I used to love the Garfield comic strip which featured the lasagna-loving cat saying “I’m not overweight, I’m under tall.” At 5′1″, I totally relate.

Like many “under tall” people, I keep wondering why the heck I’m not losing weight. No, I don’t exercise fanatically; I don’t like to sweat unless I’m sitting on the beach sipping mai-tais while on one of those Orlando vacations.

But I do walk over 8,000 steps per day according to my pedometer, at least an hour of which involves doing housework sufficiently strenuous enough to raise my pulse to the weight-loss target zone. And still my fat won’t budge.

Turns out, the problem might be all in my mind. Literally.

Researchers split 14 university student volunteers into three groups for a 45-minute session of either relaxing in a sitting position, reading and summarizing a text, or completing a series of memory, attention, and vigilance tests on the computer.

The scientists had determined beforehand that the thinking sessions consumed only three calories more than resting. After the sessions, the participants were invited to eat as much as they pleased.

Though the study involved a very small number of participants, the results were stark.

The students who had done the computer tests downed 253 more calories, or 29.4 percent more than the couch potatoes. Those who had summarized a text consumed 203 more calories than the resting group.

Blood tests showed that the participants glucose levels fluctuated more dramatically following intellectual activity, and that may cause the brain to demand more food to balance the glucose levels.

If you think about it, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this theory. Consider, for instance, the notorious Freshman 15. Maybe they’re not so much attributable to cafeteria food as the increased intellectual demands of college life? Or bloggers: how many of us can recall being thinner before we joined the blogosphere?

So, with all apologies to Garfield, I have a new explanation for being fat: I’m not overweight, I’m just really freaking smart.

I’m back from a visit to my mother’s house in Texas where, despite her 20+ year career as a nurse and her friendship with a woman who’s had Celiac disease for over 30 years, I still got glutenated.

In all fairness, it wasn’t for a lack of effort on my mother’s part.

Those who have to live without eating gluten learn quickly that dining out is a luxury we just can’t afford. It’s not a matter of money; it’s a matter of physically needing to avoid gluten, even the smallest trace amounts that can, through inattentive kitchen practices, lead to several days of misery. At home, that’s not a big problem for me: I love to cook and my kitchen has been wholly cleansed of gluten in all of its forms.

So when I arrived at my mother’s house the first thing I did was take her to the grocery store. Yes, even H.E.B.’s in Austin offer plenty of gluten-free alternatives: they stock a wider variety of gluten-free flours than my hometown’s store does, and their fresh produce is to die for compared to what we get at the commissary. Seventy-five dollars poorer, we headed toward my mother’s house where I planned to spend five days cooking our meals just so I could avoid ingesting gluten.

And that’s when my oldest brother, the one whom I’m so fond of, called to invite us out to eat.

Oh, the Thai restaurant where we dined had gluten-free options listed on their menus. They even offered Tamaris sauce, a wheat-free (and lower sodium) version of shoyu… “soy sauce” for those of you unfamiliar with Asiatic cuisine. But halfway through my utterly yummy dish of pad se ew (a name which has since become ironic), I started feeling the symptoms that indicate gluten contamination.

My stomach rumbled. My abdomen ached. My forehead began to sweat even as every joint in my body lit up with pain that felt like someone was jabbing ice picks into my sockets. I grew mentally confused. My hands shook. Every inch of my body itched intensely, and suddenly I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to lay down on the floor of the restaurant and nap.

But in my family — an imminently Southern-schooled clan — one does not admit to such things.

So I sat there.

Suffering.

As it happens, this dinner occurred the night before my mother wanted me to attend her church so she could introduce me to all of her friends. A church which, I might add, features 2+ hours main services followed by a doughnut-and-coffee-oriented 2+ hour Sunday school.

That so didn’t happen for me, much to my mother’s dissatisfaction. Having stayed in the bathroom, miserable, until darned near 4 a.m. I just wasn’t capable of attending the 9 a.m. service. Pity.

It took the next entire day for most of the gluten to work its way out of my system. And that night my older brother came up with yet another restaurant recommendation.

“Oh hell no,” I told him. “You don’t seem to understand: eating out hurts me.”

That’s when I realized that my brother, whom I adore, couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on with my Celiac disease. See, he keeps thinking his “low carb diet” is much the same thing: you avoid grains and you’ll lose weight. That’s why, as he sat there munching one day on tortilla chips and another day scarfing down Schlotzky’s (because he had a great coupon), he thought of a gluten-free diet as, well, a diet: something one can enjoy cheating on.

On my last night in Texas my brother invited me over to his house for dinner. On the menu? Sandwiches. Having already been glutenated repeatedly on my visit there — and with a cab coming to take me to the airport at 3:50 a.m. — I knew I couldn’t survive another night of being exposed to gluten, even if he promised not to put the meat he’d sliced for me on one of the freshly-baked rolls he’d just set on the same counter where he was carving the meat.

Next time I visit my family — which is going to be sometime in mid-October — I know two things will have happened: (1) I will have worked off 10 lbs. if only to tease my brother about how “cheating” on his diet has derailed his own weight loss plans; and (2) I’m going to be staying at one of the Laughlin hotels where I can not only order gluten-free foods sent directly to my room but I’ll also be able to drink all the martinis I want without listening to my mother complain.

Ah, family. Ain’t they grand?

I ran out to Wal-Mart this morning to pick up some travel-sized bottles for my toiletry kit, rather than lugging the full-sized bottles through three airports tomorrow. Since I’m only going to Texas for five days and will be staying with my mom (who does daily laundry out of boredom), I plan to just pack a carry-on and skip the whole $15 fee for checked luggage.

So this is, what, late August? Still a few months from Halloween, not to mention the whole food fest known as Thanksgiving. But what were the clerks stocking at Wal-Mart today? Christmas decorations. Not just a few ornaments and crumpled wreaths left from last year, mind you, but stockings, garland and cards, some of which looked like Christmas invitations.

WTF?

Here I’d hoped to lose 25 pounds prior to the holidays but from what I saw it looks like they’re coming early this year.

I remember, back when I was a kid, sitting in front of the television and watching June Cleaver tip the grocery delivery boy as he removed items from bulging brown paper bags and set them on her kitchen table.

The guy looked quite a bit like our grocery delivery boy, one of my older brother’s classmates who was working to afford the gas for his spiffy GTO. I had quite the crush on him, although thinking back to his pimply face, chicken-like neck and greasy hair it’s entirely possible that I was simply fond of the food be brought to our house once a week.

It was a ritual of my mother’s to serve “dab a dinners” on Tuesday nights, dinners designed to use up every bite of leftovers accumulated in the previous week. I loved those meals; they were very much like having a Golden Buffet in our house. Afterward, while the kids did the dishes, Mom would comb through the cupboards and ice box as she made up her grocery list which she’d call in first thing on Wednesday mornings. Late the next afternoon, the grocery boy would arrive with our groceries which, although he didn’t unpack, he carried into the house while Mom hunted around for a dollar to give him. (Back then, with a dollar buying a gallon of gas, that was considered a generous tip.)

Come to think of it, groceries weren’t the only things regularly delivered back then. The dry cleaners used to pick up and drop off my father’s suits and business shirts. Another company delivered big cardboard tubs of ice cream every two weeks. Our neighbors ordered milk straight from a dairy rather than the grocery store — they said it tasted better — and they had it delivered. Even the butcher shop (which was separate from the grocery store at that time) would send over orders, as did a few local stores if you bought enough merchandise. I remember once the mechanic’s brought my dad’s car to the house after fixing a tire that had blown out on the highway, but then again they had to: we only had the one car.

That, perhaps, was ultimately the reason for all those delivery services: one-car families were the norm, as were stay-at-home wives. If the woman of the house wanted to run errands she had to take her husband to work and pick him up that evening. It was a such hassle for both of them that stores quickly realized the surest route to making money was by eliminating such hassles, so they offered delivery services. Most were free, although some did charge a nominal amount — a dollar or two at the most, and not the $10+ fee grocery stores with delivery services tack on today.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about those delivery services quite a bit. Between sitting in line to drop off or pick up my son from school and the hours I spend trying to earn a living working at home, I’d love to be able to get groceries delivered for a reasonable price. Or dry-cleaning. Or even a meal that consisted of something — anything — other than pizza. But in our small town, that’s just not possible, not even with the grocery store.

Which, really, makes the capitalist in me sit up and take note. Oh, I’m not interested in starting a delivery company myself. Of all the small business opportunities I can think of, that one’s a bit too labor intensive for me. But it sure seems like some enterprising college kids could make some serious cash if they wanted.

I know I’d use them, at any rate, particularly on busy days like today when I’m actually craving a salad but just don’t have time to go to the store to buy the ingredients.

Until my diagnosis of Celiac disease — which means I can’t eat gluten in any form — I’d been toying with the idea of diet food delivery again. I’ve tried it in the past and have to admit that I loved the experience. Having UPS show up weekly with a dry-ice filled box of breakfasts, lunches and dinners made dieting such a simple matter. With a husband and son content to live on pizza, PB&J’s and McDonald’s, prepackaged diet foods liberated me from the kitchen. They also cut down on dish washing, one of my very least favorite chores.

Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of not doing much research before signing up for the program I followed. Based on Kirstie Alley’s results, I went with Jenny’s program… and a glance at Kirstie these days tells me she encountered the same problem that I did. The food was disappointing, the servings were minuscule, and, ultimately, I learned very little about portion control. When I finally ran out of food (and money), I gorged on everything in sight. I was that hungry.

Since then, I’ve checked into other diet delivery food programs, including Nutrisystem reviews. The Grand Daddy of dieting programs has been helping people lose weight for over 35 years. Throughout that time they’ve kept their program current with nutritional research. For instance, they recognize that men and women not only need different calories but do better losing weight with different foods. As a result, they offer both male and female programs.

Nutrisystem even offers diet plans for vegetarians and patients with diabetes. I know quite a few people who’ve had great success with their plan, and all of them have raved about the abundance of food… something I definitely did not experience with Jenny. With their OmegaSol blend of heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids and a regular dose of natural fiber, dieters not only feel full on fewer calories but they don’t find themselves battling the cravings that derails so many diet plans. Unfortunately, despite their program’s numerous offerings they don’t have a gluten-free option.

So I checked out Medifast diet reviews in the hopes they might offer that alternative. Like Nutrisystem, Medifast has been around for years and has a proven track record. Oh, you won’t see celebrities like Kirstie advertising for them: they don’t need it. The program, as I know from friends who’ve followed it, works great and helps people lose weight more quickly than other diet delivery services. That’s the best form of advertising around, if you ask me.

Medifast’s principle of eating little meals throughout the day works perfectly for those who, like me, don’t want to get stuck eating a different meal than what they prepare for their family. Five meals a day are Medifast meals and one is a “lean and green” meal you prepare yourself using a balance of lean protein and green vegetables. (Presumably you won’t be serving your family high-calorie foods that would tempt you.) Although they don’t offer gender-based diet plans or vegetarian alternatives, they do offer three different packages depending on how much variety you want and how quickly you want to lose weight. Unfortunately, they don’t have a gluten-free program, either.

It’s frustrating, I’ll tell ya: I know these programs both work. After glancing over their prices, I know that even with the frozen pizzas and PB&J’s my husband and son would be eating we’d still save money on groceries. I know I love their convenience and variety, and I particularly like the thought of how simple they make meal-preparation. But until someone comes up with a gluten-free program I, like the 2 million other celiac patients (and the approximately 3 million undiagnosed people) still have to diet the hard way. Which, in my case, seems to mean: not very well at all.

Five-time Olympic competitor and the oldest woman to have ever been on the U.S. Swim Team, silver medalist Dara Torres is an inspiration to men and women of all ages. But considering that she had retired eight years ago, and gave birth a mere two years ago, she’s certainly inspiring women over 40 with her “age is just a number” mindset.

After one glance at her muscled, powerful body even I found myself thinking, “Hey, I might not get that cut but I could certainly try!” Apparently, I’m not the only one. Torres is inspiring a return to exercise among women and men alike.

Of course, Torres isn’t alone. Plenty of folks have been watching the athletes and admiring the skill, stamina and prowess. Fitness chains are reporting a boom in gym membership in the States. But even in Britain, which will host the 2012 games, there’s a call to use the upcoming events to motivate people to shed pounds (and not just the monetary kind).

But as I stand here on my treadmill huffing and puffing away while blogging I just don’t find NBC’s daytime lineup of soap operas and legal shows to be very inspiring.

Those nice, shiny gold medals may only be worth $215 in dollars but as morale boosters they’re priceless. Somehow, though, I think I might look a bit silly were I to start awarding myself trophies for every 100 miles walked.

So, how do you reward yourself for sticking with your fitness routine?

Once upon a time, long before J.Lo.’s derriere made bubble butts fashionable, I hid mine under long sweaters or tunic blouses. Then her hindness entered the picture and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s song “Baby Got Back” got everybody singing the praises of a bodacious behind, and for a very brief point in my life my callipygian curves were cool.

Then I had my first child and from that point forward I was more worried about the collapse of my cleavage than about the plummet of my posterior. Those pretty little $5 bras I’d pick up at Wal-Mart? I tossed them in favor of the kind of supportive bra that only an engineer could design: massive straps, ribbing in all the right places, enough metal in the underwire and clasps to set off an airport alarm even when I’m just driving past.

Now, I don’t mind wearing such things if it’ll take care of the ta-ta’s and keep them from hitting me — or anyone else — in the eye when I walk.

But an ass bra? That’s so not happening.

Early in my teens my mother lectured me on the importance of moisturizing regularly. Growing up in California in an age when sunscreen was for wimps the women we knew who failed to moisturize faithfully were just as blond, tan and thin as everyone else but their faces resembled leather home theater seating: obviously cared for and yet well-worn, replete with the fine lines and cracks one associates with tanned hide.

Like many pieces of advice administered by my mother — pearls like not crossing my eyes lest they stick that way and always wearing clean underwear and fresh lipstick when leaving the house — I blew off the moisturizer mantra. Now it turns out that I might have been right, because researchers at Rutger University have found a firm link between common moisturizers and non-melanoma skin cancer.

Researchers were led by Dr. Allan Conney from Rutgers University, as they ran a test on mice to see what type of effect these moisturizers had on their bodies.

They tested four common types, Dermavan, Eucerin, Vanicream, and Dermabase.

What they found was that all four were linked to the development of skin cancer tumors on the mice tested in the study.

They were not looking directly to see if moisturizers caused skin cancer, but instead sort of stumbled into the discovery.

Obviously, further research is needed to determine what compound, precisely, is the problem. In the meantime, however, I’m going to console myself that, along with cleavage, being wrinkle-free is an unexpected benefit of being overweight.

Always looking on the bright side, I am.

Every month it seems the recommended daily amount of exercise changes. It’s 10,000 steps.

No, wait, it’s an hour.

Oh, no, 30 minutes is plenty, and you can even take breaks.

While few people really believe 10 minutes of daily exercise is enough, it turns out that for most of us trying to lose weight, 30 minutes isn’t enough, either.

A study published July 28 in the Archives of Internal Medicine adds to the burgeoning scientific consensus: when it comes to exercise for weight loss, more is better. It suggests that obese people would have to exercise at least an hour at a time to see any significant difference in their weight.

The study, led by John Jakicic at the Physical Activity and Weight Management Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh, followed nearly 200 overweight or obese women ages 21 to 45 through a two-year weight-loss program. The women were given free treadmills to use at home, regular group meetings and telephone pep talks to help keep them on track. Participants were also asked to restrict their food intake to between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day, and were randomized to one of four physical activity intervention groups based on energy expenditure (either 1,000 calories or 2,000 calories burned per week) and exercise intensity (high vs. moderate).

By the end of the 24-month intervention, the women who managed to lose at least 10% of their starting body weight (which was, on average, about 193 lbs.) — and keep it off — were exercising twice as long as health authorities typically recommend and expending more than twice as many calories through exercise as women who had no change in body weight. The biggest weight losers were active a full 68 minutes a day, five days a week (about 55 minutes a day more than they had been before the trial began), burning an extra 1,848 calories a week.

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Food eaten:

Number of people nearly killed due to PMS: 4