Read All About It

Sorry to have been absent lately. I've been going back and forth as to whether I wanted to keep this blog going or not.

I've finally decided, at least for now, the answer is "not." I've been floundering as to what this blog should actually be about. While still a proponent of moderate-to-low-carb living, I'm actually doing Weight Watchers (gasp! horror!)because it allows/forces me to be accountable each week for what I eat and gives me a lot of freedom to just live.

So, bye for now. In the meantime, I invite you to join me at my books blog, As the Bookworm Turns, where I'm still working out a style but expect to find my own sarcastic voice before long.

Cleaning Out the Bookmarks

It's time for my periodic purge of the stuff cluttering up my inbox and bookmarks--you know, kind of All the News That Wasn't Quite Fit to Print. In no particular order...

• It's Harry Potter month! I love the HP books, even if JK Rowling doesn't need any more money. Today's the release of the fifth movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"--not my favorite of the books, but I'm still anxious to see it. And on the 21st comes the release of the seventh and final book. How much do I love Harry? Well, my big souvenir when I went to London a couple of years ago was a boxed set of the original Brit version of the first four books, which weighed a ton and I had to schlep them all the way from Picadilly to my little Kensington hotel, then through Heathrow and JFK and all the way back to New Orleans. Anyhow, if you're a fan of the books, you know the kids are--what a surprise--always eating sweets of such notoriety as Bertie Bott's Every-Flavored jellybeans and Cockroach Clusters. So in honor of Harry, here's a set of recipes for your Potter party. Not a low-carb option among them. Oh well.

• Speaking of Harry Potter, there was an an interesting article recently out of Worcester about how overweight children are portrayed in literature. Think about it. If you read the Potter books, you know the horrendous cousin Dudley Dursley, who's such a little porker that one of the first acts of magic in book 1 was to fit him with a pig's tail. Is it any wonder kids grow up to objectify and ridicule fat people? (And, no, let's not start that discussion again!)

• Now here's some shaky science. A group of Edinburgh researchers have concluded that--gasp--sugar is not only not bad for you, it's downright helpful in losing weight. (Excuse me while I finish choking.) Yes, sugar was deemed to help dieters feel more satisfied on their diets and stay on them longer. Oh, and that's only when combined with 60 minutes of brisk exercise per day. Oh, never mind. That one's just too stupid to take on.

• A group of pointy-headed scientists at Yale have spent the better part of a week discussing whether or not people really do have food addictions. It's actually pretty interesting in terms of how people with severe food dysfunction describe their eating in the same terms used by drug or alcohol addicts. Yet it also differs from "traditional" addictions in that it does not accelerate in the same way. Now, I know that when I've been eating low carb for a while and I eat some sugary thing, it sets off an out-of-control craving and it takes a lot of self-control to resist diving headfirst into a vat of Ho-Hos. Would that make me a Ho-Ho 'Ho? But I digress.

• Last, but not least, this interesting piece about high-carb (also read: low-fat) diets increasing the risk of people developing cardiac disease--particularly overweight people...who are the most likely to be on high-carb, low-fat diets. Particularly true of carbs coming from processed foods. I swear, I think all these processed foods are killing us but who has freakin' time to cook? I leave the house at around 7:30 a.m. and get home about 6 p.m. Yeah, I know, plan ahead. Cook on weekends for the whole week. Guess the real truth is, I don't enjoy cooking. I'd rather read Harry Potter books and eat cockroach clusters.

Skinny Bitch

No, I'm not going on a rant about one of my coworkers, or even Paris Hilton.

Skinny Bitch is actually a "diet" book--and I use the term loosely--by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman. Once I found it was the diet rage among such celebrity "role models" as Posh Spice, I knew it had to be ludicrousentertaining. Its subtitle: "A no-nonsense tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous." The authors are "former models," which means they wouldn't know a weight problem if it bit them on their skinny butts.

This isn't a new book, I discovered--Jimmy Moore did a rant, and rightly so, about it last year. But I missed it somehow. And just in case you did too, here are some excerpts from Skinny Bitch. Draw what conclusions you will, but WARNING: It's pro-vegan and they call anyone who does Atkins a "total moron." Hey, don't Vegans kill their babies?

• "Brace yourselves, girls. Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body.… Diet soda is even worse. Aspartame…turns into formaldehyde. Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don't f***ing drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda."

•• Never before has the United States seen such a ridiculous diet trend as the "low-carb" phenomenon. Every restaurant, grocery story, and fast-food chain caters to this utter nonsense...Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to capitalize on the trend, whether it is healthy or not. Not."

•• "Another worker at another plant said, 'I personally have seen rotten meat--you can tell by the odor. This rotten meat is mixed with the fresh meat and sold for baby food. We are asked to mix it with the fresh food, and that is the way it is sold. You can see the worms inside the meat."

•• "Mother Nature is no fool. All species, including ours, have just what we need to get by. She did not intend for grownups to suck their mothers' t**ts. We don't need our mothers' milk as adults, just like grown cows don't need their mothers' milk anymore. We are the only species on the planet that drinks the milk of another species. We could be putting gorilla milk on our cereal or having zebra milk and cookies."

•• "Fruits and vegetables are the answer. And unless you are an idiot who wants cancer, obesity and enlarged organs, organic is the way to go. You are what you eat."

•• "If we had a penny for every time some meathead asked us, "So where do you get your protein?" we'd be richer than Oprah. Have you ever, ever, ever in your entire life heard of anyone suffering from a protein deficiency? Did you ever see an elephant, moose or giraffe jonesing for a protein fix? It's a complete myth that we need a massive amount of protein."

And I must know: How do they KNOW the moose down the block isn't jonesing for a protein fix? Or a bite of cheese?

The Da Vinci Code (Sort of)

It's always fun to delve into the food customs of other times, so the book DaVinci's Kitchen: A Secret History of Italian Cuisine, while not actually focusing on DaVinci per se, does have some fascinating food history from 15th- and 16th-century Italy. For example, did you know that the higher your status when invited to dinner, the more likely you were to be seated with your back to the fireplace? Gotta keep that royal "hiney"ess warm, you know. Or that the first cookbook, in the modern sense of the word, was handwritten by Maestro Martino about 1460 and was called Libro de arte coquinaria, or "Book on the Art of Cooking?"

In researching the book, author Dave DeWitt went through Leonardo DaVinci's copious notebooks, looking for food references and even found Leo's salad dressing recipe! He also found DaVinci's Philosophy of Diet, as follows:

• Do not eat when you have no appetite, and dine lightly.
• Chew well, and whatever you take into you should be well-cooked and of simple ingredients.
• He who takes medicine is ill advised.
• Beware anger and avoid stuffy air.
• Stay standing a while when you get up from a meal.
• Make sure you do not sleep at midday.
• Let your wine be mixed with water, take little and often, not between meals, not on an empty stomach.
• Neither delay nor prolong your visit to the toilet.
• If you take exercise, let it not be too strenuous.
• Do not lie with your stomach upward and your head downward. 
• Be well covered at night,and rest your head and keep your mind cheerful.
• Avoid wantonness and keep to this diet.

Well, pretty wise, eh? I wonder what role sugar had in the 15th-century Italian diet. Granulated sugar hadn't been invented, so I imagine it was the occasional honey and was a treat. Might be wrong, though. These days, Italian food generally is spelled P-A-S-T-A and is a carb nightmare.

It's a 'Wonder'-ful World

I collect novelty cookbooks. As I scan over my shelves, I find such delights as The Nancy Drew Cookbook, Gilligan's Island Cookbook, Are You Hungry Tonight--Elvis' Favorite Recipes, and one of my favorites, the Mike Douglas Cookbook: Recipes Made Famous on the Mike Douglas Television Show.

OK, I'm showing my age here. I actually REMEMBER the Mike Douglas Show.

Anyway, it was with delight from a collector's viewpoint -- and horror from a dietary viewpoint -- that I heard the news that white, squishy Wonder Bread has released, in honor of its 85th birthday, the Wonder Bread Cookbook. You can buy it at Amazon for a discount if you also purchase The Twinkies Cookbook.

The Wonder Bread books touts itself as "an inventive and unexpected recipe collection," which just begs one to ask: so, what's in it? Well, there are:

• Good Morning Wonder Bread, with breakfast recipes such as Pigs in Wonder Blankets.

• Wonder Bites, with appetizers such as Wonder Beef Cups

• Wonder Sandwiches, such as Grilled Baloney (sic) and Wonder

• Baked Wonder, including Sweetened Tomato and Wonder Casserole

• Sweet and Fruity Wonder, including the Wonder Easter Egg Sandwich

• Wonder Bread Pudding and Crepes, including Wonder Caramel Apple Bread Pudding

• It's a Wonder, an unidentifiable category with such delights as Creamed Fish in Wonder Patty Shells and Pilgrim Pies.

It is a wonder.

I'll leave you instead with a selection from the Mike Douglas Cookbook:

Lady Bird Johnson's Spinach Souffle
2 packages frozen, chopped spinach
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
Milk or cream as needed (approx 1-1/2 cup)
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
Dash nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 Tbsp sugar (Splenda hadn't been invented yet)
1 tsp grated onion
5 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 375. Thaw spinach. Drain. Reserve liquid. Add enough milk to liquid to make 2 cups.

Melt butter over low heat. Add flour and blend well. Cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add milk gradually, stirring constantly. Cook until thick. Add spinach and remaining ingredients except eggs. Cook for or five minutes over low heat, stirring to prevent scorching. Remove from heat. Beat egg yolks until thick. Add equal amount of spinach mixture and blend well. Add to first spinach mixture.

Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold spinach mixture into egg whites. Pour into greased 2-quart casserole. Set in pan containing 1 inch of hot water and bake 40-50 minutes or until table knife inserted 2 inches from the edge comes out clean.
Serves 6.

Shaking Things Up

Do you have a low boredom threshold?

I sure do. I was on the Atkins plan for six of the past eight months, and did well with it but got boooorrrredd. So I switched to South Beach, but mostly maintained with that and besides being booorrrreeedd, I am not ready to be in maintenance so the past two months have been kinda "waisted."

So, yesterday I got out my dogeared copy of Jonny Bowden's fabulous Living the Low Carb Life, browsing for something to relieve my dietary boredom.

I should note here that it's not that I get bored with the food I'm eating. I get bored with whatever STRUCTURE of plan I'm following. I succeed best when I can get somewhat obsessed with whatever I'm doing. When my obsessiveness wanes, so does my attention span. This is not necessarily a good thing but it is a character trait I seem to have had my whole life and I figure I might as well use it to my advantage instead of letting it consign me to a life in the Lane Bryant lane, if you know what I mean.

So, I start reading again, and I'm struck both by what a fabulous book this is--my buddy Jimmy Moore has called this a must-read for low carbers and I have to agree--but also by how many little variations there are on low-carbing.

This time, I started zoning in on the GO-Diet, the Goldberg-O'Mara diet plan, which has recently been reformulated as the Four Corners plan. It's a low-carb plan with its own little twist, has the Jonny Bowden seal of approval, and sounds like it might be something to keep me obsessively entertained for a while. I've ordered the book, and will report on it in a few days when it arrives. (Whatever did I do before Amazon Prime came along!?)

Sweet Nothings from Fat Land

Warning: this will be a long post!

I’m currently reading Fat Land by Greg Critser, and while it’s a less-intriguing read than The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this weekend I came across one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the impact of the pervasive (since the 1980s, especially) presence of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in American foods. Since farm subsidies for corn in the ‘70s made corn cheap and plentiful, and HFCS could be had much cheaper than real sugar, or sucrose, more and more manufacturers began using it.

Critser summarizes the effect:

“For years, food technologists and academics alike knew that, in addition to its properties of sweetness and stability (which made it so useful to convenience food makers) there was something else unique about fructose. Unlike its cousin sucrose, fructose is selectively ‘shunted’ toward the liver; it does not go through some of the critical intermediary breakdown steps that sucrose does. This was interesting, but for years no one knew exactly what it meant. Eventually, cell biologists figured out that fructose was being used in the liver as a building block of triglycerides. This it did by mimicking insulin’s ability to cause the liver to release fatty acids into the bloodstream (as demonstrated by Zammit in Scotland). Bombarded by fatty acids, muscle tissue develops insulin resistance. Whether humans consume enough high fructose corn syrup to activate the effect was something that eluded scientists until the year 2000, when researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada fed a high-fructose diet to Syrian golden hamsters, which have a fat metabolism remarkably similar to that of humans. In weeks, the hamsters developed high triglyceride levels and insulin resistance.”

“Preliminary human studies also indict concentrated fructose. Two years ago, the clinical nutritionist John Bantle at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis fed two dozen healthy volunteers a diet that derived 17 percent of total calories from fructose—the percentage that Bantle believes about 27 million Americans eat regularly (particularly all of those fast-food “heavy users” and drinkers of 32-ounce Cokes). Bantle then measured the volunteers’ blood fats and sugars, and then switched them to a diet sweetened mainly with sucrose. The results were dramatic. The fructose diet produced significantly higher triglycerides in the blood—in men about 32 percent higher—than the sucrose-sweetened diet. The fructose diets also made triglyceride levels peak faster—just after the meal, when such fats can do the most conservative American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published one article that bluntly (and uncharacteristically) concluded that ‘these deleterious changes [by dietary fructose] occur in the absence of any beneficial effect…and these abnormalities…appear to be greater in those individuals already at an increased risk for coronary artery disease.’ ”

“The fructose trouble hardly ends there. Fructose consumption—it now constitutes 9 percent of the average individual’s daily energy intake (and up to 20 percent of the average child’s diet)—has lately prompted science to look at another, more controversial, theory—that fructose consumption itself may have led to increased rates of obesity, not merely through increased calories but through a variety of complex chemical reactions it stimulates in the human body.”

The book goes on to cite a number of studies conducted more recently that show a direct correlation between the rise in HFCS consumption and the rise in average BMI, however flawed that indicator of fitness might be. It also notes that public health workers and nutritionists have been “reluctant’ (understatement!) to single out HFCS since “most of their careers had been made in demonizing dietary fat.”

Now, all of a sudden, the cost of corn—and, as a result, HFCS—has increased dramatically leading Coca-Cola to consider returning to the use of real sugar in their soft drinks instead of HFCS. Could it be the beginning of a shift away from HFCS, and could a return to sucrose as the primary sweetener help tip the scales back in the other direction—figuratively if not literally? Only time will tell, but that’s probably wishful thinking on my part. I really don’t believe I’ll ever be able to actually “have my sugar-sweetened cake and eat it too.”

AND THE WINNER IS...MARCELLE WYZDYX

Thanks to all of you who sent in veggie recipes. I've drawn the name of Marcelle Wyzdyx to receive the prize: a new copy of the mammoth book The World's Healthiest Foods. Congrats, Marcelle! Please contact me at waisted@cox.net and let me know how to send the book to you.

The nature of blogs being what they are, if I haven't heard from Marcelle in sevendays, I will draw another name. I'll let you know when the book has been claimed. Thanks for participating, everyone!

Here are the links to your recipes:

Cauliflower Hash Browns
Coleslaw
Coon-Ass Veggies Love this name!
Creamed Spinach
Garlic Green Beans
Grilled Ratatouille
Head-Hunger Soup
Mock Potatoes
Potatoes a la Kanchara
Quick & Easy Veggies
Ratatouille
Roasted Asparagus
Sauteed Asparagus
Sesame Kale
Spinach Koottoo
Spinach Soup With Lentils & Lemon
Squash & Peppers
Windy Swede
Zucchini & Jicama Salad

Veggie Tales: A Contest for You!

Have you heard the buzz about The World's Healthiest Foods, "Essential Guide to the Healthiest Way of Eating," by George Mateljan, published by the nonprofit, non-commercial George Mateljan Foundation? Here's a chance for you to win a copy, valued at $39.95.

I'm always struggling to find new and interesting ways to prepare veggies. It's after working all day, I'm tired and don't want to spend a whole lot of time cooking. But steamed with butter gets old, and raw with dressing gets older.

So, for the next week, post a reply with your favorite quick-and-easy veggie recipe. Any veggie, any style. The only requirements are that it contain at least three ingredients (no steamed veggie with butter--even I can do that!), not be too labor-intensive and not contain ingredients that are too exotic.

Everyone who posts a recipe will be put in the running for the book. I'll draw the names on Tuesday, March 13, and will post the winner on the site here along with my e-mail address. We'll work by private e-mail to get your address so I can send you the book.

So start posting, and pass along the link to your cooking pals!

The book, by the way, is very carb-friendly. Mateljan rates 100 foods on the basis of nutrient density and gives them a score. The most nutrient-dense food, with the highest score, is spinach. Strawberries are high on the list. What you won't find are sugars or processed foods.

Each of the 100 foods gets its own chapter with history, health properties, how to pick out the best in the store, how to prepare it. It's a huge volume and a great resource!

Eating Local

I'm almost finished reading Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I'm feelin' it--the dilemma, that is. (Yes, I realize I'm about a year behind the rest of the planet in reading this.)

The "Omnivore's Dilemma," for Pollan, is that since we have learned to alter the natural cycles of food and food production--through chemistry, through technology, and through transportation--we are in a constant dither about what's really good for us, what we really should be eating. In the absence of a historic national cuisine, Americans are left to the whims of the latest scientific study, the latest products, the latest trends, in order to figure out what to eat.

Instead of simplifying our diets, the modern world has made eating very, very complicated.

So last week, I decided to try and eat local, at least within reason for someone living in an urban area who works full-time and tries to maintain two blogs : )

There's quite a flap between Pollan and Whole Foods. First, Pollan chastises Whole Foods for talking the talk but not walking the walk. Whole Foods chief John Mackey has issued numerous responses in his own blog, admitting that Whole Foods could do a better job of buying local but stands by Whole Foods' practice of buying organic and then using fossil fuels to ship it to the USA or buying organic from large, industrialized organic producers in the USA and shipping it to the stores.

So just buying at Whole Foods wouldn't help me buy local. Thus, off I went to the farmer's market.

What can I buy at the farmer's market in late February? Much to my surprise, there were early strawberries. I love strawberries. So I picked up a couple of pints, which I could eat with some cream from a local dairy. They also had milk and butter, which I passed on but might try later. There was a peanut grower, but I can't digest peanuts--believe me, you don't want the details. I got some cabbage and some broccoli and some spinach that I was assured were grown without pesticides. There was a big selection of grass-fed beef and some wild catfish.

There was also the lady selling killer homemade pies--peach and apple and pecan--but I gave her wide berth, sadly.

That was about it for my shopping this week. It's pricey, but probably no moreso than Whole Foods. Of course the prices at Whole Foods is what has kept me out of there for the most part, except to buy pimiento cheese--the best in the world.

Will all this be healthier? Will it help the environment? Should I limit what I eat to what I can find grown locally? I guess it's the omnivore's dilemma.

The 5 Biggest Food Myths

I read an interesting article in Forbes recently, talking to author Barry Glassner, whose recent book, The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong, is next up on my To-Read pile. Basically, Glassner thinks we've all gone overboard in thinking about food, and assigning it a greater role in our overall health and welfare than it deserves. In the process, he says, we've lost the "pleasure factor" in eating, replacing it with guilt or duty.

More on that when I actually read the book!

What the Forbes article talks about is what they call Five Big Food Myths. And what are they?

1) "Fresh is Best." We tend to think canned or frozen food is inferior to fresh food, and that supermarket fresh food is inferior to farmer's market fresh food. Actually, Glassner points out, flash-frozen produce retains more nutrients than "fresh" produce that is trucked or shipped from parts unknown, unloaded, stocked and then sold. By the time it reaches your plate, many of its healthy properties have been lost or weakened.

2) "Vitamin-Enhanced Foods Are Better." It's the big thing now, the so-called "functional foods." We think that "blurring the line between food and vitamins or medications" means we're eating healthier. Just watch to see how many foods are released in coming months with Omega-3s. But Glassner says the vitamins are altered in the process of adding them to foods in which they don't normally occur--like Omega-3 Pasta--and we don't really know if they're effective, or even harmful.

3) "A Meal is Worthy for What It Lacks." By focusing on what our meal doesn't contain--such as fat, salt, or carbs--we lose sight of the pleasure a great meal can bring us, Glassner says.

4) "Natural Means Less Processed." There's no rules concerning the word "natural," Glassner says (unlike "organic," which does have some legal restrictions)-- "The only thing the terrm natural seems to consistently mean is a higher price," says Forbes.

5) "Some Foods Are Inherently Bad for You." Categorizing a food as "inherently bad" is unnecessary, Glassner says. Too much of anything--sugar, fat, whatever--is bad.But the food itself isn't. "Food like potato chips, which most of us enjoy, can still have a place in our diet," Glassner says.

Yeah, but what if you can't eat just one?

How Corny Are We?

I just started reading Michael Pollan's bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma, and it has me thinking about corn.

I'm a Southern girl, but I did spend a few years living in the Midwest--north-central Illinois, to be exact--and I learned something there about corn. For one, I'm allergic to corn. Its pollen causes my eyes to water and swell, and I can't digest its kernals without problems.

So I don't eat corn as a rule, whether I'm following low carb or not. And yet, as Pollan points out, I actually DO eat it all the time, in some form or another.

So the book's early discussions of corn and its place in our modern food chain was fascinating to me. Here's an excerpt as Pollan tours the local supermarket:

"Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are re-engineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, now typically comes from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn.

"Head over to processed foods and you find ever more intricate manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do most of the nugget's other constituents, including the modified corn starch the glues the thing together, the corn flour in the batter than coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di- and triglycerides, the attractive golden coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget 'fresh' can all be derived from corn.

"To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)--after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for your beverage instead and you'd still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn."

Pollan goes on to show the corn connections to modified or unmodified starch, glucose syrup, maltodextrin, crystalline fructose, ascorbic acid, lecithin, lactic acid, lycosine, MSG, polyols, caramel color, xanthan gum--all common techno-ingredients in our food. Corn, he notes, is in non-dairy coffee creamer (and dairy as well, since it fed the cows), cheese, frozen yogurt, canned fruit, ketchup, candies, soups, snacks, frozen waffles, mayonnaise..and on and on and on.

Of the more than 45,000 items in the modern supermarket, Pollan says, more than 25% now contain corn--even in produce, where corn produces the vegetable wax that makes your cucumbers and apples shiny and in the pesticides used to grow your veggies big and strong.

So, if there's corn in everything we eat and if you have a sensitivity to corn, what the heck is all that corn doing inside you? Low-level, chronic inflammation is increasingly cited as a big factor in developing heart disease. If you're constantly ingesting even small amounts of things that your system is sensitive to, then how much inflammation is that causing?

Book of Dreams for the Sucker Born Every Minute

You never know how much you'll miss getting junk mail catalogs till you don't get them any more. After Hurricane Katrina, our mail was disrupted. I didn't get any mail between Aug. 27, 2005, and roughly February of 2006, and even then it was only first-class mail. In June 2006, the mail opened back up to magazines and catalogs but, by then, I had been removed from all the junk mail lists. So much for the "rain, sleet or snow" of the U.S. Postal Service.

But I digress.

I'm slowly starting to get a few bits of junk mail again, so it was with some relish that I sat down last night to peruse a new catalog that came in yesterday's mail. "Time for Me," the catalog said. "Dedicated to the Art of Well-Being."

On the cover was a boobalicious blonde sitting in front of a mirror. She was obviously well-groomed and high-maintenance. I had no idea what the catalog was selling. But by the time I reached the end of its 48 pages, boy, was I fuming.

I know now why my dreams haven't come true. I know why I'm not pretty enough, skinny enough, healthy enough, and have strong nails. My problem is that I simply don't have enough money.

Because, according to this catalog, every woman can be "perfect" if she can only buy the products.

A quick rundown.

Page 1: A special shampoo ($20 a bottle, plus another $20 for conditioner) to help me "shampoo in stronger, bouncier hair." It will increase hair growth up to 123% in under a month! For gosh sakes, keep it away from my legs.

Page 2: For $19, a unique wrinkle eraser pen "will target wrinkles and erase them in minutes." For $39, "Luster Eyes will permanently banish dark undereye circles." For $34, the purest form of Hoodia will "kill hunger and cravings." For $39, a "Detox Wrap Home Kit" will help me "drop one dress size in just one hour." For $69, an injection-free facial relaxer will "relax my wrinkles."

Page 3: For $99, I can buy "tummy-tuck" jeans provide an exclusive slimming design to make me look like I just had a tummy tuck.

And on it goes, including:
$89 for an eye lift in a bottle
$50 for advanced lip-pumping power to puff my smackers up like Angelina Jolie
$349 for a Light Therapy machine that will reduce all my crow's feet in 4 days
$79 will get me a faux-wrap top with a secret liner inside to hold in my bulges
$39 will get my Thyroid T-3 capsules to reduce body fat and maintain muscle mass
$29 will get me some Bio-Ear to reduce the ringing in my ears.
$59 will provide Herbal Go to supercharge my weight loss
$29 will get me an arm wrap kit to firm my upper arms in one month.
$89 will provide me with enough Baebbe to shrink my tummy fat without liposuction
$17 Cinnergen will stop my blood sugar swings
$29 will cure my fibromyalgia
$27 Nite-Lite will burn fat while I sleep
$79 NuGen will give me natural hair restoration, but if that doesn't work
$99 will provide me a beautiful, natural looking wig
$199 will help my scalp become healthier
$14 will thicken my nails with just one coat of Barielle Nail Thickener
$19 will get me a facial massager to jiggle away my double chin
$18 will give me a special formula to change the color of my complexion
$28 will shrink my pores with Dermelect Pore Revolution
$24 will provide me with a "Self-Esteem Neck Firming Face Lift"
$19 will giveme some "extra oomph" up top without pesky breast enhancement surgery
$79 will intensify my erotic pleasure with the "Synergy Pleasure System." Hmmm...

And on it goes. Why am I wasting all this time trying to eat a healthy diet and lose weight? Obviously, because I don't have the money for the appropriate quick-fixes for every need.

Oh, wait! they have an online Outlet Store. Maybe the perfect product is waiting there for me.

What Shall We Eat Today?

I've had Michael Pollan's bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemma, sitting in my "To Read" pile for the past month or so--it was a Christmas present, or, actually, what I bought myself with the Barnes & Noble gift card that was my Christmas present.

After reading this weekend's article by Pollan in the New York Times (registration required, I think), I'll have to move the book higher up in the stack.

In "Unhappy Meals," Pollan says a lot of things strict low-carbers will disagree with--he advocates a mostly plant-based diet, albeit of "real" foods, not processed foods, with meat as a side item rather than the star of the meal.

But the article is fascinating for his insights into the food industry, the food lobbyists in Washington, and how the ridiculous food pyramid has been compromised and sold out in the name of politics over the years.

His thoughts are interesting about how the transition was made from eating a diet based on foods to a diet based on nutrients (counting carbs, fats or proteins). Who knew George McGovern played a role?

His point that we need to get back to the basics of planning our diets around real food is well made -- he points out all the conflicting research coming out of the nutritional arena. It results in what he calls the "cognitive dissonance of the supermarket shopper."

"Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease," Pollan writes. "The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer. Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims."

More later--gotta go to work now. But check the article out if you haven't read it!

Are You a Food Snob?

Apparently, most Americans are, to some degree. This Salon.com article talks with Barry Glassner about his new book, The Gospel of Food. I want to get the book--it looks ready-made to be something that will just really set me off big-time!

In the meantime, he has interesting comments to make in the Salon article about how we are such total snobs about whatever type of diet we support. Low-fat snobs, of which there are such an abundance, not only disagree with low-carb proponents but are absolutely disdainful of the idea. Unfortunately, most low-carb proponents are just as snobbily disdainful of the low-fatters. Basically, we all think we're right, and that's that.

Calianna, over at Calianna's Low-Carb Cottage, touches on a similar topic today, aimed primarily at the low-fatters but basically saying: What works for some people doesn't work for other people.

A problem for low carbers, of course, is that we've had to defend this way of eating for so long--and we're so frustrated that the high-carb-low-fat mantra continues to predominate in the face of mounting research evidence that simple carbs are slow poison--that it's hard for us not to push back in the game of Bully Nutrition.

Only time will tell.

Voices of Experience--or Not

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a tad obsessive. Okay, more than a tad.

So when I'm trying to lose weight, I want to drown in the world of diet. I buy magazines with what turn out to be ridiculous diet articles ("Lose 200 pounds in just 10 days!"), and obsess over every conflicting research report.

This time, I've moved on to books--particularly memoirs, or accounts of people who've lost weight and want to present their own navel-watching account of their journey from flab to fab.

But I've made a recent discovery: most of those books are by people who had very little weight to lose, and I'm sorry, but what the heck do they know about facing a real weight problem? Even their good ideas seem lacking in any real-world test.

I recently read Linda Moran's little book, How to Survive Your Diet, and thought--and still think--it has a lot of good ideas as far as "eating normally" in terms of portion and hunger-satiation. But you're led to believe throughout the book that Linda has battled real weight issues over the years, and don't find out until the end that she battled something like 10 pounds. Now, she says in the book that the reader might discount her ideas because she only had 10 pounds to lose--sort of the reverse-psychology equivalent of "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." But, sorry, I think you have some great ideas for maintenance but 10 pounds just doesn't gain my respect for weight-loss tips.

Next, I read Wendy McClure's I'm Not the New Me. Wendy's the author of the popular poundy.com blog and in the book she had lost about 30 pounds on Weight Watchers. Not shabby but only borderline "real" weight loss in my book. Mostly the book was the obsessive ramblings of a woman on the prowl for the perfect guy, posing as a book about dealing with body image. "X" that one off the list, although she does write well, albeit with too much profanity for my taste.

Then I read Dr. Nick Yphantides' My Big Fat Greek Diet. While Dr. Nick did lose an amazing 220 pounds, the way he did it is way out of the ball park for most of us (pun intended). Dr. Nick was wealthy enough to take a year off from work to drink a liquid diet while he tooled around the country indulging his passion for Major League Baseball games. Yeah, right. I'd be living under New Orleans' Danziger Bridge in about two weeks. Welcome to the real world.

Now I've begun Courtney Rubin's Weight Loss Diaries, and while she doesn't seem to have a tremendous amount of weight to lose, I'm identifying with her "all-or-nothing" mentality. You know the one: "I ate that bite of (name the food that doesn't fit on your food plan), so I might as well have whatever else I want today and start again tomorrow." Or: "I have to eat out twice this week for social engagements so I might as well wait to start next week." I'm not far enough into it to see how she's going to resolve these things but I do believe fixing your thoughts is the biggest thing you can do to improve your chance of successful weight loss. So we'll see how she does it.

Meanwhile, you can't do much better than the irrepressible Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb, where he chronicles his own 180-pound loss eating low carb. His "take no prisoners" attitude toward weight loss doesn't give us a lot of introspection or navel-watching, but it's an honest, real chronicle of serious weight loss that doesn't involve surgery or off-the-wall baseball schemes.

There are a couple of other books in my "to read" stack (told you I was obsessive!), so stay tuned.

Greed is not Good

Start Date: Aug 6, 2006
Lost to date: 48 lbs

I'm reading Linda Moran's little book, How to Survive Your Diet, and am finding it interesting. At first, I thought her characterization of overeating as being the result of either stress or greed too simplistic. Stress, I get. As I spent my two-month evacuation from Hurricane Katrina glued to the TV watching my city die, I practically mainlined chocolate. But...Greed?

Then a funny thing happened. As I finished my lunch yesterday, I thought about getting "just a little more." But I stopped and thought about why I wanted it. I wasn't still hungry. It's just that I wanted more.

Uh-oh. Greed. And the fact that I like chewing.

Thinking of oneself as a greedy, chomping, overeating slob isn't a very pretty picture, is it? The word "Greed" is loaded. We don't like it. We don't want to be it. Yet, actually, that is a big part of it. I hate to admit it, but I think Linda Moran is right.

Holy Toledo, Batman, It's a New Addiction

Program start: Aug 6, 2006
Lost to date: 46 lbs

Well, actually, it's not a new addiction. It's just an addiction I never realized I had till very recently. Talk about a light bulb going on over your head!

I have had a weight problem since approximately age 7, when in the space of two years I went from looking like a slightly malnourished skinny preschooler to a pleasantly pudgy first grader to an out of control 7-year-old. So after all those decades of struggling with weight, what did I think my food issues were? Well, during the many wasted years of low-fat dieting, I would have told you I couldn't stay away from fats. Turns out I didn't need to, Wilbur.

Then I realized, during a massive Blue Bell Ice Cream binge, that I was addicted to sugar. I would start something sweet -- or bready or both -- and couldn't stop.

So, in August, when I started my Last Diet Ever--because low carb is not really a diet but a changed way of eating, I thought--I started trying to listen to my body, to discern physical hunger from "head hunger."

Then I rediscovered low-carb snacks. There are some really fine ones. And as I calculated which ones I could eat the most of without overdoing it on carbs, the light bulb went off.

I am addicted to overeating--not food, not carbs (though they are the major triggers) but overeating. The sensation of being full.

I realize that, even as I have a ways to go with the weight loss, this is a food issue I absolutely MUST address if I'm to take it off and keep it off. Yes, you can binge on low-carb just as you can binge on high-carb (though, theoretically, it wouldn't be as harmful as all that sugar--ick! Yum! Ick! Yum!

Oh well. All that to say that I've picked up a copy of Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever. You'll be hearing more about it as I work through the book on this blog. Cognitive therapy techniques, here I come.

I promise not to post anything too Freudian, though!

Talking to Myself

Low Carb "birthdate" Aug 6, 2006
Lost so far: 47 lbs

Okay, so I've started reading Linda Moran's interesting little book, Surviving Your Diet. There's a lot of food for thought there (pun intended). So far, there's a lot of talk about, well, talk. Specifically, self talk. The voice inside your head that screams "Outta My Way--Sugar Ahead" when you approach the food table at a party. The one that whines "Everybody else gets to eat what they want, and why do I have to do without, wah-wah-wah" when everyone else is eating birthday cake and you're sitting there stoically with a cup of diet soda.

Well, okay, now you've heard some of the voices in my head. If I had to boil them down to one emotional stereotype, it would be the petulant child.

"But I WANT it."
"I deserve it--it's been a hard day."
"My home is floating in three feet of water from Hurricane Katrina and I need chocolate."

Well, you get the picture. I'm the spoiled 3-year-old who wants what she wants.

Now, how do I get from there to the adult who can shut down the pity party once it begins, give myself permission to eat, and then eat like a self-controlled adult? Well, heck, if I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be in this shape to begin with.

Baby steps, baby steps. Coming up tomorrow: Chapter two, and maybe some answers.