Good morning,  everyone! It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a beautiful weekend!

Yeah baby!! But first, let’s get this stuff outta the way:

1. Day 5 of the 7-day weight averaging thing:

193.8

Wow — that was unexpected! Hey, remember how I started out on Monday at 198.0? That’s almost seven, count ’em 7, pounds lost in five days! Now you know and I know that could NOT be 7 pounds of fat. It’s definitely water — and tomorrow morning it could very well go up again. Which demonstrates that we really shouldn’t worry about these little (and sometimes not-so-little) fluctuations from day to day, or even week to week. As long as the LONG-TERM trend is downwards, you’re fine. (Jay at aworkoutroutine.com lists a whole bunch of reasons for these daily fluctuations here.)

2. Another day, another gym. Now that I’ve been a member at Anytime Fitness Chatsworth for more than 30 days, I’m allowed to visit gyms in other locations, so this past Wednesday I visited the one in Simi Valley (shoutout to Jasmine in the office!) It was actually pretty nice, although the video treadmills were set up a little differently: no YouTube app, so no Corner Gas, but a whole slew of DirecTV channels, so lots of sitcoms and game shows. It’s all good!

3. Eat something small to keep from eating something big. So yesterday I was doing a walk around my neighborhood, when I was suddenly seized with an almost irresistible desire to stop at the nearest KFC and savor as much of those 11 herbs ‘n spices as possible. Where that desire came from I have no idea. I thought I’d managed to kick the fried chicken habit, but ya know, these things come back to haunt you.

I confess — I actually walked to the door of the KFC down the street, ready to take the calorie hit. FORTUNATELY, it was 10:45 and they didn’t open till 11:00. So I went to the Starbucks next door, ordered an Americano with just a scosche of regular, full-fat half-and-half, and decided to indulge in one of their yummy 80-calorie string cheeses.

Half an hour later, after sitting at a table sipping my coffee and savoring the cheese, I walked out — with absolutely NO desire to revisit the KFC, even though it was wide open! Yes, the evil cravings were GONE!

So there you go — today’s Diet Wisdom:

If you’re struggling against a 1,000-calorie craving,
treat yourself to something yummy with 100 calories instead.

Worth a shot, right? Let me know how that works out for you.

4. Man, I’m having trouble coming up with a fourth thing. Tell you what, we’ll just agree that this counts as #4, and move on. Um, if that’s OK with you …

Thanks, Napoleon!

5. On a more serious note, very saddened to read this morning that Anthony Bourdain apparently took his own life. Although I hadn’t watched very many episodes of his show, “Parts Unknown,” I did recently read his book, “Typhoid Mary,” the true story of an Irish immigrant cook who spread disease to dozens of people before she was found and jailed. What made the book really enjoyable is that he obviously felt a lot of sympathy for her, as one cook to another. It was a good book. He wrote quite a few books. It’s sad to hear he’s not going to write any more.

+Eternal memory, Mr. Bourdain

OK, that’s your Friday Five, more or less. Hope you have a great weekend — see you Monday!