Just when you think the holidays are over and get back on the diet bandwagon, along comes a birthday. Birthdays are hard on your metabolism, especially as the number increases!

I haven't been wanting to eat out all month, and I avoid it whenever possible, but on my birthday I ate out twice, and got into black dot toxin territory both times. At least I don't think I got into regular toxin territory. I got to choose the restaurants, so we had Thai food for lunch and Indian food for dinner. My thai food had some rice noodles and a bit of cabbage, but otherwise was pretty decent. I tried Beef Laab (beef was the best choice there, the only neutral), and it had just beef and onions and cilantro, lemon juice and ground chilis. It was really good. The noodles and cabbage were in the form of spring rolls, oh but yes, I did have some of the dipping sauce for those, which undoubtably had toxins like cornstarch or maybe even corn syrup. And yes, I am still regretting that! For dinner, I splurged and had a keema dosa, my old favorite. The dosa is a Southern Indian sourdough flatbread, made with rice (basmati usually) and lentils (a black dot). The filling was ground lamb and peas, superfoods both. I did manage to avoid dessert at both destinations, even though Mango and Sweet Rice is super tempting, if I only were a hunter, it has coconut milk in it. It wasn't too hard to avoid dessert because I had my own beneficial & neutral dessert waiting for me at home. I made a ricotta pie (using 1/3 cup agave instead of sugar) with a teff crust (using grapeseed oil and agave for the oil and sweetener, and added the lemon zest as recommended in the pie recipe). It certainly fit the tab for dessert, though I think I'll use less crust in it next time, to make it a bit thinner, and I may not beat the egg whites quite as much, it was so fluffy that for somebody expecting cheesecake, it was a bit weird. It grew on me though, my two year old and I finished it off pretty fast.

The scale chides me for my birthday celebrations still, and I gained back a bit of my losses. That will just be temporary. I find it much easier to lose weight when I actually follow the portion recommendations, namely, eating enough vegetables. It's nice that celery is a superfood, it's so convenient. Sugar Snap peas are a nice snack as well.

The healthy thing I did on my birthday was to receive a far infrared sauna. I couldn't find one anywhere to use, so I just went and ordered one for my birthday, with my husband's blessing, and his help putting it together. I love it! I like how I feel after using steam rooms and traditional saunas, but this one is more comfortable for me during use. On days when I don't get time to use it, I feel some withdrawal, it certainly helps my moods and warms me up. It's still a cold, harsh winter. We've been shoveling snow until we can hardly stand the sight of it! We need the moisture to get us out of the drought, but it sure piles up, and every place is running out of places to mound up the snow. It's nice to look forward to the sauna, after being out in the weather.