exercise:

Curves (curcuit training) 3x a week

Walking 3-5 miles a day (I wear a pedometer)

Hiking at least every other weekend, usually for at least five miles, just to shake things up a bit

diet:

I'm doing the Curves diet, which is basically a low-carb diet. Low-carb is the only sort of diet that has ever worked for me; with low-fat diets, I get irritable very easily and just plain don't lose much weight.

(Before you fire off that cranky email telling me that low-carb diets don't work, let me remind you that diets are not one size fits all; I happen to have fabulous cardiovascular genes, my blood lipids are on the low side of normal, and more importantly, I respond very well to a low-carb diet. It's not for everyone, certianly--but nothing much is.)

A typical day looks like this:

Breakfast:
2 eggs, scrambled
2 chicken breakfast sausages

Lunch:
salad with Ceaser salad deressing
6-8 ounces of protien, usually grilled chicken
1/2 cup strawberries

Snacks:
I usually have a couple of snacks a day--usually 2 ounces of a high-protien food such as cheese, ham, or almond butter, and vegetables of some description--celery, or cucumbers, or parsteamed broccoli.

Dinner:
Usually, I have some grilled or roasted meat, and some vegetables. Sometimes, I'll have a protien shake, usually when it's beastly hot out and I've worked out that afternoon.

whole life:
Yeah, it sounds new-agey but i'm totally into getting my whole life together--mind, body, spirit--and making sure that I'm not neglecting things.

I am trying to do the following things:

• Get enough sleep
• get enough alone time (I am an extreme introvert; I desperately need great swaths of time spent entirely alone)
• find time to write and do art on a daily basis
• get out into the forset on a regular basis (see exercise, above)
• I'm trying to start doing yoga, but this may or may not work out--there just aren't enough hours in the day

We'll see how I do.