Sure Sophie had a hard choice in the movie role that landed Meryl Streep her first Oscar. In the Archie comic books, we never knew if the title character was going to pick Betty or Veronica. Now, I’ve got a modern day dilemma for this Halloween weekend – should I stock up on candy in a neighborhood typically lacking young trick or treaters, or simply shut off the lights and pretend no one is home?

Before you think I’m the community Scrooge, let me explain. I love Halloween and dig those itsy bitsy versions of beloved candy bars. While living in the ‘burbs over a decade ago, I happily provided the premium candies (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, mini Hershey’s and Snickers bars) to costumed kids. The constant foot traffic ensured nothing was left over for me to inhale. Fast forward now to two years ago, my first Halloween in a cool, new townhouse community left mostly empty by the housing market collapse. Guess how many kids came by? Zero, to be exact, leaving me with the results.  It’s sad seeing a grown woman bested by a bowl of individually wrapped chocolate treats, people. No wonder I just bailed out completely last year and stayed at my boyfriend’s place.

This year, it seems three or four families with kids have moved in. I’m not a parent, so it’s unclear if they will be trick or treating on Halloween night, attending parties elsewhere or going to a bigger community with more candy collecting options.  Burned by the past, I’m not loading up on bags of my favorite treats. Wouldn’t think of handing out stuff like raisin packets or mini flashlights, because those homes used to get toilet papered during my childhood. That leaves me with two options. I could stock up with a bag of some neon, non-chocolate candy that’s easy to resist, or make sure I’m nowhere near home during prime trick or treating hours.

What do you think? Do you always furnish the treats, or have you ever been the object of a trick for not passing out candy?

When I was single, I had a lot of first dates with guys who prided themselves on being adventure seekers. You know, the sort who went sky-diving or kayaking in Class Five Rapids with the same frequency that I schedule pedicures. When they started talking about how we should go bungee jumping or rock climbing on date two, I knew it wasn’t a fit. My idea of a great view comes from riding in an airplane or helicopter, not being suspended by my knuckles on a hang glider. (Disclaimer – while my dear boyfriend loves extreme scuba diving, he’d be perfectly delighted if I read a book on the beach while he swims with the sharks.)

However, a recent conversation with fitness expert Kelli Calabrese (www.kellicalabrese.com) has opened my eyes to the benefits of adventure.  Turns out that being more adventurous and active is something you can learn.

“People who have a more developed pre-frontal cortex tend to be more adventurous – they find new hiking trails, run through rivers, like to be up and engaged,” Kelli explains. “All of us have this part of our brain and we just have to stimulate it a little more.  Realize that maybe you can ride a bike now even if you fell once at age seven. People become healthier when they open their minds to what’s possible and see the entire world as their playground.”

Ready to get started? Kelli recommended the following ideas:

1. Head to the park and strap on some rollerblades.
2. Dust off your mountain bike and find a historic rail trail.
3.  Go to www.Active.com and find an event that makes your heart race.  It should be out of your reach, but within reason given the training time.
4. Create a new family holiday tradition by enlisting in a 5K event the whole family can do such as a Halloween Hustle, Turkey Trot or Jingle Bell Run.  As Kelli says, “it is a great way to create new family memories, have a feeling of accomplishment and burn off the pumpkin pie.”
5. Try a multi-sport vacation such as the ones put on by Backroads (www.backroads.com).  For example, you can combine white water rafting with hiking a summit and single track mountain biking.

Just typing that list gets my heart pumping. How about you? What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done or plan to do in the future?

Birds of a feather do flock together. This I’ve known since seventh grade, when Audrey, Kim and Susie and I would call each other up to discuss what clothes to wear the next day at school. The jeans had to feature Gloria or Calvin’s signature, and Candies were best worn on our feet instead of served in a dish.   Beyond the adolescent need for conformity, peer groups have often impacted my perspective of what’s "normal."

Drinking heavily in college suited me and my circle of friends, until I landed a part-time job in news that required an early rise every Saturday and Sunday.  When I was 50 pounds overweight and consumed junk food like others breathe air, the man in my life and people I worked with did the same.  I have interviewed so many women for my book that had to make new friends after shedding pounds because former compatriots who used to go out for beer and wings every Friday night didn’t welcome the better looking competition.

Unfortunately, the perception of what’s normal is hurting many Americans. According to a new study, a substantial number of obese people see no need to lose weight - http://tinyurl.com/3y2kdgz. Doctors think that heavy people’s self perceptions may be changing because obesity has become so much more common.

Having a positive body image is great. But when it keeps you in denial about the risks of developing high blood pressure, diabetes or a heart attack, then you’ve got a real problem.  Has your peer group ever made you unhealthier? Or have friends who embraced better eating or exercise encouraged you to pursue wellness?

Some things have gained celebratory status in American culture – self-made successes like Oprah and Steve Jobs, reality TV stars launched by a sex tape or over-developed six pack and the ability to chow down on any kind of food at any time – Mexican fare in a small Iowa town, or fruit imported from a continent thousands of miles away. However, there are food purgatory zones known for cutting off your power of choice. Like prison, airports after 10:00 p.m. or movie theaters if you aren’t craving popcorn, candy bars or paying $6 for a soda. And for most people working the 9 to 5 grind that Dolly Parton sang about, there are work conferences. Held at hotel ballrooms where dim lights make you feel like it could just as easily be 2:00 in the afternoon or the morning, and your body seeks food to stave off the boredom.

I’ve been to some pretty elaborate meetings of this genre in the past. During my early days as a PR person for Days Inns headquarters 20 years ago, the planners went all out to feed attendees during the annual franchisee conference. Food breaks included a full ice cream bar, fresh popcorn standards, pretzels dipping stations and I constantly strategized ways to be first in line.  But typically, the drill includes continental breakfast tables where tired fruit Danish and bear claw rolls are picked over several hours later for a mid-morning coffee break. Lunch with something that looks like chicken, starchy sides and whopping slice of dessert already waiting at your seat so you can’t refuse it. Massive dinners out with your compatriots where the food hangover rivals that from alcohol.

Sound familiar? Currently at my favorite client’s annual conference in New Orleans, my quest is to make this excursion as healthy as possible. That has included waking up early to exercise and loading up on a room service breakfast that includes lots of fresh fruit and egg whites. Chugging water like crazy. Eating the little bags of raw nuts that I packed in my bag for snacks. And while enjoying the fine cuisine this city has to offer for dinner, just saying no to dessert.

How do you deal with eating in places like work conferences and other food purgatory zones?

The Brady Bunch exerted a huge influence on my formative years. I knew they weren’t real people, but come on! Their home was the height of suburban grooviness - even if architect extraordinaire Mike Brady only installed one bathroom for all six kids to share. Who wouldn’t want someone like Alice around to prepare meals and clean up?  I’ve already told my boyfriend that we have to avoid any evil-looking amulets during our December trip to Hawaii, forewarned by Peter Brady’s travails.

Best of all was Carol Brady. With an unflaggingly perky attitude, she could fix any problem with a raised eyebrow and shrug of her polyester jumpsuit-clad shoulders.  Everything about her seemed perfect. And that’s probably because she didn’t work, had Alice around the house to take care of everything and wasn’t an actual person – sorry, had to remind myself.  Still, you have to hand it to Mrs. Brady …I mean Florence Henderson… for rocking it at age 78 on Dancing with the Stars.

Over the years, I adopted certain practices that seemed like they’d elicit the approval of Carol Brady (and my extremely hospitable mom).  Until the mid 90’s, I always had a candy dish out for visitors. I learned how to bake during college, churning out fantastic banana breads, cookies and muffins by the hundreds. During the holidays, every client would receive a fresh-baked chocolate chip cheesecake with hand-crushed Oreo crust. And now, I’m pretty much done.

Sure, I don’t feel like dodging the temptation of industrial-sized tins of chocolate chips anymore.  But it is about more than that. I was baking to express friendship and love. Now, armed with reams of information on the impact of sugar and processed stuff, it doesn’t feel very loving to give a friend a thousand fat grams.  So I’ve shifted gears. Am coming up with more creative ideas for presents and bringing friends in need items like baked salmon and brown rice main dishes instead of baked goods. Sorry Carol Brady, but your hold on me is gone for good.

Have you ever had to challenge a long-held belief or practice to have a healthier life? How did that work out for you?

Remember Fear Factor? The reality show that put contestants face-to-face with whatever terrified them the most... like tarantula-filled tanks or wading into alligator infested waters.  I never watched it; seeing people have the bejesus scared out of them just isn’t my idea of stellar entertainment.  Besides, the thing that petrified me the most wasn’t creepy-crawly or reptilian in nature – it was the fear of failure.

Speaking of that, last week Oprah interviewed JK Rowling on her show. The Harry Potter author has long topped the list of people I most admire. A former welfare mom who is now the world’s first billionaire writer, she’s gotten hundreds of millions of kids worldwide interested in reading.  I was particularly impressed with an outtake from a Harvard speech Rowling delivered in 2006 called "The Benefits of Failure."

“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential,” said Rowling. “I stopped pretending that I was anything except what I was and began directing all of my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive, still had a daughter I adored, an old typewriter and a big idea. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you’ve lived so cautiously that you might have well not lived at all. The ability to use failure often leads to the greatest success.”

Her words have had a profound impact on me. You see, I’ve had three “failures” this year that actually improved my life. The first happened in February, when I decided to sublease my primo office space to another firm and operate my boutique PR business as a virtual agency. It turned out that working from home doubled my productivity, gave me constant access to healthy snacks and decreased stress. As for the second failure, that would be finding myself seven pounds heavier than normal by May. Foot problems meant the old “burn calories furiously through exercise” trick didn’t work anymore. So with help I learned to stop eating processed stuff, broke my sugar addiction and passionately embraced fresh fruits and veggies. Today, the extra weight is mostly gone and I’ve gained better eating habits for good.

Now that brings me to my biggest perceived failure (insert drum roll, please) – my book about life after weight loss.  Working furiously since last fall, I made all changes advised by my literary agent without raising an eyebrow. Then things didn’t go as planned, and we didn’t get a book contract this summer. Ouch! So I stepped back, licked my wounds and gained perspective.  Now, I’m re-writing a new, different, funny book that is exactly what I want. This pathway feels right and once it is complete, my message will be heard.

 Has failing at something ever benefitted your life?

Some things are always going to be cool – Saturday Night Live’s digital shorts, the choreographed zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and just about any project Justin Timberlake touches (loved his new movie, The Social Network).  Until now, I never would have added baby carrots to that list. But the baby carrot industry has rolled out a $25 million advertising campaign to make their packaged vegetables more appealing than junk food to teenagers.  I think it is awesome.

Carrots have never been one of my best friends.  During my youth, they were only acceptable in two forms – carrot cake and as the token vegetable in chicken soup. I zealously avoided any signs of carrots in the TV dinners mom served or on school lunch trays. Even after I became healthier, I shunned carrots for their greener cousins like broccoli, asparagus or spinach.  All of that just changed recently. Holistic nutrition coach Sandy Dalis taught me that carrots rocked as a snack. Then during a double date with our friends Joe and Jennifer Remling, Joe explained that he was tired of being a picky eater and now embraced everything. Something clicked and I decided to add carrots to my forte. Snack on the cute baby kind with fresh guacamole or hummus about every other day now.  And that brings me back to the point of this post.

Advertisers have created fast paced commercials that feel like action flick trailers for youth-oriented brands like Red Bull, Doritos, Mountain Dew and others for years. So it just makes sense to give baby carrots to same kind of treatment in TV spots like this - http://tinyurl.com/3y6lcqc. New, enticing packaging for high school vending machines has been created also to help them compete with Cheetoes and candy bars.  With the exception of the popular “Heard it Through the Grapevine” campaign for California Raisins in the 1990’s, I can’t recall seeing any other fruits and vegetables get that kind of marketing love focusing on a youth audience before. My fingers are crossed that it works.

Do you think that it makes sense to reposition baby carrots and other healthy items as “bad-ass” snacks to combat the lure of junk food?

Remember those essays we had to write about our summer vacation? Most of my summers were spent working in the family deli to make extra money for school clothes or speaking tournament travels. I was always jealous when buddies would discuss their travels to exotic places – you know, anywhere outside of South Carolina and adjoining states - or talk about summer camp experiences. So 30 plus years later, it’s my turn to share what I learned on my fourth annual Girls Trip to Canyon Ranch Tucson:

1) It’s never too late to learn something new. Arts and crafts have never been my forte. The pottery dish and macaroni-encrusted, gold spray-painted candle holders I made for mom sometime during the Watergate Years were both lopsided. A brief flirtation with crocheting the summer after my freshman year of college produced a blue scarf that was just plain ugly. But all that didn’t matter when I spotted a bracelet making class called “Don’t Worry Bead Happy.” By golly, I was going to make something pretty and have fun doing it. The results are displayed on today’s visual (my bracelet is on the far right, purple stones with the clasp facing in your direction).  In the interests of full-disclosure, I got a little extra help – okay make that a lot – from the instructor and my artistically-inclined pal Jennifer Grizzle.  

2) Don’t plan every minute. Life is already busy, so in contrast to previous years where I planned every minute and exercised non-stop, this year was about relaxation. Yes, I did hang out by the pool underneath an umbrella with a book. Woke up every day without an alarm. Had a blast dabbling in new spiritual sessions like handwriting analysis and numerology. And it was the first time I returned from vacation completed rested and actually ready to come home.

3)  There is too much of a good thing. The food at Canyon Ranch rocks – healthy stuff that tastes great. But somehow those little bits of less fat chocolate chip cookies, fruit infused brownies and more add up if you are ingesting them at supersonic speeds. I actually ate enough desserts that it killed my desire to eat any sweets for the next decade. Or at least until my belated birthday celebrations this weekend.

What have you learned during travels, vacations or time outs this year?

The Beatles famously told us “Baby you can drive my car.” But they never gave any lyrical advice on what to eat when you’re behind the wheel.

We are spending more time in our automobiles than ever, commuting to work, driving car pool, frantically running errands during jam-packed lunch hours, etc.  According to Answers.com, the average American is behind the wheel about three hours per day. No wonder a growing number of people are eating breakfast, lunch and all sorts of snacks in between red lights and crowded intersections. It’s a dangerous trend for road concentration and our waistlines.

But being in your car doesn’t mean you have to decorate the floor board with fast food chain wrappers. I just got a call that cracked me up from a friend who’s a professional fitness instructor.  While she was leaving her cul de sac, a neighbor flagged her down and asked for advice on how to get rid of “love handles.”  A quick conversation revealed that the woman often snacked on Doritos or pumpkin bread from Starbucks while in transit. “But I’m always driving my car,” she protested, like calories consumed in an automobile should magically vanish.  When my buddy responded by pointing out the banana, nectarine and bag of raw almonds adorning her passenger seat, that argument for healthy eating on the road merited a (somewhat) joking obscene hand gesture in return.

How do you handle snacking in your car? Keep it healthy or dig into junk food with abandon?

5 A Day public service campaigns worldwide have encouraged kids to consume more fruits and vegetables for more than a generation. From the Fruit of the Loom Guys to the Veggie Tales characters, pop culture has given appealing, quirky personalities to nature’s wholesome goodies. But for some reason, fruits and vegetables have become the equivalent of the girl who everybody likes but no one wants to date.  

According to a new survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans are flunking easy goals for healthier eating - http://tinyurl.com/24zpqqp . When it comes to fruit, public consumption has dropped over the past decade and remained flat on veggies.  Only 32.5% of adults are eating two daily servings of fruit and 26.3 percent for three servings of vegetables. None of the 50 states in our union hit the mark.

I started pondering this sad state of affairs and realized, until this year, that I fell into the underachieving   majority.  Sure, I watched calories but all whole lot of what was coming in consisted of low calorie pudding snacks, protein bars, reduced fat treats, etc. I would steam some broccoli or asparagus to accompany my dinner, but heaven forbid I’d snack on a banana or really dig into some berries instead of something processed.  When I injured my feet last year and lost the ability to burn pounds off easily through exercise, I had to do things differently. Now I exceed that five a day bar most days and wish there was some sort of grown-up merit badge for it.

Why do you think the general public has such a hard time eating fruits and veggies? How have you tried to incorporate them into your eating?