Mir Kamin's blog

We are just about smack-dab in the middle of Lent, the period of time leading up to Easter (measured either from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday or the six weeks prior to Easter, depending on your particular flavor of Christianity). For many Christians, Lent is a time to deprive oneself to attempt to better understand the sacrifices Jesus made.

I am the daughter of a woman who was on a diet my entire childhood. She was fat. Well; in truth I don't remember her ever actually being fat, but she was convinced she was fat, and didn't hesitate to say so. She also never hesitated to point out how skinny I was, and how lucky I was to be naturally thin. I didn't think much of it, as it required no special action on my part. It just was. And worrying about it---as my mother did---seemed somehow vain and frivolous, to me.

It's happened to the best of us: You get home (or, if you work at home like me, emerge from your office bleary-eyed in the afternoon) and are delighted to pick up the phone and hear from a pal who's wondering if she can stop by for a little bit. You're thrilled and tell her to come on over, and she says she'll see you in ten. Then you hang up the phone... and panic.

For the first time in my life, with the start of 2010, I actually made a resolution to make fitness a priority. I realize I'm a little late to the party, but what can I say? I'm a late bloomer. And really, really lazy. Nonetheless, with the support and ridicule of four like-minded friends, I'm now firmly ensconced in a challenge to lose ten pounds in ten weeks. (Shameless plug: If you care to follow our journey, all five of us are blogging it over at Five Full Plates.)

It's such a cliched scenario that it makes me cringe a little to even bring it up, but it happens even to the best of us from time to time -- we find ourselves with a scant ten minutes to get dinner on the table for the family, and panic is setting in. Modern family life tends to run at a frenetic pace. On any given day my modest family is navigating through both adults' full-time employment, two sets of homework, after-school activities, and doctors' appointments, and I would be lying if I told you dinner was always on the table without a fuss.