I'm starting to think that jeans shopping is harder than shopping for a wedding dress. I've yet to have the opportunity to do the latter, but I hope that if I do it's not as painful and irritating as the former has always been for me.

When Citizens for Humanity and all the other more expensive yet stretchy and shapely jeans brands came into high fashion, I finally scored a pair that hugged my curves, accentuated my butt, and didn't pinch my thighs. However, this past summer (and many pairs of Citizens later), I went in search of jeans made by a different designer and could barely get a leg in. It seemed like each of the millions of pairs of jeans that I yanked on were either barely zippable and left indigo ink under my fingernails from my efforts, or they were a size larger than normal and too loose. Yes, my thighs had indeed grown since my last purchase, but they hadn't grown enough to warrant such a struggle!

A few months later, I tried again in vain to find jeans. Exhausted, I resolved to not shop again until this month, when I expected to be further on my way to getting fit. So, this past weekend I went back to the same stores (Henry Lehr, Scoop, and Barney's Coop). After all those attempts at trying new brands, I finally tried on a pair of Citizens. I got them on with a minimal amount of hopping and pulling, and zipped them right up, only to find that the style I was trying was too high cut. Thankfully the store is getting in a shipment of lower cut Citizens this week.

Do I wish the above paragraph went more like: not only did I find a new brand of jeans that was the perfect cut, color and length, but they are also two sizes smaller and make my thighs look like Jessica Biel's? Although that certainly doesn't sound bad, it also doesn't sound like me. I'm a curvy woman with a passion for food. I accept and like my curves, and I recognize that with my culinary yen sometimes comes a little extra weight, and a responsibility to always make gym-going a part of my weekly routine.

Thanks for reading this month, and I hope you'll continue to read about my exploits on my blog, SlicesofMe.Blogspot.com

I'm having a cranky, crampy, womanly, bloaty, low-energy day today. Even though I brought my gym clothes with me to work, I think I'm going to forgo the gym tonight in favor of running a few errands, eating the salmon and spinach I bought at Whole Foods on Sunday, and watching the last two episodes of "Heroes" on the couch with Jon. The good news is I can make up for tonight's workout with a slightly abbreviated one tomorrow night after I volunteer. The other good news is that not going to the gym was a very hard decision to make, whereas it used to be lickety-split.

Finding a balance between the gym, my social life, extracurricular activities, and life's irritating but necessary responsibilities continues to be a struggle, but I'm getting better at it.

I've entered into that exercise phase where my body looks forward to the gym and feels the difference when I don't go. Which, for one reason or another, has often been when I stopped going for awhile and broke the rhythm. I'm not going to allow that to happen this time though.

For the last few years I've had a list of healthy foods that I copied from Newsweek stuck to my fridge with a magnet that says "Exercise! The Poor Man's Surgery." When I glance at it, I'm reminded that I haven't had salmon in a while, or that I should slice up the tomatoes on my counter and have a healthy snack. The other foods are:

Beans, Blueberries, Broccoli, Oats, Oranges, Pumpkin, Soy, Spinach, Walnuts, Yogurt and Tea (green or black).

Another list that makes sense to me is this one from Day 25 of the America Takes It Off diet plan that includes the following list of foods that will fill you up with the fewest calories:

Potatoes, Fish, Oatmeal, Oranges, Apples, Whole wheat pasta, Grapes, Air-popped popcorn, Bran cereal and Soup.

It happens every month, and yet it's always an utter drag. PMS, that is. Some months are worse than others, but usually I'm bone tired, a little weepy, spacy as all get out, hungry, headachy, and have low energy.

This past summer I finally got into the routine of taking a daily vitamin. Much as I hate taking big pills and don't always "remember" to take it, I make sure to during my PMS and MS weeks, in hopes that that extra dose of iron will perk me up.

I've learned that my PMS week is my least creative and productive week of the month - and since I figured that out, I've begun to work around it. I've also learned that taking good care of me really helps - for example, going to bed a little earlier and forcing the rational me to actually go to the gym on my designated gym nights despite the irrational me's pleas to curl up with "Studio 60," "Veronica Mars," and my cat.

As I write this, I hear my couch calling me from 30 blocks away, but I've got my gym bag packed and under my desk, so there's no getting out of it tonight, irrational me, you hear me?!

Don't turn up the heat in my apartment, which is currently sweltering despite the 30 degree weather, but do turn up the heat in the food you eat this winter.

I recently subscribed to writer Jane Brody's Personal Health podcast on The New York Times' website, and this week she talks about spicy food.

My favorite spicy food of late is Trader Joe's killer Thai Lime and Chili Peanuts. When I eat a small dinner, I often have a handful of the peanuts for dessert and soon feel sated. This, says Brody, is the effect that spicy food can have on you. According to the podcast, eating hot chilies, black pepper or ginger increases feelings of satiety so that you eat less; they also raise the body's metabolic rate, which means you burn extra calories.

Thai food for dinner, anyone?

The iPod 'tis the thing. Or rather, the gym mix that I finally finished making for my iPod is the thing that I credit for helping me go an extra quarter of a mile on the elliptical this week. I've been holding steady for the last few months at 2.5 miles in 30 minutes, but I'm trying to get up to 3 miles, and I think I can do it.

Here's a sample of the songs I've been bopping (and sometimes mouthing the words) to:

-Queen's We Are the Champions, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Fat Bottomed Girls, natch!

-Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit

-Big Boy's The Way You Move

-Andrew Bird's Two Way Action

-Beastie Boys' Intergalactic

-The Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go

-Fame's Hot Lunch Jam & Body Electric

-Black Eyed Peas' My Humps

-Ryan Adams' New York New York

-Aida's My Strongest Suit

-Spring Awakening's Totally F****d

-Ben Folds Five's Underground

-Soul Asylum's Somebody to Shove

I obviously haven't bought much new music in the last few years, but when I tire of this mix, I'll definitely have reason to do some serious iTunes shopping!

"I never drink a calorie," a friend once told me. Indulgent alcoholic beverages aside, I rarely keep anything other than water in my fridge at home, but I still love fresh-squeezed orange juice on a lazy weekend morning, a smoothie now and then after the gym, a pick-me-up cup of coffee around 3 p.m., or a Coke when I have a headache. I rarely have soda otherwise, and today's article on the Diet & Fitness channel reminded me why. Recently though, my office began stocking Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, and at my request, Diet Sprite.

I'm not a morning person, in part because I often feel nauseous when I wake up. On the particularly bad days, sparkling water or soda helps settle my stomach. Since I've been drinking a few diet Sprites a week, or rather Sprite Zero as it's now called, I've been wondering if the artificial sweetener could do me harm. This Prevention magazine story helped allay my fears of gaining soda weight or ingesting too much sweetener.

I rarely need to drink the whole can, so I've started pouring half into an empty water bottle and saving it for the next morning. This way, I don't rely as much on soda to quench my thirst.

Tonight I had a few friends over for a post-New Year's catch up. I've resolved to cook one healthy meal a month this year, but it's neither enjoyable nor practical for me to do it on a weeknight, so I served two very tasty lower-fat frozen pizzas.

The first, an Amy's, had pesto, organic tomato slices, and broccoli with part-skim mozzarella. The second was from Trader Joe's and had spinach, feta, tomato, and more part-skim mozzarella. The slices were satisfying and small, and in between eating them, we had fun with my pièce de résistance of the evening: Thai lettuce wraps, which are basically a DIY, hold-in-your hand salad.

Once everyone arrived, I explained the assembly method of eating the wrap: take a leaf of lettuce (I used iceberg tonight, but have also used Boston), spread a little goat cheese on it, then top with diced tomatoes and mushrooms and sprinkle with either hot sauce (I like Cholula) or salad dressing (my favorite dressing is lemon juice mixed with olive oil). Fold and eat. The wraps are fun to create, make you think of salad, and veggies in general, a little differently, and are actually filling. These were the ingredients I was in the mood for, but the possibilities are limitless.

A few hours, and a few glasses of sparkling wine later, we were all caught up, and full but not too full.

Food. I love food.

Thinking, talking, and daydreaming about it; looking at it; blogging about it (SlicesofMe.Blogspot.com); feeling and smelling it; its cultural and familial origins; and of course tasting it (dreamy pumpkin-filled tortelloni in a sage butter sauce at Via Emilia; the tastebud tickling gold corn Johnny Cake with barbequed duck and cranberry butter at Bar Americain; heaping, garlicky portions of broccoli, brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes at Mama's Food Shop; the portobello mushroom sandwich on perfectly crusty bread at Nicky's Vietnamese Sandwiches; the why-do-I-like-this-better-than-fine-dining tofu salad with carrot dressing at Yaffa Cafe; and the savory and sweet de Pabellón arepa at Caracas Arepa Bar, to name a few favorite dishes of late).

Depending on the day/hour/minute, I have very specific cravings for flavors and textures. And sometimes when I have those cravings, like a recent desire for chocolate and peanut butter malt balls from Trader Joe's that resulted in a five-alarm self contol disaster, I eat that food to the point of disgust. And then I don't want it anymore, at least not for a while.

I readily admit that I have little to no self-control with dessert, so I've learned not to keep it around the apartment (except for impulse buys like the malt balls...oops!). Therefore if I'm all snug at home and have a hankering for a Twix bar (another favorite), I know I have to go down the stairs of my 4^th floor walk-up, around the corner, back, and then up the stairs, to get one! Often after I've weighed my options, a handful of nuts, an apple, or a piece of low-fat mozzarella string cheese becomes more appealing.