trunk or treat:
Sock Hop at school:
Trick or Treating:
Monday, October 31, 2011
the harder you try to lose weight...
This is a fascinating concept that HAES introduced me too. I had already gathered on my own that dieting doesn't work and it will be depressing when Kristie Alley gains the weight back, or Oprah does, Or your friend, or yourself. It will take different amounts of time for the weight to come back for different people. But it almost always comes back. Except for the few who have adopted full on disordered eating - and then they are thin, but their regimen, diet, exercise, calories is ALL they can talk/think about. And they dont' seem to enjoy social situations especially if food is involved because they have become afraid of food. Visit on online forum for weight loss and bathe in the sadness of eating disorders and false pride. but I digress again...
**Study shows why its hard to keep the weight off.
ARE YOU A RESTRAINED EATER?
hopefully not. I am. (a recovering one.)
You would think being a restrained eater is a good thing. Someone who controls their cravings and appetite and has adopted moderation in all things.
But in the context of intuitive eating unrestrained eaters have a healthy relationship with food.
An unrestrained eater, listens to their body's cues and are sensitive to hunger and satiety need. They eat when hungry and stop when full. They naturally guide themselves toward healthy foods without caring about calories. They listen to their bodies and work with it instead of against it.
Years of self hate and attempts to lose weight can break these internal signals.
Have you spent time learning and counting the calories of all types of food - or their POINTS value?
Do you spend weekends telling yourself on Monday. ON MONDAY you will start eating "healthy" and you mean it this time!!!
Have you signed up for weight watchers, Paleo, clean eating, south beach, Jenny Craig, Atkins, cabbage soup diet, body for life, Dr. Phil, HCG (that one is a special version of scary) etc. Giving your cues for food choices and fullness over to someone's opinion or system?
When you ignore your own body's cues, it starts to damage your relationship with food.
Some symptoms of restrained eaters:
*I generally count calories before deciding if something is OK to eat.
*I am often frustrated with my body size and wish that I could control it better.
*I am often on a diet or seriously considering one.
*I usually feel like a failure when I eat more than I should.
*I often feel physically weak and or hungry because I am trying to control my weight.
*I often turn to food when stressed out or sad.
*I am afraid to be around some foods because I don't want to be tempted.
*I feel safest if I have a plan or diet to guide my eating.
*I worry more about how fattening a food might be than how nutritious it is.
*I equate guilt with eating.
*Its hard to resist something good if it is around me even if I am not hungry.
Food is food. Don't let it make you feel guilty. Your body is not wrong don't let it make you feel bad. Listen to it.
"What is the danger in restrained eating habits? If you are a restrained eater, you try to control your body weight and don't trust your body to do it for you. You're likely to be gaining weight or at the very least frustrated in your efforts to lose.
Why? Because attempts to control your food intake through willpower and control require that you drown out the internal signals leaving you much more vulnerable to external signals. This approach is a problem because unless you lock yourself in a closet, there's no way to control the constant exposure to food we face in our world."
All from Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon.
Want to be an unrestrained eater?
Read up on intuitive eating. Of course this is a good place to start.
Start listening to your body not magazines or the Today show or people at work about how to eat.
Eat delicious, nutritious foods. (Whole foods are great place to start)
Pay attention when you eat, Enjoy the food. Taste the food.
Satisfy your hunger.
Stop when you are full.
______________________________________________________________________________
here is a wonderful synopsis from Golda Poretsky:
1) Get Clarity – Take a moment to write down all of the diet rules that still haunt you. They may be conflicting, nonsensical, or sometimes sort of sensible. Whatever they are, get them all out on paper. Then decide if any are worth keeping. Only keep the ones that really honor your body and itschangeability – such as getting adequate water, avoiding allergenic foods, stuff like that. Throw out any rules that limit the types of foods you can eat (unless you have allergies or other health concerns) and definitely toss the calorie and carb counting.
2) Listen To Yourself – We all have a voice within us that tells us what foods nourish us and advises us as to our hunger and fullness. Note, we ALL have this voice. Sometimes this voice has been stifled by pushy parents or diet rules or our emotional torment, but trust me, it is there. Take steps to actively listen for this voice. Honor it no matter how quietly it speaks. If you think you heard it and turned out to be wrong, listen for it again tomorrow. Trust me that it is safe to trust yourself.
3) Pay Attention – Notice which foods feel best to you. Do you like a muffin and coffee in the morning or an apple and almond butter and tea? Does it depend on how much sleep you got, how much stress you’re under? What time of year it is? Are comfort foods comforting sometimes and sometimes not so much? Notice the effects on your energy levels. Notice comfort and discomfort.
Continually repeat the above to get better and better at tuning in.
In truth, the only rule is that there are no rules. You make the rules. It’s okay to be heady with that power as long as you let your body lead the way.
PS. Have you signed the HAES pledge yet? PLEASE, please, please, please do.
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Pumpkin Farm Field trip
Its funny to see the progression of my little ones as we've been going here over the years.
Its easy to tell Maiya is well loved by the kids in her class. Ever since she was little she is shy but still manages to make many friends. I remember when I was taking care of my mom during chemo/radiation watching her on the daycare webcam - she wasn't talking yet but she still managed to take charge of the situation.
During one reading time she got up and started taking books off the bookshelf - in record time the teacher lost control over all the kids and every single book was off the shelf.
she's a quiet leader.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
mascara
Linda Bacon discussed why the weight loss industry is so profitable and persuasive. If you are convinced that your body shape is wrong you'll do most anything to "fix" it. That's how something is sold daily that has a 95% failure rate. Its how people are signing up for a surgery with an outstandingly stupid crazy death rate and hasn't been proven to improve health even when it doesn't manage to kill you.
Health doesn't sell like fat hate does. Health at every size is hard to catch on because there is not really anyone to profit but you and your own instinct.
Then she discussed mascara. To sell you mascara the beauty product industry needs to sell you the idea that your natural lashes aren't good enough.
That thought and my recent addiction to Mad Men on netflix got me to thinking. How often are we sold the idea that we aren't good enough just. the. way. we. are. Just to buy something someone is peddling to us.
One look at women's magazines and you'd think the American woman's mission in life is flat tummy and pleasing him in bed. And if you could lose that much weight in one month why do you keep selling these magazines with the same goal? I think Woman's day has done nothing but regurgitate the latest diet fad for the last 30 years.
It also made me think about natural childbirth. Birth in this country has become another HUGE industry. Women have become so afraid of the birth process that just mention homebirth and you get the 'wow that's crazy or you are so brave" comments. Our bodies were made to birth. We don't need IV's, pitocin, surgery except in true emergencies, But its hard to tell what a true emergency is at a hospital because they've convinced us that its so freaking dangerous we might as well just get those things from the start. I don't think I did any thing special by birthing without drugs. When I beat the natural childbirth drum its not to say Look at what I did! I did it better than you. I am saying I wish women knew how amazing this process is when unmessed with! I think you can do it!!! I bet you could do it BETTER than I did!
I've already said I think this is a full on attack from the Adversary. And I think he's winning. Four out of five women are dissatisfied with the way they look.
Dissatisfied women have the potential to raise daughters with body image issues. There is an excellent post here about changing the tide for the next generation from Allison Dickson:
I sat her down last night and I told her that the path I took at her age, the one where I noticed for the first time (with help from others) that I was "fat," was blocked. That she would not go the way I did. She wouldn't be the one searching desperately for a solution, no matter how destructive, to a problem that doesn't exist. A non-existent problem that only becomes a problem when we try to solve it. I told her that I would not allow her to be driven by shame and loathing, from herself or others.
I know that I have done this to her, and it is perhaps my greatest failure as a parent. But I didn't realize then the damage I was doing. That hating myself in front of her was teaching her to hate herself.
It's not too late to fix it, though. Of this, I am sure. My intelligent, generous, loving, artistic, funny, compassionate, animal-loving (and, yes, beautiful) daughter will know how very precious she is. I will teach her the habits I should have had at her age. That to live, love, sing, dance, run, swim, laugh, cry, and eat is all part of being a human, and that her long legs, her wide hips, the pooch of her belly -- however they may grow or change shape as she ages or bears children someday -- are a lovely vehicle in which to do all of those things, and she should cherish it and nurture it and love it. Not starve it or cut it or deny it or hate it.
When we start looking outside ourselves for reasons to like ourselves, our worth all of sudden exists in the external.
I do it, even when I wrote about liking yourself right now just the way you are, I talked about makeup and hair.
This is dangerous.
We can start to care more about what we weigh, what we wear, where we live, what we drive, how our house is decorated, how exercising will make us look not how it will make us feel. And the thing is none of that will make us happy.
Since my mascara a-ha moment I've looked at my daily practices and the root cause of them. I still love makeup and fixing my hair. But I also don't mind leaving the house without those. I try to remember the Young Woman's theme more than commercial rhetoric.
We are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love him.
that's what its all about.
I don't need mascara.
I don't need designer clothes.
What I wear places is not as important as what I DO when I get there.
My home is a home with or without decorations or hardwood floors.
Driving a minivan isn't embarrassing. Its a car that gets me and my family from A to B, A porsche would do the same thing.
A refurbed laptop does what I need as well as the latest Ipad.
Thrift store clothes on my kids are just as good as clothes from the mall.
etc. etc. etc. (King and I anyone?)
** Its funny to me that Allergan the maker of LabBand also is the company behind Botox and Latisse the eyelash growing goo - that may or may not give you racoon eyes for life.
Monday, October 24, 2011
the big texan.
Last stop in Amarillo - the Big Texan
Free gigantic steak if you can eat it all, and a baked potato, and a shrimp coctail and salad and roll.
$72 bucks if you can't finish it
oh and you have to sit at a big table in front of everyone and be on webcam.
we didn't try - though I teased Kyle incessantly to...
That's all folks - we made this trip to Amarillo instead of doing the State fair like we did last year.
not to knock the State fair because it was its own special breed of awesomeness, but we did this little road trip for only a little more dough and had a blast!!
(and I can't help but wonder if my mom of oz tag has been painted over yet...)
My tips for road tripping with a large family:
1. I know lots of people like the lots of "stuff" method but I start to lose my mind with lots of stuff and electronics and snacks. I like a book on CD that will entertain most. Three snacks that will occupy most and juice boxes - the box from those becomes the trashcan.
2. Van is somewhat reorganized at every stop.
3. You HAVE to have one of these little potty's Your kids might need it way past its age appropriateness.
4. Sometimes mom has to sit in the back with the kids. The lack of adult conversation will be offset with the lack of fighting.
5. The alphabet game never gets old and my husband is uber competitive. And talking can be better than the radio and sometimes we do the NO TALKING, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW or we are leaving you behind at the next stop. Don't double dog dare us to.
6. Stopping to get bread and a little jar of mayo and lunch meat (get a lone knife at the salad bar) is way cheaper for a family of seven though we didn't do that this trip. And we reserve doing some more expensive things on trips like vending machines that I usually say NO WAY to, can be there own little adventure.
7. an actual paper map with a marker to check off distance traveled slows the "are we there yets?"
8. Find out a little bit of the history of where you are going because your kids will be a little disappointed that when were are actually "there" Amarillo just looks like Plano. America's kind of turned into one vast wasteland of all the same billboards and restaurants off the interstate.
9. A hotel with an indoor pool and a hot breakfast bar is worth it. Need a good deal on travel go here: Abundant Travel.
10. Oh yeah - your jacket is your pillow and your blanket.
the end.
Weight loss surgery on children, when the world totally lost its ever loving mind.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
holy mother of all that is unholy and evil and stupid.
ELEVEN.
Because you should be interfering with your body's gastric system before you are even solidly into puberty and are most certainly not done growing. And to tick me off more they included headless fatty pictures of children and fat child eating junk food pictures to the article.
I hate headless fatty pictures. If you want pictures of fat people come take a picture of me and my husband flying kites with our kids or hiking or in our Sunday best.
You want a fat person eating fast food, pan out on that zoom lens you got going on and see that there are probably thin people next to them eating THE EXACT SAME STUFF. Funny thing is last time I took my kids to the playland at McDonalds there were plenty of thin people there.
Anyway I digress...
There was also the news story of a sweet woman who died after lap band surgery.
Rojeski, a Ladera Ranch resident who loved dogs and worked as a buyer for an aerospace firm, had told friends and family that she was looking forward to the Lap-Band surgery. One friend described Rojeski as being thrilled ahead of what she hoped would be a life-changing procedure.
"I had just talked to Paula the night before. She was really excited, really happy. She told me, 'I'm going to be skinny!'"
so. so. sad.
There is also news that a new group has formed to fight for obesity rights, specifically for obesity to be considered a disease on its own accord.
One might on first thought think this is a fat acceptance group fighting for equal rights, rights for people to work, be promoted etc. despite their size.
not so.
CHOICE – Choosing Health Over Obesity and Inspiring Change Through Empowerment.is, drum roll please...
"Choice" is actually Allergan and the public face to their BIG, BIG business lobbying of government to get obesity considered a disease so they can FORCE insurance agencies and medicare/medicaid to cover obesity surgeries.
SURGERIES That are KILLING PEOPLE!!
following from here:
In the more than forty years that bariatric surgeries have been performed, there have been no randomized, controlled clinical trials that have shown any long-term improvements to actual health or that lives are saved or extended by these surgeries
The end result of bariatric surgery is surgically induced malnutrition:
Gastric bypass essentially results in surgically enforced, very low-calorie, low-carbohydrate dietary intake, thus requiring attention to adequate (>0.5 g/kg) daily protein intake. Micronutrients, including calcium, vitamin B12, folate, multivitamins, thiamine, and iron (for menstruating female subjects), must be supplemented after gastric bypass. A bariatric dietitian who is familiar with the progressive addition of food items with more complex compositions and consistencies can help with meal planning and nutritional “troubleshooting” as recovery proceeds. Finally, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications should be avoided, to reduce the risk of intestinal ulceration and bleeding.
Dr. Smith then discusses the patients in her practice who have had bariatric surgery. A few have done okay, but most haven’t even though they had their surgeries done by the same surgeon and at the same medical center.
One lady passes kidney stones every couple of weeks. Another regurgitates anything solid that she tries to eat and yet has only lost 20 pounds in six months. She says she makes up the calories in liquid. Another can not eat more than one slice of toast at a time without getting sick. Some have chronic diarrhea. Many have nutritional deficiencies. A couple have gained their weight back after 10 or 20 years. And yet, not one of them says they regret having the surgery, such is the praise they get from others for losing weight. If asked, every single one of them would call themselves healthier, but from my perspective their health is worse. They all require more monitoring and more interventions than they did before having the surgery.
It's the height of arrogance, however, to push this medically induced malnourished state on a still developing and growing child. We don't know what damage we may do in the long-run to their bodies or their minds with these procedures.
One bariatric patient shared with other patients her experiences:
...If you tell the average person that doesn't really know what weight loss surgery is, they are totally stunned. They just know that your stomach is smaller and that you lose weight. They don't know that the body is getting butchered up. And for the people who do know what the surgery entails, they are so caught up in the disgrace of being obese that they think it's okay to butcher the body to be almighty thin.
When I became very sick, almost 6 years ago, trying to find a doctor to help me, I had friends and relatives tell me “but you would be dead if you hadn't gotten the surgery!” --- and here I was, dying when they were telling me this, because of the surgery! This is how ingrained it is in society, how dangerous it is to be obese.
increases her risk of dying 45-fold.
My lasting opinion of all of this is: I may write about this just to change women's perspectives but really altering society's ideals of beauty is a live saving endeavor.
ALL people, especially fat people and more especially fat children NEED to know that they belong in this world.
Food is not evil. It nourishes you.
Your body is not wrong it houses you.
Moving feels good and is good for you, you should find a place where you can do it without ridicule.
Don't let anyone cut on your body just to make it look different.
If you survive the surgery, you may live with unintended consequences for the
REST. OF. YOUR. LIFE.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Palo Duro Canyon
Amarillo By Mornin'
Up from San Antone
Everything that I got
Is just what I've got on.
When that sun is high in that Texas sky,
I'll be buckin' at the county fair.
Amarillo By Mornin'
Amarillo I'll be there.
Up from San Antone
Everything that I got
Is just what I've got on.
When that sun is high in that Texas sky,
I'll be buckin' at the county fair.
Amarillo By Mornin'
Amarillo I'll be there.
If you go to Amarillo when you get done with your graffiti at Cadillac Ranch, the next place to see is
• Known as “Texas’ Grand Canyon.”
• Man has inhabited Palo Duro Canyon for approximately 12,000 years.
• Palo Duro Canyon is located on the southern high plains, an area called El Llano Estacado or "staked plains."
• The rim of the canyon is considered part of the short grass prairie while the elevated moisture of the canyon floor supports a
greater diversity of plants including some medium and tall grass species along with shrubs and trees.
• Palo Duro Canyon contains many species of wildlife including the rare Texas Horned Lizard, and Palo Duro Mouse.
• Other species include wild turkey, white tail and mule deer, Barbary sheep, coyotes, cottontail rabbits, roadrunners, and
western diamondback rattlesnakes.
• The canyon is approximately 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep.
• The slopes of the canyon reveal the colorful natural history of the area.
• Dating back 250 million years, the oldest layers of rock, Cloud Chief Gypsum, can only be seen in a few areas in the canyon
Monday, October 17, 2011
You have my permission to forgive yourself.
When I was 12 you said "wow you'd make two of her"
When I was 30 I overheard you say "its too bad she let herself go."
I've worked hard to forgive 'you'. But I've had to work harder to forgive myself.
I'm not blaming myself anymore. It stops now.
I have been writing about size acceptance and Health at Every size but I think I need to slow down and explain some more of "my truth"
I call it my truth because that is what it is. I will point to some studies and cite some resources but the theme is that this is my truth. I've lived in this body for almost 34 years and for many of those years its a been a body easily judged.
When I blog about health at every size - I don't blog to necessarily convince anyone of anything - though that would be nice. I blog for the me 15 years ago who needed this. I can't go back in time and talk to that me but maybe someone else can read this and benefit.
Fat is not a sin or weakness.
Fat is not a necessarily a sign that you are unhealthy.
Fat will not kill you.
Fat will not cost society bazillions in healthcare costs.
Its NOT a simple equation of Calories in/Calories out
Almost any statement about fat following 'well everybody knows..." is most of the time opinion and rarely an actual fact
Healthy choices are paramount but what you look like is determined by many factors: genetics, hormones, environment, thyroid issues, PCOS, etc...
Diets don't work. The measure of a successful diet is five years of maintained weight loss. The success rate for that is less than 5% - a statistical failure. What diets do succeed at is money making - a 60 BILLION dollar soul crushing industry.
from here:
If we wanted long term weight loss using this theory (calories in/calories out) then we’d have to eventually turn to starvation
If we wanted to use calories in/calories out effectively, knowing what we now know about entropy and how decrease in caloric intake causes decreased basal metabolic rate, we would just have to keep decreasing our calories and increasing our exercise until eventually we would be following disordered eating patterns. It would be the only way to stay under our ever plummeting BMR and eat less than we burn. Perhaps this is why 95% of intentional weight loss efforts fail. The body releases weight at first but then the damn science catches up to us and no matter how hard the people who’ve attended a physics amateur hour try to yell to the contrary, they will never be able to out-science the actual laws of thermodynamics and the complicated human body...
I'll give you a moment to take that all in.
You may disagree. That is ok.
I've had plenty of thin roommates - in fact all the non-related females I have lived with were size 0-8 - mostly in the size 2 area. One was a size 00 - I didn't even know that size existed till her. I wasn't overly impressed with their willpower or exercise habits - we had similar eating and exercise habits. Yet I felt like a failure because my dress size exceeded what GAP would carry.
following info from here:
Starting in 1959 Jules Hirsch was curious about weight loss - he basically starved 8 fat people with a 600 calorie diet until they had lost significant amounts of weight. Thinking their bodies were so drastically altered and now in a thin state they could maintain it. Not so -they regained and he was horrified.. And his testing went on and on to the point that participants in his studies experienced starvation induced neurosis.While in this state of reduced caloric intake participants metabolism dropped up to 24%. The requirement to maintain weight loss long term was to be metabolically in a constant state of starvation.
Then another researcher Ethan Sims wondered if naturally thin people deliberately got fat what would happen. He had prisoners volunteer for the experiment - trying to gain as much weight as possible. It took tremendous effort. Four to six months of consuming up to 10,000 calories a day (yes you read that right). During this phase their metabolism increased up to 50%. And when the study ended they effortlessly returned to normal weight and stayed there.
The message is clear. Your body has a set point weight it wants you to be at. Disease may alter that level but doctors should treat disease not size. "Lose weight" is not a prescription.
There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body's metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.
The message of these studies never really got out to the nation's dieters. What industry would benefit from: "its good for your body to be healthy, but really in the end you'll look like your parents."
Some days I get so sick of diet and weight loss surgery ads. I think I should write a HAES post for every single one I hear. But I'd probably not have fingers left.
More interesting studies have been done on twins:
Stunkard ended up with 540 adults whose average age was 40. They had been adopted when they were very young - 55 percent had been adopted in the first month of life and 90 percent were adopted in the first year of life. His conclusions, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1986, were unequivocal. The adoptees were as fat as their biological parents, and how fat they were had no relation to how fat their adoptive parents were.
The scientists summarized it in their paper: "The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect."
In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.
A few years later, in 1990, Stunkard published another study in The New England Journal of Medicine, using another classic method of geneticists: investigating twins. This time, he used the Swedish Twin Registry, studying its 93 pairs of identical twins who were reared apart, 154 pairs of identical twins who were reared together, 218 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared apart, and 208 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared together.
The identical twins had nearly identical body mass indexes, whether they had been reared apart or together. There was more variation in the body mass indexes of the fraternal twins, who, like any siblings, share some, but not all, genes.
The researchers concluded that 70 percent of the variation in peoples' weights might be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.
The message is so at odds with the popular conception of weight loss - the mantra that all a person has to do is eat less and exercise more - that Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at the Rockefeller University, tried to come up with an analogy that would convey what science has found about the powerful biological controls over body weight.
He published it in the journal Science in 2000 and still cites it:
"Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one's breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe," Friedman wrote. "The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty.
This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight."
What it comes down to is this.
Healthy choices will always be good for you.
Intuitive eating may make you weigh less, it may not.
But its better than hating yourself any day.
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