Tag Archive: blogging

Charlotte’s post about the Diet Wars, and the elephant in the room

I just discovered a blog that I’m enjoying a lot, and added to my sidebar under “Fitness”. It’s called The Great Fitness Experiment, and it’s written by one Charlotte Hilton Andersen. She writes about fitness and nutrition, with a side dish of hilarity, and I’ve found myself going through her archives and reading back through all her many experiments.

This morning I found a great post she wrote on March 15th entitled, The Diet Wars: Learning to Listen. It starts out:

Welcome to Dueling Diets! I’m your host, Crazy Charlotte. Today I’ll be pitting the Primal Blueprint a la Mark Sisson against the Engine 2 Diet a la Rip Esselstyn, all as part of my “Striving for Perfection” Experiment this month.

Sound familiar? I was posting about Paleo versus Rip recently myself (part 1 and part 2), although I haven’t done the personal experimentation that Charlotte has (I’m still working on the elimination diet – more on that later).

You should definitely go read her post, because her writing is entertaining and friendly, but I wanted to talk about her conclusions a little bit, because they’re very similar to what several of you guys have been telling me:

A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine looked at dieters on several different popular diets. Their conclusion – and this will surprise no one – is that despite all the hype, it doesn’t really matter much which diet you pick as long as you cut your calories. I know, the whole “eat less” thing again. The key is to find the diet that helps your body live with the calorie restriction the best. And that apparently can differ from person to person.

Now I know that will sound familiar to some of you, eh? It’s a paraphrase of what you put in comments (and send me in email!), which brings me to….

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

Yeah, it’s me. I’m not saying I’m an elephant, I’m saying I’m like that thing that no one talks about. I’m THE THING. Except less swampy. I have been writing about different diets for the last, what, six months? And you guys have patiently listened and commented and encouraged me, and yet the fact of the matter is, six months later, I still:

  • …don’t have a regular exercise routine.
  • …don’t have a regular diet, meaning a general healthy routine. I still eat willy nilly, even when I’m eliminating things.
  • …don’t know how to cook very well.
  • …don’t have hardly any recipes on this blog.
  • …don’t have any significant weight loss, despite knowing that I need to lose weight to get these hormones in check and my cycle back on track.

I felt such a kinship reading Charlotte’s blog because she struggles with a lot of the same thought patterns I do, even while she’s doing a whole lot more work than I am! She’s brave enough to talk about them, and she’s brave enough to keep going. I talk AROUND my issues, and then I avoid doing a lot of things that might help, because I’m sincerely afraid of it all just failing. I’m afraid I’ll work out every day and nothing will happen. I’m afraid I’ll try to eat right and it will be too hard, or I’ll suck at it, and then I’ll be too afraid to write about it. It’s a lot easier to write about my potential for things than it is to write about struggling through those things.

But I’m going to give it a shot anyway, because this is getting a little ridiculous. I’ve got a perfectly LOVELY little blog here, and it isn’t going anywhere. I’m still sitting on my ass. My ridiculously flat behind, which could use a few squats. As could the rest of me.

I’m still going to write about what I’m eating, but I’m going to try and write less about the theoretics of it all, and instead write more about how I feel, and how my body does, and how I’m learning to cook it all up. I still want to write about diet trends and staying heart healthy, and all the nutrition news I read every day, because I find all that fun. But it has to stop being an excuse to not do any of my own work. On that note: I’m off for a ride on the stationary bike. Wish me luck!

I removed the Google ads.

I know, I know, how could I get rid of such an important revenue stream? I mean, all that imaginary money was going toward my imaginary turtle sanctuary! Sarcasm aside, they are freaking obnoxious, aren’t they? Every time I looked at my own website, they were a blight. And it just feels wrong to be out here, in the intertubes, talking about how to eat, making this big deal about finding out what our values are and looking at the morality of our food choices, and then look over to the side and see an ad to ABOLISH YOUR TUMMYFAT.

I don’t think it’s wrong to put ads on a website. I didn’t think I was going to make a ton of money putting ads on mine, but I thought I might make a little to offset the cost. But it just isn’t feeling right to host ads for things I would never personally suggest anyone buy or do, which is what the Google ads amount to. LOVE your tummy. Love it. Yes, I write about wanting to lose some weight, no, that does not mean I think you should lose weight. But Google can’t see that difference, and I don’t think it should make me morally conflicted to read my own website.

Right now I have links on the side for the Thesis WordPress theme (which makes me dance with joy), and Vita-Mix, which honestly I could not live without. Greg has joked that if the Vita-Mix ever broke, he’d have to fly one in overnight because otherwise I’d starve. Those are both things I support, and wouldn’t feel dirty earning a little money from. I’ll let you know if I feel like putting up any other ads.

Comments are fixed! *shaka shaka*

I’d posted here about how comments weren’t coming to me in email. I finally figured out what the problem is. I’m posting the solution here, even though it has nothing to do with food, because someone else might do a search for the same problem, and I’d love to be able to give you the solution (this question spent a week ignored on the WordPress.org forums).

In your WordPress admin panel, there are three links in the upper right hand corner. Click on “Settings”. See the field for your email address? You’ve probably seen that a hundred times, right? And I’m sure it’s set correctly, because you area fine blog mistress who pays attention to such things.

Now go up to the TOP right hand corner, the top right of the browser window. See the grey area marked “Dashboard”? See on the right hand side, how it says, “Howdy, Hollie!” Click on your name. That’s a whole different page for your profile information, different from Settings, and it includes a field for your email address. WordPress has it set by default to “you@yourdomain.com”. Replace that with your own email address.

What makes this so tricky is that if you go to Settings, and then click on Discussion, and check the box that says, “All comments come to me in email,” than those comments go to your profile address (the one set wrong). But if you go to that same place and tick the box that says, “Comment author must have a previously approved comment,” then the first comment anyone posts will go to your Settings address. Every subsequent comment will be emailed, like I said, to your profile address. You’re getting blog mail intermittently – so you know that something is wrong with comment delivery, but it’s not at all obvious that it’s as simple as WordPress having the wrong email address.

I’m sitting here sick in bed, with Greg sending test comments to help me solve the problem, and when we’d figured it out, I screeched and shook my hands in the air. It’s the *shaka shaka* happy dance.