No more croissants

Well hello there!

I've been busy... my parents and my aunt and uncle were here, and I had a birthday! It was all wonderful, and of course it was great to see the gang. They weren't here long enough! I will post some photos when I get a chance, but I may not have a chance until after the 17th, when I have my exactly 15-minute-long (plus 10 mins for questions) interview, and yup, it's in French -- to become a French civil servant so I can stay in my current cushy lifestyle for a while.

In the meantime I began a diet today, just because it's time to get disciplined about this or I'll never get to a healthy weight. So I'll be counting calories for the next three months or so. I'm not doing any weird sort of diet, just trying to keep things balanced, lots of veggies, not so many carbs and fats. But I'm counting calories because otherwise it's very easy to convince myself that I can have just another few bites, which turns into another serving.

There are two non-fat dairy products I was unable to find at the Monoprix: non-fat cottage cheese, which wasn't surprising--it's surprising that they even have full-fat cottage cheese--and non-fat milk, which I did find surprising. Maybe I should try a fromager. (That's 'cheese seller,' for non-Frenchies.)

It's been a while since I was last counting calories, and I forgot how much frickin' time one ends up spending thinking about food. Not that I'm hungry and craving it, because I'm not, and that's not the kind of diet I want to do anyway... but geez, just the sheer amount of time spent planning! I guess it gets easier after a while, though.

Some sites that have been helpful: traineo, a simple tracker for working out and dieting, Ate Today, a simple way to track what you eat (nice easy interface), and Nutrition Data, which has loads of neat visuals, including a cool RGB diagram for seeing the carb-fat-protein ratio of what you eat (but not a very simple interface, alas).