There is no such thing as a quick fix.

I tried a new sunless tanning spray this weekend. It was my first diet strategy. Fat that is tan looks a lot better than fat that is white.

It didn't work.

I look like I have a disease.

I look like I'm turning into Michael Jackson.

I'd post a picture, but my camera is in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, HOPEFULLY still in one piece.

Along that vein, I have spent the last 24 hours contemplating this whole diet thing. I need to get some focus though. I was bombarded with how many different trends there are in weight loss. But they all basically get you to the same point. To quote my biggest brother....

"Eat less. Move more."

One could get lost in the specifics. Let's make this a little more cut and dry...and realistic?

(Hello, Jillian. We meet again.)

Part One: Eat Less
I go back and forth with the kinds of food I like. In college, I stumbled on something that really worked for me because it let me eat like a college kid. The "weigh down workshop" was based around some biblical principles that God made everything and said it was good. We shouldn't limit certain food groups, because they're made by him for us to enjoy. But just like the manna in the wilderness, we are only supposed to enjoy them in moderation. When the Hebrews collected too much manna in a day, it was rotten before the sun came up the next morning. They were only to take what was needed for the day. Or as Jesus put it, a couple millennia later, they were only supposed to take their "daily bread".

The FDA has gone to great lengths to readdress the whole pyramid thing and portion size, etc. WDW didn't take the pyramid into account. The author pretty much said eat whatever you were craving. Stop before you felt full. Remind yourself that you have 75,000 more chances to eat in your lifetime. You can have cheesecake again. No sense eating the whole thing at once. Trust God to give you the chance to have it again.

Some people read WDW, and the whole idea of trusting God enough to step back from the table enabled them to step away from other self-destructive habits. One girl used to attack herself by pulling out her own hair. Then she put her trust in God to handle whatever stresses were causing her to do this. There were before and after pictures. It was gruesome. But the point was made.

But there were some problems with this. 1.) I became very conscious of my cravings, and had learned a habit of eating whatever I was in the mood for. 2.) I married a man who loves food just as much as me. I was smaller when we met than I had been when I was in 9th grade. I even kept it off as we dated. And there was one final flushing of the fat in my system the summer before we got married. (Venezuelan cuisine and parasites will do that to you.) When we got married, food was a means of communicating love. We loved to cook for each other. We loved going to restaurants together. I lost all judgment of portion size by comparing what I ate to what he ate. I was too busy gazing into his steely blue-gray eyes to listen for my hunger signals. I didn't refer to the pyramid. And I gained. And gained. And gained....

So now what? What will get the metabolism going again? Do I just eat less of the normal food? Do I change altogether? Do I substitute meals with shakes and bars and bottles of fruity water?

I know how to fix this. It's just going to take effort. And once you've put on so much weight, and the metabolism is slow, and the gall bladder is full of sludge, and the liver thinks you've given up, well, you get lazy. Which leads me to my next point -

Part Two: Move More

Awwwww, crap!