No one's here in the bas.e.m.e.nt to cheer me on (or offer me a cappuccino) and there's no prize at the end, but that doesn't stop me from trying anyway.

I cue up my best hip-hop running playlist and put a muted episode of Jersey Belle on the television, so I have something to focus on other than the numbers.

As always, I start off slowly, allowing my muscles the time to warm up. My knees feel better than they have in a long time. I was always so hesitant to work out for fear of injuring them, but it turns out that the more I exercise, the better they feel.

Yesterday when I undressed for my shower, I noticed something odd going on with my b.u.t.t. It's . . . a little bit higher than it used to be, and now there's some distinction from where my thigh ends and my glutes begin. In no way am I ready to pose for a swimsuit calendar, but that I've actually worked hard enough to see a difference is incredibly motivating.

As my muscles begin to loosen, I quicken my pace from 2.5 mph to 4.0, which is not terribly fast. At all. In fact, I can speed-walk more quickly than I can jog.

I crank up the speed some more and within the first ten minutes, I'm so hot that my whole shirt is damp and clingy, to the point that I have to take it off. I pray that Fletch doesn't come downstairs to see me running in my sports bra because I suspect he'll never stop laughing.

I chug away for an embarra.s.singly long time, feet thudding on the moving belt beneath me, heart pounding so hard that I temporarily lose hearing in my left ear again. Maybe it's all the sweat pooling in my ear ca.n.a.ls? I eventually find a rhythm and my task becomes slightly easier.

I have to break up my jogging with frequent bouts of walking to keep myself from hyperventilating. But in the end, I manage to complete the full three point one miles in . . . well, more minutes than you'd think. I'm not about to go posting this Personal Record anywhere because it's nothing to be proud of.

And yet.

I really did a full 5K, which is why I feel completely justified in donning my medal again.

For I am a champion.

A very, very slow champion.

Delighted with my 5K checkmark, I feel ready to embrace all sorts of healthy habits, so I don't laugh when Fletch suggests a juice cleanse. (Although I do highly suspect he's been reading the lifestyle magazines I leave in the bathroom.) Gina does cleanses before every bikini-based vacation, and each time, I've questioned her sanity. But now a cleanse doesn't seem like the craziest idea in the world, especially when I hear that some guy made a movie about losing one hundred pounds in sixty days by juicing.

A hundred pounds? In sixty days? Sign. Me. Up.

"How does a cleanse work?" I ask. "Do we buy premade juices?" Every time Gina's on a cleanse, she shows up with cute little bottles of clever-sounding drinks.

"Of course not. Why would we buy anything when we can do it ourselves so much better?" Fletch asks, handing over a stack of diagrams and recipes. "We'll do it at home. We make five juices a day and we can eat fruits and vegetables for dinner."

Two months ago, I wouldn't even have considered such an idea due to my deep and abiding love of dessert. When I started the 5K training program, I noticed how much more energy I had on the days I avoided simple carbohydrates, so I decided to cut out sugar entirely to see what happened.

What happened is I dropped ten pounds in a week.

A freaking week.

It's no hundred pounds in sixty days, but it's certainly a start.

For years, Fletch and I have been trying to get to the bottom of why I weigh too much. He eats every meal with me and can see that I'm fairly cautious about calories and serving sizes, save for Italian food, such as when I turn into Betty Spaghetti on Bolognese Sauce Night. But since working with Mich.e.l.le the Nutritionist, I learned to stop piling up my noodles in a big bowl, instead opting for a plate that I fill with an equal amount of fresh vegetables. Same deal with pizza-now I have a salad and I eat one slice instead of my half of the pie. As for the Roman breakfasts, I'm doing more fruit and less cheese. (My new motto is What Happens in Rome Stays in Rome.) I thought the issue could be that I was an emotional overeater and I explored this possibility in therapy. My therapist gave me tons of literature about it and the more I read, the less I identified with those ladies in the books who hide in the closet with a bucket of chicken, alternating finger-licking and crying because they hate the fact that they have to eat in the first place. If I want fried chicken, I'll order it, without a side of histrionics. No judgment on those who do struggle, because I know it's hard, but for once, this isn't my actual problem.

But all summer I regulated my portions and came to terms with the difference between hunger and boredom, and I still couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

What I was doing wrong was consuming far too much sugar.

To be clear, I'm not anti-sugar and I'm definitely still a fan. I happily ate a piece of cake at Laurie's son's engagement party, but that's all I've had this entire month, having decided to save treats for special occasions. So, for now, it's no cupcakes, no gelato, no brownies, no pie, no kidding. I even refused my favorite Momof.u.ku blueberries and cream cookie when I was in New York on business and had only a single cup of gelato on my girls' trip. I find the fewer sweets I eat, the fewer sweets I want to eat.

I understand moderation works well for many people, but I'm not someone who'll ever be satisfied with a single bite of cheesecake, regardless of how slowly I savor it. I either want the whole piece or I want nothing. Honestly, having nothing is easier and I'm all about easy.

Looking at my food choices through the scrim of therapy and nutritional counseling, I realize that dessert is more than just flour and frosting. For me, dessert represents the few golden hours in the evening when we've both finished all the day's tasks and we're finally able to hang out together on the couch in the TV room. Dessert is my reward for having met my goals during the day. Really, dessert is an event rather than a specific item.

Turns out I'm fine subbing a bowl of raspberries with a splash of cream for a pint of Graeter's Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip during So You Think You Can Dance. This way, when I do have something like special-occasion engagement cake, I can enjoy the whole d.a.m.n thing without a twinge of remorse. I can't say if this approach would work for anyone else, but for me, that I'm actually amenable to a juice cleanse is evidence of stratospheric progress in all things food-related.

"Since when do you want to do a cleanse?" I ask.

"I read about how cleanses are supposed to reset your metabolism and enhance your taste for fresh food. Sure, you're eating better, but now I'm sucking down everything you left behind. At this point, I've had so many Gra.s.shopper cookies that I'm going to turn into a Keebler elf."

(Sidebar: I prefer the Keebler Gra.s.shopper cookies to Girl Scout Thin Mints because (a) they're better and, (b) I'm not a fan of tracking down little girls for any purpose.) I say, "Fair enough. Want to start tomorrow?"

Neither one of us has reason not to begin, so we head to the grocery store for supplies. The list of fresh ingredients fills an entire sheet of notebook paper and by the time we reach the cashier, our cart is overflowing with beets and Swiss chard and sweet potatoes. As we fork over what we'd normally spend for a week of food on three days' worth of fruits and veggies, a thought occurs.

"Do we need a juicer?" I ask.

"We have one," he replies.

"No, we don't."

"We do."

"Believe me, nothing happens in our kitchen I'm not aware of. I a.s.sure you, we are juicer-free."

He insists, "We have a juicer. You used to use it to make that banana ice-cream stuff."

He's referring to the Yonanas ice cream maker I bought a couple of years ago when we attempted the Paleo diet. The device turns frozen bananas into creamy soft-serve, which sounds really healthy until you do the math-one non-sad-sized serving of banana ice cream takes four to five bananas, which is almost five hundred calories. For that many calories, I may as well have regular ice cream.

Or a Burger King Whopper.

"That's not a juicer," I say.

"Then what is it?"

"Basically, a waste of fifty bucks."

"Oh. Do we need to buy a juicer or can we just use the Vitamix?"

I do a quick Google while we wait in line and confirm that our Vitamix should work. "Says we're fine, particularly because we'll get the benefit of all the fiber, too."

"Then I guess we're juicers now."

I'm in charge of making the first round of juice because Fletch has a conference call. Our fridge is overflowing with produce and I have to open a dozen plastic grocery bags to find the carrots, apple, and ginger for the first drink. Although the instructions say to juice and pour over ice, I core the apples, dice the carrots and ginger, and dump the whole lot in the blender. I press the ON b.u.t.ton and wait for the magic to begin.

I envision sitting at my desk, quaffing delicious and nutritious smoothies, as my body becomes stronger through the antioxidant intake, all my excess poundage simply melting away.

What I don't antic.i.p.ate is the logjam all the carrots create in the Vitamix. Smoothies normally blend nicely because they contain milk or other liquid, whereas this is nothing but a pile of choking hazards. I spend the next twenty minutes poking at the cache of veggies with the end of a wooden spoon. The Vitamix makes terrible noises under the strain of trying to liquefy the carrots, so much so that I receive a text from Fletch asking, "That your friend in the wood chipper?" I end up pouring a little water into the mixture to prevent motor burnout.

When the first drink is finally blended, the sheer volume of it all takes me aback. I figured I'd be left with about ten ounces once everything processed, but what I have here is a quart of . . . homemade soup? I take my first sip, expecting the cool, creaminess of a regular smoothie, slightly sweet from the apple, which is very exciting. Because I've had so little sugar, even blueberries taste like Jolly Ranchers to me right now.

The flavor isn't what's disturbing, largely because the front of my tongue is numb, having scorched my taste buds earlier on the boiling gla.s.s of required hot lemon breakfast water.

The problem with this "smoothie" is twofold: First, the texture, which is somewhere between baby food and oatmeal-laden vomit, and second, the temperature. Instead of being frosty, the concoction is lukewarm from having run in the blender for so long.

I deliver Fletch's bucket-o-juice just as he's hanging up the phone.

"What is this?" he asks, his eyes growing wide.

"Breakfast," I reply, spinning on my heels before he can argue with me.

I spend the next two hours trying to choke down my "juice," finally employing a straw. I feel like I'm drinking from a trick gla.s.s as I can't seem to pa.s.s the halfway mark, although that's probably because I have to keep adding water to thin it out enough to operate the straw.

Fletch is convinced that I somehow read the instructions wrong, so he volunteers to make the midmorning juice, which is a blend of cuc.u.mbers, celery, apples, ginger, lemon, and kale. Save for the kale, which is my favorite salad addition, I've enjoyed many fine beverages from these ingredients. b.l.o.o.d.y Marys are brilliant with the addition of a splash of celery juice. (But not Clamato. Never Clamato.) Cuc.u.mber martinis could not be more light or zesty or refreshing. I'm mad for all things lemonade, and you can't go wrong with apple juice, so I antic.i.p.ate the next round will be better. Besides, I probably did do it wrong, as I'm not the best at following directions. I always get dyslexic reading recipes and then end up trying to stir in baking powder after I've already poured the cake batter in the pan. (I bet this is what went wrong with my Christmas cookies.) Fletch is in the kitchen for at least as long as I was, Vitamix churning away, and when he comes upstairs with thirty-two ounces of fibrous army-green juice in a ma.s.sive tumbler, I fear for the worst.

I take a sip, swishing the juice (which is the consistency of lumpy toothpaste) from one side of my mouth to the other in an attempt to identify the overpoweringly familiar flavor.

"Did you . . . wash the kale leaves first?" I ask.

"Was I supposed to?" he replies.

Argh.

"We need to buy a juicer," I reply. "Like, today."

After adding a pinch of salt, I manage to put away a decent portion of the midmorning juice, profoundly confused as to how the ingredients that mesh so nicely on a salad plate can go so horribly awry in a gla.s.s. When I pull in a mouthful of grit, I decide I'm done. Libby, normally so anxious to bat cleanup, slinks away when offered the remains of the dirt daiquiri.

The lunchtime gazpacho juice is what breaks me. Normally, I'm never one to shy away from an onion. A big red Bermuda on my backyard barbecue burger? Yes, please! Diced and tossed with balsamic, feta, watermelon, and tomatoes? My favorite! Nestled in sour cream on top of a bowl of chili? The best! Fried, sauteed, or au gratin? I live for you. But blended into a diarrhea-colored sludge with parsley, red peppers, and cuc.u.mbers?

I can't. I try, but I just can't.

Fletch can't either. He starts to research juicers and ends up in such a.n.a.lysis paralysis that we miss our afternoon snack of pureed clementines and Swiss chard.

d.a.m.n.

Desperate to get as far away from our Vitamix as possible, I head down to the treadmill and jog, the whole time pretending I'm running away from a river of hot, roiling compost water.

When I come upstairs an hour later, I find Fletch in the kitchen, marveling over a partially eaten apple.

He holds the Golden Delicious up to me, all Garden of Edenstyle. "You can just eat the fruit. Did you know that? You can just bite it and chew it and it tastes really good," he tells me.

We end up ordering a Hawaiian pizza for dinner and it is freaking delicious.

We regret nothing.

"So the next day I go out and find that I can purchase premade cleanse juices, which is actually cheaper than getting a juicer, buying all the veggies, and trashing my kitchen," I tell everyone. "Plus, the juice tasted like c.o.c.ktails. Win, win."

"Why do you never ask me about these things before the fact?" Gina queries.

"Because it's impossible for me to learn any way but the hard way," I reply.

"How much weight have you lost so far?" Tracey asks. "Your face is definitely thinner. I can tell."

I sit up very straight in my chair. "As of this morning, thirty pounds!"

I receive a round of high-fives from everyone at the table.

"Glad you're here to celebrate with us," Stacey says.

"Right now, the difference is barely noticeable, but my pants are definitely looser and my arms aren't going numb in my sleep anymore. I totally see more definition in my calves and around my chin, too. Thing is, I feel like I'm different, not just because of diet and exercise, but from everything. It's like speaking Italian actually did make my a.s.s smaller. The other times I've tried to lose weight, I was never in the right mental mind-set."

While I was on my girls' trip, I looked at a bunch of shots from Savannah last year and I noticed how much fatter I was back then. But for the first time, this observation came without feelings of guilt or inadequacy.

Really, looking at my shape was more of an observation, kind of like, "Huh, I had a better tan back then," or, "Wow, I really needed to have my roots done." The key has been taking responsibility for my own weight loss. Instead of relying on a trainer or a diet plan, I've been in charge of my own destiny; ergo, the success is all mine.

"Sometimes it's just time," Stacey says with a shrug. She's lost quite a bit of weight herself in the past year, not by making drastic changes, but by adding healthy habits here and there.

I think the older we get, the more we learn to moderate our moderation. Thus far, it's working for all of us.

We place our orders and instead of my usual breakfast burrito with extra sour cream, avocado, and floppy bacon, I choose the watermelon gazpacho and kale and beet bruschetta, not because I have to, but because the dishes sound appealing. Juicing really made me appreciate the fresh taste of these ingredients when not blended into a vat of tepid, unseasoned stew.

"You haven't been down here all summer. We've missed you," Tracey says. Between travel, the furniture show, due dates, and Hambone, I've not had a minute to spare. "How's Hammy doing?"

At the beginning of the summer, Ham got into a huge fight with Loki. She didn't start it, but she certainly finished it. After that, she became really aggressive and started to attack Libby and Loki, to the point we were worried the dogs would become seriously injured. (By the way, I could check off the break up a fight between two pit bulls item on my bucket list now, except that was never anything I'd wanted to do in the first place.) As soon as we had the second dustup, I realized the fighting wasn't just an anomaly and I began to research specific steps I'd need to follow to help my baby. I immediately began to investigate what had gone wrong and one of the first resources I turned to was Cesar Millan.

I perused his Web page, with poor little Ham clinging to my legs under my desk while the other dogs were downstairs with Fletch, and I ran across a few products he sells on his site. Where there should have been product reviews, dozens of people were instead telling their stories about the problems with their dogs, each desperate for Cesar to respond and tell them what to do, begging him, pleading with him, saying he was their only hope.

This broke my heart.

Instead of figuring out how to implement solutions to save their dogs-with much of the needed instruction posted elsewhere on this very site-these owners instead opted to do nothing but write their stories. I hate to imagine how many of these dogs will be put down when the nothing their owners tried doesn't pan out.

If anything, this year's taught me that the key to living without regret is to take immediate action.

You see, I'd already lost one pit bull before her time and I'd be d.a.m.ned if I was about to lose another.

Thing is, I knew Hammy wasn't mean or evil and I'd trust her in a room full of babies. After each of the fights this summer, she'd been so frightened, trembling for hours, even though she was the instigator. I quickly discovered that hers wasn't the behavior of an aggressive dog; it's what happens when a dog is scared.

Sweet Hammy has always been anxious and I now realized that we'd been dealing with her angst all wrong, like when we'd come home and she'd lose her mind. We were taught to ignore her and to discipline her into submission either through yelling or shaking a can of pennies at her, but that's the opposite of what she needed. An anxious dog requires rea.s.surance, so now we greet her and find a way to redirect her nervous energy. We have her cycle through her retinue of tricks until she's calm, and for this, she's richly rewarded.

Over the course of the summer, we've seen our vet and a board-certified behaviorist to help us take the steps needed to give Ham a long, happy life. One of my tasks is to walk her every day for an hour to burn off her nervous energy. The walks are of huge benefit to both of us.

Now she's calm enough to be left in a room alone for the first time in her life, and I can be left alone in a room with a cheesecake for the first time in my life. And she and I have an exceptionally tight bond now because I feel like we're both tearing ourselves down to the studs and starting over. She'll never be Maisy, but I've discovered that her being Hammy is pretty darned good, too.

"Hammy's working so hard," I say. "Yesterday we were on our walk and we pa.s.sed a couple with two badly behaved beagles. They were yipping and pulling and lunging and basically pushing all of Hammy's b.u.t.tons. So I put her in a sit and let the beagle owners walk past and that little champion didn't even blink an eye. I could hear the owners asking their dogs why they couldn't behave like the nice red dog over there. Sure, mainstreaming her back into the pack is going to be a process, but I believe we're all up for it."

"Glad to hear it," Gina says. "Hammy's such a little peanut."