Category Health & Weight Loss

Trying to be Kind in an era of Anti-Social Media

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Trying to be Kind in an era of Anti-Social MediaAntiSocial Mediea

If you’re thinking I’m avoiding talking about my diet because I’m not doing so well at the moment … you’d be right! 🙂

For the purpose of this piece, I’m going to blame my current, & hopefully temporary, lack of dietary success on the stresses of social media. Some folk are posting & sharing thoughts & beliefs that I could never have imagined coming out of their mouths. These are nice, kind, feeling, thinking people. I’ve spent time with them, eaten dinner with them, had a beer with them, & I can absolutely say that they are nice people. So why would such nice people flip out every now & again, to spread unkind thoughts, memes & tropes?

We seem to be pretty tribal by nature. We prioritize our family, our friends, our neighborhood, our city, state & country, over those of others. Maybe that’s okay up to a point. But it’s not so okay when we start belittling or taking action to lower the “others” position. If, without changing our own position or circumstance, we somehow feel elevated when we take down another, we are in a bad place.

Today’s social media platforms are an amazing way to stay in touch with family & friends around the world. They can be used to spread fun, joy & happiness. They can also be used as tools to denigrate each other, with the safety of that digital distance & anonymity between us. I have been so surprised by some of the posts & comments in recent times, that I renamed my social media app folder “AntiSocial”. Each time I open a social media app, it’s a quick reminder for me to think before I post.

Remember that old saying: if you don’t have something good to say, say nothing. It’s probably still sound advice, isn’t it? Now, I wish I could claim the high moral ground here & say that I am that kind of person. I wasn’t always & indeed, I’m sometimes not. But I think it’s worth trying to be that guy. And I am occasionally reminded of that, most often when someone has higher expectations of me, than I have of myself. We all have the capability of being good people.

This is a great day to remember all this because today, March 20th, is the International Day of Happiness. And spring arrives today!

Now that sounds like a great day to share a little of the good stuff on social media, doesn’t it!

Peace, love, happiness & all that sloppy, mushy stuff (Cut me some slack, I have to preserve some of my bad boy image here! ) to all of you. I hope each & every one of you finds an extra ration of happiness today, tomorrow, & beyond.

PS … I will get back to the diet talk, please bear with me while I battle my demons! 🙂

Top 10 Things to Irritate the Irish with on St. Patrick’s Day!

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Top 10 Things to Irritate the Irish with on St. Patrick’s Day!
Irish Habanero

Some Irish facts for the day that’s in it …

  1. If you want to use the diminutive of the name of our patron saint, the correct version is St. Paddy’s Day, NOT NOT NOT St. Patty’s Day. I’m sure St. Patricia was a lovely woman but we don’t celebrate her on March 17th. Remember that we have Liam Neeson, with that special set of skills, for folk who get this wrong!
  2. I’d have to be under severe duress before I’d even look at green beer, never mind drink it! And no, you do not contaminate a good pint by putting green sprinkles on the top of a Guinness!
  3. Irish nachos are not corn chips with some green crap thrown all over them. Irish nachos are made from spuds! Preferable thinly sliced (to maximise grease absorption!) & fried, of course. Then you throw the bacon, sour cream & green crap all over them!
  4. While I love corned beef & cabbage too, the traditional Irish dish is bacon & cabbage. There’s no point in looking for it outside of Ireland, it doesn’t taste the same. That’s why the Irish adopted the corned beef thing when they came to America. If you’re outside Ireland, you might be forgiven for going with the corned beef & cabbage.
  5. Don’t assume we all know Bono! Though I did work with the Edge’s brother for a while! And now that I think about it, I think a lad I worked for at one time, actually worked with Bono’s brother!
  6. I don’t think I have ever said “Top o’ the mornin'” to anyone in my entire life. Nor has any Irish person ever said it to me!
  7. No, I have no idea how to spell leipreachán. Feck off & look it up yourself!
  8. A four leaf clover does not represent the Irish shamrock. If you smuggle the real thing out of Ireland to plant in your foreign garden. It will die within 24 hours. But remain green after it’s death. (You know I make some of this crap up, right!?!)
  9. We tend to overlook the fact that the lad was English. And we’d be grateful if you didn’t ask us to explain all that to you!
  10. And last, but not least, it’s just pointless me trying to adhere to a diet on St. Paddy’s weekend. So I’m off to have an Irish coffee to start off the day. And I’ll probably have a pint for my morning coffee break. NOT!

Spread the green love … Happy St. Paddy’s Day to all! 🙂

How to Make Skinny People Fat

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How to Make Skinny People Fat

Haggis & Chips

Comfort Food! Aaahhh!!!

You have no idea how difficult my life can be sometimes. I have a lot of expertise in how to get fat. I’m lucky enough to share my life with someone who doesn’t get fat. Wait a minute, let me rephrase that: I am lucky enough to share my life with someone who is even luckier, not because she’s get to share her life with me, but simply because she doesn’t get fat! Indeed, every now & again, she’ll come to me & say something totally & utterly excruciating, like …

“I’m down a few pounds & I don’t think it suits me, what should I eat?”, with that look of total innocence on her face.

Is she just trying to torment me or what!?!

But of course, ever dutiful when called upon, I will immediately try to help her out. Yesterday, & I’m still in my flu-season-comfort-food mindset, I thought I’d marry my own desire for comfort food with her desire to add a few pounds. I’d just have to eat a bit less of whatever pound-padding creation I concocted.

It’s no surprise that our favourite comfort foods come from our younger years, but choices were limited. We were busy yesterday & didn’t have time to hit the grocery store, so the cupboards were pretty bare. There was a decent selection of healthy choices but that wasn’t what either of us was looking for. I unearthed a can of haggis and, wonder of wonders, a can of baked beans! There are always frozen fries in the freezer so that was it: the complete fattening meal. A can of fatty meaty bits, loaded with oats to soak up & disguise the sheer volume of fat. A can of potentially healthy beans that are swimming in a sugary tomato sauce. And spuds so finely slivered so as to maximise the grease-attracting surface area of a veggie that might otherwise be healthy.

Now I must admit to enjoying my combo platter of sugar, fat & starch. Unfortunately, the Skinny One wasn’t enjoying hers. She’s not a big fan of haggis. The beans weren’t like the ones she had as a child. And there were too many fries on the plate. OMG!!!

While she went off to boil an egg, to accompany the single slice of Jarlsberg cheese she placed on a small plate, I finished off her leftovers. Only about 90% of the original meal! I know, I’m weak. What can I say. Other than I enjoyed her’s too.

After that amazing little keto-friendly “dinner” she had prepared for herself, she then went to prepare dessert. It was some kind of upside-down pineapple cake. With ice cream.

“Would you like one too?”, she inquired. More of that innocence in play!!!

I should have pulled the battery out of the scale last night, but I didn’t. So this morning: I’m up, she’s not. And we might have to go through this exercise all over again today. Aaarrrrghhhh!

Good thing we’re all out of haggis & baked beans! 🙂

Comfort Food

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Comfort Food

Snow Window Open

Note to self … Close car window during winter!

Who doesn’t love comfort food?

We need it even more when winter drags on & on. I was looking at green grass for most of winter but now, suddenly, I’ve got snow mountains on the sidewalk. And we have a polar vortex that’s chillin’ things down for a day or two. What on earth is a polar vortex!?! Never mind, I don’t really want to know. Just bring on spring. Please!

I’ve segued from one cold or flu to another for the past month or six weeks. Now I have a sore throat that just won’t go away. Combine all that with some winter blues & I’m pretty close to forgetting all about diets & weight loss. Almost!

I don’t think I’ve ever been sick enough to not want to eat. I’m not sure if there’s any truth to the old saw about feeding a cold & starving a fever, but I was never motivated to starve myself in either circumstance. Quite the opposite.

Feeling as I do, it would have been easy to give up on the diet. I didn’t (well, not completely anyway), but I still needed comfort. Lots of comfort. Instead, I made a huge pot of silly-hot beef curry, adding all those ingredients that I thought might carry some natural curative properties. Chilli powder, turmeric-laden curry powder, tons of hot peppers, garlic, onion, cilantro. And, towards the end of cooking, three big thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger. Adding a topping of melting Jarlsberg cheese to my big bowl of “medicine” gave great texture, along with a Vitamin K2 boost.

Cure a fever!?! This stuff is hot enough to give you a fever! Wonder if my strep throat bugs are the curry-resistant variety!!!

I also went into free-fall on fresh & frozen fruit, bananas, raspberries & blueberries. All accompanied by chocolate & cream. Sadly, it wasn’t always the dark chocolate.

Has it cured me? … Not at all.

Do I feel better? … You bet! Especially while I’m stuffing my face!

I’ll worry about what the scale feels next week! 🙂

 

Results … Month #8

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Results … Month #8 (Down 40 lbs) results-month-8

I can’t believe it! I dodged a bullet. Again!

I’m down 4.2 lbs for the month. I could pitch that as another success story for this amazing dietary philosophy I’m practicing. But it just doesn’t feel like that. I blamed December’s lackluster results on the holidays, January’s on work travel, & I’ve been mentally preparing to talk about the winter blues & blahs as my excuse for February. While all those excuses are true, the really huge news in this month’s story is that I haven’t abandoned the diet. I’m hanging in there. Falling off the wagon, & that has happened several times, hasn’t resulted in some huge rebound.

I started this program by practicing for failure. Let’s be real here, most of us yo-yo dieters know that we start a diet on Monday. We enthusiastically make our way through Wednesday. By Thursday, we feel like we deserve a treat. The wheels come off on Friday. And we binge ourselves to a new high on the weekend. Just a little reward before we start a new diet the following Monday!

That’s why I needed to learn how to fail … first. And I’m not talking carrots & celery sticks here! You’ve seen pics of some of my failure foods along the way. When times are bad, I’m eating more failure foods, more often. During those times, I’m eating as I might expect to eat when the diet is “over”. It’s pretty good. I can live happily on a diet that includes French fries & ice cream. Though, even by my rules for failure, I’ll admit to overdoing it on the chocolate!

My big fear now is that things are tapering off. The downward slope of my weight-loss graph isn’t as steep as it was during the first four or five months. Is this the end? Is this as good as it gets? Or will the warmer spring weather, when it finally deigns to arrive, bring along some fresh enthusiasm for the program?

At this point, I am grateful that I haven’t done the rebound thing. But I’m not sure what happens next. I alternate between being cautiously optimistic and then, despairingly melancholic about ever getting to a safer, healthier weight.

The next couple or three months will be very interesting. I’m writing the story, but I have no idea how it turns out.

Welcome to March … here’s hoping it’s a good month for all of us.