There's a nifty little freebie magazine, called Delicious Living, and it's been around for ages: at least since I worked at a health food store back in the early 1980s. It's distributed at natural foods stores, co-ops, and health-conscious mainstream grocery stores, and I always enjoy reading the articles about health and nutrition and maybe picking up a new recipe or two along the way.

This month's issue had an article called The Sugar Debate: The usual information about how we eat too much sugar, and how too much sugar is bad for you, and how you can spot the hidden sugars in your foods, and how you can cut back on excess sugar. Nothing new, there. What struck me was the little tidbit about how much sugar is too much: For an "average adult" on a 2000 calorie per day diet, sugar intake should be no more than 50 grams (200 calories) per day.

50 grams.

I long ago developed the habit of reading ingredients and nutrition information on labels, but until now I had never had a specific numerical standard by which to evaluate my sugar intake. So I took that 50-gram standard and I started counting how many grams are in a single serving of the various and sundry foods I eat, especially "snack" foods--you know, the ones that Don't Really Count. :-D And I further considered just how many servings of those "snack" foods I would consume at a time. And I quickly discovered the solution to a mystery that had long puzzled My Son:

"You eat such a healthy diet, Mom. And you do a lot of walking. I don't get why you aren't skinny!"

Might have something to do with all those excess grams of sugar sneaking in between the cracks of an otherwise healthy diet...

I decided to cut out the excess "snacky" sugar. No more bullshit excuses. But I did it in a spirit of fun and experimentation: If I change just this one little aspect of my lifestyle, if I stop snacking on cookies and candy and other sweet junk, all other things being equal, I wonder how much weight I will lose. Let's see what happens!

That was maybe three weeks ago. So far, I've dropped 15 pounds, about 10 of which was weight that had crept up over what had been my stable "maintainence" weight for the past five years. Of course I'm also eating even more veggies and healthy stuff, because nature abhors a vacuum. ;-) Gotta snack on something.... hmmm, broccoli! Salad! Carrots!

I also made sure to plan, from the outset, what sugar sources I would keep. My one exception to "no candy" is dark chocolate: It's satisfying, less sugary than other sweets, and even good for my health. Huzzah. In moderation, of course, and not every single day. My other source of self-added sugar is about a half-teaspoon (a measuring half-teaspoon, that is) of organic sugar in my tea--and I'm talking about a 16 oz. mug of tea. I never did get the idea of those mincing little dainty delicate teacups that hold maybe three sips of tea. Give me a robust mugful! So a half-teaspoon of sugar in such a robust mugful of black tea really amounts to just enough to bring out the flavor.

Don't worry, folks. I haven't gone over to obsession with Hollywood Fascist Beauty Standards. I'm just looking out for my health. And with diabetes running rampant in my family history, I figure this is one small thing I can do to shift the pattern in a healthier direction. Wherever my weight ends up, my blood sugar and triglyceride levels will surely thank me.

Hoot!

My last couple of journal entries have been a bit on the bitch-and-moan side, so in the interest of preserving my image as a Basically Jolly Person, I will now post something amusing and light-hearted and totally weird.

My nose.

About a month ago, as I believe I wrote, I got walloped with one hell of a cold. It took a week and a half or so to get rid of the worst of the symptoms, and go back to normal allergy season sniffliness instead of Cold From Hell exploding head syndrome, but I got over it -- except for one thing:

My nose.

From the outset of the cold, my senses of smell and taste became nonexistent. That's normal. Nose is stuffed up, nose is incapable of smelling anything and, since the sense of taste is linked to the sense of smell, my taste buds weren't registering much of anything either.

But this time, after the acute phase passed, my sense of smell and taste did not return. Instead, if I smelled anything at all -- especially very perfumey smells, e.g., the incense, stored in a drawer, that tends to permeate my room even when it's not being burned -- it smelled weird and kind of metallic and just generally icky and off. Sense of taste remained basically nonexistent. A roasted garlic salsa that is normally very, very strong-tasting (and confers equally strong-smelling breath), I could barely taste. For someone who loves good food and sensual fragrances, this was an exceedingly frustrating state of affairs.

I gave it a few more days, then I began to panic: the usual "ohmygodwhatifimreallyharboringandignoringaHIDEOUSDISEASE" panic that occurs in situations like this. ;-) So I googled the matter, and found out that a distorted or disappeared sense of smell and/or taste is a totally normal and routine side effect of colds, sinus infections, and other upper respiratory ailments.

It was never normal for me. Dammit. And I've had more than my share of upper respiratory ailments over the years, so it's odd as hell that this should happen all of a sudden at the ripe old age of 43.

O.K. I'm not dying, or even in danger of serious bodily impairment. It's just annoying as all get-out. And WEIRD.

Slowly, very slowly, it seems, my sense of smell and taste are returning. Still not totally normal, but I guess there's only one thing to do, and that's wait. And count my blessings, because there are a lot worse things than not being able to burn incense and enjoy it. HOOT!

Today was Dining Out for Life, an annual fund-raising event for The Aliveness Project. On this day, various restaurants in the Twin Cities (mostly Minneapolis and St. Paul) pledge to donate a percentage of their sales for the day to the Aliveness Project. All one has to do is show up at a participating restaurant and buy something to eat and/or drink.

I have tonight off work, so I set the alarm and made myself get up about 12:30 p.m. so I could do lunch at May Day Cafe, one of my favorite places to eat and hang out. When I win the lottery, or otherwise have enough money to keep my own hours, I will make a habit of spending at least three days a week hanging out at May Day, eating good food and enjoying the ambience and muttering over my manuscripts like a Serious Writer. For now, I settle for the occasional day when I can make myself get my butt out of bed in time to have lunch at May Day, but I've already made good progress in the department of muttering over my manuscripts.

So, at May Day, I couldn't make up my mind between the curried-rice-and-almond salad and the salmon salad sandwich -- so I had both. Accompanied by a very large mug of assam tea. But I did have the sense to order only a cup of salad, not a bowl. Even so, I ate very slowly, muttering over my manuscripts in between bites of food.

A friend of mine picked me up at May Day about 5 or so, and we went to have dinner at Birchwood Cafe, by way of the newly-opened East Lake Street library. Since I had already eaten substantially at May Day, I decided that "dinner" would actually be dessert: Does a giant slab of chocolate-banana-almond cake accompanied by a cup of carrot-ginger soup and a cup of really tasty chai sound good to any of you?

If it doesn't... seek help. ;-)

Hey, everybody, guess where I went today?

That's right.

IKEA.

Hoot, indeed.

Some of the stuff was crappier than I expected. Some of it was rather nice, especially for the price. I found a loft bed that I am thinking of purchasing in August, when renter's credit refunds roll around the happy state of MN. And I found a comfy chair for only a hundred bucks that I will probably buy sometime this month, Minerva willing.

But what's with the freakin' LINGONBERRIES?

Everywhere I went that had anything to do with food, it was lingonberry this, lingonberry that, and oh, yah, hey, didja try our very nice LINGONBERRIES? Lingonberry pop. Lingonberry mousse. Lingonberry candy. Lingonberry jam.

O.K. The Swedes are really into lingonberries. Whatever the hell lingonberries are. Maybe that's the only fruit that grows north of the Arctic Circle. (Yes, I know that only part of Sweden is north of the Arctic Circle. Don't break my stride.) Lingonberries and meatballs. Yum yum.

But I'll tell you this: When They were doing Their studies on the magical powers of antioxidants, it wasn't LINGONBERRIES that kept popping up as the wonder berries of the millenium.

Anyway, I'll cool off, now, maybe go find myself a nice bottle of lingonberry wine...

P.S. - I recently viewed a movie called Latter Days. Came out a few years ago. About a Southern California party boy who sets out to seduce a Mormon missionary. Silly, sappy, and surprisingly tear-jerking. Somebody out there probably hated it, but that somebody wasn't me. Go rent it and let me know what you think.

Well, I had a hell of time last Thursday doing the Dining Out for Life thing. After eating breakfast and an early lunch at MCAD Bistro (their student cafeteria, good space for a writer, at least in the morning), I went to St. Martin's Table for a late lunch. SMT was donating the tips, not sure if there was also a percentage of the tab thrown in or if the percentage they gave (20%) was based on "standard" tip rate. Anyway, I tipped more like a hundred percent of the bill -- which, granted, wasn't huge; SMT is cheap eats, and very very good if you're ever around Riverside and 20th in the late morning or early afternoon.

For dinner I headed to downtown Minneapolis and over to Loring Park to eat at Joe's Garage. There is a new Loring diner of some sort, but, typical of the old Loring Cafe and Bar, it looked exceedingly snooty, and I don't do exceedingly snooty, so I enjoyed the comfortable atmosphere at Joe's instead. Good eats, too, though they, like many restaurants, really need to offer a LIGHT dessert, such as lemon ice, for those of us who get too full from a meal to enjoy more substantial sweets afterwards. ;-)

So I spent more than I should have, and ate more than I should have, but it was for a good cause. Hoot.

Because I finally got my shit together, made note of the date, and made plans to have money and be prepared to stay awake so I could go out to eat on Dining Out for Life day here in the Twin Cities. By spending my hard-earned cash at select designated restaurants, a portion of the proceeds at said participating restaurants will be donated to The Aliveness Project, a community center for those living with HIV/AIDS.

So for once I get to do some good when I'm indulging one of my favorite pastimes of hanging out at a casual restaurant with a book and a notebook.

I started the day at the MCAD Bistro, a.k.a. the student cafeteria at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Now I should really be heading to St. Martin's Table, but I got sidetracked by the lure of the Internet at the East Lake Street library, which will be closing in just two days for renovation. But it's open today, so here I am.

This is my mind on no sleep since waking up at 5 p.m. yesterday. Do the math, folks. Weeha!

I've also been helping Goddess Jen, a.k.a. jemby, deal with a lot of complicated shit regarding the death of a very good friend of hers whom she'd lost contact with for the past couple of years. You can read the details on her journal; for my part, all I can say is I need to remember to get better grounded after doing this sort of "support" work, because I've been rather "floaty" for the last few days. Or maybe it was the moon...