I've been looking at my calorie total, and I've been gradually eating less and less every week. I'm not sure this is a good idea, and it makes me wonder if my weight loss is slowing because my body is in major starvation mode. I only lost 1 pound last week, and it looks like I'm only going to lose a pound this week as well.

In week 1 of my new eating plan, I ate a total of 11,814 calories. I'm at week 7 now, and my calorie total for the week is 10,044. I went from an average of eating 1,688 calories a day in week 1 to 1,435 calories a day. And what's really weird is, I don't feel like I'm starving or eating less than I did before. The only difference is I don't have any days where I really went over my calorie total anymore. I read somewhere once that if you eat too few calories your body goes into starvation mode. In starvation mode, you get colder and your immune system is weakened, and you end up getting more colds. Is this what's happening with me?

I think I'm going to have to experiment with this theory and try to eat more next week. I want to lose weight, but I want to do it the right way so I don't trigger my body to go into mass starvation mode. The thought of having a cold every month is just wigging me out, since I hardly ever get colds. Being sick is so miserable. I think being sick and ill all the time puts a major stress on your body and ages you. Look at anybody you know who's been through a major illness, and you'll see that the illness completely aged them. The formerly sick also never seem to recover their youthfulness either. My skin crawls at the thought.

I've been so lucky to have been blessed in my adulthood with good health. I was an asthmatic sickly chid, who was allergic to everything. In junior high when puberty kicked in, my asthma and my allergies disappeared and I've been pretty healthy ever since. I'm definitely going to have to experiment with adding more calories into my diet. My body never seems to work like anyone else's, so it does seem possible that I'm not eating enough calories even though I now weigh 13 pounds less than when I first started. I could try it for a week to see what happens. The worse thing that could happen is I gain a couple of pounds back, but at least then I'll know that my weight loss is normal and not plateauing or slowing down.

I'm just so bummed out though, because I expected to have a 2 pound weight loss per week. I thought I would be at my goal weight by December or January. If I only lose 1 pound a week, I won't be at my preferred weight until April of next year, and that seems like such a long, long time away. I think the truth is, I'm going to have to resign myself to the fact that I'll be eating this way for the rest of my life or at least until my weight stabilizes and stays where I want it to stay, without much thought or effort on my part. But how long is that going to take? I saw a dieting site from a woman who says she's still vigilant about her eating, even though she's been at her goal weight for 3 years now. One would think one could get to a point of equilibrium where your weight would stay the same without constantly watching it. But not according to this woman.

Maybe it's true what they say in those 12 step groups. You have to take one day a time. If you look too far ahead into the future, you'll freak out because the future just seems so overwhelming. I mean it's not exactly a pleasant thought to me that I'll be inputting everything I eat into an excel worksheet for the rest of my life. I'm not that anal after all. But I can do it, I can deal with it, I can tolerate and put up with it, if I just think of it as something that I have to do today. Is this what alcoholics go through?

The The Sun UK had an interesting called Blondes Die Out by 2202. Scientists are predicting that natural blondes will become extinct by 2202, because men are dating "bottle" blondes instead of natural blongdes. The gene for blonde hair is a recessive gene and both parents have to have the gene to produce blonde babies. Since it's "bottle blondes" are preferred by men over the natural blondes, the blonde gene is dying out.

Then the Sun had a hilarious section called Save Our Blondes. The Sun is conducting a campaign for men to date natural blondes. There's a fact file on blondes which gives everything from migration patterns, mating call, feeding habits, natural habitat, etc. It's very, very funny!

I've always wanted to be blonde just for a day, to see what it's like. All my blonde friends tell me that men treat them like they're dumb, even though they're not, and that being treated that way by practically every man is not a fun experience. Still I wouldn't mind knowing what it's like to walk into a room and have every man whip his head around to look at me, since I've seen that happen with my pretty blonde friends. They hate it, but then again they're used to it. It's not the kind of thing that has ever happend to me, and I think it would be fun just for a day. Maybe.

I researched how much Pay it Forward grossed domestically and it didn't do too bad. Pay it Forward was ranked # 77 in 2000 out of about 300 movies, and grossed about $35 million.

Perhaps that's a good goal to have for a movie, rank in the top 100 for year, and make back the amount of money you spent on the movie and have some profit. I don't think that Pay it Forward had a big budget for production, but probably had a large budget for the movie star salary. Helen Hunt was commanding $ 1 million per episode for Mad about You. Heaven only knows that Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment are commanding for salaries.

I must really be a sentimental person at heart, because I loved the movie "Pay it Forward". I've been reading the reviews, and they'e mostly all panned the movie. But too bad, I liked it.

Helen Hunt was great, playing the same kind of low class waitress type character from "As Good as it Gets". She sports a total bleached blonde look, and looks really scary in her outfits and her makeup. She really looks the part of a secret alcoholic mother. Kevin Spacey was also good as the scarred social studies teacher. His performance reminded me of his performance in LA Confidiential. Spacey is a great technical actor, and you have to really watch his face and all the emotions that flit through it. He's playing his usual type of character too, but he's so good at it. For a change of Spacey character type, watch Hurly Burly. Spacey looked so cute in that movie, where he played a smarmy Hollywood executive. Haley Joel Osment was also very good as the child of a alcoholic mother and wife beating father.

Although the idea of "Pay it Forward" isn't new, think of the "random acts of senseless kindness" saying, it's nice to see the concept revived again in a major hollywood movie. I've always believed in the concept of paying it forward. So many complete strangers have come to my aid over the years, that I've made it a point of also helping total strangers, or people I might not know very well. It's my way of thanking the people who have helped me, by keeping their kindness going.

The reviewer at Salon.com was so cynical. It doesn't surprise me that their online site isn't that profitable. Their writers are the type of people who never have anything good to say about anything and anybody, and who needs more that kind of cruelty in the world. Didn't they mother teach them that if they have nothing good to say, they should just keep their mouth shut? I wouldn't mind if their criticisms were valid, but it's done with such an attitude of cultural superiority. Like who made the writers at Salon.com our cultural czars? I don't think the writers at Salon.com would like anything unless it was anti mass popular culture. What a mistaken attitude to have for an online magazine, that after all to be profitable, has to appeal to a mass popular culture. Whatever.

I liked Pay it Forward. I wonder if it did well at the box office. It would be interesting to find out.