Shrinking Sisters

How many calories does a redesign burn?

I was reading an especially poignant post over at the blog See Sara Shrink. She wrote:

... I haven’t lost weight in awhile.  But it’s not like I haven’t been trying.  I wake up every day with the best of intentions, but by lunch I’m fighting the same battles I’ve been fighting for years.  The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

OK, who can relate?

(Raises hand.)

I've been holding steady since the end of the year, when I burned off a few holiday pounds. But I'm tired of holding steady and need to see the scale move again. 

I have to keep reminding myself that I did work on bettering my health in 2009. I got my cholesterol down from borderline icky to perfectly normal and dropped my triglycerides 100 points into the completely normal category. And I did it all with diet and exercise.

So that was 2009. Now it's three weeks into 2010 and I need to make more changes, primarily in calorie intake. I have already mentioned that I have to drop down to 1,200 for a couple of reasons. One, I have a slow metabolism (I had it tested). And two, that will help give me leeway for the "invisible calories" from supplements like fish oil, dark chocolate calcium and other good-for-me things that aren't really food. I really hate counting the calories of stuff that isn't food.

Step one is this redesign. When I first redid the logo I had in it a photo of my sister and me from 1991. That's not realistic, now, is it? So I freshened up the site and added current photos of us.

It's cleaner, lighter and brighter and I'm hoping that'll rub off on us. And you, if that's what you need.

Produce of the Week: Bok choy

This week's veggie is a guest post from my pal Lynn Haraldson Bering, who blogs at -- among other places -- Lynn's Weigh: The Journey Continues. This time last year I sent Lynn an e-mail after reading of her 168-pound weight loss in People magazine and we became friends. Cool thing, this Internet. She recently wrote about the wonders of bok choy. You can read the entire post HERE but here's an excerpt:

Eight ounces of bok choy has just 30 calories, only a trace of fat, 5 grams of carbs, 3 grams of fiber, nearly 4 grams of protein, 240 mg of calcium (that’s nearly 25 percent of daily recommended calcium intake for women 18-50) and 570 mg of potassium (strive to get 4,700 mg a day).

I’m going to add bok choy like I would spinach to vegetable soup and eat it as is in a salad, too. The key around my neck of the woods is finding bok choy that doesn’t look like it just got off a 2-year boat trip from China.

Farewell, Elastic Waist!

Conde Nast had a sassy little diet blog called Elastic Waist but like many media projects lately, Conde Nast has pulled the plug on it. Hope the writers can find a new home for it.

It's a shame because Weetabix and her crew had a great thing going. Catch it while you can.

Work can be fattening

My pal Tracy, who writes the blog Middle-Age Sexy, is alarmed to find her clothes getting a little tight a month into her new job. She writes:

Now that I'm basically sitting for eight hours a day, exercising a little less and eating out a little more, the weight has started creeping on.

To read more, check her out HERE.