In pursuit of washboard abs

I've mentioned several times that I'm participating in a Biggest Loser competition.  There are about thirty of us - friends and acquaintances - and if the competition goes anything like it has in the past, there will be a range of results.  There will also be a few outliers who manage to lose twenty to thirty pounds and start running marathons twice a week. I will try very hard not to hate these people.

My goal this time is to lose ten pounds.  This will not allow me to win the competition.  It takes more than that.

So why do I keep participating when I won't win?  Because it doesn't matter if I don't win the competition.  If I lose a couple of pounds, I have won.  If I simply manage not to gain, I have won.

Fat Amy.  I am not fond of this picture.

I used to weigh about seventy pounds more than I do now.  If you've ever been really heavy and lost the weight, you know how much work - physical and emotional - losing that kind of weight requires, and how horrifying the thought of putting it back on is.  I still need to lose about thirty pounds, but even more important is keeping the weight off.

Before I had kids I always assumed I was just doomed to be a fat person.  I wasn't one of those people that hits adulthood, eats too many pans of brownies, and has it catch up with their metabolism.  No, I always ate more than my metabolism could handle and was heavy from the time I was six years old.  There was no "getting back to my high school weight."  I'm thinner now than I was in high school.

Still fat, but much better now.

After my daughter was born I was so horrified by the condition of my body that I joined Weight Watchers.  Okay, I'll be honest, I didn't officially join Weight Watchers (at that time).  I just got the materials from my sister-in-law and did it by myself (I'm cheap that way).

Having kids has this effect on you sometimes.  Suddenly you realize that your health is important to more than just you.  There are people depending on you and kicking the bucket early would be a big disappointment for them.

So I tried to lose weight and it worked.   I was able to lose sixty-five pounds over the course of nine months.  Don't I make it sound so easy?  It wasn't easy, but it was possible, and I was so happy.  It's an amazing thing to learn after several decades of obesity that the trick to weight loss really is to eat less and exercise, that you really do control your own weight.

I'd be lying if I pretended that my only motivation to lose weight was my health.  I'm a woman and I live in the modern age of advertising when the media portrays women (compliments of Photoshop) sans anything resembling a realistic womanly shape.  I'm as vain as the next girl.

However, at this point it has a whole lot more to do with my health.  I've had the joy of having my body develop lots of problems at a pretty young age and also watching my father's health fail pretty spectacularly.  Thankfully none of my health issues are life-threatening, but keeping my body in the best condition possible has become a lot more important to me.  I still have many years left ("Good Lord willing and the creeks don't rise," as my dad used to say), and I don't want to spend them on a motorized scooter before I have to, even if Medicare will pay for it.

This blog post was not as much fun as I like them to be, but if it can be an encouragement to somebody then it's worth writing.  I'm as big a fan of food as the the next person, but it's not worth eating your way into an early grave.  You only get one body.  Take care of it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have more crunches to do.  If I'm ever going to get those washboard abs, I'd better get to it.

Crazy World of Pinterest

If you haven't been on Pinterest, you should have a visit, just to see how strange our society really is.  It's a website that allows you to "pin" a picture and web link to a virtual board.  It can be addictive, but I've found that, due to the repetitive nature of what gets pinned, the novelty wears off fairly quickly.

Repetitive?  Oh, yes.  According to Pinterest, our society is obsessed with the following: food, dresses, food, decorating, food, braiding hair, food, alcohol, food, eye shadow, food, jokes, food, exercise, and food.

If you look up my boards on Pinterest (there are no Facebook-like privacy settings, so feel free), you'll see that I mostly pin recipes, which isn't terribly shocking considering my obsession with cooking.  Look up anybody you like and you'll see what makes them hit that "Pin It" button.  For instance, a few months ago I came across the Pinterest profile for the wife of a friend of mine.  She'd pinned a bazillion pictures of children and child-rearing tips, even though she has no children of her own.  I hope he knows he has fatherhood in his future.  

In fact, most of the people on Pinterest are women, so I'm a little concerned by all the pictures of nearly naked women on there.  They all have a comment under them like "Great diet tips!" or "How to lose weight in a healthy way!"  Really?  Is seeing a woman in a bikini with hips like an adolescent boy and no body hair an incentive to exercise?  Frankly, it makes me want to sit and have another cookie (according to the Pinterest picture at right, cookies should be pink!).

One of the most consistent trends I've noticed on Pinterest is that you can serve anything in a canning jar.  What?  You didn't know that canning jars were vital to a well-laid party spread?  Oh, ho ho!  Yes, indeed.  Canning jars are not just for jam and pickles any more.

Why, just look at the following:

I've never liked oatmeal, but perhaps that's because
I never ate it cold out of a canning jar!

A wash tub filled with bottles of beer or cans of soda is not enough.
You must serve a variety of mixed beverages in canning jars! 

Salad in a mason jar.  Why?  Because bowls are so 2010!

A few weeks ago I gave you a link to a website featuring Weight Watcher recipe cards from the 1960s.  The site makes fun of the absurdity of the recipes and the absolutely appalling way that food was staged for photography back then.  A few minutes on Pinterest, however, and I've come to the conclusion that nothing has changed.  We're still making crazy recipes and serving them as weirdly as possible.

So have fun on Pinterest, and may all your cookies be pink and all your oatmeal come in a Mason jar.

Narcotic-fueled brilliance!

I made several New Year's resolutions this year, and one of them was to blog weekly.  I'm doing a better job at keeping my weight loss resolution.  How crazy is that?

For a while, I had the excuse of working a lot, but the tax deadline was nearly a month ago.  I did have back surgery a week ago and have been mostly lying around watching television and reading ever since.  I keep thinking I should post something to my blog, but do people really want to read my narcotic-fueled insights?  Do I even have any narcotic-fueled insights?

The only thing my brain has spawned from the painkillers was a truly awful nightmare earlier this week.  I was chaperoning at a youth rally and ended up on a horrible journey that involved being vomited upon, trying to take care of a baby while being crippled by an unknown neurotoxin, and getting lost on the way back from the bathroom.  I tried to get back to the teens I was supposed to be chaperoning, but I was hopelessly lost, wandering through several sports facilities and children's arcades, a strange retro martini bar filled with men in suits, a sushi kitchen, a courtroom, and a porn palace.  It was the porn that freaked me out enough to make me think maybe this was a dream.  The only thing that would have made the dream more frightening is if I were being chased by clowns.

I don't have much of value to write about, so I've gathered a few links for your browsing pleasure.  I just realized that all the links are on the subject of women.  Interesting.

The first is a wonderful link to a random page that has women laughing alone with salad.  I feel it has something deep to say about how women are portrayed in modern society, and I really want to stage photos of my family laughing with salad now.  I'm not kidding.  When I finally do it I promise to post pictures here.

On essentially the same subject is The World According to Stock Photos of Women.  Apparently stock photos have captured the reality of my life.  I mean, I'm always laughing as I eat salad, and my bedroom is completely white, with completely white linen, and I sleep in a white cami and white yoga pants.  Isn't that what being a woman means?  

Finally, I present you the latest in the endless stream of non-news controversies brought up to pit women against women (which we fall for every time).  This time it's the Time Magazine cover shot of a woman breastfeeding her three-year-old son.  It's getting more news than it deserves, which is why they did it.  I love this column from the Huffington Post's Lisa Belkin.  It's long past time women stopped criticizing each other's parenting choices and started supporting each other.  Parenting is an endless challenge and anyone who thinks they have all the answers is either an idiot or not a parent.

I promise I will try to post again soon.  I'm starting to think my weekly resolution was a bit optimistic of me.