When my in-laws visit, as they did over the weekend, my life becomes a blur of cooking and doing dishes, with seldom an hour to rest after one meal before it’s time to start preparing the next. Sure, I could make life easier by ordering in pizza, but since they both have numerous health issues I’m a bit hesitant to feed them foods which could only exacerbate their problems and — worse yet — might prolong their stay.

Besides, all of that time spent cooking and cleaning spares me from having to endure hours of chit chat about memories they share with my husband but which I’m no part of.

My goal for the weekend (in addition to making it through without losing my temper in a psychotic rampage) was to simply maintain my weight loss from last week. Not to lose more, mind you: just to keep from packing back on the two pounds I’d recently lost.

I’d read somewhere that blue plates diminish one’s appetite, but since I don’t have any of those I opted for using a blue tablecloth instead. I’m not sure it did much to prevent overeating, but it disguised stains nicely.

I stuck with healthy meals, too, starting each meal with courses of soup and salad in the hope of having filled up on lower-calorie foods before getting to the main entree and side dishes. It worked quite well.

A little too well, as a matter of fact: I now have a refrigerator full of leftovers, but with two fewer people here to eat them. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’d rather eat leftovers for the rest of the week than continue to have house guests.

As for the weight loss? I lost close to 300 pounds once my mother-in-law got off my back this morning and left en route to her own house.

What a great way to start a Monday!

I like weighing myself on Fridays as a means of keeping my eating in check over the weekend. I figure, if I’ve gained during the week then the weekend’s a good chance to spend time making healthier meals and exercising. If I’ve lost, then I want to keep that momentum going by avoiding opportunities to pig out.

Somehow, I managed to lose 2 pounds this week.

I’m not quite sure how it happened. I haven’t been any more active than usual: the ragweed and mold count are still high enough that outdoor activity is out of the question thanks to my severe allergies.

One thing I did do last week might have helped. I sat down and made a spreadsheet of my normal day-to-day activities, together with a running, hour-by-hour total of how many calories I burn in an ordinary day.

Thanks to that approach, I realized I’m only burning 60 calories per hour while I sleep at night, and a mere 80 calories per hour while I sit at the computer. That shed a whole new light how to make proper food choices while running a calorie deficit throughout the day.

For instance, 8 hours of sleep gives me a 480 calorie cushion by breakfast. So I’ve been opting for a 250-calorie breakfast to keep that calorie deficit going.

Between breakfast and lunch I’m mostly at the computer, burning perhaps another 320 calories. If I want to maintain a calorie deficit, I’ve got to keep my lunch choice around 300 calories.

Since I do manage a little housework between lunch and dinner, I typically burn around 500 calories by then. Even so, to keep my ratio of calories in to calories out in proper alignment, I’ve got to have a much lighter dinner than I’d grown used to having.

That hour-by-hour calorie burn is so small, in fact, that I realized I had to cut out snacking altogether if I wanted to enjoy anything large enough to be considered a true meal.

Sounds obvious, I know, but until I’d sat down and charted how very few calories I actually burn each day, I’d never really grasped just how many excess calories I was eating each day.

And in other announcements: I will be attempting to go without alcohol while my in-laws are in town this weekend. Wish me luck.

And, yes, I could increase my food intake if I’d increase my physical activity. Which I do plan to do at some point — I’m just not sure how to find the time right now. Besides, I think the best way for me to start is to first get control over the amount of food I’m consuming — and to get comfortable eating less food, less often. Which I’ve been doing, and I’ve got two missing pounds to prove it.

If rumors are to be believed, Courtney Love had gastric bypass surgery. Former Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell is battling bulimia — again — a condition which Lindsay Lohan also finally admitted to sharing.

And Angelina Jolie is allegedly addicted to diet pills. (Whether we’ll hear about Angie entering drug rehab for this is only a matter of time.)

How weird is it that we in America so greatly worship the thin body that we pursue a “perfection” based on the image of people who admittedly abuse their own bodies?

Today while working out to an exercise video from “The Firm” I had to pause the DVD player to answer the phone. Fifteen minutes later I returned and glanced at the screen before pressing the “Play” button again. What I saw was, when I think about it, rather horrifying.

Have you ever actually looked at the bodies of some of these “exercise gurus” and wondered what they’d look like wearing more than spandex shorts and sports bras? How they’d look if you couldn’t see their chiseled abs, their muscular biceps and squared-off shoulders?

These women look perfectly healthy when surrounded by a half-dozen or so fat-free, hard bodies just like their own. But throw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on them and set them on Main Street U.S.A. and they’d look frighteningly thin. Anorexic, even. Sure, they’ve got cardiovascular fitness and definite muscle tone, but at what point did we begin thinking it “healthy” to so greatly reduce one’s body fat that we can see every tendon and vein in a woman’s arm?

Sure, I’d like to lose weight. I’d like to be able to survive a 55-minute step-aerobic workout without feeling at some point like my heart was going to leap out of my mouth (and that I’m so darned hungry I’d be tempted to eat it). But just as I think there are too many celebrities who abuse their body and drugs to acquire that “perfect” physique, I’m starting to wonder if those exercise gurus don’t engage in their own kind of self-abuse to achieve the same look.

Dear Self,

Yes, you’ve had a crappy day. Yes, there is a small round of Brie in the fridge and a full bottle of vodka in the freezer.

Now seems like a good time to remind you that you are not on the “Let’s Pretend We’re Doing Atkins” diet.

You will not touch the cheese. You will not drink the vodka. Oh, and martini-soaked olives do not count as vegetables.

Step away from the refrigerator before you grow large enough to play defense for the Penn State football team.

Now drop and give me 25 sit-ups. Pronto!

Love,
Your Stomach

I love a three-day weekend, if only because I have a 50-50 chance of winning the “Who gets to sleep in on the third day?” coin toss my husband and I have the Friday before the weekend begins.

See, I look forward to long weekends for the opportunities to relax: a longer morning lay in, the cessation of most household chores, a break from home schooling my son. Oh, and the food: what’s a Labor Day weekend without grilled burgers and chicken, tossed salads, fresh-baked pie and slices of watermelon?

My husband, on the other hand, sees long weekends as an opportunity to do stuff — most of which involves catching up on things he made excuses for not accomplishing during the week. Telling me that he really wanted to get on top of his end-of-summer chores, he spent yesterday mowing the yard, putting down fall lawn treatment, pulling weeds, trimming tree branches, and sweeping the garage.

Today, though, he wants to do something fun — maybe even go boating. Which would be fine, except that he wants me to make a pack lunch, find everyone’s swimsuits and life jackets, pack a day bag with all of the stuff we could possibly need, gather our fishing gear, renew our fishing licenses and run to pick up some bait.

Then we can all jump in the car and drive to join some friends for a fun day of boating, after which I’ll get to unpack the picnic basket, wash all of the bathing suits, hang the life jackets up to dry in the storage room, put away the sunscreen and First Aid stuff from the day bag, stow the fishing gear and file our fishing licenses.

That. Is. Not. Happening.

It’s “Labor Day” and, since there’s still no such thing as a Mommy Labor Union, I’m on strike.

I did it. I finally broke down and stopped pretending that my Gap and Guess jeans still fit. I went with my husband and son to our favorite mall today and didn’t even pause to leave my drool prints on the window at BCBG. I marched — ok, waddled — past the stores in which I usually shop and set foot for the first time in a Lane Bryant.

Not that I haven’t shopped LB’s before. I’ve just done it online where anonymity and electrons protect me from the pitying stares of skinny people walking by with “Pity about her fat ass, because she has such a pretty face” written all over their own.

Until now, though, I’d limited my LB purchases to a handbag, some necklaces and quite possibly the single most comfortable pair of yoga pants I’ve ever worn.

Today, I just couldn’t take it anymore. We’d gone out for sushi, see, and as usual I overindulged in my love of spicy salmon rolls and whatever the sushi chef recommended. (Answer: damn near everything.) We hadn’t even begun window-shopping and already my waistband threatened to cut off circulation to my lower body. Also, it was hot.

Being hot and uncomfortable is never a fun experience for Chubby Mommy. Bad enough to be laboring for breath but also sweating? I might as well be exercising… and we know how much I hate to do that.

So I stepped into the LB Outlet store with the intention of sucking up as much of their air-conditioning as possible before re-joining my husband and son (who were enjoying their skinny selves at Coldstone Creamery with little regard for my misery).

Well, I was there already, why not try on some clothes? In fact, why not try on some jeans and maybe find something a bit less restrictive than the Gap pair shrink-wrapping my body as my sweat dried.

That’s when I found them: the new LB “Right Fit” jeans.

Jeans that actually fit both my ass and my waist… a waist which, it turns out, I actually still have when clad in pants designed to follow curves, not fight them. Jeans — most importantly — that don’t promise all sorts of stretchy material and then look like they’re made out of, well, all sorts of stretchy material. Jeans that are lightweight, perfectly comfortable and actually reveal that my ass does not reside on the back of my knees.

I bought three pairs. Yep, three! Then I slipped back into the dressing room and swapped my Gap crap for one of the new pairs before strutting out, wholly comfortable and quite confident again.

My husband came out of Coldstone licking the last of his Chocolate Devotion off of his lips and said, “Hey, have you lost weight?”

My son said, “Mommy, where’d your Buddha Belly go?”

I have to admit: I felt SO much better about my body, too, even without having slipped on the leopard print “boy short” panties still in my shopping bag.

Best money I’ve spent in a long time. (And, yes, the panties look great, too.)