The Vitamin A Diet

I'm perpetually making efforts to control my weight. After putting about 40 extra pounds on my 5'3'' body four times, that's not the easiest thing in the world.  Especially now that I'm pushing 40, and I had my last baby after 35. There's something about 35.

35 is the magical age when 18% of pregnancies will end in miscarriage, when the chance of having a child with Down Syndrome rises from 1 in 952 (at age 30) to 1 in 378 - hence, the unnerving and mandatory genetic counseling. It's the age at which fertility begins to decline at a much more rapid pace. (In any given month, your chances of getting pregnant at age 30 are about 20%, but only 5% at age 40.) What am I getting at? I'm sure there must be a statistic about how much more difficult it is to lose the baby weight after that magical age of 35.

In any case, I've been fighting the last ten pounds for quite some time now (like ten years), but the way my life rolls I just can't do "diets" anymore.  I don't have the wherewithal to prepare separate special meals, to count every calorie, to cut out certain foods. And it doesn't help that the other grown up in the house has no interest in weight control or regular exercise.  Until recently.

For whatever reason (it might have to do with the relentless nagging from his wife about how we should use our big move as an opportunity to make other big changes as well) Brandon has finally jumped on the weight loss bandwagon. And wouldn't you know it, he's losing more and at a faster rate.  Isn't that just always the way! It's maddening!!  But I shant complain, because I finally have a weight loss companion and he's helping me to stay motivated. He's lost like 15 pounds now or something ridiculous like that, and do you want to know how we're doing it?

Deep fried pumpkin doughnuts with buttermilk glaze.  Seriously.

We take our Vitamin A consumption pretty seriously during the fall months. We've had our fair share of pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin muffins, and yes, pumpkin doughnuts. I can't believe I haven't made pumpkin pancakes yet, and I'm always up for pumpkin or butternut squash soup. But I'm getting off track.

We're just eating less, moving more, and making sure we cheat on the weekends - both on our Friday night dates as well as on Sunday afternoons when I feel compelled to make baked goods. That's where the pumpkin doughnuts come in.

And that's more detail about the minutia of our lives than anyone wants to know.