The big box of food from NutriSystem was indeed sitting on my front porch when I got home last Monday. It was bigger and heavier than I expected–I’m glad I didn’t get it sent to work so I didn’t have to wrestle into and then out of my car.

They’re clever to encourage you order in bulk like they do. Sorting out the packages into breakfast, lunchtime, dinnertime, and dessert (which should really be called “snacks”, because pretzels are just not dessert no matter what the bag says), I thought “wow, this is a lot of food; I shouldn’t be hungry eating all this”. Of course, I don’t get to eat it all at one time, it’s supposed to last me five weeks.

So since I had all that food, there was no reason not to start the diet last Tuesday. Before breakfast, I had Mr. Karen take yet another set of before pictures. He thought I should call them after pictures–after I gained all that weight, I guess. And I suppose that makes sense, to think of these pictures as the end. I’m done with being heavy thing, whereas I won’t ever be done with eating right–not if I want to keep from being heavy again. I posed in front of my colorwash star quilt, since I figured that would give me a visual scale to track my progress. (You can see the pics in my all-new weight log; now with color-coding!)

My first breakfast was Banana Spice Muffins. These are barely recognizable as relatives of the muffins I used to buy at the farmers’ market. They’re more like little cakes, wider than they are high–like something one might make in an Easy-Bake Oven but not quite that big. Per the label, they have no trans-fats and actually contain some actual banana puree, so that was encouraging. They tasted okay. I didn’t want to spit them out, but I sure wouldn’t make a special trip to buy them, either.

I’ve had something different for every meal so far and have been taking notes about which items I’ll order again and which I’ll avoid. The scrambled eggs were the freakiest thing so far–yellow powder to which one adds water and then microwaves, with the result being something very like scrambled eggs. It’s like magic. I’ll be getting those again. The breakfast muffins, not so much; I’d rather eat one of the lunch bars for breakfast and have breakfast eggs for lunch.

Today, one week in, I’m four pounds lighter. Considering I had that decidedly non-NutriSystem lunch on Sunday, I’m pretty happy with the results. Too bad I can’t expect to keep losing at this rate–I’d only need a couple more months of big boxes of food to do that.

One year ago today, I was heading home from JournalCon DC. I just today booked my airline tickets for this year’s gathering. There’s still time to sign up to join me at JournalCon San Diego in October.

Two years ago, I was in Chicago having fun and not writing an entry.

Three years ago, I was tired. I’m tired today, too, since I couldn’t get to sleep and ended up getting out of bed to write my morning pages starting at 12:50 a.m.