My boyfriend spends a minimum of a dozen hours a day cooking, but he never has time to feed himself. He's taken up some emergency measures -- protein shakes, Clif bars. But these are poor substitutions when body and mind are calling out for some real food. More

I have now been on my "diet" for more than three years now, and as you might have noticed I weigh in every Friday, just like I am about to do. What has that meant to my weekly eating habits? That Thursdays have been near-fasting days for me. I have had many a Thursday dinner of apples or banana or raisins. A toasted bialy would qualify as a Thursday feast. More

After reading the piece about "imagination diets" in New York Times yesterday, I couldn't help but disagree. Perhaps my instincts are particularly Pavlovian, but the more I think about a certain food, the hungrier I get. Remember at the end of SuperSize Me when they show the credits and Morgan Spurlock says something like, "If you're hungry after watching this, you're sick"? All I wanted at that moment was a McDonald's Happy Meal. More

My wife and I have spent the last 24 hours preparing for the effects of Hurricane Earl on the little former sheep farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard that we've been coming to together ever since we met more than 32 years ago. We are fully PB&J equipped for Hurricane Earl, but given my predilection for inhaling entire jars of peanut butter with a spoon, I am worried about the effects of Hurricane Earl on my serious diet. More

I'm getting ready to hit the road tomorrow for almost two weeks in California, and though I am certainly worried about the road's effects on my weight, I'm actually feeling reasonably OK about my chances of staying the course on my serious diet, but if any serious eaters out there have words of wisdom concerning road eating, now is the time to share them. More

I knew I had a peanut butter problem. If there was a jar in the house I couldn't stop eating it. So I stopped buying peanut butter, even though I love it so. Now I'm worried that I have the same problem with my favorite brand of hummus. It's so creamy and smooth (kind of like a creamy, savory peanut butter) and seriously delicious (as we noted in our hummus blind taste test a while back) that I have a hard time not finishing the whole tub once I start. More

I'm probably stating the obvious here, but I eat out in restaurants. A lot. Not as many times as a restaurant critic at the New York Times like Sam Sifton (Sam and his predecessors eat out a minimum of ten meals a week), but I probably eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in restaurants at least four or five times in the course of a week. And when I read a menu, I become a kid back in the candy store. I have a hard time deciding what to order, so I invariably order too much food. This makes it difficult to lose weight. So I realize I have to go back to the drawing board when it comes to ordering in restaurants. Which is just what I did this past week. More

n the last few weeks a few commenters have suggested that it's time for me to pull the plug on the Serious Diet column. Someone suggested I rename it "weight maintenance," because I haven't lost much weight lately. A few other folks have taken me to task for not being disciplined enough, or not exercising enough in the right way, or not eating enough fruits and vegetables. Hmmm. Now that I've listed the most common complaints I see that in fact, all these folks are correct. But that doesn't mean they're right about retiring the column. Why? More

I'll admit it, serious eaters. I was feeling discouraged after last week's Serious Diet post. Some of the comments upset me, though I know everyone was just trying to help. But what was even more upsetting was the upward direction of my weigh-ins. I felt bewildered,overwhelmed, even helpless. It wasn't until Sunday that I finally came to grips with what had been going on. Even more importantly, I figured out something very concrete that I could do about it. Where did I find such solace? In my very own words. Direct from last week's post. More

It doesn't seem to matter what I eat, or how much I exercise. The diet powers that be have obviously decided to test my resolve this week. Well, if the forces of diet evil think they're going to defeat me with this brazen show of scale power, they don't know who they're dealing with here. I'm going to give you a bite-by-bite rundown of my calorie intake this week, complete with high and lowlights, along with a log of my obsessive exercise regimen. More