I’m watching Mark Bittman’s interview from last night’s Colbert Report and there was a mention of how he is “vegan until 6PM”.

It just struck me as a brilliant idea for anyone trying to cut back on meat and add more vegetables and such to their diets. You wouldn’t even have to go full vegan, or even until 6PM. Say, vegetarian for the first half of the day. Even that could make quite an impact on your overall diet and health.

It’s something I am definitely going to have to give more thought to.

…sucks. There’s just no other way to describe it. There is nothing quite as annoying as discovering that some of your favorite things to eat and drink are making up WAY too much of your caloric intake for the day. (Why must my beloved Cokes cost me 140 calories a pop??)

I’ve come to the realization that my metabolism isn’t quite what it used to be and I can’t eat and drink everything in sight anymore without it having a few consequences. And those consequences all seem to be stuck to my backside.

I am not crash dieting, and frankly, I’m concentrating more on kicking up my calorie burn through exercise than making myself miserable by living on rice cakes. But, I do need to drop about 5 pounds by the beginning of summer so I can at least fit in my swimsuits.

That being said, I am concentrating on finding a few more things to eat that are filling and satisfying, but don’t make up 50% of calories consumed in a day with a single serving – but without having to resort to “lite” or “low/no-fat” ingredients.

In short, I will not be giving up my Shallot Parmesan Risotto (316 calories!), but I see a few more carrot sticks in my future. (And possibly some attempts to make a lower calorie version of my favorite salad dressing – Ken’s creamy caesar dressing – that is what does in my otherwise fairly healthy house salad…)

Some good does come out of paying attention to these things though – nice to find out that my beloved roasted asparagus (made with honest to god butter) is only 9 cals a stalk. A dozen of those is a nice snack and at 108 calories, isn’t going to destroy the day.

Don’t worry, this won’t become a health blog. ;) But I will be talking more about food in the context of it’s caloric contributions to my butt.