You need to begin again? Come on back!

Why is it so hard to just start over?

I really believe it is hard to jump back on the horse because the brain loves the chemical highs it gets from those influxes of carbs. Carbohydrates are so like a drug in many ways.

I know that, like a friend of mine, if I'm off-plan it takes me waking up ill every morning before I finally clean up my act. And even still, by 3pm in the afternoon it is awfully easy to conveniently ignore feeling dizzy and ill for needing a handful of chips.

We jones. We crave. We need that fix. It's our blood sugar, it's our brains, but it's our lives, too.

The good news? We have choices. They may be unexciting, and they may be underwhelming, but we usually ignore our freedom of choice until it is removed from us. Then we realize all too late what choices we could have made, should have made.

Now is the perfect time to choose to make the rest of the year a beautiful one.

Emerge next Spring as a new you, and spend this New Year's Eve not steeped in regret, but celebrating how far we've all come this year because of the choices we have made towards living happier, healthier lives.

You don't have to be perfect. Just try your best. You can do this!

Welcome home.

Arrr be the winner of the photo caption contest

Ye Favorite Pirating hat 3 gold pieces

A night of debachery with ye favorite wench 6 gold pieces

Bein caught on Cleo's blog with your wooden plank and said hat... Priceless!

You guys are hilarious! It was hard picking only one, but a committee of three very caffeinated people chose the winner. Vikki, please email me at cleochatra@gmail.com with your home address and I'll get the book right out to you.

Oy! Where are all the guessers! And spaghetti...

First things first.

When I let you guys enter a contest in email I get hundreds of entries. I ask you to caption a picture and you go all quiet on me. I swear you guys are more quiet than an underwater mime concert. :^D

Is there too much pressure to perform? I just wanted to try something different. The odds of someone winning went from 1 in hundreds to like 1 in 10.

Why can't I have that kind of luck with Publisher's Clearinghouse?


On to the good stuff

Ooh! Check it! See that picture above? That recipe is now an Examiner.com article for a low-carb Spaghetti recipe. Be prepared to celebrate taking back your weight loss plan with this and other recipes I'm rolling out to you in the coming months. My goal? To keep you in foods you enjoy so much you'll never leave this way of life for wont of something you felt you couldn't have.

Take that, low-calorie flour-laden pasta lameness!

I literally have a couple hundred recipes to share with you!


Do you have a great recipe to share?

If you have a great recipe you want to share with the nation on my column, please let me know. I always give full credit and will only publish your original recipes. By posting them you are not transferring the rights to me. I am merely sharing your brilliance with the country.

Please include a picture and nutritional information when it exists.

Send your favorite low-carb recipe to cleochatra@gmail.com

Is it worth it to keep trying?

Sometimes I get a great question from a frustrated friend. "Is low-carbing worth it? Should I try again?"

It is definitely worth it to try again! Anything worthwhile in your life is worth fighting for, no matter how many times you have to begin anew.

Low-carbing is a lifestyle, and like any lifestyle, it is difficult to change old perceptions and ways of doing things. Our brains have been programmed to behave certain ways. Changing to new ways of thinking and doing things takes time.

You remember how wonderful the healthy lifestyle of low-carbing made you feel, so my advice? Give this extra effort the next two weeks of your life.

Remember that Atkins and low-carb shouldn't be any more of an event in your day than caring for braces.

You take time initially getting used to the braces and the fact that you can't have caramel or huge mouthfuls of crunchy apple, and you move forward to taking the extra effort to care for your mouth appliance.

And when accidents happen do you rip the braces from your straightening teeth? No. You work through it.

A low-carb lifestyle becomes natural eventually, with some practice. And anything you do for health should feel as normal as caring for your teeth on a daily basis. You need your teeth and you need your health.

So go care for those braces!

Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrr! Contest for ye landlubbers!

Source

Ahoy, ye low-carb land lubbers!

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day! I have a recipe for Dill Pickle Planks and want ye to learn to speak right proper, lest ye want to walk the plank!

Pirate Speak Translator

Caption Contest

In yer best Pirate Speak, caption the picture above. The best, wittiest, most ridiculously hilarious response will will a copy of Juicing, Fasting and Detoxing for Life, a book which will clean yer poop deck and offer some healthy recipes for those who like thar meals in liquid forrrrmmm! (I'll review this book next week)

Thar contest lasts until next Friday. Leave yar comment alow deck on this yar blogg, and I shall pick the winner next Friday as sure as barnacles make yer ankles look slimmer.


Winners be sure to check back next Friday to see if you won. You will have to supply a home or PO box address in an email to me if your caption be chosen to receive your prize.

Promises with a twist (not very low-carb)

Sometimes friends ask me for advice regarding different situations they happen to be encountering in their lives.

Not long ago, my friend Rita was embroiled in an interesting situation regarding when to keep something hush-hush, and when fingers should never do the talking. Her neighbor and friend Rita had called in a panic. "Jill. Could you ask John if he saw anything unusual at school today?"

With a little prompting, and what sounded like a valium being chased down by a triple foam latte on the other end of the phone, she told me she was able to determine that her high school son had acquired what amounted to a rather large bruise near his eye. I assured her that I she should ask her son about it, and he had claimed that he had fallen down a flight of bleachers in gym class.

"Some bleachers!" Jill exclaimed.

Because those red flags of motherhood have a tendency to pop up and wave themselves wildly, until there is answer for them, Jill assured Rita that she would ask John about it as soon as he stepped into the door.

Later, Jill struck up a jovial conversation with her son. "So, I heard Mark got a pretty good shiner! What happened?" (She has a way to finesse my way subtly into a situation. It's a gift.)

"Well," began John, avoiding eye contact, "I really don't want to say anything." The impending silence and sensation of Jil's motherly orbs burning shame into the side of his head were enough for him to break. Besides, she had the box of Crackerdoodles he was looking for in the pantry. Visibly uncomfortable, he shifted from foot to foot. "I'll tell you, but you can't tell a soul, because Mark made me promise."

She finally acquiesced to the terms of the agreement, swearing on a stack of Nintendo Power Magazines that her lips would forevermore be sealed.

Son then went on to explain, between handfuls of cheesy cracker snacks. "Mark was giving nipple twisters to another of the kids at school, and the kid hauled off and punched Mark in the face." Jill and John reacted as could be expected for the moment: they guffawed for a few minutes, both at how ridiculousness the situation was compared to the worry of a mom, and second, at the image of Mark giving another teenager a nipple twister.

Unfortunately, the joviality of the event broke into smithereens suddenly when Rita saw Jill the next morning as they were in the usual shuffle to send kids towards school. Before their eyes met, in a wild and last-minute attempt to dive behind the garbage cans to keep from view, Jill instead stumbled over her shoe, and fell unceremoniously into a compost bin. When she looked up, she saw her friend.

"Did John tell you anything about what happened to Mark?" she asked, plucking a piece of lettuce from Jill's hair.

This is when Jill painfully recalled the promise made to her son. There wasn't much she could palpably do in a situation like this. Part of her remembered that she is the parent, and that promises made could and should be broken when it has to do with someone's health and well-being. At the same time, these were the nipples of the young adult bipedal hominid, and some of the most pliable bits of flesh known to mankind. At the same time, she could see in Rita's tired eyes a desperate hope of knowledge she trusted that Jill had.

Looking for the happy medium of blabbing or letting a fellow mother down, she finally relented, "Well, I can't tell you what happened, but I can show you." She leaned forward towards her hopeful, waiting friend.

That afternoon, as Jill's son roamed into the kitchen for his afternoon snack, he stopped short. His eyes popped open, and as he drew near for a closer look at his mother's left temple, he plucked a piece of rhubarb from her ear. "MOM! That-you have a black eye! What hap--?"

Just as his voice box was about to complete the sentence, he saw the sharp glare which threatened his possession of car keys, and he abandoned the issue altogether.

Looking back, it was probably the self-examination of some things being better left unsaid in the wisdom of the young person who has had time to examine his life and who makes intelligent judgment decisions often based in restraint. Further examination from the casual observer might argue that it was more likely an outstretched mother's fingers flying out towards the boy's chest at just the right moment which silenced any commentary.

Or, on the other hand, it looked to be just another one of those unfortunate gym class incidents.

She pointed at me then, muttering, "Not a word."

"Bleachers?" I asked, anyway (I'd never been good at the whole not a word thing).

"With nipples," she nodded.

Our Official Low-Carb Mascot-- meet Maynard

Maynard wants a smooch.

He's a low-carber, too, you know.

Venus fly traps are plants which thrive on the proteins of living insects like flies and ants. They do not fare well with hamburger, jerky or even low-carb cauliflower pizza. (I know. Crazayzay!)

So, Maynard ekes out his existence on my windowsill hoping for wary bugs looking for a hep, green friend. Sometimes I wish Maynard ate small pets. I have this dog...

Winner of the Splendid Low-Carbing Cookbook is...

With nimble fingers, drawn from hundreds of the most attractive people I've ever met...

Sonya, congratulations! I will mail the cook book this weekend to you.

Thank you all so much for entering.

Stay tuned for another giveaway (next Friday. I'm swamped right now with book reviews--not a bad thing. I love passing them on to you!).