Perhaps the three-thousandth iteration of this lesson will be the one that sticks: "Amy, you have to keep your calorie count up around 1600 or you will not be able to do your workouts." But who are we kidding? Right now I'm terribly repentant; I know I haven't eaten enough in the past couple of days, and I'm currently promising myself that I'll be more careful about what I eat and make sure that I get enough calories to get me through each day. Eventually, though, I'll slack again, and my per-day calorie count will drift down again, until one day I do a workout and then I come home and don't move from the couch for three hours because I literally don't have the energy to get up.

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. Well, it sounds better than "nurse practitioner's appointment," which is the actual truth. A couple of years ago I found that I really liked Kay, the NP at the family practice I use, and I've tended to stick with her for the few times I've been cajoled into a doctor's office.

The first thing she said when she saw me was gratifying: "Amy, I don't know what you've done since I've seen you last, but you look fantastic." She weighed me and we went to the back room to talk (and perform variously-uncomfortable doctorly prodding bits). She confirmed that I'm now suddenly starting to bear an inordinate resemblance to someone who is really and truly healthy…

…and then I caught a glimpse of a number written on her chart.

"Was that my weight?"

"Yep."

I looked at the date, and did the math, and filed a tiny bit of quiet horror away to be re-examined after the appointment was over: I dropped nearly thirty pounds in 2003. Not because I was trying to drop weight (though I should have been), but because I simply stopped eating. What scared me was that I didn't even notice it at the time.

Since starting the workouts in January, I hadn't really given much thought to what 2003 had done to my body. I knew I hadn't eaten well (or…uh, much of anything really), or done much to take care of myself, but I think I was laboring under the impression that it hadn't affected me that much.

Now I know differently.

I worry sometimes how I'll function when this weight-loss phase is over; what will I do when I no longer have the body reserves to cushion me against the days when I just don't eat enough?

* * * * *

This past Monday, before heading out of Atlanta, I stopped off by Perimeter Mall to have lunch with Jody. What I expected to be a short lunch turned into a three-hour conversational affair ("Longest Lunch Ever!" read my subsequent text messages) with much more seriousness on both sides than perhaps either of us intended.

We are both battling our weight, Jody and me. We are living at different ends of the weight-management scale: he is trying to cut back his calorie intake and I, well, you know the drill by now, don't you? I'm trying to figure out how to eat enough to sustain the workouts I need to drop the extra weight I'm carrying. Different, but equally difficult.

What I realized at the end of the lunch was that we were saying the same things - in fact, very similar things to what Suzan has been saying as she started her attempt to lose weight: this battle is about choices. It's about bypassing the fourteen aisles of food that provide you nothing but calories, and trying to seek out the foods that actually provide nutrition.

For Jody, his question is, "Will I regret eating this in fifteen minutes?"

For me, my question is, "Am I attempting to feed my emotions, or my body?"

Different tactics, same end result. A variety of healthy foods. Sane choices in drinks. Moderation, moderation, and exercise. It's why none of us are 'dieting' - oh, I loathe that word! We are not trying to pare down our body weight, then resume our previous lives as if nothing happened. We are trying to make small, daily choices that will eventually result in a healthy lifetime.

…and if it were half as easy as that sentence makes it sound, it wouldn't be a 'struggle,' much less one worth writing about. Instead, when we go to a grocery store, we're faced with aisles upon aisles of consumable substances that really aren't food: chips, sweetened breakfast cereals, candy, sodas, cookies, all in enormous packages that make it all but impossible for anyone with normal human willpower to eat a single serving.

It takes choice and willpower to decide that you're going to weight your life toward the fresh, the whole-grain, the actually-nutritious. Especially when the Aisle Of Chocolate™ looks so damn tasty.

I see so many articles about "America's Obesity Problem," all marveling at the scope and wondering at the cause. I'd never given it much thought before trying to lose weight, but it seems to me that part of the answer must lie in the contents of our grocery stores.

* * * * *

I spent much of tonight's grocery store run attempting to find foods that would actually help me on days in which my calorie counts are low. I walked out with plenty of fruit and vegetables, a yogurt smoothie to deal with the immediate issue, and canned soups and energy bars for the days when my blood sugar falls so fast that my immediate priority has to be to get some calories in me so that the 'brain fog' will lift.

The number of aisles bypassed was much higher than the number of aisles I actually needed to walk down.

One day at a time.

One meal at a time.

One workout at a time.

One choice at a time.

It's the only way this is ever going to work.

It's the only way I - or any of us, really - will ever make it.