Standing on the scale today, I breathed a sigh of relief. Since Thanksgiving Day, I've gotten rid of 5 pounds.

Yep -- I lost 5 pounds over Thanksgiving and the weekend.

How did I do that? I got out of my own way.

I tend to impose too many weight-loss rules: Eating a piece of fruit? Make sure you have some protein with that. Having a salad for lunch? Better balance that with something starchy. You can't have a spoonful of peanut butter and call it a snack! Did you do a DVD yesterday? Better run today. Did you walk today? You need to strength train tomorrow.

And on and on.

Taken at face value, and one at a time, those don't seem like bad suggestions. But these food and exercise rules can swirl around in my head every time I step in to the kitchen or lace up the sneakers.

It's exhausting and can make me freeze in my tracks, afraid to eat a banana or do a Zumba DVD. Afraid it's not the right day or the right food.

The day after Thanksgiving, all my kid wanted for lunch and for dinner was a plate of turkey. No sides, no bread, no ketchup, no nothing. Just turkey.

"Is that it? Don't you want some leftover stuffing? Want it in a sandwich?"

Nope. Just turkey. I couldn't wrap my head around that because of my food rules.

Ugh.

So Saturday morning I said to myself: "Stop it."

Want a banana? Eat a banana. Want to Zumba every day? Go for it. Eat the salad for lunch and have a baked potato at dinner -- it all works out in the end.

I also went back to my old pal SparkPeople.com. I have always loved their fitness and food trackers. But this time around I'm not going to check the pie chart of nutrients after every meal and snack. In the past I would do that and then obsess the rest of the day about getting my food in the "perfect" ratio or getting enough fiber or calcium or whatever. Instead, I'll let the tracker give me the daily wrapup at the end of the day. I'll see how I did and think about working in more fiber the next day. All I'm looking at is the calories. SparkPeople gives me a range and I have been staying around the low end of them.

And that, boys and girls, is how I lost 5 pounds in three days.

And here's a belated HealthBuzz: