Barking Mad

Weight and See - It's Been a While

It's been more than a while, it's been close to eight months since I last updated.    So much has happened and so much hasn't happened that it's hard to know  how to update anything. 

Back when I last updated my weight, I was still dealing with a semi-serious knee injury and I was having a snit over cancelling my trip to Idaho in order to go to what was basically, fat camp. 

I was told way back then that my knee would take time to heal and that I might have to have surgery.    Well my knee has in fact gotten a lot better.   12 weeks of physical therapy turned into 6 months.   My hamstring tendonitis is virtually gone and the meniscal tear is almost healed. However they eventually came to the conclusion that I have something called Plica Syndrome which is exacerbated by my weight.  I still might have to have surgery but the huge caveat to any surgery is that my doctors want me to lose 100lbs before they do anything remotely related to surgery.    Combine that with the fact that my immune system basically took a nosedive and it appears to be attacking all of my joints and causing massive inflammation (they have no idea what's causing it.  My rheumatologist is nice, but at this point, clueless) and I've finally moved from simply knowing I need to lose the weight, to actually wanting to.    

Fat people know they're fat . . . well most of the time anyhow.   They know the smart thing, the healthy thing to do, is to make the necessary lifestyle changes.   I think where we all screw ourselves is by trying to bargain ourselves into allowing more time to be obese and unhealthy - telling ourselves little lies that I call the 'Chris Christie Syndrome',  "Oh I'm not sick yet.  I can take my time losing weight.  I'm lucky and still healthy!"    

Just because we aren't shooting up insulin, or popping blood pressure pills, we automatically think that our fat isn't affecting us yet.  Well, pardon my profanity, but frankly that's bullshit.    There is no such thing as a healthy obese person.    I know, you're going to tell me how you are 5'5" and weigh 250lbs and can run a 5K, hike Mt. Rainier, swim 20 laps at your local Y, and that your cholesterol level is a sane and reasonable 80.    Give it time sunshine.   Just like a pack of cigarettes every day catches up, and you start coughing up pieces of your lungs, eventually you'll notice your joints are deteriorating, your heart is about to beat out of your chest after you've climbed 6 stairs, of you go into a diabetic coma after pounding your second Coke of the day.   But hey, don't take my word for it.  It's not like I'm currently living this nightmare or anything. 

Well here I am, I know I need to lose the weight and I finally, genuinely want to, but every single time I move, it hurts.   Well hell yes it hurts.  Moving around 350lbs of mostly fat with very little supporting muscle underneath it, hurts like a mofo.   So I'm back to taking baby steps.   

My doctors want me to go on MediFast but our insurance policy has an exclusion that doesn't allow coverage for any and all obesity treatment, and MediFast needs to be meidically supervised and it's pretty expensive to boot . . . about $500 a month for the shakes and meal supplements.   Plus the other huge kink in my hose is the fact that I'm on massive dosages of Prednisone to control the inflammation, for the foreseeable future.    While it's helping keep whatever is wrong with me, at bay, it also causes massive weight gain.  In my case, while I'm almost 20lbs less than I was when I last posted my weight in August, it's been hellish trying to keep from ballooning to massive proportions again.   Hence the reason my doctors feel like MediFast is my best bet.   So I'm paying out-of-pocket to meet with a bariatric doctor I've seen before and with the help of his staff, is going to custom design a semi-liquid meal replacement system that is both cost-effective and healthy, that will also allow me to transition back into eating healthy meals, after I've lost 100lbs, and without re-gaining the weight that I've just lost.    Who knows, maybe I won't have to have any further treatment for the Plica Syndrome and taking the first 100lbs off will be enough to keep further injury at a standstill.  

Current Weight:  352lbs

Yes, I'm pretty disappointed.  I do feel kind of stuck, but everyone in charge of making sure I can help myself get healthy, tells me it isn't forever, because I have control over whether it's forever or not.  I'm promised it always won't hurt this bad to move.   It will get easier.     

Every day I take another step further than I did the day before.  I mean that literally.   Last week I started just by walking in my driveway.   I'm still not supposed to do stairs because it's too jarring on my knee, but simple walking is fine.  I'm also supposed to be in the pool 3-5 times per week.  I came down with a bad case of the "I look heinous in this swimsuit so I'm not getting in the pool", so I haven't been getting in the damn pool!  The idea is to walk and then spend an hour in the pool letting my joints rest, then 15 minutes in the whirlpool.    While I haven't gotten into the pool I am able to walk halfway around my block.  I start to get really sore if I push it much further than that.    

Yes, I have deteriorated a great deal in the last eight months.    I'm trying not to beat myself up.  It doesn't do me any good to do that, plus I just end up feeling like the asshole that I'm acting like.   I got myself into this mess and having a continual pity party, or acting like it's anyone else but my own fault just isn't cutting it any more.    So, while I feel like I've physically and mentally atrophied over the last 8 months, it's not something that is preventing me from taking small steps, which will hopefully lead to larger and longer steps, and moving forward.   

In other words, there are no excuses.  None.   

I'm dealing with all of the "emotional fat".   I don't have anyone or anything to blame any more.  

I am still going to chronicle this.  I just am not sure in what form that chronicling is going to take.  I'll always be honest about my weight and my struggles (I'll write more about some of the various "lifestyle" changes I have tried to adopt - such as the "Paleo thing", in the next week or so) but I don't know if I want to photo and document every meal, or just some meals, or no meals at all, and just post about my weight, and maybe toss up a vlog or two a week.    At this point, I know that I will be using a meal replacement called "Unjury" (I have used this before, post-gastric bypass several years ago.  I like it and know it works) for two meals a day and have a normal, healthy meal in the early evening.    At this point, that's all I know for sure. 

Do you guys like the whole photo-documentary style blogging like I used to do?   Is it of any value to you?   I can't see how photographing two shakes and one meal a day is going to be very interesting, but then what do I know.   Oh, I do know that I can add frozen fruit and plain, non-fat greek yogurt to one shake per day.  So there's that I guess. 

As far as Idaho goes?  I don't know about that either.   I'm pretty sure, at this point, I'm not going to be cleared for something as intense as what Bobbie originally had planned for me.   Maybe 100lbs from now?  Who knows.   I just want to get the weight off, then I can figure out the rest. 

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I want to give you a little fair warning.  I have a couple of draft posts I haven't hit "publish" on, related to weight and being obese, and the general state of the obese in this country, because I was afraid of offending people and all the many ways we delude ourselves into thinking we really aren't that fat.   In particular, I want to talk about this "Healthy at ANY Size" movement and how harmful I think it is, in particular to our children - children who are experiencing unprecedented obesity rates in America, rates so high that it's literally an epidemic.   There's a discussion that isn't happening that desperately needs to happen!  

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Before starting any life-changing exercise or eating habits, please consult with your personal physician or other trusted medical professional.

If You're Fat and Work for CVS You Might Just be Screwed!

  image credit

Let's get something out of the way right here and right now.  

I'm fat.

I'm not just fat, I am morbidly obese.  I have written extensively over the years about my life being an utter nightmare because I'm slowly dying, literally dying, and suffocating underneath all of this weight.   I've not only written about my weight for a nationally circulated, popular magazine, I've gone on camera talking about it for HBO!

Because I'm fat I've also been discriminated in the most heinous way possible.  However I can't talk about that.  All I can say, legally, is that the case is settled.  Due to how horribly I've been treated in various workplaces in the past, I will never ever work again, outside of my own home, for another person, as long as I live.   Just thinking about putting myself in that position again makes me physically ill!   I've been to the point, in the past, that I sat in a tub full of cold water, held a razor blade to my arms and dared myself to just end the pain caused by people who have made it their goal in life to make sure fat people know just how unworthy we are, how unpleasant we are to look at, and how much we're hated because somehow we are solely responsible for rising health care costs - or more to the point, people who have made it their goal in life to let me know how heinous I am, and how unworthy of occupying space on earth, I am.   The message has been driven in, loud and clear, repeatedly.   Maybe the fact that I have been deeply broken inside for a long time, makes it harder for me to let the cruel words, jokes, and snide fat-shaming comments roll off my back, leaving me somewhat emotionally crippled when it comes to dealing with the hatred lobbed at me from time to time, due to my weight. 

You're saying to yourself, "Well honey, there's an easy solution, lose the weight!  It's not brain surgery, just stop shoving the Big Macs in your face and get off your ass!"   Oh m'dears, if it were only that simple.   Obviously I'm a total loser, because I'm still sitting here, more than 150lbs over my ideal weight, and struggling with how to take it off in a healthy, reasonable manner, and incorporate a lot more movement, all while recuperating from a devastating knee injury.   That said, I'm really glad I don't work at CVS as well because I'm pretty sure there's no way in hell I'd let them force me into complying with a new corporate edict that says I need to submit to a health screening (paid for by CVS) including weight, height, body-fat measuring, blood pressure, glucose, and fasting lipid levels by May 1, 2013 or face a penalty of $50 a month/$600 a year on top of what I was already paying for health insurance!  

Keep in mind that many of CVS's 175,000+ employees are low-wage earners in the first place.   Now let's combine that with some national statistics about obesity that show us that more than a full third of Americans are overweight, while up to one quarter of us are considered technically obese.  So we can loosely extrapolate that half of those 175,000+ employees are overweight or obese.   I know I'm playing fast and loose with the numbers, but I'm probably not that far off.   So now you've got roughly 85,000 people employed by CVS, most of whom don't make much more than minimum wage to begin with, who are now dealing with what is basically corporate coercion and on top of that are concerned about the privacy of their personal health information (despite claims by WebMD Health Services Group, who will end up with the information, promising that corporate suits at CVS will never see the data.  We all know how easily supposedly protected medical data has been breached in the past.  Need I say more?) , and if they don't comply with the new CVS policy, they will have to cough up what equals $600 a year. 

Now I want you to take all of the above into consideration when I tell you that President Obama's beloved health care act, the PPACA (also known as "Obamacare") makes it completely legal for employers to "penalize obese workers, smokers and anyone else who doesn't participate in the company wellness plan and meet specific goals."    So now we've got employees who are understandably worried about giving personal health information to a third party aggregator who is going to help CVS interpret all the data, but they've got the Federal government basically condoning this and making it completely legal for a company to say, "You're fat!  Less money for you!"   In my book that's called discrimination. 

Oh, but wait a minute, that's right, silly me . . . fat people are the last group of Americans we're legally allowed to discriminate against.   

What I find laughable is that talking heads like Tamara Holder, who is a liberal paid contributor over at FOX News was on TV earlier crowing about how unfair this CVS policy is because it forces employees to acquiesce or they face having to pay a fine, yet this same woman is an ardent supporter of the PPACA which, oh wait . . . forces people to buy health care or pay a fine if they refuse to do so.  I've seen other zealous liberals (for the record I'm independent of either party.  My views make me a pariah to both sides.  I do however believe that instituting a single-payer system would have rendered all of this nastiness, moot) in my Twitter and Facebook feeds decrying this policy move from CVS as intolerance on a monumental scale, yet they're the first ones to defend the mandate that is Obamacare?   Despite the obvious hypocrisy of Holder's, and other liberal's views, Obamacare is a topic for another post entirely and one that I'm not altogether sure I want to opine on as my views are highly unpopular. 

Politics aside, the new policy being implemented at CVS is outright discriminatory and just plain offensive.    Yes, I know, you're sitting there yelling at your computer screen trying to get me to understand that obesity is solely to blame for your health insurance premiums going up.  Um, bullshit.   While it will be a leading driver of escalating health care costs if we don't get this monster under control, and we  could see obesity-related health care costs upwards of $500BILLION by 2030, it is not the sole reason your health insurance rates are as high as they are, and to claim as much really does nothing more than show how prejudiced you are against the obese in the first place.  There are so very many factors that go into what is currently driving our escalating health care costs, but placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the obese is wrong.

Before you start lining up all of us fatties and penalizing us for being obese, why not engage with us in a reasonable and unbiased discussion about the factors that contribute to obesity which have been going on for decades?    It's not as simple as the last few generations suddenly losing all willpower and becoming fast-food-freaks of nature.  It's about our society as a whole and the fast-paced-gotta-have-it-now-gotta-have-it-big mentality that we've adopted over the last 40 years.  It's about our food chain and how the production of our food plays into what we end up eating.  It's about making healthy, whole foods more widely available not to mention affordable. 

Yes, you'll get no argument from me that  we are getting pretty damn fat!   The only thing that's surpassing the rate at which our waistlines increase is the rate at which technology gets smaller and smaller - to the nano-scale.  We're able to fit much more data on smaller and smaller microchips,  but our asses are getting so large as to necessitate larger automobiles and in some cases, custom made hospital beds to accommodate the obese.   However, attacking us and then levying monetary fines when we don't comply with what are pretty questionable policy demands, makes about as much sense as peeing on our feet and telling us it's rain!

So, you're not going to get any argument from me about the fact that we're all getting fatter and sicker.  What you will see me rail against is bullshit policy implementation like that imposed by CVS that basically scares people into compliance by forcing them to give up this information or be financially penalized.   To further that, like I said earlier, once they've got the information, once January 1, 2014 rolls around,  it will be completely legal for your employer to penalize you for not participating in company wellness standards and meeting certain goals .    This sort of forced compliance circumvents any legitimate and necessary conversation that we as a nation need to have about our health.   It does nothing to address the  "Fast Food Nation" we've become. We didn't get here overnight, so condemning us now, via financial pain, isn't going to help matters, and it only makes us feel further discriminated against.

While you will never see me jump on the "Healthy at Any Size" movement, or alternatively you'll never see me advocate discrimination against the obese simply because they are obese, you likewise won't see me damn the rest of the my fellow Americans who struggle just as much as I do with their own weight, or overlook the corporate bigotry against the overweight and obese - a bigortry that's condoned by our own government, simply because I myself am fat!

The real kicker about this entire CVS policy implementation?   They're making their employees sign a form stating that they are voluntarily providing this personal health information then allow the information to be given to WebMD Health Services Group.    Oh sure it's completely and totally voluntary and couldn't have anything to do with facing a $50 per month increase in their health care premiums if they don't submit to the new policy.    For someone making minimum wage or just barely over it, that's a pretty painful chunk of change to suddenly lose from your monthly income.

CVS, here's an idea.  Why don't you think about implementing a plan that offers incentives to those who adjust their eating habits and make positive changes towards living a healthy lifestyle.   Soon enough they'll realize on their own, the rewards of weighing less, being more active, and putting fuel rather than fat into their bodies.   Your current policy is bullshit and you're helping blur the lines between motivating wellness and potentially discriminating against workers who are ill.

Weight and See - Numbers, Knees, and Wheat

I guess I'll get the bad news out of the way first.   

Due to tearing the meniscus in my knee and a severe case of hamstring tendonitis, my trip to Idaho has been postponed until at least December.     Along with what could be 12 weeks of physical therapy, combined with draining fluid off the top of my knee (if you have any experience with this, I'd love to hear your own story.  I've been terrifying myself by Googling it!),  this is going to be my life for what looks like the foreseeable future . . .  

But (yes, I know you aren't supposed to start a sentence with the word, "but."), it's not all bad.   In that there photo is an ankle.  An ankle that was completely and totally AWOL the entire time I was on heavy doses of prednisone!   It's still a fat ankle, supporting a very fat leg, which is still supporting a very fat body, but it is finally once again discernible as an ankle.  

Not only that, but on August 8, I went in for a doctor's appointment and limped over to the scale and found out that my weight had gone from 407lbs to . . . 

I attributed most of that 26lb weight loss to water weight loss due to stopping prednisone.   However, I've made some other big changes in the last few weeks, changes that I'm not sure are going to be permanent to the degree they are now, but I felt I at least needed to try to make some of these more drastic changes because I refuse to ever go back on prednisone unless my life depends on it.  So that means I need to control my inflammation issues in other ways.    One of those ways was by looking at every single thing I was eating and whether it was contributing to not only my inflammation problems, but trying to figure out if it might also be contributing to my severe eczema, which at times has gotten so bad that it's been life-threatening.  

I decided to read as much as I could about wheat and decide if eliminating it from my diet would have any of the often talked about benefits that so many who have decided to adopt a "Paleo" type dietary lifestyle change, are talking about.   Well, that might be better worded.  Not everyone who has cut wheat out of their diet has adopted a paleo or primal diet, whether they are gluten sensitive (which is the predominant reason many people stop eating wheat - because of either celiac disease or a gluten issue) or not.  Some people want to eliminate carbohydrates and the best way to do that is to start with wheat.   Then there are the others, the folks who've "gone paleo" and aren't looking back.   

I'm not sure where I fit in, because I have not eliminated all grains from my diet.   Right now I still have a breakfast that looks a lot like this . . . 

Mostly because I was finding that eating eggs more than once a day was too much for me, and I had read that some skin conditions can be exacerbated by eggs.  So I decided to cut back and introduce oatmeal back into my diet.   Incidentally, I feel much better having that for breakfast than I do eggs, anyhow.   For some reason my intestines handle eggs a lot easier if I eat them later in the day.  

Oh and that stuff on the oatmeal?   It's this . . . 

It's pretty tasty but I'm going to stop using it because peanuts are a legume and I'm trying to avoid them.    I'm replacing peanut butter with almond butter.    

Most of my other meals resemble something like this  . . . 

Baked chicken with lots of veggies.    I'm also trying to eat as "clean" as possible . . . organic when possible, and all the animal proteins we consume are mostly grass fed, free-range, organic meats.   A huge bonus to this is that the meat is almost always local.  

I had another doctor's appointment yesterday and was anxious to get on the scale to see if trying to eat a cleaner,  wheat-free diet was doing me any good, weight-wise.    Have a look for yourself . . . 

10lbs in two weeks?  Not too shabby!  

Now, I'm not going to sit here and convince you that you should adopt a paleo-type of diet.  I'm not even convinced that long-term, this is going to work for me.   I've got a long ways to go to see if avoiding wheat is going to help me avoid prednisone and in the hopes that no wheat means less inflammation.   However, I'm giving it a really good shot.  My diet was far too high in wheat anyhow, and that was all whole-grain organic wheat products.     There's no denying that wheat might be what's making us, as a nation fat.   It's not anything close to the grain it was even as little as 150 years ago.   It's a bastardized, highly genetically modified grain that doesn't resemble the ancient einkorn or emmer grains - the original wheat - that our ancestors ate.   

If you're sensing the slightest bit of skepticism in my tone (if you can even do that via the written word) you'd be correct.  When I first started reading about wheat, I read the massively popular best-seller, "Wheat Belly."     Then I went on to read Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint", and Wolf's "The Paleo Solution."   I ordered another book that I'm currently in the middle of reading, "Practical Paleo", as well as Gary Taube's "Why We Get Fat", which I'm about half-way through.   Right after I finished reading "Wheat Belly", I came across this site that shoots some pretty serious holes in Dr. Davis' extrapolation of studies that he uses to support his own theories about why wheat is bad for us.    The people that I've talked to about "Wheat Belly" have embraced it so thoroughly that I hated saying anything about it on Facebook, but went ahead, especially considering that I knew others were watching and waiting to see how I was dealing with the elimination of wheat in my own diet. 

I take Pete Bronski's findings pretty seriously because I am taking the foods I eat very seriously, and if I can't trust the veracity of the  literature that claims to be based on medical science, then what can I trust?    While I don't discount Wheat Belly as a whole, I am seriously disappointed that Dr. Davis was disingenuous and misleading.     The fact remains, we consume far too much wheat and it's probably a contributing factor when it comes to why we're getting so fat.   Thankfully I didn't just rely on Dr. Davis' book, but have been doing as much reading as I can and am trying to come to my own conclusions.  

Additionally, some of the paleo books claim that eating plants from the "nightshade family" (Solanaceae plants, not to be confused with the "deadly nightshade" family of plants!)  which includes potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, are dangerous for those of us with inflammatory conditions.  Not so.   There is absolutely no formal research or studies that have been conducted which link consuming these vegetables with an increase in inflammation or a worsening of conditions like arthritis, like a lot of these books would have you believe.   However, that said, I have pretty much eliminated my buddy the tuber (potato) from my diet because I can't be trusted to indulge in a healthy way.   Maybe one day I'll partake again, but for now?  Not so much. 

When it comes down to it, food is becoming a highly political topic because of what our current food chain looks like, where our food is coming from, how it's grown or in many cases, how it's being manipulated, and what our food is eating before we eat it.  Then you have the various food lobbies that seem to be in the back pockets of all of our elected officials in D.C.    I don't want to get into all of that in this post, but suffice it to say, I'm not sure one can adopt a totally paleo diet simply because the genetics of the food we consume has changed somewhat from what our paleolithic ancestors ate.  

Most Americans eat meat that was raised in a factory setting, fed grains and animal byproducts and never see the light of day.    Finding truly grass-raised beef for instance?  It's hard.   It's doable if you're willing look, and in some cases, to drive out to the farms to get it, or can find one online who will ship, and it's pricey, but it can be done.   The fact remains, most Americans can't do this simply by virtue of how our food chain works and what they're willing to pay for.  

When all is said and done, each one of us has to live a lifestyle we're comfortable with and that helps us be as happy and healthy as possible.  Right now I'm willing to alter my diet significantly in order to do that, to see if, for me, the claims that wheat is this basically evil grain, hold - well, holds a grain of truth.  Pun fully intended.    Like I said, I'm still eating oats, and might have a little black wild rice here or there.  I'm not altogether convinced that all grains are inherently evil and bad for the human body.   I do think there's a lot of funky pseudo-science out there that would have you believe that eating anything other than protein is bad for you, and conversely,  there is also a lot of literature out there that tries to claim that all animal protein is bad bad super-bad.    Maybe, for me anyhow, it will end up being somewhere in the middle.   I think it will be some time before I know whether or not I see any genuine benefits from avoiding all wheat products.    

I also have to be very careful of the kinds of fats I'm consuming when it comes to animal proteins by virtue of the fact that I don't have a gallbladder.  Haven't had one since 1991.    Fatty meats and high-fat food tend to make my intestines feel like they've been wrapped around barbed wire.   It's probably why I've become the complete carb/sugar addict I am.    Add to that a serious abdominal surgery I had more than 7 years ago and then had reversed only two years later, and my tummy and gut are now sensitive to several things.    Slowly I'm learning to view food as nothing more than fuel, and I want the best possible fuel running my body and helping heal it from all the abuse it's suffered as a result of my emotional inability to handle life.  

I'm not exactly sure what physical therapy is going to entail, but at this point, I am limited to no more than aqua workouts, wearing that God-awful ugly brace, and not much more.   I feel a bit like I need to get the weight off even faster in order for my knee to heal and not be under so much stress, but I know that this isn't a sprint, it's a marathon and that intentionally trying to lose weight faster than I already am will likely cause more problems than it solves.   

One day at a time. 

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I almost forgot!  I've decided that once a month I'm going to have a cash give-away tied in with my weigh ins.    I'm not sure how it's going to work, but once a month there will be a cash give-away as part of Weight and See, and it will  always be a VISA gift card, anywhere from $100 to $250.    I was going to have you guess, at the end of the month, how much weight I'd lost, but I can see some potential problems with that.   So I'm going to have to think about it.  However, the first give-away will be at the end of September and it will be for a $150 VISA gift card!  

If This Post Doesn't Hit the Blog, It's ALL Bobbie's Fault!

I'm kidding.  

Sort of.

I was in the middle of getting the photos from today's meals ready to post when the phone rang.  It was Bobbie.  She had a confession . . .or three.   But more about that next week. 

Anyhow, 90 minutes later, I'm still on the phone and nowhere near close to posting for the day.  So now I find myself rushing to get this up and get in bed before the insomnia makes it impossible.   But then, that's kind of a funny story in and of itself, the insomnia.  I haven't been dealing with it so much lately.  Well not since Bobbie made me promise that in preparation for what I am jokingly referring to as "Fat Camp", that I walk a mile a day.   I'm actually going to bed really tired, and am not taking a Xanax before bed, and have only taken Melatonin 3 nights out of the last 7.      At this point, I'm hoping I can keep my eyes open long enough to get this posted, and then go crawl under my icy cold covers.   Well, hopefully they'll still be icy cold.  I suppose it all depends on whether or not Geronimo has managed to plop his furry ass down, where my own is supposed to go, and warmed things up.

Anyhow, moving on . . .

I woke up late, again.   Actually I got up at 6:45 but then Gaby decided to come out and for some reason, cuddling with her on the sofa put both of us back to sleep.  When we woke back up, the clock said 10:30!    We've got to stop being such layabouts!  Not good.

So I made a quick smoothie and packed it with as much of a nutritional punch as I could.

Gaby decided that she wanted a smoothie for brunch as well, but she wanted to do it all herself!  And by all, she meant all.  Everything from getting her blueberries out of the freezer, to pouring the milk,  scooping the yogurt into the blender, then the berries, and, surprisingly, she even wanted chia seeds!   So with mommy standing close by, she made her very own blueberry smoothie, entirely on her own!

Oh and she even managed to color-coordinate her smoothie with her outfit!   Take that Suri Cruise, and stick it in your burn book!

Gaby has told me that she wants to make pancakes tomorrow morning.   That only strikes the fear of God into me.   I'm not so sure that 'almost 7' is quite old enough to be cooking with a hot griddle.  Perhaps that's just me being overprotective?   Besides, I could go for some pancakes.  OK Bobbie, one pancake.

Lunch was really late, again, and substantial  So substantial in fact that I didn't bother with dinner.

I just had a handful of leftover chow fun noodles, a couple of almonds, and a huge glass of ice water.  That should tide me over until morning.

I managed to get my mile in, in the most interesting way.  I danced with Gaby.  Not just any kind of dancing, but her version of hip hop, which had lots of hopping with the potential for a hip or two to be completely dislocated.   Oh and remind me the next time I decide to get my groove on with Gaby, to wear my Enell!

I'm almost certain I have bruising in places that a grown woman should never have bruising, because I didn't wear that damned industrially reinforced sports bra while doing what no sane, 43 year-old obese woman should have been doing in the first place!    Trust me, with an Enell sports bra, nothing moves, jiggles, wiggles, or dares to bust a move of it's own!  They are worth every shiny penny you'll spend on it.   And no, no one paid me to say that.  Hell, I'd shout it from the roof tops!   They are that good!

On that note, I'm taking my bruised bosom (or should that be bosoms?) and going to bed.

Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite.  Well, I hope you don't have bed bugs.  That would pretty much suck worse than not wearing an Enell sports bra while attempting to hip hop dance.

Weight and See - Berries, Grocery Store Miles, and More Berries

I slept in way too late this morning (we all did!), and woke up with a slight sinus headache.  Maybe that's why this morning's breakfast of steel cut Irish oats with Greek yogurt and chia seeds, with lovely strawberries on the side, didn't taste so good.  Well, the strawberries?  They were wonderful.  However the oatmeal tasted really woody to me.    Normally I only use vanilla flavored Greek yogurt when I mix it with my oatmeal so perhaps that threw me off a bit too.  I discovered over the winter that I don't like warm berries at all; not in my oatmeal anyhow.

I got the nicest email from a reader yesterday asking me about the chia seeds; why I eat them and where I buy them?

The easy question first.   I normally get my chia seeds at Whole Paycheck Foods, but because the nearest WF is about 130 miles away in Hadley, MA; if I'm not going to be going back home to Maine for a visit anytime soon (where I stop in at WF before we leave), I sometimes order them online.    A bag the size of the one pictured below usually lasts me about 6 weeks. 

As far as why I eat them?    Last autumn I came across Kath Younger's blog, KERF, and she talked a little about chia seeds.  She typically adds them to her overnight oats   (she has quite the thing for oatmeal!) and sometimes smoothies, so that got my curiosity piqued.  After seeing her mention of chia seeds several times, I started to do a lot of reading on the benefits of seeds and nuts and came across several articles and studies that reported chia seeds are beneficial in numerous ways.  

*When chia seeds are exposed to water it forms a coating of gel increasing it's size and weight.  The gel is made of water so it has no calories, but adds to the bulk of the seed, making you feel fuller.

*When it's left to soak with something else, it often takes on the flavors of what it's mixed with, as it expands.

*Full of healthy Omega 3s.

*Because it's made up of a mix of soluble and insoluble fibers; those fibers combine to help slow down your body's conversion of starches into sugars, thereby helping balance your blood sugar.

**Chia seeds also pack quite the punch when it comes to calcium!  Per ounce they deliver up to 18% of your RDS in calcium.

**They are full of fiber which is not only good for you, but really good for your lower intestines!

*cited source

**cited source

You can do a lot of research and reading on your own and probably discover even more health benefits.     Those are just a few of the reasons I use chia seeds.

I've also been hearing/reading a lot about hemp hearts.   I want to try them but they're pretty pricey and I don't want to commit to spending almost $15 on a whole bag if I don't like them.  So the last time I was at Whole Foods I picked up a little sample packet.     I think I'll try them on my lunch-time salad tomorrow!   I'll let you know how it goes.

Waking up late sort of messed up the entire day.  Throw a sinus headache on top of that and I ended up skipping lunch in favor of a Tylenol, glass of ice water, and a nap.    By the time I woke up it was close to dinner time so I had a cold piece of leftover pizza and another huge glass of ice water.  Of course, I forgot to take a picture.  

Because the Y was closed in observance of Independence Day, I decided to see if I could get my mile in by walking around the perimeter aisles of the grocery store.    Yes m'dears, you can in fact get a lot of walking in, at the grocery store if you don't want to walk around your neighborhood because the asshole teenagers on your street and the next one over, are tossing live firecrackers at passing cars and pedestrians!  

So, just how many laps of the perimeter of the grocery store does it take to equal a mile?  Well, I gave up counting at 40.  Plus, somewhere around lap 20, I started to freak-out the guy at the seafood counter.

He stopped me to ask if there was something I needed help finding, and I matter-of-factly told him that because I had nim-rods for neighbors, because the Y was closed, and because it was too damned hot to walk outside anywhere else, I was going to walk my mile at the grocery store.   Thankfully a customer approached the seafood counter allowing me to avoid stopping any longer, and thereby realizing that my feet hurt and were about to burst into flames!   I still don't get why my feet get so hot? 

The next gazillion laps I was able to pass by the seafood counter without any further inquisition!

Like I said, I stopped counting laps at 40, but I did have with me, one of these dandy little gadgets that kept track of my steps!

Back when I joined Weight Watchers eons ago, I got two of these.   Despite having dropped out of WW long ago, I kept the pedometers.  One resides in my gym bag which I take with me to the Y and wear while I'm walking in case I forget to keep track of my laps, and the other, this one, I took out of the box today and took with me to the grocery store.    Because I know that for my typical stride (a very short one), 2500 steps usually equal a mile.     By the time I left the store I was at 2609 steps.   So while I don't know exactly how many laps around the inner perimeter equal a mile, I know that I did in fact hit my mile, today.

While at the grocery store I picked up some odds and ends for salads and a couple of things so that I could make Red, White, and Blue Sundaes back home.   This is the first year we've done pretty much nothing on the 4th of July, despite sitting out in the back garden and watching the local fireworks display, and I didn't feel like grilling in the heat.  So, sundaes it was!

Over the last couple of weeks I have re-discovered the blueberry.  Normally I've never really liked them.  They've always reminded me of fruity body lotion, or shampoo.   But lately they taste really good!  I mean REALLY good.   I'm going to pop some in the freezer before I go to bed tonight, then take them out in the morning, dip them in vanilla Greek yogurt (if the berries are frozen before hand, it helps the yogurt adhere better - think tongue sticking to frozen pole idea!) and then refreeze them for a tasty treat!    I've done this with strawberries and bananas and they're great!  

The blueberries on my sundae tonight were really plump and super sweet.    I don't know, but perhaps my beloved strawberries might have a little competition! One thing's for certain, I do love my berries!   I'd probably make a pretty good bear.  Well, except for that part about hating fish.   That's something I'm going to have to work on . . . the trouble is, I have no clue how to prepare fish and most of the time, outside of heavily beer-battered cod or haddock, I can't stand the stuff. 

Have any good fish recipes (especially for the grill) that you think might convert me from a fish hater to a fish...well "lover" is being a bit too enthusiastic, but perhaps a fish-tolerator? 

Hope you've all had a great 4th of July!