Validation and A Pity-Pot That Will Leave a Mark

Apparently up until about a week ago, I had been utilizing a pitypot built for my convenience, since I had been spending so much time on it. First of all I was stressed because I had an extra marketing project to get done, working in an arena in which I hadn't been for several years. Then I was pissed when they removed it from me after a week. Then I got stressed about jumping back into, complete immersion as it were, my own business I've had for the past seven years, and taking complete responsibility for making it work. I haven't lost all hope, but I am very concerned about finances. As they say, have said, and most likely forever will say, Things right now are tough all over. My industry is particularly cut-throat-- that is disheartening in itself-- and at this point there are so many of us who were accustomed to making a good living and have had to learn to w-w-w-w-o-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-rkkk harder for it, that when you finally get a good prospect, it is tantamount to throwing a bone into a pack of starving Dobermans.

So I'd been struggling within myself all week to stay off that PityPot, when I got an uplifting comment from a drive-by encourager the other day on my Sparkpage, that reminded me even when life gets crazy, how GOOD it feels to at least be in control of one thing, and for me, right now, that's being on track with food and exercise. It refocused me on the things I can absolutely control...how much time I spend working in my business productively (as opposed to just working at it) and how much time I spend planning and executing a healthy lifestyle. Then I got another email right after that about a video on YouTube called Validation. If I could figure out how to embed it, you could see it right here, but you'll just have to click the name and link over to it! Validation is a short narrative "fable" about the magic of free parking., starring TJ Thyne (from Bones) & Vicki Davis, by Writer/Director/Composer Kurt Kuenne, and well worth the 16+ minutes you'll spend to view it. Seeing it, really lifted my spirits, and I resolved to spend more time and energy on trying to make life easier for other people.

I set about acquiring and implementing some new marketing tools. I'm designing a new campaign, and began getting back in touch with previous clients. I got back to eating and exercise-walking consciously through planning. I joined a couple of walking groups, the Clearwater Recreational Walkers and Friends, Fitness & Fun, which have interesting outings, and imported the planned walks and hikes into my calendar. I began calling and checking on people I had not heard from in a while. I renewed a habit I had begun years ago of always acknowledging aloud that special something you can see in every human being you meet-- thanks Kurt Kuenne, for reminding me! I, in essence, began validating my own life again by simply infusing it with positive, productive energy and remembering the importance of others in it. By crikies, after only a week of trying out that "new" plan, I feel about a thousand percent better!

Oh, and I did away with the more enticing pity-pot, and installed one with a STUDDED SEAT.

Becoming Princess Phatso, One Year at a Time...or, I can start my year over anytime I wish

...and I wish it to be right now.

If an advanced degree could be awarded in starting over, or if they had a Bounce-back B.A., I'd have so many skins on my wall, it would bleat at nighttime.

Actually I am not starting over so much as I am tightening up, because since I began my weightloss efforts in earnest last October, I have never truly let go. I did think I'd be at goal within the year, but apparently that is not to be the case...this year. The thing I am most pleased about is how I am unable to abuse myself with food to the extent I once was. I am definitely a progressionist over perfectionist, so I'm going with that as a positive accomplishment. And I have managed to keep 51 of the 62 pounds I lost, off.

I am more returning to the spin cycle of my life laundry... it is time for once again devoting the extreme attention to wringing out the last 50 or so pounds of my journey. I have paused halfway for way too long, and enjoyed the progress I've made too much, as opposed to getting on with it so I can enjoy the complete triumph.

I have always enjoyed Tom Venuto's blog-- what an intense, driven, honest, gut-level, caring and giving guy he is! I have read him for about three years now and I think he and the work he has done and what he has given back to people at large is just phenomenal. I am not into eating the amount or kinds of protein he mainly advocates, but I am not saying it's not healthy...and different things work for different folks. He is great on bodybuilding and recovering one's physical health. He had a powerful motivation strategy I'm adopting right now... I always knew it worked. Being reminded of it is just one of the primary examples of how and why we ought to continually keep ourselves in front of some sort of audience to provide enough external motivation for us to keep on keeping on. Because not one of us--- no, not one--- has sufficient, continual internal motivation to do what we need to do in order to keep the heat turned up on achieving difficult goals, and they are ALL difficult. So, as Tom reminded me, if you don't have an external motivation, create one.

My new goal is to have lost fifty pounds by December the 1st, this year. 90 days. Yep, I'm doing a 90-day transformation. Stick around to either have your betting against me doing it validated, or to cheer me on despite all odds. I'll take both as motivation! I'll post a link to my fitday log at the bottom of the blog, and a new goal counter so you can see where I'm at... oh, and I'll take before and after pics, but not in a swimsuit with my gut trying to escape down to my knees, oh, hell no!

And I'll actually share some of my real dreams I'd like to make happen after I get what's left of my body back. Hope to be getting feedback soon. And thank you all for coming...it's been a lovely post.

All I Gotta Do

My Fat Brain got some bad news in the last few days. A growing awareness in Thinbrain has led to the conclusion that the beatings will continue...the exercise will be increased in frequency, duration and intensity. This year is all about simplification, honesty, accountability, cleaning up and cleaning out. I am continuing to intensify my walking, and now running, exercise by now doing it twice a day, once easy, once a little more intense. Now I am also thinking about adding in extra toning and strengthening exercises. The focus is: I don't have time to play around with the weightloss... GET THESE TOXINS OUT NOW.

I've been paying more and more attention to the ladies I'm in contact with who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off successfully. I've also begun to research the subject, because me dealing with it this year is a reality, and I need to begin to prepare. The general consensus is, the more you lose, the more you have to exercise in order to lose more! Because there is less mass to burn the calories than there was before, and even if you strengthen and build muscle mass to replace and burn calories more efficiently, its very efficiency cannot make up for the volume that was formerly inside the body maintaining itself. The White Queen would no doubt tell me I've been living in a slow sort of country, because now, it takes all the running I can do, to keep in the same place. If I want to get somewhere else, I "must run at least twice as fast as that!"

In sales, you set goals and then you set quotas. You set the goal far out, and then you break down time in between now and when you want to reach the goal into quantifiable quotas which will accumulate over regular intervals during the given period of time to yield the goal amount.

I have a goal of 126. I know when I want to be there. I have now gone back and set weekly quotas for toxins to be released, which will result in reaching the goal when I initially planned. In order to effect that release, my intake of calories, which must remain fairly constant within a range of 1000-1200 calories, is less manipulable than the exercise. The amount of exercise I must do in order to work within the range of calories, given the projected weight my body will be on any given week, is therefore identifiable, quantifiable, and DO-ABLE! I have to burn a certain amount of calories, and there are fairly static basal rates for a given weight, and there are set calories expended by various types of exercise with relation to intensity and duration, and that is identifiable...ALL I HAVE TO DO IS STICK WITH THE PLAN AND MY GOAL IS A FOREGONE CONCLUSION!!!! You don't know how much comfort that gives me.

Now... I just have to WANT to stick with the plan hour by hour, day by day, week by week, for the next 22 weeks! That's all I have to do, and I will have completed the first step in restoring That Seventies Body to mois....in becoming Princess PHATso...and then the next tough part begins, but for now, all I have to keep my eyes on is doing my exercise and eating my fruit and veggies for today, so I can meet this next week's quota! I'm on my way!!! 22 MORE WEEKS!!! Two fiscal quarters! A pittance! A snippet of time!!!

What I Learned at Raw Food Boot Camp

All ten of us who read this blog may have noticed my absence the past, oh, let's just call it six weeks and be done.

Well, my goal was certainly to blog more often, and one of my new year's resolutions was to blog nearly daily, but a funny thing happens on the way to the resolution forum every year. I start early in late November-- to get the jump on the rest of the hoi polloi, you see-- but I suspect I have a hidden agenda about that, as well. I believe that the part of my brain (Fat Brain) where Little Voice dwells, lurking behind some algae-covered synapse, has subscribed to the RSS-feed--- I'm not exactly even sure what that is but I know it has something to do with instant notification of updated information--- of the other side of my brain (the side where Glenda the Good Witch stays when she comes to visit), and goes into overdrive to immediately counter-attack any planned positive changes. Therefore, the jumpstart on new year's resolutions serves as a counter-counter response to any insurgency on the part of Fat Brain, which results in said resolutions actually taking effect about...the first week or two of January, same as everybody else.

Then there is the whole maddening December thing my head goes on a tirade about, on any given year, ever since I lost both my parents and a favored dachshund during that season several years back. A few Decembers since 2000, I have absolutely had all I could do to function for the entire month. Much less make the journey, alone, into that head of mine, a necessary evil of the blogging process. And this year, I also had to deal with the contemplation of the end of a career path, continuing the raw food path, etc, etc, waaaah-waaaah, ad nauseum... there are my excuses, and I'm sticking to it!

Now we've got that out of the way, I had taken some time to reflect upon what the Raw Food Boot Camp experience had done for me after it ended November 21st, besides help me lose about 28 pounds. Fortunately, dear reader, I made a few notes and saved them in a text file for future reference for when I wrote my report, What I have learned as a Result of Boot Camp.

Three major things come to mind: getting back "in touch" with ME; uncovering and tackling some inner "work" that needed doing I didnt' know was there; and how to open up lines of communication with my husband, the benefit to the latter of which being re-evaluated on a daily basis. The biggest thing I took away was the realization it can be done, and it can be done by me. I had pretty much given up on getting below the number on the scales the ginormous amount of weight I managed to accumulate inside my skin afforded me. But I proved to myself I was about to give up right before the change. Now, I know it is possible. Now, I know that I can lose the weight--- it takes determination and sticking to the plan but I can do it. I am starting to see the old me, that I imagine I was at some point whether that has any bearing upon the actual truth or not, start to shine through. Now I am taking the excitement of knowing there is something that absolutely does work and converting it to action to shed the pounds! I really am so thankful for this experience!

I have also learned to incorporate exercise and keep it a priority in my life, because I have come to believe and admit that exercise is key to any successful weightloss program, and to keeping it off once you've lost it... and that harder isn't always the best if its the pounds you're really looking to lose. I've learned that I really can set goals and follow through. I've also learned that exercise is good and can elevate my mood more than ice cream ever could, or, as Dr. Stephen Gullo says, exercise keeps my moods out of my foods. I've also learned that all fruit is the best, most efficient way to lose weight, for me, for right now-- fruit always tastes delicious, it's portable, it delivers live nutrients at a moment's notice, it's beautiful to behold and it fills me up..... physically and emotionally.

Oh, a couple more aphorisms... after enduring a particularly difficult December:

It is better to be thinner and miserable, than fat and miserable.

There is no value high enough to be placed upon friends, cyber and flesh alike, who help you keep an attitude of gratitude....SPEAKING OF WHICH, please be good to yourself today and visit an AMAZING SITE that belongs to my new cyber-friend, Christy Murphy. She has tapped into something that is one of the major cures for depression, and has almost become a lost art in our society today...expressing thanks.

And if you are reading this, thank you.

Fear of Feasting Alleviated by Veggie Porn

"And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God,

we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie."

---Edward Winslow writing in Mourt's Relation,

one of only two primary sources for the events of autumn 1621 in Plymouth, MA

We were planning to go to The Pub Waterfront Restaurant, over in Indian Shores, for Thanksgiving dinner...I really did not relish the thought of the whole two-day food-prep rigamarole, for food I wasn't going to eat, anyway. I discovered while either reading Creative Loafing or *tbt that they were serving TD traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings. Knowing that Ossie is all about tradition-- we've had the same things at Thanksgiving Dinner for twenty years, an amalgamation of what my mother (and her mother) made and what his mother made, with a few creations of my own added over time-- I thought, what a wonderful way to preserve my rawtiety and not make the family suffer unduly! With the added bonusii of being waited on, no cleanup, and the certain appropriateness of traveling to a place called Indian Shores on Thanksgiving, I excitedly called for reservations.

Despite all that, we made some last-minute changes to TD dinner plans when Ossie returned from Boston this week. Maybe it was something about being closer to the area the actual first Thanksgiving took place, I don't know. But when he returned, his resolve to go out for TD had waned, and after very little discussion, I agreed. We are going to stay home and cook, again, but a streamlined version of all the other years. Ossie is going to help prepare. He is actually an excellent cook and enjoys it, so we are dividing the duties. I'll handle the veggies, he'll handle the meat, and we'll come together on the dressing. There was some momentary angst, when discussing just purchasing a turkey breast for the whitemeat lover, and a leg for the darkmeat lover (alas, the poor turkey, he loved all of his meat!), and Ossie worried about not having giblets for the gravy or dressing. I reminded him that, he hated giblets, and so did my son, and the only person who ever gobbled them down was...mois. This cheered him up greatly, and the modified plans are in place and widely accepted. They make more sense for everyone, now that I have gotten over my fear of cooking.

It wasn't as if I bothered to make pies for a long time, anyway. Grocery store bakeries do such a good job, more cheaply. Traditional pies at TD never were a huge draw for me... I only suffer the pie to get at the whipped topping, and left up to the other two family members, they don't even want the topping! (You can see on top of having a food addiction, part of my curse was to live in a house filled with non-foodies, with no sweet tooth, who forget to eat on a regular basis---in other words, I've been forced to cohabitate with beings outside my species.) Now, a great treat will be an extra smoothie that day... a fresh cranberry-apple-orange one in the morning, and a watermelon-papaya-pineapple one later in the day. For the actual dinner I can just share the nice big fresh-fruit salad I make for everyone else to enjoy. I look forward to that, because I haven't taken the time since I've been raw to actually cut up fruit and make a mixed salad! I tend to be a mono-eater, one of the reasons I find eating raw food so appealing. That might mainly be due to the fact I simply enjoy eating one food at a time-- sometimes the same food over and over again for weeks until I move onto the next one--or to my extreme laziness when it comes to getting nutrients and fuel into my mouth when it doesn't involve preparing for anyone else.

As Boot Camp has progressed, I've learned more and more, and I'm starting to loosen up about this new way I eat, and live, and think. I was feeling so magnanimous, I made dinner again last night... the previously-dreaded rellenos. It was so alright, I didn't even crave one-- not ONE, I tell you! Part of dinner involved making the pintos from scratch, which I started in the morning, seasoning blind, had hubby taste midday, they were pronounced fine, and I didn't have to worry about them again, except to keep an eye on them just simmering a few more hours. No big whoop with the pintos...my legumitude is, to forego the good but not fantasy-inspiring flavor, I can do without the after effects. I crave them not.

The other part-- a prior subject of fear--- was preparing the actual chile rellenos. They are my absolute favorite dish, ethnic or otherwise, of all time. I was able to avoid a dangerous part of the Relleno Ritual, because they had already been roasted and frozen. After they were half-defrosted, I peeled them and then, it became more like an art project. Since they had come from the tailend of the crop we harvested from our backyard garden this fall, they were so small, the usual Mexican-cheese strips with which I stuff them would not fit. Each chile had to be laid out on a board with the Queso Blanco strip beside. In order to make the chile relleno, or 'stuffed', I then had to carve the exact shape to fit that chile and carefully slide it in. I was partway through this process, when it occurred to me-- I was sculpting little phallic shapes and slipping the little chile condoms over them.

That pretty much did it. Took it right out of the realm of food for me. The rest was a snap. After I finished dipping them into the batter of blended yolks and eggwhites beaten stiff--- oh, no... I won't even go there---and frying them in the hot, melted vegetable grease---which caused me to ponder, how does one render a vegetable in order to extract its fat?---I immediately tidied up, wiping all the ceramic down with my homemade cleaner-- a mixture of a little bit of purple Fabuloso (a wonderful cleaner originally from Mexico, now manufactured by Colgate-Palmolive and pissing off the people at ConsumerReports.org who fear their sweet-smelling and luscious-coloured product may entice small children to drink and die), water, and a bottle of alcohol. I was Suzy-Homemaker for a few moments, again-- even filled (but failed to start, which I discovered this morning) the dishwasher, then walked out to the back landing to do my 57 wall push-ups for a challenge at Rawk Village.

Let me tell you, when it was all over, and I had gone out front for a moment and come back in, I realized it was the first time I had smelled any of the cooking odors! Made me wonder about how deeply I breathe normally. It also dawned on me how much easier it was to stand for all the time it takes to prepare them, and how my back didn't even start to hurt until the very end. That's understandable, since I'm just two pounds from my goal of releasing thirty during this first Boot Camp. What a difference from seven weeks ago when it would start hurting within the first five minutes, standing bent over the countertop, to do any type of food prep. Maybe my body remembering that associated pain was the real reason I dreaded making chile rellenos, after all.

But now...Piece of cuke!

If Monkees Can Die From Bananas...Why Can't I?

I read in an article written by Frederic Patenaude about a sign he read while in Costa Rica, that stated, "Contrary to the stereotype, bananas are not the preferred food of monkeys in the wild. Bananas, especially those containing pesticides can be upsetting to the monkeys' delicate digestive system and cause serious dental problems that can lead to eventual death."

Anyone who has read more than a few pages about Frederic knows he is absolutely devoted to dental hygiene. In fact, I'd say he could more closely be classified as a fanatic about healthy teeth and gums. And not without good cause. He is one of raw food's leading gurus, and he acknowledges the "weak link" in the raw foodist diet is basically a very serious possible side effect, dental decay and oral problems. The entire article is--- personal product plugs notwithstanding-- pretty informative and does offer condensed solutions, which is all I'm looking for, and I found it under the October 13th post on his blog.

Back to the mortal threat of bananas to the bononos...supposedly their inability to brush their teeth would make them more at risk, and only because the sugar content would be feeding the elevated bacteria population of their mouths and leading to dental disease, from which infection can more quickly enter the bloodstream, get to the brain, and quicker than you can say "Zoom! Darkening" the monkey keels over and assumes ground temperature... which leads me to my all-time favorite riddle:

Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

Because it was dead.

The first time I read that joke, it struck me just right, and sent me into gales of laughter. When I retold the joke, and discovered a much lower percentage of my audience was able to find the humour in it than I, I have since learned to take enjoyment from the blank looks on faces, and the fact that something I found amusing others often find annoying, and the very dichotomy sends me into paroxysms of gaiety all over again.

Which leads me to another point...I really don't find dead monkeys amusing. Nor dead animals of any sort. Their respective demises all cause me pain. Even so, I would like to see the study that led to the posting of the sign in Costa Rica, apparently in an attempt to dissuade its readers from handing out bananas willy-nilly to wayfaring monkeys which might be encountered in the wilds of Costa Rica, that gives empirical evidence wild monkeys have "delicate" systems. That's all I'd like to know.

Wild monkey deaths and rampant tooth decay aside, this is my eleventh day as a 100% raw foodist. It seems to suit me well, so far, as a lifestyle... I am actually quite pleased with it... and I've yet to experience any nasty cravings...yet. I won't be a Pollyanna and think that day will never come... but by and large I am so pleased with how I feel: re-energized, more alert, no CRAVINGS... my sinuses have cleared, my snoring is lessening... I had been waking up with dry eyes the past couple of months and that is gone... I don't know what all that means, or what it portends... all I know is, coincidentally, these things have happened in my life and body after I began consuming only raw fruits and some vegetables.

But I am considering cutting back on the bananas...

The Worst Thing About My First Day Raw

The worst thing about my first day raw with RFBC was the hour leading up to the time I had set for myself, in my head, to exercise...w-w-w-w-a-a-a-a-lk. How do I hate thee, walking? Let me count the ways... to the depth of shame I feel walking down my favorite walk by the bay as I pass the multitudes of other walker/skater/bikers, all thinner than I. To the heighth of my body which does not seem to be stretched to its full heighth as I walk, but instead, to be sinking, vertebrae by vertebrae into the back of my pelvis, compacting what coccyx I have left into a Necco-sized wafer. To the breadth of my, well, breadth, as my almost-normal sized ankles attempt to balance an entire additional person inside the skin we call my body and totter both beings along the sidewalk at a 3mph clip for 60 minutes.

Right up until I bent forward, squishing a goodly part of me between my chest and my upper thighs as I perched on the sofa, to tie my shoes, stood up and walked right out the front door, my tuchas rushing behind to catch up, no doubt wondering where the feet were going at this hour... right up until then I was not 100% sure I could count on myself to do it. But, I did.

And not without many arguments with Little Voice (not exactly sure, but I think it is the spirit of a long-deceased Native American, apparently bent upon my destruction, I picked up while living in the desert a decade ago), which periodically hissed suggestions I turn back because my large left toe had begun to hurt. Then the blister I got a few days ago on my Achilles tendon flared up, then the back thing kicked in... and it was dark and there were too many thin people to pass, their attractive visages filling and tormenting my view... and on and on... thank God and Drill Sergeant Carlene I got sick of listening to Little Voice's whining this time, and began to distract myself instead with the beautiful surroundings, and to be thankful I could get up and walk at all, and began to notice instead the breeze blowing off the bay helping to drybrush the sweat from my skin.

No nausea today, feeling clean and healthy, and ever so grateful for having taken the walk.

Seeking Rawtiety

Today is the day I begin the Raw Food Boot Camp I mentioned in an earlier post. I am very excited and quite ready... I'm ready to see if I can actually follow through with a commitment, 100%, without cheating and what it will do for me, spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

I'm looking forward to meeting all the other women who are involved... and I'll be journaling here to let anyone who wants to follow along know what it is like to go from an omnivorous, cooking-loving, foodie to a raw foodist from one day to the next. Oh, I have slowed down on meats the last few weeks, and actually overall for quite a while, preferring chicken and fish, and eating a great deal of veggies. But this program is radically different. I've thought about it for a long time...about two years... I've toyed with raw before, and I like it.

There are more than eating issues, however, associated with going raw. There are a lot of emotional issues and first-family re-programming issues... that I have only begun to explore in my mind. In a way, I'm looking forward to getting this journey underway so I can get on with actually encountering the obstacles, because the suspense about how I'm going to react is killing me.

Not to mention all the extra weight I'm carrying...