My horoscope for today

Making a commitment to your long-term health can assure years of increased vitality down the road. Transformative Pluto is entering your 6th House of Routine, enabling you to ruthlessly eliminate old habits that no longer serve you well. Consider changes to improve your diet and exercise program while you can. If you wait too long, the negative effects of an unhealthy lifestyle will begin to take their toll.

Begin to take a toll? Huh. That bell has tolled. That bell is pealing in the tower and the pigeons are deaf.

How is this different from any other horoscope I have and will read? It's this line: Transformative Pluto is entering your 6th House of Routine, enabling you to ruthlessly eliminate old habits that no longer serve you well.

I don't know about Pluto, but I really need some help eliminating old habits. Coincidentally (or not), I recently told some friends that I think my aversion to healthy eating and exercise is no longer based on a deep-seated emotional need, but on bad habits I developed when I was needy.

I used to suffer from the "when I get thin, I'll be able to get a boyfriend, finish school, get a job, make friends, be happy...." Back then, I think I sometimes sabotaged my healthy eating and exercise plans because I needed the fat as an excuse for anything that wasn't working.

Now, I am married and out of school, I have lots of good jobs (some which pay in cash, some in satisfaction), I have great friends, and some days, when I am feeling very brave, I will admit that I am happy. Once in a while I catch myself thinking that if I were thin, I'd be able to handle a tougher situation better ---then I call myself a liar and just do it.

But I am still fat, and the health bell is tolling for me.

I know how to eat well. I like healthy foods. I like to walk, especially now that it is fall and the weather is perfect. So what is missing?

Habit. If I have good food at my office, I'll eat it. But on the days I'm not alone and someone offers to buy me lunch my mind perks up and my mouth says, "I'll take two chili dogs and small fries." My stomach and my brain are saying, oh jeeze, Kathy, that is going to sit like a pile of grease in your stomach and you won't get anything done. Just say no, or at least see if you can get a grilled chicken sandwich. But Habit wins.

Habit has me in my warm jammies and socks within two minutes of hitting my house. Habit has me eating ice cream when I really do like fat free vanilla yogurt. Habit has me, period.

The question I ask myself (I suppose out of habit) is if I have so many bad habits, why can't I develop good habits? If my mind is so strong it can make me sick and sad, why can't I use that same mind to make me healthy and happy? What do I need to do to develop new habits?