Back again

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.

I'm Ba-a-a-ack!

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

The Biggest Loser - Trying to Gain a Foothold

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 Biggest Loser - Taking All the Fun Out of Being Fat

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

The Biggest Loser - Couples

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!

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

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

The Biggest Loser - Hanging by a Pole

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

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

The Biggest Loser - Shaping Up in More Ways Than One

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.

The Biggest Loser - This Week, Not So Outrageous

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

Attitude of Fatitude

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

The Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 3

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 Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 2

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!

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.

The Biggest Loser Outrage

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

Losing the Same Pound...527 Times

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

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