SISTER SHEILAA’S AT it again, giving us good advice under her beautiful umbrella of stars. According to her, the challenge for Aries this month is to find the middle road through all the ups and downs. Seems to me, that’s a quest for a lifetime, not a month, but with some good counsel, I think I’m on my way. The Buddhists (and friends) have this one covered…

When you need a hit of wisdom and perhaps some advice, why not look to a philosophy that’s been working for people around the world for, oh, more than 2000 years? Whatever your faith, there’s comfort to be found within the Buddhist doctrine of the Middle Way. In a nutshell, the teaching is this: avoid believing in extremes. You won’t find the truth in them. But there are writers who say it, and apply it, much better than I can. A few gems:

1. Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance encourages looking at tough times with acceptance, detachment, and compassion. Brach is a psychologist and a meditation teacher, and brings both of these to bear in this gentle, practical, approachable book.

2. Jack Kornfield’s The Wise Heart explores Buddhism and psychology, and their relationship, arguing persuasively that support for the wisdom of Buddhist teachings can be found in current scientific research. Kornfeld provides many anecdotes from his years as a Buddhist monk and as a meditation teacher, which make the book as thought provoking as it is useful.

3. Anything by Pema Chodron, an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun. Anything. When Things Fall Apart is a classic for hard times.

4. I’ve written before, and recently, about my love for Brené Brown, a professor of social work from Houston who has been known to describe herself as a “researcher/storyteller”. Though she’s no Buddhist, she is a big fan of the teachings, and refers to them frequently in her totally brilliant, must-read, anti-perfectionist manifesto, The Gifts of Imperfection. Read it yourself, and then see if you don’t want to give it to every single sister-friend you have.

Be sure to check out your May horoscope from Sheilaa. And in the meantime, tell us: Where do you turn when you need help navigating the slings and arrows, the ups and downs? How do you find the middle of your own road?

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WHAT’S A FOOD-LOVING sister to do, when confronted with the need to make big changes in diet? I’ve been facing up to that dilemma for the last couple of months. Wondering how in the world a committed foodie makes peace with dieting? Read on.

I wish I could say, “Once upon a time, I lost a lot of weight, and I’ve kept it off now for 10–no, 11!–years!” But my speech goes more like, “I’ve been fighting and losing the weight battle pretty much my whole life, with a couple…ok, ok, ONE…interlude of skinny, fit success.” I love food. I love eating food. I love cooking food and feeding it to other people. Eating is one of my great pleasures. And it shows.

But in the last few months, I started taking teeny, tiny steps toward a healthier weight. After Christmas, I stopped eating sugar. From there, it was pretty easy to get off of other refined carbs. Marion recommended her friend Gary Taubes‘ new book, Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It, and on my own, I discovered Tim Ferriss and his latest publishing rocketship, The Four Hour Body.

But what about the joy and pleasure of food? I’ve tried prepackaged diet foods, and…blecch. That’s not food to me. I like to cook, even if all I’m tending on the stove is a pot of black beans or a sautéd chicken breast. And so…mostly following the advice of Taubes and Ferriss, six days a week, I eat protein (eggs, meat, fish) and lots of  veggies, including lentils and beans. Those days I don’t eat grains, refined carbs of any kind, dairy or fruit. Phew. That’s a lot to give up.

But I’m eating well: roast chicken with broiled asparagus and white beans with garlic, or stir fried steak with broccoli, or a Mexican-inspired salad with grilled chicken and black beans. I snack, when I need to, on nuts, carrots, or a smaller version of that same protein/veggie meal. I add olive oil to my salads and butter to my scrambled eggs.

And on that seventh day? I cheat. I eat whatever I want, which usually includes some cookies and ice cream and bread. (Not all at the same time. Usually.) During the week, when dark chocolate is staring me down, I tell myself, “Eat it on Saturday.” Often, by the time Saturday rolls around, the craving is gone. But if it’s not, that’s ok. I eat some, and move on. As Ferriss says in The Four Hour Body, everybody cheats on diets. Why not acknowledge that, and plan for it? And if he’s right, regularly consuming more food helps avoid lowering your metabolic set point.

Like most who fight this flabby battle, I don’t know anymore what to believe in the diet literature. Set point? Low carb? Count calories? But I do know that in the past, the easiest way for me to remove weight and feel more energetic, less imprisoned by cravings, was to cut down on, as Oprah calls it, “the white stuff.”

This time around,  I’ve lost about 12-15 pounds, give or take, in just under 3 months. I’m down a size in my jeans (from my fat jeans, to my not-so-fat jeans, to my smallest-fat jeans. As I read that sentence, it sounds insane, but I’m guessing that at least some of you can relate.) I have more to go, but here’s the thing. Even the foodie in me can stand to eat this way. My energy is high; my immune system (which in the past has often gone haywire when I diet) is solid. And with this post, I’m doing the one thing that nearly all the diet books tell you to do:  go public with your quest. Enlist support. Tell your sisters. Who’s with me?

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AFTER A HOLIDAY season of massive indulgence, the new year brought a new resolve: I’ve gone sugar-free (at least, mostly). And I’m coping surprisingly well without my nightly chocolate fix (thanks for asking). But I’ve found some great resources to help. Want to join me in my pursuit of a healthier sweet life? Read on.

I think it was the caramels that did me in. I made batch after batch as holiday gifts this year; a couple failed and were crushed into toffee bits for Christmas cookies, and then, insane circumstances forced me out of town, holiday gifts (for teachers at school) undelivered. I had 8 dozen spare caramels and about as many toffee cookies on hand. I think I only ate 3 dozen or so. Of each.

Blecch.

By the new year, I felt like a deleted expletive. And, in the serendipitous way that these connections find me, I started seeing people I admire chucking sugar out the window. Online icons like Kris Carr and Shauna Ahern, my inspiring new teacher Brené Brown (read about the class I’m taking with her), other friends in the real world, too, were all extolling the pleasures of a less-refined life (ingredient-wise, anyway).

Sometimes, the right example is all you need to see a shift in yourself. I quit white sugar, at least for a while, with the caveat that once in a while, on a special occasion, I might take a bite of something…but I quickly discovered that my sweet tooth more or less left with the sugar bowl. And after I chucked sugar, it felt pretty easy to abandon white flour, too. So while I’ve tasted a dessert or two at a dinner party in the last month, my sense of missing sugar is gone, and I’ve cut way down on my consumption of, as Oprah says, the “white stuff.”

That said…every once in a while I want to make something special. And if I’m going to bake for my family, I would rather have something I can try without feeling guilty (or unhealthy). So I’ve turned to some great online resources for advice and inspiration. Some of these will be familiar to you if you’ve been reading for a while, but others are all new. In no particular order:

1. Alana of Eating From the Ground Up

Alana is one of my favorite people in the real world AND online. She’s not all about sugar-free, but she is about simple, clean and healthy. She gets top billing because I was privileged to try her amazing sugar-free birthday cake last year. It was heavenly; all the kids and adults devoured it, and the absence of sugar? You could never have guessed. My next goal: to try to adapt it to a gluten-free, whole grain version.

2. Shauna of Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef

I’m lucky enough to call Shauna Ahern a friend, too, and it was her Facebook announcement that she was done with white sugar that crystallized my own resolve. She’s expanding her baking repertoire to include unrefined sweeteners, and I’m dying to try her new whole grain muffin recipe. My favorite muffin of all time is a lemon walnut amazement baked at the (superb, sugar-full) Sweet Lady Jane bakery in L.A. I’m going to see if I can make a healthful version that does justice to my nostalgia. (And if you’ve never read it, our profile of Shauna shows a whole other side of this food blogger extraordinaire. We love her!)

3. Elana of Elana’s Pantry

Elana was one of our early discoveries, and we love her energy and creativity about, well, just about everything. Super healthy, Elana is nevertheless dedicated to preserving her fair share of culinary hedonism; she’s not above chocolate chips in her brownies. But she uses alternative sweeteners and simple recipes to preserve nutrients and minimize processed ingredients. Her raspberry hamantaschen are calling my name.

4. Amy of Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free

Amy Green turned to sugar- and gluten-free cooking as a way to control a lifelong struggle with her weight. Now, she says, she keeps off the 60 pounds she lost by sticking to this cleaner way of eating. Clean eating that includes almond butter blondies sounds pretty good to me…

5. Isa Chandra of Post Punk Kitchen

Ok, Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s site is all about veganism, not going sugar-free, but it’s got a lot of sugar-free-friendly recipes, like oatmeal peanut butter cookies. And Isa’s got great tats. Tats, people. Though I am uninked, I have a not-so-secret love of tattoos, and how can you not love a woman with a beautiful matryoshka on her arm?

6. The fine folks at Truvia

Ok, it’s not a blog, it’s a totally commercial site, and the parent company is agro-giant Cargill, which gives me shivers. But I’ve been a fan of stevia for years (I was turned onto it by, of all people, Larry Hagman and Linda Gray. Yes, of Dallas. In a very strange meeting which also included Dennis Weaver. Yes, McCloud. Another story from another lifetime.) I even tried to sell a magazine article about this super sweet, super healthy herb before it went mainstream. But cooking with it never worked for me, so I’m eager to see if the professional chefs working for this company have figured it out. They’ve got loads of sweet and savory recipes, including a tempting apple berry galette. They’ve even enlisted Top Chef hunk Sam Talbot to develop recipes for them. Eye candy, anyone?

7. Heidi of 101 Cookbooks

Heidi Swanson is another foodie blogosphere rock star, and for good reason. Her recipes are thoughtful, beautifully presented, and they work. So when she offers up a sugarless carrot cake, resistance is definitely futile, and probably stupid.Her site is chock full of low and no sugar recipes, and inspiration for many more.

I know there are more than this out there. Have any of you been inspired to make similar dietary changes? I’d love to hear your stories, and your recipes!

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APRIL DOES SOMETIMES feel like the cruelest month, because for me, every year, this is when I revamp my diet and exercise routines. Something about warm air and sunshine makes me tune back in to my too-often-neglected body and my health, and as a result, I’ve been scouting around the net for blogs and websites that help me clean up and pare down my eating. Here’s a baker’s dozen of sites that are my current faves for inspiring me to cook and eat in a way that is healthy for me, and the planet.

Some of these you’ll recognize from prior favorite food blog lists, but others are new to me, and TSP.

Cheap Healthy Good

The name says it all. And besides staying true to its mission, the site offers great roundups of recipes from elsewhere on the net, tailored toward a particular goal. I like this list of “healthy one-dish meals with good leftover potential.” And not just because it features lots of gratuitous pictures of George Clooney.

Albion Cooks

Catherine describes her cooking as “Vegetarian, delicious, healthy” but it’s also beautifully photographed and geared towards cooking with what’s in season. I’m dying to try  her brussels sprout and blue cheese pizza, which combines two of my favorite things in the world.

Dr. Gourmet

This is, hands down, the best dieting website I’ve found. Created by New Orleans physician Timothy S. Harlan M.D., it has medically sound information and advice, and every single recipe tells you if it’s suitable for various nutritional needs (low sodium, gluten-free, etc.) Best of all, unlike so many other diet sites, Dr. Gourmet’s recipes focus on using unprocessed, real foods. The chicken vindaloo is calling my name.

Mighty Foods

This site’s mission is to “redefine the way you think about whole, natural foods” and with inventive recipes like Midnight Hummus (made with lentils) and Brown Rice Syrup Brownies, I think it’s got a good shot. I also love that like Cheap Healthy Good, it offers up well organized lists of other recipe sources around the web. Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks (more on her later) is one of the contributors, so you know you’re in good hands.

The Ethicurean

This one’s not a cooking site, per se. But if you care about what you eat, where it comes from, and its impact on the planet, this site is for you. It gives a great round-up of food, farm and environmental news in one pithy package. Good to read while you’re eating your (healthy!) lunch.

Mark Bittman’s Bitten

Mark Bittman seems to divide foodies straight down the line: some love him while others scoff. I’m a lover, so I was distraught when, just this week, The New York Times decided to fold Bittman’s Bitten blog into what they describe as the new “superblog” Diner’s Journal. My jury’s out on that decision, but all of Bittman’s posts are available here. His chickpea snack has my name all over it.

Grist

If you don’t know this smart, slightly irreverent environmental news site, you should, and not just because their food content is excellent. Great writing from strong voices make this entertaining as well as a useful resource. Recipes are featured occasionally, but this one is all about educated eating.

Fat of the Land

Langdon Cook (with whom, as it happens, I went to high school–go figure) is an author, and, perhaps more important, a forager…meaning: he finds his food. OK, not all of it, but if you want to read about hunting and cooking chanterelles, fishing for salmon, or digging razor clams, he’s your guy. And his recipes (and writing) rock. Since I pine for Mexican food here in my tiny nearly-New England town, his recipe for fish tacos may be a lifesaver.

Eating From the Ground Up

I met Alana IRL (you know: In Real Life) because the Rock (that’s my daughter) befriended her little girl, Rosie. They quickly became peas in a princess-y pod, and Alana and I were thrown together as only two mamas on a playdate can be. But it turned out that I love Alana as much (dare I say more?) than Rock loves Rosie. She’s a superior cook, an adventurer, hilarious, kind, and so dedicated to locavore eating that she kind of takes my breath away. She’s responsible for my discovering the wonders of homemade granola, but her blog is a treasure trove of healthy, family-friendly recipes. I can vouch for her nearly-no-sugar birthday cake: awesome. But don’t take my word; bake it yourself.

101 Cookbooks

If you’ve followed my previous food-blog picks, you already know how much I love Heidi Swanson and her gorgeous site, 101 Cookbooks. She’s the queen of taking healthy whole foods and turning them into inventive, delicious fare that appeals to a wide range of eaters. As winter winds down, and I await the real spring veggies, I think I’m going to try this Warm Red Cabbage salad for a super healthy and satisfying farewell to cold-weather foods.

Gluten Free Girl and the Chef

My love for Shauna Ahern and her delicious blog is not new news. My ardor for her kale chips, heaven on a plate for a chip-deprived dieters, might be. Check ‘em out, and be sure to read our profile of sister Shauna, too.

Gluten Free Goddess

I found Karina Allrich, aka the Gluten Free Goddess, thanks to Twitter, and I love her writing, her photography, and most of all, her recipes. Karina is gluten-, egg- and dairy-free, so great for people challenged by those allergies. I just like how her food tastes; this mayo-free coleslaw just may become my summer BBQ staple…

Post Punk Kitchen

I was never really punk, so I don’t think I qualify as post-punk either. But no matter: the rebellious vegans of PPK welcome all cooks willing to forgo animal products. Veggie friends of mine swear by their cookbooks, and I’m pretty sure their mango-ginger tofu would convert anyone to the joys of the humble soybean.

Enjoy, and share your favorite online resources for healthy eating.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

My new fitness ritual takes me two or three days a week to a community center in a nearby town. It’s nicer than “community center” suggests–with a large pool, lots of fitness equipment, and on-site day care center, it’s an amazing resource for our rural area. I don’t know what the median age is in the county where the facility is located, but I’m willing to bet it’s over 50, if the patrons of my gym are any guide. I am always, always one of the youngest women (every once in a while a brave man joins) in a very crowded class. The teacher is, I’m guessing, in her 50s, and most of the women busting a move alongside me are in their 60s.

The fourth or fifth time I went, I ran into the mother of a friend of mine. She’s, you know, mom-aged, i.e., in her late 60s or maybe even early 70s, but she’s in awesome shape. She was excited to see me, and quick to add how great it was to see some younger women (I’d dragged two other “young”–i.e., in their 40s–friends along with me) at the center. I asked her if she came to the class frequently, and she replied, somewhat sheepishly, that she didn’t. It was too easy for her.

I was drenched in sweat, and sore from classes I’d taken the previous two days.

OK, this ego-crushing moment aside, exercising with women a generation older than I am has mostly been an inspiring experience. Where I live now, in stark contrast to my former home in Los Angeles, I see little plastic surgery, abuse of injectables or other strategies meant to ward off aging but often, in my opinion, just drawing more attention to the cruelties of time. The women in my class are round and lean, white-haired and hennaed, exhibiting every variety of beauty and vanity and lack of those qualities you can imagine. But without exception, those women are moving, swiveling, dancing. They’re sexy, perhaps, most of all, because they’re clearly having fun.

I’m lucky to have a number of women I count as close friends who are 15 or 20 years older than I am. But our interaction tends to take place over a glass of wine, not a water bottle and a yoga mat. Seeing older women in this light was a game-changer for my view of myself and my own aging, and my view of my companions in cardio.

I started taking this class in a moment of desperation to shift my focus and kickstart my exercise habits, realizing that in this economy (how sick of that phrase are we all?) hiring a personal trainer was just not an option. It felt a little like a spoonful of bitter medicine, but one I’d force myself to choke down. Instead, I can’t wait to go dance and box and kick and sweat every week with a roomful of sisters, senior and otherwise.

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IAM NOT MUCH for New Year’s resolutions. They mostly just make me feel like a slacker by the time March rolls around, one more thing for me to beat myself up for not doing well enough. (And don’t we all have enough of those already?) This year, instead of chaining myself in the guilt of unkept resolutions, I’ve decided to take a more, uh, aggressive approach.

As I’ve written complained here before, last year was hard. But hard times have a benefit, which is that they force you to examine how you live your life, and confront the ways you might make changes to accommodate whatever new difficulties you face. (I’m not trying to gloss over the extreme hardships so many sisters have faced this past year with unemployment and foreclosure rampant, and our nation still at war. I’m talking about difficulty, not catastrophe.)

In my life, one thing that became apparent this year was that my habit of putting myself dead last in order of my own priorities was actually having the opposite of the intended effect. I was spread too thin, miserable and grumpy and short with everyone. It was clear that my life needed a brand new organizing principle, and I started carving out time for three things that are, if I take the time to admit it to myself, really really REALLY a big deal to me. These were the holes in my life, and I needed to fill them, pronto.

The first was  (drumroll, please) making art. I am the daughter of an incredibly talented visual artist (my mom, the queen of pie) and as such have a fair bit of insecurity about my own abilities. And yet––I love to make things, used to love to draw, have a secret desire to learn to paint…you get the idea. I compromised.

"Extra, Extra"

I took a collage class, for which, it turned out, I’d been collecting materials (old books and photographs, scraps of paper) for years. I have no illusions that I’m the next Joseph Cornell, but the attempt (often unsuccessful, but an attempt nonetheless) to fulfill my teacher‘s assignment to make a collage-a-day made me more productive than I’d been in years. And, even better, it made me happy.

"Mother, the Woven Word"

The second was to write fiction. In November, I spent about an hour a day writing fiction, yet another thing I’d wanted to do, oh, my whole life, and hadn’t really tried since second grade. I completed a first draft of a novel; this month, I’m about to dive into the rewrite after putting it aside for a few weeks to give me some breathing room and some perspective. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I think it’s got the potential to be, and you know what? It exists, all 51,000 words of it. Put another way: I did it.

"Tolerance of Concentricity"

The third was to move this old, tired body of mine. This was my strategy for not succumbing to the onslaught of butter and sugar we Americans like to call “the holidays.” Three or four days per week in December (until my kids’ vacation began–sigh) I went to a local community center/gym to a cardio or strength training class. I’ve always held to the idea that I don’t like group exercise classes, but you know what? I was wrong. I love sweating my brains out, dancing around like I’m auditioning (unsuccessfully, mind you) for a Beyoncé video, with a bunch of other women. It was oddly inspiring, and both physically and emotionally curative. When school starts again on Tuesday (yippee!) I’ll be back.

My revolution this year? To keep all three of these new habits present in my life. Ironically, this fall was the time when things got really, really hard for me and my family, and yet, having a commitment to doing these small things for myself kept me sane, rather than making me crazier for taking up my ever-evaporating time.

I learned that I don’t have to write 1,500 words in my novel every day. I don’t have to create an original collage every morning, and if I don’t make it to the gym seven days a week, that’s OK. But my revolution is to change the organizing principle of my life, which had been: “Take care of everyone else before myself.” Instead, I’m going to shoot for this trio: Make Art. Tell stories. Dance. I’ve found that by creating some space for the things that really matter, deeply, to me, I can actually take better care of everyone else.

How about you? Do you want a revolution for 2010? Do you know what the organizing principle of your life is? Does it need revising? Share with your sisters.

P.S. That image above? That’s Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man and fought and was injured in the Revolutionary War. She was honorably discharged in 1783, and 20 years later, became the first woman to be awarded a federal pension for her service to her country. There are all kinds of revolutionaries. Thanks to the site Honor Roll of Liberty for this image of the statue of Deborah, located in Sharon, Connecticut.

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IT’S THE HOLIDAYS, which means we all eat and drink until we want to hang our flabby heads in shame. But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? We have had a giveaway to help; read on.

I laughed, hard, tonight, when my Facebook page today let me know that one of our favorite online sisters, April of Coal Creek Farm, did the exact same thing I did today: joined (in my case, rejoined) the gym. After today’s “total toning” class, I can already feel my arms aching. But I also feel a lot slightly less guilty about the weekend’s major indulgence, chocolate pecan pie.

So inspired by a generous donation by one of our favorite cooking sisters, the amazing Elana Amsterdam (read our profile of her here, and visit her website,) we’re challenging ourselves, and you, dear sisters, (yes, that means YOU!) to tell us your best tips for keeping healthy, dare we even say fit, during this most tempting and overindulgent time. Do you do like Margaret and Marion, and follow a specific regimen (gluten-free, or otherwise?) Or are you more loosey-goosey, like I tend to be (with predictably uneven, ahem, results?)

Whatever your dietary M.O., we want you to give us your very best ideas of how you keep a lid on holiday excess, and we’ll reward a select (random, but select nonetheless) seven of you with a copy of Elana’s incredible The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook, a beautiful compendium of healthful and delicious recipes for this time of year and beyond.

Here’s how it works. If you would like to win a copy of the book, leave a comment on this post, telling us your best idea for not going to the (corn)dogs between now and January 1. Then, if you have a blog, please post the news of this little shindig of ours there, too (with a link back.) We’ll select the winners at random next Tuesday, and you don’t have to be a blogger to win!

WE HAVE OUR WINNERS! Congrats to Paulette, Irene, Ashlie, Square Peg Karen, L, Jen and Kelsey–be sure to read through the comments to learn their great tips for staying healthier during the holidays! Thanks, all, for reading and chiming in!

In the  meantime, I have to gear up for tomorrow’s dose of pain: Cardio Jam. April, are you listening?

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DO YOU, LIKE I DO, dread visits to the doctor because of the inevitable weigh-in and BMI discussion? While I am, apparently, of average American size, I am also overweight, not just by the tables and the scales, but by my own estimation. I’d like to be 35 pounds or so lighter, like I was before I got pregnant for the first time. I don’t know if that will ever happen. I like to cook and eat, I find it extremely difficult to diet, and though I am active, for sure, I don’t know that I’ll ever build in the two hours per day/six days per week workout schedule I know I need to really remove that much weight, not to mention keeping it off.

Meanwhile, there’s a whole world of overweight people (some moderately so, some more) online, and a hot topic of discussion is the accuracy, or lack thereof, of the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a predictor of, well, much of anything. Heavily muscled? Extra tall? You might be labeled obese. Big boobs? Ditto.

Kate Harding, whose site Shapely Prose seems to be the (really good, extremely well-written) nexus of the web’s “get over it, I’m fat” community, has put together a kind of mind-blowing slideshow of real people, with their real BMI categories. Some make sense, at least to my eye. But others? Crazy. Take a look, and tell us what you think. (Over on TSP’s “She Said, She Said” blog, sisters Marion and Margaret are discussing a related topic–dieting–this week, too. Go see.)

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