Half of Me

Half of Me: "Is low-calorie food healthy food?"

I love this girl. She gets it. Her book, Half-Assed, a Weight-loss Memoir came out last week. I love stories about people losing weight the right way. Her last paragraph from a blog post today sums up quite nicely what weight loss is about.

Perhaps that's what it's about, not necessarily having the best diet on the planet, just a better one. Maybe we shouldn't aim for the impossible task of eating a completely healthy diet, just a healthier diet. You don't have to be the healthiest eater on the planet. No one is going to give you a prize. But you can almost always make improvements to your lifestyle, so perhaps it's better to focus on that.

The Cardiac Lab

School is winding down for the semester. I have a math test tomorrow that is weighing on me, but I think I shall survive just fine. I have been doing math problems for days.

Anyway, lab last night consisted of taking our pulse, bp and then our pulse after two minutes of exercise. I couldn't help but feel for the poor girl who I had been lab partners with the first week. She was an undergrad and I was making up a missed lab (for a stuffy lawyer dinner) and happened to sit next to her. She had friends and seemed to be making due but she was a very large girl. There was not a single bp cuff in that room last night that will fit her during her lab on Wednesday. :c( The embarrassment. Out teach lets the night school peeps coast so we are only doing part of the lab, but it still included 2 minutes of exercise for us. The daytime kids are going to have to due the Harvard Step Test and design another fitness experiment.

These are things I notice being formerly that girl. I feel for her awkwardness. Maybe she won't notice, but back in the day, that lab would have been 3 hours of pure torture for me.

BTW-- my stats. BP was 110/78. I wish that bottom number were lower. Pulse was 104 resting (too much inhaler!!!) and 124 after hopping on the bike.

Incredible Shrinking Gossip Blogger

Perez TV

Eating better and moving more. Perez gets it. Even if he's doing just to get laid. ;-)

Google Alerts: Obesity

Obesity: A New Fuel Source? | Toilet Scribble

I get google alerts for several topics, one being Obesity. Today it brought me this gem. You *must* click on this. (/Perez)

The idea of it doesn't offend me. He's actually pretty funny, reminds me of my sister.

Junkfood Science

Junkfood Science

I have added a link to the left.
This woman is my new hero.

As seen on TV

MyFox Kansas City | Weight Loss Program Promises Results in 12 Minutes a Week

Their website confuses me? Chiropractics and God? What?

They are selling something for sure, I'm just really not sure what.

Oh and this comes from teh Fox affiliate in KC. I love My Fox Boston but hope they would never feature something so, well, icky.

Growing meat without growing animals. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Growing meat without growing animals. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

I'm not sure how I feel about this-- we were just discussing it in Biology last Monday.

Not so sinister weight loss!

So my sister has been kicking ass and taking names this year. Down over 40 pound since Christmas I watched her run today. Run!!! For a brief moment she (and we) thought her weight loss my be an illness, but nope- it's all her and her healthy choices.

That's what it comes down to. Making the choice. Making the choice not have a donut with your coffee in the morning. The choice to have oatmeal and berries instead. The choice to go out for a walk even when your knees scream at you or your FM is beating you down. The choice to go an extra lap because of the rush you get when you move your body.

I know there are a ton of people out there who will say that obesity is not a choice. But it is. What's worse I think is that all those people who had always been heavy-- they don't know any better. They don't know that they have a choice, they don't know that they can change. They don't know that they don't have to have to be obese.

Easy for me to say? Sure. But anyone can do it. Watching my sister lap me at the track tonight was so inspiring. I can see that she is making a choice, a choice to be healthy.

You make that choice and the weight will fall off.

Big Fat Lie

I wish I were a better blogger-- but, well, life happens. And life has been happening again.

So much stress that I guess I didn't know I was under. Hindsight = 20/20. I broke out in spots over two weeks ago. At first I thought it was shingles (but they don't normally happen again) and then this rash started to spread. It's pityraisis and will last for about 6 weeks. The spots fade in and out but are quite visible on my neck and chest. Common in females under 35 and occurs in the Spring/Fall. My PCP also seemed to think it happens in people with weakened immune systems and those under stress.

Yeah, that's me.

Back in the day it would have been because I was fat. Everything that was wrong with me was because I was fat. Well, let me tell you, the only thing that is better (besides my long term prospects and even the data on that is sketchy...) is my thyroid. It can now keep up with my body weight but all the other problems that plague me are still there. Crappy immune system, (leading to all sorts of issues) asthma, bum knee. All still there. It the lack of defense against germs (viral or bacterial) that really gets to me. It keeps me from feeling healthy and dammit isn't that what weight loss is supposed to do. Make you healthy?!?!?! Here I am years later and still feel like ass.

A lighter piece of ass with hopefully better long term health prospects, but still. Damn. Why put in all this effort to be healthy when your body is just going to do what it wants anyways.

/rant

The way we eat continues to change

Eating at the bottom line - The Boston Globe

I waited tables at Uno's. It's interesting to watch it evolve.

Test your 100 Calorie Knowledge

100 CALORIES QUIZ | Women's Health Magazine

This is neat, but slightly long. Notice that none of these snacks are coming out of a Nabisco package!

(My score was 20/24)

I need a hug.

The kind where your man wraps his arms all the way around you and squeezes really tight.

Hugs are way better now. One comment that still gets me every time-- "I can put my arms all the way around you now," I heard it from my mom again recently. So validating.

Goodbye MFD, I'll miss you.

My weight loss was nothing more than eating better and moving more. Seriously it's that simple. It's the mental part that gets complicated and the reason I left My Food Diary today. Board suicide over a gastric bypass surgery question-- I'll explain my issues with weight loss surgeries in a subsequent post.

I had been a member for almost a year, my former bossed turned me onto it after last years surgical fiasco. My weight was creeping back up and I was flirting with 170!!! I have been counting calories for years now and have a pretty good idea of what's in what but it kept me accountable. For 9$ a month you get a great food/activity diary in an easy to use uncluttered format. The nutritional database is massive and manually entering information is quite easy. You can build recipes and share your "fridge" with others. The activity/exercise log is one of the most accurate out there. It was always right in line with my heart rate monitor (after I subtracted the calories I would have burned at rest anyways while I was exercising.) It also has some neat reports to track your progress and a message board.

There is a link to My Food Diary to the right. Please check it out. Compared to The Daily Plate and Spark People and many other online food journals imho, it is the best. My own personal failings will not keep me from suggesting it to anyone who wants more information on what they are consuming.

So why did I leave? Simple. I kind of felt like a freak over there and I couldn't keep myself from checking the forums. I'm a message board junkie (it's how I met my husband, different board on a totally unrelated topic) but I'm not paying 9$ a month to be continually annoyed. I had been holding onto the membership for some nutrition class projects but hadn't logged my food in a couple of months. I'm still between 155-160 and feel confident that I don't need to be that militant about logging to keep the weight off after three plus years now of maintenance.

Today was the last straw for me. Someone posted a question about gastric bypass surgery-- they had been directed to the site by their physician and wanted to know where they could find support for people looking into surgical options for weight loss. MFD does not promote a culture of quick fixes but you do occasionally get people asking questions about weight loss surgery, fat burners etc. So here this person is casting out a life line on the forums and someone comes in and tells them that only 2% of obese people lose weight with diet and exercise and keep it off. Ugh. I wish this factoid would just disappear. By telling people that there is only a 2% chance of success (I take issue with the number regardless) you are setting them up for failure. I know it's not an accident that the man making that claim has been banded (with great success and I wish him luck) but MFD is a solid program based on eating better and moving more. To trash it on the forum by spouting off that "fact" annoyed me to no end. We went back and forth a few times and then that was it. Board suicide. I posted that I was done, clicked on cancel my account and that was it.

Instantly I felt five pounds lighter.

Perfect Size Six

I was a huge fan of the Sweet Valley High series. Between my sister and I we had all the books. Being a twin, I liked reading about other twins. Each book had a physical description of the girls within the first few pages that described the girls a perfect size 6 wearing gold laveliers. No more.

Like all things from my childhood this series is being repackaged and sold to a whole new generation. With variations of course. The big one that most people picked up on (and were outraged by) was the vanity sizing. A size 6 twenty years ago is more like a size 2 these days, but at least the publishers didn't go that far. Elizabeth and Jessica are supposed to embody what every girl wants to be-- thin, blond and popular. It didn't matter to me that I was never going to be that and the mention of their size in every book, while it stung, never kept me from devouring them. Standards change over time-- it is what it is.

In my humble opinion if they want to make the description more relevant the girls need to be wearing Tiffany charm bracelets, not gold laveliers. I'll be on the look out for these when they hit the bookstores. I'm curious what other changes they will make. You can click on the picture to enlarge it the see what else Random House is doing to make the stories more today.

The Shape Issue

The April issue of Vogue is on newsstands now. It has Lebron James and Gisele Bundchen on the cover. The Shape Issues a yearly nod to the non-twigs and normally the only one I actually purchase. I'm going to have stop doing that-- every year it just pisses me off. Some of the articles pimped on the cover include, The Perfect Fit, Dressing for Every Shape from Size 0 to 16 and You Are (Not) What You Eat: Debunking Diet Myths.

So I flipped to the section where they dress every size. Actually they are dressing every shape, but that doesn't stop them from putting the numbers on the cover. Is the 16 a nod to the larger girls to help sell more magazines? I think so. Shapes include, 1. Tall 2. Pregnant 3. Thin 4. Curvy 5. Short. Pregnant is a size huh? And the dress listed under Curvy-- only goes up to a size 12. Hmmpf.

Click the link to a read a great summary of the issue by the fashionistas over at New York magazine. Sums it up perfectly.

Is this movie ever coming out?

Jared Leto gains 60 pounds to play Mark David Chapman

From what I have read though Jared Leto turned into even more of ass when he gained 60 pounds. I lost all respect for him after I read his take on being overweight. Boo-hoo and cry me a river.

I had a dream I was 300 pounds

I've read a lot of blogs today that started with. I weighed in today and I was ! Ha ha ha, April Fools!

No joke for me though, this is my third April first under 160 pounds. I got that neat little factoid when I logged into My Health account online. Basic stats like hgt, wgt, bp have been recorded on every visit since I have been a HVMA member. It alo lists every single doctors appointment I have ever had within their system. My knee plagues me. I can't imagine having more problems to manage than this. Diabetes? No thank you.