Today was a long travel day. We walked around the rim and down into the crater of the volcano at Capulin National Monument. The 1.5 mile trail was a good way to stretch our legs, and experience geography at the same time.

As I fixed lunch on the fly, I commented that I had bought fewer chips and cookies than ever before on a vacation. I left home with one bag of chips. When it was gone, I bought another bag, but it was still half full as we traveled home. The same was true with cookies. The cheese cake was the only dessert any of us had at a restaurant. Nonetheless my husband and kids only ate a bag and a half of cookies in a week. "I can remember when you guys would put away a whole bag of chips during a movie," I teased. "I can remember other vacations when I was at the store buying cookies every other day. What happened?"

My son said that I made sandwiches different this year. In the past when I gave him and his dad the same amount of meat, he was still hungry so he filled up on chips. This year I piled the meat on his sandwich, and it satisfied him. I realized I had still been at the store every other day but instead of cookies and chips, I had been buying fruit! Everyone had been happy snacking on cherries, dried fruit, nuts, protein bars and carrots.

We stopped at Arbys to pick up dinner. This wasn't anyone's first choice, but it was the only thing available at the time we were hungry. I got a side salad and a regular roast beef sandwich, discarding the bun as usual. The salad was a wonderful surprise: lots of mixed greens and other vegetables. Frankly, it was better than the salads in some of the expensive restaurants. My son was happy with one of the giant roast beef sandwiches. My daughter also got a salad. My husband spent a lot of time looking for something good for Type A, and settled on a turkey sandwich. Then he upgraded to a value meal with curly spicy fries. A couple of hours later he muttered, "Drat that diet." I asked what was the matter. "Now that you have me on that diet, I can't eat bad foods without feeling it," he said. "I have heart burn from those fries. They never used to bother me before this diet." I said, "It's not that the diet makes you feel bad. It's that you were used to a low level of feeling bad all the time. Now, you're used to feeling better. So you notice when you eat something that doesn't agree with you." It was a revelation.