and I don't feel hungry anymore. I feel great.

So, you probably know that the average adult needs 2000 calories a day (and I do stress average - you may need more or less). Well, maybe you also know that 1 pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. So you need to cut this many calories to burn one pound of fat. Essentially, you need to consume much less than you burn to lose weight, to get at those fat stores. To maintain your weight, you need to consume the same amount that you burn. It's really so simple (and so hard too, I know).

Really, though, it's those first few weeks that are hard. If you've never counted calories before, I urge you to give it a try. You may, at least, be surprised at how many you actually consume. Just be honest with yourself. It's hard at first, but it gets a lot easier. It's always so hard to make changes. I'm really glad I've stuck with this, though.