This year I will seek help from...

I've alluded to this previously, but I intend to seek help my fitness instructor regarding a healthy diet. I belonged to Weight Watchers in the past and I know about portion control and calculating fat vs. fiber vs. calories. But when it comes down to it, my healthy food knowledge and in particular, my knowledge about how to fix that healthy food, is pretty limited. What I especially need advice about are some healthy, easy-to-prepare meals that are quick to throw together at the end of a work day. I've got breakfast and lunch pretty well covered. Where I falter is at dinner time, when I arrive home already starving and I start snacking on whatever is available before I've even decided on what I'm going to make for dinner.

One hurdle I need to get over is to reconcile how my husband prefers to eat with how I want to eat. He's notorious for going to Sam's Club and buying things like a super huge bag of M&Ms, then handily leaving it out on the counter to taunt me every time I walk into the kitchen. There's one of those bags happily residing in our kitchen now, alongside a colossal box of individually wrapped cinnamon rolls, also from Sam's Club. The rolls I can avoid pretty easily, but it sure is easy to just grab a handful of M&Ms every time I walk through the kitchen! I've suggested that he put them in a cupboard--even though I'll know where they are, out-of-sight/out-of-mind usually works for me. But somehow, they always get left out on the counter again. My husband is also a strict meat-and-potatoes kind of guy--no fruits or vegetables for him. In fact, no casseroles or noodles for him, either. So except for a few foods that we agree on and prepare together occasionally, we pretty much each do our own thing when it comes to meal preparation.

Life would sure be great if, like Oprah, I had my own personal chef to fix and prepare calorie-conscious, wholesome meals for me every night when I come home from work! But, alas, I'm my own personal chef and solely in charge of what I put in my mouth. So I think some further nutritional education is in order!