The thing is, usually when I finally get around to making this announcement, then the phase is over and the next day I’ve got twenty things to report. So in case that happens, here is the note beforehand warning that I might be busy for awhile. All is well! All is very well. I just don’t have a lot of time to write.

If you have questions or need to know anything (like, what could you possibly need to know?), just comment, or send me email, or carrier pigeon, or something of that nature. Except maybe not the pigeon.

And now that I’ve said that I’m taking a break, look for me to write twelve posts in the next two days.

This past week has actually gone pretty well, and I can say that now (knock on wood) because it appears to be over; rain is falling now, that glorious unfrozen water, and the snow is (HURRAH!) melting. Ollie and I took a short walk up and down the block, noting that there are more cars everywhere (everyone drove home after being away?), and the street is slushy but workable. A big sigh of relief came over me.

I’ve gotten a few friendly notes from people asking if I’ve been running – no, I haven’t. Running also triggers panic attacks, and I’m already fighting off the anxiety from the snow. I’ve had three attacks this week, one each night I went to bed and it was still frozen out. On top of that, a lot of free-floating anxiety. I wish I could control this. I would if I could. But since I can’t, I do what I can to avoid triggering it, which has meant that I didn’t exercise this week.

Now that it’s melting, however, I’m ready to get back on the treadmill. I’ll do that tonight and let you know what happens.

There aren’t very many, and some of them are personal so I won’t be sharing the list, but the one that I wanted to share was this:

For the entire span of 2012, I will not find out my own weight.

This means that I won’t weigh myself at home, and when I go to the doctor’s office I’ll tell the nurse I don’t want to know what the number is when s/he weighs me. I go to a great clinic and I’m confident this won’t be an issue.

Obviously if someone blurts it out, I’ll be annoyed, but that won’t break the resolution. I’m also adding a caveat for any medical issues; in the unlikely event that my doctor feels my weight is a problem, and needs to talk to me about it, then obviously that will happen. I’m not at a high enough weight nor do I have any weight-related illnesses that would make her concerned, and I’m not losing weight at a rate fast enough for her to worry, so I think chances are good that I might actually be able to pull this resolution off.

Why am I doing this? I want a break from the issue, just for a year. It isn’t that I don’t want to lose weight; I would love to. And it isn’t that I think weight is unimportant; I don’t believe that, I believe weigh-related diseases are very real and we should care about how much we weigh, and what effect that might have on our health.

However, I have other commitments right now that are leading me toward better health and fitness, such as learning to run a 5k, learning to cook and eat a plant-based diet (see Lindsay’s great post for why I’m no longer using the word “vegan” if I can help it), taking Tai Chi classes, meditating, and other pursuits. If I’m eating healthy food and getting the exercise I need, then the number on the scale doesn’t matter.

We already know that an increase in fitness is more important than weight loss anyway. Losing weight would be great, but unfortunately we have ample evidence that it isn’t losing weight that’s the problem, it’s keeping it all off for any extended period of time. I’m not kidding, this task is nearly impossible for most people.

And you know what I realized? I’m not that special. I’m not confident I can do what 97% of people can’t do, in large part because I just don’t care that much. No, I don’t particularly like being 40-50 pounds overweight (depending on what table you use), but I’m not going to starve and exercise myself into oblivion just so I can gain back all that plus 50 more, putting me into a weight bracket with virtually guaranteed serious deleterious effects. I refuse to do that to myself.

Not weighing myself for a year is a leap of faith in myself, and I love the way it feels. It means that I trust myself to eat well and exercise, and I trust that whatever my body does this year in response to those things will be okay, acceptable, even welcome. It means I have faith and acceptance in my body, no matter what. At least that’s what I’m saying. Let’s hope I can follow that with action! Or rather, in this case, inaction.

I know what I weighed on December 31st, 2011. Next weigh-in: December 31st, 2012.

What else did I discover? Take away all the ethical or environmental reasons for not eating meat and I’m still left with this: I don’t like it. I don’t like the taste or the texture, nor do I enjoy cooking with it. The only way that meat is palatable to me is if it’s breaded and covered in sugar, like Orange Chicken for example, which I haven’t been able to eat in nearly two years after discovering I can’t eat gluten, and isn’t a healthy option anyway.

I really tried with this one. I was convinced for a long time that paleo would save me, despite the fact that whenever I really adhered to the diet I had headaches, was more anxious than ever (I know some people report lower anxiety levels on paleo, but that wasn’t me), and didn’t lose a pound. I could never tolerate the high level of flesh that diet prescribes, neither could I tolerate the fat. Anytime I eat a high-fat meal I get heart palpitations afterward, and it doesn’t matter if that’s animal fat or a healthier fat like coconut or olive oil.

Every time I would look at my paleo plate with all that meat and all those veggies, I would EAT JUST THE VEGGIES. I KNOW, RIGHT? I don’t like vegetables. That’s Hollie’s General Rule #3. I’ve based this whole blog on poking fun at my dislike of vegetables. So imagine my surprise when faced with a plate of beef, salad, and zucchini, I gobble the salad and zucchini and avoid the beef. I’m even bored with bacon. There. I said it.

What I’ve settled on, what seems to make me feel good, is when I eat more fruits and veggies, less fat, and less sugar. That leaves protein: do I eat more meat, or more beans? I’ve got a big pot of vegan chili simmering on the stove right now, so there you go.

I apologize for abandoning you during the Thanksgiving season. I’m sure that all 100 of you (seriously! 100 subscribers!) were SIMPLY BEREFT.

Why was I gone? I’ve been busy! A couple weeks before Thanksgiving I made the huge decision to go back to massage therapy, beginning in April. I’m so excited!

I’ve been a therapist for four years, but stopped working a couple years ago after we moved back to Seattle. The kids were in a new school and needed  a lot of support with the big transition between our previous small town and the big city, and I didn’t feel up to the challenge of trying to start a practice again, so I just let it slide. I did, however, keep up all my credentials, thank goodness!

I’ll be doing an oncology massage workshop in March that will let me work with oncology patients in hospitals and in hospice, so I won’t be formally beginning my practice until that’s complete, but in the meantime I’m volunteering with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, the Providence Hospice Program, and possibly one other organization. I hope to work mostly with cancer patients and other clients under care or in recovery for illness, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ll be working part time for now, it’s incredibly important to me that I’m home with the kids as long as we can afford it.

I’m also enrolled in the East-West School for Herbal and Aromatic Studies to become an Aromatherapist! I’ve wanted to do this for years, and I finally get my chance, and with such a great school, too! I love scents and essential oils, and I’m excited to use what I learn in my practice, and at home with the family.

Between all that and Thanksgiving, well, the blog slid a little, but I hope to be back in track now. I’m digging all the Christmas prep so much! It’s so fun, and it’s such a huge gift to be in our new house this year, I find myself thinking I am so thankful, every single day.

More later, including an updating on the Couch to 5k, and back to our Daily Photo feature, woo!

Love,

- Hollie

Until then, I give you the best Halloween sign Beth has ever made. At the bottom, in blue and black letters that are hard to make out, she writes, “Love, The Ghost.”

It’s beautiful. I’ll just tell you right now. It’s funny, it gets the point across, and has its heart (and abs, oh geez, the abs) in the right place.

I often have mixed feelings about supporting breast cancer organizations, after one of my best friends (I accidentally typed that as “one of my breast friends”, oh I crack myself up) developed uterine cancer. She was told repeatedly that there would be all kinds of help available to her “if only” she had breast cancer, since that is such a well-funded cause and there is a great deal of services available for free or cheap for breast cancer patients. Since then, those of us close to her get a tad annoyed when Pink Season arrives, and I give my charity dollars to cancer organizations that fund all types of research.

However, I’m all for breast self-exams, and I am downloading this app. Which has everything to do with staying healthy, and nothing to do with really hot guys on my iPhone. Seriously. Cancer prevention is a very sober business. Says the woman who just downed half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Look, I’m doing my own research on the cancer-fighting effects of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, alright? I’ll get back to you on the results. I’m sure they’re awesome.

Cinnamon apple with caramel glaze (hell yeah)

I like big BUNDTS and I cannot lie
You other bakers can’t deny
When a girl walks in with
that cake-like thang
and puts the round thing
in your face you say YUM!
Wanna pull up a trough
Cuz you know you’re about to get STUFFED

Sugar-filled glaze it’s wearing
You’re hooked and you can’t stop staring
Oh sweet thing I wanna get with ya
Let me tweet your picture
My friends did try to warn me
But that bundt you brought
Make me so hungry

Oooh, let’s get that fork in
You say I getta piece of that bundt?
I’ll say please, say please, cuz that sugar is makin’  me dazed, see?

My stomach is appraisin’
If this bundt will keep it from lazin’
It’s sweet, you bet, gonna give me the sugar sweats

I’m tired of the sugar-free scene
Saying bundt cakes are obscene
Take the average man on the street and ask him that
You gotta put the sugar BACK

So Fellas (yeah) Fellas (yeah)
Have you gotta piece of that bundt? (hell yeah!)
Well eat it, yeah, eat it, yeah, eat that big round bundt
BABY GOT BUNDT

- Written after Game Night on Saturday, when I felt a bundt inspired. Thanks to Sir Mix-A-Lot!

Credit: Stephanie d'Otreppe / NPR

You can visit the main page for the series, but I am particularly interested in this page of facts.

It estimates, among other things, that if current trends continue, 50% of Americans will be obese (not just “overweight”) by the year 2030. It also says we eat more chicken and less eggs and far more cheese and sugar than we did in the 50′s, that our portion sizes of practically everything have increased, that poverty and obesity are strongly correlated, and that it costs more to be an obese individual in nearly every respect.

According to the credits at the bottom, the sources of these facts are

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• U.S. Census Bureau; “A Heavy Burdon”
• George Washington University, 2010; “Why Are We So Fat?”
• National Geographic, August 2004, Volume 206, Issue 2

Pages like this are interesting because they show a lot of information in a visual way, but this does (of course) also raise a lot of questions.

For instance, I really want to understand which of theses sources figured out the cost of being obese, and find out how they arrived at their numbers. Especially noteworthy is the Salary and Wages – men apparently have no penalty for obesity, while women lose $1,855/year from obesity? That’s disturbing, though not surprising; Hollywood repeatedly teaches us that it’s far worse to be a fat woman than a fat man.

I haven’t read all the articles yet, but I plan to. I started with One Woman’s Struggle to Shed Weight, and Shame, and was happily surprised at how sensitive it was. The woman in the article, Kara Curtis, is very humanely profiled, unlike a lot of other articles I’ve read where a fat woman is put on parade, her “failures” discussed at length. Kara is conflicted, like most overweight people (like most people) about her body, and struggles with accepting it while simultaneously wanting to change it – a struggle I can easily relate to.

I was also very touched by her comment about a photo of herself from years ago –  standing on a hilltop looking like an average slim woman – in which she says that she felt the image herself in the photo was so fat she almost destroyed the picture. God, I have so many photos like that. At seventeen years old I was at my adult height of 5’9″, and I weighed 165 pounds. In my mind I was, as I used to say at the time, “a complete heifer”. Now it’s twenty years later, and I sometimes look at old photos and just pine to have that body back.

I’ll be watching to see what the purpose of all this special series is. Are we to feel horrible about ourselves? Because I can guarantee you, most overweight people already do, and I don’t see that making anyone thinner.

(It's Hamlet, yo. .....I might be working too hard.)

Denmark has become the first country to have a nationwide fat tax. They aren’t taxing fat people (or corgis – my dog Oliver would like to register his considerable relief), they’re taxing fat food, imposing the tax on anything high in saturated fat (over 2.3%). Apparently there has been quite the run on butter, red meat, and pizza.

Everyone is talking about this, from The Washington Post to The Atlantic (which features a terrifying photo of…..what is that? Butter? Danish nacho topping?).

Even the Freakonomics guys delved right in, claiming that it’s an “…economically efficient response to the rising social costs of obesity and underscores the efficiency losses that we must accept as the price of compassion and political correctness — objectives which typically do not preoccupy economists.”

In other words: I’m sorry, but your fat has forced us to be impolite.

But will it work?

The Danish government hopes that this will makes its citizens healthier, but this reminds me a little bit of America’s low-fat craze: we didn’t replace the fat with vegetables, we simply replaced it with sugar, and look where that got us! According to many terrified policy-makers, our country’s obesity rate has risen over 30%, while Denmark’s is only 10%.

Are 10% of Danes really fat because of too much red meat and butter? I guess we’re about to find out.

Such a lovely Sunday in Seattle! This is a photo I took with my iPhone, of my spearmint and lemongrass tea (Adagio!) reflecting our sumac tree.

Jason and I did our weekly pilgrimage to the Ballard Farmer’s Market, this time bringing my corgi, Oliver, who has apparently decided he likes other humans but other dogs can just go to hell. How he got this surly toward his own kind I will never understand, but he is an equal-opportunity hater; even the friendly Labradors were summarily rejected.

We picked up our CSA box, and now I have to figure out what to do with all these delicious vegetables. I know, I know, eat them. I’ve been thinking that too. It’s certainly one possibility – although I also liked the idea of a giant outdoor vegetable collage (people just don’t appreciate glue guns anymore), or maybe sharpening the paring knives and holding a turnip whittling contest between the children (haha, I’m kidding – we didn’t get any turnips).

The sun has been out all day, lighting up fall; we sat out on our front porch drinking tea, observing the rays of light filtering through the leaves of our sumac, slowly turning from green to yellow to red before our eyes. A pair of little grey finches came to watch with us, and then we saw our squirrel, Bill, crossing the porch. He froze when he realized we were watching him, looking up at us with a fat peanut in his mouth. “Who on earth is feeding Bill peanuts?” Jason asked. Before we could ask him, Bill had finished sizing us up and was sauntering, unconcerned (even a little cocky), off toward his pine tree.

I love these little moments.

So much texting this week has given me a great opportunity to experience the fun of auto-complete:

When done right……

When done wrong…..

And when done really, really wrong…..

Happily, technology also allows me to see when he’s buying something really good  - because the bank sends each of us a notice for each transaction. And you know your souvenir will be awesome when you see this land in your email:

I kept pulling out Kleenex after Kleenex, asking myself what was wrong with me, what’s the big deal? It isn’t like I was friends with the guy. Good people die every day, cancer happens every day. And yet, the whole evening was weighted with this soft haze of grief, and it was hours before I had words to explain why.

I’m married to a Mac and iOS programmer. We met as teenagers in the summer of ’93, and within a few months he started working at Omni, a company that began developing software for the Mac. Greg was their first full-time employee, and so excited to be there. He loved the projects, and the other guys in the company (all four of them) weren’t just coworkers, they were friends.

What does this have to do with Steve Jobs? I have had the immense privilege of being married to someone who has loved their work, who has been passionate about what they’re doing, for the last eighteen years. Greg’s happiness is my happiness, his enjoyment of his career has enriched us both in more ways than I can count, and all of that has been working on a platform that Steve Jobs built. I’m so grateful to him for that. Because of Steve, there was Apple, and because of Apple there was Omni, and because of Omni, I have been given the gift of eighteen years with an incredibly happy spouse, and a truly wonderful life.

On a more personal level, my passion is writing, as well as reading and photography, and I do it all on Macs – as well as play games, keep in touch with family and friends, and research every subject that catches my eye. I use my iPhone, iPad, iMac, and Macbook Air every single day. But writing – writing is what has saved me over and over, helping me get through tough times and be present for the good times, and I do all that work on my Mac.

These tools are more than just their parts. They aren’t just machines.

They’re an elegant means to a meaningful end.

Thanks, Steve.

I wanted to come up with something simple but to the point, and I knew I had it when I found this lovely apple photo:

1. It has a heart! And I blog from the heart. Well, sometimes from the kitchen.
2. Apples are my favorite fruit (Honeycrisps and Cameos, if you’re curious).
3. I’m apple-shaped, which is the riskiest for heart disease (see #1).

I go through phases with it, as I’m sure many of you do. Sometimes I don’t care about it, sometimes I care a lot about it. Sometimes it’s just in the back of my mind, other times it’s all I can think about. It isn’t ever a non-issue, even when it’s a very small, almost-forgotten issue. Being fat is an impossible thing to lose track of.

I vividly remember standing in the kitchen when I was six years old, holding my plate out, and asking my mother how many calories were in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Skip ahead a few years, and by the time I was ten I had somehow gotten my hands on a copy of the book, The You Can Do It Kid’s Diet, by Dee Matthews. I remember her name: Dee Matthews. I remember, as a kid, thinking that she must be very thin, and very pretty, and very perfect.

A few days ago I looked that book up again, and sure enough, you can get a copy for about $4, so I bought one – it hasn’t shipped to me yet, but when it arrives I’ll review it. I want to see what I was reading back then. What messages was I getting? I still have the notebook that I used as a journal while working through the book. The girlish handwriting earnestly scribbled on to that wide-ruled paper still breaks my heart – that someone young enough to write like this would despise her body enough to go on a diet – though at the time I don’t remember feeling derision. I remember feeling hopeful. Hopeful about what is a whole other post.

This this is unlikely to be about fat acceptance. I’m heavily invested in changing my body, at least my physical health even if I can’t make a dent in my physical appearance.  I don’t hate my body – I could never hate anything that produced my two beautiful children and has kept me going for the last thirty odd years – but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change a few things if I could. I want to lose weight. I do believe that obesity is a huge problem in our country, and I question whether “health at any size” is really possible for anything but a large minority of obese folks. Yet, at the same time, I find the moralizing around fat reprehensible, and I applaud efforts to keep kids and adults from equating body size with self-worth. I don’t think, if there is a problem, that hating it away is the answer.

Most of the fat acceptance blogs I read right now imply or state outright that any modification of food intake is a diet, and any diet is an act of self-hate. I just don’t buy it. How I work through this, how I figure out to what extent I’m able and willing to change my body through diet and exercise, is what I want to write about under this category heading.

This should be interesting.

One two three four

tell me that you love me more

sleepless, long nights

that is what my youth was for

Those are the first few lines to one of my favorite songs, and sadly apropos this evening/morning. I’m writing this at 4am. An Amazon Fresh driver woke my husband up first, and then me. The guy was standing outside his parked truck in my normally quiet Ballard neighborhood, lifting and smashing down plastic crates with a fury we couldn’t make sense of, as if he’d never done this job before, as if he suddenly woke up to find himself in the middle of our street (and a bad science fiction movie), with a truck full of yellow and green crates, the only solution to the mystery being to open and close and then drop kick every single one.

He finally found what he was looking for, left it on our neighbor’s porch, and drove off. I spent several minutes laying in bed thinking of endings to his bad sci-fi movie – the crates come alive and demand blood as the truck hurtles down the Interstate - before I realized that I wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. Not that it matters that much; I’m exhausted all the time anyway, and that’s something I’ve been wanting to write about.

Thank you, Amazon Fresh, for inspiring me. May you be so inspired.

I’ve been reading a book called Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, and it’s completely changed how I view the last few years of trying to enact large scale life changes. The authors make a convincing case that willpower, rather than being something akin to a concrete trait we either have or don’t have in abundance, is instead more like a muscle; a thing which we work out every day, and which gets tired and depleted and less available to us the more it’s run down. They introduce the concept of ego depletion, the idea that in our daily lives we make hundreds of small and large decisions that cause ourselves to deplete the very exhaustible mental resource we commonly think of as willpower.

A great article on this was published in the New York Times, you can read it here. After reading it myself a few weeks ago, I put Willpower on pre-order, and when it arrived last week, I wasn’t disappointed. When I look at what I learned in the context of the last few years, it becomes clear why I’ve struggled so badly, so often.

I don’t sleep well, and likely haven’t in about ten years. In July I discovered that I have sleep apnea, something I never would have guessed, simply because I don’t snore. This is apparently a common – and wrong – assumption that many people make, including physicians, a population my orthodontist says should know better.

After I got diagnosed I began looking through old medical records and found many comments in doctors’ notes that addressed my fatigue, such as, “Patient reports that she’s walking 3 miles a day, 3 days a week, along with eating heathy, yet is struggling to stay awake, has no energy, and can’t seem to lose weight.”

My orthodontist, who has been studying this for nearly twenty years, says this sort of thing drives him nuts. “It’s amazing how ignorant most physicians still are,” he told me. “They don’t think to send someone for a sleep study unless it’s a 300 pound man with a big beer belly whose wife reports he snores like a chainsaw. Women with average builds who don’t snore will never have their fatigue identified as a possible sleep disorder.”

For years my daytime fatigue has been put off by doctors as “Tired Mom Syndrome”. I’m sure you moms have heard it all before:

“Of course you’re tired! You have a baby!”

“Of course you’re tired, your baby is now a toddler!”

“Of course you’re tired, you have a school-aged kid!”

You’re never not tired as a mother is the common refrain, and having that drilled into me for so many years is what kept me blaming myself for so many things I now understand were related to severe, long term sleep deprivation. Willpower addresses sleep in several places:

…..Sleep is probably more important than food: The more that researchers study sleep deprivation, the more nasty effects they keep discovering.

…..Adults routinely shortchange themselves on sleep, and the result is less self-control. By resting, we reduce the body’s demands for glucose in the bloodstream. Sleep deprivation has been shown to impair the processing of glucose, which produces immediately consequences for self-control – and, one the long term, a higher risk of diabetes.

…..Not getting enough sleep has assorted bad effects on mind and body. Hidden among these is the weakening of self-control and related processes like decision making. To get the most out of your willpower, use it to set aside enough time to sleep.

When I complained of fatigue at every appointment, my family doctor would test my thyroid and iron levels. If both were normal, then I was told it was the Tired Mom Syndrome. If, as happened a few times, my iron was low, this was pointed to as the culprit, and supplements would be prescribed to cure me – these edged up my energy by a small amount, but I never substantially improved.

I still started every morning by taking stock of what paltry amount of energy I’d accumulated during the night, and then would carefully work at pacing myself throughout the day so that I’d last until the kids were in bed. I watched other moms running 5ks, holding down 9-5 jobs, taking their kids to the park on a regular basis and actually chasing them around instead of sitting in an exhausted heap on the nearest bench, trying to keep their eyes open. That I couldn’t keep up with these moms was, I believed, completely my fault. If I just ate a few more vegetables or walked one more mile, I’m sure my energy would kick in and I’d start feeling normal again. That I was too tired to research and cook new recipes or walk that extra mile was just my own crappy lack of willpower.

The role of anxiety and stress. Since my son’s traumatic birth in 2002, I’ve struggled with generalized anxiety and panic disorder. An aspect of that which has been particular difficult has been the large number of nocturnal panic attacks I experience. Over the years therapists have commented that I have more nocturnal panic attacks than anyone they’ve ever treated. How odd, they always say. I wake up, unsure of why I’m awake, and within a few seconds, my heart begins racing. If I think to check my blood pressure during these times, using our home machine, it’s always high.

When I told my orthodontist this, I was touched by his very sincere sympathy. “That’s apnea,” he said, patting my shoulder. “That’s classic apnea.”

I’m not waking up because I’m anxious, I’m waking up because I need oxygen. This explanation further illuminated why I tend to have these “nocturnal panic attacks” from naps, with such a strange regularity. According to my sleep study, my apnea is doubly bad when I sleep on my back. Yet I rarely sleep on my back, except when I nap. When I nap, it’s because I fell asleep on the couch, always on my back. They caught this in the sleep study only because I was so wired up I was forced to sleep on my back for part of the night. After the tech showed me how to rearrange the wires, I went back to side and stomach sleeping.

The degree to which I’m physically and mentally depleted has been disturbing to recognize these past few weeks, and yet a huge relief at the same time. What Willpower has to say about stress and anxiety is simply that; it’s depleting. Worry of any kind will deplete you fast, and make it that much harder for you to stick with your goals or changes. Without realizing it I’ve been trapped in a catch-22: poor sleep leads to fatigue, which triggers more anxiety, both of which then quickly exhaust me and deplete my internal resources, a depletion which then causes more anxiety as my sense of overwhelm builds throughout the day in anticipation of obligations yet to come that I don’t know if I can make it through, which leads to more anxiety and self-recrimination, which leads to…..you get the picture.

Finally, the book helped me understand a big personal failing of my own: I do everything at once. One of the pieces of advice repeated throughout is that when we try to make big changes in our lives, many of us <cough> tend to want to do them all at once, and this is virtually guaranteed to fail. We simply don’t have enough willpower to accomplish this; if we’re going to make a major change we need to focus our energy on one such change at a time to ensure success, otherwise we’re spreading ourselves far too thin.

You’d think after examining my own history, I would have come to this conclusion on my own, but I’m embarrassed to say I never have. Any past failure to launch is just an excuse to try harder next time. I dive into everything with all I’ve got, and I tackle it all at once, no holds barred. If I want to “get healthy”, then I’ll do it all: start an elimination diet to identify any problem foods, learn to cook new foods, start counting calories, and begin an exercise program – usually with some new piece of equipment or a new routine I’ve never tried before – all at the same time.

And if I’m already in the middle of taking college classes as well as caring for my two toddlers, keeping up with family and social obligations, well heck, that’s okay! I CAN DO IT!  My response to feeling overwhelmed is, perhaps predictably, to change it all at once. If everything feels stressful, then change everything.

Reading Willpower was like having a very nice research scientist look deep into my eyes and say kindly, “You sweet, well-intentioned idiot. You are doing it wrong.” My whole-hearted enthusiasm for new projects and ideas is something I (and I’ve heard family and friends) love about myself, but it clearly needs modulation. My motto needs to be, “One change at a time,” not, “I can do everything because I said I can, so there, shut up, that’s how.”

So here’s the new plan: NO BIG CHANGES UNTIL I SLEEP.

There are already some small changes that have me heading in the right direction. The kids began school this week, and it’s a 1-mile walk there and back. For me this means 1-2 miles of walking each weekday, depending on whether I’m taking them both ways or not (currently Greg is walking them in the morning, but if I can regain some energy, I’ll try to take over both ways). In addition, we’re planning and making more meals at home, which means I’m getting a chance to try out healthy cooking.

What I eventually want to accomplish is a major lifestyle overhaul that includes a big introduction of regular exercise as well as a radical change of diet that involves far more home-cooking with vegetables, and less ice cream. However, I recognize that these changes are far too big to make when I’m so badly sleep deprived.

Enter my oral appliance in shining armor: the SomnoMed.

At the sleep clinic in July, I was told that one option is an “oral appliance”, which is a device similar to a mouth guard, that you wear all night and which holds your jaw forward, allowing your airway to remain open. I asked at the time if I would be a good candidate for that, and was told that normally yes, but in my case my exhaustion is so severe that she believed a CPAP machine would work better. Well, the CPAP experiment was a dismal failure, so a few weeks ago I sought and found a great orthodontist. Now I’ve pinned my hopes on an odd-looking piece of pink plastic, that arrives on September 23rd. I plan on coming home from their office that day, going to bed, and not emerging until Spring. Much like a bear. GRRR.

The device takes about a month to reach its full beneficial adjustment – slow increments are made so your jaw doesn’t become sore. Which means that if all goes well, then somewhere around November or December, I should begin feeling a whole lot better. And then, THEN, I will change everything pick one change and begin working on it.

And then, the fun will really begin.

The application is touted as MOTIVATIONAL. It will give you helpful messages for each sit -up, counting as you go. And here is your motivational image:

You might notice, as did I, that the app is called i-fukkin. Gizmodo reports that fukkin is Japanese for, wait for it…….”abs”. Which makes you wonder what Japanese for…….oh, never mind.

Yet another in a long line of illustrative examples of how what motivates you might not motivate me. My sit-up application would have Aragorn from Lord of the Rings saying things like, “Just one more sit-up, and I’m leaving Arwen for you, baby.” Flat abs in no time!

I believe the Whole Foods candies are using fruit juice as coloring, but I didn’t get to read the ingredients. I was too busy laughing at Greg’s misreading of the signs over the bulk food containers that said USE THESE PENS, as USE THESE PENISES. This is how you know the man with the 148 IQ needs glasses.

We went shopping this evening, driving over the Ballard bridge, smelling that great saltwater-esque air (it’s possible I’m just smelling the fishing boats, but whatever, it’s still wonderful), whisking its way into our little Prius via the gaping hole that was my window. We are officially the victims of that most ubiquitous of urban crimes. I walked out this morning and discovered the driver’s side window smashed to pieces. The idiots didn’t even take anything, they just rifled around and made a mess. They left the kids’ scooters, helmets, Greg’s tin of Altoids, all of our insurance and registration papers, and my CD labeled SAM BEAM I LOVE YOU.

Greg filled out the police report online. I was so conflicted about that. On the one hand, police officer, get your butt down here and validate my sense of violation and my need for an appearance of social order via a uniformed person calmly taking my statement. On the other hand, isn’t it nice they’ve put the internet to good use and are now taking non-emergency complaints online and leaving the police officers for the real crimes? I know, right?

So the window is broken. So what? We will survive. I don’t care. I still love Ballard. I still love Seattle. And now I love something else…..

“I think I have a thing for Whole Foods,” I said to Greg on the drive over.

“A thing?”

“Yeah, I mean I think I’m kind of in love with Whole Foods a little bit.”

“So now Whole Foods is one of your partners?”

“Oh, it’s not that serious yet. But we’re dating. I broke up with PCC, I mean we moved away and we kind of lost touch, and I’m not sure our feelings were real. But Whole Foods; I think this could be the one.”

He laughed. “You say you aren’t bisexual, but you clearly are: men and grocery stores.”

Not quite: it’s natural food stores rather than grocery stores. A Safeway is just the cheap date you make out with and then go home feeling dirty, but a Whole Foods is like a night of delicious passion that turns into the relationship you want to tell your parents about. Everything is so organic! So fresh! So natural! So clean! It’s the promise of a new day, of change, of a better world, of farmers getting the wages they deserve, of kids eating real food instead of fake food (faux M&Ms not withstanding), of everyone wearing hemp clothes and using mass transit and voting in every election. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

I’m exactly the person the green movement markets toward, and it works. I’m a huge sucker. And I can tell you exactly when it started.

When I was sixteen years old I read an article in Seventeen, or maybe it was Sassy (okay, that just dated me); I think I even still have it somewhere around here in a scrapbook. It was an interview with these two young women who worked in a natural foods store, and they were both thin and gorgeous and dressed like adorable hippies, and I was like a baby goose imprinting on its mother.

I used to drive my Volkswagon bus (I am not kidding) over to Food Front, and stand in front of all the hummus, soaking up the vibes, breathing in all that patchouli. I developed deep and abiding crushes on the dreadlocked boys who clerked the check-out areas, putting all my goods into my canvas rucksack while telling me how many turtles die every year thanks to those plastic shopping bags. Swoon.

It’s been 21 years since I read that article, and I’m still in love with the natural foods movement. Oh, I know it isn’t perfect, I know there are conflicts and politics and loads of imperfect people, just like anything else; but I still get that good feeling whenever I walk into a store. I still feel like this is a place where I can make a difference, where my choices are meaningful. And yeah, I know it’s expensive, and I don’t expect everyone to shop there, but the longer that some of us do, the longer this place stays around, and the cheaper all of it will become, and then who knows? Maybe someday we really will all be wearing hemp clothes and using mass transit and voting.

Okay, fine, but at least we could all get reusable grocery bags, right?

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men. Even the jerk who broke my window.

I chose this app after spending a couple days and about $5 testing various iPhone applications designed to help you track food and exercise. I wanted something that was pleasant to use, came with an iPad variant since I find the iPad a lot easier to use and I carry the dumb thing around constantly, and something that was upbeat without being judgmental. The Livestrong site, while I approve of its overall message, is too GUNG HO WE ARE JOCKS LET’S EAT HEALTHY, and some other sites pandered a bit overmuch to The Woman Trying To Lose Weight. All that was missing was a douche ad and a spray of spring flowers.

A few months ago I tried Weight Watchers again, but the points thing drove me away. Suddenly foods became good and bad, and right away I found myself compulsive overeating on a regular basis. Calories, for all the grief they seem to give other people, for all the diet and eating-disorder-related connotations they have for apparently a large number of women, just don’t have any of that for me. They’re simple, easy, basic. A food that is 200 calories is neither good nor bad, it’s just 200 calories worth of energy. That’s it.

My Net Diary takes account of my weight, height, and activity level, and has spit out a plan complete with a calorie limit. At the moment I’m aiming roughly for that limit – give or take a few. I’m not too rigid about it. I’ve lost 1.6 pounds so far. We’ll see if it keeps working.

I want to write about all this; but very little of this will be about cooking. I’ve already tried that route. I wrote this is a food blog for a couple of years, until I realized it was doomed. I hate to cook. I would rather be in a good restaurant with good company (or a good book) any day of the week.

Heck, truth be told, I resent food. It’s annoying but necessary, and I accept that, just like I accept taxes and the DMV and childbirth. But I will never be a foodie. No one with my level of gastronomic pickiness will ever be a foodie, except for our passionate affections for mundane things; creating the perfect recipe for cinnamon toast, or finding the exact right Caesar salad. I will never eat foie gras (again), or a clam, or eggplant, or raw tomatoes. I will never have a blog post that gleefully features all the things you can do with dandelion greens and mesclun, or how to spend all day making the perfect tiny little yummy thing that will be gone in ten seconds.

My pickiness is painful, even to others. I don’t care how trendy it is: I loathe the texture of sushi (I’m pretty sure that in my twenties, people sincerely thought less of me for this). I hate cauliflower, I abhor pine nuts, I love the smell of mushrooms but can’t stand the taste, and, as the blog title says, all vegetables taste like either dirt or grass or corn. How I ever thought I could be a food blogger, I have no idea. My “recipes” section, after 18 months of blogging, consisted of directions for making croutons (cut bread! season! broil!), and a recipe for a kale smoothie (actually that last one was pretty popular – maybe I’ll bring that one back).

So if food features at all, you can rest assured it will be utility food: how to get calories in without making yourself too fat, and how to do the least possible in the preparation of digesting those calories. I figure this has to appeal to someone. There have to be some anti-foodies out there somewhere, lurking in their dark corners, eating their cinnamon toast and ordering pizza with nothing on it. This is your kind of blog, people.

Fair warning: things are very different then they’ve been in the past. I’m no longer vegan, or even trying to go vegan, although I still love my vegan cookbooks. And, I’m back to trying to lose weight. The biggest change of all: I’ve been eating gluten-free for well over a year now. It has helped my panic attacks immensely.

All this (and more!) will be explained over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I’m going to try and clean the place up a little. The categories and tags are all out of whack, the banner needs updating, the widgets are sorely neglected, and there are various other blog maintenance tasks to be done. Stick around!

My food life has been interesting lately! I went gluten-free a few months ago, and I feel a whole lot better. Then I went off sugar, and have lost a total of 17 pounds (still seem to be losing slowly). I think all these changes might be worth writing about…..

I got my recipe from  a post on the forum Raw Food Talk, and the original recipe is called Chrissy’s Goddess Chips. Be sure to read her directions too. I didn’t have a few of her ingredients though, so I ended up with a  different, more bare bones version that looks like this:

Dehydrator Kale Chips

3/4 c sesame tahini
1/2 c apple cider vinegar
1/2 c water
1/4 cup nama shoyu
1 lemon, juiced

1.) Stick all this in a blender and whip it up until it looks like a dressing you’d put over salad. It should be somewhat runny. If not, if it’s very thick, add a little more water. I haven’t had to add water yet, but other recipes suggest it.

2.) Prep the kale: rinse it to get any dirt off, and then pat or shake dry. Then what I do is lay a leaf in front of me on the cutting board, fold the leaf over so that the spine is sticking out, and then take a sharp knife and slice that spine right out. I do this for all the leaves, and I’m using the Lacinato Kale*, so it’s pretty easy to do. Then slice the kale crosswise into strips, about the width of bacon. Muhahaahahaha.

You want to slice the spines out because if you don’t, they dehydrate into LITTLE TWIGS, which aren’t fun to pick out of your teeth.

3.) Then I put the dressing in a big bowl, and put the kale strips in the big bowl, and use my hands to mix it all up.

4.) Place the strips on the dehydrator sheets, on the Teflex sheets over the mesh. Don’t pile them up, make sure they’re all separate from each other, although they can be close. The strips will drip a little – try to shake them off a bit before you put them on the sheet, although there will be some drip there too. That’s okay.

5.) Put the dehydrator on at 110 degrees, and set a timer for 4 hours.

So far my batches have been going almost exactly 4 hours, which has been great. The exception was when I made the marinade in advance, at night, and then tried to make the kale chips the next morning. The marinade was a lot thicker than I realized (that’s the batch in the photos above and below), and it really stuck to the leaves. It took about 6 hours to get completely crisp, and even then the flavor was more intense than I’d like. Next time I’ll thin it with water if I do that, or whip it up for a few minutes and get it nice and warm.

These are easy to make and taste fantastic. I eat them right off the trays as they’re coming out. Then I put them in a glass container, sealed, and in the fridge.VERY IMPORTANT TO STORE KALE CHIPS IN THE FRIDGE. If you don’t, they wilt and get moist (ick). If you keep them cold, they stay crisp and delicious. TRUST ME.

I eat them all the time, whenever I want a snack, but I think they’re especially good to eat for breakfast, with a banana on the side.

Another recipe for kale chips I haven’t tried is here.

* The last bunch I got was organic, from  PCC, and just the one bunch was HUGE. It took up the entire 9 trays of the dehydrator.

This week I started roaming around Alissa Cohen’s (raw food author) forums, called Raw Food Talk, in search of some raw food community. While perusing the “Before and After” forums, I found some more amazing transformations:

• Dina, who is now a raw food chef, looks years younger and her skin just shines.
• Kimberley, who I’m pretty sure actually reversed her age – the pictures are amazing.
• Pitaya, whose story I liked because her shape is a lot like mine – she has the glow too.
• A user named RawHeaven, who is just beautiful – her shape is a lot like mine too, and after going raw she just looks so healthy and glowy.
• And then a really interesting series of photos from a user named Matthew, who ages in the photos from 17 to 25, yet he looks like he’s actually going the other direction. Wild!

Then there’s Mimi, getting interviewed for Women Go Raw, who recently won an award for being the Sexiest Vegetarian Over 50. She went raw a year and a half ago, and HELLO, HOLY COW, LOOK AT THIS WOMAN, she’s not just 50, she’s 71 years old. Would you like to look like that at 71? Yeah, me too. She’s incredible. Granted, she’s been living a pretty healthy lifestyle for about the last 40 years –  so while I don’t mean to say this is ALL due to raw foods, this should at least inspire us to push away the pastries and go for a walk around the block, right? Are you with me? Let’s go.

Oh, and I’ll get that kale chips recipe up tomorrow. I promise! I’m up too late right now.

This has been in the works for awhile, but we expected that it wouldn’t happen until Spring, due to a surprise necessary expense. Then some other stuff happened (isn’t that delightfully vague?), and we decided to go for it this fall. So THEN we were thinking it would happen in September or likely October, and then? THEN?

Then we found an awesome house and the landlord wanted us in by August 14th, and we said, “SURE!”

And that’s a week away. So you’ll understand why right now I’m eating Skittles at 6:54 in the morning.

And you’ll also understand why I won’t be writing for perhaps a week or two. I’ll likely be posting updates over at pluvio.us, so feel free to check in there if you want to watch the moving chaos unfold. But the food talk will likely die down until we get over there.

And when we do, I am looking forward to the following things:

• GREEN ONION PANCAKES! Seriously! Like a half dozen different restaurants! I can have a different pancake every week!
• Costco! Cheap fruit! Cheap veggies! I’m gonna juice my way to a healthy oblivion! (Look for my forthcoming hit song, “Healthy Oblivion”, from my band, The Purple Kale).
• Wacky restaurants I want to try, like some raw food places, and some vegan places (let’s see if we can get the kids and the men to eat somewhere that doesn’t serve bacon).
• FRIENDS TO GO OUT WITH!
• FRIENDS TO COOK WITH!
• Shark movies! (see: Meg)
• Being within walking distance to a park! This will require EXERCISE!
• Being within blocks of a pool, a YMCA, and an ice skating rink!
• Did I mention THE GREEN ONION PANCAKES?
• Professionals who deal with panic disorder! (In our town we have not a single psychiatrist. Not one. I’m totally serious.)
• The Space Needle! Ferries! Fairies! Art galleries that feature no art containing cowboys or rodeos!  Theater! The beach! The accompanying ocean! Being within easy driving distance of family and friends in Portland!

I’m bouncing so hard I might break my chair. Which is okay, because it would be one less thing to pack. Speaking of which, I need to take my Skittles and run. Happy eating ya’ll! I’ll be back in a couple weeks, look for my first in-depth green onion pancake review!

My cholesterol is what really concerned me.

Here’s the current test:

Total: 188
HDL: 42
LDL: 105
TRI: 206 (!!!)

My results almost exactly one year ago:

Total: 168
HDL: 44
LDL: 104
TRI: 101

Basically every single number is worse, and the triglycerides have doubled. Triglycerides are linked with a hardening of the arteries, leading to stroke and heart attack, that last one being my usual nightmare.

Triglyceride values, from the Mayo Clinic:

• Normal — Less than 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) (less than 1.7 mmol/L)
• Borderline high — 150 to 199 mg/dL (1.8 to 2.2 mmol/L)
• High — 200 to 499 mg/dL (2.3 mmol/L to 5.6 mmol/L)
• Very high — 500 mg/dL or above (5.7 mmol/L or above)

What I thought was strange was that the nurse said “You’re completely normal!”, and then rattled off the numbers. I wrote them down without thinking about them, and didn’t notice anything strange until I compared them with last years numbers and started looking things up.

Also from that same section:

Although it’s unclear how, high triglycerides may contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls (atherosclerosis) — which increases the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease.

High triglycerides are often a sign of other conditions that increase the risk of heart disease and stroke as well, including obesity and the metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that includes too much fat around the waist, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high blood sugar and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Bold parts are mine. While I don’t have problems with blood sugar, blood pressure, or total cholesterol, I do carry nearly all my excess weight around my middle. I’m seeing that as something important to change – the amount of weight lost seems much less important than just getting as much fat off my abdomen as I can.

Causes of high triglycerides, according to Web MD:

The most common causes of high triglycerides are obesity and poorly controlled diabetes. If you are overweight and are not active, you may have high triglycerides, especially if you eat a lot of carbohydrate or sugary foods or drink a lot of alcohol. Binge drinking (of alcohol) can cause dangerous spikes in triglyceride levels that can trigger inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis).

Bolded parts are mine again. LE SIGH PART DEUX.

The good news? The ways to lower your triglycerides are very reasonable.

From the Mayo Clinic again:

• Lose excess pounds. If you’re overweight, losing the excess pounds can help lower your triglycerides. Motivate yourself by focusing on the benefits of losing weight, such as more energy and improved health.
• Cut back on calories. Remember that excess calories are converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Reducing your calories will reduce triglycerides.
• Avoid sugary and refined foods. Simple carbohydrates, such as sugar and foods made with white flour, can cause a sudden increase in insulin production. This can increase triglycerides.
• Limit the cholesterol in your diet. Aim for no more than 300 milligrams (mg) of cholesterol a day — or less than 200 mg if you have heart disease. Avoid the most concentrated sources of cholesterol, including meats high in saturated fat, egg yolks and whole milk products.
• Choose healthier fats. Trade saturated fat for healthier monounsaturated fat, found in olive, peanut and canola oils. Substitute fish high in omega-3 fatty acids — such as mackerel and salmon — for red meat.
• Eliminate trans fat. Trans fat can be found in fried foods and many commercial baked products, such as cookies, crackers and snack cakes. But don’t rely on packages that are labeled “trans fat-free.” In the United States, if a food contains less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving, it can be labeled trans fat-free. Even though those amounts seem small, they can add up quickly if you eat a lot of foods containing small amounts of trans fat. Instead, read the ingredients list. You can tell that a food has trans fat in it if it contains partially hydrogenated oil.
• Avoid alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is high in calories and sugar and has a particularly potent effect on triglycerides. Even small amounts of alcohol can raise triglyceride levels.
• Exercise regularly. Aim for at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most or all days of the week. Regular exercise can boost “good” cholesterol while lowering “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides. Take a brisk daily walk, swim laps or join an exercise group. If you don’t have time to exercise for 30 minutes, try squeezing it in 10 minutes at a time. Take a short walk, climb the stairs at work, or try some sit-ups or push-ups as you watch television.

All of this sounds incredibly doable, so I will do it, once I’m over this stupid flu. In a few months I’ll get the numbers checked again, and see if I’ve made any progress.

This guy probably doesn't feel sorry for me.

While I realize that there are worse things in the world than not being able to eat dairy products, like say elephantitis, or a third (or fourth) nipple, or having a few dozen nails shot though your head, it is sincerely frustrating to have to turn down every treat that comes your way because someone, a long time ago, thought, “HEY, you know that white stuff that comes out of a cow? Let’s PUT THAT CRAP IN EVERYTHING!”

And then the rest of the world was like, “Man, could those French get any more suave?”

I’m upstairs in my room right now, having run up here a half hour ago when I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or have a panic attack, or both. Now you could say that this is merely the karmic punishment of a food and fitness blogger who JUST YESTERDAY posted about how she was going to buckle down and get in shape and all that*, having had a decaf soy mocha and two chocolate chip cookies (the cookies were FREE, YO!) for breakfast. You could maybe argue that I sort of had this coming, but no, I’d like to blame it on the cows.

I just called the cafe where we got our treats, and yeah, the cookies are chock-full of butter.

LE SIGH.

*In my defense, I did 40 minutes of light aerobic exercise yesterday.

YOUR WELCOME.

I went to the doctor this morning, for my yearly physical. I told him about the elimination diet, and how I’m still having problems with being stiff and sore at night and in the mornings, and all the other symptoms. He spent most of this time looking at his computer, so as usual, I’m not sure what got heard and what got missed. He did palpate my back for the tender spots associated with fibromyalgia, but ruled that out (I wasn’t wincing enough?).

He was intrigued by the celiac idea, however, so several of you will be pleased to know he did draw some blood, for both lipids and a celiac screening. He said it woudn’t show anything if I’d not been eating any wheat, but I told him about how I’d added it back in. Then I told him about the three slices of cinnamon french toast on Sunday, and the two pieces of toast yesterday, and that seemed like enough wheat.

Otherwise, I’m healthy. GO ME.

It’s Rooibus tea from Adagio. YUM YUM YUM.