Fish for Lent? Maybe it's not the fast it's fried up to be

For Catholics, the seven weeks preceding Easter are called Lent. During this time we abstain from indulgent foods such as sugar and meat. In times past, Catholics also gave up dairy products, eggs, fats and oils. The Lenten diet consisted of fish, vegetables, fruit and fat-free grains. This simple fare is perfect for someone trying to lose weight. The problem now is that fish is not the economical food it once was. Also we have convoluted fasts into something resembling feasts! 

In the days when fish was plentiful, cheap or even free if you caught it yourself, it was perfect for Lent. But in 2021, local fish is all but non-existent. Mega fisheries have taken over and "strip-fished" oceans and lakes. Toxic chemicals have poisoned many fish and invasive species have killed off the rest. Now fish is three to four times the price of meat. Which makes an oxymoron of the Lenten injunction to live simply. Fish has become the luxury and chicken and pork, the economical options.

There are other dilemmas with the modern Lenten diet, such as the ubiquitous Friday night all you can eat fish fry. This kind of eating not only sabotages weight loss, it make a mockery of fasting. Even one plate of deep fried breaded fish, French fries and coleslaw, washed down with soda is about 1,500 calories. And those aren't good calories. They're salt, fat and sugar with little fiber or protein. And with the AYCE option, most people have two or three plates. This is anathema to the gospel injunction to avoid gluttony. 

Then there are the ways in which seafood is now cooked. Breaded, deep fried, buttery, cheesy and sugary sauces, alfredo, coconut shrimp, carb heavy pasta dishes. Fasting is more like a fast track diabetes and obesity. My solution is to avoid fish fry or at the very least opt for baked potato, unbreaded fish and salad. More on healthier fast and protein options in upcoming posts. 

Love ya! --mar

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Weight loss: easier said than done but not as hard as I thought

I think, talk and write about weight loss all the time. So do a lot of people. It's been one of the top trending subjects for decades now. But clearly, for a lot of folks it ends with talk. Because more people are more overweight than ever before. More people are suffering and dying from weight related health issues. 

7 years ago I put my words into deeds and lost 100 lb. But for a long time, I was stuck at the "think about it" stage. And what I thought was that it was easier said than done. I have heard this excuse so often. Yes, I call it an excuse. We tell ourselves "it's going to be so much work. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I really need to do it. I definitely know I don't want to do it." We literally talk ourselves out of dieting and doing what it takes to slim down. 

So obviously yes it's easier to talk about than do. But so is pretty much anything. Yet that does not stop us doing those things. So why weight loss? Why is that the thing that so many people avoid doing? For me it was fear and laziness. I'm not a lazy person per se. But I was lazy about my eating or overeating. I was lazy about not monitoring. And I was afraid that it would be too difficult and I would fail. So for a long time I didn't try. 

But then out of the blue I had this ah-ha moment when I realized I can do this. My higher power, whom I choose to call God, sent me confidence that I could do this and assurance that He would help. And so I did and so He did. And you know what? It was challenging but not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. 

If you need to lose weight, and are at the thinking about it stage, I hope that you will take strength from these words. You can do it. You will do it. I don't just believe it, I know it and I love you all 

❤️❤️--mar

Weirdest weight loss excuse: I can't afford to diet

I get a lot of interesting reactions when I tell people how I lost 100 pounds with no drugs or surgery. Most are overwhelmingly positive. Some are, well, odd.  The weirdest response is from people who say they cannot afford to lose weight 😳🤔.  This is a strangely common misunderstanding about weight loss and a big excuse people use to avoid it. Let's take a further look.

1) They assume I lost 100 pounds by having surgery, hiring a personal trainer, buying a lot of expensive diet food or paying for a weight loss program. I did none of those. I wrote my own diet program using elements from various schools of thought. 

2) I did use some supplements: green tea, raspberry ketones, apple cider and Garcinia cambogia. But I got them cheap from the dollar store. And some of them suppressed my appetite so I was able to eat less and save more money.

3) Almost all celebrity weight loss stories involve them hiring a personal trainer. Khloe Kardashian used one and she is supposedly a trainer herself ?! We do not need somebody else to manage our weight loss. In fact, it isn't even really appropriate because it's too easy to rely too much on the trainer and then blame them when we fail. You may benefit from a support group. I found I didn't need that. I'll cover this more in a further blog post. 

4) Dieting actually saved money because I eat less. And you don't need special diet food or meal plans. I wouldn't even recommend them because so many are not that healthy. I have purchased lighter versions of foods I like. But they don't cost any more.

5) Losing weight saves a ton of money in healthcare. A study showed a few years ago that 8 billion dollars in Medicaid was paid for obesity treatment. That doesn't even cover the related issues:  diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, back problems, sleep apnea to name a few. 

So not only could I afford to lose weight, I couldn't afford not to. Happy Heart Day ❤️❤️ love --mar

Diet failure or fear of failure?

Okay fair warning here comes another super blunt post. By that I mean I'm going to debunk some ideas I believe to be myths about weight loss and I may possibly come off as harsh. As always, my intent is to help not hurt. But in so doing I have to be honest. I have spent too many years trying to sugarcoat my ideas to make them more palatable. I've also spent too much time apologizing and backing down at the first hint that anyone's offended. But I no longer believe those are good strategies where big important subjects like health are concerned Again, I'm always preaching to myself first and I promise a party at the end. So here goes.

It's been 7 years since I lost 100 lbs. And I've been writing about it all through that time. A lot of people have asked me about my weight loss, how I did it, etc. Many have told me they would like to lose weight, have tried everything and that nothing works. With all due respect (here comes the blunt part) that's simply not true. If I have tried everything and not lost weight, then the problem is not with the diet but the dieter. Either I am a wonder of modern science (not likely) or I am exaggerating how much work I put into it and downplaying my lack of effort.

I'm not saying they're lying but they are not being honest with themselves. For one thing, the statements "tried everything" and "nothing works" are ridiculously generalized. No one has tried every eating plan. Sure some diets are better than others. Some folks should run screaming from (the lemon detox leaps to mind) But there is something out there that will help me reduce IF I'm willing to do the work.

I can tell you why people don't lose weight. It's not that diets fail us. We fail them. We try a few diets, don't stick with any of them and fall back into old habits. Or we cut corners. Or don'tgive it enough time. Or eat more than we admit. Or don't really care. Or blame other people. Or all of the above.

But the deepest issue and possibly biggest, is fear. I can hear it in their voices, not that nothing HAS worked but that nothing WILL work. I sometimes suspect that they haven't really even tried at all to lose weight because they are crippled by this fear. They tell themselves that they have tried everything because it's easier to think that you are that wonder of modern science, then it to admit failure or face the fears.

I'm not the most self-aware of people and I can get right down in that River of denial without even noticing I stepped in the water. For years I closed my eyes too how fat I was getting. And I can tell you right now I remember that fear before I lost weight. It was so deep that it wasn't even really fear just certitude that the pounds would never come off because I would never be able to do the work it required. 

But I did!! Yay!! Here comes the aforementioned party! Blow the party hooter and toss the confetti! And you know what's even more awesome? We are all invited! Anybody and everybody can lose weight if they choose to. It's not just for the rich or young or pretty or

smart lol I'm proof of that 🤣😂

And the Uber coolest thing is that it isn't even really that difficult, certainly not as hard as I thought it would be. More on that later my dears ❤️❤️❤️ hugs and kisses --mar

You can and should eat sugar to lose weight

What the actual?!?! I not only can but should eat sugar if I'm on a diet?? You're wondering, "Erm pardon me but are you nuts?" Well in many ways, yes I am 😁 But not about this particular subject. You did read that correctly. Sugar, even refined sugar, has a place in weight loss. At least it did in mine and I believe it should in yours too. Here's why. 

First, for the purposes of this blog post, when I say sugar, I mean refined sugar, Next some stats, to give my theory cred. I lost 100 lb over a period of about 8 months: no drugs, personal trainer or surgery. 

When I began I was pre-diabetic.  I have kept the majority of weight off for 7 years. And all that time I have eaten sugar almost every day. I factored it into the diet plan that I wrote for myself. Once in awhile I even allowed myself a complete blowout. Even before the weight loss was complete I got my sugar numbers down to normal. And here's how I did that and why I think it's important. 

1) Set attainable goals. Cutting out all sugar is unrealistic. For many reasons,  I am skeptical of any diet plan that tells you to cut out anything, even sugar. It's so readily available and in pretty much all processed food, in a developed country. (Segue, it's interesting that we consider ourselves first worlders, when some of the less developed nations actually have healthier diets than we do). It would be virtually impossible to go the rest of your life without eating sugar. And a good diet builds new habits and doesn't rely on weird temporary restrictions. 

2) Limit don't delete. Obvs, eating too much junk including sugar was part of what got me overweight to start with. Soto lose weight, I dialed way back on the amount I ate. I allowed 100 or so calories a day of my food intake to be from  sugar

3) Occasionally overindulge. Again yes you read that correctly. As I said earlier sometimes you can let yourself eat as much sugar as you want. But only at one meal on one day every couple of weeks. This overindulgence serves several purposes. It prevents you from feeling deprived. Deprivation mode is a form of depression plus resentment that leads to dishonesty. It can sabotage your diet because you end up sneaking and cheating on yourself. And you develop unhealthy self-perception.

4) Change your mind. We've come to think of sugar as a treat. It's not. It's just another food option and certainly not the best one. But it does have two benefits: it releases dopamine which makes you feel good and it perks your brain up. So while we should not use sugar or any food as a reward, we can enjoy the benefits. 

5) Control cravings. Sugar is as addictive as heroin. So if you try to quit cold turkey you will very likely have some serious withdrawal type cravings. If you eat a little bit you can keep those cravings at bay.

6) Take back the controls. The more you get the sugar habit under control the easier it gets and the better you feel physically, mentally and emotionally. You feel powerful and capable. Nobody likes being at the mercy of someone else and certainly not someTHING else. When I was slave to chocolate, I felt foolish,  weak and angry with myself. When I got my sugar addiction under control, I felt like Wonder Woman!

7) Lose your taste for it. This isn't an instruction it's a promise. When I first started dieting my blowouts looked like several pieces of dessert. Toward the end it was only a few bites. My stomach had shrunk and I literally couldn't eat any more. And it didn't taste as good. That's the honest truth. I'm not schmoozing you.  Of all the goodies I used to love, none of them taste quite as good as they once did.

9) Face those fears. I've talked to a lot of people who say they can't lose weight. They're afraid they will not be able to see it through. They fear failure. More on that in tomorrow's blog post. So I can't promise that you will lose weight but I can assure you that you do have the strength too if you want to.

10) Homework: Try this experiment. Choose a favorite piece of dessert. Monitor your reactions and sensations as you eat each bite. The first bite will probably taste great but each successive one will lose something. So if you just enjoy those two or three bites you're getting all the payout of the entire piece with a fraction of the calories. 

So here ends this blog post. I will write further on different kinds of sugar that are best. Love y'all to Pluto (it is a planet!!) and back. 💕

Emotional eating and the brutal truth about obesity, trauma and abuse

This may be my most blunt and controversial post yet. I'm going to debunk the notion that abuse leads to overeating. I recognize that I am on treacherous terrain here. I may come off as harsh or judgmental. I may very well be wrong But I assure you that I write this only to help and heal, not hurt. And I have earned the right to comment about weight loss. I lost 100 pounds and I know every excuse in the book. 

If you watch My 600-lb Life, you know that every episode features patients blaming their obesity on past trauma: death, loss, shame, rape, abuse. They say they turned to food for comfort. Now that I get. But when they say that the need for comfort is the reason they are 600 lb. No. I have been taking apart this theory and just can't get it to fit. Or if it does it is a contrived fit. 

I'm not for moment suggesting the abuse wasn't real. I am in no way suggesting that issues from childhood should not be addressed. I'm not saying that people don't need comfort or that food can't be comforting. In seeking to anesthetize pain, people often turn to dangerous methods: drugs, violence, self-harm, yes perhaps overeating but more often than not, they undereat either to achieve a better self-image or because food just doesn't sound good.

So why is emotional eating so common? And why do people blame weight problems on emotional issues? There are several reasons. Here's where the brutal part comes in.

People have been finding methods to self-soothe for eons. It's only within the last 50 years or so that food has been used so routinely and commonly.  When I was young few were overweight. When my grandparents were young, virtually no one was. It was partially because food was not so readily available in such large quantities. Especially not the nutrition void food that fills our grocery stores and restaurants.

The thing with food that's different from the other self soothers is that it is not inherently dangerous. For goodness sake it's how we survive. Food tastes good. It feels good to eat. We need to eat. But when we develop a habit of overindulging in the wrong things, we also tend not to want to take responsibility for it. We want it to be someone or something else's fault that we can't leave chocolate alone or that consume enough to feed three people. We also don't want to admit that it's an addiction like alcohol or drugs. The same people who are morbidly obese will often decry alcohol as "sinful" and then ignore their own gluttony. 

And food has changed from sustenance to treat based. Look around at 90% of the shelf filler. The majority has virtually no nutritive value. It can't even really be called food. It is disproportionately calorie dense for the amount of nutrition you get. It is filled with addictive ingredients and chemicals: MSG, saturated fat, additives, HFCS and sugar. 

Obese people didn't get where they are eating salads. "Got to have my Brussels sprouts" said no obese person ever. Whenever you see My 600-lb Life participants eating it's always junk, carbs and sugar in shocking quantities. 

There's no way that I will accept that that is emotional eating. It is addictive eating. What may have started out as self-soothing has now a ballooned into obsessive and compulsive gorging . I know a little about that. I could eat a pound of cheese at a sitting. Not because I have past trauma. I do and plenty of it but that isn't why I overate. Part of it was because of an antidepressant that turned my limit switches off. I will say I only ate to that extent when I was on Paxil. And I was lonely and missing my husband who worked nights. 

But I wasn't eating to fill a void. I was eating because it tasted good (cheese is another food with addictive properties). And I had stretched my stomach so far that I needed to put a lot in it to make it feel full. And because I was in denial about how much weight I was gaining. And because I just didn't want to stop. I didn't care. 

Now that just may have been me but I don't think so. I think this is a common experience among the morbidly obese. They have been telling themselves that their suffering has made them what they are. Some have believed their abusers that they were worthless. Then they let food take over and control them. They have allowed their addiction to trick them into thinking they have no choice or power. Some have used their past trauma as an excuse to manipulate bully and control others.  Some have made up problems to justify their actions. 

The key in weight management is to address past trauma separately from weight issues. Granted healing one may also heal the other. But continually linking them minimizes both. And it also reinforces the wrong idea that one caused the other. And because people need to see that they and only they can take charge of their lives, health, addiction, eating. And that they really are strong enough and worth doing it. 

If you need to lose weight, do it. Do it now. I'll be your cheerleader! Regardless of what happened before, you control the now. People hurt you. Don't let them continue to. The best retribution is to survive and thrive. In spite of or perhaps because of your past pain, you have the power you need to give yourself the love and care you deserve.

💕--mar

Avoiding post-op weight gain, or Help! my frig has me hostage!

Two weeks ago I had shoulder surgery. I've been virtually immobile only now able to move much. My doc warns off ibuprofen because it slows healing. So I did not have that avenue of pain relief. After the first week I tapered off the opioid, cut the Tylenol and have been trying rest only for healing. 

Surprisingly or not, despite the lack of exercise I get quite hungry. I'm thinking it's because you have to feed healing muscles, tendons etc. When my husband burned his foot, the burn clinic advised eating lots of protein to rebuild tissue. His translation was that he required many cupcakes LOL, which we lovingly provided. 

But he has never had to worry about his weight whereas I'm locked in an eternal duel with mine. 😬 So I'm back to that dilemma I was in when I worked from home: 7 steps from a frig AND with the added burden of having to eat more to heal. And this situation isn't changing anytime soon.

The nature of my current employment, Shipt shopping, is pretty physically challenging. With 16 weeks of 5 lb lifting restriction and another 8 at 25 lbs, I won't be back behind the cart anytime soon, if ever. This job is very probably what injured my shoulder in the first place. 

So what to do to avoid weight gain for 5 months? A part of me would like to complicate it. Or at least, find reasons to justify overeating. Because that's always been my habit. But that was also the problem. And really, I don't want to go back there. I know, because my common sense tells me so, avoiding post-op weight gain is no different than any other kind. The rules are the same. 

Because I need extra nourishment, I might let up on my 1,300 calorie a day weight loss diet. I might...(static buzz) "Attention folks (voice booms over loud speaker), we interrupt this fantasy for a reality check. This blog author wasn't and hasn't been on that strict diet for awhile. She has been cheating for months now. Just saying..."

Well thank you, conscience, for that fact finding info. What are you,  Snopes in my head (arschloch!) But I guess he is right. I did promise transparency in this blog and have never been anything but. So yeah, I've been off the wagon awhile.

Blame our stupid life-leeching, soul-sucking 2nd&3rd shift schedule (yep, both). Husband works 5pm to 5am often later, every weekend. I work around his schedule so that we can actually see each other and have some semblance of a relationship. 

Blame Covid and quarantine and stress and loneliness and boredom and long term traumatic stress disorder and sleep apnea and laziness. Yeah, probs that most of all. Or just don't blame and look ahead.

So moving forward in this weird new normal. Healing is going to require a higher calorie intake. That's not giving myself permission to overeat or indulge. That doesn't mean 1,800 calories of cheesecake and KFC. I'm still going to have to keep the fridge stocked with good stuff and not junk (well maybe a little junk so I don't go scrounging for cookie crumbs in the couch at 2am). I will say that's been a good habit... To keep more good than bad available.  I've maintained that despite the wagon plummet.

I'm going to eat when I'm

hungry but it's going to be protein, veg/fruit and good carb heavy. I did it before, losing 100 lbs. So this should be a piece of cake...erm chicken breast 😁 more from my weight journey later. Feel free to shoot me questions or comments. (Please!! I've got a lot of hours ahead in need of filling!)

As always, 💕💕 you lots --mar