It’s hot. I’m sweaty and sticky. With energy costs what they are — along with the high price of everything else — I’m trying to leave the air-conditioner off as much as possible. By noon, though, I can barely stand it: every movement means some part of my body is rubbing against some other part and by the end of the day all of the parts feel like raw meat.

So now’s probably a good time for some retro-Chubby: my advice from last May about how to prevent that rash caused by thighs rubbing together.

Another tip for surviving the summer: don’t be afraid to apply an acne treatment to summer breakouts wherever they happen. I learned this the hard way years ago after getting a pimple on my ass. That’s two miserable weeks I’ll never get back.

My son’s summer day camp is wonderful about planning activities to keep the kiddies entertained. Wednesdays are field trips; Tuesdays and Thursdays they spend in the pool; Fridays always involve some kid-pleasing theme. Next Friday they’re throwing a costume party and, because my son is firmly convinced I must be sitting at home bored out of my mind while he’s at camp, he signed me up to be a Parent Helper.

In other words, I’ll be spending the day surrounded by fifty-six children wearing their Halloween costumes from last year, all of them hyped in eager anticipation of busting open the candy-filled pinata they’ve been making all week. As far as my son is concerned this is the coolest thing ever.

Me? I’m freaking out. Unlike my son, I don’t have a variety of costumes in storage. I don’t have a Superman outfit or a Darth Vader mask and cape in a drawer. I don’t even have a cowboy hat and pair of plastic pistols (not that his camp would allow such things).

Last Halloween I was too sick to bother dressing up and spent most of the evening in bed. The year before? I hadn’t thought to dress up just to stand there passing out candy to sugar-addicted kids until my son insisted that “Mom, you’ve got to do something neat!” So I grabbed a green turtleneck and hot glued an ashtray, a few playing cards and some beer bottle caps on it and declared that I was going as a poker table. He wasn’t amused.

Since I don’t want to embarrass him around his little friends I’ve been looking at Halloween costumes which, let me just tell you, are impossible to find in stores this time of year. That’s okay, though: stores pretty much stock boring costumes designed for skinny women determined to show their inner skank in front of the kiddoes. I’m not about to do that.

The great thing about looking online for costumes is the huge variety are available. Variety in designs, yes, but also in sizes. Who knew they made plus-sized Halloween costumes? They look surprisingly comfortable, too: the Geisha one in particular (which comes with a wig, even) looks like one I could see myself wearing for a more, ah, intimate party of two.

Besides, I’m pretty sure neither my son nor the camp’s organizers would appreciate if I showed up in the Supa Pimp Mama costume, although it is tempting if only to teach them to never, ever look to me to be a Parent Helper again.

For the overwhelming majority of my life I despised hot, spicy foods. Oh, I love layered flavors: a dash of cinnamon in a bowlful of chili, a few drops of pure vanilla in my French toast, even chocolate flavored with a hint of cayenne. (Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.) But truly hot foods? No thanks.

Part of the problem, I think, is that when it comes to cooking most people mistake heat with burn: they pour Tabasco into a sauce and call it “Cajun-style” or toss chopped jalapeños into a dish — seeds and all — and call it “Southwestern”. No thanks. I value my tongue and my palate sufficiently to protect them from such tortures.

A few years ago I started getting serious about home cooking. (Subscribers to my Home Helper Newsletter, which provides weekly dinner menus, new recipes and grocery lists along with lots of other goodness, know that I clearly love to try new and interesting foods.) One of the first things I learned was how to make my own spice blends for soups, dry rubs and other dishes. After mixing them together, I began storing them in magnetic spice jars stuck to the side of my fridge where they’re out of direct sunlight and away from heat. (Here are my favorites, by the way.)

Turns out maybe I shouldn’t just use those blends while cooking, because research has shown that the addition of certain spices or flavors can lead to weight loss by increasing an eater’s satisfaction.

The study of “tastants” — substances that can stimulate the sense of taste — included 2,436 overweight or obese people who were asked to sprinkle a variety of savory or sweet crystals on their food before eating their meals. They used the salt-free savory crystals on salty foods and used the sugar-free sweet crystals on sweet or neutral-tasting foods. The participants didn’t know what the flavors of the crystals were, other than salty or sweet. The hidden flavors of the savory tastants were cheddar cheese, onion, horseradish, ranch dressing, taco, and parmesan. The flavors of the sweet tastants were cocoa, spearmint, banana, strawberry, raspberry and malt.

A control group of 100 people didn’t use tastants. Both groups continued their normal diet and exercise habits during the study.

At the start of the study, the treatment group had an average weight of 208 pounds and an average body mass index (BMI) of 34, which is considered obese. After six months of using the tastants, the 1,436 people in the treatment group who completed the study lost an average of 30.5 pounds, and their BMI decreased by an average of five points.

In the control group, the average weight loss was two pounds, and the average BMI decrease was 0.3.

Thirty pounds lost by simply adding a few flavors isn’t something to sneeze at (unless you’re allergic to onion or strawberry, I suppose). In my own experience I’ve noticed myself eating less when a food delivers a big taste in the first few bites, but I’d never really thought about the connection.

Could it be that many of us eat more than we should simply because we’re searching for something more flavorful than, say, the benign squishiness of a Big Mac or the bland waxiness of most chocolate bars?

I’m down in Texas visiting my mother, and it feels like I haven’t stopped eating since the moment we stepped off the plane yesterday. Southern food is my weakness: fried okra, fried catfish, fried… anything… all topped with jalapenos, poblanos, gravy or all three.

Yesterday, I overdid it on the peppers: scrambled eggs with jalapenos and tomatoes for breakfast; a chile rellano and Spanish rice for lunch. By the time dinner rolled around I wasn’t in the least bit interested in food. In fact, I went to bed a bit early (we’d had to catch a 6 a.m. flight, after all, so I was exhausted) and wound up having those crazy post-spicy food dreams.

Today I’ve decided that even though I’m on vacation I shouldn’t let it completely blow my diet. So I’ve grabbed one of the hotel’s promotional pens and a little pad of paper so I can keep track of calories I’m consuming. In theory, this should help fend off overindulgence. In reality, I suck at math, so I won’t be surprised if I get home to find I’ve gained two or three pounds.

On the bright side: it’s smoking hot here. The temps reached 105 F yesterday, although today they’re expected to be a comparatively chilly 99 F. So if I do manage to get home without gaining any weight, it’s probably due to the water weight loss with all the sweating I’m doing.

Well, I did not miraculously lose 30+ pounds this week. No, I didn’t really think it would happen but, hey, it would’ve been nice to have lost at least one pound, but that didn’t happen, either. Which is frustrating, to be honest, because I’ve been pretty darned good at eating right.

In fact the only thing in my household that seems to be lighter is my wallet. Since I’d received a Starbuck’s gift card for my birthday, I decided to head there around lunch time. In our town, Starbuck’s is really just a kiosk inside a grocery store, and not surprisingly my stomach got to rumbling while I stood waiting for my double-shot non-fat Venti latte. So — and here’s where I was proud of myself — I headed over to the salad bar with my low-cal Starbuck’s treat in hand.

Five minutes later I walked out $7 poorer. Seven dollars! And, no, that wasn’t for the latte: I’d paid for that with the gift card. That little plastic box holding my salad cost seven freaking dollars! I could’ve gone to a restaurant and had someone else put my salad together for me at that price.

Figuring I’d save more money by making salads at home I asked my husband to stop at the commissary on his way home to pick up salad-making stuff. Ordinarily, it’s far less expensive to shop there than at a civilian grocery store. But when he came home with a mere bag of fixings (mixed greens, carrots, celery, black olives, chickpeas, green peas, grape tomatoes and chopped turkey) the bill came to $14.75.

Holy crap! At that price I could buy two weeks’ worth of side salads — or 14 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers — from Wendy’s. So, really, as if it wasn’t already hard for us chubby folks to make healthy food choices, the expense of it’s now making it even more difficult. Which kind of makes me wonder if the makers of appetite suppressants like hoodia are making a fortune these days as people seek ways to keep their grocery costs down. I know I’m finding that tempting, at least.

Speaking of which: here are web-savvy ways to help keep your grocery costs down. Not that using online coupons or ordering in bulk is all that revolutionary, mind you. My favorite web-based way to save money at the grocery store? Order pizza online.

On a more frequent basis than I care to admit, I say a little prayer asking God to bless the makers of Preparation H. If you’ve given birth, or ever left a bathroom feeling as if you have, then you know exactly what I mean. It’s the kind of relief to which nothing compares (except, perhaps, finally giving birth or leaving a bathroom feeling as if you have).

I have several tubes of the stuff myself: one in each bathroom, and another in my make-up box. My what??? That’s right: my make-up box. Stuff’s invaluable for shrinking zits and those puffy morning-after bags under your eyes. It’s not the only butt-medicine that does double-duty on the face, either (please, resist the urge to make wise cracks): those Tucks pads they dole out to new mothers are soaked in witch hazel, a well-known natural astringent.

Apparently, Preparation H has another use I’d never heard about until now: body-builders are said to be using Preparation H to shrink fat deposits. Of course, non-butt uses aren’t condoned by the ointment’s makers, but I still can’t help wondering: when the hell is someone going to make a body lotion containing this stuff?!

Jae’s been doing a weekly Wednesday Weigh In, and I’ve been meaning to participate. Except that might involve actually stepping on a scale, and I’m trying to avoid that.

What’s that, you say? Why would I eschew weighing myself if I’m trying to lose weight? Because I’ve been overly-obsessed with my scale of late and I’m trying to break that pattern.

As I’ve mentioned before, I keep my scale in the kitchen, not the bathroom. The reason’s not as nefarious as it sounds: we simply don’t have a place in our bathroom where I can put the scale without tripping over it. So moving it into the kitchen seemed to make sense at the time. Besides, I figured, if I’d weigh myself before binging on a snack it might actually give me a little more willpower.

And that’s when the problem started.

Every time I thought about snacking I’d step on that scale and groan. Then, instead of foregoing the snack I’d actually eat more: out of frustration, out of disappointment, out of a feeling that I’ll never, ever, ever lose weight so why bother.

A week ago I decided to take a break from daily weighing. It’s kind of like putting myself on a scale diet, I guess you could say. We have a trip to my mom’s house planned for the middle of this month and I’d started really obsessing about my weight. (Translate: freaking out. Big time.) It’s not like we’re going to to be staying at one of those Outer Banks rentals where I’ll need to be seen in a bathing suit or anything. We’re going to my mother’s… but since many of my weight issues started in childhood, perhaps that’s just as bad.

Which is why I decided that until we’re back from that visit I’m just not going to weigh myself. Judging by the fit of my clothes, I’m guessing I’ve neither gained nor lost but I don’t want to know for certain. I don’t want to think about it. I want to trust that my visit with my mother and my enjoyment of our time together has nothing to do with my weight, and to ensure that happens I’m just not thinking about it right now.

But Jae is doing awesome — she’s lost almost 30 pounds since January, so go congratulate her!