Day 2 - Switching It Around

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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