Hi all,

Feeling cranky. Wanna beer. Or a cup of coffee. Or, something I shouldn't have. So, here's some stuff I'll argue about:

1. "Muscle weighs more than fat . . ." I see this over and over. I DO know what you mean . . . But, muscle or fat, a pound of either weighs a pound. Just like a pound of gold weighs exactly what a pound of feathers weigh. So, you may not lose a pound, or even gain a pound, and still lose inches.

The good news is, (depending on all those individual factors and your metabolism) it takes about 2 to 3 calories a day to maintain a pound of fat, and 30 to 50 calories a day to maintain a pound of muscle. Muscle burns more energy. And takes up less space.

2. Chicken breasts are part of an insidious plot by the low fat big food industry. Skinned chicken breasts. I don't know much about heraldry, but if you designed a coats of arms for LOW-FAT, it would feature a skinned chicken breast rampant. The plethora of low-fat cookbooks feature this unfortunate part of the bird prominently, and restaurants bragging about their low-fat menus offer this up as real food.

The food industry is well on the way to creating a poor caged-chicken that has no thighs, legs or wings, but is all breasts. You think I'm kidding? Witness the chicken neck. Gone forever.

I know there are ways to make chicken breasts edible -- barely -- but they remind me of the old joke about how to cook a carp. You put it on an oak plank and season it with butter and olive oil and blah-blah-blah, etc. The punchline of this corny old joke is, you throw the carp away and eat the plank.

**Sorry to be so grumpy at you. Just when you think all your cravings are gone . . .

But, I had seven things on my list, and only mentioned two, so this is definitely a low-calorie post.