Every time I've ever tried to quit smoking, I have simply ground out the very last cigarette in my very last pack and then I was quit, and I didn't smoke again. Until I started smoking again. Sometimes a day later, or a week later or a month later, and a couple of times I managed more than a few months, a handful of them, a year or so. I have quit smoking for as many as four years, before taking it back up with enthusiasm and gusto. I have a lot of gusto, when it comes to smoking. And I always go back to it.

I would rather do this on my own. Just set the pack down and walk away. Except, when I do, I always walk away telling myself that maybe I can smoke again later, if I am good, on special occasions, and when the sky is blue. And I always keep my promises. So clearly, quitting on my own and quitting without help is not something that sticks for me. I need a program! A cessation program! Maybe one that involves drugs and gums and shots and a watch that is swung gently before me, pendulum-like, in a dark room while a man in glasses with a little beard soothingly invites me to go into a deep trance during which he will reprogram my brain and fix me right up, good as new.

It's not like I look sexy when I do it (I feel maybe a little sexy, but I know I look far from sexy). It's not like it fulfills me, makes me feel good, or satisfies me. In fact, it bankrupts me, makes me feel light-headed and kind of ick, and it is the furthest thing from satisfying to leave the house smelling like flowers and end up smelling like ashtrays. And yet, I continue to smoke. I buy a pack, I smoke a pack, I buy a pack, I smoke a pack, steady as a metronome. That ticking sound you hear? The counting off of the minutes of my life every puff snips off the end.

How many times have you ordered an appetizer with your meal and then declared you're no longer hungry anymore, before the entree even arrives? Do you ever try to cancel the order? Or do you just plow onward, eating past the point of comfort just because it tastes good and you don't want to inconvenience the waitstaff?

One of the things that people with disordered eating struggle with is the fact that we've lost a connection with our sense of satiety. Through our struggles with food, we've stopped listening to our bodies, and food is no longer associated with hunger or lack thereof. We eat when we're not hungry. We don't eat when we're faint from hunger. It takes a long time to start listening to those cues again. I have done a better job of not reaching for food when I'm in need of comfort (instead, I browse for shoes online...yes, total transference and also a problem) but when I'm actually hungry, I'm still struggling with identifying the moment at which I stop being hungry. It almost never ever coincides with the last bite off the plate. In fact, I have usually hit the full mark about half a meal ago. And since the brain takes time to get the message that the stomach is full, the trick is identifying not only when you're full, but also, being able to predict how much food to eat that will allow you to coast into fullness twenty minutes after you've stopped eating.

We're all feeling the economic crunch, but despite the cold thin line of ice water that trickles through my veins when I check my 401(k) balance (if you haven't already checked, please, I beg of you, just don't look), I find that I'm adapting better than I thought I would. You see, I've done this before. I grew up exceptionally poor, and then I moved out of the house and became even more staggeringly poor. I fully know about the way that the little things add up to a huge cash hemorrhage. You wouldn't think that something as benign as a cup of Starbucks or a bottle of OPI nail polish would break anyone's budget, but combine that with a $15 lunch and a pedicure and take out food at night (don't forget to tip the delivery person), in the span of one day, you've dropped almost a benjamin on things that really do not matter.  In fact, if you really thought about it, you might have actually added a little extra stress by making those choices. You have to ask yourself what the end goal is and which will make you the happiest: financial solvency or some General Tso's chicken from the place down the street? Remember: it's not the "not having" that gets you when you're broke, it's the "wanting."

Somewhere on that knife-edge between the seasons, where they overlap ever-so slightly and set you a little off-balance, lives a colony of evil little germs. They lie in wait, poised and ready to leap on your hair and burrow into your skin as you pass from one month to the next, and they crawl into your blood stream and race around to your lungs and scale your esophagus and take up residence in your face and your head and your entire life until you are a mess, a mass, massacred by the worst cold ever in the history of colds, because that is what happens when the seasons change. And that's my theory why, too.

Possibly it's not scientific. Probably, in fact. But even science, my friend and long-time object of my admiration, does not help me in those early few hours and days of an oncoming cold, when I feel the illness creeping through me slowly, unstoppably, inevitably and bringing with it an unhappy ending. There's a point at which you know that no matter how many vitamins you take or half gallons of OJ you chug, no matter how much tea you desperately quaff or how politely you appeal to a higher power, there is no getting out of it.

I looked up "deformity" in the thesaurus to try and find a kinder, gentler way to tell this story, but "deformity" is a truly ugly word with truly terrible connotations as proved to me by the thesaurus, because these were some of the words it came up with: aberration, abnormality, corruption, crookedness, damage, defacement, defect, depravity, evil, grossness, hideousness, impairment, repulsiveness, ugliness.

My mother is not an aberration, she is not abnormal, she is not defected, hideous, repulsive or evil and she most certainly is not ugly. In fact, my mother is absolutely stunning. She has long, curly, red hair down to her mid-thigh; chocolate brown eyes; unbelievably sexy legs; and the most amazing skin that has ever been bestowed upon anyone in the history of ever. She's a total hottie. But she does have a deformity. She has very severe scoliosis, which has robbed her of about nine inches of height. According to the length of her spine she should be about 5' 7" but she currently stands at an adorable (she's going to so hate me for calling her adorable) 4' 10". As the years have past and her spine has become more and more compressed, it's become harder for her to fight her spine and hold her body up straight. More and more, people start to notice her crookedness.

Photo via Splash

This weekend, I was surrounded with a gaggle of awesome friends who all looked sexy and awesome and were loaded with compliments and gossip and snarky salty goodness. It was a good weekend, a great weekend actually, and exactly what I needed after a pretty miserable few weeks.

While I was getting ready for one of our numerous social outtings, I threw on a babydoll-type dress and hated how it looked, so I pulled out of my suitcase "the Iron Maiden." It looks like a simple girdle, but in reality, it's closer to a Pretty Hate Machine. In fact, I know from experience that I have to put it on BEFORE doing my hair and makeup because the resulting struggle will turn my face into a sweaty hot mess. It's so evil that just getting it over your shoulders fills you with all kinds of self-doubt. Maybe it shrunk in the wash? This can't possible fit me! Perhaps tiny little elves snuck into my lingerie drawer and replaced this garment with one that is fifteen sizes too small? Once it snaps over my shoulders and rests in my armpits, I have the new struggle of wrestling it down over my rack. Then it snaps into my waist and I usually stop for awhile, mop my brow, perhaps sit down and do a shot of vodka before trying to reach the pinnacle of Woman Versus Spandex: getting it over my hips and nestled down against my thighs. I've never let anyone witness the fight but I assume it's like those nature films where the boa constrictor has to unhinge its jaw to swallow a pig. Total elapsed time of putting on the Iron Maiden? Probably only about five minutes, but every damned second is a fight for survival and there's always the danger that the Spandex will snap out of control and knock me unconscious, perhaps severing a limb in the process.

I'm so tired of the American-centric blog posts this week, so here's some news from across the globe to cleanse your palate. In Israel, they recently crowned the winner of the 15th "Fat Is Beautiful" pageant. This year's winner, all news agencies would like you to know, was one of the smallest contestants, weighing 80 kg, or about 176 lbs. I wish that weren't the takeaway--that even in a fat girl competition, the skinniest one is going to walk away with the rhinestone tiara. So when you watch this video, don't think about that, just think about how awesome these 20 women look, how proud, how sparkly, and then remember that there are people in the world who value beauty that doesn't involve a protruding collarbone.

Happy Election Day! Change is in the air and it's about time to make some changes for this new month of ours. 

But first...epic fail, guys, epic fail. My resolutions for October really didn't come to fruition. I have yet to eat quinoa, my Halloween costume was meh, I failed to get up before 7:30 a.m. pretty much every day after I returned from my windy city vacation and well, my foot is feeling a bit better. At least I'm not a complete failure.

I think quinoa will have to wait; I have a full year to redeem myself in regards to Halloween; but I think I may actually get the hang of the morning workouts again now that daylight savings time has ended and I have an extra hour to play with in the morning. It's a new month and I'm not going to let the stumbling blocks of October stand in my way! Here's what I'm setting out to accomplish before December rears it's ugly head:

1. Experiment with pumpkin. I have a confession to make: I've only had pumpkin pie once in my life. Pumpkin was just not something we cooked with in my family, so this fall I'm going to take the plunge and learn to cook with that great orange squash I've ignored for so many years. If you've got cooking suggestions, please pass them along as I am truly a pumpkin novice.
   
   
2. Back to Bikram. Last winter I ventured to my very first Bikram yoga class and thereafter made it my mission to conquer the 26 poses. But the warmer months came, and the idea of spending 90 minutes in a 105-degree room became less and less enticing. Now that the air is crisp again it's time to get my limber on.
   
   
3. A Healthy-ish Thanksgiving. This year, Turkey Day is at my apartment, which means I'm in charge and I can force my family to eat foods that I like. I like indulgent fare as much as the next thanks-giver, but I'm determined to balance out my table with healthy options as well.
   
   
4. Read something fun. I read a lot of non-fiction, a lot of career oriented books, a lot of how-to books, and they are all sorts of informative, but they're not always the most interesting of time-passers. So this month, I'm going to indulge my brain with a little down time and read something all sorts of chick-litty.

I think those are pretty do-able, although number three may result in coal in my stocking. What about you, any resolutions for November? Things to get done before 2008 is over and done with?