I never thought I would see the day!

Friday is here. At last!

I really earned this Friday, too!

School is beginning soon, and no doubt you are out and about getting ready for fall, if you have kids going back to the educational institution of your choice. Or, perhaps you are the one who is going back to work when school begins again (thanks for what you give to the students!)

Now is the time to start planning ahead.

Are your kids going to be eating school lunches? If not, now is the time to start planning ways to make the change an effortless one! You can start testing recipe plans now so that the first day won't be met with groans of no crackers and sandwiches on thick, white bread.

I am really excited about a project which you will learn more about in the coming weeks! I hope you'll have a good time as we discover some ways to feed kids healthfully together in the coming year.

Until then, have a fabulous weekend, and hang in there in this chaotic time of year. You are worth it!

When the honeymoon is over on your weight loss plan

Starting is tough enough.

Starting over is harder still. Continuing? Sometimes harder than both starting or rededicating.

The honeymoon from the excitement of discovering something new is over. The initial excitement of the first few pounds that came off seems like a distant memory. The first time you stepped on the scale and ogled your first amazing and steady stream of losses will never again be quite the same.

Now you’re back to where you started, or you’re partially there, or you're moving forward but you might not feel progress is as quick as you'd like. You feel like you can’t do it because you’ve never been able to stick with anything before. I mean, what makes this any different, right? This is just like every other time you either sabotaged yourself or messed something up because you knew you couldn’t make it anyway. Starting over isn’t as romantic. The magic of rediscovery seems to be wasted.

You feel like you’ve been through this all before. You glare at the eggs. You don’t even find any humor in taking out the Muenster and ‘cutting the cheese’ when your significant other asks you what you’re doing. The light is gone. You’ve given up.

That’s ok. For now. But keep reading.

See, life is a series of choices we make. Some of them are wonderful: having children, not having children, starting that business, writing that book, taking up gardening. Some of them are not the best decisions we ever made: going for a chest wax, trying the Epilady on our armpits, getting a pet indoor rabbit when you prefer your appliance cords largely unchewed, thinking roasting marshmallows on lit sparklers is really funny when you were inebriated in college.

No, you can’t have the total beauty of the first time over again, but what if? What if, instead, you looked at something as being new the second time around?

I had a car once, a long time ago. It was my first car, and I bought it from my parents. It was a 1979 Toyota Corolla, and it was the smallest little car, but by golly was she reliable. Not only was she a good car, but she could easily seat 6 people (convenient if you need to get your friends to the high school dance, so long as everyone was comfortable in their sexuality enough to sit on top of each other), and she was a stick shift, so the amount of control I had driving up and down the hills of Seattle looking for punk rock night clubs was pretty wonderful.

It wasn’t a new car, but it was new to me. I owned it, and good, or bad, and even when I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to pour oil down the dipstick (well, I knew it came out there, so why not?), I knew that car was my responsibility. And to me, she was a wonderful creature.

Looking at your lifestyle the same way makes for a different attitude.

You own it. It’s yours. It’s wonderful and unique. Sometimes you pour the oil down the dipstick, but you eventually figured it out when your best friend came over, and between fits of laughter, he let you know how things really worked. Such is the way with life. You wear your seatbelt, buy your insurance, pass the driver’s tests, and occasionally you’re going to get a ticket. Sometimes you might think you can jump the sidewalk, and you find your car being realigned the next day. Getting the occasional tow home because you tried to take a shortcut over moguls in the Safeway parking lot makes for good stories later on, even when the situation is exasperating at the time, and the tow truck driver is snorting laughter as he hooks up your rig and takes your credit card number.

Laugh. Call the tow truck. Get home safely.

The same applies to your way of eating.

Learn what works for you and what has caused you problems in the past and keep going. It is worth it!

Most of your life will be spent in maintenance, so there is a little bit of magic in beginning anew. Not again, but anew. Look to your strengths and reaffirm your weaknesses. When you falter, don't give up. As the meachanic and his vehicle, you can inspect your plan. Use experience and don't repeat mistakes again if you can help it. Once I figured out I really could add too much oil to the engine of a vehicle (and did), I learned something new. Did it mean I shouldn't ever own a vehicle? Heckola no. It meant that, like all of life, learning is quintessential.

If you take care of you car it takes care of you. Whether yours has 150,000 miles, or 900,000 miles, whether you’ve overhauled the engine, or it’s holding on everytime you push start it, it’s yours. Take care of it. Own it. Keep it running.

It’s a great little chassie you’ve got there.

Enjoy the ride.

Looking for ways to eat fresh? Try your local farmer's market!

Farmer's Markets are not only a wonderful way to find fresh produce, but meeting with local growers and supporting their business is a three-way ticket to success!

In our daily lives, there is hardly time to grow vegetables in our yards. I know I had a dog eat my thornless blackberry shrub, and birds ate the cherries. I loved growing tomatoes last year, but a late frost here caused my new crop to succumb to chill and pass out (they still haven't made a recovery). Now I find I am looking for more sources of in-season fruit and vegetables locally!

You can seek out organic growers locally in a farmer's market, try new foods you hadn't tried before, and enjoy fresh air with other people who share a passion for healthy food in a fun environment.

Even more exciting news? Not only is WIC (an organization which provides free nutritional aid and supplemental food to families who fall under a certain income level) now helping people to eat fresh through stipends for fresh foods for farmer's markets, but grants are also being afforded to seniors to enjoy the bounty of local farmers under the SFMNMP (Seniors Farmer's Market Nutrition Program).

Now, more than ever, this is a great time to find out more about farmer's markets in your area!


Click this to find your local Farmer's Market.

For great tips in getting the most from your farmer's market, check this link! I love this site!

Support your local farmer and enjoy your bounty in the process!

10 things to think about if you've fallen off the wagon

It may have happened. One fell swoop and the next thing you know, youi've falledn off of the wagon and into a vat of puddings. You felt guilt, you are now mourning your perfect dieting run, cheat-free up until this moment.

You later realize you didn't even enjoy the experience. If you didn't even enjoy the experience.

Here are some things to think about:

1. Are you missing nutrients in your way of eating? The body has a way of craving what it needs when it feels it needs it. If you're eating a very low-potassium diet, it's amazing how much the body can crave a banana. We think of it as merely wanting fruit, but the body knows what it wants. Make sure you are eating healthfully, exercising, seeing your doctor for questions or concerns, and taking vitamins and nutrients!

2. Are you eating enough? Even when we don't really think about it, feeling hungry, deprived or following a particularly rough patch in your plan can lead to an opposite physiological response. Shake things up by trying some new menus and foods (careful to stick to plan!)

3. "That time of the month" can also cause issues with blood sugar wooblies causing cravings I know! It's an ewww for the guys out there, but hormones can cause all manner of cravings. Be aware of cravings and be prepared! Knowing, logically, what the problem is can help you be prepared for the event each month!

4. Your fat cells want to hang onto fat for reasons of survival. If you've yoyo dieted before, your body might be trying to save for another 'famine'. The best way to fight this? Show those fat cells you mean business with a one-two pow to the kisser! Sticking to a plan for the long-term will show those fat cells you mean business!

5. You have stressors that you are medicating with food, rather than dealing with appropriately. Easy to say, right? But here goes:

Are you tired? Sleep.
Sngry? Write a scathing letter you never intend to send.
Sad? Cry

Many times we eat as an emotional response and not a practical one. In eating, we further foment the plan that eating is important as a solution, when in the end it only leads to a blood sugar crash, creating worse feelings. And, if you're like me, think of the other problems you have when you eat too many cabrohydrates! I know my legs crawl at night. You don't want to feel sick, either! Stick to plan. you can do it!

6. Are you bored? Nervous? Take action! Find a book or hobby you enjoy. Nervous about something? Take action. Use that nervous energy to accomplish something.

7. Sabotaging efforts? This could be an issue of feeling worthless, listening to old brain-computer programs telling you what's the point? Rewire that thinking to positive thoughts rather than thoughts of frustration and reaction.

Action always beats reaction. Reaction is largely emotional. Action is practical.

8. Was it an avoidable cheat? Did you end up out for dinner for your birthday as every year and expect different results? Holidays and events should be about making memories with people and not eating. The next time people want to take you out for your birthday, choose to go bowling instead of out for pizza! You all get exercise, and enjoy memories rather than feeling sick the next day from carb hangover.

9. Have you been feeling emotional? Did you know that estrogen is released when fat is burned? A lot of people don't know this, and can't attribute emotional response to a temporary physiological phenomenon. So, if you are feeling emotional and ready to give in the towel, your estrogen is talking to you! Give her a hug, point and yell, "LOOK! George Clooney!" and run the other direction.

10. Plan. What causes the cheat? Plan ahead for the next instance. Always have a plan. Keep note cards with strategies for all of the reasons you ever fall off the wagon. when you feel helpless and your brain isn't functioning the way it should in those circumstances, draw out the card that gives you ideas for ways to avert a binge. It works!


Planning and thinking before acting can make a huge difference on your way of eating.

Getting real with yourself could be your ticket to success this time around

Are you a perfectionist?

You know, I've always been a perfectionist.

I'm the person who always strove hard and beat myself up if I didn't achieve what I was going for. It's killed me all this time. I'm never good enough. Never helpful enough. Never smart enough. Never pretty enough. Never clever enough. Not focussed enough. Nothing but... well... a failure.

Why? Because when as perfectionists, we tend to set ourselves up with a do or die attitude. We die on every hill of the battle, instead of taking the occasional bullet and moving to the next hill.

Triggers for the perfectionist and possible solutions to consider:

1. Date goals for weight loss. If you keep failing when you put time restrictions on yourself, this is danger Will Robinson! More dangerous than those heels with that pantsuit, we're talking about setting yourself up for failure. You either set too high a goal because you know you're not going to make it anyway (thereby reinforcing the whole I'm a failure routine), or you start goofing around because you can't afford to hit your goal. It's counterproductive to your negative self-programming.

Don't do it!

Instead, I note I didn't have a deadline to put on that weight. What good is an arbitrary, man-made number going to do for me? Wake up, hot hootchie mama friend! Wake up!

I can look at the end as justifying the means. Focus on now. The today. The saying, "OMG, maybe I don't have to be perfect!"

I mean, the horror, right?

Other options: shoot for smaller weight increments and weigh less often. You can survive in this challenge by being real and not focusing overly much on success versus failure as being black and white.

2. Throw the scale out the window if weighing is becoming obsessive. I know, I know. The last time you did that, you hit Auntie Edna's ficus and she wasn't very happy about it. Again, we're talking about arbitrary data points for failure. You're never going to weigh less enough, lose fast enough. You're mad you ever gained so much. You're a failure, failure, failure!

STOP! Is it really worth it? I'm losing weight and I'm feeling better. I sleep better. My clothes fit better. Am I so ruled by what the numbers say and use it to gauge my worthiness?

That's so wrong! STOP IT! Get rid of the distraction.

Maybe you will choose to weigh only once a month. Maybe wait until the end of the year. Maybe you just write the number down on eat Monday of your calendar and ignore them until you have a few months’ worth showing you how steadily those numbers have really moved down!

3. STOP trying to be perfect. OMG! You ate an excess piece of lettuce by mistake. You didn't know the waiter put black beans in your chipless nachos. It happens! Stop looking for reasons to beat yourself up! Maybe you forgot to write down what you ate and can't remember if you had 13 net carbs or 14. Stop expecting everything has to be perfect or what's the point. Nothing magical happens because you did nothing wrong all day. You're still human. You're still losing.

You just drink your water and know you didn’t wreck your diet. You don’t start over. Life doesn’t have a reset button. You keep going. To stop and unnecessarily beat yourself up doesn’t make sense. We spend most of our lives in maintenance. Do you think there won’t be occasionally flare-ups there? Roll with the punches. It was one goof in one meal.

Nothing at all in the overall scheme of things.

4. Emotions and bad stuff happens. I don't care if we're God's gift to muliebrity or manhood while following any way of eating.Even when you have stuck to plan flawlessly and the weight is melting off of you like butter on a griddle, the boss is still a putz with a bad hairpiece and our kid might still be in juvie. Your kid's teacher still talks more about her gastric bypass surgery than polynomials, and it rained today.

It HAPPENS! Embrace the imperfection of life with humor. Treat the emotions with a plan. Don't try to push them down with food. And don't internalize.

These things don't happen to you because you deserve them!

Life happens whether we do our part to make ourselves better or not and it is not an indiocator that you are not worth wanting better health. Health makes problems better in that you can learn to cope with them without eating, but we don’t earn a pass on bad drivers on our way to work, even though our thighs are so slim even Angelina Jolie is envious.

5. Now smell the java with me a moment. Look at the mirror and you're seeing someone who's not been a very good friend to you. She's been pretty mean. You treat everyone else better than you treat yourself, and you constantly sabotage your efforts in ways you never would anyone else.

Notice your triggers! You have them! Embrace the fact that every Thursday you watch a show and it makes you feel fat and unsophisticated so you decide to abuse yourself and eat. Stop watching the show. Or watch it while you exercise. Be pro-active.

Look for where you fail every time and why.

I'm telling you, it's been an epiphany and a half to wake up one day and have to admit I'm a perfectionist and that all I've done all this time is set myself up to fail.

Sometimes, even its simplicity it’s harder to admit I'm human, to roll with the proverbial punches and to keep going.

But practice makes, well, perfect. So to speak.

My concerns with Jimmy Moore's blog which prompted me to contact sponsors

In an effort to clear the air once and for all, my concerns are as follows (and are the concerns I have had from the beginning):

1. He has before edited at least one comment to his blog and has admitted this. It was admitted on the blog that he had done this, and it was a joke. I don't think it's funny to edit comments to change their meaning. To edit for profanity or for reasons which violate your TOS, certainly. To my knowledge, there was no TOS violated.

2. He appears to be a bit caustic to those who disagree with him. Rather than embrace disagreements, or acknowledge concersn, there seems to be a tendency in the past for him to sometimes be a bit harsh to people.

3. As a celebrity, he is endorsing a way of eating which many believe is dangerous for its low calorie restrictions, coupled with low-fat, through a company which many believe has been controversial and should be under the watchful eye of a physician. I know he has always espoused healthful living, but this new foray into Kimkins apologetics, podcasting and blogging has many low-carbers rightfully concerned.

These are valid concerns from readers and members of the low-carb community and have nothing to do with the personality, jealousy, emotion, or meddling in someone's livelihood, but with the ethnics, scientific and nutritional information and the safety of the public.



That people would maintain contacting companies with valid concerns are 'out to get someone' is patently false and intellectually dishonest, especially when you see what my concerns are (listed above).

People want to see Jimmy move forward in health and happiness, and because people listen to him, it is important he is really living a healthful, low-carb lifestyle!

Healthy low-carbing made Jimmy a slimmy-Jimmy. I would like to see him go back to that. Weight loss is not a race.


So, with wishes for good health and for a positive foot going forward for the betterment of all of low-carb-dom,

Jamie


edited for clarity

Low-carb links have been removed

To everyone who contacted sponsors and voiced your thoughts on the matter (whether supporting or showing concern--or even if you were realy mad at me for providing links), thank you.

I have removed links because a reader made me realize that it would only be responsible to be sure that I'm linking to the right sponsors and to ones who should be contacted. I didn't intend for listing a few companies to be a hobby, especially when my blog isn't about that.

I like discussing low-carb, and felt this was just one issue worthy of addressing... but not indefinitely! This is so not the me-angsty blog!

This should be a place where uplifting and supportive care are given. I am not a professional bogger, just someone who worries about everyone and wants everyone to be safe and healthy.

That said, thanks for your blessings and the discussion of the matter. Eat well, and remember-- weight loss is not a race! Enjoy the journey.

How do I love Low-carb? Let me count my awkward social moments

The low-carbohydrate way of eating has been an absolute boon to me, if not to trucks carrying delicious pre-wrapped snack cakes.

No other way of eating has kept me from chasing Little Hostess trucks down the street while trying to gnaw the tires. You know, it's socially awkward when they driver is trying to make out why the truck makes the whump-whump-whump sound as he's travelling down the road.

Then, when he finally pries my canines out of his steel-belted radials (and says, "Wow, have you had dental work? Such great choppers") and continues on his way, he waves as I'm then hugging the big fiberglass donut at the corner Drippin' Donuts.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for big sprinkles.

Through a change in eating from a high-carbohydrate diet to one with fewer carbs, I have removed virtually any and all cues which tell me to lick Pizza Hut ads (my monitor tasted like dust), try to adopt Betty Crocker, fondle Dolly Madison or eat the plastic Barbie cake (it looked so pink).

I think once I accidentally ingested one of the Olson twins. I still have a platform shoe wedged in my esophagus. Such tiny feet.

I am reformed! Made new! No longer one of the hungry aggressors towards hugging the golden arches, I have entered the rehab clinic of healthful eating.

That Oscar Meyer Weinermobile I chased the other day and accosted with saurkraut before the police showed up and slapped me with a restraining order for tasting its sweet, delicious casing? Totally legal.

Thank you, Dr Atkins.

Sarah

She hugged her sides
And wanted away

In her room she was a blossom
Unfurling concisely
Each petal poking through her
Dark and angular

Bones on the inside Bones
on the outside

She played at dying Tried to
stop breathing Like a spider, limbs
everywhere
She reached out and pushed away

If she was less there maybe Just maybe Less
in the air, less on the ground, weaving smaller
black shadows It would be for her

She looked away And hugged her sides

And maybe hate wouldn’t curl up tight
and lick its lips In the corner of her bed
And doubt would clomp its heavy boots
somewhere else
Hands would not yell at her
Words would not hit her

Bones on the outside Always the outside

She breathed in sadness, breathed out sand
Kept its time with her thinning hand