I sat down this afternoon to work on my book.

Then I spent about 20 minutes writing, an hour finding songs that would go on the soundtrack if my book were to ever become a movie (not so much egotistical as a fun distraction) and then another 45 minutes downloading cool widgets for my dashboard.

Diet is such a four-letter word.

At least the "diet" we're regulating ourselves to right now is not really a set of restrictions so much as guidelines for what kinds of food burn fat efficiently so that you basically lose weight without much effort. Then, if you exercise on top of that, you can lose up to 15 to 20 pounds in 6 weeks. (I'd be overjoyed if I lost 10.) For men, you can burn off even more, because men carry less fat around than women. (Discrimination, if you ask me.) After the initial 6 weeks, you transition to a maintenance plan.

This diet, which isn't really a diet in the American tradition, is called the Abs Diet, and it's by the editor of Mens Health magazine, and you may have heard of it.

We're so dedicated to this new diet that we have decided to go back to meat-eating, after 8 years of vegetarianism! In the last two days of healthful eating and adding just a little bit of white meat (chicken Friday, turkey yesterday) I feel fantastic. I don't feel hungry, but I don't feel sluggish from overeating, either. I acutally have energy, and feel great. The days of saying no to meat but yes to cream pasta are now behind us.

Six weeks to go...