[cercis]

Made perfect sense, Gailete and I agree. My problem with dieting has been the whole - "you want potato chips, have sweet potato chips instead". I'm sorry I hate sweet potatoes and find the chips rather disgusting. And if I try to satisfy my craving for potato chips by eating sweet potato chips, I end up eating more than I want of sweet potato chips (well not really, but this is an example) and then finally give in and satisfy my craving. If I had just started with satisfying my craving, I would have eaten less.

I've learned to ignore my craving as long as I can (rather than try to substitute another food) and then when I can ignore it no longer (we're talking days here) then I'll buy what I want and then take it to work to share. That way I get one small serving and the rest is gone before I can try to get more.

I agree about not knowing how to cook. I was lucky, no one ever told me rice was hard to cook. So my rice is always perfect. So when I started doing whole grain pilaf, it seemed easy to me (and it is, but it does take forever). But other people have trouble with rice so they buy the minute rice which is very refined and doesn't have that many nutrients, plus it requires very little energy to digest and releases its sugars very easily (so you have a blood sugar spike).