The great thing about running a half-marathon tomorrow is that I get to eat lots of carbs. I will try to remember the joy of gorging myself on bread and pasta when I'm running in the rain. The cold, wet, rain. When I picked up my pace bracelet at the running store yesterday, the clerk asked me, "Got your outfit picked out?" "Yep," I replied like I was an A-student proud to be prepared for a pop quiz. "Is your shirt white?" she asked as she rung up my gel pack purchases. "Um, yeah it is." How did she know that? "Better wear a dark sports bra," she said as she handed me the receipt. Why would I wear a dark bra with a white shirt? That didn't sound like an ensemble that would land me on the cover of People's best-dressed issue. Then my brain made the connection: White...continue

Yesterday was one of the top ten best days of my life, which is an odd thing to say about any day I wake up at 5:30am. My mom and I drove downtown and parked in my office's parking garage, which is conveniently located 4-5 blocks away from the starting line. Thus we avoided any parking nightmares and I felt slightly better about the monthly garage fee they take out of my pay check every month. I felt chilly in my long-sleeved shirt and sweater as we walked towards the starting corral. The sun was still rising, but from what I could see the weather appeared gloomy, though thankfully it wasn't raining. Thunderstorms had whipped through town the night before and there were still some puddles in the road. As we got closer and closer to the starting corrals we encountered more and more people. It felt like I was...continue

I'm going on tour - a blog tour. For the next three weeks, I'll be making stops every week day at different locations in the blogosphere to talk about my book. There will be reviews, interviews, guest posts and perhaps even podcasts. It would be fun to tour the country on a book tour, but also rather expensive and I don't have the vacation time. A blog tour is better because I save a lot on gas money. And I don't have to find someone to feed my cat. We're kicking it off today with the woman who helped get this whole book thing rolling, Kalyn Denny of Kalyn's Kitchen. Here is a schedule of the rest of my stops, which I will update with direct links to the posts as they go live. It should be lots of fun, so I hope everyone will check it out! Monday, May...continue

Get your personally signed copy of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, lovingly autographed by the author herself, for the list price of $15.95 + shipping and handling (I WILL ship internationally). Buy your copy here. You may also include the name you want me to sign the book to and a message you wish for me to include. I reserve the right to reject any messages I don't want to sign, so requesting something like, "I'll never forget our wild night in Vegas" isn't going to happen. Thank you in advance for your support!...continue

I answered my cell phone and the woman on the other line said, "Oh my God, you're in the TiVo." "I know!" I exclaimed to my Aunt E. "Isn't it crazy?" If you've got your TiVo remote handy, you can use it to search for The Today Show and set it to record the Sunday morning Mother's Day show on May 11th. (ETA: Local air times vary. Check your listings.) I'll be promoting my book and wearing an outfit that hopefully makes me look very slim. I'm set to appear on the same episode as Susan Sarandon. Do you think she'll sing Rocky Horror songs with me in the green room? My appearance has been planned for over a week, but I've been afraid to mention it for fear that it might not actually happen. God knows I could still get bumped if terrorists blow up the Brooklyn Bridge that...continue

After running 13.1 miles in a half-marathon, I bet most people hobble home and collapse on the couch or a bathtub full of ice. I decided to hobble home and then hobble back downtown to PAR-TAY! It was somewhat difficult marching up the spiral staircase to the dining room at The Milano Inn where I was holding my book release party, but I made it to the top without tripping or without anyone looking up my skirt...I think. I've never thrown a party before in my life. Even my childhood birthday parties were hosted by my mom, who bought the cake and ice cream and whisked my hair out of the candle flames before my head was set on fire. Since she'd proven herself so well in the past, I put her in charge of organizing this brouhaha. Thanks, Mom! There are a lot of questions that go into planning...continue

Thanks to the NBC tech monkeys, you can watch my appearance on The Today Show here. If you are a new reader, thanks for stopping by! You may like to read some of my best entries here and check out my product recommendations here if you're looking for tools to start your weight loss journey. Thank you to everyone who has left comments and sent me emails about my appearance! However, those of you who have complimented my hair and make up should redirect your accolades to Joel and Hair-Guy-Who's-Name-I-Didn't-Catch who made me look more fabulous than I shall ever look again. I shall write more about my New York adventure soon, and, oh yeah, get back to blogging about health and fitness too. Just as soon as I take a long, long, nap....continue

(Psst..I know you guys probably want to hear about The Today Show and what Lester Holt smells like. I will write about it soon, but I have a job and a sleep schedule to attend to, so please enjoy this pre-written entry for now.) Ten years ago I was lying in bed at summer camp when a floormate walked into the room. This wasn't unusual because my roommate and I kept the door open and somehow a spontaneous bubble of popularity had formed over our room, a bubble I would never have been able to create if I tried. "Do you have any CDs?" she asked. "Yeah, over there," I replied. "Why?" "I need to find my theme song." Her group had been assigned a task to pick a song that represented who they were. This was 1997 and MP3s hadn't even been invented yet, so she was limited to...continue

When my older brother was in elementary school, he came home one day and asked my mom for a dollar to buy a raffle ticket. This was the 80's, so a dollar could buy you at least two gallons of gas back then. It was big money. "Why do you need it?" she asked. "I'm going to win a bike!" he told her. The school was raffling off prizes as part of a fundraiser and my brother had his eye on the shiny, yellow, 10-speed bicycle. My mom gave him a dollar and prepared for the fallout when the young boy had a sudden lesson in probability outside of math class. The next week he walked home with a shiny, yellow, 10-speed bicycle. Screw you, probability! When Lipton Tea contacted me asking if I'd like to give away a bike on my web site as part of a promotion for...continue

If you live in the Lexington, Kentucky area, you can catch me at the Bluegrass Festival of Books this Saturday, May 17th. I'll have a table at Joseph-Book Booksellers where I'll be signing books all day, starting at 10:30am. At 2:00pm I'll be doing a reading and Q&A at the Sky Lobby in the Hilton Suites right next door. I'm bringing the fat pants, you bring yourself. You can find more information at the official site as well as a PDF of the table assignments, the better to stalk me with....continue

As we walked down the New York sidewalk Sunday afternoon, I moaned to my aunt Lori about how stressful it had been finding my way from Kennedy airport to my hotel in midtown Manhattan the night before. It was an endless saga involving hidden elevators, express buses that took their damn time and AirTrains that did not fly through the air but disappointingly looped around the airport terminals endlessly. Eventually I decided the price of a taxi was worth eliminating the chance of getting lost in New Jersey after midnight with only a box of soy protein bars and lip gloss for sustenance. "So, you appeared on national television this morning without any anxiety, but it was traveling from the airport to the hotel that stressed you out?" my aunt asked incredulously. "Um, yeah," I replied. "I really hate traveling." Bizarrely enough, it's true. I didn't feel stressed at all...continue

I feel like a long, long nap. Instead, all I have is a mug of coffee and a 5-day work week. In lieu of a real entry, here's a bumper sticker I saw last month: Change how you see, not how you look. Discuss amongst yourselves....continue

I had to slow down to walk for three minutes at the second mile marker on my three-mile run last Sunday because I was getting tired. "I ran a half-marathon two weeks ago? Seriously?" I asked myself. Good thing we took pictures or else I wouldn't have believed it. Lately, a couple of people have asked me how I've managed to hold down a full time job, maintain a blog, promote that thing I'm promoting (that you're probably sick of hearing about), and keep up a diet and fitness regimen. The answer is: not very well! I've been spending so much time running around telling people about all the running I'm doing that I haven't had much time to do all that running I'm telling people I'm doing. Also, during the last month of half-marathon training, I stopped doing Pilates and weight-lifting regularly to find the time to complete those...continue

When I graduated from high school 10 years ago, we could drive to the southwest side of town and get gas for $0.99 a gallon. Everywhere else it was $1.00 or $1.02 or $1.03, but over by Dixie Highway you could still get it for under a dollar. Gas prices are now at about $4.00 a gallon, which means the price of gas has quadrupled in the past 10 years. I'm pretty sure American paychecks have not quadrupled in the past decade, and I know the minimum wage hasn't. Do you know what craziness this has spurred? According to the news last night, people are riding bikes to work. And they're carpooling. Horrors! Some people are even trying to sell their SUV's, though nobody is buying. So, even though I hate paying $4.00 a gallon for gas, I can't help but think it is a good thing in many ways...continue

I've had the My Buddy jingle stuck in my head lately. It was a catchy song played during an ad for a doll sold in the 1980's. (As well as the gender opposite toy, Kid Sister.) Thanks to the wonders of YouTube you can watch it here: The lyrics are: My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy), Wherever I go, he goes My buddy (my buddy), my buddy (my buddy), My buddy and me Only I change the lyrics to: My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache), Wherever I go, it goes My headache (my headache), my headache (my headache), My headache and me Remember that headache I had back in March? The one I thought had gone away? Well, it eased up for awhile there, but it never really went away. Which means I've been in pain 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ever since...continue

Yesterday, I was all, "Hey, by the way, did I mention I've been in chronic pain for three months? I didn't? Whoopsies!" For those of you sneaking in your blog reading at work, I shall summarize: my head has hurt constantly since February 18th. I was going to list everything I've done or considered here, but it got insanely long. (I have a headache notebook now just so I can keep track of all the doctor contact information and record all the drugs I've introduced into my bloodstream.) So today I'll just cover treatments I've tried and tests I've taken. Tomorrow I'll go over other possible causes/treatments I've considered and am still considering. I'm leaving out some of the specifics because I have privacy concerns and I don't want anything to come back to bite me in the ass, even if I can't completely visualize how it might do so...continue

Continuing from where we left off yesterday, here are other possible causes I've thought of for my headache as well as things I'll probably try when I find the time and extra funds. Sorry if all this talk of headaches is giving those of you looking for weight-loss posts a headache, but this problem is affecting my life and my ability to live a healthy lifestyle, so I consider it relevant. Plus, it's my blog, so I get to do what I want to. Neener, neener! SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) There's no doubt that I get down when the weather is bad and winter in Indiana lasted about 20 years this season. I bought a special light to sit in front of for 10 minutes in the morning. It helped me feel a little less depressed, but my headache didn't go away. Also, we finally kidnapped the sun back from...continue

I'll finish up my headache series on Monday, but in the meantime, Marla sent me this graphic which illustrates the celebrity I most look like. I'm a man, baby! It's Brendan Fraser, probably most well-known for The Mummy and such classics as Monkeybone. According to IMDB, he was born in Indianapolis too! Is it incestuous to say I think he's cute?...continue