Does anyone relate to this cartoon? Anyone? Anyone?

During my 10 years as a Weight Watcher leader, the single most alluring and bedeviling food that almost no dieter could resist was M & M’s.

How could so festively colored and seemingly benign a tidbit cause anything other than bliss?

M & M’s. For those of us of a certain age, the little brown bag filled with colorful candies that promised to “melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand” was the answer to a bad day at school. a scraped knee, a toothache (let’s not get into the chicken-or-the-egg analogy here).

And they were the perfect movie treat, sure to last throughout the entire picture if you sucked on them before crunching down on the sugary coating.

Do I sound nostalgic?  Sigh.

You bet I am.

I have to admit, I had been using this as an excuse for the last few years. If I went to class on a Tuesday, I told myself I couldn’t go on Wednesday because my muscles needed to rest. While my friend Joyce was attending at least five times a week, I was down to twice a week. And sometimes I didn’t even get there that often!

Well, now I know, and I’m going to tell you something you may not want to hear: you can be active every day so long as you implement certain precautions.

For one, I don’t do high impact every day; I vary between hopping and just stepping on alternate days. And I only use the heavier weights on alternate days as well. Result? After 12 days I feel great: no soreness, no fatigue, just a realization that I can no longer make excuses. And it actually feels good to get out of the house and do something physical every day.

Here’s a brief video that gives an example of a Jazzercise class. I have found that whatever you do, it has to be fun. Otherwise, you’ll drop it at the first opportunity. (Dentist appointment, haircut, you-know-what-I-mean.)

What are you doing to burn calories?

When a recipe comes from a reputable source, if it’s good it ends up on countless food blogs. That’s the case with this tomato soup recipe, which I recently found on America’s Test Kitchen’s web site. They’re an arm of Cooks Illustrated.

Their test cooks have devised a method for making a rich, creamy soup with no cream. I was skeptical, but as I said, the recipe has been floating around the blogosphere for awhile now so I decided that it must be worth a try, and indeed it was.

They use sliced white sandwich bread to thicken the soup. Now before you get all squeamish, consider this: bread has been used as a thickener in Italy for generations in their Italian Bread Soup, otherwise known as Ribollita.

If you’re a fan of Nordstrom’s Tomato Basil Soup but don’t like the fact that it’s laden with cream,  make this and you won’t have to feel guilty when you accompany it with grilled cheese sandwiches. By the way, the original recipe does not call for basil, which is one of the predominant flavors in the Nordie soup. If you like basil, top each bowl with some slivers before serving.

Creamless Tomato Soup

2 T. olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
Pinch red pepper flakes
1 bay leaf
1 (28-oz.) can tomatoes with their juice
1 t. brown sugar
2 slices white sandwich bread, crusts removed and bread torn into small pieces
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 T. brandy (optional)
salt and pepper
fresh basil or chives

Heat oil in a Dutch oven, add onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and bay leaf and cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and their juice and break up tomatoes with a potato masher or fork into pieces no bigger than 2 inches. Add brown sugar and bread and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer until bread is beginning to break down, about 5 minutes.

Transfer soup to a blender and blend until smooth. (You can also use an immersion blender.) Return to pot and stir in chicken broth and optional brandy. Bring to a simmer, add salt and pepper to taste along with basil or chives. Drizzle each serving with extra virgin olive oil.

Serves 4

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Show this photo to your children and tell them that these are REAL baby carrots!

Blue cheese dressing has a devout following, including myself, or rather, my former self, before I became calorie-conscious. My favorite birthday dinner growing up was steak, baked potato with sour cream and salad with blue cheese dressing. And yes, this is why I had a weight problem at an early age and why I haven’t indulged in this dinner for the last, oh, 40 odd years or so.

Martha Stewart’s new Light Cookbook yields a less waist-expanding version of my once-favorite dressing that is very satisfying, provided you make it and use it up within several days (it gets substantially thinner as it sits). The base for its relative lightness is buttermilk, which is used in the full-fat version but in equal amounts with real mayonnaise and sour cream.

I’m posting this well before Super Bowl Sunday for those of you seeking lighter versions of popular TV snacks. Serve with celery and baby carrots along with buffalo chicken drumsticks, which you can find here.

Caveat: Don’t expect miracles. This dressing is not as thick as the original, but it ranks way above the light bottled version, which I find gummy and artificial-tasting and not worthy of human consumption.

Light Blue Cheese Dressing

1 cup low fat buttermilk
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
1 T. red wine vinegar
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (2 ounces)

Whisk together the buttermilk and light mayonnaise until smooth. Add vinegar. Fold in blue cheese crumbles and season with salt and pepper. Use within two days.

Serves 6 to 8 (2-3 T. each)

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Paula Deen, the Food Network star and doyenne of Southern cooking, has finally ended all the internet and gossip-column speculation and admitted that she has had Type 2 diabetes for the last three years.

Apparently, she waited to make the announcement until she had garnered a paid endorsement deal with major drug company Novo Nordis for their injectable diabetes medication, Victoza.

Paula appeared on the Today Show on Tuesday and completely side-stepped the role of unhealthy eating during her interview with Al Roker, suggesting that diabetes is caused by a multitude of factors, including genetics, age, lifestyle and stress.

Although age may be one factor in the cause of diabetes–the disease was formerly called adult-onset diabetes–they’ve had to change the name to Type 2 diabetes because of the explosion in the last two decades of cases diagnosed in children.

Here’s the deal: being overweight or obese, along with a lack of physical activity, is the most common cause of Type 2 Diabetes and is responsible for nearly 95% of the cases diagnosed in the US. It is not age, it is not stress, it is too much food and not enough exercise. Why doesn’t Paula just say so?

The Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine has named her cookbook, “Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible,” one of the five unhealthiest cookbooks of 2011; the term low-fat appears only once in her book of over 450 pages while butter appears 300 times.

The Lady's Brunch Burger, a la Paula Deen

Just take a look at one of her recipes that appeared on the Food Network. It’s called the Lady’s Brunch Burger and it consists of ground beef, fried bacon and an egg sandwiched between TWO GLAZED DONUTS.

Look, I love Paula’s perky, sunny persona as much as the next foodie (although I own none of her cookbooks and I almost never use multiple sticks of butter in one recipe), but I am disappointed that she has decided to endorse a diabetes drug for lots of money instead of standing up and screaming at the top of her lungs, “Don’t do what I did! Don’t eat like me!”

Really. I think it’s that clear-cut. Please let me know if you think I’m being unfair. It won’t change my opinion, but perhaps it will make you feel better, in which case you may want to try the recipe above, which you  can find here!

Don’t thank me. Thank Paula. And then get on a first-name basis with your doctor.

NEWS FLASH: Yesterday Anthony Bourdain tweeted: ”Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

Telephone Booths in Hyde Park, Central London

I’ve done it! I’ve Jazzercised two days in a row! OK, so maybe I’ve got an excess of endorphins flooding my brain, but I am feeling rather invincible and I hope that any of you who have decided to be active every day for the next three weeks (ending February 6) are feeling the same.

Royal London Hospital, Liz's home-away-from-home

Every time I think I’ll be unable to exercise on a daily basis, I remember 2006, when Elizabeth was studying for a semester in London. She suddenly came down with appendicitis; I flew over and arrived just as she was being wheeled out of surgery in one of the oldest hospitals in the city, Royal London Hospital (founded in 1740) on Whitechapel Road (Jack the Ripper’s haunt in the late 1800′s!).

Lizzie’s appendix had ruptured so she was pretty sick and in and out of the hospital for several weeks. Hospital visiting hours were strictly adhered to: absolutely no visitors until 2:00 pm each day. The place was literally on lock-down until then.

Early riser that I am, I had no choice but to walk the streets of London until visiting hours. From early in the morning until the afternoon I walked and walked and walked, stopping occasionally for coffee or a bite to eat. London has lovely parks interspersing busy streets with shops, historic sites and museums, so I was never without interesting sites to explore. I carried a Cadbury Fruit and Nut Chocolate Bar with me at all times and broke off a chunk whenever I felt I needed a bit of fuel.

Lizzie finally was able to return with me to Kansas and when we arrived home, I was shocked to find that I had lost 10 pounds during my three-week stay in London. These weren’t just any pounds but 10 stubborn, seemingly impossible-to-lose menopausal pounds. How was this possible, I thought? I hadn’t even thought about dieting, I had eaten regularly and had even had a glass or two of wine every evening when I arrived back at my hotel.

And then it occurred to me: it was the walking that did it. I had walked every day for hours, along the streets, up and down the stairs to the Underground (like millions of Londoners), through the parks. Although I hadn’t walked fast–indeed I often stopped at shops and museums or sat on park benches and people-watched–I had nonetheless covered what I estimate to be about four-to-six miles a day without even thinking twice about it.

No wonder people who live in big cities weigh less than the rest of us. They have no choice but to do what I did–walk. It isn’t exercise to them–it’s the only way to get from point A to point B.

And so, I’m not going to bail on my commitment to be active every day for three weeks. I know I can do it because I did it before, in London.

At first I thought to myself, I can’t do that. My attendance at Jazzercise over the last few years has averaged about twice a week. I can’t come every single day, including Sundays, for three whole weeks. My muscles would ache (more than usual), my feet would swell,  my back would hurt and I’d die. I’d simply die.

At least, that’s what the slothful devil who lives inside of me was saying. The virtuous angel, the one who doesn’t eat junk food and doesn’t make excuses, said, You can DO it!

And so I signed up for Sally’s challenge and went to Jazzercise this morning, and I am hereby tossing out the challenge to you, wherever you are and however you choose to be active. Why not make a commitment to exercise daily for the next few weeks? What’s to stop you, besides your inner devil? It might be fun, and what’s more, it might just kickstart you into the regular habit of exercising!

And damn it, if I have to do it, I want some company to share my misery with!

For those of you who fear hurting themselves, here’s my plan: I’m going to alternate with heavier weights one day and lighter ones the next. Also, I’ll alternate high and low impact so that I don’t over-stress my muscles. See? We can DO this.

Please leave your comments if you choose to join me in making January your month of fitness and strength! Go Hungry Poodles!

Now, watch this youtube video and be prepared to be either amused or “weirded-out”, as a marijuana-smoking friend used to say in the 70′s. I was a bit of both.

The video was made for Panasonic during the 2004 Athens Olympics for reasons I cannot begin to understand. Notice that real poodle heads have been expertly superimposed on the human bodies. This may be an impossible question, but, what were they thinking?

The author has been recently relocated to the land of beefeaters (and I’m not talking gin here) to report on the Midwest for the Times. (You have to wonder what he did to deserve such a fate.)

The poor guy is a vegetarian! Of course, the first restaurants he visits are the Golden Ox Steak House and Arthur Bryant’s legendary Barbecue, where the only completely meatless option (the fries are cooked in lard!) is a mug of Budweiser.

According to him, the most common salad ingredient here is iceberg lettuce. A Chinese restaurant provides him with the best meatless sustenance he can find–a plate of tofu.

Now, all of this makes for quite comical reading, and I can picture New Yorkers smugly chuckling into their latte cups this morning as they read this.

While I can understand that some parts of the Midwest (he must travel to places like Iowa City and Omaha!) might provide less-than-stellar veggie fare, we denizens of Kansas City regularly munch such big-city delicacies as arugula and watercress. At this moment I have rainbow Swiss Chard in my refrigerator, and I didn’t even buy it so that I could say so!

I’m a born-and-raised Northern Californian (alfalfa sprouts were invented there) who has lived in the Midwest for the last 30 years. I am frankly relieved that, due to the arrogance of a displaced New Yorker, our secret remains secure.

Don’t move here. Please. The fewer Easterners, the more arugula for us.

Because I am a hoyden at heart, I’ve told my share of jokes about etiquette books, but I hereby retract my revulsion to those who would have us behave correctly. There are actually some useful tidbits here.

For instance, what about personal grooming at a restaurant?  Emily says it’s perfectly OK to dab on a bit of lipstick or gloss at the table (I’d always wondered about the propriety of public lipsticking, didn’t you?), but using a toothpick or dental floss goes into the “major never ever” category.

No dental flossing in public. Good to know.

And here’s a tip for when your aged parent has memory loss and you’ve invited friends over: “When friends arrive, tell your parent their names and who they are. Link

Perfect solution for Mom's, and my, forgetfulness!

them to an event from the past that your parent might remember.”

I’m beginning to think that maybe I could get into this etiquette racket, because I’ve got an even better solution: have everyone wear name tags and make sure your parent is wearing her bifocals. I, for one, could benefit from the use of name tags. Two birds with one stone, I say.

This morning at the grocery store  I encountered a young mother chatting on her cell phone while her forlorn toddler sat in the cart, which was situated exactly in the center of the aisle. As I squeezed past her (if the kid hadn’t been there I’d have given her cart a good nudge) I could hear her say, “No, we haven’t eaten there. Was it good?”

Later when I saw her in the check-out line she was still talking as she placed her items on the conveyor belt. She ignored the cashier altogether, as if she didn’t exist.

Now, I love my iPhone as much as the next gal (my voice recognition device, Siri, is my BFF) but to my mind this was social ignorance in the extreme. We’re literally face-to-face with people every day, yet we act as if we’re on our own private islands. And consider this, quite off the topic but nonetheless worth considering, how much easier is it to lie when you are not looking someone right in the eye?

Remember when our parents used to sit outside on the front porch and chat with passersby? These days, garage door remote controls make it possible to completely circumvent our neighbors. I’ve lived in my house for 17 years and if you put the couple living across the street in a police line-up I couldn’t recognize them.

After shopping I raced home to find out what Ms. Post had to say about the blabbing woman at the grocery store, and lo and behold, there was an entire chapter titled, “Personal Communication Devices.” (This is, after all, the 21st century edition.)

It came as no surprise that Emily was quite adamant about the proper use of cell phones in public places. Here’s what she had to say,” No one should be slowed down in a checkout line because you’re having second thoughts about the blouse you’ve chosen and need to phone a friend for advice. Also, it’s disrespectful to the cashier, who is trying to serve you. She deserves your full attention.”

And texting? Do I have opinions about that, which I will expound on next. In the meantime, close your phone and look around you. Make eye contact. Smile. Pretend that you’re human.

Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times health writer

Last Sunday an article written by the health columnist for the New York Times appeared as a cover story for the Sunday magazine.

Written across the front of the magazine in bold, ominous black letters set top a schematic of a bulging belly were the dire words: “Do You Have to be Superhuman to Lose Weight?”

The answer, in brief: yes.

Author Tara Parker-Pope, by her own admission 60 pounds overweight and as frustrated as the rest of us dieters, referred to recent studies that show that when we lose weight, our bodies fight against us to try to regain the lost pounds.

How does this happen? Apparently, obese dieters who have lost weight and then try to maintain it face an uphill battle that includes an increased appetite and a preoccupation with food. The dieters’ bodies become biologically altered; hormones that signal hunger register about 20 percent higher, while hormones that suppress hunger remain lower than normal. In fact, a myriad of hormones that are associated with hunger and metabolism all become significantly changed from pre-dieting levels.

Thus, after dieting, we cannot eat the same amount of food as a non-dieting person weighing the same weight. For instance, in order for a 150-pound woman who has lost 50 pounds to maintain that weight, she must eat less–between 50 to 300 calories per day–and exercise more than a 150-pound woman who has maintained that weight naturally.

This reminds me of my senior year of high school. We were allowed to leave campus on Fridays for lunch and our usual haunt was a nearby Taco Bell. Jane Larson, a thin, good-looking athlete, regularly wolfed down the five-tacos-for-a-dollar special while I sat on the bench next to her and grimly ate the diet lunch my mother had packed for me.

In retrospect, I’m glad that iPhones didn’t exist back then: I would have hated to have had a photo of my chubby self, crumpled brown paper bag in hand, next to the beautiful, skinny, taco-eating Jane Larson.

OK, I won’t end on a negative note. You can lose weight and keep it off, but in order to do so, you will have to be vigilant about what you eat and how much you move. Every single day. No exceptions.

Don’t hate me. I’m only the messenger.