I’m oh-so-fickle when it comes to diets.  I’ll vascillate from one to another, never finding one that truly satisfies me long-term.  One of my biggest problems with dieting is that I have a raging sweet tooth.  I have a hard time eating foods in strictly measured amounts – for instance, if a two-inch square of cake equals x number of points – I’ll readily cheat by telling myself, “Oh, a three-inch square isn’t that much bigger, so it won’t really matter.”  That type of thinking invariably leads me to failure.  On the other hand, I can’t stay with diets that are TOO strict, such as the ones that require you to eat carrot sticks at 2 PM and radishes at 4 PM, or whatever. 

Several years ago, I learned of a diet called the 3-Apple-A-Day Plan while shopping for apples at Sam’s Club in Parkersburg, West Virginia.  Sam’s sells everything in large quantities, and nearly every 10-pound bag of apples in their produce section had a sticker that advertised the 3-Apple-A-Day Plan.  My curiosity was piqued, so when I got home, I did some research about the Plan on the Internet.  

I learned that Tammi Flynn is the nutrition director at Gold’s Gym in Wenatchee, Washington, and in a nutshell, she discovered that clients who ate an apple before every meal were shedding pounds like crazy.  Some people lost as much as 30 pounds in three months.  Well, I like apples, and I wanted to have results like that, so I bought Ms. Flynn’s bookat our local Wal-Mart.

Being the flake that I am, however, I followed the plan for a day or two, then promptly regressed into my old (bad) habits.  The 3-Apple-A-Day Plan ended up in my stack of unread books, and when I was downsizing last year, I even tried to sell it at the V-100 yard sale in Charleston.  Fortunately, the book didn’t have any takers and it ended up coming back home with me.  I decided to just hang onto it for awhile.   

The book surfaced again recently, so I decided to give the plan a more serious try.  Last Thursday, I followed the 1800 calorie meal plan from the book.  I wasn’t hungry all day, so yesterday I figured I could go with even less calories and I used the 1500 calorie plan, but I cheated last night and impulsively ate a Kashi oatmeal raisin cookie for an additional 130-or-so calories.  I really could have done without the cookie, though, since the apples seem to be curbing my cravings for sweets for the most part. 

My apple of choice is the Pink Lady, because it’s so crisp and tangy-sweet.  My second favorite is the Granny Smith, with Gala running a close third.  I must confess that I have a strange quirk about apples, though — I don’t like to eat them whole, out of hand.  I always feel like the apple is all over my face once I’ve finished eating it.  So, I always slice them up.  

At any rate, I hope I can stick with this diet for awhile and make it work.         

I have a really, really bad habit of buying books.  I can’t go in Borders, Books-a-Million, or Target without buying at least one book (usually more).  The problem is, I buy them faster than I can read them.   

I had most of my books, plus many of my children’s used homeschool textbooks piled on, under, and around an antique table in my bedroom.  I recently went through all of them and sorted them into the books I’ve read and the ones I still need to read.  Then I determined which of Caroline’s old textbooks I intend to use for Peter, and which ones neither of them will need.  I also had Caroline and Peter go through the floor-to-ceiling bookcases in our dining room and decide which of their books (both novels and non-fiction stuff) they want to keep, and which ones no longer hold their interest (e.g., Blues Clues, Powder Puff Girls, etc.).   

Then I put my yet-to-be-read books back under the table in my bedroom, and piled all of the books I need to get rid of on the other side of my room.  They’ve been sitting there for awhile, and I trip over them constantly, most often when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom.   Yesterday, it was as if Alexander finally noticed them for the first time.  He said, “Um, what are you planning to do with all of those books?”  Well, silly, I plan to list them on eBay!  What else do I do with the stuff I no longer need or want?

It’s just a matter of finding (or taking) the time to sit down and list them.  I purchased nearly all of these books new, but I doubt if I’ll be able to get much out of them.  If books had a high resale value, I could probably finance a horse with their proceeds!