Losing Weight Can Get Embarrassing

Ok, when I decided to make this blog, I swore I wouldn't pull any punches and I'd lay it all out on the line, and this is one of those posts.  Forgive me if your humor has evolved past the 12 year old level, because this post is going to be a doozy.

Weight loss, can sometimes get embarrassing.  One of the first things a person usually does when trying to eat better, is incorporate more vegetables in their meal decisions.  Well, vegetables can sometimes wreak havoc on the stomach and colon.  You know where I'm going with this...GAS!

Don't get me wrong, I have never been adverse to vegetables.  I love them, but they have not been center stage in my meal prep for years.  Even if I did serve vegetables, they were usually over cooked, and as we should all know, this zaps the vitamin and fiber benefits right out.  Now, I'm trying to barely steam the vegetables to maintain the nutritional benefits.  My colon, however, has regarded this as an act of war!  Especially considering I tend to prefer vegetables of the cruciferous variety; broccoli, brussel sprouts, greens.  Now if the untrained colon regards vegetables in general as an act of war, cruciferous vegetables would be considered the nuclear attack on Hiroshima variety.

Now, I live in a house of men.  I have a husband and a 7 year old son, and there is always someone breaking wind in the house.  My son thinks it is his job to maintain a certain air pressure in any enclosed space he inhabits.  He's pretty proud of himself when he does let lose the canons too, in a manner only a 7 year old can.  We are working on this and learning it is not necessarily polite to announce when he has "tooted".  It is a bit of a losing battle, however.  If his father is any indication, being amused by bodily functions tends to be something carried on the Y chromosome that they never quite outgrow.  To his credit, his father no longer announces it, preferring instead to let one figure it out on ones own if you get my drift.  He finds that much funnier.  So, not unlike any woman in a house of men, I have been somewhat fighting a losing battle on the "farts are funny to anyone with a penis" front.  Until now.

Combining the cruciferous vegetables with the protein shakes I have for breakfast (because I hate eating breakfast) have left me with an arsenal of my own in the battle of who farts more.  While I am just girly enough to try and do this as privately as possible, sometimes....well....things happen, let's just say.  My husband and son, don't quite know what to think.  I think up until now, my son thought women didn't fart at all.  I think this because he chastised me in the school pick up line one day, in full earshot of a group of teachers, that farting was "not ladylike"!  Yeah, that wasn't embarrassing at all!  It's pretty hard to make people think he's not my kid when he is crawling into my car, and has done so every school day for the better part of two school years.  And, there was no way of hoping no one heard it, when the teachers all stopped speaking, simultaneously, and looked right at me.  So, yeah, parent teacher night is going to be really interesting this year.  I can see them all now, whispering and laughing..."that's Sam's mom...she farts!"

Things also tend to happen when you aren't really conscious   This can put a wrench in the intimacy department as well.  I know because I awoke this morning to my husband hugging the last two inches of the king sized bed on his side.  With his back to me.  Usually, I awake with him spooned up behind me.  It's one of my favorite times of the morning, feeling him there and enjoying a peaceful moment of intimacy with the love of my life.  When I asked him about it he said he was doing it out of "self-preservation".   Already coming to terms with the fact I do snore, combined with the thought of me farting against my husbands lap while he spoons me, has left me feeling like a princess....NOT!

I know from my weight loss efforts before that this is a temporary situation, and I'll get through it.  Eventually, my colon and vegetables will strike an alliance.  It may take a month, but they will come through it.  I just hope they do so before my husband and son decide to team up against me.

Dieting With Men In Your Life

You want to know why married women are fat?  Especially if they are Stay At Home Moms?  Because they have husbands and sons.  The great universal unfairness of the universe, or U-cube, is: men don't gain weight the same way women do.  As a matter of fact they can eat ALL day and still wear the same size they did in college.  Another U-cube, is men SNACK!  A LOT!  My men are no different.  It doesn't matter how long I have spent in the kitchen, and how great of a meal I meticulously place in front of them, and no matter how much they eat of said meal, they will inevitably want snacks less than 2 hours later.  This means I have to either, keep snacks on hand, or cook another meal or dessert 2 hours later.  It's like I'm living with fucking Hobbits who have to have 2nd dinner.

I don't understand this habit.  There was no snacking in my family.  You either ate leftovers from the previous meal or made yourself a sandwich if you absolutely couldn't hold out to the next meal.  We never had chips or cookies laying around.  Someone may make a dessert on a Sunday, but when it was gone it was gone.  Too bad, so sad.  My husband's family on the other hand, eats about 12 full meals in snacks alone.  I've seen my father-in-law down a full meal to the point I thought he would literally explode, and then start rifling around in cabinets a half hour later looking for a snack.  My husband, has done the same thing.  Oddly enough, my family is the fatties.  Even tonight he is asking me if we have this or that, specifically the ingredients for brownies, in the house.  Even though he will protest that he doesn't want me to go to any trouble, we've been married long enough he "knows" I won't let it drop because I have some really sadistic, misguided guilt to make sure he is gastronomically satisfied.  This guilt is wearing me out and making me crazy.  Logically, I should know it is not my place or responsibility to jump at his every want and desire, especially his desire for after dinner snacks when he is the one with diabetes, but it still bugs the shit out of me.  I'm working on it.  I just feel as if I am tied to the kitchen sometimes, and nothing is ever enough.  I could spend all day laying out a virtual buffet and he would still say, "hey, do we have the stuff to make.....?" But it's my issue I know.  I try not to take it out on him, but for the love of God, eat a second helping and let me close the fucking kitchen once in a while.  Or get fat!  Shit!

Diet Pills or If you want to throw your money away send it to me!

In all my years of dieting and trying this plan or that plan, I think of myself as somewhat of an expert.  I'm not medically trained, so if you are using me as your medical advice you are a LOT misguided.  Always check with your doctor before taking any advice offered from a blog.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way....

Diet Pills are a joke.  You are not going to get any magic from a diet pill.  You are wasting your money, and if you really have that big of a burning desire to throw your money around, just send it to me.  Really, I'll start working on a PayPal link today!  Read the labels.  They all say the same thing.  They all say they will help you lose 1-2 pounds a week.  Well guess what sweeties, you can lose 1-2 pounds a week on your own.  The diet pills really aren't helping that much.  Back in the day, I took my fair share of Xenedrine.  This was before some hammer head decided Ephedrine and Drano could be used to make Meth so they didn't regulate it that much.  Yes, Xenedrine did help me lose the weight, but it was because I was hopped up on the speed in the stuff.  I would pop two Xenedrine and maybe not sleep for two days, but my house would be SPOTLESS!  I would also get really bad road rage, and who knows what damage I was doing to my body.  But that was another time.

It especially troubles me when otherwise respected celebrity doctors and fitness professionals advocate and push their brand of diet pills.  I just saw an advertisement for Dr. Oz Diet Pills.  I don't know how much money a person needs but I think it's pretty irresponsible of him.  He is a doctor, I wonder if he takes them himself.  NOT!  The funny thing is, a very well known fitness professional has been hawking her wares all over the Internet as well, and it wasn't that long ago I heard her bitching out some big losers about how there wasn't any magic pills to lose weight.  Hmmmmmm.

Now, I do throw this caveat in: Vitamins are a different story.  But you don't have to buy specialty vitamins, you can get the mid priced variety and they work just as well.  I wouldn't recommend the cheapos, but that is  my preference.  What I'm about to tell you may sound like the wackiest thing you are going to read all day, but bear with me.  Overweight people are actually malnourished.  Yeah, I told you it would sound wacky.  You may be thinking malnourishment looks like those starving children in the 3rd world with pouchy bellies and flies all over their faces, but those are the extreme cases.  The malnourishment of the 1st world, looks a lot like me.  FAT!  Let's face it, if I were getting adequate, balanced nutrition, I wouldn't be over 100 pounds overweight.  I may still be overweight, but not by this much.  Because I've been eating fast food, over processed food, and snacking on entire bags of chips and cookies, my vegetable intake is not as great as it could be.  For that reason, I really advocate a multi-vitamin as part of a healthier lifestyle.

Some vitamins I recommend when starting out are:
B complex - Good for any woman, even if she isn't overweight.  Folic Acid is important for preventing neural tube defects in pregnancy.  B vitamins help iron work more efficiently to prevent iron deficiency anemia, and give you an energy boost.  What do you think is in those 5-hour energy shots?  Take a look at the label...it's a hella lot of B vitamins!

Iron - again, women tend to have iron deficiency anemia, particularly around that time of the month, and iron helps you from getting sluggish.  Check with your doctor as Iron is very easy to OD on.

C - immune boost to keep you from falling off the exercise wagon because you are nursing another bout of the sniffles.  C is also good for the skin.

D - because we live indoors and it helps calcium work harder

Calcium - for bone health

E - for your skin and hair.

I'm sure there are others, but those are my suggestions.  And I can't stress this enough, because I'm not about to pay anyone in a lawsuit...CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR to prevent any nasty side effects from any meds you are currently taking.  Also, don't take Iron and Calcium at the same time, they negate one another.  Take one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

So, my advice, is save your money, eat better, get some vitamins and write a check to help end hunger.   There are no magic pills to help you lose weight.  You will have to do a little work!

Weigh In Days and Mondays Bring Me Down

It's Monday.  It's Weigh In Day.  It is probably going to rain today.  This day SUCKS!

I started watching what I ate, drinking the water....blah, blah, blah...last week and my weight was 280.  On a 5'8" woman, that's not so great.  Today I got on the scale and I am at 274.  So a loss of 6 pounds.  Not too bad, but not that great for my first week either.  And yeah, I know you should average 2 pounds per week, but people generally lose a lot of weight up front...the proverbial "water" weight.  At any rate, I'm not worried about it.  A loss is a loss.

Just to go on record, Mondays are my official weigh in days, even though I crawl my fat butt on the scale everyday.  Measurement days are, so far, scheduled for the first of each month.  That gives me 3 more days, for a total of 10 days of dieting.  Not really enough time to see a significant difference, so I am contemplating skipping the month of March with measurements.  We'll see.

Atkins, Paleo, HCg.....oh my!

The first thing people generally ask you when they find out you are trying to lose weight is: What plan are you following?  As if no one in the world would try to navigate weight loss without following some bullshit diet plan.

Here is the thing with all these diet plans:  they all work, somewhat, but yet they all don't work with life.  I didn't get fat because I hate food.  You can't show me one person who is fat who will ever say "I don't know why I'm fat, eating is a chore!"  No, fat people like to eat!  That may be all manner of Captain Obvious, but it's true.  When a fat person starts subscribing to this eating plan or that eating plan, they inevitably have to eliminate one type of food or another.  Either they can't eat carbs, or they can't have sugar, or they can't have anything white on Thursdays...what the fuck ever!  You tell a fat girl (namely me) she can't have something, whatever it is, and she is going to want it ten times more.  You want to eliminate the weight problem in America?  Outlaw vegetables.  Outlaw vegetables and you will have some fat bitches giving hand jobs in alleys for a bag of frozen Brussels sprouts.

So, no thank you, I won't be eliminating anything from my diet because some whack-a-do who lost ten pounds tells me too.  Plus, these plans never fit into anyone's real life.  Suppose you are on some weird ass eating plan and you go to someone's party.  The world isn't going to accommodate your diet, so now you have to spend all your time asking the hostess what's in this hor d'oeuvre, and if she used organic olive oil, and did she stand on one leg when she did it so the carbs wouldn't mix with the fats due to the earth's axis.  You know what the hostess is going to do?  She's going to think you're an asshole and you won't get invited back to any parties to wear that fabulous dress you can now fit into.  So now you are thin, sitting on a couch every weekend, NOT eating Doritos.  In the words of my girl Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time For That! 

Heaven forbid you actually do eat something that doesn't agree with the very strict eating plans laid out by whatever book you smuggled out of Barnes and Noble, you feel like a complete and total failure.  Excuse me, but I've tried on swimming suits in a department store, I don't need a diet to make me feel like shit.

For these reasons, I'm not subscribing to a trendy diet.  I am going with the oldest diet in the world, the dreaded-by-dieters-everywhere MODERATION plan.  Moderation allows me to not turn down my mother-in-law when she invites me for dinner.  Moderation doesn't keep me from being able to enjoy a night out with my husband.  Moderation allows me to re-learn self control and revisit the joy of having a healthy relationship with food.  It won't be easy at first, but nothing worth having ever is.  Here's to it.

Just Another Fat Chick Blogging About Weight Loss

Well, the title says it all.  I am just another fat chick, blogging about my weight loss efforts.  But I wasn't always this way.  No, there was a time when I lived to exercise.  I woke up early every day and headed out to the gym or the track and didn't stop until I was suitably worked out!  If I gained a couple of pounds, I stepped up my work out or watched my diet until I got back to my magic number.  I wore my health and fitness like a badge of honor in an unhealthy family.  That was my role, I was the "health nut" that got fit out of high school and kept it up for well over 10 years.  I was on the train to "not going to let my hereditary diabetes and heart disease catch up to me ever-ville".  Then, my train got off track.

I don't think people know when their train goes off track.  I don't think it's a big loud crash and crushing of steel that no one could miss.  Rather, I think it's a little bump here and a nudge there.  I think it's a extra serving of desert with friends, a few too many dinners out, a few too many well meaning aunts urging you to "try a little of this".  I think it's a few "too busy to work out" days, until you finally just pull the train into the depot and say "I'll finish later".  Sure, I've cranked the train up a couple of times since then, but never really got it back on track.

Well now it's later.  I can't turn back this time, I have to see it through or I'm going to be facing all those things I worked so hard to avoid before.  I know I can do it, because I did it before.  True, my body is older and it's not going to respond as quickly as before, but it can be done.  If you choose to follow this blog, I'm going to warn you ahead of time: I am a smart ass, I don't pull punches, and there will more than likely be cussing.  Consider yourself warned.