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Amanda and I have very different ways of watching what we eat.

Last night, on a four-mile walk during which we only got a little lost, we talked about how we want to decide what to eat -- and track what we eat - during these ten weeks.

Me -- I'm a counter. And not just calories. I like seeing how much everything I'm taking in, what I'm burning off and just how bad my habits are. That's why I've been using this great online site called SparkPeople to track everything I eat and how much I exercise. It's free, easy to use, has a wide database of nutritional information for all sorts of foods - from the grocery store to fast food joints and national chain restaurants. If it's not in the database, you can add it.

The site has a lot of other features -- community message boards, meal plans, etc. -- but the food and exercise trackers are really the only things I use. There's also a button to help you keep track of all the water you should be drinking (I know I'm drinking enough if I'm running to the bathroom every five minutes).

So as of 5 p.m. today here's what I had:

My big problem with food is that I don't -- and never have -- seen it as a source of nutrition. I know intellectually that you are what you eat -- but I see food mostly as a source of pleasure. I eat whatever I want and way too much of it because I don't bother thinking about how it affects my body beyond my taste buds.

With charts showing me the concrete science behind my choices, SparkPeople helps me think about what I eat, what it means for my body, and take responsibility for my choices rather than ignoring them and reaching for the next chicken wing.

This weekend Amanda and I decided to try some good-for-you recipes she'd gotten from Food Network and Fit TV.

She went to the gym, I went to the grocery store. Or, more accurately, four grocery stores.

It turns out eating right isn't easy - or cheap.

Technically, our friends Chris and Kitty did not know we were experimenting on them. But, that is sort of what we did.

When I first started dieting, I turned to the Food Network for solace. Sometimes just watching Nigella Lawson heat butter in a pan was enough to dull the cravings.

Fit TV -- that network almost totally populated by people in spandex -- has its own late-night food program that also tries to give you want you desire, this time without the fat and calories.
Healthy Decadence with Devin Alexander takes all those yummy fast food recipes and makes them a little more diet friendly.

The poor thing is up against Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network (that is the guy with the spiky hair who eats French fries and burgers for half an hour). But Alexander, who also penned the Biggest Loser Cookbook, somehow manages to make the stuff look halfway decent.

Breakfast is, indeed, one of the most important meals of the day. And not just because your mom said so. You need to have a good breakfast to kickstart your metabolism, get some protein and fiber in your stomach to sustain you through the day and keep you from turning into a fast-food devouring animal by lunch-time.

I used to be pretty notorious for skipping breakfast (or worse, rolling out of bed, rubbing at my dry eyes, having a Red Bull and cutting myself shaving). But since we resolved to eat better, my breakfast has looked something like this each morning:

That's a bowl of oatmeal, an 8 oz. glass of orange juice and a slice of wheat toast with low-sugar grape jelly.

It's about 290 calories, 3 grams of fat, 5 grams of fiber and 12 grams of protein.

Sometimes I switch it up with a piece of fruit or Wheaties, but that's about the size of it.

And size matters. Watching the portions of the things I eat has been difficult, as my general tendency is to fill large bowls and glasses to the brim without caring how many servings it is. Take a look at the bowl in which I ate my one serving of oatmeal next to the bowl I would have probably filled with oatmeal (or Cocoa Puffs) two weeks ago:

Even filling that small glass to near the top with orange juice rather than about half-way would have been 12 ounces rather than 8.

These are things we should think about, but don't. Reprogramming my brain is going to be a large part of this thing.

What do you guys eat for breakfast? Snap a picture and send it to me at Joekillian@gmail.com. I'll post them here for everyone to see -- and hopefully get tips from. The first one of you to send me a shot of a Krispy Kreme Donut, though...

Well Amanda seems to be coming out of Flu territory -- though she still doesn't seem 100%.

I, however, seem to be going into it.

Eating right when you're sick is a challenge because you often don't want to eat anything -- and when you are hungry, you want comfort foods that can't be good for you. Going into our third week there's been more cheating because summoning the will to care for yourself is hard when you can barely summon the will to lift your head before coughing up a lung.

I know a lot of you are under the weather out there -- how are you handling it?

Yeah -- where staying healthy is concerned, this week has been almost a complete wash.

Amanda and I both came down with the flu and spent a lot of time coughing, stuffing ourselves with medication and, more than once, ordering in and not really caring about calories, fat, cholesterol or any of the rest of it.

The urge to comfort food culminated last night when we actually ordered in Chinese. My love for Chinese food is just this side of being a substance abuse problem, and this is the first time since vowing to get healthy that I've had any. We did split one entree (they're more than big enough for it and that's a good way to mitigate the initial bad decision) but I also ordered dumplings. Like Amanda caving to ice cream, this was my low point. And I was too sick to even enjoy it properly.

Neither of us have been to the gym this week, either. But Amanda's on the mend and I should be by next week. We'll be working hard next week to make up for this one.

The USDA food pyramid is baffling -- and it might not be right for everyone.

Here's the government's attempt to tailor it to every individual.

Hi. My name is Amanda, and I am a snack-a-holic.

It's been one day since my last snack. It was a bag of popcorn and a half cup of mini chocolate chips. I ate them in alternating mouthfuls. It was salty and sweet. Delicious. I ate this at 11 p.m. at night. In front of the television.

I am ashamed of my habits. I know I am not hungry, but I snack anyway. It's especially bad when I have a deadline coming at work, and I am having a tough time writing a story. I once told an intern that I couldn't figure out how to start my story, so I needed a bag of chips.

My work doesn't help the situation. I recently went to an employee training where they handed out free coupons for the vending machines as prizes. And these aren't just soda can machines and packages of crackers. The News & Record has the Taj Mahal of vending machines: 20 different kinds of drinks, a machine full of sandwiches and even an ice cream novalities machine. With so much choice, how can I NOT snack?

Anyway, I am taking it one day at a time. I am filling up on water throughout the day so my tummy is full (that always makes it harder to snack.) And I am bringing apples to work, so if I absolutley must snack, it will at least be a good one.

Here's hoping I can give up snacking all together.

Reader Elaine asked if we could post the recipe for the stir-fry we've been making at home for the last few weeks.

It's so simple I'm almost embarassed to call it a recipe. We usually buy the ingredients at Harris Teeter, but you can get this stuff just about anywhere. I went to Food Lion the other night and saved some money doing it.

Anyway, here's what we do. It's pretty simple, as we're not expert cooks.

Ingredients:
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast diced
(260 calories, 3 grams fat)
6 oz. Eat Smart Vegetable stir-fry mix
(includes fresh cut broccoli, snow peas, carrots, red cabbage - 50 calories, 0 fat)
2 tbsp. Kikkoman Stir-Fry Sauce
(20 calories per tbsp., 0 fat, 520 mg of sodium)
2 cups rice (410 calories, 1 gram fat)
Simply dice chicken and brown in a large pan. Drain any excess fat or water.
Add stir fry mix and stir fry sauce and let simmer for about 5 minutes.
Serve over rice.

Divided into two equal servings the whole thing is 380 calories and 2 grams of fat per serving. And that would be two very large servings. We usually have a bit left over.
You can also steam the vegetables seperately -- any vegetables you like, really -- if you don't like them stir fried with the sauce and the chicken.

We think it's pretty delicious.

Since we began our mission to drop 10 lbs. in 10 weeks friends, family and complete strangers have been dropping knowledge on us -- and introducing us to some great products we'd never tried before.

My favorites so far:

Our friend Kitty Campbell suggested we try the new Chocolate Cherry Diet Dr. Pepper.

I'm not big on diet soda, but this one's got me hooked. The secret: it actually tastes like chocolate and cherries and I can't detect the aspartame they're using to sweeten it. That may be because it's well down the list of ingredients, behind some other artificial (and some natural) flavors. They're calling it a "Limited Edition" -- and if they really do away with it, I'm going to be heartbroken.

Our friend and co-worker Janet Brindle Reddick turned us on to the Orville Redenbacher Kettle Korn mini-bags. The Kettle Korn is both salty and sweet -- and the mini-bag is actually the perfect amount of popcorn for just 100 calories a bag.

Next, we're going to test-drive these Bird's Eye and Green Giant steam-in-bag vegetable servings. We hear good things.

What are some of your favorite guilt-free snacks?

We all miss something different when trying to lose weight.

For Amanda, it's chocolate ice cream and lobster with melted butter. For me it's greasy, bastardized American Chinese take-out.

For Esquire writer Tom Chiarella, it was sandwiches. The writer recently wrote about giving up bread for weight loss and spending A Year Without Sandwiches.

From the article:

I lost weight, but it wasn’t worth it. You give up bread and you figure you’ll miss toast, or the crust of a baguette, or pumpernickel seeds. But what you miss is sun-warm tomatoes between bread. Blood-red slices of roast beef. Paper-thin layers of white onions. Marmalade. The knife-curl of peanut butter. The weight of a tuna salad. None of these works particularly well on its own on a plate. They demand bread.

I figured it would be an easy enough year. I told myself I’d had enough sandwiches and that I’d be better off in the long run. There’s always soup. I went into spring thinking, This isn’t so bad. I might never have another sandwich again. Then one afternoon in early summer, I watched my girlfriend’s daughter slice up a tomato, salt it lightly, and put it between two pieces of Roman Meal. Not long after, I saw a Reuben on the grill in a diner in Albany. Midsummer, I played poker at a game where the only food was a Dagwood, slice your own, made on twenty-four inches of ciabatta. The whole night was a sandwich, noshed inch by inch by five four-flushers and a fish. I didn’t eat a thing.

They've just opened a Jimmy John's downtown -- about a block from my office in Greensboro. Even closer than the one on Tate Street, which cheerfully delivers this far. Not as bad as the McDonald's, KFC and Kabab place that are all less than a block from the High Point office -- but close.

What do you guys have the most trouble passing on?

Amanda and I have very different weaknesses when it comes to this staying healthy thing.

For her, it's the snacking.

Last weekend I went shopping and, at Amanda's request, I picked up a box of Life cereal. Monday night Amanda ate almost the entire box in a late night snacking frenzy. When I woke up there was enough cereal -- and milk -- for one bowl.

"I don't think we're going to be able to have that in the house again," she said sort of sheepishly.

"But...what if I want some?" I said.

"Yeah, sorry," she said. "No more of that."

I'm just as bad on my end -- but with exercise. Tonight I went to the gym for only the second time this week -- and it's Thursday.

I exercise better in the morning -- when Amanda can't yet move or speak. At the end of the day I'm often too spent to get much out of it. But I have to wake up at least an hour early to hit the gym before work -- and I'm having trouble doing that too.

This week we vowed to support each other more in our areas of weakness. Tonight we held to that vow.

Amanda called from work to ask what we were going to do for dinner.

"I can cook something," I said. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Pizza and beer," she moaned. "Peee-zzzaaa and beeeeeeer...."

"No pizza and beer," I said. "I'll cook us something healthy."

"Can't we pleeaaase have pizza?" she said. "Just tonight? We'll just cheat tonight..."

"No," I said. "I'm going to cook us something healthy. I'll have it on the table when you get home."

When she walked through the door I handed her a plate of grilled salmon and steamed vegetables.

"This is me supporting you," I said.

After dinner, she pulled me off the couch.

"Come on," she said. "Gym time. You've only been once this week."

"Do I haaaaave to?" I whined.

"Yes," she said. "This is me supporting you."

Check out this quiz on modern portion sizes vs. portion sizes of the past.

It points out that twenty years ago the average bagel was about half the size and half the number of calories as today's bagel. The news gets worse from there.

I've noticed this a lot since we started struggling to lose this weight. You're almost never given one portion size of anything -- and if you are, it seems very small in this giant-food culture we've built.

Much to my disappointment, Paul McKenna didn't hypnotize anyone on the first episode of his new show Sunday night.

Instead, TLC's "I Can Make You Thin," included a handful of helpful, practical tips to battling the bulge.

McKenna laid out his rules for eating:

-- Eat when you are hungry.
-- Eat what you want.
-- Eat consciously.
-- When you are full, stop eating.

His argument is one of moderation: you can eat anything you want, as long as you don't gorge yourself on it. It's a great idea, but one I find tough to follow (you may recall my recent inability to stop myself from eating a whole box of Life cereal).

In the spirit of Cheesefry Nation, I am going to give it a shot. At lunch today, I tried one of his "eat consciously" exercises. Every time I took a bite of food, I put down my fork and chewed the bite 20 times. When I didn't feel hungry any more, I stopped. I still had half of my lunch left on my plate.

Now that is a sure way to cut the calories. But let's just see if I can make it last all week.

When all else fails, turn to weird pseudo-science weight loss cures!

Like these Weight Loss Sunglasses!

They tint everything blue, you see -- the least appetizing color in the spectrum. Look at your food through them and you won't even want that double bacon cheeseburger!

Amanda points out that blue is also the color of our kitchen (not our fault) and it doesn't seem to have helped us...

Jack LaLanne lets his viewers in on the secret to happiness: fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats and, maybe, a little singing.

Jack had it down thirty years ago -- how did so many of us get so fat and miserable anyway?

...piling a bunch of moving boxes in front of the fridge. You can't snack if you can't get to the food.

Granted, the mess was only temporary. But it was affective.

In the future, I am going to put the cookies on the shelf I can only reach with a chair.

Here's what we were up against on vacation:

For what it is worth, we didn't eat the Twinkies. We bought apples at this store. Apples covered with chocolate, caramel and nuts. MMMMMmmmmm.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man who helped build the 31-flavor craze at ice cream store Baskin-Robbins has died at age 90.

Irvine Robbins died Monday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. Daughter Marsha Veit says he had been in ill for some time.

Generations of kids trooped to Baskin-Robbins stores to buy ice cream flavors like Pralines 'n Cream, Daiquiri Ice and Pink Bubblegum.

Robbins opened his first ice cream store in Glendale, Calif., in December 1945, following his discharge from the Army.

Robbins offered 21 flavors at that store. His brother-in-law, the late Burton Baskin, opened his own ice cream store in neighboring Pasadena a year later. The two eventually joined forces.

----

First the inventor of the Egg Mcmuffin dies at 89. Now one of the founders of Baskin-Robbins at 90. It's been a rough year for the visionaries of deliciousness, but at least it seems they've had a good long ride. Not too much of their own medicine, obviously.

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Delimma lectured recently as part of the Authors@Google series.

Here's the video. Really good stuff.

Pollan, a professor Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkley, has written extensively about everything from the health implications of the ubiquitousness of corn and high fructose corn syrup to the politics of the way we eat.

There's also an audio interview with him from NPR's Science Friday here.

If you're trying to eat better, and fresher, food, you probably discovered what Joe and I learned: fresh fruits and vegetables can cost you a bundle.

Never fear, thrifty shoppers. It's time for the farmer's market.

We hit up the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market last weekend. We knew we were going to get tasty, locally-grown commodities. What we didn't realize was how affordable it was going to be.

We picked up potatoes for 69 cents a pound, zucchini for 99 cents a pound and an 8 oz. package of baby portabella mushrooms for $1.89.

I saw the same mushrooms -- on sale -- at our regular grocery story for $2.50. Some deal.

And it's only bound to get better as the summer season rolls on, and more fresh offerings.

Food costs are rising, in part, because of fuel prices. It costs so darn much to ship fresh food all over the country. So why not shop locally?

By the way, there is also a farmers market in Greensboro, open on Saturdays and Wednesdays.

If you can get over the ridiculous title, Devin Alexander's new book looks like it will help you keep on your restricted diet.

If you haven't heard of her, Alexander is the author of The Biggest Loser Cookbook and has a show on FitTv. Her thing is taking those favorite recipes -- the ones that aren't so good for you -- and turning them into something your waistline can appreciate.

"The Most Decadent Diet Ever!" is no exception.

So far I tried out the zucchini boats and the banana coconut muffins. Both were tasty and easy to make.

Try the zucchini on for size. It's a cool way to eat your veggies without sacrificing taste.