Day 7: When I told a friend, a classroom teacher, what I was doing, she shook her head. "That would never work for me," she said. "I eat breakfast at 6 A.M. and don't sit down again until noon."

I do feel like I'm spending all my time either planning or creating a meal. In fact, today I'm kind of relieved that tomorrow I won't have to think about eating all the time. But in fairness, I think that things would get easier if I tried this for more seven days. Just today, in fact, I knew I was going to be out of the house all morning and remembered to pack myself a 300-calories meal-on-the-go. (Okay, it was more of a snack. But the point is, I remembered.)

Weight lost: 1.5 pounds. Respectable, I think, though I'm not convinced it was the rationing out my calories that did it. At 1500 calories a day plus exercise, a 1.5 pound weight loss is reasonable for me.