First step to dealing with future obesity in US
Banning junk food from schools is the first step in the right direction!!
Body Conscious Blogger, May 20th 2010
Fat-o-Revolution
I’ve been slack, I know. Or maybe just tired and lacking the motivation, time and inspiration for writing. Or all of the above. Or none of the above. The fact of the matter is that there is a fat-o-revolution* on the go and you should know about it!
First things first: I have a rather time consuming habit of reading food/health/fitness blogs/articles/magazines/books. I like to be up to date on scientific health data, I like to read what other folks have to say about their food intake/preparation you name it. As I’m browsing through all these blogs, articles, websites etc. I’m noticing the following trends:
You are either:
1. Health obsessed and writing good quality stuff about nutrition and exercise OR
2. Health obsessed but can’t tell the difference between a carrot and a package of cookies labeled “only 100 calories”, “Good for you cookies” or “healthy cookies without bad fat” OR
3. Food obsessed and providing the reader with good, well balanced dishes to try OR
4. Food obsessed, providing the reader with probably good tasting but nutritionally devalued (fat and sugar laden) recipes and on top of that you call yourself a personal trainer!
I usually stay away from # 2 and # 4, but I can’t resist their audacity to actually say they know what they are talking about. So from time to time I will read what they write only to get frustrated, post a comment and hear from them that they still know what they are saying. Like this fat, personal trainer who puts bacon, heavy cream and sugar in every dish she makes. She wanted to teach me how to get my six pack without actually giving one single advice on how to do it. Yes, you heard me right, she said there is no formula for a six pack, just that a six pack is made in the kitchen. I get that, I even agree, it’s almost become common knowledge that in order for your abdominal muscle to show you have to shed the fat that’s covering it first. But as a personal trainer she doesn’t tell her “clients” what to eat to achieve that. Oh well, gotta move on.
Then there is a “health” blogger disguised in a gadget food costume! This one is less exciting and less offensive than the previous one, because it’s a simple gullible kind. He/she claims to be eating healthy foods, supposedly eats the right amounts of the right things. But then once in a while, or should I say every post he/she will tell you about a gadget food he/she discovered the other day while grocery shopping. What is a gadget food? A piece of something, in most cases something artificial that pretends to be food or a replacement for food that you can consume when you are on the run. In this category you could place a protein bar. Why on earth do you need a protein bar if not so that you can eat some empty calories and tons of sugar in some form or another! Have an apple or a banana, it’s convenient and can be eaten on the run. If you are in the office, have some almonds, piece of low fat cheese or grilled chicken breast, they all will provide you with much healthier protein! This group of “health” bloggers will also heavily indulge in “healthy” cookies, cakes and other pastries. Move on, have real food that will not undermine your efforts to be healthy, fit and of the right size.
These have been the things I have been reading, sometimes amusing, other times plain simple frustrating, but today my reading list has expanded! There is another category of food/health/fitness blogging on my reading list:
The Fat Nutritionist
5. The fat nutritionist!
Even saying the two words together just sounds plain wrong and offensive, let alone being that person. It’s like saying “the pedophile priest” – it offends me just as much. But yes, it’s true. There is a person (and others who practice the same religion but under different names) who is fat, about 260lbs at 5’4” and she “teaches” people about nutrition. No, she won’t tell you that sugar is bad and veggies are good. She will “teach” you how to be happy with your figure. In principle this is not a bad idea and that’s why I went on to read more of her blog. She is promoting good body image practices in young adults. Sounds positive, doesn’t it? Well, not really. When you read enough of her blabbing you realize that she condones stuffing your mouth with garbage. She explains what normal eating is by quoting her unhealthy-eating-guru in saying that it is:
“….giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.” - NO, you eat because you’re hungry, you eat to sustain life, not because it feels good or you have nothing else to do!
“….mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.” – NO, that’s not listening to your body when it tells you it has had enough!
“…. overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable.” - NO, that is binge eating!
“…. trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.” – NO, your body will not make up for your mistakes in eating, it will PAY for it dearly!
She claims that one should be able to eat whatever the heck they want and however much they want and these habits will lead to a healthy, well rounded (the pun intended) individual who will learn to love his or her body. Bullshit! You will expand in all possible directions and develop poor nutrition aliments and diseases.
This attitude, however absurd, intrigued me a bit, because she did have a good pool of readers and followers (well, have a look for yourself**). Mostly people who congratulated her for her “guts” in being a nutritionist regardless of her size and culinary habits. Clearly, they must be just as fat and as mentally unstable as her, or more. Another thing that struck me while browsing through her page was the fact that she is quite aggressive in her writing, swearing right, left and centre, which makes me believe that she is not in the end as happy with all this fat covering her as she would like to have us believe. After a while of reading about her nutrition services (100$ a session for 12 sessions!) I was very close to dismissing the whole thing as a hoax or as somebody just trying to make her living by teaching what they know to do best – how to eat garbage and be fine with it. But then I clicked on couple of links on her site and I discovered that she is only a tip of an iceberg and the rest of it is “hiding” underneath!
There is a whole fat-o-revolution going on behind our backs! Or at least behind my back. There are others who are doing the same thing! They are fat and they are trying to convince the whole world that you should not strive to be thin and fit because…. well… because it’s too hard and it’s easier to get and stay fat and that’s ok! According to this crowd there are no repercussions of being fat, you just have to learn to love the fat and you’ll be ok. It’s unbelievable, but you go ahead and have a look too:
Voilà Mme Kate Harding who claims that the airlines should redesign their planes if a fat person can’t fit in one seat!
And Mme Marianne Kirby who wrote, together with Kate Harding, Lessons from the fat-o-sphere, can be seen here, here and here (nothing of any substance, mind you).
I did a search at amazon and apparently there are “writers” with actual books defending obesity: Linda Bacon, Marilyn Wann, Crystal Renn and the list goes on. Remind me to write one too!
Not to mention TV shows!
It blows my mind that in the age of obesity epidemic where you can’t leave the house and go grocery shopping and not see at least one obese person, there are people protecting and defending their fat state by debating whether or not it’s ok to be fat!
On one side you have a fat person who claims she is happy and healthy the way she is accompanied by a plus size model who claims she has suffered from anorexia to be a model but came out of it and now is modelling for plus size catalogues*** On the other side you have a person who used to be morbidly obese but through proper nutrition and exercise came out of it and a person who is of normal size thanks to proper nutrition and exercise but who genetically speaking should be just as obese as the rest of her family (proving this way that the genetics argument is bull).
Let me tell you, if you haven’t figured it out yet, that there is not a single good argument on the fat front!
There is no happy medium either in this debate. There are only extremes, it’s either being obese or anorectic! The fat will defend their state by showing you examples of unnaturally thin models saying that that’s unhealthy so they would rather be fat and hell yes, it is unhealthy to starve yourself, but so is being morbidly obese. Nobody will ever convince me that you can be healthy being obese!
* I’m openly taking my inspiration for this title from the fat front
** I was debating for a while whether or not to link to her in my post… By no means do I want to create publicity for her. But then I thought about it some more and I researched some more and came to the conclusion that people should be warned against the absurdity of her writings but they should also be able to create their own opinion based on primary sources. And since I know I’m not the only one condemning her beliefs in “fat is beautiful let’s embrace it and learn to live it” I don’t have a problem with linking to her.
*** You can’t just simply decide you are no longer anorexic!
Body Conscious Blogger, May 20th 2010
Pine mouth
I think I have unusually bad luck with trying out new things and it’s sad, because it’s supposed to show how open-minded I am, but all it does is make me seem incompetent 
 What happened? Well, I turned my family vegetarian, just like that, on the whim! One day we were eating meat and then the next I decided to ditch it. I texted my geek to see what kind of response I would get and strangely enough he was all for it. Probably because the figuring out would have been up to me, but I was good with that, because he does the dishes and that’s a good deal. Anyway, going vegetarian is not exactly easy. One has to figure out where all the nutrients are going to come from, especially protein, since the main source of it is gone. So I did figure it out and found new and exciting sources of protein and more. It’s all good, I’m enjoying the new adventure, except for this funky bitter, metallic taste in my mouth (and the mouth of my geek). The funny thing is that it didn’t come from something unusual…. Long story short, I’ve always wanted to make home made pesto and so I did couple of days ago. I got my basil and pine nuts, the main ingredients for pesto (I decided to skip the cheeses). I mixed in some beans and veggies for a protein packed meal. It was delicious and if it wasn’t for the bitter taste that it left in my mouth I would be making it again and again and again…. We didn’t notice it right away, though. The geek was the first one to notice some unpleasant taste in his mouth and the more he spoke to me about it the more I realized that I was afflicted too. I didn’t think much of it, simply discounted it as an after taste of something we ate, but it just wouldn’t go away! Brushing teeth didn’t really do much and trying to wash it down with any food or drink only made things worse! Actually, we came to the conclusion that putting something (food) in our mouths only brought up the awful metallic taste! At that point I was googling like mad! At first all I could find were things that pointed to mercury or lead poisoning. I knew that couldn’t have been it, because both of them have other symptoms that we didn’t display. There was also an article on cancer, highly unlikely that we’d develop one at the same time. So I decided it had to do with food, yes, I again was poisoning my family It happened before, at the start of my relationship with the geek when I was feeding him a extra super duper healthy diet only to end up with a spoiled jar of natural peanut butter in my fridge.
I have been adding new foods to our diet lately so I inevitably googled them with relation to our symptoms. Nothing came up. So I tried searching for random food related bitter/metallic taste in mouth articles and soon enough I came across an array of articles explaining how an unknown kind of pine nut imported from China is reported to give people a bitter metallic taste that lasts between 2 weeks to 6 months! That was it! My home made pesto was making us not want to eat anything! What’s the point of eating if all that you put in your mouth tastes like garbage and makes you want to puke? Today is day 3…. And I am utterly sorry for unknowingly causing this. It might sound weird, but once I figured it out, I breathed a sigh of relief, as if though it wasn’t so bad. Â Needless to say that day was day 2, so far the worst of it.
Here are some resources for those of you who think I’m joking: 1, 2, 3, 4 and on and on.
PS. This is totally unrelated to my “pine mouth” but driving on the highway this morning I had this urge to acknowledge that: “I’m finally learning how to use the highway and it’s all thanks to my lovely geek, who’s been very patient with me teaching me to drive, parallel park and now to navigate on the highway.” Just so you have the big picture I need to point out that I’m learning all this as an adult. I’ve never got my driver’s license as a 16 year-old, so I haven’t seen the road from behind the steering wheel until I turned… well recently. Driving an automatic isn’t exactly difficult, but using the highway is, especially if you didn’t grow up in a car, being driven to places and you grew up in another part of the world. I now truly believe that real navigation doesn’t start until you know how to use the highway, so I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the man who’s stuck by me, teaching me all the ins and outs even though I can be a difficult student. Thanks hun!
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Body Conscious Blogger, March 15th 2010
Going vegetarian, going once, going twice, sold!
I remember as a young child at my parents’ house a meal had to consist of meat, potatoes, gravy and some veggies (usually cabbage) in the following proportions: 3:2:1:1, where meat was allotted the biggest space on the plate, then came potatoes and at the end some veggies. Regardless of the size of each component the truth is that a “proper” meal had to consist of meat. If it didn’t have meat it wasn’t a real meal. The opposite was also true, I still hear my mother say “Don’t just eat the meat, eat the potatoes (or other starch) – otherwise you’re going to be hungry again in an hour”. So we begrudgingly ate all of it. Now, I don’t remember being told to eat the vegetables, probably because there was not much there to begin with. They were too expensive to have at each meal. All I remember was coleslaw with some sort of heavy cream dressing, cucumbers would make their way onto the plate once in a while and much later, when I was in my late teens, I remember carrots, green beans and tomatoes as a regular thing at the table brought on by my mom acquiring a piece of land just 10 minutes from the house to grow her own veggies and fruit. I’d only experience the veggie abundance for a little while, since I moved out shortly after her purchase.
The moral of the story is that as a kid I’ve been told (implicitly and explicitly) that you have to have meat as part of a “healthy” nourishing meal. My breakfast had deli in the sandwiches, my lunch (which in Europe is a main meal of the day) had to have meat and my supper was again my trusty sandwich with deli. That was it, I was an omnivore going on to be a carnivore… because they instilled in me this idea that if you don’t eat meat at every meal, you somehow don’t give your body the necessary building blocks, that somehow your meal isn’t complete if you don’t include meat in it!!
Mind you, I was never overweight as a child, if anything, I was underweight. I’d be told constantly to eat more, because my frame was too bony. All those potatoes and meat combos were not doing it for me. Or was it my metabolism that was through the roof, not letting me put on too much weight, burning all those calories? Or maybe it was the fact that snacking only happened once a month, when parents got paid? Yes, we did not snack on chips, chocolate, sodas etc etc everyday, but about once a month….
Then I moved out and didn’t think twice about changing anything. What’s more, by moving to North America I found myself in the land of plenty and of convenience! I learned that I don’t need to spend hours and hours preparing the food, I can buy it already prepared and simply put it in the oven, wait 30-45 minutes and then serve it! How convenient indeed! Snacks were abundant as well. I didn’t all of a sudden become a rich person, far from it, but “food” was much cheaper on this side of the North Atlantic Ocean! My blind infatuation with this overabundance lasted about 4-5 years, that’s how long it took me to realize I was slowly killing myself with “this convenience”! All my adult life I was about 50-53kg, now I was weighting a whooping 70kg! For a while I was convincing myself that it was due to the fact that I “just” gave birth to my child. But the weight would never come off, that is until I saw my nutrition habits for what they really were – JUNK.
To make a long story short, fortunately I have informed myself on the deadly habits I’ve been subjecting my body to and understood what had to be done to reverse those 5 years of junk in the trunk. I’ve ditched all processed foods and turned to natural healthy ones. I shed my extra weight and was finally back to my original jeans. Since then another 5 years passed, my weight fluctuated a bit and today I find myself at a point where I’m overflowing with information on food, food industry and treatment of our food and I’m no longer happy with the choices I’m making mostly because I no longer know what’s in the food I’m consuming and feeding to my family! I’ve watched countless documentaries on the food industry and can no longer subject myself to the garbage they produce. So after reading on raw foodism, vegetarianism and veganism I finally decided it is time to abandon meat and most meat products and turn even more to natural foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and seeds. I’ve contemplated the idea for a while, by reading various blogs on the matter and I must admit it was slow coming. Simply put it was difficult for me to envision my life without meat. Upon learning about my conversion my geek even pointed out that he has suggested ditching the meat a while back to which I “freaked out” saying that there won’t be anything else to eat for us. I don’t recall this outburst. Needless to say today is my 3rd day without ANY meat and these are some of the meals I’ve been consuming:
Zucchini spaghetti with home made tomato sauce
Spinach salad with nutritional yeast
Creamy pepper soup
Curry Lentil crackers with Sweet pepper hemp pesto
In the end, after reading on my options I decided that this is going to be a semi-rawlacto-vegeterian diet, which means that many of my meals are going to be raw (as in not cooked) and I will forego all meat and eggs, but will from time to time allow dairy products (I just can’t see myself not eating yogurt for now).
Body Conscious Blogger, March 8th 2010
