Laura: I'm baaaaaaack!

So, guess what guys? I'm married. I'm married and I only have one mortgage. Last time I posted I had reached the pinnacle of lifetime stress with a home sale in jeopardy because of title issues and because I was just a week away from my wedding. In the end, I didn't lose 10 pounds. I think on the big day I was only down 2 pounds, but I found a really great fat sucker in thing at Victoria's Secret that made it look like I lost 5 more pounds, so life was good.

After the wedding, I fell off the dieting wagon. Wait -- who am I kidding? I jumped off the wagon, did a couple cartwheels and then mooned the wagon. I ate like a king who loves cheese, meat, and ice cream for a couple weeks solid until I decided it was time to regroup.

For the last week I've been trying to reform. I started with an attempt to start cooking healthier foods instead of the comfort foods I was raised with and can cook with my eyes closed. I tried a few recipes from my most recent Fitness Magazine, which surprisingly has a lot of great food ideas. Here are two recipes I thought were particularly good.

Whole Wheat Linguine with Green Olives (serves 2)

• Whole wheat pasta
• 1/2 cup halved red or yellow grape tomatoes
• 3 tbs sliced green olives
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
• Grated Romano cheese

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Saute tomatoes, olives and garlic in olive oil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add white wine; let simmer 3 minutes. Stir in rosemary; toss with cooked pasta. Top with grate Romano cheese.

Sauteed Baja Fish

• 2 6-ounce white fish fillets, such as tilapia, halibut or flounder
• 1 1/2 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• Snipped fresh cilantro

Lightly rub fillets with 1 tbs olive oil and season with chili powder. Rub remaining 1/2 tbs oil in a heavy skillet. Heat skillet over high heat. Saute fillets for 3 minutes per side, or until fish just flakes easily with a fork. Serve with lime wedges and snipped cilantro.

Now that I'm starting to get a hang of this light cooking thing, I need to work on getting to the gym. Now that it's getting colder and I can't go out on my bike, motivating to workout will be very difficult. But, where there's a will there's a way. Let's just hope I can find the will.

Still got 6 pounds to go.