Fat Chat

The Real Reason I've Lost More Weight

2011-02-01T09:35:00.011-06:00

I have been feeling pretty proud of myself for losing 51 pounds and keeping it off for more than two years. As many of you know, what finally led to success after so much failure was that I I used the BodyBugg like the contestants on The Biggest Loser do. It worked!

Recently, despite no attempts on my part to do so at all, I lost five pounds in a week, taking me suddenly down to 157. Oh-oh, I thought, because in addition to the weight loss, I was feeling increasingly lousy. But would I go to the doctor, despite my sister's urging? And she's an RN, so she knows whereof she speaks. Oh, heck no. Dr. Fat Cat was in, and busily misdiagnosing herself, but mostly just busy ignoring the obvious.

Then on New Year's Day, a bit of divine intervention. I was carrying a tray of food up the stairs at the entrance to a friend's house when I just fell backwards down the stairs. I fractured my collarbone, the first fracture of my life and essentially a minor one. Here I am a month later, and I am fine.

But here's where the miracle comes in. They had to call 9-1-1 because I was obviously injured, and had hit my head, but not hard enough to knock any sense into me. When the EMT shone a penlight into my eyes as part of my neurological assessment, he looked very concerned and gave the penlight to his partner, who looked into my eyes and also looked very concerned. But neither said anything as they were trying to deal with my immediate problem, the fracture.

In the ambulance, I asked the EMT riding with me what they had seen in my eyes, and she just told me something was wrong and to get to an eye doctor right away. Right away didn't turn out to be possible as I was confined to my house for two weeks, but I went on January 17th. After a very extensive two hour exam, the doctor told me the structures in my eyes were fine, but he suspected I had something he called TED, or thyroid eye disease. He wrote down the names of three tests, and sent me to my primary care doctor.

Sure enough, the tests proved I have Graves' Disease, an autoimmune disorder that makes your body make way too much thyroid. Left unchecked, Graves can eventually cause blindness, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, permanent hand tremors, all sorts of nasty things. I had the tremors; I had the racing heart; I had increasingly severe eye problems, and I was blithely ignoring it all until, and believe me, this is how I feel and will always feel about my accident, God told my guardian angel to gently toss me down the stairs, only allowing me to suffer just enough of an injury to require an ambulance. Why do I feel this way? Because the doctor told me that anyone falling backwards down seven stairs should be dead, or at the very least, seriously and perhaps permanently injured. I am not only not dead, but I have been given a new lease on life. Everyday, as the medications work a little better to bring down my thyroid levels, I feel a little better.

My challenge now is that I understand I was maintaining my weight not through any great discipline on my part, because I have very little left of the determination that carried me through the original weight loss. I was taking my weight stability as a given even though I had started stuffing junk back in my face.

Now, without the help of those way too high and wildly dangerous thyroid levels, I am truly going to have to watch my weight, like a real, dedicated, knowledgeable person, not like someone who just thought she got lucky with the weight loss wheel of fortune. Now comes the real trial of my nature and I welcome it, because ever since God cared enough about me to throw me down those stairs to get me to pay attention to my health, I am feeling more blessed than ever, and along with that comes a touch of invincibility. Yeah, I know. I've got to work on that invincibility thing.

Now orbiting more slowly,

Planet Fat Cat

They Don't Call it the "Alli Ooops" for Nothing!

2010-09-14T02:01:00.002-05:00

So a few weeks ago I posted that I had intended to begin blogging again about my weight issues (and this time, I MEAN it!)... and then promptly disappeared. Not to be rude, but shame on you, the public, for thinking I meant it when I said I meant it. Really, as with most things, it's your fault, and it's about time y'all start taking responsibility for your actions.

Now that you've apologized, we can get on with setting a baseline.

I am currently a very svelte and muscular 220.5 pounds and change (we can believe in). And when I say "svelte", I mean "rotund". "Muscular" is also a very liberal definition unless it has recently come to mean "weaker than a new-born faun". But naturally age and some modest (for a hibernating grizzly) weight gain hasn't detracted from my overwhelming natural charm.

If by "charm" you mean "light nervous sweat odor".

But why get caught up in definitions? Is this a wiki? No, this blog is a place to find out what works and what doesn't in weight loss.

Sadly, I only know about the "what doesn't".

Oh well. That still has some value, especially when I tell you NEVER TO EVER TAKE ALLI PILLS EVER IN YOUR LIFE.

I could say why, but my mother told me not to talk about diet pills that make you mildly incontinent... in public... at work... TWICE.

You have been warned.

Pigassus? Calling Pigassus!

2010-08-16T21:30:00.003-05:00

Yes, I am rubbing your nose in it, but only to get you fired up. I've already lost five of the 10 pounds I gained. Nanner, nanner, whatever in the !#!$?#!! that means.

I wish I could say I have been saintly and stopped drinking Coca-Cola, but then I would be lying. I never lie on purpose; only accidentally, to make things more wonderful or more terrible than they really are, but you already know this about me. Anyway, come on, Pigassus! Get back on the bandwagon, but do it carefully. I wouldn't want it tilting precipitously over to your side, you know.

Snigger.

Planet Fat Cat
Now back in orbit

I'm Back, Too...Kinda Sorta

2010-08-14T00:56:00.004-05:00

My favorite commenter read the post of Pigassus...(hmm, The Post of Pigassus...that sounds like a book title) and wrote to inquire about my current weight. Until two months ago, I had been maintaining right at 162 pounds and a size 12, then I injured my shoulder. I didn't realize how much the injury had impacted my activity level until I stepped on a scale this week and saw that it read 172 pounds.

No panic. I am still a size 12 and 10 pounds is not an insurmountable obstacle. I started watching what I was eating a bit more closely, stepped up my activity level a bit, and I am already down to 171, so I will do the work and get it done. Who knows? This time around I may even get below 160. That was one goal I never did reach. I was pretty happy once I was able to zip up a size 12 pair of jeans with no struggles, and I found myself content with where I was.

Not any more. I can't let this 10 pound gain turn into a 20 or 30 pound gain, because then all my hard work to lose the weight to begin with would be for naught, so FatCat is back, too!

The Pig Is (fat) Back!

2010-08-10T22:59:00.002-05:00

It has been two years since I have posted. But now, with the grace of God and more than a couple of Alli tablets, I have returned. And though I am nearly incontinent, both literally and verbally, I intend to restart the blogging and get on, at last, with the weight loss ... again, one more time - for real though - and I mean it.

You have been warned.

162 It Is

2010-03-04T16:31:00.002-06:00

A commenter asked me to talk about where I am now in my weight loss journey. I never did lose that last 17 pounds, but I haven't gained any weight back, either. I live, eat and exercise in a relaxed way, not counting calories or worrying about if I skip a day working out. It seems I did totally change my body chemistry to the point where 162-165 is now my new normal weight. That makes me a size 12, and I did go buy new clothes once I realized the last 17 pounds were not coming off in any reasonable or rational way like the first 44 pounds did. I am content.

So Earl, thank you for asking. I am doing well and maintaining, even though I never did hit the original goal weight. I think one of the things that stopped me and settled me down at 162 was that I'd lost so much weight that people were starting to ask me if I'd been ill.

Just the opposite. I am well and truly intend to stay that way!

Fat Cat
Now in a smaller orbit

I am Now a Size 12

2009-07-31T23:32:00.006-05:00

Shortest post in history. Just 17 more pounds to my goal weight and a size 10. (I started at size 18! Ugh!)

I am so proud of what I have accomplished. Still not quite sure how I did it, but it felt really good slipping into those size 12 jeans last week and having them feel loose and zipping the zipper right up with no trouble whatsoever. They looked hot!

The weight is coming off more slowly now, but it is still coming off, and that's the important thing.

Notes From the "Ouch! Ouch! Damn, That Hurts!" Department

2009-07-02T02:27:00.025-05:00

I opined a while back that even once I reached my goal weight, men would continue to ignore me. I was wrong.

A living, breathing, good-looking guy with all his limbs and most of his teeth took notice of me last week. I liked what I saw, and it seemed he liked what he saw. We went to dinner, and I liked what I heard. He had a great sense of humor, and apparently, we were raised in parallel universes, with similar family histories. We enjoyed the same movies, we both like gardening, and we each had an interest in organic food. As we talked, I was stunned to feel that little frisson of energy toward him that I haven't felt in more than 20 years. I was actually attracted to this guy, and I was hoping he felt the same way about me.

At that moment, if I'd had a Magic 8 Ball in my purse, I believe it would have said, "All signs point to Go."

We went out to dinner and closed down the restaurant; they had to flick the lights on and off to get us out of there. The conversation was lively and never one-sided, and he leaned slightly forward across the table as he spoke...good body language, I thought. We made another date for three days hence.

Then he drove me home. We sat in his car for a couple of minutes and he asked me about my children. I proudly gave him a brief bio of each. Then he asked me how old they were. I told him, 24 and 27. His eyebrows shot up.

"Then how old are you?" he asked in alarm.

"60," I said truthfully, because I see no reason to be dishonest about my age.

He face turned into a mask of horror, I mean, genuine horror. Obviously without thinking, he plastered himself up against the driver side door, as if he'd suddenly discovered there was a rattlesnake in his car. He wanted to get as far away from me as he could without being patently rude. I felt like any second he was going to whip out the garlic and a sterling crucifix to protect himself from what he seemed to regard as a creepy and terrifying specimen of the UnDead.

"Why don't you look your age?" he seemed to be asking me telepathically and accusingly, as if I had led him into something by winsome subterfuge. I got the feeling he thought I slept in a coffin to protect my delicate white skin, and also because I might melt if exposed to sunlight.

The silence was deafening. He appeared to be going into catatonic shock, so I figured I'd better say something fast.

"How old did you think I was?"

"My age," he said. "45."

Only 45. Wow. Flattering in a way; it let me know I'm looking pretty good for my age, but the look on his face squashed any pleasure I might have felt over the compliment.

No wonder the poor guy was terrified. He had accidentally gone out with someone old enough to be his mother, and worse yet, he'd been attracted to me. Eeew! I'm pretty sure that's what he was thinking. And as for what he was feeling, he looked slightly green about the gills, as if he might throw up at any moment. I felt awful. I felt bad for him, and even worse for myself.

"Oh, my God! I'm a cougar!" I thought. It was my turn to be horrified.

I'd been sitting in his car in perfect ease, feeling like I belonged there, and he'd just let me know in no uncertain terms that I didn't. I am a 60-year-old woman who, through no artifice at all but just good Polish field hand genes, looks far younger than my age. The 43 lost pounds don't hurt my looks one bit, either. But, newly attractive and self-confident or not, the two traits I think attracted him to me in the first place, now that he knew my age, he was plain terrified of me.

Just like that, with the simple utterance of a number, he was repulsed, frightened, and in a damned big hurry to get me out of the car. I don't know what scared him the most; the fact that I was 60, or that he'd been attracted to a 60-year-old-woman. Probably a little of both.

To his credit, he kept the second date, and was charming throughout the evening, telling me he really liked me and thought we would be great friends.

Yeah, friends. Only I haven't heard a peep from my new "friend" in a week, and my money is on I'll never hear from him or see him again as long as I live.

The sad thing is, if I had been his age, 45, and he had been 60, there would have been no problem. I would have acted on my attraction to him, and suffered no scorn from society, nor would he. But for a 45-year-old man to date a 60-year-old woman? He would have been shredded by his family and friends, excoriated. And to be honest, when I found out he was 15 years my junior, I felt a little creepy, too, as if I had robbed a cradle or gone out with one of my son's friends. It just didn't feel right. I certainly don't blame him for his reaction; it was predictable and completely normal, but it still made me feel sad.

Here's the good news. I've been buried inside my excess weight for two decades. The weight and the lack of confidence are mostly gone, and that's good news. When I was heavy, I was afraid to let myself feel attracted to a man because I thought rejection was inevitable. I'm not afraid any more.

So maybe this man wasn't right, but upon reflection, the whole incident feels more positive than negative. For one thing, I got to meet a great guy and go out with him twice, and both dates were really enjoyable. For another thing, it reminded me what it feels like to be a woman, and how nice it is to be in the company of a man I like and feel that nice little play of energy zinging back and forth across a table.

So, the next time I meet a nice man, (and I now feel confident there will be a next time...) I pray he will be close to my age. I've talked myself through, psychologically speaking, the feelings of hurt and rejection I felt last week. But if something like that ever happened again, I'm not sure I could avoid internalizing those negative messages...You're too old. Your age repulses me, therefore, you repulse me.

Still, if I could shed years in the same way I've shed pounds, I'm not sure I would do it. I don't mind being 60; in fact, I like it. And if the rest of the world automatically labels and marginalizes me because of my age, you know what?

That's their loss.

Bouncing Around 165

2009-06-16T00:15:00.003-05:00

As I continue on my weight loss journey, I've noticed I keep hitting certain sticking points. I had one at 195 pounds, another around 188 pounds, then 175, and now 165. If I have to keep bouncing around one weight, I'd much rather it be 165 pounds and not the 208 where I started.

What I really want is to start bouncing around 145 pounds. When I hit that goal (and hit it I will) I'll be back in my size 10s and looking swanky. It's probably just as well that I've been overweight these past 20 years, because I'm dangerous when I feel swanky, and I had kids to raise.

The kids are both grown now, so there's nothing holding me back except that last 20 pounds. Once I hit that mark, I'm going out and buying a new wardrobe, and ALL the fat clothes will go to Good Will.

Then, look out world!

Fat Cat

20 Pounds To Go

2009-06-10T10:59:00.008-05:00

A long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, when I was sitting on top of 68 excess pounds and feeling lousy about myself, I didn't think I could change. I didn't believe there was anyway I would ever be able to lose weight. I'd tried every diet, plus faithful and religious cardiovascular exercise and strength training and got...nothing. While the muscles underneath my fat became quite shapely, the blobs of avoirdupois heaped atop those muscles wouldn't budge. Worse yet, the fat hid any attempt I made at rearranging my shape.

I don't know what happened except to say that I gave up. I stopped walking on my treadmill, stopped lifting weights, thinking, "If I'm going to be fat for the rest of my life, at least I won't have to be sore and worn out." And paradoxically, that's when I started losing weight. I also bought the BodyBugg used on The Biggest Loser and had great success with it for two months; then I developed a hideous burn underneath the sensor they told me was an allergic reaction to the metal, and said I couldn't ever wear it again.

I'd lost only eight pounds with Bodybugg when this happened, one pound a week for eight weeks. But during that eight weeks, something happened inside my head. I began to know instinctively what an 1800 calorie day should be, and what a 2300 calories burned day felt like. I knew when I hadn't been active enough, or when I'd overeaten by the way I felt. I just went with those feelings and here I am, 43 pounds lighter with no BodyBugg to guide me, and just 20 pounds to go to reach my goal weight. At the moment I am 165 pounds, less than I have weighed in almost 20 years.

I feel great, people keep giving me compliments about how I look, and all those muscles I developed lifting weights now actually show. I am wearing terrific, classic, timeless clothes from the back of my closet that I haven't been able to button or zip in more than 2 decades. And yes, I'll buy myself some new clothes...when I reach my goal weight.

So, even if you haven't been successful at losing weight, don't give up. I kept floundering around until I found something that worked for me. Even though I was only able to use the BodyBugg for eight weeks before developing a metal allergy, that was time enough to me to get the message, to take into my head and my heart what I needed to do to reach my goals. It wasn't about self-deprivation or giving up my favorite foods. It was about portion control, eating every 3 hours or so and starting to exercise again.

I was a size 18 when I started; I'm a size 12 now. Next stop: size 10!

Planet Fat Cat
Now moving in a smaller orbit

Ignoring Your Audience

2009-05-26T23:11:00.010-05:00

They say there's someone for everyone, but I've rarely beheld an entertainment match as near perfect as Bravo TV and Project Runway. That was of course, until those peckish Weinstein brothers broke it up.

Following a truly nasty legal battle, the courts decided the Weinsteins didn't have to honor their contract with Bravo, and allowed them to take Project Runway to Lifetime.

What? How will the 5-hankie network and Project Runway ever work together? And how will I ever conquer the mortal fear and loathing that overcomes me every time my channel clicker accidentally lands on Lifetime? The answer is: I probably won't. Because the kind of people who watch Bravo are not the same kind of people who watch Lifetime.

I'm not making any kind of judgment call here. I'm not saying that people who watch Bravo are intrinsically cooler, smarter, hipper, etc. than the people who watch Lifetime. I'm just saying I don't think most of them will make the switch. I think a lot of people are going to forget about Project Runway, because it won't be in its accustomed spot. I'm saying a lot of people will not bother to turn on Lifetime just so they can follow Project Runway. I know I won't.

I am not judging a book by its cover. I've watched Lifetime programming on occasion. When I first got cable, I tried several of their programs. But I couldn't stay with any of them. The weeping, helpless damsels in distress, who always rely on a strapping hunk of man for rescue just got to be too much. The hokey dialogue, the circumstances contrived to throw the damsel in harm's way and have the hunk standing by; the damsel's tearful refusal to give in to his charms until his boiling sexuality just mows her down...oh, please.

Even the commercials I saw on Lifetime were offensive. One that was burned into my memory was an ad for Playtex bras designed for women with "healthy" figures. The models all squeezed their enormous breasts together as they said this, leading me to believe that whoever produced the commercial must have thought that anything smaller than a 44DD was somehow..."unhealthy."

Deeply offensive. And I'm not carping because I'm flat-chested, either. I'm in the middle when it comes to breast size, and I am perfectly content with what nature gave me, even if some obnoxious bra company thinks it "unhealthy." Okay, so they didn't come right out and say that normal-sized breasts were unhealthy, but they certainly implied it.

And now, this bastion of healthy bosoms and snot rags is going to be home to Project Runway?

I don't think so. I predict this match will last but a year. Once the Weinsteins see how execrable their ratings are, compared to what they were on Bravo, maybe they'll rethink their money-grubbing strategy and head back to Bravo. That's where Project Runway belongs.

Another Update

2009-04-30T10:11:00.002-05:00

I'm still having trouble believing this is all happening, but I have continued to lose weight. I now have lost 40 pounds, and have just 25 more to reach my goal.

My primary reason for posting today is in support of my favorite television show, "Chuck." It's one of the few family friendly shows on TV, and it's got a little bit of everything...humor, romance, suspense, action. I just signed a petition asking NBC to renew it for a third season. It hasn't been cancelled, but it hasn't been renewed, either.

They have it stuck in a terrible time slot, Mondays at 7 p.m. when The Big Bang Theory comes on, and now Fox has moved House to that slot as well. I wish NBC would move the show to Wednesdays at 7 p.m. CST, where it would have a chance to grow, thrive and find a bigger audience.

Anyway, that's my two cent's worth for today! See the petition to the right of this blog, and if you feel so inclined, please sign it.

Fat Cat
(no longer a separate planet unto herself; more like a minor star)

Time for an Update

2009-03-01T00:32:00.006-06:00

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. Someone posted an interesting comment on one of my entries yesterday, and it got me to thinking...I should probably write something about my progress, because I'm more than halfway to my weight loss goal and fitting into clothes I haven't been able to wear in years.

I can't exactly explain how I did it because I've changed so many things. I got serious about exercising, switched to an almost totally organic diet, started juicing and de-toxing and bought the gadget the contestants on The Biggest Loser use, the BodyBugg. I'm more aware than ever of what I put in my mouth, not just calorie-wise, but quality-wise. I'm also more aware of my activity level during the course of the day. When I check my Bodybugg, if my calorie burn isn't where I want it to be for that day, I shut down my computer and get my humpty up on the treadmill. I've lost 33 pounds (31 more to go) and 15 inches, most of it in the right places.

I also took the energy I was spending whining on this blog and applied it to myself in a positive way. Positive energy=positive results.

I know that getting to my weight loss goal is within reach. I'm losing about a pound a week, so in just under eight months, I will be back to my normal weight, and I will be wearing a size 10 again.

Then I'm going shopping!

Planet Fat Cat
In a smaller orbit now

The Leper's Colony

2008-11-27T11:31:00.005-06:00

Earlier today, I opined that even when I finally reach my weight loss goal, and I finally believe that might actually be possible, men will still ignore me simply because I am not 20 years old.

Hmmmph! Don't men ever stop to think what they might be missing by not getting to know older women? We're experienced, wise, kinder and less judgmental than we were in our first bloom, and more accepting of human failings in others because we're more aware of our own. But unlike other cultures where the wisdom of age is respected and relied upon, here in America, growing older is treated like a hideous disease. At least for women it is.

You know the old, true, but unfair saying, "Men grow distinguished while women grow haggard?"

Yeah, that one.

Haggard is terrifying to most of us. Here's an example. I am finally, at the tender age of 59, beginning to show a little age on my face. Just within the last week, as I've continued to lose weight, my face is collapsing ever so slightly as the underlying collagen infrastructure softens and settles. I was at the dermatologist having a mole checked and he looked at my face with concern. Then he softly touched the two gentle valleys that were forming on either side of my mouth.

"Don't you want me to fill those in?" he asked.

"No, I don't," I replied. "They're MY wrinkles, I've earned them and I'm proud of them."

He sent me away with a puzzled look, shaking his head as if considering whether he should have written me a referral to a psychiatrist. I mean, what woman wouldn't want to look younger?

This woman. I mean, think about it logically. If I look way younger than my age and I have lost all my weight, I might attract a much younger man. What could be wrong with that? Well, I've already raised my children. If there's going to be a man in my life at all, which at this late date I doubt, I want one who is my contemporary, who can laugh about the 60s and the 70s because he lived through them as a teen and young man, and not just because he read about them in a history book.

Alas, most of the available men my age, upon finding themselves single either through the death of their spouse or by divorce, immediately turn to the androgenous, anorexic "he-women," who weigh 95 pounds and 80 of those pounds are in their fake boobs. Most of the rest of the weight is taken up with hair extensions and gel nails. I mean really, you might as well sleep with a blow-up doll, but what from I read, many of you do anyway.

Geesh again.

This disrespect of and disaffection toward older women is not a problem I am going to solve all by myself. There are occasions, rare but undeniable, when I miss the comfort and warmth of an intimate relationship. But why risk it when I know all that awaits any forays in that direction is scorn and rejection? I can live without that.

Instead, like other older women, I am dismissed instantly and consigned to The Leper's Colony. It's where they send all women over the age of 30, all less than perfect or bothersome women, the place they'd prefer not to think about in case Fate ever sends them there.

On the whole, I am content with my life. I have two wonderful grown children, both a daughter and a son, a loving family of two sisters and a brother, supportive friends and work that I love. What more could I ask?

Oh, except for maybe...a day pass out of The Leper's Colony. That would be nice.

But by the Twelfth Day...

2008-11-27T11:16:00.008-06:00

I had lost another pound! Gee, this one only took 12 days, just like i was waiting for Christmas...only not.

So I am down to 195 pounds, still enough to make grown men cry, which contrary to popular opinion, they do a lot anyway, if the exit interviews on this and several other seasons of Top Chef are any indication. But come to think of it, on Top Chef it's probably just the onions.

I am hoping that by the time I am down to 185 or 190, they'll stop doing that. It's very unattractive, not to mention disheartening, when a man sees you, bursts into tears, then turns and runs away, all while screaming for his mommy. Even more disheartening is when they look at you in abject terror, as if you were considering them for the appetizer course, or perhaps even the entreé.

Geesh!

Still, 195 pounds! That's 12 pounds down from a year ago, 12 miles up on my sense of self-confidence and 12 rocket-boosts of determination to keep going. 12 pounds really seems like something. The five pounds, not so much, but when this five pounds becomes 11 pounds and I finally fall below 190 pounds for the first time in many, many years, that will also mark a day of celebration. But just a day. I'll still have 44 pounds to go to reach my goal weight at which point grown men will stop, consider me thoughtfully and think to themselves, "Hmm, that woman has a pretty nice shape for an old broad," and then burst into tears and still run to their mommies because even though I will no longer be fat, I will still be OLD.

And that's a topic for another column.

A 195 pound...
Fat Cat

P. S. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

And on the sixth day...

2008-11-19T20:54:00.003-06:00

I still haven't lost any more weight, even though the green tea guzzling continues apace. I think my body was so shocked that I tricked it into losing four pounds with green tea that my fat cells have dug in and gone into hiding for a long fight.

But I have to say, if I had my choice of hanging around the 200 pound mark, versus hanging around the 196 pound mark, I'll take the latter any day. I was so-o-o close to 195 today, 196.2 pounds, but I just didn't quite make it. Naturally, to console myself, I went off my diet, so tomorrow I'll probably be at 197 or 198. But I'll get myself back in hand soon.

One other interesting thing, my fancy scale that does everything but brush its own little teeth indicates I lost some body fat with the four pounds, so it wasn't just a fluid loss. And, my face is looking thinner. I didn't notice it, but three different friends on three different days have commented on it so it must be so.

Anyway, Top Chef is on, so I have to go torture myself for an hour by looking at fabulous food when I have already far exceeded my calorie count for the day.

Maybe I'll be back to 200 pounds tomorrow.

Ugh. I hope not!

Ups and Downs

2008-11-18T07:52:00.016-06:00

I can resist tempting foods, but I admit I am helpless in the face of certain magazines when I am standing in line at the grocery store. You know the ones: Woman's World and First for Women. Their covers always include a photograph of a fetchingly shaped woman, a woman whose body looks like I want MY body to look, and it is accompanied by a headline that reads thusly; "LOSE 50 POUNDS IN 3 DAYS WITH MAGIC EYE-BLINKING TRICK!"

Even though I know what I'm in for, even though I know there will be more "trick" than "magic," and certainly more "trick" than "weight loss," my hand reaches automatically for the guilty issues, and they are plopped into my basket at the last minute, whilst I chastise myself furiously for wasting money this way. And yet, and yet, they remain in the buggy, then find their way onto the conveyor belt, and before I can squeek out, "Er-um..." I've bought them.

Then I bring them home and morosely thumb through the short romance and the mystery in Woman's World, and the recipes in First for Women, all while trying to tell myself I DIDN'T buy them merely to read about their latest outrageous weight loss claims, when in fact, I did.

The articles always feature women who have been miserably fat their entire adult lives, but BF or "before fat," they were miraculously pretty, happy and successful. Every American woman knows how being less than svelte, less than perfect body-wise, can ruin your whole life, right? And if you don't, may I refer you to Woman's World and First for Women so you can get up to speed? Because they will let you know how truly awful you really are at your current weight, straight from the mouths of formerly overweight women who swallowed the magic beans thus prescribed and somehow, the beans worked for them, even though they never seem to work for me. But there they are on the cover of a magazine, and here I am, huddled behind my computer, writing this piteous bleat.

The weight loss and exercise articles usually consist of an excerpt from the New York Times best-selling "fad diet du jour" book. I confess I have on several occasions read the articles carefully, and then set out to do just what they suggest, which usually involves an investment of several hundred dollars in special food, vitamins, herbs, and equipment, not to mention the suggested book, plus I also buy additional life insurance in case I accidentally kill myself while trying to follow the diets and/or exercise routine.

I did one that consisted entirely of three days of watery protein shakes and fresh juice. The whole idea was that you were juicing or shaking every three hours or so, so you wouldn't be hungry. The payoff? A 10 pound loss in those three days.

Wrong.

By the end of three hours, much less three days, I was so hungry I might have cheerfully plopped my neighbor on the barbee if I had happened to see her in the yard. I was so hungry I was gnawing the legs of my dining room table for fiber and sustenance. I lasted one day and lost two pounds which came right back on the next day, plus one extra for good measure.

Now you may think that the "accidentally killing" myself part was somewhat of an overwrought reference, but sadly, it did almost happen. I, a strong woman who stands proudly on my sturdy, if somewhat overlarge "Pillars of Hercules," was reduced to a mewling kitten by one day of following some exercise routine posted in Woman's World. My doctor looked at the magazine and said any untested, out of shape ewe like myself who even tried to follow it would end up with a 100% chance of injury. And I did. I, whose back had never hurt for a day in my life, spent three days curled up in a fetal ball in my bed, howling in agony whenever I rose up from the haze of painkillers.

Fortunately the damage was not permanent.

So, you would think that I had learned, but no. I just bought a First for Women last week with a cover that reads: "Lose 47 pounds by Christmas!" I turned inside and found an article laden with claims but few facts. A thorough re-reading convinced me I could lose the weight by simply drinking 4 cups of green, black, white or oolong tea per day, sweetened with one ounce of orange juice per cup to increase its weight-reduction benefits. So I bit. I like tea, I like orange juice, so why not? At least it would be a relatively painless change.

And in four days I lost four pounds. I did. And they have stayed lost, even though I am still eating as per usual, and still half-heartedly exercising a few times a week. In other words, I didn't change a single thing except add the green tea, which I think must have flushed out some excess fluid from my body, and nothing more.

So, you do the math. I lost four pounds in four days, then nothing for the past five days, even though I'm still swilling tea like an intemperate barfly. That means I still have 43 pounds to go before Christmas. Today's the 18th of November, which means I have to lose more than a pound a day for the next 37 days. Which means...it ain't happening.

But I did lose those four pounds, and I am now finally below 200, those four pounds below, and I have to admit it is nice to see my weight fluctuate between 196 and 199 pounds during the course of the day, rather than between 200 and 203. It's just a psych thing, but it matters to me.

Back again

2008-11-13T10:43:00.005-06:00

Even though it's been a long time since I posted anything about my weight loss journey, I'm back again. I finally broke the 200 pound mark and now weigh 199 pounds. Since I started at around 207 pounds, that's an amazing weight loss of - "Ta-dah!" 8 pounds in 13 months. Yeah, I know. Hold your applause.

But at least, unlike previous years, I weigh less this year than last. So my walking must be doing something. Even if I can't really see any visible changes, it seems to have kept the usual 7 to 10 pound yearly automatic weight gain from accumulating. So, instead of weighing 214 to 217 pounds this year, I weigh 199 pounds. That's good.

That's how I got to be so overweight, was the yearly creeping up on me of a few pounds here, a few pounds there. At least this year, I lost weight instead of gaining it.

Since I'm a visual person, I like to use little reminders that serve to keep me on track with my goals. I now have 54 pounds to go to reach my goal weight of 145 pounds. I got a free ticker that shows my progress. I started a few weeks ago at 200 pounds and the slider shows the one pound I have lost since then.

Here it is:

I'm kind of mulling over a new approach to this blog, but have to talk to Pigassus first.

Anyway, that's all for now. Top Chef Season 5 premiered last night and I was disappointed that, on first look at least, I didn't find anyone to root for. The Biggest Loser is wrapping up its 6th season and it's been a doozy, with some of the nastiest contestants ever. The producers seriously need to take this show back to its original inspirational format and stop selecting contestants who are mentally unstable and who exhibit vicious personalities on air. It's embarrassing. The show has become such a conglomeration of product placement that it's ridiculous. Very little in the way of tips and nutritional information anymore.

Until next time! Hope that will be in a few days or weeks instead of months!

UPDATE! - I didn't realize the ticker was dynamic, meaning it would update on this blog as my weight drops and I change it on my weight loss management page, which is my private way of tracking my progress and encouraging myself to keep going. I made one small change this week; I started drinking 4 cups of green tea a day, each sweetened with one ounce of orange juice. I just read a study that said mixing one ounce of unsweetened natural citrus juice with each cup of green tea greatly enhances the tea's fat-burning properties by allowing the release and activation of more of the tea's catechins. So I have lost 4 pounds nows, not just one. I'm down to 196 pounds, the lowest I've been in years. I hope this keeps working, and that I'm not just dreaming, but so far, so good. The ticker will continue to change as I keep losing weight.

Day 2 - Switching It Around

2008-08-05T12:43:00.009-05:00

Today is the fruit day. I am supposed to have one serving of something called "low energy density" fruit every two hours. According to the experts, that is fruit that contains the highest possible volume of water, fiber and enzymes. The lower the numeric value, the higher the energy density.

The acceptable fruits listed in the article were:

Fruit Energy Density

Strawberries .2
Raspberries .3
Watermelon .3
Grapefruit .3
Canteloupe .4
Honeydew .4
Papaya .4
Peaches .4
Tangerines .4
Oranges .6
Apricots .5
Pineapple .5
Plums .6
Blueberries .6
Apples .6

I was curious about how these values were derived, so I went surfing around the Internet to find out. I particularly wanted to know because I eat a banana every day to help my blood pressure. I was already missing my daily bowl of raisin bran with the sliced banana on top; I really didn't want to go three days without a banana. If the energy density of bananas fell within the acceptable values, I could see no reason not to include it in my diet.

After much searching, and I do mean MUCH, I finally found the answer I needed on a website called myfooddiary.com. Here's the formula:

Energy Density = calories per serving divided by the weight of the serving in grams.

I went looking for the calories contained in a banana and found:

http://caloriecount.about.com

This is an absolutely great site. It allows you to easily track your calorie intake meal by meal, snack by snack and day by day. Not only does it have calorie counts for just about every food and beverage you can think of, raw or packaged, home or restaurant-prepared, but it also allows you to enter caloric and nutritional values for foods you consume in your own diet.

For example, I favor this particular brand of organic popcorn that I couldn't find in the caloriecount site, so I entered it. Now, whenever I put a serving of this very healthy snack into a snack category, its correct nutritional and caloric values pop right into my daily food profile.

Anyway, I soon discovered bananas have an energy density of .6, the same as many other fruits on the acceptable list. So I made a banana my first meal of the day, and an apple my second. But just like yesterday, by the time lunch rolled around, I was so hungry that's all I could think about. The plan calls for me to have another serving of fruit for lunch. I knew I would be horribly uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon if I did that, so I decided to switch things up a bit and eat my dinner for lunch. Scientifically, this has actually been proven to be a much healthier way to eat. When you eat a larger meal later in the day, your digestive system doesn't have as much time to process the food as it would if you ate that same meal for lunch. Eating big meals in the evening can lead to a variety of digestive problems like acid reflux.

So, I ate my dinner at lunchtime. I also didn't eat a huge 6-cup salad like the plan called for. I ate a one cup serving of a very healthy casserole I prepared with onions, garlic, diced tomatoes, olive oil, grass-fed organic ground beef and brown rice.

I know, I know. All the things I'm not supposed to have on this diet plan...meat and carbs. But you know what? I feel satisfied and full. I will be able to get some work done this afternoon without the distraction of overwhelming hunger.

For the rest of the day, I'll do the fruit every two hours thing, then at dinner I'll eat a 2 cup salad, not 6 cups. I ended up throwing out about half the salad from last night because I simply couldn't eat that much food in one sitting. If there's one thing I hate more than being fat, it's wasting food. Now that I think of it, that's probably one of the reasons I am fat. In the past, when I thought something was going to waste, I ate it. Now, even though it hurts, if it can't be refrigerated for the next day, I just throw it out.

I know I have probably blown the whole thing. But I can't stick to a program that is making me feel physically weak and cranky. I did lose 2 pounds overnight, going from 204 down to 202, but I don't fool myself that it's a real or permanent weight loss.

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment.

Planet Fat Cat

The First Day of Many

2008-08-04T21:56:00.003-05:00

So, today was the big day. I started on a new diet plan. It's from the June 30th, 2008 issue of First Magazine. The cover headline reads, "Lose 10 Pounds in 3 Days," which is mild for these magazines. I've seen magazine covers that say, "Lose 50 Pounds in 3 Minutes Just By Blinking Your Eyes!!!" But when you open them up, you either can't find the article or you discover that in order to achieve the suggested results, you also have to have gastric bypass surgery. And that 3 minutes? Turns out it was a typo. They really meant three years, you know, to give the surgery time to work. Plus, you have to give up proteins, carbs and fats. But you can chew sugarless gum.

The actual article I'm following is called, "Summer Fruit Breakthrough." It's not really that much of a breakthrough; I've been reading variations on this juice fast theme for years now. The first day, today, I have been drinking an 8 ounce protein shake made with Jay Robb's whey protein, every two hours. Then at dinner I was supposed to have a salad made with 6 cups of raw vegetables and 6 ounces of lean protein (I used sliced turkey) with a dressing made from 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the juice of one lemon.

Here's how the day went. As time progressed, I got hungrier and hungrier. And I don't mean normal hunger. I mean, "Oh, my God! Why did I ever decide to be a contestant on Survivor? I've been on the island 7 days without a single bite of solid food!" hunger. It literally gnawed at me from the inside out. I've never been on a diet that did that to me, but then again, I've never been on a diet that was almost all liquid almost all day.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was ready to gnaw the legs off my coffee table. I made the salad and dressing but here's a weird thing. I could only eat half of it. When I thought about it logically, six cups is a LOT of food. I think it would have been smarter to eat a 3 cup salad at lunch and then another 3 cup salad at dinner. But I am nothing if not obedient, so I dutifully tried to chow down the whole thing. I only made it about halfway through, and then two hours later was ravenously hungry again. But by that time, the salad was dead. If there's one thing I WILL NOT eat, it's a dead salad.

Conclusion? Even though I have stuck to the plan, I don't like this diet. I have been obsessed with thoughts of food all day long, to the extent that I didn't get much work done.

Tomorrow the plan changes to eating fruit every two hours, followed by another of those giant salads, but with no protein in the salad, just another of those watery, totally unsatisfying protein shakes. So for two days I will have virtually no protein except for that one lone 8 ounce shake.

At the end of the three days, I'll report my results, then go back to eating my normal diet. I don't expect to lose ten pounds, but I would be happy with two to three.

Next Monday, I'm trying a different three-day plan. Come back them for the details.

Planet Fat Cat

Starting All Over Again...Again

2008-07-31T21:14:00.004-05:00

Oh, I am so tired of all this, but I have decided, yet again, that I really MUST get up off my tush and do something about my weight, or risk turning into a human blob. I don't want to be like that poor woman in Florida who was so fat she couldn't get up from the sofa, and after three years, she finally grew INTO the sofa and they had to send the whole damn fire department to cut her loose. And then she died anyway.

Okay, so I don't weigh 800 pounds, but I do weigh 204 pounds and I should only weigh 150 pounds. So I am carrying around an extra 54 pounds that makes everything about my life more difficult. My hips and knees and ankles hurt from lugging around all the excess flesh, and no matter how hard I try, I can't get used to the looks of revulsion on the faces of men I see out in public. I'm not hideous to look at, but apparently my fat is, and it terrifies men. Why fat women should be more terrifying to normal-sized men than fat men are to normal-sized women is a topic for another day. I guess I am the living embodiment of that old cliché..."oh, she's got a pretty face...if only she wasn''t SO FAT!!!"

I am tired of being SO FAT!!! So, probably inspired by watching too much of the Tour de France this month, I have decided to get juiced. No, I am not taking performance enhancing drugs...I am going to start juicy-juicing. I bought a juicer, and lots of fresh organic fruit and veggies, and I am going to "get juiced." Supposedly juicing flushes all the toxins out of your liver that keep you from losing weight. Doesn't sound any less plausible than any of the other diet plans I've read about, so I might as well give it a try.

I have also totally given up Coca-Cola again...hah! I claim this time it will stick, but all my so-called friends have bets on how long I will last.

Anyway, I am pleased to note that whereas I started my last effort at 206 pounds, this time I am starting from 204 pounds. So the last little vestiges of the few pitiful pounds I lost by exercising like a maniac last fall are still hanging on.

Anyway, this big event starts on Monday, so tune in then for my first update.

Planet Fat Cat

The State of Texas Finally Figures Out a Way to Get Rid of My Ass

2008-04-27T15:20:00.004-05:00

Longtime readers (I'm not going to do the easy joke here...) know that I have tried almost everything to budge the fat cells from my rear end, with little success to show for my efforts. Now, the Lone Star State has finally figured out a way to get rid of my ass for good.

As a freelance writer and reporter, I am always surfing the net looking for potential gigs. I have registered on many job sites, and posted my resume on many more. So Texas, in its wisdom, sent me a real doozy of a job last week...combat videographer in Iraq.

Boo-yah! There you go! Never mind that I'm a 59-year-old, overweight, out-of-shape woman, never mind that I have never operated a video camera in my life. My resume includes the word "reporter" and the job description included the phrase "battlefield reporter," so in the eyes of the computer, it was a match! Not necessarily one made in heaven, but a match nonetheless.

Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but I passed. I know, I know. The first surefire way to get rid of my ass in history and I lift my nose at it! I must really want to stay fat. That's all I can conclude. Or maybe I just really want to stay alive and NOT have my ass blown to kingdom come.

Okay, here's the real scoop: I think I would have had a hell of a time trying to operate a 40-pound video camera from beneath my burka.

Planet Fat Cat
Firmly planted in Southwestern North America

Oinks on the Passing Scene 2

2008-04-23T16:41:00.000-05:00

Since I am melancholy today because of the myriad problems that are facing my friends and relations, as opposed to the usual self pity, I am not experiencing the desire to write about losing weight and instead wish to revisit something I introduced months ago: Oinks on the Passing Scene.

In case no one remembers, “Oinks” are my poor imitation of economist Thomas Sowell’s “Thoughts on the Passing Scene”… with my own irreverent twists thrown in for effect. I hope he forgives me for aping his style; I pray I am not wrong in believing all these thoughts are at least original to me.

With that in mind:

1. The movie “Cloverfield” was better than I could have imagined only because it was obvious, if you could keep from hurling from the jitter camera work, that all the people involved actually put tremendous effort into making the movie look … real. Can any normal person even conceive of how much education, training, and artistic talent it must take to make it look like a 30 story alien actually destroyed New York?

2. The current crop of presidential candidates has me pining away for a return to an old feudal system: We would still all be filthy, starving surfs, but at least we wouldn’t have been responsible for ELECTING our own nasty, idealess, pandering, self-aggrandizing weaklings to leadership.

3. The Universe continues to remind me of the axiom that “you get what you pay for”: Although I have tried for weeks to ignore the tiny bits of bone I have found in my (now infamous) Jenny O’s Chicken Rings, today I nearly cracked a tooth on a fragment that must have been the chicken’s entire leg. It may be time to spend more than $1.99 on three pounds of frozen “chicken” product and pay more attention to what I’m putting in my mouth.

4. Two years ago I purchased a watch that was too large for my rather chubby wrist. Since then I have lost a substantial amount of weight and my jewelry now constantly annoys me by sliding down my arm whenever I look at it. But I refuse to get it adjusted because my twisted mind insists on believing that the loose watch will make me look thin to any observers… instead of like a dork who keeps checking his elbow to see what time it is.

5. Violent wind noise, leaking tops, higher insurance costs, negligible trunk space, and lower safety still can’t hamper a convertible’s ability to induce big smiles on a sunny day across an open road.

6. Yesterday while the world wrestled with mounting hunger, unrest, and political instability my buddies and I spent most of our intellectual talent on coming up with a new radio phonetic alphabet based on “porn words”. I mean Whiskey Tango Foxtrot dudes!

7. Men are pigs.

8. The rise of the middle class in modern Western society has done more to create equality between the sexes than any law ever passed.

9. Cutting edge computer operating systems and text editing software have become so damn “helpful” that it practically takes a learning annex course just to figure out how to turn them on and disable all those wonderfully “helpful” little extras that no one needs and few use.

10. My father was shocked to hear that young men today use as many hair care and hair styling products as young women do. What will I be shocked to hear about the younger generation when I am his age?

Pigassus

Silk Purse from a Sow's Ear

2008-04-17T05:00:00.002-05:00

Long time readers, both of you, will probably think that the title above refers to my efforts to make myself more appealing through the magic of diet and exercise. Forgetting a moment that I have never referred to the FEMA disaster area that is my body as a "sow's ear", I am slightly offended that anyone would assume my ideal body would in any way inspire visions of a silk purse. Jackhammer maybe, soft hand bag, no.

But as they say, no accounting for taste.

Which is my incredibly smooth segue into the real point of today's screed: I have become a wizard at turning ordinary and inoffensive foods into somewhat tasty abominations. Now either I am like a medieval alchemist or Dr. Frankenstein, but either way I have found a gift and it's not for metaphor.

I thought of this talent today because I had just finished my take on ... some classic dish that involved chicken and broccoli and honey mustard. I am so not trained as a chef that I don't even know what it is that my trailer-park creations are mimicking. But I assume there is a Bennigan's restaurant out there somewhere that serves a breaded chicken breast stuffed with broccoli florets, covered with melted Swiss cheese and served with a warm honey mustard sauce. But since I don't have time for all that, I used Jenny O's Chicken Rings microwaved to perfection with frozen broccoli cuts and slices of mozzarella cheese melted on top. The honey mustard I believe came from Ken's Steak House brand and was not great, so I went ahead and added some spicy brown mustard.

You see, it's the little touches like those that really make it special.

The problem is that I know, no, I HAVE created the real dishes in my kitchen at one time or another. I have sauteed fresh vegetables and stuffed them into succulent chicken breast which I then baked in a flavorful homemade sauce. I have fussed over exact flavor combinations for meats and breads and rices and sauces until I almost couldn't taste anymore and then served these masterpieces to friends and family and smiled when they gobbled down the results in seconds... and then asked for thirds.

But now it is just me, and the desire to create gourmet food has ended. Expediency is the new salt; inexpensive is the new garlic; inoffensive is the new lemon.

Just remember that if I ever invite you over to my house for "veal scallopini over linguine", I probably really mean "Tyson Chicken Nuggets with warm Newman's Own Italian Dressing".

You have been warned.

Pigassus

My Dear Pigassus...

2008-04-14T08:56:00.007-05:00

As always you manage to both entertain and amuse me. I love your writing. Guess that's why we're doing a blog together!

I started to make a comment on your latest post and when it exceeded the maximum allowable characters, I realized I needed to dash off a quick blog entry to make one important observation vis à vis your view of palm oil. Repeat after me: Palm oil is GOOD! Palm oil is GOOD!

My dear friend, the question you pose, "What Next?" is a question I struggle with every day, the food version of the man stranded alone in a boat in the middle of the vast ocean who says to himself right before he dies of thirst, "Water! Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!"

That's how I feel when I go into a grocery store or restaurant. Food! Food everywhere, but almost nothing fit to eat. I am so hungry all the time but can only rarely find anything in a grocery that piques my interest or desire.

So back to the palm oil thing. You have succumbed to our government's oft published false statements about the dangerous nature of palm oil. It was all part of a campaign of dissinformation disseminated by the government when it was pushing liquid oils after World War II. Their mantra was, "Solid oil=BAD; liquid oil=GOOD!"

We now know this is simplistic and wrong. Hydrogenated solid oils are BAD; they are solid at room temperature only through chemistry, the addition of a hydrogen molecule to the oil lowers the temperature required to make the oil solid. Trouble is, these artifically solid oils don't easily melt and liquify at body termperature, so they fill your digestive system and your arteries with artificially hard particles that do real damage, causing injury like nicks in the walls of blood vessels as they careen through your body. The body's response to these injuries is to rush to repair them. The bandaid it uses to patch over these nicks is cholesterol, so eating hydrogenated oil starts the process of artery clogging that eventually results in heart attacks and bypass surgery.

As for liquid oils, read my previous post, "My Own Private Raisin Bran," and you'll see that not all liquid oils are safe or healthy either. Olive oil, yes, because the cold pressed variety is natural and doesn't contain any added chemicals or solvents. If you buy the "lite" olive oil however, look out, because that stuff is adulterated with chemicals to make it "lite."

Your body understands how to handle oils that are naturally solid at room temperature. Room temperature is usually 25 to 30 degrees lower than your body temperature, so solid oils melt and liquify when you ingest them. Even though they are solid on your kitchen shelf, they are liquid and soft after you eat them. Does this mean you can eat palm oil in huge quantities? No, but don't believe it is unhealthy. It is loaded with antioxidants and tocopherals that are natural preservatives; therefore it does not easily go rancid like some chemically extracted vegetable oils. Rancid oils are bad because ingesting them causes enormous free radical damage to the cells of your body, damage that accelerates aging and disease processes.

On the down side, the growing demand for palm oil in the United States is leading to the massive clearing of natural habitats in Malaysia and Indonesia to make room for more palm plantations. This is of particular concern in Indonesia where the clearing threatens both the Orangutan and the Sumatran tiger.

Like anything in life, there are trade-offs, but my one inviolate rule is, I NEVER put anything in my mouth that came from Dr. Frankenfood's chem lab.

Eh, so what's for lunch?

Planet Fat Cat

What Next?

2008-04-13T04:54:00.002-05:00

On the journey of self-discovery, one crosses many uncomfortable truths: I will never be a rock star, my hair follicles don’t find my temples as hospitable a place to live as they once did, and although I posses a fertile mind, I generally react more creatively than I create. Thus I am easily inspired, but not usually from within. Am I a “brilliant mimic” as Drew Barrymore describes her character in the underrated romantic comedy “Music and Lyrics”? No, forgiving the call and answer, I would suggest I am more like a really clever earthworm: stimulus and response on a much higher plateau.

Great. And if I ever decide to crawl around naked, digesting soil for the benefit of America’s beleaguered family farmers, perhaps society can find a use for me. But oh how I have digressed.

The reason for this recent examination comes from a reaction to another writer’s work. This evening I read Fat Cat’s latest post “My Own Private Raisin Brand” and it prompted me, as usual, to write a column. How I wish the idea had come to me “organically”, but alas it did not. No, if credit is due, Fat Cat gets a prize; if blame should be necessary, Fat Cat done it!

You see, what on Earth am I supposed to eat now?

I LOVE raisin brand. In fact, I love high fructose corn sweetener. Just a few weeks ago I actually bought a bottle of Caro Syrup. I did so despite the fact that I KNEW it was essentially bottled demon’s bile. Not surprisingly, the whole section of sweeteners was behind glass and I was forced to call the manager to come open the display. The mandatory counseling session that preceded my purchase seemed like overkill, but what was a ten minute lecture on the near-radioactive nature of the syrup compared to its delicious and Heavenly flavor?

Yet despite my desire for tasty yummies, all the warnings about my imminent death from carbs finally got to me: I threw out the Caro last week in a fit of pique and dread for my health (I could actually hear a Celestial Chorus sing out as I did so). I also threw out my ketchup, my cereal, my tiny little bag of white sugar (near to spoiling for age), my strawberry jam, and my half-used bottle of chocolate ice-cream topping (never once poured on actual ice-cream). All of them had some type of vile sweetener in them or a palm oil or worse. Heck, the ketchup was probably made from tobacco! Though mostly unused in my kitchen, and only very sparingly at that, they HAD TO GO. Like lead paints of old, these foods could kill me and I wouldn’t even know it.

But after the rapture of my liberation from the Evil Additives, I felt vacant and, well, hungry. What was I supposed to eat? Carbs are bad, saturated fat is bad, low fiber is bad (as so is too high a fiber I hear), palm oil is bad, preservatives are bad, packaged foods are bad, fried foods are bad, bleached food is bad, meat is bad, mercury-laced fish is bad, unwashed organic vegetables are bad, tap water is bad, IT’S ALL BAD.

What next, they find crack cocaine and unprotected sex with hookers is bad too??

Assuming you could find uncontaminated soil and create your own untainted fertilizer, the only thing left to do would be to grow your own vegetables at home. Finally! Good food to eat at every meal and healthy living for decades to come…

Until the radon gas got you.

So do what you will, I am heading to the Quickie Mart to get some Twinkies, a fifth of Jim Beam and a carton of Lucky Smacks brand unfiltered smokes,

Pigassus

P.S. Apologies to my good friend Fat Cat! Generally in all things health-related we agree, but sometimes the useless rebel in my lashes out. Know that the whole time my tongue was firmly in cheek, and I only pretended to enjoy a Hershey’s Bar while I wrote. Or did I!?

My Own Private Raisin Bran

2008-04-11T19:13:00.008-05:00

Part of my plan to get healthy includes eating healthy. The breakfast part of that is easy, or at least I thought it was until I started reading nutritional labels. Ever since I was a little girl, raisin bran has been my favorite cereal. It didn't matter whether it was Post or Kellogg's; I just loved the stuff. I felt like if I ate a bowl of that with a sliced banana and 1 percent milk every morning, I was doing my body a big favor.

Wrong. The Post raisin bran delivers a whopping 46 grams of carbs and Kellogg's 45 grams of crabs, all thanks to a relatively new ingredient that doesn't even need to be there in the first place....high fructose corn syrup or HFCS.

Regular readers know that last fall I went on a 90 Day Walking Program. Despite sticking to it faithfully, eventually walking a half hour a day on my treadmill for six days out of every week, and despite really cutting out the junk, including soda and, I thought, sweets, I didn't lose any weight. It was one of the biggest puzzles ever.

Recently I got serious about eating organic and realized I was going to have to find an organic brand of raisin bran. To get a sense of where to start, I read the labels on my old faithfuls, Post and Kellogg's. That's when I got the shock of my life. Both brands were loaded not only with sugar, but also HFCS. What? What possible earthly reason could there be to adulterate a healthy cereal with HFCS? It's a substance that's been linked to unexpected increases in body weight, problems with satiety and hunger resulting in higher caloric intake, rapid increases in fat mass, and problems with the hormone signaling system the body uses to regulate food intake. Since HFCS is now a key ingredient in most packaged foods, it's harder than you think to avoid. So maybe that's the hidden reason why the mass of my ass won't budge.

HFCS is not just in foods where you would expect to find it. For instance, would you believe that almost all sausage contains HFCS as a major ingredient? Now why does something piquant and savory, that's flavored with garlic and onions, need sugar of any kind? It's bizarre. It's also in ketchup of all places, fruit juice (like that needs to be sweeter!), yogurt, premade pasta and piza sauce, canned soups and fruits, salad dressings, (another weird place for it to be...who needs sweet dressings?) breads, and sad to say, even breakfast cereals.

HFCS is the only sweetener in soda, so when I gave up my huge daily soda intake at the beginning of my walking program, I got rid of lots of HFCS. Yet, that didn't lead to any weight loss, probably because I was chowing down a huge jolt of HFCS every morning with breakfast, right along with my "healthy" raisin bran.

So, I went on a hunt for a healthy raisin bran to replace my Kellogg's and Post brands, one that had bran, raisins and little else. But I didn't have much luck. All the organic brans didn't have much fiber, which was weird, but worse than that, many brands had raisins coated with safflower or sunflower oil. It's amazing to me how companies that purport to be manufacturing "healthy" organic foods are so ignorant of the basic tenents of nutrition. Sunflower and safflower oils are among the polyunsaturates that contain a dangerous imbalance of omega fatty acids. Ideally, Omega 3 and Omega 6 should exist in a 1 to 1 balance. But in many polyunsaturates, the ratio is more like 20 units of Omega 6 to 1 unit of omega 3. If you ingest these oils as a regular part of your diet, this imbalance leads to a chronic inflammatory state in the body. So what? you may be asking. Well, chronic inflammatory states lead to disease...specifically heart disease, stroke, arthritis, cancer, kidney failure, fibromyalgia, pancreatitis, lupus and Alzheimer's Disease, among others. When you listen to the so-called experts and try to "lighten up' your diet by removing hydrogenated oils, which are truly deadly, and replacing them with polyunsaturates, which some uninformed journalists and even some doctors mistakenly call healthy, you are putting your body in a chronic state of inflammation, which, I assure you, is not a good thing.

So, to keep my brain from becoming even more inflamed than it is normally, I stay away from polyunsaturates that are high in Omega 6. So no raisins coated with oil for me. Once again, a manufacturer adds a bizarre ingredient where it isn't even needed and once again, I was unable to find a raisin bran to suit my needs.

Time to get creative. I quickly found some wonderful organic raisins by Tree of Life. The wheat bran flakes were harder to find, but I finally settled on Nature's Path Heritage Flakes, which have 22 grams of carbs per serving and 100 calories. Then I add two tablespoons of raisins which add another 15 grams of carbs and 65 calories, for a total of 37 grams of carbs and 165 calories. Now I know that's not all that much lower than the 45 and 46 grams and the 190 and 187 calories in the national brands, but I'm putting much higher quality food in my mouth by doing this. It's like I have my own private raisin bran, which I would take over my own private Idaho any day.

Planet Fat Cat
Trying a new orbit

Production Junction, What's Your Function?

2008-04-08T01:21:00.002-05:00

Today marked the end of the “messy” phase of my year that began maybe nine or ten months ago. Back then I moved my computer out of the spare room and placed it, quite controversially, in the living room and squarely in front of the large plasma television that my mother purchased for me at Christmas, 2006. Showing my gift for rationalization, I thought I would be more productive if I had the distraction of hundreds of overpriced cable television channels, and so I abandoned my ersatz office and turned it into a temporary “storage” area.

“Temporary” eventually became the word worthy of quotation marks.

Over the course of many months, the one or two boxes in the room became intimately familiar with one-another and uncontrollably spawned dozens of children. Apparently the spectacle of boxes making dirty cardboard love also attracted a multitude of unused pillows, blankets, picture frames, computer accessories, books, compact disks, tables, weights, papers, and “nic-naks” (which I do not esteem but have because of well-meaning friends and relatives). Whatever the actual cause of the congregation of loose and untidy objects, eventually the room became a jungle of “crap” that was neither too useless to throw away nor too important to be used with any regularity. Finally, something in my life was disorganized and for months I couldn’t have been happier with my progress toward filthy.

I should mention that at some point last year I actually became determined to be less compulsive in an attempt to spark some long-buried creativity. Reasoning that rigid organization of my general life and apartment somehow had stifled the random thoughts that birthed creativity in writing, I vowed to scramble my living space. By yesterday, the apartment looked awful and no one could claim that hadn’t become less “anal” (or enamored of quotation marks to be sure).

Pity it turns out anality doesn’t stifle creativity as much as lazality. Which is to say that after ten months of being uneasy at the deteriorating condition of my home, and possibly attracting rodents, the only thing I had started to create with greater regularity was garbage. It was time to chuck the whole “amateur behavioral psychologist” stinker and just get on with some spring cleaning.

So now, still honoring my mother’s generous gift, I am standing here in front of my computer and simultaneously watching “The River Wild” on some Encore cable channel. My spare room has morphed, through hernia inducing physical and mental effort, into something resembling a clean and tidy work-out room/storage area. Though not aesthetically appealing from a design perspective (and what around here is?), the room is organized enough to afford a space in which I can weight train. You can never go back to Eden, apparently, and so mystically the room will be partially storage until I move. But such price, wisdom.

Now so far I haven’t mentioned anything related to losing mass on my body, but I think on the balance I shed a great deal of weight off my mind. For in the process of cleaning today I threw away a great many things that at one time I considered memorabilia too precious to abandon. The junk, indescribably varied, simply ceased to haunt me or pain me or in some cases interest me. Although one day I may pine away for those things I released into Infinity today, overall the paring of my accumulated belongings was cathartic.

Now to pare down my ass.

If only THAT were as easy as throwing out some old boxes.

Pigassus

Two Bagger

2008-04-03T00:53:00.002-05:00

If you were really tasked to think about it, what would make you happy in half-pound increments? Would a half-pound hamburger delight you? Perhaps a half-pound of cocaine? Solid gold, a little gleaming ingot?

For me, this last week I was made slightly happier with the removal of a half pound of something rather than its addition: I now weigh a Slyph-like 223.0 pounds. That’s right, apparently all the whining and complaining about being a whale managed to burn away at least 1700 kCals of stored energy in the form of human adipose tissue. And you thought the groaning on about inspiration and disappointment was wasted time!

But not one to rest on my laurels, I fully intend to bitch and moan some more until another half-pound melts off my ass. Actually, if it’s true that just being really pissed about obesity burns calories, I intend to go around being angry all the time and just grouse my way to Nirvana.

If nothing else, imagine the conversations at the grocery store:

Underpaid Teenaged Clerk Named Candy: “Hello sir, did you find everything you needed today?”

Me: “Yeah, and about fifty more pounds of it in the ‘Disgusting Middle-Aged Phenomena Isle.”

Candy: “I’m new to the store sir, is that by fresh produce?”

Me: “Trust me, Cindy, there is nothing fresh OR tasty about a bitter, fat guy.”

Candy: “My name is Candy, and uh, do you need any stamps or ice today?”

Me: “Only if a bag of ice can sooth the disappointment of not having a date in several years.”

Candy: “Oh God… I uh, have a boyfriend. Two! Big ones. Oh man, Mom told me this was a bad idea… uhm… what was I supposed to do… oh yeah! Paper or plastic?”

Me: “Any chance I’ll ‘accidentally’ suffocate in a paper bag while checking the bottom for loose change?”

Candy: “…”

Me: “Plastic. And don’t forget to double bag the ice cream, please. Last time it fell out and I had to bend over to pick it up. Which, trust me, that ain't something anybody wants to see."

Candy: “Manager to checkout 7…”

Hey, could be fun!

Pigassus

Nancy Drew a Blank

2008-03-29T01:30:00.002-05:00

So I’m watching the new “Nancy Drew” movie tonight and I can’t help but think that I missed the boat somehow. Actually I didn’t just miss one boat, but perhaps more accurately, I missed the entire fleet (not to be confused with Fleet Enemas, which I am more than happy to avoid). If you include some embarrassing quick “dates” I had post-high school, I missed the entire Spanish Armada.

You see, although the movie made had all the excitement of watching carpet re-fluff after you step off of it, I found myself rather jealous of the child stars. Not for their youth did I get all green with envy, but for the opportunities they are embracing in life. These pimply, nasty little creatures obviously reached out to fame with both hands, clawed after it when it tried to elude them, and then rapaciously clutched onto it when it finally managed to get close enough to capture. Granted the star, Emma Roberts, probably didn’t have to step over too many bodies given her famous father Eric or aunt Julia, but still, not every tween in the picture had such illustrious lineage. The grotesquely fat “comedy” relief in the picture MUST have begged for the roll and peed himself silly when he got that call from the director. These kids worked it.

And despite having a f**king bus-load of similar potential and energy when I was their age, I chose to feign away from fame like it had an open sore and a potential for lifelong recurrences. I hesitate to use such an expansive and overly inclusive phrase like “failure” when referring to myself, but if it has a blow hole and swims in the ocean folks it’s not a Volkswagen. So, yes, I’m a failure.

But I digress.

I meant really to tell people not to spend any money renting “Nancy Drew” because it’s just dull (like napping on the couch, wipe the drool from your chin, now my hair looks like crap, dull). But my actual intention to write a movie review was derailed by one recurring thought: people were paid to write the film, direct it, and star in it. And no matter how great or awful they thought it was, they had the confidence, courage, and determination to get it made regardless of any obstacles they encountered.

Lord, give me that courage!

And, if you’re feeling especially generous, a refund on “Nancy Drew”. Haven’t I suffered enough?

I'm Back (Again)...and Off Topic for the Moment

2008-03-25T09:55:00.007-05:00

I have been long absent from these boards, a combination of health problems, time constraints and just a general, down-in-the-dumps, what's it all for? sort of nihilism. Translated into English, that means, "Ugh! Do I have really have to get up again today? Didn't I just get up yesterday?"

Now this goes against the grain of my innate, Pollyanna-like optimism. But I think I just had to write one too many stories at my weekend job as a television news producer about some cretin who thought he just had to have sex with a four-month-old baby...his daughter, his nephew, some baby in a day care center...it didn't matter except that it ruined the innocent child's life.

After I wrote the third story in less than two weeks, I just collapsed psychologically. What kind of world are we living in where grown men can look at a baby and think, "Hmm, sexy!" The way so many young girls are handing it out like it was Halloween candy (because we raise them to think that's what they are supposed to do), no man should ever have trouble finding someone to bang. And yet these children keep getting targeted.

I think I know at least part of the reason why. Last year, I went to buy a cute little outfit for my then two-year-old niece. Even though I was shopping at an "upscale" store in an "upscale" Galleria type shopping mall, I was absolutely shocked at what I found in the toddler department. Without exception, the outfits all looked like they were designed for hookers, with plunging necklines, sparkly appliques right where a stripper would have pasties, shirring and fullness meant to emphasize the non-existent "bustline" of these babies. I thought to myself at the time, what sort of brain dead woman would put her kid in these things?

Turns out, not many and thank God. I ended up in an long discussion with the salesperson, who was a veteran employee. She said their sales had plummeted because most moms didn't want to dress their toddler girls like dance hall floozies, but the buyers didn't get it. And when the salespeople challenged them about what they bought to put in the toddler department, they became defensive and said that was all that was available.

I designed children's clothing for almost 10 years back in the 70s and early 80s (before I became a journalist) so I well remember the fun of selecting the soft colors and designing cute little bunny or ducky appliques. We used ruffles and bows and lace to show that little girls were feminine, but never ever did we trick them out like streetwalkers. Maybe there's a business here, for someone to design clothing to make little girls look like little girls again, and not wannabe centerfolds.

As a nation, we lament the increase in child pornography and the growing sexual victimization of our children. Yet we do nothing about the commercial sexualization of children. We push them into watching movies and television shows that were never meant for their young eyes and ears, we routinely expose them to violence and sexual situations, and parade them around as objects of sexual desire in kiddie beauty pageants, then act surprised when someone who is unbalanced acts upon the visual stimulation his impaired mind is receiving constantly, but cannot control rationally.

I ended up not buying any clothing for my niece; I got her the Disney "Sleeping Beauty" DVD instead and she loves it. She parades around the house with her little plastic tiara balanced on her head, and lords it over her baby brother. In other words, she's doing what God meant all children to do, playing innocently in a protected environment while she grows into a young woman.

Sad to say, once she is a young woman, her danger will increase exponentially. You only have to pick up a paper or turn on the TV to see how many woman and girls are assaulted and murdered in this country each day. It seems to be open season on women, particularly on women who are independent. Every day, female joggers and hikers are snatched off trails, never to seen or heard from again. That 19-year-old who was killed in Utah a few weeks ago was kidnapped from her friend's sofa in the middle of the night while she was sleeping.

I know that violence against women has existed since the dawn of time, but I do in part blame the media for the current flood of incidents. Our movies are glorifying "torture porn" where girls are kidnapped, tortured, raped repeatedly and then finally killed, all in excruciating detail and gory technicolor. Why do people pay to see this? Why is it even legal to show this? There are plenty of countries where it is not legal. And since when is this sort of stuff considered "entertainment?" That scares the hell out of me, that there are millions of men in this country who think nothing of going to see films like this, who enjoy seeing women terrorized, humiliated, sexually abused, tortured and then killed for "entertainment." What in the world are their dates supposed to think while they sit there and watch their "boyfriends" hoot it up while women are attacked on screen? I know one thing. First, I would never set foot in a theater with such a man. Or, if I ever somehow got tricked into attending such a movie, I would run, not walk for the exit at the first hint of violence.

For filmmakers, it is strictly a business of making money. The sad fact is that these films makes money. And the more money they make, the more this type of film will be pushed into the theaters and the more dangerous day-to-day life will become for ordinary women.

The daily violence against women is so epidemic it is now routine and elicits barely a response from many overworked police departments. It is one of the reasons that drove my daughter out of this country. She was living in a city where a serial rapist was targeting a couple of women every weekend, breaking into their apartments while they were sleeping and attacking them. Each week, the attacks grew a little more violent and bloody, and a little closer to my daughter's apartment. She couldn't live with the stress of worrying about whether or not she would be next, so she moved to a country where personal violence basically doesn't exist. She has been there almost four years, and in that time, there has been only one widely publicized violent attack by a deranged individual copying something he saw happen in the United States. That one attack caused the death of four students and sent the country into a state of mourning for a full month. She saw people crying on the trams, saying that now Finland would be just like the United States, full of hatred and violence. And this after just one attack!

We have hundreds of murders every single day, thousands of rapes and armed robberies, yet we are so inured to the violence, it has become such a part of the fabric of our daily lives, that each new incident produces barely a ripple in our subconscious minds. We are too busy surviving economically and psychologically to worry about whether we are going to survive physically.

We have to change this. Evil prospers when good men and women remain silent. I for one, cannot be silent anymore.

Well, I guess that's enough for this rant. I promise to post more soon, and to get back on topic. But please feel free to weigh in with your comments on this topic. It affects us all.

Planet Fat Cat

Domo Origato

2008-03-24T21:27:00.001-05:00

Hey! Guess what? It’s Monday again and time for another enthusiastic report on the excellent progress I have made on my super-swell, happy-time Joy Pop weight loss program for life!

223.5! Sweet! I gained three pounds in two weeks!

Wait. That’s not right. I GAINED THREE POUNDS. Unless my brains have added neurons and synapses at an alarming rate and now weigh roughly twice what they did fourteen days ago, I am just a very positive, exuberant fat-ass.

And since I don’t feel particularly clever or more thoughtful this evening, I’m gonna go with the whole “Excuse me sir, but your down-stairs neighbors have complained of hearing a moose in your apartment… and you can see clearly on line seven of the lease that this is prohibited…”

Oh sure, the clever and kind amongst you will claim that all the Krav Maga classes have simply added muscle mass and that if I check my shorts I will see they have extra room in them. But the truth is I have checked my shorts, and there is nothing there anyone wants to get a closer look at, lately.

And also they are snug, very very snug. Seems even elastic has its limits.

But after the whiney post a few days ago, I decided that instead of a groaning and pitiful account of how much I exercised but still failed to lose fat, I would try to put a positive spin on creating yet more yummy fat cells. Hey, whales spend their whole lives trying to gain weight and look how happy they seem on those grainy Greenpeace videos.

Until someone harpoons them of course and then they realize too late that the big whale ass just made a much easier to spot target. But unless I see a bunch of Japanese fishermen circling my apartment, I’m gold!

So there we have it. I don’t care anymore. If I’m going to be fat, I might as well be jolly. No one likes a bitchy fat person; at least six people in Samoa are known to love fleshy, jokey guys.

Now all that’s left is a snorkel, a map to Samoa, and a book of recipes for raw plankton.

How can I go wrong?

99% Perspiration

2008-03-20T17:54:00.001-05:00

Okay I haven’t written a word in over a month, either on this blog or in “real” life… anywhere. My grocery lists have become mere notations, such is my apparent reluctance to write anything coherent or purposeful. Forget a blog, an article, a screenplay, book, novel, or even dirty memoirs from my ridiculously sinful 20’s. In the past six weeks I have become a net consumer of entertainment, happy to allow others to create all the images that rattle around in my brain.

I lack inspiration; I fear mental exertion.

Which is odd to say because I never stop thinking, rethinking, examining, theorizing, and plotting all day long. I even put myself to sleep by imagining plots and then adding dialogue to characters (a favorite is David Letterman interviews as I wish they were conducted). But none of the endless thoughts I have on any day take any real effort, no strain. Wondering about my noisy neighbors and creating a scenario where they are arrested for running a prostitution ring, and thus alleviating their constant disturbance of my musings, takes little time and fewer neurons. Simple creation, short storytelling, exerts my mind about as much as chewing a doughnut strengthens my jaws. I live in a very flabby, waking dream-world of imagination and no production.

And because I still have food to eat, apparently, I am not inspired to work harder to change a minute of it.

I have tried to argue with myself that I wish for great wealth, but I don’t really. That Elysian vision looks nice, but other than providing security in the future, great comforts don’t compel me. Fame allows for a giant ego and a great many sexual conquests I imagine, but neither of those has spurred me to action since college. And worst of all, accomplishment means nothing to me without a Love to share it with, so what will make me stop imagining and start producing?

If only finding a Muse were as easy as advertising for a boarder on Craig’s List:

“Looking for roommate to share the apartment in my head. Must be clean and inspiring and have good bathroom habits. Creativity a must. Rent due immediately as the landlord, Father Time, refuses to change the lease agreement.”

Of course on second thought, perhaps I have answered one of my own questions: maybe it’s time to stop waiting for Inspiration to come unbidden and start looking for her instead. Like playing the lottery: you may never win, but you certainly won’t if you don’t buy a ticket.

I'm Ba-a-a-ack!

2008-02-15T10:33:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I spent all of January curled up in a fetal position on the floor, remote control at the ready, angled so that I could keep up with The Biggest Loser, Project Runway and other important world developments on the TV. The area around my body was littered with chocolate wrappers, empty Coca-Cola bottles, bitter remorse and huge, hulking piles of self pity.

What got me over it? Well, two things. A comment from one of my favorite readers, Gucci Muse, who told me to stop focusing on the negative (Thank you, Muse!) and ugh, yes, another health crisis. The health crisis shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. For three months, I walked six days a week on my treadmill, didn't drink a drop of soda, and really watched my diet.

Then came January. I realized that my Christmas holiday was bad and sad and that made me mad, and then I realized that my beloved (and only) son hates my guts and isn't likely to change his opinion anytime soon, and then I realized that even though I had faithfully stuck to a reasonable, rational fitness and weight loss program, I hadn't lost any weight. All reasons to just go straight off the end of the pier and try to kill myself with bad food and slothfulness, right? Chocolate and Coca-Cola Nirvana, here I come.

Well, I almost managed to do it. My body reacted to the absence of regular exercise and addition of much bad food to my diet as if it had been hit with an atom bomb. It basically shut down and I came very close to having to go to the hospital for the exact same thing that sent me there last March.

If life really is a circle, then I'm back at the beginning, and yes, I know that circles don't actually have a beginning, but work with me here. I am back to weighing more than I did when I first started in October (those four pounds I lost over the 90 days of walking flew back on and then some once I started drinking soda again.) But the worst thing is that my blood pressure spiked, went sailing through the roof even with my daily medications, and that made me sick. But what makes me feel even sicker is that this is something I did to myself, knowingly, willingly, consciously. With my lower lip poked out further than the Grand Canyon, Ms. Pity Party (that would be me...) decided that I DESERVE copious amounts of chocolate and soda...advice to the contrary from that stuffy old doctor who's just trying to keep me alive and healthy be damned.

Today I have to report that I am still sick. My blood pressure is still elevated, my kidneys are still barely working and I am walking around puffed up with excess water like one of those animated balloons in those dumb incontinence ads on TV. But I am back on the treadmill. The same woman who just six short weeks ago could rip off an hour on the treadmill at three miles an hour on a 2 percent incline without breaking a sweat can barely make 5 minutes at two miles per hour. It is absolutely stunning how quickly the human body loses its conditioning. For 90 days, I slowly built myself up to a modicum of fitness. My blood pressure normalized and my resting heart rate fell to the highs 50s. A mere six weeks of slothfulness and my blood pressure is back through the roof and my resting heart rate is in the high 70s.

I wish I could say that I will never slip again, but I know myself and I know that eventually, something will come along that will knock me off my pins. What I can say and promise myself is that the in-between times, the times when I am rolling around in my sorrows like it was actually fun (which it's not), will grow shorter and shorter. I know now that it's unwise for me to focus on trying to lose weight (a negative focus); from now on, I am focusing on something positive...staying healthy. Exercise and healthy eating are a vital part of that focus...so today...Round Two starts.

Oh, and I did get that exercise thingie I ordered...the Urban Rebounder. I have only used it a couple of times but can report that it's a lot of fun and reminds me of when I was a kid bouncing on the trampoline in my neighbor's back yard. I just need to get an industrial strength sports bra before I use it again or I might have to report that I have become the first woman in history to break her nose with her own boob.

Finally back in orbit,

Planet Fat Cat

I Bow To My Betters

2008-02-12T03:25:00.000-06:00

Sad that I should post twice in a week and each time open on my knees, begging for forgiveness. Yet, here I am imploring all and sundry to grant me another pass and accept an apology for my transgressions. What have I done this time? I am posting a poem I did not write to emphasize a point I tried to make yesterday but didn’t do with any real eloquence.

The masters of the past and pen, as I will refer to them at least once, have ways of making a point that I simply cannot. I am humble enough to realize my own limitations and, more importantly, to enjoy words and thoughts that are not my own. Perhaps it is my destiny in life to merely connect the great writers of history with shallow contemporary concerns such as weight loss.

I can think of many a worse fate.

THANATOPSIS

by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish'd thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour'd round all,
Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Thanks for the read; I hope you found as much comfort and inspiration in the words as did I.

Pigassus

Real Answers to Burning Health Questions

2008-02-11T16:23:00.000-06:00

Apologies to all for the long absence from posting! I would roll out an assembly line of excuses, but aren’t we all adults here? Will the injuries I suffered while saving kittens from a burning tree, including ten broken fingers, really make all of you more likely to forgive?

Actually, if that works, let me know. I am a “writer” and quite ready to concoct any number of fantastic, though still somehow plausible, stories to cover for my laziness and mental paralysis.

And speaking of which… This week in addition to announcing that I am down to 216 pounds (thank HEAVENS!) I thought I would post something I got in my e-mail in-box. I think it captures the essence of what I feel about life and health.

HEALTH QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION with Dr. Kenmiester:

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way.

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good !

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING! Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO! Cocoa beans! Another vegetable! It's the best feel-good food around!

Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember: “Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"”

As I asked a friend last night, “Are you really going to be jealous of a thin, muscular, athletic, good-looking corpse that smells of natural herbs and organic grains?”

She’s something of a smart-ass so she claimed she would, but I think we all get the picture. Enjoy life! Start with a Snicker’s bar and don’t stop until they have to grease your thighs to get through the ice-cream isle at Wal Mart.

Exercise if you feel better doing it, otherwise just have another pork rind and call it a day.

Remember, an asteroid could strike the Earth tomorrow and will your last though really be, “I am so glad I did those sit-ups for now I am READY oh Lord!”

I didn’t think so,

Pigassus

I Have Designs on Designer Cupcakes

2008-01-30T10:22:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here stuffing a "designer" cupcake with four and a half pounds of icing on it into my face. Yes, it's my breakfast. I stared at the box of raisin bran this morning and decided that because I didn't have a banana to slice on the top, I wasn't supposed to eat my favorite breakfast at all. How can it qualify to be my favorite when one of the components is missing?

I never let myself run out of bananas, but I am going through one of those, "what's the damn point I've been killing myself exercising and starving and I still can't lose a single ounce so why not eat what I want?" mornings.

But here's the thing...pricey though it was, the cupcake didn't taste very good. The cake part was heavy and chewy, the icing was grainy and way too sweet and just about flavorless. So, no matter what else I did or did not accomplish over the past four months in regard to my health and girth, I did truly reeducate myself about food. The fact that this morning's attempt to comfort myself with "comfort" food did not go exactly as planned is proof of that.

I was talking to an old and dear friend last night (please note that the friend is not old; the friendship is) about my struggles and at just about the same time, the words Weight Watchers came out of our mouths. Many years ago, she used Weight Watchers to transform herself from a beautiful woman with some weight issues into a drop dead gorgeous, knock your eyes out stunner, the kind of woman who makes you crane your head around when she walks by and then grouse at God about how come you don't look like that. Okay, I know part of it is her innate sense of style and glamor that came to the forefront after she reached her goal weight, but the point is, she only reached her goal weight with a lot of support, determination and science and that's where Weight Watchers came in. Many years ago, I used the program successfully to lose 17 pounds, and those pounds stayed off for years. So we both decided we're going to join up.

My first meeting is on Friday and I feel a small tingle of anticipation. I hope this gives me the discipline I need to stay on top of the nutritional portion of my weight loss journey. I have been feeling so discouraged lately that I have been drinking soda, eating ice cream, doing all the silly things I used to do. None of it even tastes good, but even though I've only been doing it for about the past three or four days, just in that small window of time I have gained back every single pound I lost through the 90 Day Walking Program. I haven't been exercising at all except for the occasional desultory walk on my treadmill. So 90 Days of sacrifice and busting my hump loses me 4 pounds and three Coca-Colas and ONE damned ice cream sandwich and ONE damned cupcake adds all four pounds back on.

Oh yeah, right. That's fair.

But life isn't and I just wasn't standing in the "willowy" line when God handed out the DNA.

Anyway, I have a new carrot to dangle in front of myself. I have a big event coming up May 1 where I will have the opportunity to meet some people who can greatly influence the future of my career. It is absolutely essential that I look smashing when I meet these people because the way this game works, your appearance does count for a lot when they make their decisions about whether or not to take you on as a client. So no fat, wobbly old lady had better show up. I'd better look fabulous, and I'd better feel fabulous, because if I don't, then I won't project "fabulous" and fabulous is what you need to get these folks' attention.

So here's my new plan: I will get back to my plan of exercising six days a week, only instead of just walking, I will mix it up with a little strength training, some stretching, some toning, and some aerobics. I will go to Weight Watchers so that I have to be accountable to someone other than my easily fooled conscience, and I will, by May 1st, have lost at least 12 pounds and gone down another size to a size 14.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it, at least for the next 90 days.

Planet Fat Cat
Still in orbit around The Lagging Moon

Gravity Breaks Détente, Renews Violence

2008-01-29T06:30:00.000-06:00

Austin, Texas

A man awoke Monday morning to find that the brokered peace agreement between himself and Gravity had been shattered by surprise fighting over the weekend. Although the man claimed he had done nothing to provoke Gravity, sources close to Gravity said the renewed fighting was a direct result of a “two-margarita” lunch the previous Wednesday. While negotiators were confident a new agreement could be hammered out, Gravity made clear it would continue to exert an increasing pull on the man’s mass at least through mid-week. U.N. officials had no comment when asked if there were any known survivors from the surrounding areas of Ego or Self-Esteem.

In case anyone missed it, the above blurb was my way of reporting that after a few weeks of good news, I have returned to gaining weight. Monday morning I stood motionless and hopeful on my scale and discovered that I had in fact gained 2.5 pounds in the previous two weeks (incidentally the last time I posted). For those keeping score that means I am now an eye-popping 219lbs. and exactly the same weight as I was on January 27, 2007. You read that right: In one calendar year of diet, exercise, and fervent prayer, I have lost NO WEIGHT.

I should add that if I hadn’t spent months ruining my joints with rigorous exercise or draining my bank account with specialty foods and supplements, I wouldn’t complain. After all, most people in their 30’s gain two pounds a year. But I did do those things and all I have to show for it are some ever-so-slightly-more-tone muscles and an extremely unpleasant disposition. Wait, I also have a lot less money.

Further I should note that over the course of the year I fluctuated from a high of 231 pounds to a low of 203 pounds and every point in between. Pity I couldn’t have settled into a weight range (as I seem to be doing) that was closer to the low end. Double pity I couldn’t have figured out what I was doing right at 203 and kept doing that! Since I don’t remember any long battles with dysentery, whatever it was must have been willful and behavioral. Oh, the humanity, and another spectacularly dull flop.

My only prayer is this: Dear Lord, thank you for that year; I ask only for another; I promise I shall do better for myself and you.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - Trying to Gain a Foothold

2008-01-17T22:29:00.000-06:00

I'm having a hard time getting into this season of The Biggest Loser with the couples. When I get wrapped up in a reality show, a big part of the draw for me is keeping up with the show online via blogs - both fan and official. The official blogs let me know what happened on the show, or at least, their version of what happened. The fan blogs let me get into it with other rabid people...at least, get into it in my own mind.

For whatever reason, maybe the television strike that is keeping them "writer-less," NBC has utterly failed to provide an up-to-day website and blog for this season of The Biggest Loser. When you click on it, you'll still see the contestants and the winner from last season. The lack of a current website where I can go read after show updates and preshow teases has really diminished my interest in the show. I like reading blogs to see if other viewers share my concerns and opinions. The lack of a website and viewer blogs reduces my level of participation and my level of interest, even thought the only blog I ever actually commented on was the Top Chef season 2. That's when the producers let an emotional assault on one contestant by several of the other contestants go on way too long, even with the fans screaming about it. The emotional assault eventually and predictably evolved into a physical assault that was videotaped by the contestants with a camera given to them by the producers. Oh yeah, like that was spontaneous.

Ugh, icky, and it the resulting fan outcry almost killed the show and led to parent company NBC threatening disciplinary action against Bravo TV and the show's producers. I'm happy to say the next season featured much nicer contestants.

A similar thing happened on Project Runway season 3. There was a really nasty, emotionally abusive guy on the show, but the producers LOVED him, so not only did he stay, but was eventually awarded the win over two much more talented designers. The show took a big hit in viewers and popularity after that and this season, the contestants are all pretty nice people. The one drama queen was pretty severely chastised by the judge's this week for pitching a hissy fit and being ugly to his teammate on the design challenge.

So what I guess I'm saying is that I don't like to see nasty, ill-tempered, abusive people on reality shows, but having said that, nor do I like to see boring people. For whatever reason, this season of The Biggest Loser is boring me. Even though I am using the concept of the show to help myself stay motivated and on my own exercise and nutritional plan, I haven't yet found any heroes in this particular cast. My favorite couple was voted off last week, and I am feeling sort of "ho-hum" about the whole season now.

Two of the eliminated couples needed to go - the father who didn't really want to be on the show with his daughter, and the lazy, whiny husband who lost weight even though he did next to nothing and then made fun of his hard-working wife when she didn't lose much weight. Nice guy.

I guess I am struggling to find someone I can relate to. There was a moment between the mother and daughter from the pink team when the mother apologized for bringing home so many "uncles" after her divorce and leaving her very young daughter on her own while she pursued a wild sex life, but it was an embarrassing moment. At least it got the two of them talking and made the daughter confess to something I could relate to...she said she thought she used her excess weight to protect herself...probably from the "uncles."

I think my excess weight serves the same protective purpose, but for a different reason. If I am a normal weight and no man looks at me with interest, then I have to deal with the awful question of exactly why that is happening. But since I am overweight, I don't have to answer the question because it is answered already. I am fat, therefore I am unattractive, therefore, I have no interested men in my life.

Funny thing is, it's been that way for so long it actually feels comfortable to me now. So I really have to fight to get out of my comfort zone and keep pushing forward, because I want to lose weight and get fit NOT to attract a man, NOT to please anyone else, NOT to look sexy or attractive, but to feel healthy and strong again. I think when I have achieved my goal and feel that way again, all the other things will just fall naturally into place and take care of themselves.

Planet Fat Cat

The Wind That Shakes the Blarney

2008-01-15T04:33:00.000-06:00

Although late, today’s update is supposed to be about the dreaded Monday weigh-in. The title is completely stolen from a movie, albeit badly, because I believe the actual title is “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. But I never understood what that meant, and I like the silly sound of “blarney”, so I never looked back.

I am so daring that Chuck Norris is afraid to hang out with me!

Back in the real world, however, I can confidently report that Monday morning I weighed an astounding 216.5 pounds. Astounding because human beings under six feet in height should simply not weight that much, and also because it indicates a two-pound loss in one week. Two pounds! I am seriously at risk of not being a scary lard ass… in ten or twenty weeks or… months or… sometime in the dark future world where robots have declared war on humanity…

Pardon, I drifted off imagining thirty years from now when my cyborg body will be AWESOME, like with ripped muscles, and I will have lasers for eyes and all the cyborg honeys will see me and exclaim, “Oh Pigassus! Your mini-life-support fusion reactor is SO BIG!”

Of course you’ll probably need to be rich not to get stuck with the extra small fusion reactor, and it occurs to me it’s never too late or too early to start saving for that bad boy. If I had more than half a brain, I would stop eating and put all that money into some Chinese Internet start-up IPOs and sit back and wait for Nirvana. But, sadly, I have only one frontal lobe, having sold the other half for an over-sized novelty Hershey’s kiss last Valentine’s, and so my extra cash this month is already marked for a new rowing machine.

I’ll let you know how that experiment works out in a few weeks when I am back from the hospital.

You know, the one I’ll be sent to when the “Clean and Jerk” goes bad on the rower. Or whatever it’s called.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - Taking All the Fun Out of Being Fat

2008-01-08T20:16:00.000-06:00

Tonight's edition of The Biggest Loser was somewhat surreal. They had a sequence early on that looked like a scene out of Soylent Green, only instead of people seeing videos of beautiful sunsets, flowers, butterflies, land- and ocean- scapes as they drifted into the crematorium and death, the contestants were shown disgusting close-ups of the unhealthy foods they indulged in prior to the show. Instead of death coming quickly as it did in the movie, it comes slowly, mouthful by large mouthful through continually making poor food choices.

As the contestants looked up at the unappetizing food flashing across the wrap-around screens, a disembodied voice intoned the annual calories, pounds of sugar and pounds of fat that daily indulgence in these foods adds on. It was actually nauseating. Instead of dying humans being harvested and processed into soylent green to feed their starving fellow humans, the contestants seemed to morph into oreos and corn dogs intended for self-consumption. The brown team got the message...the husband, Curtis, started crying and said, "We are killing ourselves with what we eat."

Yeah, we are. All of America is.

Then they had the first temptation, with the team that consumed the most junkie calories set to win $5,000. But it was the day before the weigh-in so teams that went for the money and the food were likely to have bad results on the scale. Mark from the grey team surprised me; he had threatened to hurt his younger brother if he succumbed to the temptation, but it was okay if he did it? Yeah, I suppose. Once Mark heard the guy from the yellow team blurting out that he had about 900 calories left in his daily allotment which he planned to eat to win the money, Mark decided to go for it, too. And why not? The yellow team guy telegraphed his plans, which I think means if he ever planned on working for the CIA, he should probably think of choosing another career.

So Mark ate 925 calories and snatched the money from the yellow duo, but he enraged his brother by doing it. Still, why did the guy from the yellow team blab? If he'd just kept his mouth shut, he'd be $5,000 richer.

In typical male fashion, even though Mark pigged out the night before the weigh-in, he still lost 7 pounds, whereas two of the women who busted their butts all week and didn't eat a single calorie at the temptation lost only 1 pound each, and the wife from the white team who sweated bullets lost nothing and Mallory, the wife from the brown team who ate 215 calories at the temptation, actually gained a pound. That eventually sent her and her husband home, but the good news is they have successfully continued their weight loss program.

Jillian Michaels practically burst a blood vessel screaming at her team members for eating at the temptation, and Bob Harper looked pretty ticked off, too. There were hints that the pairing of Jillian and Bob into a training "couple" may not last. The weight loss results were pretty low this week; I would have been thrilled with them but compared to what contestants lost when they were being trained separately, the numbers were way down. Bob was grousing about it, so I wouldn't be surprised if he and Jillian go back to training their couples separately next week.

NOTE: Sorry I don't know all the teams' names yet. For reasons probably related to the writers' strike, NBC is not currently updating The Biggest Loser web site and all the contestant bios on the site are actually from the last season. So I'm struggling a bit with the names.

It isn't easy to eat a healthy diet, even when you are in a controlled situation like The Biggest Loser house. It's not because healthy food isn't delicious, it is; it actually tastes much better than junk food. But you really have to work in the grocery store to find healthy food. You have to plan ahead and figure out what you want to eat and how much cooking and prep time you can fit into your schedule for the week. You have to read labels; it's ridiculous how many foods you wouldn't think of as being unhealthy are bad because they are adulterated with completely unnecessary ingredients.

For example, a famous New Orleans dish that I grew up eating, Red Beans and Rice, is actually quite a healthy meal what with its perfect mix of beans and brown rice, and a little bit of sausage. Nowadays, just try to find sausage that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup as it's second, third or fourth ingredient. High fructose corn syrup! What the heck is THAT doing in sausage? Sausage doesn't need sweetening; it's a savory food – not a dessert item, candy bar or soft drink. But EVERY commercial brand of sausage, Hillshire Farms, Hormel, Oscar Meyer, even HEALTHY CHOICE, has a lot of corn syrup in it.

Fortunately, there is a very good little local sausage company in my neck of the Texas woods, and they make their sausage the good old-fashioned way, with meat, salt, water and spices, so when I have a hankering for red beans and rice, I buy that. Even though sausage is salty and fairly high in fat and I would never just eat "sausage" by itself, each serving of red beans contains only 5 or 6 small pieces of sausage, so you're not getting an overload of either sodium or saturated fat.

Because so many foods have been ruined with unnecessary additives and high doses of salt, sugar and saturated and hydrogenated fat, grocery shopping is no longer enjoyable like it was in the past – it's become real work. Making it through a grocery store is like running a deadly obstacle course, with hapless shoppers forced to dodge a barrage of hidden sugar, fat and sodium bullets as they try to make it to the checkout in one healthy piece.

I think that was the point of the whole weird Soylent Green routine on tonight's Biggest Loser, they want to take all the fun out of being fat. I know it worked for me. After I finish this butter cookie and shake all the crumbs out of my keyboard, I know it will be at least a day or two before I eat another one.

Planet Fat Cat

What Lies Beneath

2008-01-08T00:12:00.000-06:00

The holidays have officially come to a close and another round of resolutions and recriminations have passed with the usual effectiveness. I resolved this year to be kind to the young and leave only footprints and take only memories, but since I ate all my brother-in-law’s cookies at Christmas dinner while ignoring his children, I have botched those already. So back to the tired stuff that provoked me to write in this blog last year.

This morning at weigh-in I was… (drumroll)… 218.5 pounds!

For those of you keeping score, that means for the holiday season consisting of three weeks in December and the first week of January, I actually recorded a loss of one-half pound! Since I read that the “average” American gains two to four pounds over that same month each year, and I was gaining at least a pound a week previously, I consider my half-pound loss a minor miracle. Heck, I thought about celebrating with a Tootsie Roll and two Ritz crackers, but I didn’t want to give back all my hard-fought losses.

Anywho, Men’s Health magazine published an interview with a doctor from the Mayo Clinic who recounted the medical staff’s behavioral changes engineered to promote better health and weight loss. In addition to impractical measures such as “walking meetings”, the doctors and nurses also threw out their old desks and replaced them with… (drumroll)… standing desks! Seems after extensive research they determined that the average male burned one calorie per minute while sitting at a desk but burned two each minute if standing instead. And although it seemed like a small increase, when assuming a six-hour “desk day”, it turned out a “stander” could burn an extra 360 calories relative to a “sitter”. In one work month (twenty days) the total extra calories amount to nearly two pounds of disgusting fat. So all things being equal, like not increasing caloric intake or sitting more at home, a man could lose 24 pounds in a year just by making that one change.

I plan on being that man.

Only less of one.

Because it sure would be nice to obsess about what’s below that Pallid Acreage other than the angry red numbers on my bathroom scale.

Pigassus

A Psychological Pit Stop

2008-01-05T23:27:00.000-06:00

I was lying on my humpty today...watching HGTV and thinking impure thoughts about Carter Oosterhouse when I realized that other than work, I haven't accomplished much of anything for the past couple of weeks. I think I am in a sort of psychological pit stop, just trying to make it through the holidays in a few small pieces, rather than shattering into bits of dust.

I have big plans for next week, though. I will start my new exercise regimen then, a little walking, a little resistance training, a little stretching and flexing and some breathing exercises, as well. I am trying to finish one book and outline another one, plus I am trying to convince one of my publishers to let me update one of my medical books. I am determined that 2008 is going to be a good year, and equally determined to do every thing in my power to make it so.

Slowly I feel myself coming back to life, feel energy and the desire to succeed and excel percolating into my cells. It's just the tonic I need. I have been in a month-long coma, but then, it's that way every Christmas. This year just turned out worse than usual.

I am particularly encouraged about my new exercise plan since I did such a good job of sticking to the 90-Day Fitness Walking Program. That showed me I can stay with and complete a program, which was a big unknown when I started. I only hope my results are more noteworthy this time around. I believe they will be since I am incorporating a variety of activities into the program.

I only lost five pounds over those first 90 days of walking, and have gained one pound back over the holidays...not bad considering I haven't exercised in almost three weeks now, and have been doing a bit of indulging in eggnog, pumpkin pies and such.

Then there's that going from the size XL down to the size Large pants thing. That is a major accomplishment. I don't know how I did it without really losing much weight or many inches; I guess the three months of walking just sort of toned and tightened my body all over.

I was talking about my new plan at work tonight and this cute guy told me he didn't think I needed to lose any weight, and I think he meant it, too. I am tall and big-boned, so my excess weight is pretty well distributed over my frame and of course, I dress to hide the worst of it. Still, it made me feel good when he said it. Then it made me feel a little dirty too, because I am 20 years older than he is. Kind of like I feel when I ogle Carter Oosterhouse. That guy gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "men with tools."

See what I mean? Naughty. If losing four pounds makes me feel this frisky, God protect the poor men of the world when I reach my weight loss goal.

Anyway, time to get out the WD-40 and lubricate the old synapses. Time to come out of my coma, inhale the hopeful air of a new year and prove that old adage: "Today is the first day of the rest of my life."

Happy New Year, dear readers.

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser - Couples

2008-01-01T21:48:00.000-06:00

Seems like just a few weeks ago we had The Biggest Loser finale, and now here we are already again, starting off a new season. I guess we can thank the ongoing television writers' strike for that, but I for one hope they stick to their guns and hold out for a fairer distribution of the wealth. Did you know writers only make 4¢ for each DVD sold of their movies? So, for example, when Pirates of the Caribbean did 5 million dollars in business on the first day of its DVD release, the two writers took home an astounding $6,700 in royalties and they had to split it between the two of them. So from the five million dollars in sales and rentals, the writers got $3, 350 each while the producers and the video stores that wouldn't even have a product to put in theaters or to rent without writers and their ideas, well, they got millions. I would say that is a way lop-sided distribution of the profits but the producers are determined to keep it that way.

But anyway, the strike means more reality programming because reality writers are not covered by the WGA contract, another thing producers DON'T want. So we get our next season of The Biggest Loser speeded up and delivered to us in double time.

This season features 10 "couples." Some of the pairs are married, one is divorced but still friendly, there's a mother-daughter couple, a mother-son, and a father-daughter, plus two brothers, two former football teammates, two fat camp counselors who were shamed into applying for the show and two strangers, a young woman and a young man who were randomly selected and paired.

Even though it was the usual two-hour season opener, for some reason it felt rushed and I didn't feel like I got to know much about the contestants. Of course, it didn't help that my phone kept ringing, either, so maybe I missed stuff that would have made me feel like I knew the people better. There are 20 contestants instead of the usual 12 or 15, and that's a lot of folks to keep up with.

For the first challenge the couples had to race up a hill, touch a flag pole and race back down. They chose their trainer by crossing the finish line into that trainer's camp. This year it's back to Bob Harper and Jillian Matthews, the original two trainers from season one. Most of the people chose Jillian so poor Bob was left standing there with only 2 couples while Jillian was almost instantly up to her limit of 5 couples. The three couples who came straggling in weren't not all exactly happy about being on Bob's team instead of Jillian's. But I tell you, if I had a choice I would take Bob. I think Jillian is a terrific trainer and you can't argue with her results. But she and I would not get along one-on-one.

Jillian was kind of making fun of Bob saying people think he is nurturing but he's really a monster. But the fact is, he comes across as emotionally nurturing, and he takes care of his team's emotions almost as well as he takes care of their training. Now Jillian does deliver a bit of encouragement, a few pep talks here and there, but her style is mostly loud screaming and humiliation. That works well for a lot of people; it wouldn't work for me. I don't mind watching it; I couldn't bear to live it.

Sure enough, one of the couples that chose Jillian went into full tilt rebellion after the first workout. The wife did fine, but the husband was rolling around on the floor whining and crying like a baby, saying it was too hard. But the worst was the father on the father-daughter team. He refused to work out and went and took a nap instead. Of course, being a man, he still managed to lose double digits, then made fun of his hard-working daughter for only losing 7 pounds.

7 POUNDS! I would be thrilled with that. In 90 days of walking on my treadmill I only lost 5 pounds, so 7 pounds seems like a lot. Anyway, that's the team that was voted off, because the father had a negative attitude and was nasty to his daughter. I was so happy to see she kept it up and changed her habits for the better once she went home. She's now enlisted her friends to support her weight loss efforts as her father wasn't interested in helping either her or himself. She's lost another 14 pounds since she's been home for a total of 20 pounds shed. Her father has only lost 4 pounds, also for a total of 20 pounds lost. But considering he lost 16 pounds in his week on the show and only 4 pounds since coming home, I think it's pretty clear he doesn't take the thing seriously enough even though he's pushing 400 pounds.

Jillian said something really funny about not liking the set-up of this year's competition with the couples, because the arrangement allowed contestants to bring their "fat enabler" with them to the campus. She thinks it will be much tougher for her and Bob to keep the contestants on the program since they've all got their fat buddies there to keep them company and help them think up excuses. In fact, on the previews for next week, there was even a funny hint about Jillian and Bob becoming a training "couple," so they could keep their workout couples in line and on track.

It's a little too soon to pick favorites but I like the interactions between the man and woman on the team picked at random. They did well this week. And the mother-daughter team is interesting to watch, but the mom's so prone to hysteria (and daughter is not far behind) that I think they won't last long, but who knows?

Planet Fat Cat
No longer XL; now just L
Yay!

Humpty de Dump, Dumb, Dumb

2007-12-29T07:15:00.000-06:00

I have been lolling around on my humpty these last few days, thinking great thoughts and trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. In other words, I have been doing pretty much nothing, day dreaming and trying to recover from the annual, exhausting extravaganza that is Christmas.

I just saw an online ad for Dodge cars. It was one of those "beautiful people" ads, where everyone was slim and gorgeous, and doing fabulous things like surfing off the coast of California and hiking in a beautiful forest. Ho-hum, I thought. That's not me. Then I saw the tagline on the ad and it galvanized me: "Make the most of every mile."

That's something I worry about a lot...that I let myself get so upset, so worried, so unfocused by all the dumb little distractions in my life, that I lose sight of the goals that are important to me and end up wasting most of my time in non-productive ways. I am definitely NOT making the most of every mile. But January is nothing if not a time for new beginnings, so instead of the usual 372 resolutions I faithfully trot out every year, knowing I will fail to keep any of them, I will trot out just one this year. In 2008, I intend to make the most out of every mile, no matter what that mile may be or where that mile might be taking me.

For reasons far too boring to go into here, I have been through an emotional buzz saw these last two weeks. It's not over yet but I can see that light shining at the end of the tunnel, so I am hanging on for dear life, praying for the dreaded Christmas door to close and the hopeful New Year door to open.

I live a quiet, peaceful and solitary life by choice, because I don't like conflict or an excess of emotion. My current situation is a nightmare that landed in my lap. Yeah, I know...Merry effing Christmas. I bear a little responsibility for what is going on but I've been assigned all the blame and am getting all the punishment. Psychologically, I am bleeding from every pore, but God made me nothing if not strong. Soon it will be over and I will go back to my peaceful, solitary life. The damage will be permanent, but there's nothing I can do about that except pick myself up and go on.

Many people have suggested I cut the offender out of my life, but the offender is in deep psychological distress right now, and needs a strong anchor more than ever. I am sorry this person thinks it's alright to be emotionally abusive and cruel and cold to me, but if I return this behavior in kind, then he or she sinks even further into the black hole they are swirling in. I have been so angry and so hurt I have seriously considered slamming the door, then I saw Oprah yesterday, a show about people who attempted suicide and yet, against all odds, were saved. These were not half-hearted attempts, either. One lady threw herself off a 200 foot tall bridge, a teen girl threw herself under a roaring freight train and a teen boy blew his face off with a shotgun. None of the three should be here, but they are.

Normally, I would not have even watched such a show. I think to take your own life is a sin, courtesy of the Catholic upbringing that I just can't seem to shake. But something told me that I had to watch and so I did. In all three cases, it was a rejection or a judgment by the person who has the same relationship to these people who tried to kill themselves that I have to the person who is being so abusive to me at the moment. That rejection was the trigger that sent them over the edge. So I know this person who is feeding me inch by inch into the wood chipper right now is in a lot of pain and knows no other safe way to rage than against me. And I know more than ever that I have to hang on and be there for them in their crisis, even though all their behavior is designed to crush me and drive me away. I am strong enough to do it, but the person is away for a few days, visiting other relatives, and it's only now in the last two days, as I have drifted without purpose from one silly little activity to another, that I have come to realize what a toll the last two weeks have taken on me. I feel hollow and empty and every cell in my body rings with a sort of dull ache.

For fifteen years, I wrote a humor column. It won the top award for newspaper columns in two states, and for a while there, I entertained the thought that I might make it as a nationally syndicated humorist. Then I went to New York and met with some agents and mostly got this response..."Who are you? Are you Erma Bombeck? I don't think so. No one's going to publish you unless you are Erma Bombeck."

I imagine some variation of this was told to hundreds of aspiring humorists back in the 80s and 90s, when Bombeck, Dave Barry, Mike Royko, and Art Buchwald reigned supreme and made millions of people laugh every week. We weren't needed or wanted so our work was rebuffed.

So where are our humorists now when we as a nation and individuals need them more than ever? Bombeck, Royko and Buchwald are dead, and Barry is retired. And some of the very editors who spent 20 years rejecting every new humorous voice because it wasn't one of the giants are looking desperately for a new voice now. But they're going about it the wrong way. They've forgotten the vital role that editors used to play in bring ing new writers along. Now the publishing houses and editors that used to help refine and develop talent demand that talent arrive on their doorsteps with a well-established name and millions of loyal followers already in place. And my question in this day of e-books and print on demand is, if you have accomplished that all on your own, exactly why do you need a New York publisher? Answer: you don't.

After several brutal rejections, I went back home with my tail between my legs, thoroughly beaten, convinced I was a lousy writer, even though I had thousands (but not millions) of faithful fans. Then another awful thing happened. My kids, my inspiration for all the funny columns, became teenagers, and suddenly life was not so funny anymore. Overnight, I became stupid, embarrassing and "the worst Mother in the world." Those turbulent years robbed me of my sense of humor and I found I was no longer able to produce a weekly column that made people laugh out loud. What I wrote made people want to swallow whole bottles of pills, or slit their wrists, kind of like what I am writing today. Just like that, my 10-year career as a humorist was over.

Then I met Pigassus and his lovely wife, Trina, and they made me laugh again. I reconnected with who I really was. They became my older, more loving and much more kind children. My own flesh and blood hated them with an unreasoning hatred. They didn't love me and they sure as hell didn't want anyone else loving me either, because that gave the lie to their theory that I was horrid and essentially unlovable.

Ah, motherhood. All I can say is...consider carefully before you have children.

Anyway, as kids grow older, sometimes, they realize the error of the harsh judgments they pass on their parents. I occasionally see glimmers of hope but I am not there yet. And this Christmas reminded me just how far I still have to go. And it also reminded me that I cannot let go, no matter how appealing that may seem, because it is often when people are pushing against you the hardest that they need you to stick with them the most. So stick I will, even though the battle is costing me dearly.

I find myself drifting into another day of ennui, so I think I will rouse myself, go walk on the treadmill, and see if I can do something productive today. I sure hate to let another days' worth of miles go by without making the most of them.

Feeling blue...

Planet Fat Cat

Good Luck, You'll Need It!

2007-12-28T06:46:00.000-06:00

So Christmas is over and it is on to the next big “Ha, You’re Still Single!” event of the year, New Year’s Eve. Which means that even though I survived crawling into bed alone Christmas Eve and waking up alone Christmas morning, I now get the honor of standing alone, looking cavalier and faking good cheer at the stroke of midnight on the 31st, while my friends all do a lip smack-down on their significant others.

But hey, ya pays your money and ya takes your chances. I don’t have to go to a New Year’s party; I can sit at home watching soft-core “adult” movies on Cinemax, right? And a few days later I can go get a cat, the first of a few dozen, and start my year with all the furry companionship I can stand. Then a couple years from now, when they come to saw the door off my apartment so they can take my 800 pound ass to the hospital, cats racing to and fro for cover, I can look up with my Crispy Crème encrusted face and say to the paramedic, “Hey, at least I wasn’t alone this New Year’s…”

Heck, maybe Karl, the really strong and heavily mustachioed paramedic, will give me a lip smack-down so the horror will be complete.

Who am I kidding, that won’t happen… Karl probably has a really hot boyfriend.

But I digress.

I didn’t intend to go on about the tragedy of single-hood, I actually wanted to talk about the insanity of placing any serious meaning on the first of the year. Why, as reasonable and educated adults, do we place so much emphasis and pin so many hopes on a date on the calendar? Just another day, another Tuesday like any other, but we make it out as if we are sending off the space shuttle of our whole year and screwing the launch will bring explosive disaster. F**k up New Year’s Day and spend the rest of the year searching the ocean for flaming wreckage.

Is that really how it works? Can anyone say that the successes, failures, promises, or recriminations on New Year’s day really had an impact on the rest of the year or the rest of a life? If I want to lose weight, am I only serious on the first and just kidding today, a Friday? We must be more “evolved” as a species. Aren’t the creatures that invented nuclear reactors and comfort-adjustable beds far enough along that each and every single day has the same opportunities for greatness, glory, anguish and angst as the next? Will Pakistan wake up Tuesday morning repaired and ready to make a resolution to stop fighting and start the “healing process”?

Somehow I doubt it.

Yet as skeptical as I am, I can’t help but think there is a little magic in that old silk hat they found.

No, that’s not right, I’m behind a holiday.

I’m suggesting that we do give meaning to the day beyond the rising and the setting of the sun. The Earth knows nothing of our calendar; it will turn inexorably around no matter that we call the day “January First 2008” or we rename it “Spaghetti-O’s” in honor of the famous Chef Boyardee. But it must mean something to us. We give it some power over our lives. We invest hope in the day.

I still don’t understand why we do, but I am willing to accept that we do. I have always said my understanding or acceptance of a thing is not necessary for it’s existence. So when I wake up this year on January 1st, I too will look with new hope for the future.

Even if I had to stand there at midnight alone, faking that bitter smile, and hoping that somehow in the next 365 days I might find another wandering soul to keep me company for at least a little while.

Pigassus

A Year-Long Fuse

2007-12-24T13:26:00.000-06:00

In the rare moments when I can quiet my mind enough to actually think, I think about the human condition...our virtues, our foibles, why we do the things we do, why we're so wonderful and so terrible all at the same time.

I think about life. Life has a rhythm and flow to it, just like a river. Sometimes life is joyous and flows quickly, so quickly you can scarce keep up with it. It's joyous and full of anticipation, of dreams of the possible and unexpected.

Other times life puddles into stagnant little ponds and you feel like you're going nowhere. 2007 has been one of those "puddlin'" years for me, so I will be happy to kiss it goodbye, kick it to the curb and start over again.

It's funny how we arrange our lives into years punctuated by holidays and special events like birthdays, weddings, births, deaths, anniversaries and funerals. We've all had our share of most of these occasions, sometimes more than our share. We get new jobs, new friends, new lovers, our lives spin around and flow in new directions, and sometimes we crash head first right into a wall, or stall out in a dead end alley just because we refuse to acknowledge we don't know where we're going, and sometimes, even what we're doing.

My dad always told me that to get anywhere you had to have a map. I assumed he was talking about roads because he was an engineer and loved maps with unbridled passion. But he was wise, so as I grow older, I came to know he was talking about life, too.

When I was young, I was so full of passion and fire that I was like a raging spring river, full of ideas and imagination. I was going to take 34th Street, 7th Avenue, Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Broadway and Sunset Boulevard all by storm. I was going to own the world. But looking back, I realize I never had a map. I didn't know where I was going so I had no clue how to get there. I just had these deep-seated yearnings to do something, to be something...I just never knew what. As a result, I never got anywhere.

Age and experience have taught me a few things by now. One truth that always hits me square in the face this time of year is how we human beings are like candles with year-long fuses. We light up in January, when the year is full of possibility and promise, and splutter out in December, when we are tired and our options are gone and it's getting harder and harder to lie to ourselves about what a mess we made of the year.

I will say without equivocation: 2007 sucked for me. It was probably one of the worst years of my life. I tried to make sense of it all but the body blows just kept on coming...some my fault, most not.

Still, there was no tragedy in my year, so I hesitate to complain to God too much.

Whether I muster up the strength to complain about it or not, 2007 was a sucky year in many ways. Possibly one of the most annoying was that I finally made this decision to lose weight and get fit; I found a program and stuck to it for 90 days, and what did I get out of it? Almost exactly nothing.

But I did learn I can stick to a program, and that was huge. As a result, I have ordered a significant piece of exercise equipment for myself. I didn't do it precipitously. I studied and read about all sorts of different programs and pieces of equipment and finally settled on this one as being best for my age and state of fitness and for my inclinations. I also ordered a particular exercise program on DVD to complement the equipment I ordered. Once these arrive and I start doing them, I will report my results.

There's nothing to report right now except that I am sitting on my haunches for the rest of the year, and the interesting thing is, I haven't gained any weight even though I'm not exercising at the moment. So maybe I changed my body's metabolism ever so slightly with those 90 days of walking on my treadmill, or maybe the God of Fat Asses took pity on me and is giving me a Yuletide pass.

Here's wishing all our loyal readers a safe, happy and prosperous 2008. And here's wishing myself and Pigassus the same thing.

Planet Fat Cat

Don't Eat Green Jello

2007-12-21T02:36:00.000-06:00

First of all I would like to thank my friend Fat Cat for supplying the world with perhaps the most poignant, and funniest, rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” extant. I am not really sure what “dew-laps” are, but they sound revolting, so I imagine they fit nicely in the song. Unfortunately this year I can empathize with the extra chins, stretch marks, and thunderous thighs because of the many times in the last 12 months I have stared down at my scale and screamed, “FIVE GOLDEN POUNDS?!?!”

For the sake of accuracy, please substitute “golden” in the above exclamation with a word in common usage that refers to the act of reproduction in higher mammals.

BUT don’t think this year was without some victories and I am here merely to whine again about my failing joints and expanding ass. Because in addition to those things, I can also report that the standing desk investment might in fact have begun to pay some small weight loss dividends. Last week, for the first time since I challenged Fat Cat to a “Weight Loss Mardi-Gras to the Death Buffet”, I actually lost weight!

Yessiree folks, I am now only 217.5 gorgeous pounds of man-flesh. Instead of gaining two pounds last week, as I had for the last couple months, I actually lost 1.5 pounds.

I should mention too that since I installed the standing desks and began to “waterboard” my back and feet, I actually exercised LESS than in the five or six months prior. My reluctance to actually cause permanent damage to my joints by over-stressing them with hours of pong or jogging, while also spending hours standing at my computer, limited me to just three hours of “aerobic” exercise in each of the last two weeks. Normally I would easily work out three times as much. But, and this is my unscientific belief, the incredible benefit of standing for up to 12 hours a day instead of sitting has overcome my exercise deficit and actually gone far past it. I wasn’t even really dieting the last two weeks. I just stood around and lost weight.

I don’t wish to push religion onto this blog, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a small Christmas miracle. Thank you Lord!

Now of course I am cautious since it has been only one week of a loss preceded by a week of a smaller gain, but I love the trend line. And because I am a pragmatist and also a surrealist, I am even going to assume a gain this week and next given the certainty of over-indulgence in Christmas holiday dinners and treats. But in my mind, even if I gain a couple of disgusting fat pounds, I will assume without my new desks I would have gained many many more (since I have the will-power of sorority girl on Ruffies when it comes to cookies and ham).

So although I am loathe to do so, I am allowing hope to fill my shriveled, cellulite covered heart. Next year will be that year: the year I stop being worried about my health and start being PROUD of it.

Many Christmas blessings to all and thanks for reading,
Pigassus

The 12 Weighs of Christmas

2007-12-17T14:14:00.000-06:00

On the 1st weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 2nd weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 3rd weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 4th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 5th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 6th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 7th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 8th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...eight jowls a-jiggling, seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 9th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...nine stretch marks spreading, eight jowls a-jiggling, seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 10th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...ten diets a-failing, nine stretch marks spreading, eight jowls a-jiggling, seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs tocks and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 11th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...eleven fat cells plumping, ten diets a-failing, nine stretch marks spreading, eight jowls a-jiggling, seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

On the 12th weigh of Christmas, my body gave to me...twelve dewlaps dangling, eleven fat cells plumping, ten diets a-failing, nine stretch marks spreading, eight jowls a-jiggling, seven scales a-breaking, six fat rolls a-flubbering, five golden pounds…four double chins, three spare tires, two thunder thighs and a mighty trunk that looked just like a tree.

Thank you ver-r-ry much. Planet Fat Cat has left the treadmill! I've completed the 90 Day Fitness Walking Program without losing much weight or gaining much fitness. Tune in starting January 2nd for my new and improved exercise program, whatever that may be. It will include walking, but won't be only walking.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukah! Happy Holidays!

And may 2008 weigh less on my mind (and behind) than 2007 did.

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser - (Hint: it's not me...)

2007-12-13T09:26:00.000-06:00

When my dear little Piggie and I started this blog, we were both full of the fervor of the naive and deluded. We truly thought if we reduced the number of calories we took in each day, and added vigorous and sustained exercise, our bodies would follow the laws of science and slowly become smaller.

Hah! We were wrong. So much for what we thought.

My body has become smaller, but only by a miniscule amount. 4 days from now, I wrap up my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program without much to show on my body change-wise. I will have those 90 deceptively cheery little check-marks in my journal. Sorry, but that's cold comfort.

My inspiration, as I have said right from the beginning, was the contestants on The Biggest Loser. While I sweated and starved and lost 5 pounds, they sweated and starved and lost anywhere from 50 pounds to more than a hundred pounds in the same time frame. Okay, so I didn't have Jillian Michaels or Bob Harper beating my hump, but I did a decent job of beating my own hump, staying faithful to the program I had chosen. I just didn't understand the program I had chosen wasn't going to do me much good.

Hard to believe, but in 90 days of greatly increased physical activity and greatly reduced caloric intake, I have managed to shed exactly 5 pounds. Now 5 pounds is something, and I'll take it, but I was reading some ads for exercise programs last night, and one woman who started out a bit heavier than me at 215 pounds, claims she lost 41 pounds by doing nothing but this exercise for 90 days. She didn't even go on a diet and lost 21 inches and 41 pounds.

Needless to say, I ordered the DVD right away and will be reporting if it works or not. That's not such a self indulgence as it may seem. One thing I have proven to myself over the last three months is that I do have the will to stick to a program. I truly do want to change my life and remake my body; I just haven't found what works for me yet and that is frustrating. So I guess I made the wrong choice; I walked and dieted for 90 days and lost five pounds; this lady did an exercise tape for 90 days and didn't diet and lost 41 pounds. So she will go to her Christmas celebrations a new woman at 163 pounds and I will go to mine looking like the same old marshmallow in a dress.

Doesn't seem fair to me.

Anyway, on to the topic at hand...The Biggest Loser. Isabeau finally won a challenge, dragging the 73 pounds she had lost so far across the desert faster than anyone else on the team. When she dumped those pounds into a trench and raised her flag, she won $10,000. I was really happy for her. She has grown up a lot since the show began. At first, she was kind of a whiny baby, but with Jillian beating her regularly and forcing her to confront the issues that made her overeat, she finally accepted responsibility for her own health.

Tuesday's show can be summed up in two words: poetic justice. When Neil weighed in and it was revealed he had lost 10 pounds, my heart sank. I thought there was no way he was going to fall below the yellow line with that double digit weight loss. So it looked like he had made it to the finals, and from there, I think he would have been a shoo-in to win.

Then Holly weighed in and lost 5 pounds, a pretty good result for her, but still dicey. Then Bill weighed in with a loss of 9 pounds, and as a percentage of his body weight, that made him beat both Neil and Holly. Then Julie weighed in, and was told she had to lose at least 7 pounds to stay above the yellow line. I was sweating bullets because Julie usually only loses 2 to 4 pounds a week. I thought sure she would fall below the line, but she came through with a loss of 8 pounds, catapulting her to the top of the chart. Finally it was Isabeau's turn and she lost 8 pounds, too, pushing Neil and Holly below the yellow line.

The Black Team did it! Rejected and left alone in the desert, they came back with the guidance and leadership of their kick-ass trainer, Jillian Michaels, and totally eliminated both the Red and the Blue Teams, a first in Biggest Loser history. They stuck together and voted Neil out, which is where the poetic justice comes in. Neil finally paid for his cheating ways and no one could be happier about that than me. If he had ended up being this season's "Biggest Loser," I'm not sure I could ever bear to watch the show again. For once, justice triumphed!

Anyway, I have a dumb business meeting next Tuesday night so I am going to have to tape the program, but I am still anxiously awaiting two things...the arrival of my new exercise tape, and the outcome of The Biggest Loser. I will actually be happy no matter which one of the four Black Team members win, but my sentimental favorite is probably Isabeau.

Planet Fat Cat

Oinks On the Passing Scene

2007-12-11T04:30:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite columnists is a gentleman named Thomas Sowell, noted economist and professor. Although I appreciate reading his well written and erudite articles and books, my guilty pleasure with regards to his works, given my excruciatingly short attention span and limited retention, are his “Random Thoughts” columns – bulleted lists of short observations about life in general. I am far too small a person, in stature and metaphorically speaking, to pass upon the opportunity to clamber onto the shoulder of an intellectual giant and try my hand at something similar. I shall call my inconsequential observations "Oinks On the Passing Scene"... which I hope is not already in use and likely to provoke legal action.

* This Monday, after a full week of standing at my new desks, I have several squealings and oinks to report.

1. My feet and back hurt badly enough to make me wish for an immediate morphine addiction and a subsequent treatment program that includes more morphine and a private room with Lindsay Lohan. Actually, screw it, just more morphine.

2. The simple act of standing at my desk has given me the impression that even unproductive, pedestrian activities such as playing World of Warcraft suddenly feel more important and useful. Now when I kill goblins and orcs, it really seems like I am accomplishing something and am not just a huge freaking dork.

3. The pooling of blood in my legs and subsequent starvation of my brain has made me delusional enough to think online video games are not the life-sucking wastes of time they really are for huge freaking dorks.

4. I gained one pound this week (now 219), but since the previous two weeks saw gains of two pounds each, all this delirious standing around has at least slowed the rate of “massivication”, my new word for becoming fat enough to scare children to tears and repel woman fast enough to provoke skid marks even from high heels.

* Having watched the “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show”, I can agree with Fat Cat that those women have 14 feet of legs… 14 happy, awesome, gorgeous, tasty, yummy, sexy, beautiful feet of WHERE CAN I GET ME SOME OF THAT??, legs. My question: what exactly are they selling again?

* As Christmas approaches, I can’t shake the feeling that everyone I know personally must be damn blessed (see what I did there?) if the main problem this year is that they’re hard to shop for because they already have almost everything they could use or want.

* There is so much partial nudity, sex, foul language, and amorality on television now that I am seriously tempted to start watching again.

* Our society took another step towards Hell this week now that Michael Vick has been given 23 months in prison for promoting dog fighting while O.J. Simpson walks free. What has happened to proportion in this country?

* The women at the pharmacy where I get my prescriptions for prostate medication look amused (and damn unprofessional!) that someone my age might have trouble of any kind “down there”. I also can’t think of a good way to legally convince them that I don’t.

* With any luck, the Writer’s Guild strike will put a big nail in the coffin of the Hollywood studio elite network that is designed to reward producers, agents, and stars to the detriment of the people who actually create the stories and characters we all love to watch on television, the computer, and especially the silver screen.

* If the aforementioned strike goes on too long, however, the national I.Q. will drop to historically low levels as the entire network television line-up becomes “reality” programs such as “The Hills” and “Kid Nation”.

* Winter is magical and wonderful not because of the holidays or the vacations, it is awesome because fat people can finally wear clothes that manage to hide some of the pounds they have packed on the first 10 months of the year.

* Because your mirror lies, don’t be fooled that your enormous overcoat is hiding ALL of those extra pounds. People still kinda know, with or without the furry muumuu you call a “jacket”.

Pigassus

P.S. Did I mention my feet and back sorta hurt? Like crazy, tears-in-my-eyes, hurt?

Okay, Now I'm Really Going to Kill Myself

2007-12-08T14:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I do things that are just inexplicable. For example, if you were an overweight older woman, trying desperately (and unsuccessfully...) to lose weight, would you willingly torture yourself by watching The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show?

Probably not, right? So you're already much healthier mentally than I am. But everyone expects writers to be a little loopy anyway, and I sure would hate to disappoint my fans. So I watched it.

But see, I didn't set out to watch it. I dutifully watched this week's edition of The Biggest Loser and then cast about for something different to put on. If it sounds like I watch too much television at night, you're right, but I don't just watch television. I watch television and write, or pay bills or yack on the phone, or wash dishes or cook, or walk on my treadmill. So see? I'm a real multi-tasker.

Okay, the real truth is I don't watch TV so much as listen to it. After years raising my children in a house full of activity, and more years spent in newpaper and television newsrooms, the noisiest places on the planet, my quiet, quiet, empty house seems strange. So I turn on the TV to provide my accustomed level of background noise and forget I am alone.

Back to the topic at hand. All my male friends are always going on and on about Victoria's Secret models. I have a special pair of earplugs I keep just for when this happens. I can nod and look interested when in fact I am on the verge of slipping into a coma. So I never knew what the fuss was about until I turned on that TV. Did you know there existed anywhere in the human genome DNA for women with 14-foot-long legs? I didn't. Did you know there were women with skin that looked like molten honey? I didn't know that either.

Now, I've never really watched a fashion show except for the mini shows on Project Runway, so I wasn't prepared for the full blast of music, style and color the highly produced Victoria's Secret show provided. I've never seen women stomping down a catwalk like they did, keeping perfect rhythm with the music while wearing these wildly elaborate but still stunningly skimpy outfits that no woman I know would wear under any circumstances. I mean, I don't care how festive you're feeling; would you dress up like a Christmas tree complete with floor length cape covered with fake needles and nothing but a teeny bikini underneath?

Of course you would, if you looked like these girls. Once again I must make a note to talk to God about where I was standing in the pulchritude line. Yes, he gave me brains and a kind heart, two wonderful children and a wonderful family and friends, and that's a lot of blessings for anyone, so I feel bad complaining. But in the beauty department, um, I was not close to the front of the line for anything except maybe my eyes, and before childbirth ruined it, my navel.

But my body? Let's just say I am Sophia Loren struggling through the age of Twiggy. I am zoftig, with big, curvy hips, big thighs, and a relatively small waist...the classic hourglass. Nobody seems to like hourglass figures anymore, especially not after they go soft. I am most definitely NOT a Victoria's Secret model type. My legs are only 12-feet long, way too stubby for the runway. And my skin is a splotchy, pasty shade of blue-white, not molten honey.

Here's another funny thing about the fashion show. The camera kept cutting back over and over again to three celebs in the audience: Neil Patrick Harris, Ryan Seacrest and Joey Fatone. I kept asking myself, "Are these really the only three recognizable faces in the whole audience?" If so, and I'd been producing that show, I wouldn't have had my cameras cut to them at all. First of all, except for Ryan Seacrest, they're not exactly A list. Second, there seems to be this conceit in TV Land that all Americans breathlessly wait to see what their favorite stars do before making a move, but I think a conceit is all it is. I personally get tired of seeing the same names shoved into my face, as if what they thought was important to me and could actually influence how I live my life.

Anyway, back to the show again...there were some interesting outfits; well, actually they were more like costumes. But even though the costumes were skimpy and outrageous, they weren't cheesy or skanky, quite an accomplishment.

I watched for the full hour, my hands never once touching the keyboard of the computer on my lap. I didn't get up, I didn't talk on the phone, I just watched dumbly, the little green monster of envy growing in my heart. Why couldn't I look like that? If I looked like that, wouldn't I have a great boyfriend, or several great boyfriends?

Well, not necessarily, but probably. More than likely. Alright, yes. Who am I kidding? I'd have my pick of great boyfriends.

After seeing those models, I really had to struggle with my self esteem for days. Even in the bloom of my youth when I had a perfect figure, I never looked like those girls. They were all teeth and legs and massive heads of billowy hair they kept flipping over their shoulders. If I was a man, I imagine I would have had to take several cold showers during the show. But I'm a woman so I felt a different kind of cold...the cold, green fingers of envy that were squeezing tight around my little jealous heart.

So briefly, I thought, "What's the use?" Then I remembered I have a different mission in my life than tromping up and down some runway in 7 inch heals and acting like I was enjoying it. And sometime before I retire, I truly hope I figure out what that is.

At least I know what it isn't.

Planet Fat Cat

The Last Stand

2007-12-03T21:54:00.001-06:00

A few days ago I read an article that suggested if a person only stood more they could improve their health and maybe, with exercise and diet of course, lose weight. Although I am a card-carrying cynic, I took the advice to heart and vowed that I would quickly find ways to sit less in my waking hours. By the weekend I was on the hunt for a “standing” desk and today I finally found one I could afford. In less than five hours this afternoon, I even managed to inexpertly put it together.

And there it towers over in the corner looking pretty and tall while I sit at my short, comfortable little computer desk writing this column.

Of course more story stands between me and my new furniture than just a general reluctance to start doing all of my writing and computer work off my enormous ass and onto my feet. Like feuds and families, a history makes the simple complex. My old desk means more to me than just the place that props up my monitor. Even with its chipped paint and scuffed legs, the heavy, squatty, dark and simple little beast has more meaning to me than its use warrants.

You see, my wife painted this table for me by hand years ago as a way of customizing it just to my liking.

Almost nine years ago when I “inherited” the desk from a friend who was buying “up”, the very plain, cheap thing was solid wood, but with a faux-grained laminate and an unattractive light-brown color. I hated the way it looked, but it was exactly the height I desired and had just the right amount of surface real estate for my needs. A lack of one of those annoying under-desk pull-out keyboard trays or shin-mashing bottom braces made it safe and extremely comfortable as well. It never fit in with our other office decor, and I was always a tad ashamed for people to see it since most of our other furniture was fairly attractive or new… and usually black or silver or grey, my colors of choice. I tolerated it, but always vowed to get a better looking desk when I could find one I could afford.

Then one day, out of the blue, I came home to find my desk in the garage and Trina bent over it, blasting the heck off the top of it with an electric hand sander. As I walked up I could see her just muscling that sander back and forth with a look of pleased determination in her eyes. As I approached and screamed a hello, she pulled down her dust mask and gave me one of her trademarked grins, maybe just a little bigger.

Turns out she had decided that if we couldn’t afford a nice desk that met all my requirements but looked modern and flashy in a shiny black paint, then by God she would make me one.

It took her the better part of a week to completely strip, sand, paint, repaint, and seal the desk, but when she was done it was beautiful. Sleek and dark with a durable finish for my heavy use, it was awesome and I loved it. I couldn’t have bought a more perfect desk for me, but she had made it happen with her own effort, blood, sweat, and bone. It was not possible to be more blessed than at the moment she proudly set it up in my computer room and the two of us gazed upon such a fine piece of work.

I have had that desk ever since and loved it every day.

But now time has forced me to try something new; some of the old won’t work any more. The truth is that I DO sit way too much at the computer and force my body to go dormant for most my waking hours. I know I won’t magically transform into an underwear model overnight, but I know this will help. And I will enthusiastically embrace all the help I can possibly manufacture right now.

But still I am sitting here.

It seems like such a small effort to just get up and sweep clear the junk on this old thing and make way for the new one. It’s only wood and paint and screws and nails. But more every day the new buries the old and week by week Trina grows fainter in my memory. I know I need, for physical and probably mental health, to take a stand at that new desk, but part of me doesn’t want to go.

I will get up soon and set up that shiny new four-legged metaphor; I have to do it.

But for a few more minutes I think I’ll sit here and run my fingers over the chipped and fading black paint, just me and these little memories.

Pigassus

Can It Be This Simple?

2007-11-29T12:56:00.000-06:00

I sat yesterday in my comfortable chair reading health-related articles on the Internet and wondered why my body seemed to have relegated the responsibility for fat loss to someone else, someone I didn't know and who refused to share. I mused that this person, who was very fit and probably sexually active to the point of perversion, didn't realize I had given him perpetual thinness and he didn't care. Just like a man, he pocketed my precious gift and went on, unaware that I was now hideously fat so that he could make dozens of booty calls and eat whatever he wanted, when he wanted, even who he wanted.

I became so enraged at the thought that maybe it was Shia LaBeouf who had stolen my health and fat-melting metabolism that I very nearly got up off my extra seat cushions and made myself a snack. Almost. After all, I needed to finish reading my health articles so I could finally figure out how I had inadvertently transferred my sexy athleticism to another person.

I shifted in my chair and looked at a promising article titled "A New Way to Control Weight?"

(http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=3922069&page=1)

I wasn't particularly excited by the title since I had seen dozens of very similar ones before. Heck, most of them did without the question mark and went straight to dramatic and fat burning exclamation points. Those were called "advertisements" and usually shilled for products that made you soil your pants but did promote a loss of weight along with your dignity (see "Alli Oops!").

But unlike many research articles I had read in the past that claimed, at least preliminarily, to have created a new substance for fat loss, this one had a simple premise instead: Stand up more.

That was it. Stand up more, or sit less, and creatures big and small burn more fat.

Could that really be the key? The scientists claim that although we have known for some time that standing and walking use more bio-chemical energy ("food") than sitting, they only recently discovered that it isn't just sheer numbers of calories that changes with position. Apparently your body chemistry profoundly changes when you sit for long periods of time and the actual fat metabolizing process SHUTS DOWN if you sit for too long. Even if you have exercised earlier in the day, once you sit for a while, whatever fat-burning machine you thought you turned on by jogging for two hours simply TURNS OFF.

The implications of this are enormous and of course they need more study to determine exactly why the body ceases lipase production when you park on your giant ass for extended periods of time (lipase is the chemical that allows your body to "burn" stored fat). But the message they say is clear: in addition to regular exercise, you MUST stand and walk around more and sit less if you ever wish to lose weight.

It seems too simple to work, but I must say even anecdotally I know I was always thinner when I had a job or just hobbies where I sat at my computer less. I weighed 130lbs when I worked as a theater usher at the age of 16 and it wasn't because I vigorously "ushered" anyone. Mostly I just stood in one place and took tickets. But I guess the key was I "stood" there bored and unhappy, trying to imagine sexual relations with my cuter co-workers in skirts at the concession stand.

Years later as a night club manager, I spent most of my time walking around talking with staff and guests and, after closing, drinking thousands of calories in alcohol. I was maybe 150lbs. When I left club management and took a job as a director of marketing and advertising for clubs (I really liked clubs...) I gained thirty pounds in less than a year. I actually stopped drinking and snacking and had regular meals, but I also spent most of my work day behind a desk and a computer, wedged into a soft chair. At the time I convinced myself that it was my new-found sobriety that had caused the fattening... you know, because I was running marathons drunk.

But now I am not so sure.

For years I have contended that something was taking place that made it impossible to lose weight even though I exercised and controlled my diet. If this new research is true, it will still be my fault that I have gotten, um, less sexy, but at least I will have a better idea of what I can do to change my current condition. Just the idea that I can regain control over my own body fills me with an excitement I haven't felt in years and is for once unrelated to skimpy clothing draped suggestively over hott, easy models with loose morals and poor taste in men.

What if I can actually change my whole life for the better by just buying a tall desk and doing all of my computer research and on-line writing while standing? I already do the exercise that gets my body burning fat; what if I keep that healthy engine going by limiting my sitting?

What if it really is that simple?

I don't want to get too hopeful as I have become very comfortable with cynicism and frustration. I wear those two like an old sweater, soft and warm. But maybe this time things will be different.

Just maybe.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - Hanging by a Pole

2007-11-28T19:57:00.000-06:00

This past week has been busy, so I completely missed the opportunity to vote on a favorite challenge for the competitors. But when they announced the winner, I was happy because I wanted the pole challenge. It seemed the least dangerous and the best test of how far the contestants have come strength-wise.

Here's how it worked. The contestants went out onto a temporary cat walk and wrapped themselves around a large metal pole. Then the walk was removed and they had to hang onto the pole for as long as they could. The prize was a nice family vacation at a ski resort.

The way it went down was somewhat predictable...Isabeau was off that pole in a matter of seconds. Then surprisingly, Neil, followed by Bryan, Hollie and then Nicole. That left Julie and Bill hanging on...both wanted the vacation for their families. Julie put up quite a struggle but finally fell off. So Bill won, again. That man has been winning everything, but I am happy for him. He works very hard and earns what he gets.

Unfortunately, the other contestants, particularly his Black Team teammate, Hollie, weren't very gracious. Hollie definitely seems to have an attitude problem, and Jillian even talked about that on the show, saying she didn't really know how to approach Hollie. She got upset if Jillian honored her wishes not to train very hard because of an injured ankle, then when Jillian realized she was upset and offered to train her, she got snippy and refused to train. So she is basically one of those people you can't win with.

At the weigh-in, it came down to Bryan and Hollie, and I really wanted Hollie to go home, but I knew the Black Team would keep Hollie as a strategic move. So Bryan went home. He looks amazing now; he's lost a total of 118 pounds since starting The Biggest Loser. His departure marked a Biggest Loser first; it was the first time an entire team was eliminated. The Red Team is no more. I think Kim needs to look at how she trains because the reason the team got down so far is that they never could win a weigh-in. Her team pretty consistently lost the least amount of weight, even with the Blue Team cheating at the weigh-ins.

So another of my favorite players goes home, and we're another week closer to the finale. I can't wait to see what happens and who goes to the final four.

The Fat Philosopher

2007-11-27T12:02:00.000-06:00

I shall start today with a quote from Voltaire:

"One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion."

I don't know what that means, but it had the words "hope" and "illusion" in it, so it seemed germane to the topic of weight loss and good health.

Far be it from me to suggest that most good health is a fantasy, but anecdotal evidence continues to mount that after the age of 30 we are really just delusional beings praying that we don't get sick. And don't even get me started on the insurance industry here in the States praying along with us that we never take ill or, Heaven forbid, stop making monthly payments.

If it sounds like I'm bitter today, or bitterer (more bitter?), then I have done an effective job of communicating my mood. You see yesterday was weigh-in day and let's just say things aren't "fine", even in an delusional sense:

I am now an Earth shattering 216 lbs.

When I walk across my apartment floor, the support beams now groan with the effort to keep my enormous ass from breaking through and landing on the downstairs neighbors. The walls literally rattle if I cross my kitchen quickly, say to get a healthy snack or return a small plate of cut vegetables to the sink. If I have a notion to exercise in front of the television, I have to alert the local emergency response personnel so they will not issue earthquake warnings.

And perhaps worst of all I am sick of my own complaints. I simply wish to be thinner and need to get down to the serious business of getting fit and healthy. No more whining; a lot more exercising.

Problem is, that's what I've been doing all year. I know it to be true because I keep a very detailed log of what I eat each day and how much I exercise. Since January when I weighed 219lbs., I have exercised, on average, 8 HOURS (up to TEN on some weeks) a week and consumed between 2000 and 2500 calories a day. Yet here I am, 11 months later, three pounds lighter... and gaining.

I would throw up my enormous, flabby arms in a sign of frustration and confusion, but the sudden change in air pressure in my apartment might blow out a window.

Instead I will sit and think, one of the things I am best at. My hope, it seems, is that I can one day figure out what I need to do to feel young and healthy again. My illusion is that time will stand still for me while I arrive at my answer.

Pigassus

Figuring it Out

2007-11-27T10:58:00.000-06:00

Any regular reader knows I have a habit of complaining about my nefarious, back-stabbing body that always contrives to lose weight during the week, only to gain it back and then some just in time for Monday weigh-in. This week was no exception; I made it through Thanksgiving weighing in at 201.8 pounds, only varying up or down by a few ounces every day last week.

Knowing my history of weight gain just prior to weigh-in, I doubled my walking time on Saturday and Sunday to one hour instead of 30 minutes...and was especially careful about what I ate. I was so happy to have made it through Thanksgiving without a weight gain that I felt pretty good about the upcoming weigh-in. No such luck. Despite eating very lightly on Sunday and walking almost 5 miles over the previous two days, when I weighed in yesterday morning, I had gained two full pounds. I wasn't bloated or swollen so it wasn't water weight; it was just pure stubbornness on the part of my body; it's undying refusal to cooperate at all with my weight loss and fitness program.

Then I started thinking about it scientifically. I looked over my weight loss and exercise logs and realized that every single week, I weigh the least on Tuesday. For the 70 days I've been on this program, Tuesday is consistently the day of my lowest weight.

So I did what any right-thinking dieter would so...I changed my weigh-in day.

Now, as for why I always seem to gain weight over the weekend...I think it's because my Saturday and Sunday schedule is so radically different from my weekday norm. Monday through Friday, I wake up, walk on my treadmill, eat breakfast and get to work, which means I walk to my computer and start writing. I also do phone interviews and run a bit of laundry, wash a few dishes, go outside and pull a few weeds, rake some leaves, anything to keep the creative juices flowing. Writing is not a linear process. I don't get writer's block, (thank goodness), but over the years I have figured out ways not to get bored as I write. Sometimes that means a quick phone call to a family member or friend; sometimes that means a walk to the mailbox to see if the check really is in the mail (freelance writers live for mail delivery); sometimes it means a run to the grocery or the post office, or another 20 minutes of walking or exercise to get the old brain jump-started again.

Now, contrast that interesting, self-directed schedule to what happens on the weekend with my part time job. First I pack a dinner, then get in my car around 12:30 pm, and proceed to battle traffic over 42 miles of hideous major city Interstates. I'm surrounded by insane , enraged or chemically impaired drivers, drivers on the road with no citizenship papers, no knowledge of or respect for the English language or the laws and customs of this country, no legal drivers' license (they buy theirs at flea markets for $50.00), no drivers' training, no concept what a blind spot is, drivers who have 8 unrestrained children and 4 dogs bouncing around the bed of their pick-ups.

I can feel my blood pressure racheting up over the hour to hour and a half of the drive. I am sitting totally immobile, strapped into a seat as I fight to get to my job alive and in one piece. Sometimes I see horrible things. On Sunday, the Interstate was totally shut down. I called to work and they told me there was a major accident...a pickup driving wildly and at high speed on rain slick roads, weaving in and out of lanes, hit a puddle, lost control and flipped over.

I jumped off onto the service road. It was like swimming through molasses in January, but at least I was moving. The Interstate had been turned into a parking lot, full of police cars, two fire engines, wreckers...a real mess.

What I didn't know and the people at work didn't know since the police were being tight-lipped, was that when the pickup flipped over, the two unrestrained children in the back were ejected over the wall of the overpass down to the pavement 25 feet below. First of all, who makes their children ride in the back of a truck during a rainstorm? Secondly, as we learned later, who puts their children in their truck and then gets behind the wheel dead drunk in the middle of the day? The answer is, the guy who was driving this truck.

As I saw later on the tape at work, he was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police cruiser. But his children? Let's just say it was the most awful thing I have ever seen. As I crept up to the intersection, I began to see pieces of truck scattered all over the service road, and then I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the walls of the overpass, down the curbs, puddled in sickening circles on the pavement. It was a scene from a nightmare, one that is forever burned into my brain, one I would never have chosen to see in my lifetime.

By the time I got to work, I am sure my blood pressure was through the roof. But unlike at home where I can check it instantly and take some medication, do some breathing exercises or hop on the treadmill to bring it down, I was locked into an eight hour shift at a highly stressful job, producing the same amount of deadline work that just two years ago, they had three employees to do. Now there's just one...me, because after all, the multi-billion dollar international conglomerate I work for needs to make even more money.

Mark my words: unbridled corporate and personal greed will be the downfall of this country.

While at work, I don't sit there knoshing all day or guzzling Coca-Cola. I drink water and eat the healthy dinner I packed and snack on an apple or pear or grapes.

When I get to work, I sit at my desk, close my eyes, do some deep breathing, try to recenter, refocus and calm myself, and plunge in. I sit unmoving for the next eight hours while news breaks all around me, the producer reorders the show and stories change. I write about murders, rapes, robberies, beatings, attacks on the homeless, and this past weekend, about a heartless 19-year-old mother and her Internet boyfriend who beat her 2-year-old daughter to death over a period of a few days, then stuffed her body into a tackle box in their storage shed just feet from their door, and then tossed the box into the Gulf of Mexico a few months later where a fisherman discovered her. Baby Grace. I couldn't sleep last night because of Baby Grace, and the terrifying, disheartening knowledge there are people like her mother and stepfather in this world.

There's hardly any time to eat at work, much less go to the bathroom. You're bombarded for eight hours with the worst of humanity, the violent, seamy bottom of the barrel dregs of awfulness. When it's all over at 10 pm, I am totally collapsed emotionally...a bleeding psychological wreck of a human being, my normal happy-go-lucky self completely turned inside out.

I still face the hour or more drive home, frequently in blinding rain (got to love these coastal climates) with a highway full of Saturday night drunks, thugs, gang members out to show how macho they are, rapists, robbers, and the odd, frightened older woman like me, just trying to get home.

Then on Sunday, a traditional day of rest, I get to do it all over again. It's no wonder I weigh so much on Monday morning. I've just been through two incredibly stressful days, driving through horrible traffic, (which I hate) and driving myself mercilessly to get my job done accurately and well before that red light goes on and we hit the air.

I need the entire week just to recover.

So, now that I have all that figured out, I have set some new goals. Within one year, I want to be well enough established as a free lance writer that I can give up my stressful weekend job. I am changing my weigh-in day to Tuesday, which may seem like a cheat to some, but to me, it seems a cheat to myself to weigh on Monday when my weight always spikes on that day.

Finally, despite my less than stellar results, despite the fact that my legs hurt all the time from the walking, despite not losing any more weight or inches even though I am faithfully sticking to my walking program and nutritional plan, I am going to keep walking and keep exercising and keep trying to lose weight. I am on Day 70 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I am not about to give up now. I sometimes struggle to finish things but I will finish this program. I will get all 90 check marks in my journal.

And I will probably still weigh 206.4 pounds.

Bleh.

Planet Fat Cat

Happy Thankspigging!

2007-11-23T13:48:00.000-06:00

Fact: Between Thankspigging and Christmas, adult Americans gain an average of 7 pounds each.

Declaration: Between Thankspigging and Christmas, I will not gain a single pound. In fact, I will do my darndest to lose a pound. And seeing as how it's taken me more than two months to lose 4 pounds, that's quite a feat.

Ah, Thankspigging. As I lie here in my recliner, spread out in all my somnolent post-prandial stupor...ah, I mean, splendor...I reflect upon how I fared turkey wise. I went to a neighbor's, fully intending to be disciplined...and proceeded to behave myself for the most part.

During the appetizer course, I had one cracker with spinach dip...ONE! During the meal itself...small servings of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, beans, stuffing...no cranberry sauce or bread other than the stuffing.

Good, huh? But then came dessert. I had been eying the groaning dessert table with something akin to disdain; everything looked like it had trans fats in it and trans fats are something I have avoided like the plague for years; you might as well drink concrete as far as your arteries are concerned. And the weird thing is, ever since I found out how detrimental they are to your health, I have had no trouble passing on foods that contain them. That has nothing to do with trying to lose weight and everything to do with trying to prolong my own life.

Anyway, all the desserts looked greasy to me so I was more than able to pass them up until they opened the refrigerator and brought out a homemade-from-scratch Southern Banana pudding in a big old midnight blue ceramic bowl that reminded me so much of my mama's cooking I almost started crying. Well, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't disrespect the memory of my mama by turning down the pudding, now could I?

The problem was, this particular banana pudding is legendary in this particular crowd. The second the refrigerator door swung open, I was surrounded by rabid men and women swinging knives and forks through the air before them as they battled their way to the front of the line. Okay, they were plastic knives and forks, but it was scary I tell you. For once in my life, I was standing in the right place at the right time, right next to the refrigerator (Okay, again. I stand next to the refrigerator a lot, but usually, it's not such a good thing).

However, on this particular day, it was a very good thing indeed and I was handed one of the first servings of banana pudding. That elicited such shrieks of dismay from the crowd that I consider myself lucky to have gotten out of there alive, much less with my clothes still on and my banana pudding mostly intact. One lady may have stuck her thumb in it as I passed by; I'm not sure. But she didn't pull out a plum, just a piece of banana.

Oh, my God! What can I say? That banana pudding made from scratch was the single most divine thing I have ever put in my mouth...rich, creamy, just the right touch of sweetness, with the bananas firm and fragrant and the Vanilla Wafers still crisp. I have no idea how she did it.

All thoughts of a second and even third helping went out the window when I walked back to the kitchen and found two grown men wrestling on the floor in a sort of Banana Pudding Death Match 2007, to see who would get the last serving. Meanwhile, the extremely popular creator of this ambrosial concoction was staring at the empty bowl and saying, "Well, I declare. I made a triple recipe," like the good Southern woman that she is.

A triple recipe, ya'll. And it disappeared in 3 ticks of the clock.

All I can say is, I'm glad some of it disappeared into me.

Oink.

I mean, meow.

Planet Fat Cat
(still licking banana creme from her whiskers...yum!)

The Biggest Loser: Hooray for Hollywood (aka: A Legend Goes Home)

2007-11-21T08:04:00.000-06:00

It never ceases to amaze me what the makeup wizards in Tinseltown can do to an ordinary Jane or Joe with just a few pots of eyeshadow and blush. I mean, I have those items sitting on my vanity, too, but somehow, even after I slap them on, I still don't look ready for prime time. Yes, last night on The Biggest Loser, the remaining contestants were transformed into stars with nothing more than a little flick of cunningly applied powder. And the funny thing is...it worked.

Not that I claim to be any different, but as a group of human beings, this year's contestants are fairly average -looking. I don't say that to be mean but as a statement of fact. Most of us, myself included, are average-looking (still, I'll take that over being dog-butt ugly any day). But after these average people underwent their Hollywood transformations last night, they looked amazing...especially Isabeau, Nicole, Bryan and Bill. I mean, what do they put in their makeup out there in Hollywood...fairy dust?

No, wait. I forgot. It's star dust.

The makeovers were a special treat with a purpose; Prevention magazine was looking for a cover girl or guy for this month's issue. Bill looked like he could have just stepped off the cover of GQ and Isabeau's transformation was so startling I almost couldn't recognize her, but I think if I'd been doing the picking, I would have chosen Nicole. She looked completely different and so happy in her photos. But despite her success thus far, Nicole is still significantly overweight and looks it, so in the end, I was not surprised to see the editors chose Kae for their cover. At that point in the competition, she'd already lost 30 percent of her starting weight, and she looked the most "normal" among the contestants, many of whom still had a long way to go to reach a healthy weight.

They flashed a nanosecond shot of Kae's cover, which is on newsstands now, and I thought, "Wow! Aren't airbrushes great?" because she looked way smaller than what she was on the show. Turns out the picture wasn't shot then, but much later after Kae had lost a total of 88 pounds and gotten down to 137 pounds. So Prevention's offer to put a "fat" person on the cover of their magazine was a bit bogus I think.

The nice part was after the makeovers when one-by-one, the contestants checked themselves out in a three-way mirror. After they had ogled the stunning transformations for a while, the mirror opened and a significant other walked through, every one from spouses to brothers to best friends. The reunions were great and seeing the reactions of the S. O.'s to the contestants' progress was pretty cool, too,

Now on to the challenge. The contestants had to hoist themselves up on a pulley and a rope and physically hold their bodies above a line of yellow tape strung 3 feet off the ground. The winner got a $5,000 shopping spree from Prevention. It was a challenge that obviously favored lighter people. Nicole, Isabeau, Holly, Neil and surprisingly even Julie fell down pretty quickly, the first four because they had a lot of weight to keep up in the air. Julie's well under 200 pounds now so I was surprised how fast she fell down; I guess she just doesn't have much upper body strength.

That left Kae, Bill and Bryan holding on for dear life. Kae immediately hoisted herself all the way to the top of the rig, about 50 feet above the ground. Though he couldn't get himself quite as high, Bill did the same. Bryan never got himself very high up the rig but maintained where he was with sheer guts and intensity for quite a while. Finally, Bryan dropped down and slowly, slowly, Bill lost his grip, too and there was Kae, the smallest person in the competition, the heroine of the weekly weigh-ins, still hanging on doggedly way up in the air. It was nice to see her win the money.

When it came time for the weigh-in, most of the people I worry about, Bryan and Isabeau, people who have posted pretty low numbers regularly, stayed above the yellow line easily. When Nicole fell below the line, it wasn't shocking. She's been there before; she just doesn't seem to lose weight as easily as some of the other contestants. But when Kae fell below the line even though she posted her usual 3 to 4 pound weight loss, it shocked me. She's physically the strongest of the contestants, the most consistent and the biggest threat to win it all, so I knew instantly she was going home. Nicole is a threat to no one. Kae was the one to beat.

Her transformation at the live weigh-in was miraculous. Even though she only lost another 19 pounds after going home, that put Kae down to 137 pounds and she looked fabulous. Her trainer, Bob, grabbed her in a bear hug and wouldn't let go. I was afraid they were going to have to pry him off her with crow bars. I was afraid Kae's husband was going to have to call him out in a duel to the death for Kae's tiny little hand. He finally let go for a few nanoseconds so Kae could weigh in, then he grabbed her again. She probably has like three or four broken ribs this morning, but when Bob Harper's grabbing you, I guess it has to come under the heading of "hurt so good."

On a personal note, I finally quit staring with horror at the horrid pink balance ball, got it out of the box, blew it up and did the beginner's exercise routine. The good news is I didn't fall off and kill myself. The bad news is that I hurt in places where I didn't even know I had muscles. Actually, I guess that might be good news, too.

Anyway, I'll tell you all about The Big Pink Ball...tomorrow.

Planet Fat Cat

Some Things You Don't Forget

2007-11-20T20:00:00.000-06:00

It's funny what you remember about the people you love.

My wife Trina, for instance, used to love soft sugar cookies with sweet pink icing. She was a wonderfully beautiful girl with a great, athletic figure on her small frame, and she did not usually indulge in sweets or fatty foods. But she had a weakness for the tasty, happy-looking little cookies with the multi-colored sprinkles and a thick layer of colored butter and sugar we call icing. I remember so clearly it was her favorite: I can still see her eating one, little cookie crumbs lining her mouth; a huge smile lighting up her whole face.

How I wish I could see that smile again.

It would have been Trina's 33rd birthday today, and the fourth I have had to commemorate without her. I don't have any huge parties in her honor, I don't reminisce with friends. I just sit and try to remember what she was like and how much she could enjoy all the simple things in life. I think of all the things she made better just by being around.

Trina tried so hard to stay in shape; she was a master at denying herself indulgences like overeating and laziness. She inspired me and others to try harder and sacrifice more. When I was with her I don't recall having any problem with losing weight or finding the motivation work out. She kept herself in shape through diet and exercise. She kept me young.

If I could hear her now, she would probably tell me I shouldn't celebrate her birthday as I have been, it isn't good for my health. But I don't care. I know she would join me if she could.

Which is why this day of the year, as the three before, I light a candle on a pink sugar cookie and sing Happy Birthday to her.

I certainly hope there are no calories in Heaven so she can have as many of those wonderful cookies as she wants. I hope each year she is eating one with me and grinning that big grin.

I hope she knows for the rest of my life I will never see one of those cookies and not think of how much I love her.

Happy Birthday, Trina
Love,
Me

A Poundstone

2007-11-18T10:59:00.000-06:00

A few days ag0, I reached what I like to call a poundstone. Other people might call it a milestone, but since it involved me reaching a particular weight loss goal, I call it a poundstone.

I finally broke through the 200 pound barrier to 199.8 pounds. Yes!

Of course, when I woke up the next day, I weighed almost 202 pounds again, but the general trend is down...ve-e-e-ery slo-o-o-owly...but down. And I have proven to myself that I can break through that mythological 200-pound barrier.

That means that one not too distant day I will break through that barrier permanently. I know that for sure. And that means my motivation to keep going is stronger than ever...important since my results weight loss results so far certainly have been less than stellar.

Now all I have to do is make myself inflate that awful pink balance ball and get going with that program. Then I might really start seeing some more significant results and see them more quickly.

I just have to keep this vision of myself as a Goddess in mind...no longer the porcine Goddess of Blubber, but a Goddess of Healthy Fitness (and of course, slamming hotness...)

Gentlemen, start your engines.

Planet Fat Cat

A Mirror Is In Cahoots With My Scale

2007-11-15T17:50:00.000-06:00

Being a sane person, at least in the absence of alcohol, drugs, woman, chocolate, select ethnic foods, fast cars, tennis, ping pong, or online video games, I don't actually believe that a random office mirror can conspire against me with the help of my scale. I mean for the six or seven seconds a day when I am away from the above-mentioned "distractions" I am of such an even temperament and solid, rational mind-set that I couldn't possibly imagine an inanimate object made of reflective materials and cheap glass would be out to "get" me.

Yet, apparently it is.

This morning I agreed to drive one of my friends to his optometrist's appointment and therefore was required to shower and dress in a manner acceptable to the general public. I make it sound as if that were a burden or that such activities were rare and arduous, but I assure all that at least once a week I undertake such adventures. At the end of the "dressing" period, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror (we'll call him "Cindy") and gazed upon my image in contemplation and examination. I explain this procedure as if aliens from the nearest galaxy were reading this blog, because you never know; everyone else should understand that I was "checking myself out".

I looked pretty hott.

Granted I was wearing some fairly inexpensive cargo pants, a very inexpensive and plain blue shirt, a worn (with love!) baseball cap, and some comfortable but undistinguished black shoes. But since the raw material of my awesome body was underneath the ratty clothes, I made the rags look intentionally stylish in a street-urchiny way. After all, you can sprinkle dust on a Ferrari and it will still go fast. So it was with me: My mirror showed me an image of an Adonis dressed unpretentiously yet with just enough style to flatter my obvious assets.

But something went horribly wrong.

Later as I was waiting in the optometrist's office for my friend to finish his eye examination, I happened to glance at a wall-length mirror and catch sight of my reflected image. Actually at first I was sure some aging, fat, low-life had walked over and I had become invisible, so I wasn't positive it was me. But since I only ACT like a vampire with regards to my sleeping habits and perhaps my affinity for black, I was pretty confident that I wasn't invisible. Which meant, ipso facto, that the aging, fat greaser was ME!

I was so shocked for a moment that I actually turned around to make SURE no one so... so... unsexy had gotten between me and the mirror. But aside from the three people sitting in the waiting room staring at me spin around like a tail-chasing dog, I was alone. It was me in the Wal-Martesque clothes and the somehow oily-looking mopish hair poking unbidden from the nasty old baseball cap. It was me with a couple of really solid "love" handles and a few extra chins. That guy without an ounce of sex appeal was me.

Well that just wasn't possible. Something demonic must have designed and manufactured that awful mirror.

And then it hit me: THE SCALE DID IT!

Yes, you see that same morning the devil-made scale had told me that I had in fact lost a pound of something and it was feeling vengeful. Forced by the laws of physics to finally register a lower weight, it cast about for a fellow diet saboteur to trick me into an unreality... one where I was fat and icky.

But I was on to the plan.

I straightened up and looked into that false and nefarious image and gave it my biggest, toothiest grin. It's power wained against the might of my conviction that there is no way to hide all this hott. I closed my eyes and remembered what I really looked like, the REAL me behind that scary, dreary guy.

And VOILA! When I opened my eyes again I was back, sexy and youthful and smiling like always. Crisis averted.

After a second or two checking myself out to make sure no love handles had survived and I only had my original, artist-sculpted chin, I looked around the waiting room to see who was simultaneously checking me out. Sure enough both women and even some guy were staring at me, doubtless wondering if I was single and available for romance and whatnot. I sighed. It's an nice ego boost, but sometimes the attention can be tiresome.

Anyways, wanting to stay away from a possessed mirror I quickly sat down on the floor of the office where a huge stack of Legos was left out, ostensibly for children to busy themselves with while nervous parents were getting laser-corrective surgery. There were no kids to spread germs to me, so I gathered all the blocks and made myself a nice multi-colored Lego city.

If you thought the other patients and staff stared at me with lust before, you should have seen their expressions then!

It's a cross I'll have to bear.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - Shaping Up in More Ways Than One

2007-11-14T18:22:00.000-06:00

Well, things are finally beginning to shape up on The Biggest Loser. Despite NBC hinting breathlessly at more Neil drama to come, he actually behaved himself for the most part last night, especially after his trainer, Bob Harper, called him out for voting out his "friend," Ryan, last week. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I enjoyed watching him squirm, and kudos to Bob for not letting Neil off the hook.

Talk about squirm-inducing...that little scene with Amy and Kim was bad. I'm not a huge Amy fan, but I thought Kim over-reacted when Amy said she was hurt by Kim telling the Red Team to vote her off right in front of her face. Kim also lost points with me for her use of the "f" word; that wasn't professional at all. It seemed like the two of them were trying to out-whine, and out-accuse each other, and both did a really bad job of trying to portray themselves as a victim.

Kim, you threw Amy under the bus in a very pubic way. Step up and own that and stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's unattractive.

You had conflicts with Amy, and even with David, who seemed like an absolute sweetheart. He got off the treadmill and left the gym rather than listen to your mouth any more. So maybe you have some soul searching to do about how you interact with your team members?

Amy, the reason Kim picked you to go is that you did nothing but complain from day one. You didn't ever want to do the work; you always had some cry baby excuse about why you couldn't do your share. Last night, instead of being happy for Julie to get picked to go home, you whined and cried and complained that you didn't get picked. Why would you have been picked? Did you and Hollie have some great friendship? No, you didn't. But congratulations on successfully continuing your journey at home. You look great, and I hope you have learned a few lessons about your own character as a result of being on the show.

Now on to the challenges. I continue to be stunned by the ongoing junk food challenges. On a program where contestants are supposedly being taught new ways to look at food and better nutritional and exercise habits, to force them to eat the worst possible food in order to win some prize or benefit is downright sadistic.

This week, contestants were faced with a sea of doughnuts, thousands stacked one upon the other and inside one, a wooden disk good for $5,000. The catch was, in order to be able to dive in and search for the disk for 60 seconds, the contestants had to eat one 300-calorie doughnut.

No one found it, so they had to eat a second donut to search for another minute, and then a third to be allowed to search until the disk was found. Every single contestant went for it instantly, except for Kae. She was the only one with the intestinal fortitude to pass the temptation. The others inhaled their donuts, willingly downing 3 each in order to be able to search for the disk. Bill finally found it and won the money, leading some contestants to complain about his luck since he won the car last week, too.

Okay, I would have been jealous, too. I don't understand karma, how some people just seem to have good luck and good things happen to them over and over again.

I think it's disgusting that all that food went to waste. The temptation was like a college cafeteria food fight. With all the hungry people in the world, the idea that probably several hundred dollars worth of donuts simply got destroyed is disturbing.

But what really makes me mad is that ever since I watched the show, I can't stop thinking about donuts. I am probably going to have to just go and eat one just to remind myself how bad they make me feel.

Hint to The Biggest Loser producers: I watch the show for inspiration on my own weight loss journey; not to be reminded that there are bad but wildly tasty foods out there I have purposely eliminated from my life.

Congratulations to Bill who reached the 100 pounds lost mark this week! I think he and Bryan are probably my two favorites out of the remaining contestants.

In the end, Amy went home. I was amazed that Jillian Michaels tried to get her team to vote out Bryan and keep Amy. I think Jillian was just trying to be supportive of Amy and keep her word, but Amy was dragging the Black Team down.

As for my own weight loss challenge, I'm back down to 201 pounds again, not in time to be able to post it on weigh-in day, but a hopeful sign that some day I will get below 199 pounds. I have this weird mental thing that once I break 200 pounds and stay there, my weight loss will somehow accelerate. Probably a goofy thing to think, but that's my fantasy.

I'm glad The Biggest Loser is shaping up to be more entertaining and less gag-inducing than the last few weeks, but I do wish they would either cut way back on the product placement or do it in a less disingenuous way. Bob Harper seemed truly ill at ease when he advised a contestant that eating instant oatmeal loaded with sugar, salt and preservatives was a good idea for a weight loss program.

Dangerous Territory

2007-11-12T16:03:00.000-06:00

Four days ago, I blogged with a great deal of excitement about reaching 200.8 pounds, and pledged that I would reach 199 pounds by today. To that end, I doubled my walking time from 30 minutes to one hour, and was especially careful about what I ate.

Now mind you, I am logging everything I do, good or bad, keeping track of my food intake and exercise in a journal so that I can study what I do and when I do it and see if there are any patterns emerging that might help me tackle my weight problem a little more effectively. When I slip off my diet, I say so, both in my journal and on this blog.

Saturday night, I made a conscious decision to eat something I normally don't eat, french fries. I truly don't enjoy them all that much; I prefer my potatoes mashed and slathered with butter. But Saturday was a very busy day and I had no time to prepare a healthy, delicious meal to take to work as I usually do. I had skipped lunch altogether because of time constraints, again, an unusual thing for me to do. By seven p.m., I was starving. I had my most immediate deadlines out of the way, so I asked my supervisor if I could run pick up a sandwich or a salad; there's a healthy market about two miles away from where I work, but he was expecting something new to come over the wire any second, so he asked me to make it quick. There's a burger joint a block away, so a burger it was.

I got the small meal, really not happy about doing it, but so hungry I probably would have cheerfully gnawed on cardboard at that point. I calculated the calories, then wolfed down all the fries, ate half the burger and drank half the soda, the first I'd had since starting the program.

The soda tasted sticky sweet, the burger was grey mystery meat on a gluey, pasty white bun that looked like someone had sat on it. The lettuce was limp, the tomato flavorless and I had just downed 956 calories, even with halving the portions. Bad choice and I knew it.

Eating that disgusting meal was like swallowing a hand grenade. No sooner had I finished than the yucky stuff started expanding like a hot air balloon, churning precipitously around in my stomach. I felt nauseated, not from guilt or shame; I had made a conscious choice based on expediency, not desire. But I was actually nauseated from the food I had eaten.

My body is used to me treating it better. I just have to ask, why doesn't it return the favor?

Yes, I ate a bad meal, but my calorie count for the day was still under 2,000. With all the regular physical activity I now do, a nutritionist I consulted told me it would take 2,300 calories a day to maintain my weight. If I eat 1,800 calories a day, a perfectly reasonable plan, I should lose a pound a week.

Should lose. Should lose.

I eat about 1,800 calories every single day, some days closer to 1,700, and that one day just a little over 2,000. Remember I have doubled my exercise time from what I told the nutritionist I was doing. And yet, on the morning after that one fast food meal, I weighed FIVE POUNDS MORE than I had the previous morning. I was swollen like a bad melon and just a few ounces away from my original starting weight.

That was yesterday, Sunday, and I walked and walked and walked on my treadmill until I was dripping sweat from every pore. I ate a small breakfast, large lunch and no dinner, so by this morning I had it back down to 203.2 pounds, meaning that I gained weight this past week, didn't lose it, and my blood pressure has sky rocketed, too. It also means I can kiss 199 pounds goodbye, at least for several more weeks.

I still simply cannot make myself believe I gained five pounds overnight from just one heavy meal. Did the rest of the week not count at all? Did I really negate all my hard work by going through one drive-up?

Yes, apparently I did.

I ate 20 reasonable meals over the course of last week and 14 healthy snacks. Even on the day I ate the yucky meal, I still stayed within 200 calories of my daily goal. And yet my weight shot up to almost 206 pounds overnight after that one meal. How is that possible? How can two months work of work and sacrifice be wiped out by a single meal?

Yes, I learned a valuable lesson. But my frustration level is almost unmanageable. I am drifting into dangerous territory, the "dammit, if I'm going to weigh 205 pounds or so for the rest of my life, I might as well enjoy it."

Then I have to remind myself...I weighed 206 pounds and was gaining weight, 6 pounds in as many months. So maybe my reality is that I have to keep exercising and watching every bite just to keep from turning into The 700-Pound Blob.

I am a geek girl, a science-based writer who knows quite a bit about health and wellness. So what I know intellectually, is that what I am doing should work. I should be losing weight and getting more fit and healthy. But here's what my utter lack of success is doing to me.

I suspect most of my friends don't believe I am exercising 6 days a week even though I am, and I suspect they think I am a midnight snacker or closet binger, because any time someone has stuck to a well-designed, thoughtful program for two months and produced no measurable results, well, they think the only answer is, I must be cheating or lying, or deluding myself. I can assure you I am not cheating or lying, but I most certainly am deluding myself...because I thought if I stuck to a good diet and exercise program faithfully I would be rewarded with some positive physical changes.

I have seen none. Yes, my resting heart rate is now down to 60, and my blood pressure is usually under better control. But guess what? You don't walk into a cocktail party and get rewarded with admiring glances for lowering your resting heart rate. That hot guy in the corner isn't going to look at me and say, "Hey, that chick has a slammin' resting heart rate."

No, he's going to look at me and say, "Oh, my God! Look at the size of her ass! I better get out of here before she knocks the whole planet out of orbit."

So, I am discouraged today. More than discouraged. I haven't lost an inch in weeks, my weight keeps going up, not down, and I have been at it for two months. I know it's going to take time to see real results, but this much time?

I really just want to quit, but I won't let myself. I have to believe that if I keep going, some halcyon day I will wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and like what I see...not just who I see.

Planet Fat Cat

Anticipation is Gaining Me Weight...

2007-11-09T16:49:00.001-06:00

The only reason I ever like rules is that I then have an excuse to break them or, more likely, make fun of people who are caught and punished for breaking them. So when I set a "rule" for myself that I would avoid the dreaded scale except at weigh-in on Monday morning, I fully expected that eventually I would, you know, weigh myself at other times, perhaps constantly.

Because I live on the edge folks. Watch out!

But what I didn't expect was that the damn thing would keep disappointing me by claiming that I had gained weight. Come on, people. It was supposed to be something more like, "Golly I'm sorry Fat Cat, but every day I get on the scale it keeps going down... maybe I should get that checked out while I'm buying some new, smaller, sexier clothes down at the Abercrombie store and auditioning for that GQ cover model thing."

It was NOT supposed to be: "Congratulations Fat Cat for losing fifty pounds while I continue to baffle medical science by proving that a human body can in fact create matter out of nothing. Goodbye conventional physics! Hello, Sea World's newest attraction, Pinky the Flesh-Colored Whale!"

Which is a long way of saying that this morning I weighed an ass-tounding 215.5 pounds, dry.

Since declaring that I would, for snickers and doodles, lose weight along side Fat Cat, I have gained five pounds.

Now I haven't come each day to explain what I have done to promote weight loss, but I assure any skeptics out there that I have made an effort to do so. I exercise, vigorously, at least ten hours a week. Already this week I had four days where I exercised 2 hours each or more and included both aerobic and muscle building activities. Since some people are squeamish, I won't detail my exact training methods, but I promise that my program is legal, strenuous, and exceptionally sweaty.

But I am not losing weight... and that disappointment makes me want to eat a candy bar... factory.

So instead of taking Saturday and Sunday off to rest my aching joints, I will go ahead and exercise another few hours and try to pull off a miracle for Monday morning. Any prayers to that effect would be most appreciated.

Unless prayers have mass, in which case keep them to yourselves.

Pigassus

The Biggest Loser - This Week, Not So Outrageous

2007-11-08T18:38:00.000-06:00

Well, I have to admit I liked this week's two-hour edition of The Biggest Loser. My favorite part was the challenge. It was amazing to see all the refuse that junk food generates, especially the mountain of 148,000 soda cans.

I am a big recycler and have been for almost 20 years. In fact, I have to watch myself to make sure I don't take it overboard because when I get busy and can't get to the recycling center, it does clutter my house. I recycle plastic bags, bottles and other containers, clear and colored glass, cardboard, paper and aluminum. One really nice thing about giving up Coca-Cola other than the health benefits is that I don't have dozens of cans to recycle every week. That used to take up a lot of space in my utility room. I know I am only one person but I figure I will do what I can as an individual to help the planet. Most people can just throw stuff away but I practically have to appoint a standing committee before I can decide if something is garbage, trash, compost or recycle. I am very careful about what I put in the garbage.

Well, enough about recycling. On to the show. When I heard Julie's story about giving up her car so she and her husband could afford for her stay home with their new baby son, my opinion of her immediately shot up. I used to feel rather neutral toward her; she seemed very nice but didn't really stand out. But on Tuesday night, I really wanted her to win the car. She and Bill busted their butts to win, in fact, Bill was almost superhuman, with the result that they gathered 96 pounds of cans, more than twice what the two lowest teams each gathered. I was really glad they won the cars. I feel like the two of them are really deserving. When I saw Julie's emotional reaction to finally having a car of her own, I felt even happier for her.

I was glad Ryan got booted instead of Isabeau. It's about time that one of the cheaters went home. But Neil seems to stay on week after week. And the promos don't augur well for next week because NBC breathlessly hints that Neil again does something funky to "change the game." So I guess he'll just be allowed to cheat and get away with doing whatever he wants to do, just because the producers like the drama he creates when he cheats. Ugh, it makes me sick but I can already see them setting him up to be the big winner. The Biggest Loser winners are supposed to be inspiring people; not cheaters.

I just saw the promo for The Biggest Loser again and it's nagging at me like a thorn in my shoe. I know its probably nothing; just something the promotional people cooked up to lure viewers, but it sure does seem like they are hinting that Neil does something bad again.

I guess we'll see next Tuesday.

Planet Fat Cat

A Moment for Posterity...and for Posteriors

2007-11-08T08:26:00.000-06:00

Okay, I know it's not my regular weigh-in day but I just had to record this moment for posterity. This is Day 54 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program. I was discouraged yesterday because I had to climb a long flight of stairs and seven or eight steps in, I was blowing air through my nose like a whale. Is this what fitness feels like? I asked myself, because it didn't feel fit to me to get winded just by climbing stairs. And seeing as how I am more than halfway through the program and have not only been faithful but done more than asked each day, including doing my walks on a 2% incline, I think I should be more able to handle stairs by now.

Then I remembered. I may have been walking for almost two months now, but I've only lost 3 pounds and my body fat percentage and muscle mass have not budged on my fancy-dancy scale. Hauling more than 200 pounds up a long staircase would be hard work for anyone, but especially for an overweight someone born in the Jurassic Age. Still, I was ticked when I got to the top of the stairs and was huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig, even though my dainty little, erm, not-so-dainty big self usually does not sweat no matter what the provocation.

So imagine my surprise and delight to get on the scale this morning and see that not only am I down to 200.8 pounds, a loss of almost 6 pounds since I started this program, but my body fat has actually dropped by point-two percent and my muscle mass increased by point-one percent. Yay! Those are the first positive changes in my body composition I have seen and that is very encouraging to me.

So, you may be asking yourself, why is she being coy about her total percentage of body fat when she's not coy about anything else? It's because, if my readers knew how much fat I was toting around on my carcass, some sensitive or paranoid soul among you might report me to the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass destruction.

Oh, heck. I just remembered. I published my percentage of body fat on this blog already. Okay, so I'm down to 40.2% from 40.4% and up to 28.9% muscle mass (it was 28.8%). I consider these HUGE changes because it is the first time since I started this journey that my schizophrenic scale has noted any changes whatsoever in my body composition. I can weigh six times in a minute and get weights varying by as much as two pounds, but the body composition and muscle mass NEVER CHANGED. And now they have.

In physiological terms, it means simply that I am a bit stronger, even if not long staircase worthy, and that my body is now slightly more efficient at burning calories than it was before.

And as far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest triumph yet! Next stop, 199 pounds. At the rate I'm going, that should only take another three or four months.

Wait. No more negative thoughts. I will weigh 199 by next weigh-in. My foolhardy little self is predicting I will achieve that milestone in just four more days. Never mind that it took me two whole months to lose six measly pounds. I will prevail.

Now I really have to exercise.

Planet Fat Cat

Attitude of Fatitude

2007-11-06T14:20:00.000-06:00

The weigh-in this week wasn't as tragic as I expected it to be. I think the time change fooled my body, which I have by now figured out is my mortal enemy. Because we "fell back" one hour, my body forget to gain the usual 12 pounds in time for the weigh-in, so I actually lost a full pound this week, down to 202.8 pounds. I'm still a long way from my goal; I still terrify grown men on the street, but I lost a pound. I will gain it back again 20 or maybe even 40 times over the next month but for now, I can truthfully record in my journal that the pound is down.

My body is a wonder of weird science. It will not comply with the laws of nature, nor succumb to threats of extreme surgery, physical violence or bribery. It just keeps blubbering along, all proud of its fatness, while I hang my head in shame and shop in the "Big Woman" section. I hate it.

I haven't missed a day on the treadmill for 50 days now, but still no results. Maybe I'm living in a state of delusion, a fat-altered reality. Maybe when my fevered brain thinks my body is up on the treadmill pounding out the miles, in reality I have my head stuffed in the refrigerator licking butter. How else do you explain my body's stubborn refusal to shed fat?

So I have decided to develop an "attitude of fatitude" (sorry, Oprah) to match my body's behavior. Maybe that way I can trick it into doing what it's supposed to do...shrink...dammit...when confronted with far fewer calories and many more hours of intense physical exercise.

Today I went shopping for the tools required to pull off this hoax. Since walking isn't working, I'm adding a new exercise routine. I know, I said I was going to do this last week, but it takes about a week for an idea to get from my head out into the realm of reality, and then another week or two of chewing my cud before I actually get up off my double-wide and do something. Anyway, I decided I wanted to get one of those big balance balls you see on The Biggest Loser. I thought that my help me flatten my stomach so I would no longer look like "The World's Oldest Pregnant Woman."

And for those of you who are worried, no, I won't stop walking. I'm determined to finish the 90 Day Fitness Walking Program and get all 90 little checks in my journal. I just want to do the balance ball thing, too.

I went to the store and was immediately confronted with about 15 different configurations of balance balls in various colors and sizes and even more confusing, with different accoutrements. This was going to take hours, because I had to read every line of text on every box, I had to pick them up, look at them, touch them, feel them, smell them, chew on the edge of the boxes, ruminate, cogitate, correlate and relegate. That's a lot of work, and it all had to be one without raising the angst level of the store clerks who were scurrying up and down the aisles looking for places to stick up more Christmas merchandise. After all, it is November 6th already.

Some kits had resistance bands in the box, others had weights, others had resistance rings. Some had accompanying workouts on DVD, which I considered essential since I basically don't know what I'm doing when it comes to balance balls. In fact, if I followed my usual routine, I would blow up the ball, sit down on it, lose my balance, fall over, break my neck, and that would be the end of my exercise routine, if not the end of me.

So the DVD was a must-have, but equally important to me was there had to be some kind of device included to blow up the ball. Oh, shut up! I can hear you all now; "Surely she has enough hot air to blow up anything," but in fact, I don't. I am so old and decrepit I can barely breathe, must less blow up a giant ball with air from my own lungs. So naturally, the kit I liked best, that had the DVD and a pretty blue ball with color-coordinated resistance bands...did NOT have a blow up thingie included. Okay, says me. I'll just buy one, only the store clerk tells me they don't carry them since all the balance ball kits come with them.

I beg to differ and show her the soothingly designed kit with the ocean blue ball and accessories. She insists there is a blow up thingie in there and proceeds to rip open the box and scatter its contents all over the exercise aisle. Hmm, guess what? The little picture on the side of the box that shows everything included in the kit, only it didn't have a blow up thingie, well it was right.

The clerk refused to believe it and stared meanly at me as she struggled to get all the parts back in the box, which brings to mind another of Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Physics: "Any item once removed from its box will never again go back into the same box without first performing extreme acts of legerdemain and uttering copious curse words. Even then, the box will be distorted according to the precepts inherent in the following equation: cm^–1/(kA/cm^–2)."

Actually, that's a lie. I just made it all up because I am fascinated by things I cannot understand. I stole that equation from a paper entitled:

Self-consistent solutions to the intersubband rate equations in quantum cascade lasers: Analysis of a GaAs/Al x Ga 1–x As device

just because I wanted to. But equation or not, things still won't ever go back into their boxes without a struggle and lots of broken nails. Trust me on this one.

Anyway, I suddenly spied a kit that had the balance ball, the resistance bands, the resistance rings, hand weights, a DVD and a blow up thingie, all for less than $30.00!

Only, it was one of the thousands of items designed specifically for October Breast Cancer Awareness month, and it was all titty pink.

I walked away. I could not bear the thought of bringing this hideous pink thing into my carefully crafted Zen bedroom. The color was so alarming that sleep would have been impossible with the damn thing in the room. But as I did a little math inside my head (always a dangerous thing to do...) I realized that to get all the stuff in that box individually, I would have to spend at least $100.00.

So now I'm home with the damned titty pink ball and still staring at it. I haven't yet had the nerve to take it out of its box and blow it up. I think I'll wait until it's dark, but this thing is so bright it might possibly glow in the dark.

It doesn't match a thing I have except for a bra I bought when I was feeling all girly one day. I can feel my entire house sending feelings of disapproval and puzzlement in my direction.

The Mrs. doesn't usually bring home such ugly things. Do you think she is sick?

No, that wasn't my husband saying that; it was my house. I don't have a husband, remember, because I am the size of a small out-building. I am an entire planet. When I stop losing weight it isn't because I have hit a plateau; it's because I AM the plateau. Men don't like women who are bigger than them. It scares the foo out of them, okay?

Anyway, my house, which is used to a calm, Zen vibe, which has soothing, tasteful colors, reacted viscerally to the introduction of the titty pink balance ball. I could swear I heard little groans and shrieks of disapproval emanating from the walls as I brought it through the door. But that's just too bad. I want to learn how to do a balance ball routine. I want to do resistance bands and I want to lift weights. I have no confidence that any of this strenuous physical activity will have any impact on my body composition whatsoever, but so what? I know I am destined to go to my grave composed primarily of fat cells, most of which have apparently migrated to my brain, but I don't care. I still want to do this.

Now, how's that for an attitude of fatitude?

Planet Fat Cat

A Retraction

2007-11-05T06:33:00.000-06:00

In an earlier post I implied that didn't consider government intervention on a free society's eating choices a good or moral thing. I think I have changed my mind.

A few days ago I saw an advertisement for Domino's new twin-crust double-stuffed, deep fat pizza. Keeping in mind that they don't advertise it as "deep fat", it was still irresistible. And so I ordered one on a day that I was supposed to be eating slivers of lettuce and drawing in the vapors over boiling chicken broth (which is called, not surprisingly, the "lettuce slivers and chicken vapors diet"). I HAD to have one. I saw the crispy crust and the melty cheese and my hand shot out to the phone and dialed without even one conscious thought to the contrary. My mouth salivated in anticipation and all thoughts of diet, exercise, weight loss and health were gone.

Three or four hours later after I awoke from my carb heavy coma, I didn't quite feel the same about free markets and open societies. I no longer believe, for the sake of my hottishness, that they should offer things that tasty and delicious.

A similar thing happened at Target yesterday. I was heading down the isle with a friend shopping for healthy, organic, unspoiled Earth-centric foods and such crap when I saw a huge sign that said "ALL HALLOWEEN CANDY 50% OFF". Every non-fat cell in my body screamed "Don't do it!" but instead I grabbed five bags and headed for the checkout as if I had a football and was about to make the winning touchdown. I could not resist a sale on chocolate, it was impossible.

And so, I don't think they should allow the possession or distribution of chocolate.

Now I know that seems extreme, but something has to be done before I gain weight. Hershey's should be forced to make candy bars using only broccoli and brown rice. McDonald's chicken nuggets should be coated in soy protein, not tasty golden batter, and then boiled in ancient glacial waters instead of fried in oil. Milkshakes must be outlawed completely and replaced with lightly seasoned organic celery stalks lovingly washed with a baby's tears. They can call it the "Unhappy Meal".

Trust me, with a menu like that it will very unlikely that I will be able to afford to eat out, much less gain any weight. And it really could be that simple: make it impossible to enjoy food and VOILA! we are all thin and beautiful.

Of course I hasten to add that ancient Roman slaves ate nothing but organically grown grains and wilted lettuce and they died at an alarmingly early age. They rarely ate meat, were never fat, and got more than enough exercise yet they managed to have a life expectancy of around seven or eight minutes. Since the third minute was concerned with reproduction (and what has changed!), that left like six minutes to live.

I don't think I want to go out quite that fast.

So I guess I will just have to treat my desire for really tasty foods like an addiction and act accordingly. But I warn all of you out there: If I fail this time to lose weight, don't be surprised if legislation prohibiting the sale or use of flavor is introduced in the next Congressional session.

You have been warned.

Pigassus

Post Script: This morning was the dreaded weigh-in and at 214.0 lbs I gained one-half pound of muscle... MUSCLE. Not fat, not a half-pound of fat. Or bone. Maybe I grew a half-pound of bone. Or brain cells, though I don't feel a lot most smarter. But could be brains. Or bone.

The Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 3

2007-10-31T23:32:00.000-05:00

Well, things went from bad to worse on The Biggest Loser last night. My commenter Matt, who suggested on my original Biggest Loser post that Neil had really pulled off a double scam, turned out to be right. Neil won the weigh-in last night because he had a 17-pound head start from cheating the week before.

Why is this guy even still on the show?

But it turns out the cheat was even bigger than we knew. Not only did Neil and Ryan cheat by loading water right before the weigh-in, but they pressured Amy from the Red Team into doing it as well, which is why she didn't lose any weight last week even though she was working out with Jillian Michaels. So it was a Blue Team-Red Team conspiracy to try to get rid of members from the Black Team since they couldn't beat them in a fair fight.

I was angry with Kae last week for voting Jez off, and because I thought she was in on the deal. But seeing her reaction to the scam this week made me change my mind. I think she was played, and kept in the dark about the intended cheat. I think Neil and Ryan knew Kae would never go along with it, so they just made a voting pact, which is perfectly acceptable, and Kae went along with the voting pact, not realizing the fix was in. The fact that she was so upset she wanted to leave the show told me a lot. I don't think she would have voted for Jez if she'd known that Neil and Ryan cheated, and I now definitely don't think she was told about their plans. She worked as hard as ever and lost as much weight as she usually does last week. I think she's honorable and was devastated when she heard last week's results came from cheating by her fellow Blue Team members, and that she had gotten caught up in it by casting her vote for someone who really didn't deserve to go home.

So this week, still thanks to Neil's original cheat from last week, another person who shouldn't have gone home this early is gone, David the cowboy. I was happy to see he is continuing to work out, watch his diet and lose weight at home. He's lost 103 pounds so far, but still has a good way to go. He and his wife look so happy in their interview, and their kids were just thrilled that daddy could now run and play with them, and ride horses with them without putting the poor horse in danger of its life.

My question to NBC and The Biggest Loser is this: why is Neil still in the game? Why is cheating tolerated? Do you really have no idea that you are turning your viewers away? Yes, we're talking about the show, but not in a good or supportive way. And talking about the show is way different that watching it. Remember what happened to Bravo when they screwed with the Top Chef show. Viewers were so outraged the whole show almost collapsed.

The other problem this year is the egregious product placement, I could not believe Bob Harper had the gall to stand there and promote an instant oatmeal product to a morbidly obese woman who needs to lose some serious weight. Instant oatmeal is loaded with sugar and chemicals and has little to no fiber and few of the nutritional attributes of real oatmeal...you know, the kind you actually cook, not nuke. But Quaker paid for the mention (read "ad") and so there it was...bogus advice being handed out to gullible contestants and viewers not because it was sound, or based on scientific principle, or even because it would promote good health and weight loss, but because a sponsor had paid for the product placement and therefore could claim whatever they wanted. They could say that oatmeal cures cancer, acne and baldness, and I'm sure they'd have Bob or Kim up there smiling and saying it was so.

Well, that's enough for this week. I sure hope Neil goes home next week. I really really don't like or respect him at all. And as soon as he goes, boot Ryan next, and then Amy. Cheaters shouldn't win.

Planet Fat Cat

The Last Temptation of Fat

2007-10-31T12:35:00.000-05:00

Would you eat food from a vat?
Would you gain that extra fat?

I will not snorfle pizza, dear.
I will not guzzle all that beer!

But would you, could you, at a bar...
Consume all snacks though near and far?

I will not eat large portions now!
I will not look like that big cow!

Then won't you try a last buffet?
Perhaps to gorge there all damn day?

Oh no! I won't give in to lard,
Because I've worked just way too hard!

But won't you like some lobster bisque?
Will just one trough present a risk?

No, no, you fool! I won't get fat!
I won't give in to temptations that...

Will make my butt look like a cheese,
And make my gut shake when I sneeze.

If I should grow another size,
Chaffing will destroy my thighs!

My neck will sag and who wants that?
Tell me, why should I get fat?

Why shouldn't I be cute and light?
And exercise with all my might!

I will win this diet, see!
I will be the new, thin me!

I don't know why an overweight ghost of Dr. Seuss just possessed me, but I certainly hope he burns some calories while he channels his spirit through me. If he can clear up any troublesome blocked arteries or revive some hair follicles while he's at it, I might actually contribute to a charitable organization that his heirs have established in his name. Heck, if he also increases my memory, regrows my liver, and makes me look a few years younger, we'll hit the road and we can make a living as a good looking Exorcist on Ice freak show!

Never mind, I am sure I just felt him leave... in a hurry. Oh well.

But the point is still the same: People who have started to diet and lowered their portion sizes go supercalifragilistic-crazy-alidocious. At this point, if I saw pink elephants, I would simply hunt them down and roast them with a garlic chutney and honey glaze. Heck, after another few days of dieting I might eat raw unicorns with a little Hobbit for dessert.

So maybe I will just order a pizza. I have often succumbed to the "last temptation" syndrome when I pick a day in my head to really START my diet. Since it is Halloween and tomorrow begins a fresh month (as opposed to the stale, dying month of October), I think I will just indulge his ONE LAST TIME and begin anew in the morning.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Anyone else ever have that one last food fling before trying to diet? Nutritionists and psychologists alike claim nothing good comes from "last temptation" urges, but when my tummy is grumbling I can't think of a reason not to have one last tasty hurrah.

I'll let you know tomorrow what, if any, damage has come from this ill-conceived but delicious plan... and also a review of the new pizza I ordered from Domino's.

Piga-Seuss

Shovel it in, boys

2007-10-30T01:33:00.000-05:00

I can already see what this week's struggle is going to be; I am going to have to slap myself silly every time I get ready to eat a meal or a snack to keep them normal, regular sized meals. That's because I am so mad and discouraged right now that I want to eat a side of beef slathered with herb butter, topped off with a couple of loaves of buttered mozzarella garlic bread, and a few heads of steamed broccoli dripping with butter and lemon. Notice a butter theme developing here?

I want to fry a dozen eggs in butter and then fry a pound of bacon in butter. Heck, I even want to stir melted butter into my orange juice. I want to whip up 10 batches of my divine double Dutch fudge Ghiardelli chocolate brownies and put three inches of chocolate butter cream frosting on top.

Yeah, I know. Some women lie awake at night thinking about men. I lie awake chewing the edge of my blanket and I think about butter.

...and men.

Butter and men...hmm, sounds like a very tasty combination, but too calorific. Still, if I had to chose one or the other, I confess it would be butter, but only because it's pasteurized.

Anyway, instead of binging I have decided to add Body Flex to my exercise routine. I seriously considered weight training and know I will do that soon; but for the moment I don't yet feel strong enough physically to take that on. Body Flex is strength training, breathing and stretching all rolled into one, but it's a gentle program suitable for an ancient fossil like me. I can do it without risking life or limb.

For all my big butter talk, I know I couldn't handle binging. I can barely handle Christmas dinner or a wedding reception because I am a grazer, not a porker. I nibble all day long. My friends always make fun of me for never being able to finish a meal, and for always taking home doggy bags from restaurants. It's just that I have never been able to eat in one sitting the amount of food served as a typical meal at a typical restaurant.

Oh sure, you're saying. Then how did I get fat? I got fat because I am sedentary, took in about 25,000 liquid sugar calories a month in the form of Coca-Cola, and I never stopped eating. Even though I only took in little bits here and there over the course of a day, those little bits added up to a lot of calories.

No matter what, I am not going to quit now. I have come too far psychologically speaking, even if I've barely made it off the starting block in terms of my results. But here's the deal; when I was stepping off the scale this morning one of my hands brushed across my stomach.

I could swear I felt a muscle in there.

Planet Fat Cat

"Fat" Air and Other Phenomena

2007-10-29T15:12:00.000-05:00

Last week I decided, for poo and giggles, to challenge Planet Fat Cat (who wasn't a stellar body at the time) to a contest to see who could lose the most weight. I must admit that I believed the whole thing a lark, a shenanigan, a Slick Willy, a Captain Morgan, a Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

Well, that doesn't make sense in the least, but you are beginning to get the point: How could I lose when I am me? Could you call something a contest when the deck was so stacked in one direction and the winner was obvious ("The Biggest Loser" aside)?

Apparently thanks to the fattening air that blew in with Halloween, you can.

This morning I dutifully stripped naked and mounted my scale, which thankfully sounds much naughtier than it was, and discovered to my chagrin that I had GAINED THREE POUNDS IN ONE WEEK. You can't imagine how upsetting it was to see the little digital read-out climb past 210 and keep going all the way to 213.5.

Without enjoying the prospect of admitting such an unappetising condition, I think I am the loser, so far. Maybe Fat Cat hadn't lost any weight this week, but apparently her walking and portion control had allowed her to stave off the extra pounds that grappled onto my body just from walking past all the Halloween candy in WalMart. Her effort, that I did not match in any way this week, did accomplish something: She did not gain any weight.

Okay, careful readers will note that Fat Cat hoped to LOSE weight and not just maintain her present body size. But I also thought I would lose weight just from sitting on my ass and eating candy and that did not happen so much. I understand the frustration and realize that it seems inconceivable that all that effort would produce "zero", but I also believe in Leprechauns so what does that tell us?

Nothing, it tells us nothing.

Let's face it: I have no clue why, past 30, it becomes almost impossible to lose weight. But I know that apparently it takes a Herculean effort to do so. If I have to lift the entire Earth on my shoulders to gain more muscle and lose some fat, then so be it.

I just hope that Fat Cat won't give into a moment of despair and throw the contest. She's worked too hard to give up now.

Besides, I can't wait to spike the victory cruller in her end zone.

Which again, isn't nearly as naughty as it sounds.

Pigassus

Weighty Matters

2007-10-29T11:57:00.000-05:00

The Weekly Weigh-In was neither good nor bad. I weigh exactly the same today, 203.8 pounds, as I did a week ago, and the only place I lost any inches was in my chest...naturally. By the time this is over, I will look like a Hersey kiss, big and broad on the bottom and a mere slip of a girl up top.

But...and this is far more concerning, for some reason my blood pressure and resting heart rate were up this week...not good.

So I have come to a few conclusions about my walking program. You know the definition of insanity, don't you? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, now that I have been doing the same thing over and over again for the past six weeks...walking, restricting my diet, not drinking any soda, and I'm still getting the same result, which is to say, almost no measurable result at all, then I have to conclude I am insane if I still keep doing only the same things.

Another thought that keeps recurring...as a society we like to make fun of fat people; the fatter they are, the more cruel the jokes. When fat people say they have been trying to lose weight, exercising and restricting calories, we all howl. Oh sure!!! we think. What'd you do? Eat only 499 French Fries instead of 500? Is that your idea of a restriction?

Since I have but 53 pounds to lose, which makes me relatively "skinny" in the world of fat people, I have been as guilty as any of you about turning my nose up at the morbidly obese. I didn't believe it when my super fat friends told me they had been exercising and dieting and couldn't lose weight. But I believe it now, because that is what is happening to me.

For the past six weeks, I have been faithfully following my walking program. I went from being totally sedentary to walking at a brisk pace for 20 to 30 minutes a day. By the time I finish the program six weeks from now, I will be walking 30 minutes a day, six days a week. And yet, adding that regular aerobic exercise to my daily regimen has accomplished very little. Yes, my blood pressure came down some, but it didn't stay down. My resting pulse came down, but also went back up. Those were the only two victories I could cling to to keep myself motivated to keep walking, and now even those are suspect.

I've lost about one inch from my hips and a half inch from my waist, but three inches from my chest. Why is that? It's not like my boobs are walking on the treadmill. My legs are, but they stubbornly remain the same hefty size, while my delicate chest is melting away like butter on a hot skillet. That's not exactly encouraging.

I have lost less than three pounds in six weeks of hard work, and if I so much as walk by a bakery I gain a pound. Not much to applaud there either.

I have totally given up my beloved Coca-Cola, ice cream, cookies, cake and a few dozen other little snacks I enjoyed on occasion. I am eating a healthy, balanced diet of organic fruits, vegetables and meats. I am eating measured portions; one of the biggest surprises to me when I started was the discovery that what I thought was a normal portion was actually twice the size of what I should have been eating. So now I measure or weigh everything that goes into my mouth. I have thought and thought about what I what more I can do, what I might be doing wrong...but the bottom line is, my bottom line has not changed. I am still fat. I am still out of shape. I cannot see much progress. And I am very discouraged.

In my bad moments, I say, "What the hell?" If any normal person had their choice of eating whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, guzzling Coca-Cola, never exercising and weighing 206 pounds, or denying themselves most of their favorite foods, measuring and weighing every bite they took, keeping careful records, and exercising 30 minutes 6 days a week to weigh in at 204 pounds after six weeks, which one would they chose?

It is very hard not to give in to these dark thoughts and go back to my old 206 pound ways. I mean really, what's the measurable difference? Apparently little to none.

Simple science says the changes I have made and the new exercise and diet regimen I am sticking to so faithfully should have made some significant difference by now, but they haven't. Friends try to comfort me by saying I am exchanging fat mass for muscle mass and muscle weighs more, blah, blah, blah. But my fancy scale says the only way my body mass has changed since I started exercising is for the worse. When I started the scale says I was 40.4 percent fat, a figure that boggles the mind. Now, after six weeks of hard work, the scale says I am 40.6 percent body fat. So much for the changing fat for muscle theory.

I can only conclude that walking is not enough. So I have decided to add something new to my exercise regimen. Instead of just walking for a half hour, I will walk and then do something else, maybe weight training, maybe stretching, maybe some yoga or pilates, but something to extend my exercise regimen to one hour a day.

If that doesn't work, I just don' t know what I'll do next.

Bleh.

A very discouraged

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 2

2007-10-27T19:54:00.000-05:00

Wow, I guess I didn't realize there would be so many people who, like me, were outraged by the fact that Neil was allowed to get away with cheating on this week's episode of The Biggest Loser. The Internet has been abuzz with emails flying back and forth, blogsters penning their generally negative opinions of what went on, and search engines working overtime as people who missed the show look for little tidbits of information about what happened.

If you don't already know, here's the scoop. Right before the weigh-in, one of the Blue Team contestants, Neil, drank about 2 gallons of water to artificially pump up his weight by 17 pounds. So instead of losing weight after a week of hard work in the gym and dietary restrictions, he managed to GAIN 17 pounds by cheating with the water trick. That meant his team lost and one member would be voted off by the other three trios. By prior arrangement, Neil got the trios to vote Jez off.

In the real scheme of things, no one was going to beat the Black Team. Jillian Michaels had been kicking their butts in the gym and they were kicking butt at the weigh-ins. They'd only lost one team member and had more people, 5, than either of the other two teams. The Red Team was down to 3 members, and the Blue Team down to 4, so it pretty much looked like the Black Team was going to dominate right into the finals. And that's how it should have been because they did the work and they deserved to be in the finals.

Enter the weasly Blue and Red Teams. They obviously colluded with Neil on his wormy little plan to throw the weigh-in, because they voted Jez out even though he was one of the nicest, hardest working guys there. Weasels never want to compete on a level playing field; the Red and Blue Teams couldn't defeat the Black Team honestly, so they had to resort to cheating.

And Neil's reward for cheating doesn't end there. Just who do you suppose will be The Biggest Loser next week? Matt left a comment on my original post pointing out that Neil will almost certainly win and be immune from elimination because he will lose at least 17 pounds by next week and probably even more if you throw in the 7 or 8 pounds a week he usually loses when he's not busy cheating. It's highly unlikely that anyone who is playing the game fairly will be able to match that.

That's bad enough, but the idea that The Biggest Loser and NBC let Neil and his Blue Team members get way with their underhanded scheme is well nigh unthinkable. NBC almost had a lawsuit on its hands when its subsidiary Bravo TV let a similar situation get way out of hand on Top Chef Season 2. Reportedly, producers gave a video camera to some contestants who had been verbally assaulting another contestant. They were planning a physical attack and Bravo wanted to make sure they caught the smack down on tape.

Bad decision. When viewers saw the episode with the physical attack, they were sickened and outraged and let loose a flood-tide of angry email, snail mail and phone calls. The sheer volume of angry comments posted on the Bravo website almost fried their server and nearly took their website off-line. Bravo folks were unrepentant, and it fell to NBC, the parent company, to reign in its rambunctious offspring.

As a result, this year's Top Chef was a much calmer, more watchable show, still not as good as season one where food was the focus, but vastly better than season two. But just like this season's Biggest Lower, Top Chef Season 3 also suffered from too many stunts, where the cheftestants were asked to do ridiculous things in impossibly short amounts of time with few resources and inadequate budgets. In other words, not like in the real world of restaurants where chefs can plan their menus and budgets and allow adequate time and money to produce food of a consistent quality.

But I digress. Why did NBC, after having to reign in Bravo, fall prey to the same sort of misguided thinking in regard to its own flagship reality show? Somebody screwed up big time. If there is to be a next season of The Biggest Loser, one thing simply MUST happen or I won't ever watch again. There has to be a new rule stating that any contestant who artificially manipulates his or her weight through any means whatsoever is immediately disqualified from the show and sent home in disgrace. That's the only way the show can regain its credibility for me. If the producers and NBC don't take this simple step to ensure the integrity of the program, then in good conscious I can no longer watch.

Planet Fat Cat

Alli Oops!

2007-10-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

You just can't make this stuff up. I was waiting in the check-out line at Wally-World, perusing the magazine rack to see which star was sleeping with another star's husband; which star had gotten gigantic breast implants, which star was anorexic and which star was eating her way out of a career. You know, the kind of stuff that interests almost everyone, but no one will admit it.

Then this caught my eye on the cover of the October 22nd edition of First magazine:

ALLI side effects alert!

Small type, only one exclamation point.

Hmm, I pondered.

ALLI? As in Alley Oop, the beloved prehistoric caveman of comic strip fame, only misspelled?

Alley oop, as in the basketball play in which a player lobs the ball wa-a-a-y across the court to a team mate standing near the goal, who then immediately dunks it for a score...only misspelled again?

Oh, ALLI, as in the latest, "Take this pill and lose 10 pounds in 10 minutes" diet pills war. According to the experts who keep track of such things, Americans spend an average of 50 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR on diet gimmicks, including pills, fads, machines and diet books. That's a huge market.

Alli's particular claim to fame is that it's the first and only FDA-approved over the counter diet aid (meaning you don't need a prescription to buy it). Well, that certainly is reassuring, seeing as how the FDA has approved prescription diet pills in the past that killed people. Remember fen-phen? AKA Pondamin and Redux? Yeah, good stuff, that. You lost weight, and you lost your life. What a swell deal! Your heart and lungs may have been destroyed, but at least they could squeeze you into a smaller coffin.

Alli supposedly helps you lose weight by blocking the absorption of fat. NOTA BENE: when you block the absorption of fat, you also block the absorption of many essential oil-based vitamins, including Vitamins A, D and E.

Still, alli doesn't seem to cause any deadly problems, only deadly embarrassing. Go back to that magazine cover for a minute: "ALLI side effects alert!" Then notice the second line: Why Black Pants Are Not Enough

What the heck?

I turn to the article on page 22 of the magazine and quickly discovered that Alli makes you lose weight alright, by giving you such uncontrollable, explosive diarrhea that you are likely to suddenly soil yourself in public. Hence, the "black pants" thing. They might hide the spreading stain, but they sure can't hide the smell.

The magazine coyly calls these humiliating public accidents being reported by many women, "Alli oops." Isn't that cute? You're about to be so publicly mortified that you'll probably just want to go somewhere and kill yourself and they're making a joke.

ALLI OOPS #1 is oil leaks.

ALLI OOPS #2 is bad gas.

ALLI OOPS #3 is euphemistically called Trouble Taking a Vacation, but what they're really referring to is the aforementioned public "accidents."

This latest diet pill is being marketed almost exclusively to women, so I guess this means that the powers that be think it's alright for women to suffer publicly like this just so they can lose weight. I don't know about you, but I think there's something kind of sick about that.

I headed on over to the alli website, myalli.com. It's all pink and pretty looking. It's features glowing photographs of women talking happily, not I presume about their last ALLI oops. I read through the FAQs looking for any mention of the product's side effects, but there was nothing there. Finally, I found a tiny, hidden in plain sight link called Treatment Effects or Adverse Events. Adverse event? I'd saying soiling my pants in public was an adverse event, all right.

The first question was: What are the side effects of alli?

Pretty straightforward question, but the answer was anything but. Here it is, word for word.

Most side effects are related to the way you take the product and how much fat you consume when taking alli. Not everyone experiences GI side effects (or "treatment effects"), but they can be manageable when you follow a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet.

All drugs can have side effects and you should check with your doctor if anything unusual or sever occurs when using any weight loss product. In controlled trials, only about 5% of subjects on alli dropped out due to treatment effects. In fact, anecdotally, many users have told us that treatment effects served as a signal that helped them adopt healthier eating patterns.

Okay, maybe I'm dumb, but anywhere in those two paragraphs, did you actually see anything about what the side effects are? Did you see an answer to the question? Because I didn't. I didn't see oil leaks, bad gas, or "accidents" mentioned anywhere. But I do love that part about the treatment effects serving as a signal that helped them (the gullible women taking alli) to adopt healthier eating patterns. Why thank you, alli! I could never have made that decision to eat better all by my little old self unless your pill had prompted me to do it by causing me to sh_t myself in public. What great humanitarians you guys are!!! And speaking of guys, why are all the ads for this product in women's magazines only?

Oh, that's right! I forgot! If a man took your product and shat himself in public, he would go postal and open up a can of whup ass on you guys. He might invade your headquarters with weapons of mass destruction and take his rage out on your sorry asses. We women, we just sigh and reach for another anti-depressant and figure it's all our fault, anyway, right?

This is beyond horrifying. Someone at the FDA thought it was a good idea to okay an over the counter diet pill even though the poor women taking it, the poor women already overwrought because they can't lose weight, might experience explosive, public, uncontrollable diarrhea? Someone thought this was a minor, acceptable side effect?

Someone at the FDA is one sick puppy.

You'll notice the article doesn't actually tell you not to take alli; it just tells you how to manage the side effects. Call me silly, but pooping in my pants is not a side effect I want to learn how to manage. Normal, healthy, ambulatory adults should not soil themselves with any sort of regularity. That there are people in this world who think nothing of trying to guilt overweight women into accepting uncontrolled public bowel movements as a natural consequence of their desire to lose their excess weight...well, I'm just at a loss for words.

Planet Fat Cat

P. S. - I may be a fat cat, but I will NEVER be a soiled cat.

P. S. S. - If you want to lose weight, you don't need pills or surgery, just determination. That's what I admire about the contestants voted off The Biggest Loser. They have learned new, better habits and take those habits home where they continue their weight loss...no gimmicks, no gadgets...just hard work and dedication...like Planet Fat Cat.

Hannibal Lechter Wants to Eat My Readers

2007-10-24T23:56:00.000-05:00

A few blogs back I asked any readers to e-mail us here at Fat-Chat and pose any questions to our “experts” or leave any comments that they didn’t feel were appropriate for the regular comment section. Since I love inappropriate things, unless it involves cramped elevators and people with uncontrollable flatulence, I am happy to print and respond to our first Fat-Chat reader e-mail.

(note: This e-mail has been edited for length and content. Original e-mail appears in exciting, fun-loving bold type, my responses are in plain, average, work-a-day text.)

Dear Fat-Chat Friends,

I love you, dear reader, for getting our name right and proving you know what blog you’re on in such a polite, literate way. Good folks like you make me smile. :)

What in the world is wrong with you people?

You are dead to me.

Therefore I shall summarize the rest of the e-mail. In essence Queen of the Universe shares a program I will call the “Liver Bemoan, She’s Divine” diet (if for no other reason than I like the way it sounds).

The diet consists of meal and lifestyle advice such as, “for dinner… two tall vodka/sodas with lime juice, fresh or concentrate (avoid scurvy!)… have a bottle of wine for dessert… glass of Scotch as a bedtime snack… enjoy the warm, alcohol induced slumber you so richly deserve.”

It includes a list of expectations like, “You get so drunk you don’t miss food,” and “When you wake in the morning you are so dehydrated you weigh in at LEAST five pounds less than you really are.”

The e-mail closes with a program testimonial: Believe me my friends, it works. It’s worked for me for YEARS. The only thing fat about me is my liver, and clearly that’s between you and me and the coroner. XOXOXOX Queen of the Universe

Wow.

I can’t believe what she wrote. I am shocked. Shocked! The amazement I am experiencing has left me unable to write coherently. What do you say to something like that? How can I express my disbelief, my incredulity? How dare Queen of the Universe suggest a “diet” plan so outrageous as to be…

AWESOME.

Now, other than the time a girl called me the “love doctor”, I am no physician, so I can’t comment on whether or not the “Liver Bemoan, She’s Divine” health plan has any sound medical theory. But in my opinion it has a great deal of merit. Queen of the Universe manages to stay thin, well-rested, popular and wise, all without sweating. Other than a warning about the dependency disease some, more judgemental, folks might call “college student”, my only advice would be try some moderation and variety.

Margaritas have fruit juice in them and would make a fine substitute for the wine (which, lest we forget, comes from grapes). Bourbon does not have any vitamins, but it also lacks carbohydrates, gives a warm, tingly feeling when it goes down and covers the odor of the mini pearl onions you ate with your Gibson cocktail. Worried that this “diet” lacks essential fatty acids or protein? A martini with three olives or a “Bloody Bull” (a Bloody Mary made with beef broth) would provide those missing ingredients and likely make grocery shopping more enjoyable.

Actually if you really think about “Liver Bemoan, She’s Divine”, just being on it would make most activities more fun. Add to that my own anecdotal evidence that girls on similar alcohol diets tend to be more willing to enjoy special “couples” aerobic therapy, and this has WINNER written all over it.

Just don’t drive, because no one wants to carry a big casket.

Thanks Queen, I’ll give it the old college try, and keep the e-mails coming!

Pigassus

Post Script: We all have ways to stay healthy and seriously good looking, but really, moderation is the key. I, for example, have just one family-sized bag of Peanut M&Ms a week, even though I want to have a bag a day. I also only have Papa John’s Thin Crust Six-Cheese pizza once or twice a week and almost never get Chinese take-out in the afternoons. It’s that kind of dedication that allowed me to lose another pound last week. I can’t wait to see what happens next week when I give Queenie’s plan a go.

The Biggest Loser Outrage

2007-10-23T23:34:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning know that one of the original inspirations for my decision to lose weight, get fit and stay that way was NBC's The Biggest Loser. I watch the show every week and usually enjoy it. But what happened tonight was an outrage and I wish every one of you who watches the show would write NBC and complain.

Basically, one of the contestants cheated big time, and they let him get away with it. As a result, one of my favorite contestants was unfairly and unethically eliminated from the game. And I think he was someone who might have had a chance to win the whole thing.

The show had three teams, but the Red Team sort of did itself in last week by eliminating its leader, Phil, who was very strong and helped them win most of the physical challenges. But the team usually did the worst at the weigh-ins, losing the least amount of weight.

The Blue Team was kind of sketchy from the get-go, not really winning any challenges, but doing okay in the weight loss part. But the Black Team, the 6 people who hadn't been picked for the original two teams, who had been abandoned in the desert and secretly trained by kick-ass trainer Jillian Michaels, the Black Team had been dominating everything, winning weigh-ins and challenges. They worked so hard and pulled together as a team so well that they seemed indomitable. There wasn't a whiner among them; everyone on the team was strong and worked hard. As a result, they'd only been to one elimination challenge; together and as individuals, they looked mighty hard to beat. So instead of taking up the gauntlet and redoubling their efforts to beat the Black Team ethically, the Blue Team decided to cheat.

You read that right. They decided to cheat. They stacked the deck, bent the rules, violated the spirit of the competition and all that's moral and right...by cheating to make sure they won and could eliminate a Black Team member. And this was only made possible by a surprise twist The Biggest Loser imposed last night. I doubt seriously the producers of the show ever envisioned a team would stoop so low to take advantage of the new rules. But the Blue Team did, particularly two of its members. But all its members are guilty and have forever lost my respect, because instead of telling the two members who planned to cheat not to do it, they supported them by following through with the second part of the plan and voting as a block even though all the teams had been broken apart by the game twist. Here's what happened.

Tonight, the teams were divided into 4 "trios," consisting of three people each. Jez, one of my favorite contestants, won the right to pick the new trios from the existing, lop-sided teams.

He did a thoughtful job, and tried to balance the trios fairly so that every team would have a chance to win. But what Jez didn't know was that the remaining members of the Blue Team had entered an unholy pact to win at any cost. Instead of the losing team voting off its own member, the three top trios would now vote off a member of the losing team. Because Jez tried to be so fair in balancing the teams, there were two trios that had 2 Blue Team members, giving them a voting majority on those trios. So they decided to cheat by deliberately throwing the weight challenge, agreeing ahead of time that they would vote off a Black Team member once their evil plot succeeded.

Right before the weigh-in, Neil and Ryan drank lots of water to hide their week's weight loss and make themselves themselves heavier. Ryan gained a pound, the first time anyone on this season has gained weight. But Neil drank TWO FULL GALLONS OF WATER JUST BEFORE HE STEPPED ON THE SCALE, AND HE GAINED 17 POUNDS IN ONE DAY!!!

Naturally, his team lost the weigh-in. But by deliberately "losing," he and his nefarious Blue Team members really won, because they got to vote Jez of the kick-ass Black Team out. Never mind that they won the right to vote by cheating; never mind that their cheating basically screws the rest of the game. Nothing will be fair in the game from this point on because of the sleazy, low, cheater-baby mindset of the blue team members. They've been crybabies and lazy from the start, so since they couldn't win legitimately, they decided to win by cheating. And by the way, I DON'T blame their trainer, Bob Harper, because this plan is something they cooked up on their own. Bob's a good guy and when he found out what his former team had done, he was enraged, ashamed and embarrassed.

It makes me furious that The Biggest Loser is letting the Blue Team get away with this. Both Neil and Ryan should be immediately eliminated from the game for cheating, and Jez should be brought back into the game.

Just go to nbc.com, click on "Contact Us" and use the drop-down menu to select "The Biggest Loser." Then let them know you don't appreciate people being allowed to blatantly cheat on their reality shows.

Alright. Even though I know this show was filmed months ago and the letters won't do any good, now I feel better.

Planet Fat Cat

Way-Out Weigh-In

2007-10-22T18:48:00.000-05:00

Today was weekly weigh-in, and it was a much happier day than last Monday. I finally lost a full pound in a week. Never mind that it was the exact same pound I lost three weeks ago. I managed to lose it again, and that's a good thing.

Also never mind that yesterday morning I weighed even less, a full pound less, so if I could have somehow put myself into suspended animation overnight, my weight loss for the week would have been two whole pounds. But oh, no! My body wasn't going to let me get away with that outrage. So somehow, overnight, it figured out how to pump out another pound of flab from the ether. I ate right; I exercised and my reward was...drum roll please...I gained a pound overnight.

Someone should study how my body is able to manufacture fat cells from thin air. Maybe they could use the technique to mass produce fuel, reduce our dependency on foreign oil and leave our corn crops alone. I just wish I could do that "Instant Perfect Body" thing Pigassus was talking about. But he says he wants to be Justin Timberlake. Why? Has his grey matter been replaced by phat cells?

As for me, I want to be this woman I've been seeing in my dreams for years and years, a woman I know is me. I am slim, willowy and wearing a flowing, diaphanous gown. I am gliding through a verdant meadow, with birds of the field perched upon my arms and flowers twined into my hair. Fragrant blossoms spring up in my path, and I am surrounded by loving, gentle animals. The lion is lying down with the lamb.

I am Mother Nature.

I am also seriously deluded, but that is a whole other post, so back to reality.

Here's my theory on why I gained that pound overnight. I think Pigassus drive two hundred miles during the night, drilled a hole in my skull and extracted my exact thoughts for his last column. So, my theory is that it was brain swelling that caused the weight gain.

It's all your fault, Pigassus!

And please hold the fathead jokes. I am now officially Planet Fat Cat. Despite five weeks of effort, I am still the size of a small outbuilding. How do I know this? Because my yard man accidentally tried to park his lawnmower under my skirt.

But, I am feeling better and stronger. I am mulling over the idea of adding something to my exercise routine other than walking. I have the walking down as a habit now and I feel secure enough to try something else without worrying about keeling over dead. I'm having problems with leg pain and I think it's because I've been doing the same thing over and over for five weeks now. So it's time to try something new.

I will be a goddess again...I will. I just wish I could do that "Instant Perfect Body" thing.

I know, I know. A year from now, I will have an "Instant Perfect Body." I just have to work really hard for it.

Planet Fat Cat

Corpus Transmorphica Grande

2007-10-22T04:04:00.000-05:00

If you are like me and know just enough Latin to be a danger to yourself and also enjoy highly Americanized Mexican food, you likely believe the above title refers to Taco Bell's newest burrito. Actually, if it did, it could hardly be any more disturbing or bland than their usual attempts to meld the six bulk ingredients they have on hand to create novel menu items. Just because they give it a new name, do they really think we don't realize it's the same inexpensive cheese product and questionably edible bean-like paste? Don't even get me started on the lumpy grey goop they call "meat".

But that's not what I wish to talk about in this column.

Instead I'd like to delve into the fantasy that I believe many people have had that might also be called the "Instant Perfect Body".

Most of you know what I mean by that, but just in case a stray Abercrombie model surfed by, I will simply state that the IPB fantasy is a day-dream where one's physical flaws are all wiped away by an unnatural (and benevolent) force and all of one's good features are enhanced to a point of exquisite beauty normally unseen in nature. The details of the transformation vary from person to person, as does the extent, but in the end we all become just friggin' GORGEOUS in comparatively little time. Poof! We're models!

What interests me about the IPB desire are the three parts of it that I would call the Delivery Devices, the Larval Stages, and the Guilty Pleasures phase. These parts, I imagine, make an otherwise common desire wildly divergent and certainly fascinating, even uniquely cool. As no two dimples on an ass cheek are alike, no two IPBs are either.

For myself, the greatest variation in my IPB comes from the "Delivery Devices". Something powerful, and external, has to make the change in my appearance, and rarely do I receive an explanation of why I am the beneficiary of such delicious beauty. The Lord, aliens, stray chemical waste leaks, leprechauns, and confused evil sorcerers have all made appearances in my fantasy as the actuators of my transformation. At times I have called forth the agents by prayer or (for example) by looking under a rainbow for a pot of gold, and each entity grants me my wish.

How they grant me those good looks are what I call the "Larval Stages".

In keeping with the spirit of "Instant Perfect Body", many times the Larval Stages are truncated and consist only of the aforementioned "poof!" One second I am standing there with unconditioned abs and a crooked smile (my only two flaws of any note) and a flash of bright light later I have a six-pack of hard muscles and a dazzlingly straight mouth full of gleaming white teeth. But sometimes there are actual stages. Some desire to make the fantasy more real prods me to make the change more gradual so that any observer would think it natural. Instead of just becoming perfect in seconds, I take a few days or weeks so that my friends would notice, but not immediately assume I had sold my soul to nefarious agents. I have fantasized on occasion that my "Instant" perfect body took three months of slow, progressive improvement.

But no matter who does it or how I become perfect, eventually I get the undeniably handsome body that I unquestionably deserve. And thus I begin to use my new found looks and end up experiencing the "Guilty Pleasures".

And I do mean "guilty".

Let's face it: If you looked like Justin Timberlake, you would go out and party like friggin' Justin Timberlake. Joining that monastery, which I'm sure sounds reasonable to short, fat, balding folks, would make absolutely no sense if you had the body of a porn star. If you got it, flaunt it.

Still, even in fantasy land, I have something resembling a conscience and inevitably the guilty part of the Guilty Pleasures enters the dream. What happens to my friends and family while I am off cavorting with Rachel McAdams and Jessica Alba? Do I pretend not to know any of the still "normal" looking folks that I once proudly interacted with after I become awesome? How can I leave them all back in Average Acres when I have moved on to Glamour Gulch?

Like this: So long suckers! Hello, Rachel...

Okay, so maybe I don't have that much guilt. But the results of my transformation do vary and sometimes I actually put my looks to good use once I have them. I get a great job, find a new wife, buy my parents giant mansions etc. etc. Eventually I work out the kinks and end up happy.

And then I wonder: Why do I need to be beautiful to be happy?

I'll tackle that whopper another time. For now, I would ask that anyone interested e-mail me a description of an IPB fantasy. Perhaps we've had a similar one involving leprechauns and Jessica Alba (or Justin Timberlake depending on your preference). I'll post some of mine from time to time just to see if at various stages of my life the IPB changes too.

Pigassus

Post Script 1: If any Abercrombie models did wander by, please allow me to be the first to help you with any difficult words and accept any photos you wish to pass on.

Post Script 2: I write out my IPBs like so:

Delivery Device: Unknown Golden Ray coming from my shower head.

Laval Stages: Instant improvements wherever the rays land followed by successive improvements each time I shower.

Guilty Pleasures: After a couple months of magical showers, Rachel McAdams sees me having lunch with my Mom and instantly falls in love with me. Take that Ryan Gosling!

Britney Spears is NOT Fat!

2007-10-20T23:30:00.001-05:00

Being softies (in EVERY sense of the word...), we here at Fat Chat would like to speak out on behalf of the beleaguered Britney Spears...AKA the former Mrs. Kevin Federline. The following picture was recently published on the World Wide Web under the headline: "Britney Spears is Getting Fat!"

Okay, if Britney Spears is fat is this photo, then I'm a heavenly body. And by that I don't mean I have a beautiful figure. I mean, compared to Britney, I'm a whole other planet. How can I tell I'm a planet? Because of the regular elliptical orbit I maintain...refrigerator, stove, recliner. Refrigerator, stove, recliner. You could set your clock by it.

You might notice Miss Britney is proudly carrying a special award in the above photo. It's the first-ever Fat-Chat Cruller of Kindness award. Brit is so beleaguered these days, we just thought we would give her an award to acknowledge that she is still beautiful and talented, even if she is also making some rather bad choices at the moment.

In fact, upon due consideration, we realized we had to give Britney another accord, this one perhaps not so welcome, the first-ever Fat-Chat Donut of Disapproval. But Miss Fat Cat confesses she felt some trepidation when she was giving out this designation, because the very thing she was trying to cover up..., well, I guess she never took into consideration that donuts have holes in very awkward places. But at least the donut hole is better than seeing Miss Britney's bits.

Upon further consideration, Miss Fat Cat decided she had to make this a whole donut rather than a holey donut. The holey donut was actually quite unholy, and could possibly have offended some of our more tender readers.

Now, for our next topic. Shut up, Cris Crocker. Yes, we said Shut up!

Because you are not the only one who likes Britney and who is willing to go out on a limb to defend her. She may be drunk, disorderly, fast as a pick pocket on pay day and easy as a 10-piece puzzle, but she is not not not FAT. Or even Phat. Okay, Pigassus just told me she is maybe phat. Can I help it if I'm older than God's dog and don't quite understand ebonics?

Yes, we awarded Cris Crocker the second official Fat-Chat Donut of Disapproval. We made him eat it!

Still, it's just not fair. There is such a double standard in Hollywood. Male stars can have paunches down to their knees and still be cast as romantic leads. The 20-something starlets they hire to play the ingenue to the old goat must grimace when they're forced to kiss these geezers for the cameras, but the folks who run Hollywood think it's okay. But just let a female star gain an ounce, get a wrinkle or a grey hair...and God forbid! Run her out of town! Eeeeew! Who does that hag think she is, still trying to work in Tinseltown when she's old and fat?

Yep, it's the old double standard alright. Just let Britney have the teensiest bit of tummy after two prenancies and all of a sudden she's a heifer. I'll tell you who's at fault in that whole Video Music Award thing, other than the person who gave Brit all that joy juice before she went on stage. It's whoever designed her costume and dressed her. Beyonce has a rather pronounced and generous-sized booty, but her mother, who is an ingenius costume designer, makes her clothes to emphasize her tiny waist and flat stomach, and she looks like a dream. Of course, the fact that she is drop dead gorgeous helps a lot, but you get my drift.

As far as I'm concerned. whoever designed Brit's VMA costume is a rather mean-spirited person, because they put parts on full display that could have been camouflaged to make Britney look as slim as she actually is. Instead, she might as well have been wearing a flashing neon arrow pointing at her ever so slightly untoned midriff and making it look 10 times worse than it actually is. By my sights, Britney is still about a size 8 and that's a slender woman. Sure, she has a bit of a rounded stomach, but that's what happens after women have babies, and she's just had two in quick succession.

Take a look at this picture. This is NOT a fat woman. Misguided? Yes. Impulsive and impetuous? Most Definitely. Mother or Driver of the Year candidate? Um, in a word...no. But fat? FAT? Most definitely not. So cut her some slack, world!

Speaking of the double standard, the following male star is still beloved and considered highly sexy, especially by his good friend, Oprah. But look at this picture of him. He is quite frankly, fat. In fact, he is fatter than Fat Cat. But he is still bringing home the bacon...if you get my meaning.

As a matter of fact, that's a whole mess of bacon, that is.

Hmm, bacon. Time to go into orbit. Ta-ta for now!

Planet Fat Cat

P. S. - Planet Fat Cat almost forgot to thank Piggy for his brilliance. She was mulling over the idea of Fat-Chat giving out some sort of awards when he oinked out in an instant - Cruller of Kindness and Donut of Disapproval. Dearest Piggy can always be relied upon to come up with a food-based solution to any problem. However, I had quite a struggle in trying not to eat the awards before I handed them out.

Oink!

I mean, um, er...meow.

Yes, We Listen

2007-10-20T08:06:00.000-05:00

For all of you Peeping Thomases out there who question the interactive nature of the Internet, we here at Fat-Chat shall prove scientifically that we are, for lack of a better vocabulary, interactive. To that end, I would like to respond to a comment left by our most prolific commenter, Gucci Muse.

Her original comment, reproduced scientifically, is as follows:

Gucci Muse said...

ok, this is what I think, or what I know.

I have seen MANY MANY MANY MANY gorgeous men with FAT or OBESE women. Once I saw at a bar on the beach, a chunky assed woman, in a BIKINI, with her belly HANGING OVER the bottoms, sitting at a bar, with a STUD, tanned gorgeous boy standing at the bar trying to hit on her and was obviously mesmerized.

I often wondered what she had.

My friend's mother said: CONFIDENCE, and its true. It also works for FUGLY women b/c they have it as well.

So don't worry so much about the number on the scale, just keep doing what you do.

My scientific reply to her comment:

Pigassus said...

I understand what professional pick-up men call the "confidence game". In this game dice are shaved, imperceptibly at the corners, so that they will have a better chance of landing on the desired numbers, usually 7 or 11, also called "craps". And since I am so knowledgeable in this game, I can say without a doubt that it has nothing to do with chubby women in bikinis and the staggering beefcake trying to "score" with them.

No. Only one thing can explain the actions of the man in the above example and that complex psycho-chemical behavioral theory can be summed up in two words: Beer Goggles.

Or the dreaded "Margarita Mask" if you live near Texas.

You see, the muscle bound stud was intoxicated, and not by Orca's confident charm I assure you. Men and women both understand the social lubricator that is a mass consumption of strong libations. Was she displaying a great deal of confidence? Sure, but probably because she noticed he had recently vomited into the cabana trash can. As he squinted heavily upon his approach to her place at the buffet, she gained a great deal of courage and certainty that must have looked a lot like old-fashioned confidence.

In case you are not convinced, allow me to regale you with another provably learned example:

I was at the grocery store last week buying healthy, organically grown, farm-raised Cheetos and beer when I spotted what can best be described as a "slammin' hottie". Tall, dark haired with strong, slender legs and a huge set of gorgeous teeth, she turned into the chip isle where I was about to grab a low-fat bag of baked Doritos (for good health). Upon seeing her, I quickly and imperceptibly drew myself up to my full height and reached for the snacks with my muscular arm confidently. I couldn't have looked more self-assured lurching for those tasty treats.

But I could have been part of the coupon display.

And why did she not notice me? Because she wasn't drunk and I am poor.

In her sober, calculating state, she might have literally failed to see me. Like actually as she walked down the isle she only saw chips and peanuts and my cart and thought to herself, "What jerk left a cart unattended? And this isn't the tanning lotion isle. Where am I? "

Had I been thinking clearly, which I wasn't because of the attempt to suck in my six-pack of "abs", I would have pulled out some cash. But since I just had a few ones and a nickle, likely she would have only seen the money and I would have remained invisible and prompted a frightened, "OMG, who left their money floating in mid-air?"

So you see, confidence means nothing to dumb girls and now we have proof.

All we need now are some drinks.

Pigassus

Post Script: All kidding aside, Gucci is right about confidence. Maybe it doesn't get you a night of indescribable fun with "slammin' hotties", but if you are less than physically perfect, it sure can take you a long way... to the free clinic.

So I hear.

The Law of Fat and Effect

2007-10-18T05:29:00.000-05:00

In case you missed a recent British study on the causes of obesity and the resultant damage to society: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21340725/from/ET/wid/11915773?gt1=10514 I will give you a very quick summation: Being fat is not your fault.

Hooray! Three cheers and a bucket of hot wings! Finally, the scientific community has conclusive evidence that the porcine amongst us aren't the conductors of their own fat orchestra.

Really... Well then who is to blame for XXXL shirts and "appetizers" large enough to feed six adult Somalians? What chthonic agent then is to blame for clogged arteries in teens and asses that require an airline seat for each cheek?

You guessed it: GLOBAL WARMING.

Turns out all that trapped heat has expanded our energy absorbent bodies and, like a kettle left too long on a burner, we're all about to explode! Run for the hills!

Okay, calm down. I just went back to the article and re-read it to check and make sure that the word "global" didn't have two "l"s, and it seems I got something wrong. Actually, I got everything wrong and the real culprit is much more logical and true. You see, SOCIETY is to blame for society becoming overweight.

I wish I had made the second reason up.

Apparently a group of well-paid, bespectacled geek-types have come to the conclusion that overwhelming forces in our nebulous culture make it impossible to avoid gaining weight. The very act of "storing" food in your home, where cave men did not posses such stockpiles of calories, make obesity not just likely, but inevitable. Throw in advertising of food, fast food availability, corn syrup in our drinks, and it's a damn miracle we aren't ALL 400lbs.

It's not your fault, see; it's everyone else's.

"They" did it to you.

Now all we need to do is pass a few hundred laws prohibiting the sale, manufacture, consumption, and desire for sweet and fatty foods and presto! Thin Earth, here we come.

Except that of course that will not happen. The truth is that WE are society and WE are actually individuals that make a million choices each year that affect our own health. Just because we can order an extra large six-cheese deep-dish pizza and have it delivered fresh and hot to our door doesn't mean we should. And it certainly doesn't mean we should eat that whole delicious melty goodness alone. We have the choice now to eat bean sprouts and soy curd if we think that will keep us alive longer.

The point is that we have those choices. As soon as any government declares that we cannot think for ourselves and our "problems" are beyond our individual control then, all kidding aside, it is time to run for the hills.

So walk, Fat Cat, walk! If you don't lose some weight, the government will make us all eat Subway sandwiches without mayo, yuck, and it will have been your fault. The planet is counting on you!

But, no pressure.

Pigassus

Post Script: If I have to eat bean sprouts, which taste like dirty old dirt, instead of the aforementioned eight slices of pizza Heaven, then I don't want to live longer.

Losing the Same Pound...527 Times

2007-10-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

I am feeling chipper this morning. Want to know why? Because today, my demon scale says I weigh 203.8 pounds. Sure, that just two-tenths of a pound less than yesterday, but it puts me down in the 203s again.

Which brings to mind this point: how many times am I going to have to lose this particular pound before it stays gone for good? How many months is it going to take me to break 200 pounds? I have this nightmare vision of hovering around 201 pounds for months, maybe even years, while my stubborn old body desperately contrives new ways to manufacture fat out of thin air.

The day I weigh 199 pounds should be joyful but it will not be, because I know no matter how hard I work to get there, my body will go into full fat panic mode and start churning out globules of fat in record fashion, just to hang on to my thunder thighs. Which means, the day after I hit 199 pounds, I will wake up and discover that I weigh 257 pounds. If thighs could smile, mine would be grinning like mad.

Today is day 30 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I haven't missed a single check mark in my journal. I am very proud of this accomplishment, but seeing so few tangible results from my month of hard work is discouraging. I now understand why people who have a substantial amount of weight to lose, people like me, don't stay with our exercise programs. We don't see results, we bail out.

In my little pea-sized heart, I think a month is a long time to go without seeing visible results. I want to kiss my jiggly ass and flubbery thighs goodbye, but they are still there, menacing innocent knickknacks on my friends' furniture. (I specify my friends' houses because I have been forced to "butt-proof" my own house.) It makes me sad to look at myself in the rear view mirror and see the "Queen of all Butts" still leering evilly at me. Will I be dragging that thing around forever? Will it never bow to the dictates of physics and contain itself?

We have been conditioned by shows like The Biggest Loser to think that all we have to do is eat less and exercise more and the pounds will come flying off. In real life, that's just not so. 30 days ago I weighed 206.4 pounds and today, after a month of walking, a month with no Coca-Cola or ice cream or homemade Ghiardelli Chocolate Brownies or Chocolate Chip Cookies or crunchy, buttery cinnamon toast, I weigh 203.8 pounds, a loss of just 2.6 pounds.

Like I said, pretty discouraging results for a month of work. This is where most people would get off the bus. Heck, I've wanted to get off the bus for a couple of weeks now. But I'm not going to. If I accomplish one goal with this, it will be to stop requiring blood pressure medication. I don't want to have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life when my "condition" could easily be normalized with regular exercise and better fitness. And my blood pressure numbers don't lie or bounce around like my scale does. They have been coming down steadily and staying down.

Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion the medication is at least partially responsible for me suffering something called a vitreous tear in my left eye. The doctor told me it happens as you get older, particularly if you lift something heavy (I had been hefting some heavy boxes around) and...if your eyes are dry.

Duh, I've been taking a diuretic. Of course my eyes are dry. Everything on me is dry – my lips, my mouth, my throat. I drink water like I just completed a 7-day desert trek. I go through lip balm like it was Easter Candy or perhaps, considering the time of year, I should say, Halloween Candy.

So am I to believe that my poor eye just up and spontaneously ripped itself apart, sort of committed eye hari kiri?

Uh, I don't think so. But here's a multiple choice question I never thought I would have to answer:

a. Would you like to have a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

or:

b. Would you like to go blind from the medicine we're giving you to keep you from having a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

Gee, is America's pill-driven medical culture swell or what?

I choose Answer c. @#$%!!! you all!

Yes, I know that technically that answer wasn't actually on the quiz, but it was a trick quiz anyway, designed to drive frightened patients into an expensive lifetime of pill dependency when frequently, all they have to do is modify their behavior to save their own lives. And yes, crazy pill company lawyers...I realize there are some lifesaving drugs that absolutely cannot be replaced by simple dietary or lifestyle modifications...so tuck your lawsuits away inside your stuffed shirts and leave me alone.

I'm taking responsibility for my health into my own hands. I am slowly weaning myself off the blood pressure pills, taking one just every other day now, and my pressure is staying way down. Next week, I will start taking a pill every third day, and so on until I am off the things entirely.

The way I see it, a little 30-minute walk every day on my treadmill is a small price to pay to keep from having to pick either a. or b. – even if it does mean I have to keep losing the same lame pound over and over and over again.

The Genetic Lottery

2007-10-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

I am not resigned to being a fat person, but I will say this: getting slimmer would be a lot easier if my body would cooperate with me and with science. When you eat LESS and exercise MORE, you are SUPPOSED to lose weight. It's scientific.

Unfortunately, for many older, overweight women, that just isn't how it works. (Note to self: Journal entry #488. Must talk to the Big Mysogynist in the Sky about why he hates women so much...)

On The Biggest Loser, the male contestants sweat and groan and cry like babies and lose 10 pounds a week. The female contestants sweat and groan and cry like babies and lose 1 pound, or do not lose any weight, or...drum roll please! Like yours truly, actually gain weight.

How is this fair?

It's not fair, my child.

Okay, Big Mysogynist in the Sky (hereafter known as b-mits). No one was talking to...

um, err...heh-heh-heh!

I didn't really mean that, not at all, just the old proverbial "slip of the tongue," so you can hold off on the lightning bolt, b-mits. You really can, unless you arrange it to burn just the fat off my ass and thighs.

I am just SO FRUSTRATED today. Yes, I am down .8 pounds from yesterday to a more moderate 204.0, but there were days last week when I weighed 202.0 pounds, so how and why am I back here at 204?

I'll tell you why. It's the genetic lottery. Even though I am descended from aristocracy (no kidding) it was Polish aristocracy and there has to be a field hand or two stuck in there somewhere, a little slap and tickle in the green Polish verge whilst Mamá was at prayers. Otherwise, how do explain my delicate, aristocratic turn of feature, the high cheekbones, the noble forehead creased with selfless thoughts, stacked on top of the Pillars of Hercules? How do you correlate the baby-fine blond hair with hands any NFL quarterback would be proud to own?

How do you?

You don't.

There is this woman at work. I will call her Madame X. She is not only the single most exquisitely beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes upon, she is also the nicest, the kindest, the sweetest. I want to hate her, but in good conscious, I cannot. The men all swoon around her. A friend of mine says she looks like she's carved out of cream cheese, just that luscious. I do not feel such thoughts when I see her; I feel envy.

She recently had her second baby, and three minutes later, she was back in her size one jeans. She is the same height as I am, but weighs almost a hundred pounds less. She is NOT anorexic, she is NOT scrawny or skinny, she is willowy. And why? Because she won the genetic lottery. She was standing at the front of the line for the best teeth, best eyes, best skin, best hair, best body...heck, even her toes, which are frequently on display and painted to match her outfit...even her toes are cute. And lest you be making some stereotypical assumption that all that beauty must come at a price and she is perforce, dumb, you would be wrong. She is also smart. She was also in the front of the brains line.

I know. It hardly seems fair. Couldn't I have been near the front for at least one of the lines?

Oh wait! I forgot. I was at the front of the lines for "Fat Ass" and "Thunder Thighs." I also think I was first in the "Knows the meaning of the word, 'irony' and can use it in a complete sentence" line.

Thanks, b-mits, but next time, can I please have big ta-tas, a vapid stare and a minuscule brain? Then I wouldn't have to work for a living.

Anyway, my dear little Piggie, who seems quite fussy this morning, was also at the front of several lines...looks, brains, personality. But he was so used to the world falling at his feet, at it so often does for attractive people, that he simply can't get used to the loss of adulation now that he's packing some extra pounds.

Have no fear, Pigassus. It is on, and together we will scale Mount Mashed Potato and plant the flag of skinny victory upon its summit.

Or roll down the hill inhaling as much mashed potato as we can before we crash into lardiferous heaps at the bottom, whichever comes first.

Fat Cat

Oh, It's On and Brought and Such

2007-10-16T05:29:00.000-05:00

I think I smell a challenge.

Not the usual kind of challenge like when I try to mix bacon and spinach with tomato and lemon in a cheese soup base with sliced, grilled chicken. No. This is the bitter, disappointing scent of gym socks, tears, and carrots... the weight loss program smell. Fat Cat has, perhaps without realizing it, asked me to duel her to the DEATH in a Winner Loses All Fat Eviscerating Contest.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic. Perhaps, "Loser Wins a Something Fitness Sparing Jamboree."

Which explains the demise of my marketing career and calls into question my sense of smell.

Anywho, what better way to inspire someone than with a good old fashioned trial against a peer-like person? Even though it is commonly recognized that I am perfection and needn't lose any weight, isn't it time I showed my commitment to this site and my friend by going ahead and getting perfecter anyways? Doesn't my appetizer of humility demand a entrée of altruism with just a side of buttery graciousness?

The answer is a tasty YES.

So although friends, relatives, strangers and other ne'er-do-wells all agree that I might actually degrade my looks with a drastic weight loss, I am willing to try for Fat Cat's sake.

Therefore, let the Jamboree begin! We'll work out the rules and prizes and all that gritty, technical mumbo gumbo later.

Pigassus

Post Script 1: In a later post I'll include instructions so that anyone with the "stones" to do so can join in our Jamboree to the DEATH Fat Loss Evisceration or whatever we'll call it by then.

Post Script 2: This morning I weighed 211.5 pounds dry and by the "sc-eye-entific" method it was nearly 90% muscle. Beat that Harvard scale! The oven mitts are off!

The Dreaded Weigh-In

2007-10-15T23:24:00.000-05:00

This morning was my fourth weekly weigh-in since I started my weight loss journey, and I can honestly say it's the first one I dreaded. As I approached the weigh day all the other weeks,I was full of joy. I had been sneaking my measurements and could see that they had gone down, and of course, my CDWIs (Constant Daily Weight-Ins) offered mostly good news, too. If my weight bumped up at all, it was only by a pound or so, and then it went right back down the next day or even lower.

But all this week my weight has been creeping higher and higher, no matter what I did. I actually upped my walks from 25 to 30 minutes this week, so I am exercising more, not less, and I increased the incline on my treadmill from 1% to 2% just to make my workout a little harder. The only thing I didn't do this week was my arm workout because I overdid it last week and pulled a muscle, so I took the week off to give it time to heal.

Yeah I know. It's damned hard to hurt yourself with three pounds weights but I managed it.

I stuck closely to my nutritional plan - no sodas, no ice cream, no cinnamon toast - just healthy food in reasonable portions consumed before 8 at night except for that one meal out on Wednesday, the night of the by now legendary Chocolate Eruption. But that one lapse was last Wednesday and the weigh-in was today, so I should have been alright, right?

Wrong.

Every day last week, the scales crept up and up. I was pulling my hair out (like I really need to add baldness to fatness). What was I doing wrong? I was exercising, I was eating right, but my stubborn body was hanging on to every fat cell like it was a pearl beyond price. The Keebler Elves of Fat were working overtime inside my Pillars of Hercules to make sure my thighs stayed properly plumped.

Now I am NOT starving myself. First of all, I like food too much to do that; secondly, as a medical reporter I know not eating enough sends your body, particularly the female body into panic fat storage mode. But despite my care to eat normal meals at normal times, my body has gone into panic fat storage mode anyway. In fact, my body is currently in panic fat manufacturing mode. If I listened closely enough (and understood thigh) I swear I could almost hear my thighs whispering to each other in their guttural, prehistoric tongue: Ugh, woman eat last of woolly mastodon this morning. Must conserve fat. Must make fat. Must make more fat. Ugh.

So anyway, here's the tragic truth of the weigh-in:

I know. MY EYES! MY EYES! That's what I said, too. But since I pledged from the beginning that I was going to be honest on this blog, that's the numbers, horrifying though they are.

Hear that, oh hott one?

I GAINED almost a pound and a half, apparently from breathing in too much air; either that or my scale's been smoking crack cocaine. I GAINED .2% in my body fat, going from 40.4% fat to 40.6%, and this after 4 weeks of walking 6 days a week. According to my fancy, Harvard-educated scale, all that exercise caused my muscle mass to fall from 28.8% of my body to 28.7%. What? How can I even stand up? It's a wonder I have enough muscle power to press the keys on this computer.

HOW CAN I STILL BE SO FAT AFTER FOUR WEEKS OF EXERCISE AND MODERATE EATING? HOW CAN I HAVE ONLY LOST BARELY A POUND IN A MONTH OF HARD WORK AND DEDICATION? WHERE IS KIM LYONS WHEN I NEED HER?

I walk on a treadmill so I know exactly how fast I am going, 3 miles per hour, so it's not like I am crawling like a slug upon the ground. But no matter. I still GAINED a half inch in each thigh this week, the same half inch it took me three weeks to lose. But before you kindly try to tell me that maybe it's muscle, let me just say...muscle doesn't jiggle.

All this goes against common sense, logic, fairness, all that's holy, and I think maybe even Robert's Rules of Order. I was robbed, I was cheated, I was kicked around by the Universe and spat upon.

But, and but...look at my blood pressure and resting heart rate. When I started, even with medication my blood pressure was 140 over 94, not terrifying like it was back in March, 217 over 107 when I took myself to the emergency room, but not great either. Now look at it: 128 over 78 (she says proudly...). And my resting heart rate has gone from 77 beats per minute down to 65. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you but to me it means I am getting more fit, even if my damned scale refuses to believe it.

My first reaction to all the bad news this morning was to go on a binge, even though I am not a binge person. I wanted to fry up a pound of bacon and roll around in it. I wanted to slather butter on a whole loaf of bread, coat each slice with sugar, then coat the sugar with cinnamon, and stick it under the broiler until the butter bubbled up through the sugar and made a luscious crunchy crust on top of each slice. I wanted to drizzle chocolate sauce all over my hands and lick it off. I wanted to suck whipped cream straight from the Lucky Whip nozzle. Why the hell not? Apparently it didn't make any difference to my body what I ate or didn't eat; it was going to stay fat even if it had to manufacture the stuff out of thin air. So why not enjoy myself?

Here's why. Because if I let this set-back defeat me, a year from now I will still be a fat person. And I don't want to be a fat person any more. So I didn't eat all that food I fancied; I just enjoyed my carefully measured one cup of raisin bran with one small sliced banana. I did allow myself the satisfaction of going into the bathroom and staring at my scale with evil intent. I resisted the urge to pick it up and smash it against the bathroom wall. I mean, I just painted. No sense ruining a perfectly good paint job in a fit of pique.

So, Round 4 goes to the scale. But I will win the match.

I will.

Fat Cat

When To Seek Help

2007-10-15T02:24:00.000-05:00

For many of the large-ish people out there, there comes a point when they ask themselves an important question: "One dozen glazed or two?" But of course they choose two, and then they ask themselves an even more critical follow-up question: "Holy crap, do I have a problem with my weight?" Since they are carrying a few pounds of sugar-coated, deep-fried pastries and it's breakfast, the short answer is "duh".

But the odd thing is many people never get to the "duh". Like a truffle pig searching the forest floor, the clueless doughnut addict from the above example keeps nosing around from shrub to shrub looking for tasty fungus to clamp their surprisingly articulate lips around.

No, back up, that's both insensitive and not really what I meant.

What I actually mean is that most people keep endlessly searching for signs that they have a problem with their health and the behaviors that cause their weight gain. Though they are given ample clues, they dismiss the obvious and keep waiting for the one conclusive piece of evidence that will indelibly stamp a mark on their forehead that says, "Overweight Person! Seek Help!"

In the meantime, they not only endanger their health, but also the welfare of anyone they collide with on the street.

So in an effort to give people in need a sure-fire sign that they absolutely, definitely, positively should start looking for help and support for their weight problem, we here at Fat-Chat have designed an incredibly unscientific and possibly offensive test.

Please retain your answers for the analysis at the end.

1. In previous posts a dessert was mentioned by the name of "Chocolate Eruption". When you read the name, did you snicker to yourself because it sounded vaguely like a bodily function, a body part, or (depending on your level of adventure) an act between two consenting adults? Or did you think about a Snickers bar?

2.

3. (For men) Does the part of your belly under the navel sag low enough to cover from sight or, Heaven forbid, actually cover any important parts that were referenced in question one?

4. (For women) Is it difficult for people to determine exactly where your knees, calves, and ankles begin or end?

5. Do you look at a restaurant menu like other people view "adult" magazines and consider the phrase "dinner is served" naughty talk?

Scoring:

1. If you answered, "Yes, eruption is a funny word, man!" then you are a a teenage boy and you have very little problem with your weight and everyone else reading this hates you and hopes you get really fat when you get older. If your mouth watered a little when you saw the word Snickers, mark one point.

2. A trick question. If you saw the blank spot and just wondered if I was incompetent or lazy, then you are mean and judgemental. If you saw the second line and made a bet with yourself that I had gone to have a snack and forgot to write something and now you are trying to figure out what's still edible in your refrigerator so you can get a snack, mark one point. Mark a second point if you did in fact pull out three-day old mac-and-cheese and go to town.

3. Mark a point if, in reference to the question, the phrase "little snake coming out of the cave" makes any sense. Actually, mark two points.

4. If you looked confused for a second but then while looking down at your lower leg, nodded, mark a point. Mark two points if you had trouble seeing your lower leg.

5. Yes, food is an aphrodisiac? Mark a point and remind me not to invite you to dinner.

Analysis:

Okay, the obvious thing is that I probably think more than I should about food and carnal "relations". But since I am not the one with a problem, I will instead just offer this advice:

If you marked ANY points, SEEK HELP.

Now, for a change, I am serious (though not in any professional way). Think about asking someone to help you if you are struggling with your health and weight. Just telling someone you intend to lose weight or get in shape will make it ten times more likely that you will try. Disappointing yourself is easy; being a let-down to someone else is hard. I don't mean that you need to go to a private dietitian or physical therapist (unless you think you should), but maybe try getting someone else involved with your weight loss. Join a group, tell your kids to remind you to go for a jog, find someone to have regular erotic aerobic adventures with... anything that will get an external force to help support and encourage you in your difficult endeavor. ANYBODY.

Even someone hott like me.

As long as you bring the doughnuts.

Pigassus

Frustration

2007-10-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is weigh-in day and already I'm dreading it. Until now, I could look at my daily weight loss journal entries and even in the spiraling ups and downs of my weight, still see a gradual pattern of weight loss emerging. But this week, the sprials have all been up and what I see emerging, even though I am only four weeks into this thing and have really only lost three pounds or so...is a dreaded "plateau."

Now a plateau, at least in the world of dieters, is when your body basically says, "F@#$!!@!! you!" I've dropped all the pounds I care to drop. You want to lose any more? Get lipo! Get a lap band! Leave me alone. I prefer the ass just like it is now, got it?"

Yes, I know. It's appalling that my body would speak to me in such a manner. I myself was raised by a true Southern belle who had exquisite manners (Thank you, mama...). But since I am the only one who "raised" my body (grew it all by myself, with a little help from Blue Bell and Coca-Cola) it's not quite as well-mannered as I, or at least, as I pretend to be when people are looking.

Translated into plain English, this means my body has gotten used to the amount of exercise I am doing and the type and amount of food I am eating and in order to lose more, I am going to have to do more and eat less.

I HATE THIS! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!

I must take a few paragraphs to whine. Don't you think giving up guzzling Coca-Cola should count for something? By my estimate I got rid of 897 calories a day just by switching to water (3 12-ounce cans a day x 155 calories = 465 calories + one 32-ounce gut buster from any convenient drive-in a day at 432 calories = 897 empty liquid but simply divine calories a day.) Multiply that times the 28 days I have been on this program and it equals 25,116 calories. Divide that by 3,500, the number of calories you have to either burn or give up to lose one pound, and that equals 7.176 pounds. So, survey says, I should have lost 7.176 pounds from this sacrifice alone by now, but my body is saying, "Oh, hell no!"

That's not even taking into account the ice cream and chocolate I have given up, or the hot, buttery, crunchy cinnamon toast that I make so well but won't let myself make any more because I am trying to become healthy.

That's also not taking into account the fact that over the last month, by sheer dint of will, I have transformed myself from:

• a human sloth who got up and moved away from my computers (yes, there's more than one) only to eat, go to work and attend to the call of nature

into:

• a fantastic human exercise machine

Um, err, well...

into:

• a human sloth who grudgingly gets up on the treadmill every day so I can make an honest check mark in my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program journal.

So with all the calories I've burned walking this past month and all the calories I haven't taken in by giving up many of my favorite indulgences and NOT replacing them with any other indulgence, I think I should have lost 10 pounds or so by now. But once again, my body is saying, "Oh, hell no! We likes it fat! We likes it blubbery!" (I have no idea why my body is talking like Golem, but it's kind of creepy and scary...)

So this week, despite my faithfulness to the program and sticking mostly to my diet (what's one Chocolate Eruption amongst friends?) despite that...it looks like I am going to have a weight gain this week, not a weight loss, and it also looks like I am not losing any additional inches this week.

In the past, my old self would have said, "Screw this! I'm not flogging myself and depriving myself for no reason. If my body wants to stay fat, let it stay fat! I'm not working this hard for nothing. If it's a choice between lounging on my double-wide, snorkeling in Coca-Cola and weighing 204 pounds or busting my hump on the treadmill, counting every calorie and still weighing 204 pounds, then bring on the Coca-Cola! Bring it on!"

But my new self is watching the one number that does keep going down...my blood pressure. And my new self is focusing on the true reason I am on this program, which is to get fit and healthy. And fit and healthy does not always mean skinny. Apparently, at least in my case, it will NEVER mean skinny. But if I keep going as I am, I will be able to wean myself off my blood pressure medication and keep my pressure under control simply through regular cardiovascular exercise and healthy eating. Notice I didn't saying dieting, because I am not on a diet, I am on a journey.

Actually, I am on a mission. And you know what they say, there is no one more fervent than a recent convert. I am a recent convert who doesn't want to become a recent martyr.

And so...I walk.

Fat Cat

Finding the Right Carrot

2007-10-12T17:46:00.000-05:00

It may or may not surprise you to know that I bought my treadmill wa-a-ay back in 1991, and if length of use were the sole measurement employed to determine its condition, it would still be practically brand new.

Over the years, I walked on it occasionally, and once I even walked on it pretty regularly, for about ten days or so. But something else always came up to distract me. The problem was, I wasn't determined to walk on the treadmill so...I almost never did. I did however, turn it into a fetching free-form Art Deco clothes hangar and box storage unit.

The clothes and boxes are gone now and I am on Day 25 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program. I am doing it. I am sticking with an exercise program because I finally found the right carrot. Telling myself I was going to get slender and beautiful never did the trick, but telling myself if I didn't get up off my doublewide and walk I was going to die sooner rather than later, well...that had a most efficacious effect on my motivation.

But just realize, this is my carrot, and my carrot may not work for you at all. You really do have to find your own.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I learned way back in March that I had dangerously high blood pressure. Now that's a health problem that responds rather quickly to a walking done as an exercise, a health problem that can sometimes be totally managed or even "cured" by regular walking. Yet, even knowing this, it still took me to October to get up on the treadmill. I walked a few times between then and now, but it was always a desultory sort of "catch as catch can" sort of thing. I knew my health was on the line, but I was still not motivated to make the changes I needed to make to improve my health.

I know. I'm probably a head case.

Then I figured out how to give myself a dandy carrot, a carrot that is working. It's a sort of unusual carrot to be sure, but a carrot nonetheless and as long as I don't cheat, as long as I play by the rules I have set for myself to be allowed to grab that carrot every day, my exercise program will continue unabated.

I'm sure you're all wondering what in the heck my carrot it. It's simple. It's TV.

What? What? TV? How can that be a carrot?

It can be a carrot if there's a show you really enjoy that you won't let yourself watch unless your hump is up on the treadmill working out. In my case, the carrot is Frazier. "What?" again? Yes, Frazier.

In the 11 years that show was on the air, I never saw it once. My kids were young then and every night there was homework, music lessons, soccer practice, quality family time - a dozen things way more important than a television show. But as I laid up in that hospital bed last March, scared half to death and worried about how my test results would turn out, I tuned in to the TV hanging from the ceiling and found...nothing.

Endless shopping channels, Spanish channels I couldn't understand, wrestling, hunting, fishing, kick boxing, TV preachers of the most odious "Send me your money and I'll build you a staircase to heaven just as soon as I get finished building my 12-million dollar mansion sort" ... and little else.

Desperate, I flipped backwards through the channels and found an episode of Frazier. I'd heard a lot about it; I knew Kelsey Grammer had owned the Emmys for a few years in his role as Dr. Frazier Crane, so I thought, "Why not?" There was nothing else on that was even remotely interesting to me.

Turned out to be just the thing. I was fortunate enough to catch the pilot episode, The Good Son, which explains how Frazier ends up living with his father, Martin, a policeman recovering from a bullet wound suffered during a robbery. Then I found out a local station was running the series in order late at night; that was five episodes of Frazier a week. I started watching them as soon as I got home. But the problem was, I was supposed to be getting a lot of sleep to help me get better faster, and watching Frazier kept me up too late, until past midnight.

The solution was to tape the shows and watch them the next morning. I did that for a while but finally realized I could use my growing affection for the show and its cast of characters to my benefit. If I made a rule stating that I couldn't watch my taped Frazier show unless I was walking on my treadmill, then that, coupled with my desire to get fit and healthy, would be a wonderful carrot. And it's working.

Every morning, I turn on my TV and DVR and press play, then hop on the treadmill to walk the specified number of minutes. It has now become a ritual and in this case, the ritual is a very good thing.

So what's going to happen when I finally run out of Frazier episodes? It's getting close. Niles and Dapne have already eloped and found out they're expecting a child.

I expect I will just find another classic half hour comedy to keep me going, because laughing and walking...well, that's a good combination.

I Understand About Portion Sizes

2007-10-12T17:43:00.000-05:00

I have to say I was touched by Fat Cat's description of her dinner out with a friend and the incredible restraint they displayed whilst dividing up and not consuming the "Chocolate Eruption". I would like to relate a shockingly similar story and thus demonstrate my commitment to ongoing health improvement.

Yesterday evening I was asked to the home of some friends for a night of entertainment and fine dining. The invitation went something like this: "Hey, Loy picked up some fried chicken. Wanna come over and watch some stuff we recorded on the DVR?" I graciously accepted and drove over fully intent upon displaying my newly-learned good eating habits.

(I won't mention the name of the "restaurant" that the chicken came from because I am terrified of offending the trademark gestapo, but suffice to say you can't pray at this church's chicken.)

When I arrived, the food had been placed buffet-style on the counter and we divided up the chicken tenders, dirty rice, mashed potatoes, and biscuits according to normal societal rules like "fair share", "dont' be a total douche and take too much", and "leave some leftovers for the host to snack on later". I immediately showed my good judgement by choosing a large round plate and not a cookie sheet to put my food upon as I had read an article that said I would eat less if my plate was smaller. I further showed control by building only a very small mashed potato and gravy "volcano" in the center and then surrounding it with only five or maybe eight chicken strips, a pile of rice and two biscuits. Even though it was difficult to lift my plate, I theorized that the effort was a chance to get in some isometric muscle building and just a touch of aerobics at the same time. A great start.

Now I can already hear some of you complaining that in no way can fried chicken and mashed potatoes be healthy, but I will remind you that we ate chicken tenders which means there was no bone. And although we had cream gravy to dip the tenders into, we did have normal, dietetic brown gravy for the pale, highly processed white potatoes. Granted the Cajun-style rice had enough grease to lubricate a car engine, but again, I washed that down with only one soda.

In case the comparison to Fat Cat's dinner weren't clear enough already, I will explain that we left two whole biscuits for someone to eat later after the appropriate lag for digestion had occurred. Could we have finished those off? You bet. But we didn't; we controlled ourselves.

I'm telling you friends, sometimes it hurts, but if you just work at it, you can lose weight.

Pigassus

The Whole Truth

2007-10-11T16:36:00.000-05:00

It should come as no surprise to anybody, least of all me, that I weigh more today than I did yesterday, not after all the shenanigans I pulled to trick the digital scale into reading 202.0 pounds. Today I weigh 203.4 pounds, an overnight gain of 1.4 pounds that was entirely earned.

The doctors who wrote The Duke Diet Plan say people who are trying to lose weight should weigh themselves every day and record it, and expect fluctuations up and down the scale of several pounds over the course of a week, but overall, a gradual trend down. That's what my own records reveal, a gradual weight loss over the last three weeks with plenty of ups and downs, but overall, down.

The reason I say I earned the weight gain yesterday is that I went out to eat. Even though I ate a modest amount, even splitting the meal in two and saving the other half for lunch today, I did two things differently...I ate later than I have been eating, knoshing almost until 9 PM, and I had a calorific but utterly delicious, decadent dessert called Chocolate Eruption.

I'll say.

Even so, my friend and I split the piece of chocolate heaven in two, and then we each ate only half of our half. So I was being naughty, but mindfully naughty. Nonetheless, that was all it took to bump up the scales.

I'm not worried. I'm sticking to my walking, and I DIDN'T order a soda at the restaurant, a major temptation I resisted, which is huge. I know the scale is going to bump up when I enjoy a night out with friends. That's okay. What's not okay would be losing sight of the fact that this is a very long journey and I just started. It will take me the better part of a year to finally reach my goal weight of 150 pounds. I hope you all stay with me for the whole ride.

Fat Cat

Everything You Wanted To Know About Fat But Weren't Afraid To Ask

2007-10-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had a burning feeling inside you that you just had to address? An itch deep down that you were compelled to scratch? A fire you couldn't put out?

Well, it would be way too obvious to suggest you had a sexually transmitted disease and that you needed to seek medical attention immediately and not the advice of a blogger, but HA! You probably have gonorrhea.

No. Since few of you are having sex anyways, you might instead just have some curiosity about health and nutrition that perhaps you were embarrassed to discuss with your physician, your priest, your spouse, or any of the other few hundred other qualified people you know that you should go to first. If in fact you are here with a burning question, then we at Fat Chat would like to provide a forum to air your dirty laundry and poke fun at your most sensitive areas... and not in the good way. Ewww.

Actually, when someone tries to lose weight they often keep most of their activities to themselves. No one likes to go around constantly announcing their particular efforts and sacrifices. Results, sure, but no one trumpets details of the struggle like how chaffed their inner thighs get during brisk walks. OMG no one wants to hear that.

So dieters end up becoming somewhat isolated in what, to them, is an undertaking of life-altering proportions. The inward focus has the unwanted effect of divorcing them from others who might have shared experiences and making all the unusual things that accompany diet and exercise seem like gross abnormalities. That is to say, because a fat person doesn't talk about it with other fat people, they start to think they are the only ones who have red, swollen thighs that smell vaguely like bacon after each jog.

And that is simply not the case. I mean, raise your chubby hand if you HAVEN'T felt your thighs rub together.

That's what I thought.

So for anyone with a question about dieting or an observation about anything that changes during the process of weight loss, please contact us here at Fat Chat. We will, without in any way attempting to give medical advice, try and answer questions about fat loss and weight loss programs. We will publish, without names, any interesting stories, successful or just funny, that can cast some light on losing weight and remind you all that you are all in it together.

Just not me, because I'm hott and gonorrhea free!

Pigassus