"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 during my 3 minute and 43 second stint on The Today Show for the same reason I didn't feel stressed about running a half-marathon. I'd trained hard, I came prepared, and I knew I could do it. Raaarrr! Even before the book came out, I took every opportunity to do interviews so I could practice talking to people about my experiences. I've done so many now that you'd have to ask me a truly bizarre question to throw me.

The airports, though, still freak me out.

My hotel was about a block away from NBC studies in Rockefeller Center and I got there at 8:00pm. I was glad the taxi dropped me off because the hotel entrance is so discreet that I would never have seen it next to the Johnny Utah's, which according to Lori has a mechanical bull. (Don't ask her how she knows that.) The room was small, but very nice. They even folded the toilet paper in a triangle. Fancy!

My aunt met me and spent the night so she could be my official photographer the next day. I had to wake up at 6:00am to shower, blow dry my hair and wear my normal makeup as instructed. Of course, I never wear makeup, so I just put on some foundation and concealer and tried not to burn my scalp with the hair dryer. An official NBC page met me in the lobby at 7:30 to walk me to the show. And yes, with his red-hair and fresh-face he did look a lot like Kenneth, the NBC page from 30 Rock

We walked past the windows of The Today Show studio and then inside and downstairs to the makeup and hair room where Joel and Nameless-Hair-Guy made me pretty. This took at least 15 minutes because cute does not come easy.

As I was escorted across the hall to the green room, we passed a big LCD monitor that showed a live feed of host Jenna Wolf getting spritzed and primped two minutes before show time. Then I sat on a black couch underneath framed photos of all the hosts and examined their spread.

For some reason the basket of peaches and apples was exiled far away from the scrumptious mini-muffins and bagels. (See them over my shoulder?) In all fairness, there was also a plate of melon slices on the main table, so they weren't forcing baked goods down my throat. I did that myself. (Vacation calories don't count!) According to the listings, Susan Sarandon was scheduled to appear, but I don't think she did. Scared of being overshadowed, eh, Susan?

Next the producer came in and went over the segment with me. We'd done a pre-interview on the phone a week before where I chatted for 20 minutes about my experiences. I'd also scanned some new photos for the graphics department to show on the screen while I talked. She went over the script and the questions they were going to ask me, which was another reason I wasn't stressed. After she left I kept going through my answers in my head. I knew I wanted to get four points across:

1) Mention my blog
2) Mention my book
3) Mention my half-marathon
4) Wish my mom a happy mother's day

I figured if I accomplished those four things without falling off my stool, the interview would be a success.

Soon they were walking me over to the set where we snuck behind a big wooden wall and then quietly weaved through camera equipment. I sat down on one of two stools set on either side of a huge TV monitor that were directly opposite of the couch Lester and Jenna were hosting the show from. They were broadcasting live and if I dared to clear my throat or let out a big fart it would have been heard in millions of households across America. There was a live feed of a reporter covering tornado damage in Oklahoma right behind me and it felt like he was standing over my shoulder even though he was hundreds of miles away.

To the left and ahead of me, a lady stood at a podium and did a short report about...a pelican? I can't really remember. I just remember watching her and thinking that she was overacting and laying it on thick. Yet, I bet when you watched it on TV it came across as really energetic and animated. TV is weird like that.

Then they went to commercial and Lester walked over and introduced himself with a very firm, politician's handshake. He checked to make sure he was saying my name right and I told him I was going to try to say hi to my mom. A stage hand tried to steal my fat pants hanging off the back of my stool. No, not without my fat pants! He'd mistaken them for a sweater and put them back on the stool. I can't remember what else I talked to Lester about if anything because I was distracted by the cameras swinging 180 degrees around to focus on us. The producer had told me to just look at Lester. Otherwise I might get distracted by the teleprompter and the monitors and got a deer-in-the-headlights look when the interview started. So I just focused on Lester's face as they counted down from 10 and then OH MY GOD we were on national television.

Lester Holt was talking about one woman's struggle with weight and, holy crap, that one woman was me. I just kept looking at his pretty face, curious about what was being displayed on the monitor but too fearful to look anywhere else. He asked me most of the questions that had been in the script, but in a slightly different order. I dodged and weaved with it, dancing along with him leading. Then suddenly he asked me what I thought of weight loss surgery and, hey now, no one had told me we were going there! I rolled with it though and even worked in a happy mother's day at the end. He seemed genuinely amused that I couldn't say "half-assed" on TV and then the interview was over. It was good-bye Lester and I was walking off the set.

It all went amazingly well. For the past month I have been slightly worried about whether people who meet me at book events will think I'm still fat. I think I look fabulous, but I'm not the skinniest chick in the room either. I don't really care about what other people think of my body under normal circumstances, but I also don't want to be known as the fat girl who's promoting a weight-loss memoir. When I watched The Today Show two weeks ago and saw that my full body would be visible on a stool, I did a little freak out dance. Where was the carefully cropped head shot? I've always thought I look my fattest sitting down. When I was morbidly obese, I once saw my reflection in the window as I was sitting in my office chair and freaked out like a groundhog who'd just seen his morbidly obese shadow. Thankfully, when I reviewed the tape of my appearance, I looked great in my lavender shirt and the gray pants from Goodwill that my mom hemmed the afternoon before. I sat up straight, I got my four points across (or three and a half since I couldn't say "half-assed"), and I didn't fall off the stool. Mission accomplished.

I also have a newfound respect for TV people. It's amazing all the time and preparation that went into that short little segment. I'm awed by the amount of energy and pizzazz you need to host a show and the ability required to dodge and weave and go with the flow. My segment got moved from the 36 minute mark to the 42 minute mark and I'm sure they were rearranging other things. Right after we were done, I left the building and walked by Lester and Jenna doing a shot outside in the crowd. They were always running around and changing things up, but looking totally calm and collected as they were doing it, like it had all been planned for weeks.

Then I went out to brunch at Sarabeth's with family and friends and ordered the Fat and Fluffy French Toast. That's right. I promoted my weight loss book and then I ate a dish with the word "fat" in the title. And it was delicious. Mmmmm.

For the rest of the day, whenever I looked in a mirror I was shocked at my reflection. "I have a face!" I told my aunt Lori. I have never looked cuter in tourist photos than I do in my New York pics. When I got home and read my e-mail someone said they liked how I'd answered a certain question and I thought, "Did we talk about that?" I honestly couldn't remember. Yet, all together it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

"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 their new Lipton's White Teas, I thought of my brother and decided, "Yes, I would!" I try not to do too many corporate promotions around here since I consider this to be a personal blog and I don't want to turn into a corporate shill or get a reputation as a sell-out (especially since they're not paying me). But like I've said before, I do enjoy playing the part of Robin Hood and taking items from public relations people and redistributing them to my readers. Plus, the PR company, Ogilvy, put together a blogger code of ethics which they referred to in their contact e-mail which I think is an excellent idea. Every PR company should do this.

So here's the deal. Lipton is hosting a "Free Your Y" contest at www.areyouyoungenough.com and if I'd actually gotten my act together before the deadline of May 11 you could have entered a video for prizes over there. Oops, sorry! I've been busy. You can still go over there to vote on the winners starting May 17.

However, Lipton is still giving away a Lipton branded Fuji Crosstown 2.0 bike to "help underpin the concept of embracing our youthful spirits" as the press release says. Read more about the bike here .

To enter the contest, comment on this post (using an email I can contact you at) with the story of how you learned to ride a bike. Or if you haven't learned how to ride a bike, the story of why you have not. I love reading your stories. I will leave the comments open until 11:59pm on Saturday, May 17th. Then I'll randomly draw a winner. Only US residents are eligible. My apologies to the international peeps!

Lipton also sent me some White Tea samples, and I have to say, they were pretty good. I drink a lot of the Crystal Lite peach tea drink, and these tasted pretty similar just in lots of different flavors like raspberry and peach papaya. My dad tried the island mango and peach flavor hot tea and said it was good. No, they didn't pay me to say any of that. (I don't think they paid my dad either, unless he's got some secret deal on the side.) If I like a product, I don't mind saying nice things about it. If the tea had sucked, I probably wouldn't have mentioned it at all. The "To Go" packets are rather handy because you can dump them in a 16.9 fl oz water bottle, shake and drink. They're zero-calorie too. I'm trying to cut back on caffeine though, so I probably won't be sucking down too much of the stuff.

Disclaimer from Lipton Legal: The Pepsi/Lipton Partnership will provide a check for $75.00 to be used for professional assembly of all Lipton Fuji bicycles awarded. Neither Pepsi Co. nor Unilever is liable for any injuries, damages or accidents that may result from the receipt, assembly or use of this bicycle.

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 the handful of CDs and cassettes (I'm so old) her peers had brought with them. I don't know what song she ultimately picked, but the idea of a personal theme song has stuck with me over the years.

If you'd asked me 5 or 6 years ago what my theme song was, I'd have said "In Hiding" by Happy Rhodes. Here are the rather brief lyrics:

You'll find me
forever in hiding
and only time will tell
what it's done to me
I've tried to show
god only knows to grow
but music hides me so well
and reveals me
Oh well
You can find me in hiding

I spent a lot of my life in hiding, hiding behind my hair, hiding behind my fat. I've always been introverted (and I still am), and it's still hard for me to strike up conversations with strangers, but I don't feel like I'm in hiding anymore. The blog has helped a lot with that.

These days I'd say my theme song is "Come A Long Way" by Michelle Shocked from the album Arkansas Traveler. The full lyrics are here, but I really love the refrain:

I've come a long way
I've come a long way
I've gone 500 miles today
I've come a long way
I've come a long way
And never even left L.A.

The song is about someone who steals back her motorcycle from a repo man and goes driving around LA all day. Eventually she trashes it and says:

Now you tow it to the repo man's front door,
And you give him these keys, I don't need them no more

Granted, I've never even been to L.A., so I've never driven around it or left it or trashed a motorcycle there. But I think the song is really about self discovery and how you can travel very far without ever leaving yourself. I'm also plenty sure I've gone more than 500 miles in the past several years.

So that's my theme song. What's yours?

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.

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 a party, like, where do we hold it? Do we serve food? How many people are going to come? Why am I so stressed out planning an event that is supposed to be fun? Little did I need to worry though, because I had a fantastic time, which is why combined with finishing a half-marathon earlier that day, I considered it to be one of the best days of my life.

My cousins Allison and Adrienne and my Aunt Elaine helped me and my mom set up the room. As people started to trickle in, I greeted them and started signing books. One of the cool things about having a book published is that you get to write in other people's books and it's not considered vandalism.

To keep the guests entertained as people kept arriving, we introduced the "Lick the Produce" quiz. I printed out images of all the fruits and vegetables I've tried in the Lick the Produce series over the past year and made people fill out surveys guessing what they were. Nicole helped us out by doing a lovely Vanna White impression.

It wasn't done just for fun though, it was done for free pasta! Since I'm the PastaQueen, I decided I needed to bestow my bounty upon the winner. Ari over at FiberGourmet donated a lovely gift basket that we gave away to Nancy, who got the most correct answers with 11 out of 28. (It was a hard quiz!) Here's a picture of me and my mom (the PastaQueen Mother?) with the basket.

As you'll notice, I am holding a Spaghetti Scepter, lovingly handcrafted by my Aunt Donna from a pasta server, ribbon, sparkly jewels, and lots of hot glue. She surprised me by spending the night making them as party favors. Thanks, Donna!

Next up I read the "Trail Mix" chapter in my book in honor of Indianapolis since it takes place on our local nature trail. I tried not to talk to fast and to project my voice. I hadn't read the chapter for a couple months, so as I was reading I was also scanning slightly ahead so I wouldn't trip over the words. My heart stopped a little when I saw that the word "bastard" was coming up and glanced at my mom's church friends in the corner of the room. Oh, well! If they were okay with a book titled Half-Assed hopefully they weren't offended by my potty mouth.

After that I did a Q&A. At the end my mom just happened to ask what I would be doing this weekend and I made my big Today Show announcement. After that we ate and I got to talk to my friends and meet several of my readers. It's so awesome to meet people in person and finally put faces to IP addresses. It's odd, but I would probably recognize a lot of you more by your email addresses than your actual names. I was a little worried that I might be crashing somebody's diet by serving spaghetti and meatballs and fettucini alfredo and lasagna, but Lord knows I needed the carbs after all the running around I'd done that day.

Amy and Nicole took a picture with my cover signs, pretending they were standing in my fat pants too. I stole a couple of their pics for this post and Allison sent me the rest. Thanks for the photos, guys!

And then people started to trickle out and the party was over. My Aunt Elaine and cousin Allison posed me for several pictures, making it truly like the wedding reception I never had. Instead of stuffing cake into some guys face, I held up my Spaghetti Scepter next to my book sign. For several hours I was transported to a parallel dream world where I had no problems, everyone was happy for me, and there was lots of pasta. The happiness just glowed outwards and I had a great time, even though my feet were battered from running and started to hurt in my heels.

Then I went home and slept for nine bazillion years.

Thank you to everyone who attended! I hope you had a good time too. Special thanks to my mom, Donna, Elaine, Adrienne and Allison for all their work and planning. Thanks to my publisher for the signs and their other support. And kudos to our server Barb who cracked me up and truly earned her tips by walking up and down the stairs from the kitchen to our dining room.

Maybe we can do this again some time.

"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 day. And there's still a paranoid part of me that wonders if I'll get to the studio and they'll decide I'm too fat to go on TV. TV anchors are such teeny, tiny people in real life that I'm sure I'm going to look huge in comparison. However, now that travel arrangements have been made and I've sent them lots of photos, I feel like this might actually be happening. That, and my name is now appearing in common household electronics, as if my spirit is haunting the blender.

I don't know yet who will be interviewing me, though it will probably be Jenna Wolf or Lester Holt. I wanted to thank everybody who's been involved in making this happen and scheduling my plans. (They know who they are.) I feel very lucky to get an opportunity for national exposure like this and I'll try to do you all proud. At the very least I'll try not to trip over the camera wires.

If you were at my book release party this weekend, I broke the news to you first. Speaking of which, I will try to write a post about the party this week (as soon as I give up sleep and sort through the photos).

The funniest thing though is that when I pulled up the listing on my mom's TiVo, there was a bit of an optical illusion due to the font selection and how close the letters were together. So instead of looking like "Jennette Fulda" it looks like someone named "Jennette Fukla" is scheduled to appear. I don't know who this Fukla chick is, but she better not steal my thunder.

Thanks in advance for all your good wishes!

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!

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 5: Kalyn's Kitchen
Tuesday, May 6: CalorieLab (interview)
Wednesday, May 7: Life of L
Thursday, May 8: Big Fat Deal
Friday, May 9: Cranky Fitness
Monday, May 12: DietGirl
Tuesday, May 13: Diet Blog (guest post)
Wednesday, May 14: Elastic Waist (interview)
Thursday, May 15: Livin' La Vida Low Carb
Friday, May 16: Back in Skinny Jeans
Monday, May 19: Manic Mommy (book giveaway!)
Tuesday, May 20: CalorieLab (review)
Wednesday, May 21: Elastic Waist (guest on video show The Daily Special)
Thursday, May 22: The Skinny at the Florida Sun-Sentinel
Friday, May 23: Roni's Weight Watchen Page
Monday, May 26: The Diet Naked Blog formerly "The Amazing Shrinking Mom" (book giveaway!)

I also wanted to thank the following blogs for posting reviews before I got my act together to schedule the blog tour.

April 10 - In My Heels
April 24 - Morgan Gets Thin
April 26 - Yet Another Weight Watcher's Blog

And if you've posted a review, interview, revealing photos of me and want to be listed in this post, e-mail me and I'll include a link. Except if you posted revealing photos, in which case I'll send you a cease and desist letter.

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 in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind where everyone is inexplicable drawn to the mountain at the end of the film. I was one of thousands of people converging on a couple blocks of downtown Indianapolis for a shared, unspoken reason. 35,000 people run the half-marathon, so to prevent congestion they divide us into starting corrals from A-Z based on our estimated finishing time. I was in S. As my mom and I sat on the blockades, we read people's bibs and occasionally I would whisper to her, "Look! That person is a B!" as though I'd just seen a celebrity. I only saw one A and I felt like I should kiss his running shoes in tribute to his superior athletic skill.

About 15 minutes before the gun time, I got into my corral. This is when I started to feel a little self-conscious about the sign I'd taped to my back.

I figured there were 35,000 people in this race, and most of them would be passing me, so I might as well use my back to promote my book. I felt a bit silly about it, but I figured I wouldn't have to make eye-contact with anyone who read it, saving me some embarrassment. I checked my phone and saw I'd missed a call from Laura, another blogger running the race, and called her back, but we weren't able to find each other before the race started. Sorry, Laura!

At 7:30, the race started! It looked like this:

Can't you smell the excitement? As I said, I was in the S corral, meaning thousands of people in the A-R corrals were ahead of me. So, we waited.

And we waited.

Someone threw a beach ball into the crowd which we bounced around. Slowly we started walking in fits and stops to the starting line two blocks ahead of us. As we got within 100 yards of the starting line, people started walking faster, then we were jogging, and then 18 minutes and 15 seconds later I was crossing the starting line thinking, "Oh, hey, I'm running a half-marathon. How weird." Then I did some mental math and tried not to be discouraged by the fact that the elite runners were already past mile 3 by now.

The race course was very similar to the training series course, except for the pit stops where the asphalt road could barely be seen beneath the trampled paper cups. At first I tried tossing my cup into the trash cans, but they were overflowing by the time us slower runners passed by, so I settled for aiming for the gutter instead. I had brought my headphones and MP3 player along, but was surprised to find I didn't need them because so much was happening. There were good cover bands and bad cover bands and bagpipes and cloggers and square dancers all along the route. I wouldn't even be able to plot out the race course on a map because I wasn't paying attention to the street signs. I just followed everybody else. There were time clocks at each mile marker, so I kept checking my pace bracelet as we ran, mentally trying to add 18 minutes to the time. Mental math is hard when you're running a mini-marathon.

Near mile 6, I started to think about walking. I kept running anyway. Then we came upon the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As part of the race, the runners do a lap around the Speedway, though I was only going about 2% as fast as the racecars. We ran down a steep ramp to enter the stadium. Awesome! So fast and so easy. Then we had to run up a steep ramp to get on the track. Not awesome! So slow and so hard.

It was at this point that I realized the weather was freaking gorgeous. The sun was shining bright, a cool breeze came across the infield, and I was actually a bit hot. I couldn't believe I'd thought about wearing my fleece vest this morning. Suddenly all those people in shorts and tank tops that I'd laughed at in the morning cold seemed a lot smarter than me. I rolled up my long-sleeved shirt and kept running around the track.

And kept running around the track.

And kept running around the track some more.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is evidently two and a half miles long, as I now know very well. After we exited the speedway, we passed a family sitting on lawn chairs in their front lawn drinking beer and watching us run by. After I passed through a Gatorade station, my feet started sticking to the pavement. Oh no, how many seconds was that taking off of my time?

At mile 10, I decided I needed the cheesy techno. I put on my headphones and it was only a dance remix of Bryan Adams singing "Run to You" that got me through the next mile. I started wishing the pit stops would come closer and closer together so I'd have a good excuse to slow down and walk. Someone ran past wearing a shirt that said "Are we there yet?" Good question.

Somewhere before the 12 mile marker I slowed down to walk for a minute. Then I started running again. As we got within a mile of the finish line the signs started telling us how much farther we had to go. 1 mile left. 3/4 of a mile left. At 1/2 mile left I stopped to walk. My lower abs were aching and my toes were starting to hurt.

As we approached the 1/4 mile left sign, I could finally see the finish line. I started running again. A woman on the sidelines yelled, "Go, Jennette!" While I know she just read my name off my bib and had no idea who I was, it was very encouraging. Some people next to me actually started to sprint to the finish line. Jerks. I would have tripped them if I wasn't so damn exhausted. As I kept running and running, the finish line came closer and closer. It was very unexpected. For the last leg of the race in my training series runs we had to turn a corner and then turn a corner and then turn another corner and BAM! there was the finish line. Now I could actually see the end heading straight towards me.

And then I crossed the finish line. I couldn't believe it was over. No, really, I didn't quite believe that it was okay to stop running. For the last three miles I felt like I'd be running forever, that the rest of my life would be spent drudging along, trying to finish an endless race. I imagined that decades from now my relatives would be driving past 10th street, see me and shake their heads sadly as I plodded along trying to finish that damn mini-marathon. "Keep going, keep going, keep going," I had told myself and now I got to say, "Okay, stop." It made the race suddenly seem much shorter. A 13.1 mile race is much shorter than an endless race.

I threw my hands up victoriously for the photographer, though I was so tired my palms probably didn't reach above my head. My official time was 2 hours, 33 minutes, 26 seconds. Then I got lots of free stuff that only cost me $50.00 in registration fees. At the recovery area I grabbed a banana, apple, potato chips and a rather dry, chocolate chip cookie. But no bagels! What was this? All the training series runs had bagels afterwards, but suddenly there were no cinnamon crunch or French toast bagels in sight. Where were you when I needed you, Panera?

People sometimes joke about hobbling after runs, but I literally did hobble to the family reunion area to get a big hug from my mother.

"I'm so proud of you," she said.

"Thanks. Can I lean on you?" I replied. And then I did. I leaned on her for a whole minute before I felt strong enough to stand up again. Someone must have rearranged the layout of the city in that time because suddenly the parking garage was a lot farther away. Even today, my quads are sore, my toes are sore, my shoulders are sore, and if I breathe in really deeply my lungs are sore.

Before I left, I was standing in line to get my picture taken with my shiny finisher's medal and I heard a girl in line behind me say, "That's so awesome." While she might have been referring to her chocolate chip cookie, I think she was referring to the sign on my back with my book cover which said, "I lost half my weight, now I'm running a half-marathon. I hope this idea isn't half-baked!" Her comment made me smile a little bit, because while I'm mostly a humble person, it is pretty awesome isn't it? I really did lose half my weight. And I really did just run a half-marathon. When my mom and I returned to the parking garage, she said there were a lot of things she'd thought I do in life, but never this. "I never thought I'd have an athlete in the family." And we didn't even have to adopt the illegitimate child of an NBA superstar to do it. It's me.

Then we stopped at a bakery and I stood in line, sweaty and gross in my full running gear, to buy a huge cinnamon roll. Because seriously, no bagels?

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 shirt + Rain + Bouncing for 13.1 miles = Girls Gone Wild: Mini-Marathon Edition.

A black bra it is!

I've got my checklist of items to bring. I'm going to lay out my outfit and all my stuff tonight. I've got maps to the locations. I'm picking up my packet at the exposition tonight. I'm eating my carbs and drinking my water. I feel prepared.

After the race, you can still come to my book release party at 3pm at The Milano Inn downtown. There will be plenty of food and I'll be selling books! Hope you can make it. I will try to post about the race and the party as soon as possible, but it might be a couple days after the events because, boy, am I going to be tired.

By the way, for anyone who was wondering, I think my appearance on the local Fox Morning News show went pretty well yesterday. My VHS tape of the show has a big, squiggly stripe of interference halfway through my segment, so I'll try to rip it off of my Mom's TiVo sometime later and post it on the book site when I find the time, as well as a post over there about what the experience was like.

All sparrows are birds
Not all birds are sparrows.
Some sparrows are black.
If Lulu is a black bird, is she a sparrow?

Except this is a more complicated since not all low-calorie foods are healthy and not all healthy foods are low-calorie. How do I write an "if, then" statement for that?

One of the reasons it took me so long to start eating healthy is because I couldn't figure out what "healthy" meant. What do you eat when you eat healthy? Rice cakes? Tofu? It's even more confusing because you have to look at a person's overall diet and not just a single choice they make for one meal. They might eat oatmeal for breakfast, but then chomp on fried onion rings laden in trans-fat for dinner. Or they might be making a lot of low-calorie choices, but are eating so much packaged food that their sodium levels are higher than Lot's wife. There are so many components that qualify a healthy eating style that you might be doing well in some areas and failing in others.

As many people pointed out, the Hungry Girl recipes use a lot of sugar substitutes and sugar-free ingredients that use - dun,dun,dun - chemicals! There seem to be two camps on the use of chemicals in foods, people who don't want to touch anything that is not natural because they believe it's bad for their bodies and people who don't care as long as they can have something sweet with no calories. I admit, I'm one of the latter people who doesn't care how much Splenda and Aspartame they pump into me as long as I can have something sweet to drink that is low-cal. However, I also understand why people are cautious about artificial ingredients. Your body is your most valuable possession and you get to decide what you put in it. I always wait until a software release has been out for a couple months before upgrading so the developers can work out all the bugs. I figure the people who are cautious about artificial ingredients are just waiting it out to see if we all develop an extra arm a decade from now. And, boy, are they going to be jealous when we do! Who wouldn't like to have third arm? I would be an awesome drum player!

I also don't believe that just because something is artificial it is bad or if it's natural it's good. Arsenic is all natural and it will kill you. Thousands of the medications we use today are artificial and save lives every day. All I would say is that the artificial products are newer and we might not know their full effect on our bodies yet. I'm willing to take the risk, but I understand why others don't want to and fully support their decision. I'm lucky that I'm still rather young and I can chew on Tupperware and still feel okay. I'm sure as I get older that will not be the case and I'll have to start watching things like my cholesterol or my sodium levels. But for now, I'm not too concerned about that stuff.

I know some people just don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners. And other people are actually capable of putting one teaspoon of honey in their yogurt and stopping right there. I have never been able to do that. Instead, I find myself sucking honey out of a plastic bear's head in the middle of the evening like a zombie eating Winnie the Pooh's brains. So, in comparison to gorging myself on real sugar, eating a lot of fake sugar seems better by comparison.

There is also a theory that artificial sweeteners make you hungrier than eating natural sweeteners because your body is expecting to get calories when it tastes something sweet. When it doesn't get those calories, supposedly this makes you want to eat even more than if you hadn't had the fake sugar. I have no idea if this is true or not. There is the odd fact that people who drink diet sodas evidently tend to gain more weight than people who don't. I will say, I lost almost 200 pounds drinking diet sodas all the way. It sure was a lot better than drinking normal sodas with hundreds of calories every day.

Perhaps that's what it's about, not necessarily having the best diet on the planet, just a better one. Maybe we shouldn't aim for the impossible task of eating a completely healthy diet, just a healthier diet. You don't have to be the healthiest eater on the planet. No one is going to give you a prize. But you can almost always make improvements to your lifestyle, so perhaps it's better to focus on that.

Hungry Girl: Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World by Lisa Lillien

I think I first became aware of the Hungry Girl web site and mailing list when someone linked to her Rome Apple + Diet Dr Pepper recipe. Cooking with soda seems so inherently wrong that I had to try it. The baked apple itself was rather underwhelming, but I liked the upbeat, fun attitude of the site and the cute illustrations. Plus, all the recipes are low-calorie and aimed at healthy eaters.

Earlier in the month I was trolling around the Amazon best-selling books list, by no means doing anything as self-centered and vain as checking my own book's Amazon ranking every hour (it was more like every day), when I saw that Hungry Girl, aka Lisa Lillien, has a book out too. How cool! I love to see writers who started on the Internet getting books published. Only, it wasn't coming out until today. Eager to get my hands on it, I threw what's left of my weight around and for the first time actually requested that someone send me a book for free. And they did. It's amazing what you can get in life if you just ask for it. Thanks, St. Martin's Press!

This book is a lot of fun, which is an odd adjective to use about a cookbook, but it's true. There are lots of illustrations and all the recipes have fun names like "Lord of the Onion Rings" or "Fettuccine Hungry Girlfredo" or "Yummy Yummy Eggplant Goo" which almost makes me excited to eat something referred to as "goo." Good titles can actually make a meal taste better, as I learned in Mindless Eating.

What I really like is that it's not just a cookbook. As the subtitle says there are also "survival strategies." The book has tips and facts scattered throughout to help you curb cravings and avoid the social pressures to eat more. There is also a really excellent final chapter called "Survival Guides" which gives you tips about how to eat healthy at different types of restaurants (Chinese, sushi, Italian) and in different scenarios (on a plane, on the road, at the office). The tip I loved is that it's better to take a piece of cake at an office party and then not eat it than it is to refuse it outright. This way people won't nag you about not participating in the fun, and most of them won't notice you didn't actually eat what was on your plate.

There are four pages of full-color photos of recipes in the book, but you can find pictures of all the recipes on the Hungry Girl book site. The book is graphically designed similarly to the Hungry Girl site, so everything seems like it's part of a cohesive brand. All the recipes include nutritional information and Weight Watcher's points values. There are also several single-serving recipes, which as a single woman I appreciate. Many times I make a new recipe from a cookbook and end up eating it for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week.

The only bad thing about the book is that I had to go on a scavenger hunt in the grocery store looking for some of the ingredients, like diet cocoa mix and sugar-free maple syrup. I had a hell of a time finding cornstarch because Kroger only had one box left stuffed all the way at the back of the bottom shelf next to the baking soda. I was also reminded of why I don't buy entire bags of chocolate chips, even if I'm going to use them in a healthy recipe, because I just end up chomping on them straight out of the bag. The only other bad thing about the book is that it doesn't come with someone to cook all the recipes for me.

Also, if you live in the Indianapolis area, I'm scheduled to be on the Fox Morning News on Thursday, May 1st at about 8:30 am. Set your TiVos.

Our final long run before the Mini-Marathon was uneventful. I came. I ran. I drank Gatorade. It was all so normal it was almost mundane, which is a good thing, because it means I'm prepared for the race. Our group leader said it was common for people to get jitters the week before the race, but I feel as cool as the Gatorade I was drinking. I've been doing the running and I know I'll be able to finish. I'll probably get anxious-excited the night before the race, but only out of anticipation, not worry.

There was one weird thing about the final run. I was only a block away from the end point at the running store when I had to run past a wooden porch next to a local restaurant. There were half a dozen people standing there who suddenly started cheering and whooping and looking at me as I ran by. Um, was I supposed to know these people? They yelled things like, "Good job!" and "Way to go!" I gave them a confused look, and then they looked confused when I kept running past them. I think they were part of another training group, the Team in Training organization that had a water station right at the bridge. However, it was rather fun having people randomly rooting for me. It made me wonder what it would be like if this happened in other aspects of our lives. You could be walking down the office hallway and suddenly encounter your coworkers yelling, "You rock the copy machine!" or "Way to refill the coffee maker!" It would make life so much more exciting and surprising, if somewhat creepy.

Now that training is almost over, I want to show you what it's done to my feet. And yes, I know I have no future as a foot model.

The black color is due to dried blood under the nail bed. Consider it organic nail polish. It's way cheaper and better for the environment. I've had the black toenail on my left foot since my 5K two months ago. The half-black toenail on my right foot showed up a few weeks later, and now my long toe on my right foot has turned a bit red. It's not painful, though if you squeeze those toes, they do hurt a little. This can happen if you don't keep your nails trimmed or if your shoes don't fit properly. My shoes feel pretty comfortable, but since I have the gene that makes my second toe longer than my big toe, I think that toe may be brushing my shoe slightly during my runs. As a result, I can now peel that nail halfway off my toe. Cool! If I were a spy, I could hide a microchip of secret documents under there.

As you can see, I also have crossed toes, or bunions. This is another genetic trait that I've had since birth, not a condition due to ill-fitting shoes as it can be in many people. For most of my training I wore separators to straighten the toes, but decided to stop a month ago because I thought they might have contributed to my foot injury. As a result, last week I started developing a blister on my long toe, not because of bad socks or poor shoes, but because my toe is now rubbing against...MY TOE! It's not painful, just rather ridiculous. I'm rather proud of me feet. They're not as gnarly as a ballerina's feet (warning, gross foot image), but they show how much I've used them. And the blood will go away eventually.

This week the training winds down to only 20-minute and 30-minute runs. I'll start carbo-loading a couple days before the race, gaining weight in glycogen and water right before my monthly weigh-in. (Oh, fun.) Carbs get converted to glycogen, which is stored in your muscles and liver. Glycogen is instant energy that your muscles can access immediately. However, for every pound of glycogen your body stores it also stores 3-4 pound of water. When people say you've lost "water weight" at the beginning of a diet, that's the weight they're referring too. I'm going to be gaining water weight, so I'll just have to remind myself I'm not getting fat, I'm just storing energy - heavy, heavy, energy.

My training group is making pace bracelets for everyone which I'll pick up at the end of the week. You give them the time you want to finish in and they give you a bracelet that has the time you should hit each mile marker printed on it. I'm aiming for two hours, 30 minutes. I'm planning out what I'm going to wear on race day and I'll lay it out the night before. It should be all good. The best thing is knowing that a week from now all this running will be over!

ETA: A couple people asked if that last sentence meant I was going to stop running. Nope, I'm still going to run, just not so much. Those 60-minute long runs on the weekend are killer.