Here and Next: April 2013

'Eye candy': Sweets for the eyes... to be savored in small doses or devoured in abundance, always a treat and zero calories.

Or by dictionary standards: "Someone or something attractive."... but one man's junk is another man's treasure.

Taste is personal... "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"... and personally, I find this spring collection by designer Alexis Mabille well suited to my quirky taste and absolutely delicious.

So too these make-up looks, some dramatic and some subtle by comparison.

I do enjoy 'eyeing' couture and watching reality shows like 'Face Off' and 'Project Runway', where talented artists create theatrical looks and 'over the top' designs, and where unconventional challenges using materials like sugar coated dots, gummy fish, and 'Twizzlers', produce garments worth licking.

Hopefully, I haven't given you the impression that I'm obsessed with fashion and make up. One look in my closet at my limited 'Target' attire and a peek into my cosmetic drawer containing just a single tube of Aveda Crystal Mint lip gloss and two shades of Revlon Colorburst lipstick should prove my point.

Eye candy can be found anywhere and everywhere, but usually it finds you!

When your eyes get wider and your lips begin to part making sounds like ooooo and ahhhhh, to where you want to devour all that you see, which thankfully you can because you haven't actually ingested a thing, that's when you know you've found it.

Sometimes eye candy comes in a box and sometimes the box is the eye candy!

Like these...

... candy boxes once framed and hung in my studio simply because I liked the way they looked.

I like being surrounded by colorful, inexpensive, 'attractive' things, sometimes keeping the box or wrapper and tossing the contents... cheap thrills that 'float my boat'.

Unlike this theater-sized box of mint chocolates...

... most unattractive on the outside, but with tasty bits on the inside.

It was given to me while visiting a friend at 'the Philadelphian', a condo located across the street from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Chester, the doorman, said I was special, even though he never met me before and let me choose a treat from a large assortment of candy inside a grocery bag. Sweet! This time I tossed the box and ate the contents to the tune of 170 shared calories!

I don't count calories.

In fact, I've never been on a diet.

Not The Atkins Diet, The Zone Diet, The Dash Diet, The Mediterranean Diet, The Macrobiotic Diet, The Fast Smash Diet, Pritikin, those with a California connection... LA Weight Loss, The South Beach Diet, The Sonoma Diet, and The New Beverly Hills Diet, diets with food portioned in packages like: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and NutriSystem. Not Medifast, The Slim Fast Plan, Sugar Busters, Volumetrics and Dr. Oz's "You-On-A-Diet", pointing out that it is indeed me trying to get trim with emphasis on waist measurement, not weight.

Not any of these strange sounding diets...

The High School Reunion Diet, which promises you'll look slimmer, younger and healthier in 30 days in time for that reunion, What Color Is Your Diet?, perhaps a diet for artists or interior designers, that includes eating more fruits and vegetables with color, and another color plan called P.I.N.K., a low calorie plan with rigorous exercise that stands for Power, Intensity, Nutrition and 'Kardio'. "Oh my"!

Certainly not these wacky ones... The Cookie Diet where you eat dinner while the rest of the day you munch on cookies, at least six of them!, The Lip Gloss Diet with the slogan... "Always on the lips, never on the hips.", with slenderizing gloss oozing with ingredients that supposedly curb your appetite, and this one that sounds so easy, The Sleep Diet... "If you aren't awake, you're not eating", which focuses on your Cortisol levels along with Leptin and Gherlin hormones that trigger appetite.

None of these odd item diets like The Egg Diet, The Banana Diet, The Cabbage Soup Diet, The Baby Food Diet, or the 'five dollar foot long'... Subway Diet.

And never this one... The Hallelujah Diet... a low calories vegan diet created by Reverand George Malkmus and his wife Rhonda developed on their Hallelujah Acre Farm as 'God's way to optimal health'.

Honestly, I'm not making any of this up.

Instead, I've always sided with Julia Childs who said, "The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steaks to cook."

While waiting for dinner and my steak to cook, I searched diet forums online, and came across this ridiculous fad diet story about a woman on The Atkins Diet, who lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time. Every night before going to bed, she'd read pages from her Atkins book until...

One night she woke up from a dream screaming in a cold sweat because the gum she was chewing wasn't... sugar free! She attributed the nightmare to four weeks of eating hard-boiled eggs and Forman-grilled hot dogs... and admitted to gaining back all the weight she lost the minute she touched a potato.

A rather sad tale, which only proves that most diets are too restrictive, make people crazy, and in the long run... don't work.

So why is Monday, March 25, 2013 circled on my calendar?

By law, don't all diets begin on a Monday?

Yup... I'm on a diet.

Dr. Michael Mosley's book titled, 'The FastDiet', his research, and scientific evidence showing that intermittent fasting drops pounds and reduces the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular and other diseases convinced me to give his diet a try.

Rather than some kooky fad diet, this is more of a life style change with little restriction that's easy to do and one that I can see staying on for the long haul should it prove effective.

So in keeping with tradition that all new health regimes begin with new accessories like yoga pants and mats, weights and latex bands, fitness balls or elliptical trainers to name a few, I bought these...

... zipper bracelets... the latest in eye candy among tweens, teens, and now me.

I wear them on Mondays and Thursdays, the two days a week that I limit my eating to just 500 calories each day divided between breakfast and dinner with nothing eaten between those two meals. The rest of the week I eat what I choose. And if I choose carefully, 'zipping' my jeans should become a breeze. Plus, I like these colorful accessories. They're cute and great reminders to keep my mouth zipped on dieting days.

For now I have something to lose (weight) and everything to gain (good health).

Ooooo... Ahhhhh...

If I keep losing weight, I might get into these...