Today I had a totally un-American idea!  This will be a tough one to swallow - LITERALLY!  My wife often says I am such a "romantic" when I take her out to fine restaurants such as Hy-Vee Chinese!  Even though she is joking, this IS one of our favorite places to eat.  The food is good, and best of all, it's pretty inexpensive.  Recently, however, I had a thought when I was ordering my food - I wanted to tell the young man dishing up my Black Pepper Chicken and Sweet & Sour Chicken - "Please, not so much on my plate...."

This calorie thing is hard!  I had no idea when I started to learn how to eat again (forgetting all that I was taught in kindergarten about cleaning your plate and going back for seconds), that this would be so hard.  My wife and I talk about how much we use to eat and we are amazed that we hadn't gained more weight than we did.  Take today for instance, we were out shopping and we stopped at Bruegger's Bagels for lunch.  I thought I was going to be good.  According to my LoseIt.com calorie budget, I have a budget of 1,619 calories for today - PLENTY, RIGHT?  So I ordered what I thought was going to be a good (that is low calorie) lunch.  I ordered: