Category: Eat, Drink, and Move That Body!

Or, Thoughts on Swine Flu and a Possible Pandemic Thereof.

There is growing concern about a swine flu outbreak in Mexico that has already crossed the border into our country. Dozens of cases in the States and more overseas have been confirmed. Preliminary reports seem to indicate that there may be a higher than typical death rate from this strain (this may be caused by economic factors rather than some greater virulence). Official CDC updates are available via Twitter.

An additional cause for concern is the level of preparedness in this country. Since some sources say we have a shortage of doctors in even the best of times, this could be a really big deal. Of course it doesn’t help that pandemic preparedness funds were opposed by certain Republicans. Oh, and a few Dems. I guess they don’t understand that the rain falls on the good and the bad alike — and more to the point rich people get sick too. 

Oh, and this could adversely impact the economy, too. As if we need more problems. 

The CDC is advising people to take the same normal precautions they would take against colds and flu:  wash your hands; stay home if you are sick; don’t send sick kids to school.

On a happier note, mambo! Oink, Oink!

In closing:  Sorry kid, talk to the King about changing your name to Sonic when you turn 18; and City Shrinkage.

Long time readers know that I lost a lot of weight, kept it off, and that I work out. If you aren’t familiar with the story, here’s Obligatory Diet Posts Part One and Part Two. 

I’ve done a lot of different workouts over the years. I change up either to stave off boredom, to get around a plateau, or to achieve a certain fitness goal. I’m still generally a fan of Joyce Vedral. I still recommend military workouts because they work and require almost nothing in the way of equipment. I’ve also done a few taped workouts. For example, there was this Denise Austin video that just made me have unhealthy thoughts about her continued well being. There was this somewhat harder Pilates video (I bought all the hype about Pilates being all about strong core without bulk, and I have a tendency towards bulk); at least I wished the trainers no violence. There’s a Tai Chi with Kickboxing workout featuring Janis Saffell and Scott Cole — he’s nice to look at! —  but the first time I tried to do it there were so many interruptions that I took it as A Sign. There was also Nancy Marmorat’s Daily Exercise Routine, which really wasn’t bad at all, especially for flexibility.

For a while, my exercise partner and I have discussed the idea of a hard-core boot-camp style workout such as Tony Horton’s P90X. You’ve seen the infomercial, right? Who doesn’t want to look like that! However, it’s hard to plan to devote 45-90 minutes a day for 90 days, and it was even harder to figure out where we could mount a chin-up bar or find space/equipment for both of us to work out at the same time. Luckily, Tony had a solution for us! 

We ordered 10 Minute Trainer last summer and started within days of receiving it. Yeah yeah it’s got an infomercial too. Each of the workouts is 10 minutes of actual work and probably 12-13 minutes of run-time (and another couple minutes of commercials for the other Beachbody products). Make no mistake, he works your butt off for 10 minutes, and yes I mean that literally. The workouts are Cardio, Abs, Lower Body, Total Body, and Yoga/Flex. All the equipment you really need is one of those resistance bands, (one is included) although a mat is also very good to have. You can do one, two, or three routines daily. We did 2 daily and were generally pleased with the results. 

Even so, it was time to rev things up.

Last week, we began ChaLEAN Extreme, from Tony’s colleague Chalene Johnson. Chalene’s thing is free weights, although the workouts can be done with bands. Specifically, the principle is to work the heck out of your muscles with relatively heavy weights such that you can only reasonably do 10-12 reps of any given exercise. It is a progressive, 90 day program that gives you roughly 2 days off per week. I like the integrated warm-up and cool-down. A group of 4 people show you a variety of skill/strength levels, including tips for those who aren’t very strong yet. There’s a mid-week interval training block that I suspect won’t be so bad once I’ve actually learned the moves (I found it rather awkward). The beginning level ab routine is a bit tame compared to Tony’s. There is an upgraded routine that I will probably sub in next week. I am pleased with how certain things are shaping up so far. Really, the weight routines are pretty good (with the universal caveat that you have to watch your own form).  [More]

However, I was sorely disappointed with the “Recharge” workout, described as “an invigorating flexibility workout.” Despite her claim at the beginning of the routine that flex is an important and often overlooked part of fitness, it feels like an afterthought. It is roughly 25 minutes long, but baby-steps of flexibility. She talks over and over about how many people have problems with stiff hamstrings, and then she does things  that are unlikely to make them more flexible — wrong stretch, too little time, too much movement. Several of the “modified” versions for the less flexible are completely ineffective if not actively counter-productive. Some of the yoga poses are not as I have ever seen them before. Chalene clearly doesn’t beleive there’s anything to yoga beyond some funny stretches. If this is your only stretching routine, you are unlikely get more flexible. 

Tony Horton said in the introductory materials to p90x that “[I’m not strong] because I do a bunch of pull-ups. I’m strong because I do yoga.” After we finished Chalene’s workout, we did Tony’s 10 minutes of yoga. It felt really good. 

*** UPDATE ***: I have gotten a personal reply from Chalene herself, recommending “Full Body Flexibility” by Jay Blahnik. Her stance on flexibility among the Joe and Jane Average crowd are reflected in this work. It is clear that the ChaLEAN Extreme flex workout is aimed at someone with more “average” flexibility, which is odd because I always considered myself something of a “Johnny Stiffguy”. As with the entire workout series, to get the best improvement you are going to need to push yourself as hard as you can every time you work out. While I will absolutely stick with the weight routines, I will probably go back to Tony for yoga. Also worth noting that 4 new routines are under development.

In Closing: oops, he had the wrong kind of anthrax after all; when it comes to health insurance “reform”, who do you trust?; contractors continue a 200+ year tradition of bilking the military and short-changing our troops; I am unclear how bankruptcy judges can really do their jobs if they can’t address the single biggest asset and debt the people before them have; how to merely sound Japanese; and Cat Sanctuary.

For those of you not in the know, “BBW” stands for “Big Beautiful Woman“.

I’m really not sure what to make of this item from Reuters via Yahoo:

A new program developed by the U.S. government is tackling the obesity epidemic by helping “tween” girls and their parents make small but important changes to build a healthier lifestyle.

[snip]

Girls 9 to 13 years old who are overweight or obese are referred to BodyWorks through their pediatrician, or by word of mouth. Parents and caregivers attend 10 weekly 90-minute sessions, and girls are expected to show up for at least three. The goal is to give parents and caregivers “hands-on tools to make small behavior changes to prevent obesity and help maintain a healthier weight,” according to the BodyWorks Web site (http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyworks/).

“The very attractive aspect of it is that it addresses the whole family, and the whole environment in the household, which I think is the best approach to childhood obesity,” said [Pediatrician Dr. Monica] Richter. “Diet implies a short-term deprivation, which doesn’t work.”

[snip]

The goal is not for girls to lose weight…, but for families as a whole to begin making healthier choices at the grocery store, to become more active and to spend less time in sedentary activities like watching TV or playing computer games.

Ok, so let me give points for recognizing that diet alone is not the answer. More points for involving the whole family in the plan. Being overweight or obese puts people at risk for a number of life-shortening problems and some other problems that reduce quality of life as well, so helping them lose weight is a pretty good goal. But I have to take points away for targeting just girls in just this specific age range.

What? Boys don’t get fat? Girls aged 9-13 don’t have enough body image issues? They weren’t fat when they were younger? These young ladies don’t have chubby siblings and parents who could stand to lose a few pounds?

In closing: tips for better blogging; careful about shifting to the “center” Senator, because it’s further to the left than most people think; it turns out treating pregant women for their addiction problems is better for everybody in the long run; nice to see that at least some laws apply to Blackwater; and last, there will probably not be a lot more entries in the “Picture This” category. Those strange things I run across will be submitted to the new and improved Groundmeat.

It has come to my attention that it’s been 10 years since Jared Fogle lost 245 pounds eating Subway sandwiches. And surprisingly enough, it wasn’t a publicity stunt. He was a regular guy who was tired of being fat. In fact, Subway Corporate originally saw him “as an oddity, not an opportunity.”

Hey, man, congrats! I guess he’s joined me as a “literally a freak of nature.”

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the things Jared did right, and point out a few things he could have done better. For those of you just joining me, let me briefly present my diet credentials: my personal weight loss story; and some of my evolving ideas about diet and weight management.

Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that someone very special is going to be looking over this post very critically, a doctor who specializes in weight and age management here in Las Vegas.

So what did Jared do right?

He came to his own decision to lose weight. His mom, coach, or girlfriend did not cram down a diet on him. He wasn’t carrying anybody else’s baggage about body image, only his own conviction that something had to change. He, on his own, got tired of the fact that “My shoulders would hurt. My knees would hurt. My wrists would hurt. And that was not even when I was in motion.” There is unfortunately something true to the joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb — only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

He was an adult when he began to diet. Not to discount the terrible problem we have with childhood obesity in this country, but it sure does seem like the vast majority of the people who say diets don’t work have somewhere in their story a sentence like “I went on my first diet when I was 13.” Or 11. Or 16. Many of these diets were enforced by well meaning parents who were honestly trying to help their kids not be little fatties (see previous point). These people may indeed be right about one thing: diets don’t work for them. On one hand, we could use some research on the long term effects of diet on adolescents. On the other hand, I fear for the kids in the test group.

He limited calories, but to a sustainable level. He went from eating “sometimes, 10,000 calories a day” to eating about 2000 calories a day. I think all of us can live on 2000 calories a day for quite a while, and if we do it sensibly we can do it without feeling hungry all the time. This was not a severe calorie restriction diet of under 1000 calories a day.

It was a diet he could keep doing day after day. He lived practically next door to the Subway. It didn’t involve strange foods that were hard to get or difficult and time consuming to prepare. If he went away, there would still be a Subway nearby. If not, he could figure out how to make a sandwich on his own. And really, if he got tired of the turkey sub, he could have had the ham, or the roast beef, or a salad.

It was a (relatively) balanced diet. There’s plenty of veggies on top of a sandwich from Subway, along with a reasonable portion of bread and enough protein to keep you going. Protein is really important on a diet.

He cut added sugar. He didn’t have the cookie with his sandwich, although he did have the baked potato chips. He stopped putting 10 packets of sugar in his morning coffee. He switched to diet soda. Frankly, just the changes in his beverage habits alone probably took 500 calories off his daily intake! Which would you rather have, 500 calories of soda or 500 calories of sandwich?

Once he was physically able to, he added an exercise component to his diet. Sure, it started with some walking. And then a lot of walking. It would not surprise me for his workout to have evolved a bit over the last 10 years.

He wasn’t obnoxious about it. The story goes that “former dorm mate of Fogle, Ryan Coleman, wrote an article about Fogle’s weight loss story after Coleman ran into Fogle and hardly recognized him because of the lost weight.” He wasn’t beating his chest over being on a diet. Heck, he was embarrassed to be that heavy and once said “I had no intention of anyone ever finding out what I had done.”

He didn’t give up. Sandwiches are not the first thing Jared tried, just the most successful thing. To the best of my knowledge — and I have not read his book — he has never discussed some of the strategies that failed. He does point out that some things work better for different people.

He didn’t go back to the way of eating and living that got him fat in the first place. Make no mistake, Jared doesn’t just eat subway sandwiches anymore. But he’s not eating 10,000 calories a day. He’s happy to be where he is, and happy to be helping other people too. I suspect that he still does watch what he eats and that he exercises. He can certainly afford a personal trainer to help with that now.

Nevertheless, there are some things he could have done better.

He skipped breakfast. Just adding a piece of fruit first thing in the morning would have stimulated his metabolism. Some experts recommend eating 5 healthy but snack-sized meals instead of 3 regular meals for just this reason.

He didn’t have a support group. Most people don’t have the inner strength to go it completely alone the way Jared did. Most of us need somebody rooting for us — or at the very least not actively working against us! Even if it’s just one trusted friend or your spouse or your doctor, somebody to help you and sometimes keep you accountable is a good thing.

Most of us would prefer more variety. Don’t get me wrong, Subway has a lot of different sandwiches, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Jared reached a point where he didn’t particularly ever want to see another sub again.

That’s it.  There have been some advances in weight loss and a bunch of research since Jared lost all that weight, but a lot of what he did is still something doable and worth doing.

On this, the 100th International Women’s Day, 1000 Afghan women gathered to “laugh and sing for the future”. A Saudi woman drove, in violation of national law. Canadian women marched in parades and went to rallies. There were demonstrations in Paris. Protests in the Philippines. Calls to end corruption in Bangladesh. There were other events in such nations as Australia, North Korea, and Iraq. There was even an article in the L.A. Times.

Yeah, not a lot of coverage here in the States.

So on this 100th International Women’s Day I am answering the call of several women bloggers: the call for the 10 most essential items in my closet! Clearly this is an issue of great importance — particularly considering my place in the world of Short Women — and I will not let you down.

1. Jeans that fit properly. First, they need to be the right length. Every time I see a woman with her jeans dragging on the ground I want to shake her and ask why she wasted her money on clothes that don’t fit right. Did she think she was going to grow 4 inches suddenly? I know there is a lot of disagreement about this, but I think they should come roughly to the tops of your shoes. And furthermore, you should not have to wear high heels with jeans. They’re jeans for crying out loud. As for the waist, wear what you like with these two caveats: nobody wants to see your crack; and muffin-top is never sexy.

2. Black pants, again that fit properly. Currently, slim pants are the thing. Someday maybe they won’t be. That’s fine, because you’ll wear these often enough to wear them out over the course of a few years. Khakis are great too but not as versatile; you can’t dress up khakis enough for a dinner party. Mine happen to be hip-huggers, meant to be capris but they fit me like pants, purchased at Kohls. They do not have to be expensive, just nice looking.

3. Black Skirt, roughly knee length. In a nice fabric, and a cut that flatters your body type. And oh yes, it must absolutely be machine washable. Wear it to work. Wear it to parties. Wear it to events. Wear it wherever. I have both a knee length one and a mini.

4. Underwear that is both comfortable and flattering. There’s something empowering about knowing that even your panties look gooooood. Just ask Juliette.

5. A “Yes, I’m in charge here” dress. Mine is a navy blue shirt-dress that comes just above my knees, purchased at Forever 21.

6. Turtleneck or mock turtlenecks, your choice of sleeve length, at minimum off-white and basic black. Other colors are optional and welcome. Mine are elbow length and great solo or layered. Because I am Short, I have trouble finding long sleeved shirts that aren’t actually finger-length shirts.

7. Something to layer over other things. This is an issue of personal style, and what is acceptable in your workplace. Maybe you’re a cardigan kinda person. Perhaps you prefer a sharply tailored blazer. Or maybe you re-purpose a traditional women’s dress shirt that turned out to be a little bigger that you thought it would be when you ordered it….

8. A nice-looking but comfortable machine washable dress. Or two. This is a matter of personal style, but it should be something that you wouldn’t feel funny going directly from work to a social event or picking up something at the grocery store on the way home.

9. The Shoes! Now there’s no real reason to go shoe mad. Really. But there’s some things every woman ought to have. At least basic black pumps or flats that go with the pants and skirts above, and something that coordinates with browns. Mine are leopard print! And I shouldn’t have to say you need some comfy around-town walking sort of shoes. If you do a lot of traveling, you need these to be slip-on to facilitate the Safety Dance at the airport.

10. A couple bits of distinctive but not necessarily expensive jewelry. Something that says who you are. It doesn’t have to be big and certainly shouldn’t be gaudy, but it should be something that goes with the majority of your wardrobe. A strand of genuine faux pearls? Cubic Zirconia earrings? A particular pendant or bracelet? It’s up to you.

That’s it. It’s my personal opinion so take it or leave it. Keep in mind that my fashion goals are modest: to never appear as a Glamour Magazine “Don’t”, and to be neither the best nor worst dressed woman at any formal event.

In closing: we are no longer able to hide job losses; interesting piece on teachers pay; the current health insurance debate is “like watching two rocket scientists boil a discussion of space travel down to a squabble over the angle of re-entry”; what was Playmobil thinking (I mean really, everyone knows the shoes have to come off!); um no, the actual data from that meta-study shoes shows that modern anti-depressants do work in a statistically significant way; how many of the 50 most powerful blogs do you read?; the Grand Canyon is even older than we thought; perfect storm of economic indicators and mortgage meltdown; even the FBI is investigating Countrywide; and Brilliant Jill is much more thoughtful than I am, because instead of 10 wardrobe essentials she wrote about 10 things that Yes, We Can Do.

Somehow, my browser tabs have become clogged with food-related items. If you are on a diet you might scroll down….

Let’s start with a cocktail, shall we? Wired has a helpful item on how to infuse your own Vodka with your own selection of delicious flavors. Take that, Absolut!

Perhaps we should have some light dinner conversation. Here’s a book we could discuss: Swindled talks about the various ways that the food business has taken advantage of us, the customers, for the last few thousand years!

Speaking of which, Suburban Guerilla would like to talk about why it’s so hard to get locally grown food at the local megamart.

Shall we finish the appetizers with a cheese plate? Unbossed would like to know why, if rBST is sooooo good for cows and not at all bad for us humans, farmers and dairy producers don’t proudly label products with its use?

Are you a fan of Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food — even if you can’t stand his standard blog drivel? Well then you are going to love this. It’s the Mid-Century Supper Club, reproducing food your mother still has nightmares about, and sharing the pictures with us on the internet! Many thanks to Slashfood for this one.

Ever wonder what foreigners buy at Japanese discount stores? Well it turns out that Ramen tops the list. Followed by an amazing array of strange stuff, some of it even edible!

And did you know that now some people are claiming that fortune cookies are a Japanese invention?

Speaking of Japan, they are a little upset to be getting “free” beef from America. It seems they have very strict criteria regarding what they will accept from our nation, and at this point I can’t blame them.

After all, stuff like this shows up in our freezers.

And the USDA isn’t interested in the *ahem* wrong people investigating the wrong things. The “wrong people” such as Congress. The “wrong things” such as whatever they say. Yeah. Cause they totally have nothing to hide.

In closing: Education is about Students; Off With My Sexist Head!; Gretchen embraces reality as we know it; “We can’t show kids the results of non-abstinence, it goes against the principles of abstinence-only sex education!”; and $31 Million dollars worth of goods lost stolen from luggage while in TSA or airline custody in the last 3 years .

If you were to randomly come across a commentary entitled “Stop Supporting a Tainted Food Supply,” where would you suppose you were? Alternet? PETA? Some random editorial that happened to get picked up by Buzzflash?

How about financial news site TheStreet.com?

After giving us the quickie-version of the latest massive meat recall — which the USDA says shouldn’t concern us because most of the meat has already been eaten and what we don’t know can’t hurt us — the author tells us:

I’m taking a stand and putting my money where my mouth is — literally. My five-person family consumes about $1,300 of food per month — $15,600 per year — including the meals we eat at home and at restaurants. I can easily divert at least a quarter of that money to farmers and meat producers in my own community.

Now, just as a point of curiosity, how is that going to help? Even if we go out on a limb and assume that her community has farmers and meat producers that sell locally, what guaranty does the author have that locally produced food is free of the problems of corporate farming? Just because it’s local doesn’t mean that the animals have been humanely treated, or that the vegetables are free from contaminants, or that any of it has been handled in a sanitary fashion. Even the most vile of factory farms and slaughterhouses are “local” to somebody.

Ah, now here’s someone who has a grip on the problem: the Faithful Penguin points out the false premise that “the markets are a regular libertarian paradise of goodwill and bonhomie where no capitalist would dare engage in shoddy or dangerous practices because the market would ‘self-regulate;’ therefore, no rational businessman would take those risks as they’d be run out of business.” In fact, he reminds us that the current regulations — the ones that have been systematically undermined since the Reagan Administration — were passed into law in 1906, after “Upton Sinclair published The Jungle. Written to awaken the consciousness of America to the plight of immigrant workers, the horrific and dangerous conditions in Chicago’s slaughterhouses were exposed, causing the public to worry about its own health.”

In the end, that is what regulation is supposed to do: protect us from the excesses of unbridled corporatism. Some people say regulation costs jobs. I say deregulation has cost a lot of jobs in such diverse areas as air travel (bankrupt airlines), telecommunications (bankrupt providers like WorldCom), energy (bankrupt and corrupt companies like Enron), and food production (family farms). Sure, some regulation goes overboard, and some other regulation is actually a gift to the industry being “regulated,” but a whole lot of it is reaction to somebody somewhere saying “there oughta be a law.”

In closing: stock market danger; sign this stack of papers, including the one that lets your tax preparer sell your returns; make your own ginger beer; Iron Chef or Not Iron Chef; I’m late to the coverage, so I’ll let Jill say “duh” on late diagnosis of cancer; Duhpartment of Research tells us men can live longer by “abstaining from smoking, weight management, blood pressure control, regular exercise and avoiding diabetes” (anybody know how to avoid diabetes? “weight management”, “regular exercise”, and have the right relatives!); the “education gap” and social mobility; awesomely elegant wrapping; why doesn’t the border fence go across the golf course?; Word to Mrs. Clinton, it’s not that you’re a woman, it’s that you’re you!; thanks to Pharyngula for pointing out 41 hilarious science experiments; and strange economic portents, economic indicators will no longer be published due to budget constraints, and the attack of the expanding dollar menu.

Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

I have some new cookbooks.

Specifically I have some new vegetarian cookbooks. I am not a full vegetarian, but I do try to make healthy food for my family. And “healthy” means plenty of veggies. Furthermore, meatless dishes are often (but not always!) higher nutrition for lower calories, and very budget friendly as well.

One of the new books is How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. One feature I love is that vegan, fast, or make-ahead recipes are clearly marked. Frankly, this is an improvement over the original How to Cook Everything, and I hope future editions of that book will utilize similar markings. One thing you will not find in HtCEV is a lot of recipes that use fake meat. Sure, there are tofu recipes and seitan recipes, and 10 pages on making your own veggie “burgers”, including adaptations for “meat”loaves and “meat”balls. And sure, there are recipes that use alternative-but-still-natural sweeteners such as agave nectar or maple syrup. But no Gimme Lean, no Liquid Amino Acids, no TVP, no Tofurky, no Quorn, no Morningstar Farms, no Boca Burgers, no Gardenburgers, no frozen meatless beef/chicken/pork substitute patties, in fact nothing that should be capitalized or have a trademark symbol.

By contrast, I have another new cookbook that features only vegan recipes — for those who aren’t in the know, vegans not only don’t eat any sort of meat or fish, they don’t eat any animal-produced products (dairy, eggs, honey) either. You might think this is very limiting in a world where meat and eggs and dairy products are everywhere, even on our salads (mmGorgonzola). It is certainly challenging, and requires some thinking ahead. If you want to read more about that, I humbly refer you to Veggie Going Vegan and Fat Free Vegan.

Anyway, this cookbook talks seriously about eating healthy food: why the chemicals in coffee are bad for you; why refined sugar is bad for you but artificial low-calorie sweeteners are worse, and a new study supports that fact (ok, ok, giving up my Diet Coke, *sigh*); be selective about your grains, avoid ones that have “white” in the name, and why; the chemicals that go into modern farming of meat; it goes on. I really like the frank and irreverent tone of the book. I may not agree with everything they say — for example my experience with potato products is that they tend to make me gain more weight than white rice — but they do try to back up their opinions.

And then — 8 paragraphs away from a sentence summarizing the various drugs, pesticides, steroids, and hormones that end up in farmed meat and meat products — they point out that section of the grocery store dedicated to overpriced, frozen wad, chemistry sets known as fake meat. Sure, they admit that these products should only be eaten in moderation, and that they only sort of taste like meat. Oh, and that humble readers such as myself should make up their own minds.

The chemicals in dairy products? Bad! The chemicals that turn rice and soy into something that taste like dairy products? Inexplicably good! Eggs? Bad! Egg Beaters? Still bad! Vegan egg replacer made with starch and cellulose through some super-secret chemical process? Somehow good!

Listen, I am willing to concede that a diet of cheeseburgers is probably not good for you. But I have this strange feeling that switching to a diet of fake burger patties with fake cheese on a whole wheat bun isn’t much better for you. If you honestly can’t handle life without burgers, that’s ok. Really it is. Maybe a vegan lifestyle isn’t for you.

But you’ll just have to trust me that there are better things you can be putting in your mouth: for half the price of a box of frozen-burgerish-substance, you can make your own delicious meat substitute (and I bet you already have most of the ingredients in your pantry); you could be eating soba noodles in peanut sauce; you could be enjoying roasted veggies — you can figure out how to hack up some veggies and stick them in a hot oven for an hour, right?; you can make sloppy pinto-joes (sorry my recipe is simpler than any I see online) or black bean soup; just yesterday I had a lovely hummus and falafel platter for lunch; and we haven’t even touched on “exotic” ingredients like seitan and tempeh. Frankly, looking beyond a hunk of meat opens a freaking huge culinary world. After all, several cultures developed their own independent vegetarian cuisines in the complete absence of the latest scientific information on amino acids. There’s a lot of delicious and nutritious food out there. Why waste time, money, and calories on chemistry sets?

In closing: America Says Thanks for the gift card, I used it to buy “pasta sauce, diapers, [and] laundry detergent“; America Also Says the recession is already here; it’s one thing to walk away from the house, it’s another thing to walk away from the student loans, and America is doing both; at least we have homes to walk away from, one in six Iraqis don’t; Dear Hillary, grow up and smell the democracy; collegiate bloggers should read this now; deja vu; CNN shows their priorities by asking “So when are my shows coming back?“; another take on kids still don’t have employers; since the tourists are just here for the dollars, let’s not annoy them; somehow killing one out of five people doesn’t sound like a “peace” plan; Senate Traitors; and everything you will ever need to know about mattresses. Oh, and happy 200th birthday of Abe Lincoln.

It’s Blog for Choice Day. And although Maya’s Granny has written far more eloquently than I can on this topic, I will add my own comments.

I sincerely hope I am never in the position of having to make a personal decision to terminate a pregnancy. I don’t know that I could do it unless my health were at stake. But who am I to make that decision for anyone else? Why is my decision more valid than yours?

That’s the point of “Choice.” You are an independent human being; you can think for yourself. And contrary to what the so-called “Pro-Life” community would have you believe, sometimes people do “Choose Life.” My favorite story about just that — emphasis mine — is here:

Whoopi [Goldberg] was asked to contribute [to the book, Open the Unusual Door, True Life Stories of Challenge, Adventure and Success by Black Americans] and wrote about when her 14-year old daughter announced to her that he was pregnant. Even though she had supported and had spoken out in favor of pro-choice, her daughter’s situation gave “pro-choice” a new meaning. Choice to have a baby, not just choice to have an abortion. Whoopi wrote, “I had to take my beliefs out for a little test drive… It means women have the choice to do whatever they want..; even if it smacked into what my choice would have been for her… she taught me pro-choice is not just a phrase.” For me this is an important lesson. First it reminds me that I don’t want to be a parent so young. It also showed me how stating one’s beliefs or position about an issue becomes very different when you have to confront it personally. Facing it forces you to think about the issue differently. It’s one thing to state a belief; it’s another if you have to live it! It’s easier to talk the talk than walk the walk!

Obstacles like “waiting periods” and parental consent laws and spousal/paternal consent laws (which can sadly be used to force women to become gestation machines for rapists) are a nice way of saying “Oh now hold on a minute little lady! You aren’t smart enough to make this decision all on your lonesome! Don’t you know you’re havin’ a baby?”

Kindly leave aside for a moment the issue of whether a woman who is “not smart enough to know her own mind” should really be raising children.

I honestly don’t see how mainstream America can take the so-called Pro-Life movement seriously until such time as they denounce and expel the internal faction that thinks it is acceptable to enforce their opinions through violence, vandalism, and murder. By failing to do so, by actively spreading lies about birth control and abortion, they are showing their true colors: the Anti-Sex movement.

Make no mistake: I deeply respect efforts to minimize the number of abortions that take place around the world. The only way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. You prevent unwanted pregnancies by making sure women have access to birth control, by working to prevent birth defects that can turn a desperately wanted pregnancy into a tragedy, by reducing sexual assault, and by encouraging a social and economic environment conducive to the raising of children.

In Closing: Tim Iocono on Recession; the intersection of politics and health care; Henry Paulson sure looks scared about something; one way to get a raise?; ammunition the Democrats should be using but aren’t; and finally, Real ID Rebels.

If you have been reading ShortWoman for some years, you have already read some of what follows. Yesterday, I explained why I probably know more about successful dieting than many people. That being said, I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist nor any sort of personal trainer.

Most diets fail because we have unrealistic expectations. We think that if only we lost x pounds our lives would change; it’s not so. We think that we can deprive ourselves for a period of weeks or months and then go back to the way we’ve always eaten (or worse yet, reward ourselves with a big pig-out); the truth is that not only will our body hoard calories, we will go back to our old weight if we eat the old way — that is why most people who lose weight gain it back. We think our workout entitles us to a little treat; a little treat completely negates the average workout. We think a brisk walk around the mall is a workout; but what we actually do is a slow amble around the mall while sucking down a 600 calorie mocha. We think that we will magically lose weight by purchasing and eating chemistry experiments with labels that proclaim “low fat” or “low carb” or “lite”; the only thing that gets skinnier is our wallets. We think this weight loss plan will be the one that is different, the one that works; we ignore the small type about “results not typical” or “when combined with a reduced calorie diet and exercise.” We don’t stop to wonder how long Jared had to eat Subway Sandwiches 3 meals a day to lose all that weight; any doctor will tell you that 1-3 pounds lost a week is healthy — so losing 100 pounds should take 8-24 months. In short, we think there is such a thing as a magic pill.

Another major reason diets fail is that they are unsustainable. This needless to say overlaps with our unrealistic expectations. Do you really want to drink your lunch for the rest of your life? Because if you listen carefully to the ads on the TV, you will see that is their plan for you! Can you live on 1200 calories a day? Sure, for a while, but sooner or later hunger will catch up with you unless you have some sort of metabolic ace-in-the-hole. Since we have already established that losing a lot of weight takes time, sustainability is a huge factor. A diet that you can’t stand to keep doing for months — whether because of hunger or boredom — just won’t work. A sign of a good diet is that there is actual discussion of various stages of diet and a transition into a way of eating that will help us maintain a healthy weight.

The third major reason diets fail is lack of support. We have friends who say “Oh come on, just one cookie won’t hurt you!” (and we wonder if they say “Oh come on, just one drink won’t hurt you!” to recovering alcoholics). Or maybe we have friends who think they are being helpful by telling us what we can and cannot eat. Maybe we have husbands who tell the kids “Mom’s not having any pizza, she’s on one of her crazy diets again.” Even if our families, friends, and coworkers are supportive, we frequently find ourselves in a position where it is clear that we are eating diet food while everyone else is eating “normal” food. When we find that we have no supply of food that conforms to our diet, we do not engender the sympathy of those around us. At least Jared’s sandwich looked like a normal meal to everyone else. Even professional support groups like Weight Watchers have practices that are somewhat less than motivational.

The truth about fitness is that it isn’t easy. The human body was not designed to sit behind a desk all day. It is built to walk, to run, to carry things, to throw things, to swim, to climb, to move. And it is designed to do that all day, every day. Well guess what, most of us don’t have that ancient lifestyle. No, we sit at desks or on sofas, we ride in cars and buses and airplanes, we spend a lot of time on our butts. Even those of us who work on our feet generally walk no more than a few yards at one time. So we have to actually work out. And no, it isn’t fun. It isn’t supposed to be fun. Our ancestors didn’t hunt game and gather fruit because it was fun; they did it because it was food. Our ancestors didn’t run from predators because it was fun; they did it so they could live another day. Our ancestors didn’t haul wood back to the campsite because it was fun; they did it so there would be fire for heat and light and cooking. I do not work out because it is fun; I work out because I like the way my body looks when I do it regularly.

I am a freak of nature. I lost over 20% of my body weight almost a decade ago. I am my college weight, and in much better shape than I was then. There’s plenty in the archives, of course, but more of what I think about sustainable weight loss can be found in these 5 posts: one, two, three, four, five.

In closing: the market for liberty; lots of plastic bins are a symptom of a clutter problem, not a cure for it; USA Today reports on legal voters purged from voter registration lists; FedEx and the IRS are arguing about whether the delivery guy is an employee or a contractor (FedEx is going to lose); I like Hello Kitty and I think this is a bad idea; planes to nowhere; and remember the Massachusetts health plan? It turns out the fines for not having health insurance “could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of 2008….” Friendly reminder, the fine for a business not providing health insurance is $295. So much for Massachusetts being nigh unto socialists.