Sweet!

My time scouring the internet for new and useful information on health and weight loss has turned up the following possible (and scary) side effects related to the daily consumption of artificial sweetening agents:

• The taste of sweetness in the mouth triggers a release of insulin in the body.  Since there’s no actual sugar being consumed, that insulin will cause blood sugar to be stored in body tissues.  Because actual blood sugar does not increase, this can cause hypoglycemia or hyperinsulinemia, both of which  cause the consumption of more food at the next meal.  Due to these effects, overall calorie intake increases over time along with body weight.
• The natural  feeling of fullness and satisfaction is not achieved with the consumption of artificial sweetener as it is with sugar, leading to a dissatisfied end state and cravings for more sweet.
• Population based studies have turned up evidence of increased overall weight gain among diet soda consumers over time.

It is important to note that the actual scientific experiments performed in the studies above were performed on rats, not human beings.  Still, the results are disquieting.

Personally I only drink diet soda (two to three cans a day) at dinnertime.  Dinnertime is also the meal at which I habitually overeat.  Breakfast and lunch are not my trouble zones, and breakfast and lunch for me are almost always accompanied by water.

Is the diet soda stimulating my appetite?

Following my long tradition of using myself as a guinea pig (since no one else will let me experiment on them) I have given up artificial sweeteners as of two days ago.  So far I feel fine, about normal.  Maybe a bit headachy but my insomnia has been bad lately so I blame that more than withdrawal.  It’s also possible that since diet soda was my main vehicle for the delivery of caffeine that my headache is just caffeine withdrawal.

Note that I am not going to chow down on real sugar instead, that stuff (although natural) has its own host of health problems attached.  I’ve started drinking flavored seltzer with dinner and adding squeezes of citrus or crushed mint leaves to my water.  I get bored with plain water all the time and I figured a few bubbles may ease my soda cravings – I’ve been drinking it all my life so I have no illusions that quitting cold turkey is going to be easy.

I’ll check back in a month and see what, if any, effects this has had on my hunger impulses.  Assuming I haven’t been committed or arrested by then.

P.S. I already miss gum.

Superior

I am the most beautiful woman in the world.

Since beauty is subjective, believe it or not, the above statement is true.  It’s only true according to Ted, but that doesn’t make any it less accurate.

It’s also true that there are many people who find my figure repulsive and would sincerely beg not to have to see me in a swimsuit.

C’est la vie.  As one of my favorite drummers once said: “I prefer not to count the people that think that I suck.”

Chances are that you, as a woman, have at some point in your life seen a fellow woman somewhere and quietly, in some part of your psyche, felt that you were either superior or inferior to her.  You may have done this because she looked homely to you, or was older or younger than you are, or had a face you thought was pretty, or hair you found beautiful.  It is very likely that your brain regurgitated the chemical set to make you feel this because she possessed either more or less body fat than you do.

You didn’t do this because you’re a bad person, you did this because you’ve been conditioned to weigh and measure yourself against the females of your species around you since the day you were born.

I have done this.  I’m about a hundred pounds overweight but it’s still easy enough to find a woman who is bigger than me.  On the flipside, I’ve also seen women bigger than me and marveled over how beautiful they were, but on occasion I have been guilty of thinking, before I could stop it: “whew… at least I’m not that big.”

Maybe they weren’t carrying it in a way I thought looked good or maybe they didn’t appeal to my particular beauty aesthetic.  I can generally find something lovely about most women, but I admit it’s not universal.

I automatically, with no ability to stop it, believe in some part of my subconscious, that anyone thinner than me is also in a certain sense – better.  There are multiple reasons for this; the first being that I’ve spent my life besieged by imagery of slender women as the ideal and epitome of beauty.  I can’t get through a grocery store checkout without having to stare at ten different magazine covers trying to tell me how I can lose weight, lose weight, lose more weight!  More personally, since I’ve been struggling to be thin since I was around fourteen, I see that thin women already have something I’ve been working to obtain for well over half my life.  Since they have achieved what I could not, they must be better than I am.  I suppose that to my brain it’s like the obvious fact that someone with a Doctorate is more educated than me, they know more.  Similarly someone thin has (in my subconscious) done more work and conquered the gluttony that besieges me.  They have willpower, they have control, they are strong where I am weak.  They are able to not eat.

To be honest with you, right now as I write this I am feeling slight guilt for planning to have the audacity to not think upon myself as inferior to skinnier girls.

Human females have the exact reverse power dynamic to almost every other animal species on the planet – the littlest of us is considered to be the most powerful.  I think this is largely due to the fact that we live in a world where we no longer need to defend ourselves physically in order to survive.  A beauty aesthetic agreed upon by a collective, rather than actual bodily prowess, determines our pecking order.

The reverse can also be true.  There is a counter movement that praises the curvier woman and demeans the slender.  Although this tactic is temptingly comforting to us heavy types, it still simply reinforces the exact same belief that we’re superior or inferior to one another based on nothing but the mostly arbitrary fact of how we look.

I don’t think men are the primary source of this problem.  We’re all responsible as a society of course, but in my experience it has rarely been men taking the reigns of this hate show.  When I have had fat taunts chanted at me in grade school, when I have been ostracized from the rest of my group by clothing stores, when I have read something on the internet or watched a news report that spewed vitriol and ugliness about people like me, it has almost always come from women.  I firmly believe that those women are regurgitating this filth (toward the slender and heavy alike) because inside they truly do hate themselves more than anyone else.

That isn’t something to get angry or outraged over, that is something to truly weep for.

As for men, despite my lifetime of being overweight, I have never gone lonely for male attention when I desired it.  Men (at least the ones I choose to hang out with) seem to find my particularly lush figure as either erotic, adorable or simply as okay as any other female figure because GIRL = GOOD!

I admit I do hang out with particularly cool guys.  The guys who thought otherwise in my presence have usually been kind enough to keep their opinions to themselves.

So why do women do this to each other?  Not being a sociologist or a psychologist I can only guess that it’s related to the same animal instinct that causes mountain goats to butt heads and lions to try to eat one other – we have an evolutionary instinct to be on top.  Humans though are much more than just our collection of blind instincts, we can fight this.

My challenge to you is this: pay attention to it.  When you feel yourself doing it - stop, and gently reinforce the truth.  No I am not better, no I am not worse – we are all merely different.

We have to teach ourselves to be so much more than a blind pecking order based on visual imagery.  We have to fight every day against our gut instinct to weigh and measure ourselves on a value scale based entirely on a body that is only going to wither and rot. 

What about you will remain?  In some systems of belief, absolutely nothing - which leaves behind only how you lived and treated yourself and others while you did it.  For me, what is inside is eternal, but this body will be so much dust in a mere eye blink of geological time.  I have a responsibility to care for it while it lives, but in the end of things it will not matter.  Certainly how it looked on a beauty scale decided by one small-minded and selfish culture will blow away like so much chaff.  I believe that if you can stop finding yourself superior or inferior then you can also begin to stop hating yourself as well.

I am not better, I am not worse.  I am simply here.

Tech is Great

Until it breaks.

Then it’s just about the most frustrating thing in the world.  For Christmas, my husband bought me a Smartphone.  I’d been wanting one for awhile and we hit up some of the post-holiday sales to get me a good deal on a really nice new one.

For the past six months it’s been great, I’ve enjoyed my new phone immensely.  I work in a place where you’re not allowed to use your computer for personal reasons even while on lunch break, so it was good to be able to retreat to the lunch room with my phone and check my personal email and other internet based things.

As Smartphone users go though, I’ve been pretty boring.  I barely use Twitter, I’ve downloaded about five APPs since purchase (hello Angry Birds) and I text fairly infrequently.

Yesterday morning, I noticed that my phone was hot to the touch.  I’m not an IT tech like Ted but I know enough to know that heat and computer devices are not a good combination.  By the time lunch rolled around and I pulled out my phone to go check my email, the battery was nearly dead and it was declaring that I had, “no service”.  Since I had unplugged it from charging that very morning before driving to work, I knew something was seriously wrong.  I turned the unit off.

This morning it was about as active as a rock, even plugging it into the wall I couldn’t garner a response from it, so – I called Verizon.

Here’s my problem; I don’t mind that the unit died, computers do that.  They’re wonderful but persnickety and sometimes tech just fails, even tech that’s only six months old and has been gently used that whole time.  What I DO mind is being talked to like I’m an idiot.

Yes, I realize that customer service people have difficult jobs and do talk to a lot of idiots who do dumb things.  (What do you mean my phone won’t work after I’ve dropped it in the toilet!?)  However, when I tell you that the phone is not broken because I’ve stupidly downloaded an untrustworthy APP I would appreciate being believed.  I haven’t downloaded any APP in the last month so I find it beyond the realm of unlikely that the copy of a Rovio game I acquired last month has suddenly caused my name brand phone to spontaneously and irreparably break due to incompatibility.  I would also thank you to believe me when I tell you I am smart enough not to download things from untrustworthy sources ever, either to my home PC or to my Smartphone.

I have been using a computer successfully for the past twenty years now, I am not new to this rodeo and I am also not a moron.

Basically Verizon’s advice on how to avoid your phone breaking is that it’s all usually the fault of users downloading bad APPs that we’re too stupid to avoid, so never download APPs even though running them is half the purpose of the device.

Whose an idiot now?

After getting lectured on correct Smartphone usage all the while performing a master reset on the device, as the touch screen then proceeded to stop responding, the customer service rep on the phone finally reluctantly agreed to send me a new unit.  They refused, however, to send me a new battery as well.  Apparently sending out a new phone and battery at the same time to replace broken ones is, “against their policy”.  So even though they admitted the battery becoming hot is a problem and that it shouldn’t be doing that, I’m getting only a new phone into which I have to put the old battery which may in all probability fry the new one just like it did the old one.

When that happens, then they will send me a new battery as well, and I guess another new phone too.

Oh – and since today is Friday none of this can happen until Monday, so I have no phone for the weekend.

But remember – it’s all my own fault and I’m the idiot, not them.

UPDATE:  After I told Ted this entire story he became irritated on my behalf and called Verizon back to complain.  They promptly apologized and agreed to send us a new battery with the new phone, as well as knocking a discount off our next bill and informing him that they would be reviewing and retraining the rep that I spoke to.  Basically he had an ENTIRELY different experience from mine.  While I am happy with the results I'm also somewhat offended because I believe his completely different experience resulted from his voice being obviously male while mine is obviously female.  Both of us are kind and polite in conversation both in person and on the telephone.  He does not agree, and plans to teach me his technique for getting stuff done while making everyone love him at the same time.  We shall see.

Dr. Misfortune

My husband has a fictional alter-ego: a brilliant but extraordinarily unlucky super-villain named Dr. Manfred Misfortune.  While cleaning up some files yesterday, I stumbled across the Misfortune Manifesto as written by Ted almost ten years ago.  Seriously... how could I do anything but fall completely and utterly in love with this man?

****************************************************************************

THE MISFORTUNE MANIFESTO

By Doctor Manfred Misfortune

When I take over the world, the following directives will be enacted and enforced (unless something goes wrong, of course):

1. I will abolish the little red strings that are supposed to open Band-Aids and never work.

2. Households with cats will get a tax cut…but those with dogs will get a tax hike. Evil geniuses favor cats, not dogs. Did you ever see a dog on a Bond villain’s lap?

3. Scientists (mad or otherwise) will get preferential treatment in bank lines, car wash lines and fast food lines.

4. All sports teams will be dissolved and all sports will be outlawed, except badminton. Robotic gladiatorial combat will become the new international pastime. 

5. I will appoint the Panda as the Minister of Punctuation. If the Panda says no, the immediate execution of the offender will take place.

6. Top hats will be brought back into style.

7. All men are to have goatees. If you cannot grow a goatee, one will be appointed for you.

8. Smoking will only be allowed at the base of rockets (not the Rocket Base, the base of the rocket) or at the place of annihilation by Thermal Death Ray®.

9. Fish Slapping Day will replace Valentine’s Day. All births will take place on Labor Day and everyone shall get a bottle of wine on Arbor Day. July 26^th will hence forth be known as Emperor’s Day and all places of business will be closed to celebrate (except Fuddrucker’s Hamburgers).

10. All future Tom Cruise movies will be banned, all past ones will be collectively erased from history. I shall create a time machine to accomplish this. Oh wait…apparently I already have and it’s gone poorly. Tom Cruise is now President and Scientology is the national religion. Whoops. Excuse me while I fix this…oh no, now I have a tail. Let me try this one more time…@h, th@t’$ b3tt3r. 

11. THERE IS NO NUMBER 11!

12. Scallywag.

Cooking Like It's 1943

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I bought another vintage cookbook. This time it's a February, 1943 issue of a magazine called The Health For Victory Meal Planning Guide. It's a wartime publication that was produced monthly by the Home Economics Institute, Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. I bought this from an antique book and print vendor at a fair, but this same issue and others are easily found on eBay.

Look at that cover! Look at the interior photos! It was only $3! How could I resist?

I would love to eventually find more information on the Health For Victory Clubs, but from the publication, it looks as though it was a national health and cooking club focused on teaching people how to create healthy meals in a time of austerity and hard-work. Of course, considering the time, the club and publication are written for women and absolutely packed with patriotism.

"Wives, mothers, [and] landladies learn plenty about packing husky, healthful mid-shift meals at H for V meetings." (page 2)

"So eat a well-balanced lunch from now on. We're all in this war to win. And upon the health of our production soldiers, depends the strength of the nation." (page 3)

The first third of the publication is instructional. Topics such as what constitutes a healthy lunch, what to pack for different types of workers, how to time meals for shift workers, tips for organizing meal preparation equipment, the best ways to cook vegetables so the least amount of vitamins and minerals are lost, are discussed.

Once you get past the instructional portion of the magazine, to the recipes, the difference from current day cooking isn't too significant. There are ingredients listed that are out of fashion such as corn syrup and lard. But happily, some of the recipes featuring corn syrup have instructions for replacing sugar for the corn syrup.

Actually, I think there are a few surprising similarities.

• There is is a section of  Jiffy Dinners, Ready in 35 minutes! 

• There is a focus on cooking with seasonal vegetables. This issue was from February, so root vegetables, cabbage and dried beans are ingredients in many of the recipes.  

• There is also a mention of hiding healthy ingredients in 'tastier' dishes. 

“The best lunch in the world, packed full of vitamins and minerals and energy-producing foods, won't do much good, if it isn't eaten. So in planning lunches, give them what they like, but don't stop there. And don't forget – many a time it's possible to fool them! If they don't like carrots, for example – try the Carrot Honey Cookies on page 30 of this Meal-Planning Guide. And sandwiches made of the Liver Loaf on page 44, for those who 'hate liver'.” (page 4)

I think I'll pass on the Liver Loaf for now, but look for a recipe review of the Carrot Honey Cookies next week. (It's just too hot to bake this week)

Yes, you CAN have Peanut Butter!

Guilt-free peanut butter.  I have my friend Gloria to thank for this one (THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU).  This is a same girl who introduced me to Arctic Zero and Amy’s organic frozen foods – both very tasty, very healthy, foodie revelations.

This is the best one yet.

PB2 is literally powdered peanut butter.  Roasted peanuts get pressed until almost all the fat and oil squishes away.  You then take the remaining fluffy powder and add water, watching as it magically reconstitutes into the exact same creamy consistency as normal peanut butter.  It has a great roasted peanut flavor and is lightly sweet.  It’s a little bit texturally grainy but not in a bad way, it just tastes like it’s got tiny peanut pieces in it – which, it does.  Think of crunchy PB with a very fine grain.

Allow me to point out the important differences though, comparing it to the brand I normally buy: Jif Reduced Fat Creamy PB.

Jif Serving Size:   Two tablespoons

PB2 Serving Size:   Two tablespoons

Jif Calories Per Serving:   190

PB2 Calories Per Serving:   45

Jif Fat Per Serving:   12 grams

PB2 Fat Per Serving:   1.5 grams

Jif Sugar Per Serving:   4 grams

PB2 Sugar Per Serving:   1 gram

Jif Sodium Per Serving:   220 mg.

PB2 Sodium Per Serving:   94 mg.

Jif Protein Per Serving:   7 grams

PB2 Protein Per Serving:   5 grams

The only place where you lose something good is the protein factor, it’s slightly less than what’s in normal peanut butter – other than that this stuff is made of win on every level.

There’s also the ingredient list: roasted peanuts, sugar and salt.  Three ingredients.  Done.  Regular peanut butter contains things like corn syrup solids, magnesium oxide, nicinamide, ferric orthophosphate, zinc oxide, copper sulfate… should I go on?  That stuff we all love from childhood is basically a chem lab experiment.

I haven’t located a local store carrying it yet, I ordered it from Amazon here.  It seems like the sort of thing that Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods would pick up, but I haven’t had the chance to check so far.  Here’s hoping because paying shipping is the only down side.

I’ve always loved peanut butter, but recently I’ve been barely brushing the tiniest taste of it over my bread because I knew what a fatty disaster it was.  Today, I whipped up an entire serving of this stuff and smeared it decadently all over my toast.  I felt not even the slightest twinge of hesitation in eating it, I simply enjoyed.

Bliss!

Recipe For the Day (Courtesy of Weight Watchers and my friend Jen):

Frozen Peanut Butter Cups

1/4 cup peanut butter
1-8oz. tub fat free cool whip
chocolate syrup to drizzle

Thaw cool whip half way. Mix peanut butter and cool whip together and place in muffin cups. Drizzle with chocolate syrup and freeze 6-8 hours to harden. Enjoy!

Number of Servings: 8

WW Points: 1 per cup

Assuming you substitute regular peanut butter in this recipe with BP2, the point value will probably drop to around ½ each.

A Bad Day

***Disclaimer: Author currently in poor mental state.  You were warned.***

I continue to be a drain on society.

Apparently the last fat shaming, you-are-costing-your-country-too-much-money-FATSO article posted by a public news agency wasn’t effective, so today here’s a new one.

Maybe this one will finally make me thin up.  Heck knows I haven’t been trying and having soul crushing failures for over twenty years.  And it’s not as though I’ve utterly destroyed correct metabolic processes within my body by repeatedly starvation dieting so that now if I exercise five to seven times per week I might (if I’m lucky) loose a pound.  Well, except for the week where I have my period.  I could fast that whole week and nothings coming off, so just forget that one right there.

No, apparently all I needed was the CDC to tell me that on top of uglifying the world and taking up too much space on airplanes I’m also costing them way too much money as well.  Thank heck they told me, that should solve my problem posthaste.  I can’t be allowed to wallow in a state of blind self acceptance now, can I?  That wouldn’t be right.

Okay, yeah I’m bitter.  I’m not always bitter, but today is just a bitter day.  Today I feel like giving up and throwing in the towel and telling everyone to shove off.

Maybe it’s because last week I sat there listening to a someone complain to me about a size 16 woman, who had the audacity to be happy with herself and not realize she’s overweight.  How dare that fatty be happy with herself?  Doesn’t she know how BIG she is?  As always during these encounters I sit there in a dumbfounded state, unable to figure out why people think its okay to say hateful things to a fat person about other people who are smaller than the person they are speaking to.

I swear I’m taking crazy pills.

I shouldn’t read these articles, I know that.  I particularly shouldn’t read the comments.  The articles themselves are really just dry diagrams of the ways in which fatties make everybody’s life bad financially as well as propagation of the ever so ineffective BMI as a tool for determining just how much people need to be shamed.  The articles aren’t overall very emotional though.

The commenters however, are downright evil.  Some of them talking about how fat people need to be charged extra “fat taxes” since we’re a drain on everybody, some of them talking about how smokers live to a ripe old age but you can’t possibly find a 70 year old fatty, since we die off early – which conversely is a good thing because when we croak we finally stop costing SO MUCH MONEY.

I’ve actually heard that “can’t find a fat old person” trope twice this week.  Since one of my grandmothers was significantly overweight and lived past 90, I admit that one confuses me.

I know I should not look at this crap, but still I do, knowing full well that these people want me look and to feel as bad as possible.  It’s like that bizarre impulse that makes you check in your ex, either hoping that they’re miserable without you or just needing to hear from them in some way.  Why do we torture ourselves like this?

Part of me also suspects that the people who say such things don’t actually want everyone to be thin at all.  If everyone was thin, who would they bully?  Who would they be superior to?  They’d be left alone with their own blind hatred and no easy target.  They might self combust.

Heck with everybody.  See ya later, I’ve gotta go exercise.  Again.