Letter to my husband

Dear husband,
I understand that you're bored to death with the food around here. I totally get it. Chicken, fish, tons of vegetables and fruit, it does get old after months and months of eating the same thing. Grilled, broiled, baked chicken or fish, steamed, roasted or grilled fresh vegetables. I know...b-o-r-i-n-g to you, but delicious to me because I'm freaking half-starved most of the time.

I wish I had more time to try wonderful new recipes to make healthy food more appealing to you. Unfortunately, as you well know, my job has been consuming me these last few months. If I'm not working at work, I'm working at home. That's just the way it is right now. I don't have a choice. It's a new job, and a very demanding one. I have to do what it takes to be successful at this, finding a different, lower stress job right now isn't an option and not something I even want. Even though I complain about the amount of work, I actually like it a lot more than what I was doing. It's a great opportunity for me.

Therefore, I won't be trying new recipes anytime in the near future. Plus, and we've discussed this numerous times, I do better eating the basics. When I get all fancy and make really delicious new recipes, I tend to eat more. It's in my best interest to stick to the basics. I know that's selfish, but you know me, I am a very selfish person when it comes to my health.

I've tried hard to not be your food police. I don't make snide comments anymore when I see fast food wrappers in the trash. Yes, I've seen them, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell. I use to nag you about it but I've long since let that go. What you eat is your business not mine. I'd like you to make healthier choices (no fries!) but as much as I want you to eat right, I can't make you. I remember when you'd make comments when I use to buy junk food and how angry I would get at you. I won't do that to you.

There is one thing I need you to stop doing that's having a very negative impact on me. Stop bringing food into the house that a.) you know I love and b.) that's completely unhealthy. My case in point are the corn chips, carrot cake and barbecued ribs that were here last week.

The ribs weren't that big of a deal because I'm actually over my love of fatty meat. It just doesn't appeal to me anymore. So I can let that one go, but the carrot cake and corn chips?! My God man, you know my addiction to those two foods.

When I found the half eaten carrot cake in the freezer out in the garage I thought I was in the wrong house. You don't even like sweets so what was that all about? You know I love carrot cake, more than just about anything. Especially carrot cake with gobs of cream cheese frosting. Luckily I was feeling strong on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then it was gone on Thursday (I know because I went searching for it).

Thursday. That was the day everything went to hell. The day my manager said one of the projects I'm managing would be done by June 19 or all hell would break loose. The day the developer on the project told me no way would he be done coding by June 19. The day I was told I had to spend two weeks in Tulsa in July, one week in Bohemia, NY in August and attend a conference in Atlanta in September. The day the Director told me I would have ten more cities added to my list of cities coming on board in the coming year for common use (my project: common use airports). The day I wanted to quit my fucking job because it was just too much. The day I came home at 9pm and said to hell with it all.

You were asleep when I came home that night. I found the corn chips in the pantry. I'd seen them earlier in the week in the kitchen, then they disappeared. I thought you'd eaten them. There was at least a half bag (large bag) left. I ate the whole thing. It was a day when I realized my food addiction is alive and well. That I wasn't cured. The corn chips led to half a gallon of sugar-free ice cream covered with organic raspberries and lots of honey. Then four slices of Dave's Killer bread covered with Smart Balance butter stuff and honey. I felt sick afterwards. I had a full-out binge. Something I hadn't done in months. It was a very dark day.

What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm like an alcoholic or a drug addict when it comes to food. I can't have things in the house that are bad for me and I love. I can't resist them. I will eat that stuff until I kill myself. It's like poison to me.

Like I said, I'm not your food police. You may eat whatever you want. I won't condemn you or nag you about it. I only ask if you must have corn chips or carrot cake or any of the other foods I love, that you keep that stuff out of my reach. The freezer and pantry are not out of my reach.

I don't think this is too much to ask. You've told me over and over how proud you are of me for losing this weight, and how good I look now that I'm thinner. I remember you saying a few weeks ago that I look like the girl you married 21 years ago.

I know you like having a thinner wife, we've discussed your concerns over my health when I was heavier. Although I know it was more than my health you were concerned about. You didn't like having a fat wife. You never came out and said it, but it was pretty obvious. I don't hold that against you, you can't help how you feel. You're just not attracted to fat women. It broke my heart at the time, but I've accepted it.

So if you don't want me to weigh 240 pounds again, or more likely a lot more, please stop bringing all this crap into the house. I'm weak when it comes to foods like corn chips and carrot cake.

I will eat myself into an early grave if presented with the opportunity. The only way I can control myself is to not have these foods available to me. I can resist buying them, I seem to have that kind of control. I only ask you resist having them in the house. If you love me, you'll do this for me. Please.

Love,

Diana

Note: I've posted this on the refrigerator. He hasn't see it yet. I'll let you know what he says.

The miracle weight loss that isn't (DUH!!!!!)

This isn't something you'll be seeing shouted from every media source, and I'm shocked to see that it was on MSNBC (and I wouldn't have known it was there if it hadn't been posted in its entirety on Yahoo group OSSG-gone_wrong).

Eileen Wells was smiling as she was wheeled into surgery. She was too excited to feel nervous. At 38, she was about to get “a new lease on life,” she says, echoing jargon in weight loss surgery ads. She had seen the before and after pictures in celebrity tabloids, watched the TV infomercials, listened to the patient testimonials and researched online. She was ready to begin her own transformation. At 5 foot 3 and 290 pounds, she was sick of being fat. Her joints ached. Her feet hurt. A stroll through the mall near her home in Greenwood Lake, New York, was enough to leave her sweat-slick and gasping for air. She was anxious to say good-bye to sleep apnea and dieting, ready to take control. And so in March 2005, Wells underwent a laparoscopic gastric bypass. She was grinning right up until the anesthesia knocked her out.

From the menu of weight loss (bariatric) operations, Wells had chosen the Roux-en-Y bypass, the most popular option in the United States. The surgery sectioned off her stomach to a thumb-sized sac — sharply limiting the amount of food Wells could eat — then connected it to a deeper portion of her small intestine, to limit absorption of the calories she did consume. (An increasingly popular alternative, gastric banding, cinches in the stomach to restrict its capacity.) The rearrangement required Wells to radically overhaul her eating habits. She learned to eat tiny, frequent meals, cutting her food into pencil eraser–sized bites. On her doctor’s orders, to replace nutrients no longer absorbed by her digestive tract, she faithfully swallowed a multivitamin, calcium and B12 supplements and two protein shakes daily. Soon she resembled the women in those weight loss infomercials: Fifteen months post-op, Wells had lost an amazing 160 pounds — more than half her body weight — bringing her down to a trim 130.

But although Wells looked like a satisfied customer, she didn’t feel like one. Seven months after surgery she had developed an agonizing ulcer on the new inner seam between her stomach and intestine, which required a second operation. Not long afterward, Wells recalls eating a bite of tuna steak her husband, Ron, had prepared and doubling over in pain; an ambulance rushed her into surgery yet again, this time for an intestinal hernia — her bowel had snagged on a slit in her abdominal wall. A fourth procedure followed to ease the pain of the abdominal scarring from her previous surgeries. Meanwhile, Wells’s gastrointestinal pain had become so severe that she could barely eat. One day while shoe shopping, she realized she couldn’t flex her right foot. Within weeks her limbs began to tingle, her energy evaporated and her weight plummeted. She stopped menstruating. By late 2006, Wells had shrunk to 105 pounds.
“I feel like I’m dying,” she told Ron. Months of doctors’ visits revealed that Wells had beriberi, a disorder caused by extreme thiamine deficiency. Rarely seen outside 19th-century Asia, it’s present enough among those in the weight loss–surgery world that doctors call it bariatric beriberi.

This is just one story of many, and don't you believe the hype that Wells is just one of a very small percentage that have this happen to them. If the membership rolls at OSSG are any indication, it would be fair to say that your odds of developing similar (or more, or worse) complications are probably 50/50 no matter how closely you follow your surgeon's/doctor's directions, and that's just within the first year (and the longer out from your surgery you are, the more complications you're going to have and the more severe those complications are going to be, mainly because doctors refuse to accept that they don't know all there is to know about this surgery, and if you have problems, they're "all in your head"). Once you've had this surgery, your surgeon doesn't want to see you anymore because your complications are bad for his business of pushing this surgery on as many people as he can because anything is better than being fat (and yes, even though it's not recommended for anyone with a BMI under 40, surgeons are still doing this surgery on people with BMIs lower than that). Doesn't matter if you don't have any of the co-morbidities that are supposedly a requirement for having this surgery, along with a BMI over 40. If you don't have one of those (high blood pressure, CVD, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc), the surgeon will come up with one for you. And that psychological exam you have to pass? They'll fudge that for you too (if you aren't smart enough to be able to tell them what they want to hear, even as depressed as I was, on 40 mg of Prozac twice a day, I managed that).
So go read the whole article, it's very enlightening and should scare the hell out of anyone who thinks WLS is the magic miracle cure for TEHDEATHFATZ.

It really does taste like a rootbeer float

The Weight Watcher Smoothie mix, 1 can diet root beer and 1/2 cup crushed ice, in the blender for two minutes. Tastes just like a root beer float according to some lady at the Weight Watcher meeting on Sunday. I tried it tonight and she was right. It really does. All for one Point.

It's too bad I discovered this after I started reading Omnivore's Dilemma. Last weekend I declared I was giving up all artificial, non-organic stuff. My husband just shrugged his shoulders, he remembers my vegetarian phase about twelve years ago. It lasted almost two years, but it was too hard and my hair started falling out...I gave up.

I haven't cleaned out all our cabinets yet, so I still have some of the Smoothie packets from several months ago (I don't like them just as a smoothie, they taste weird).

Have you ever read the ingredients on a box of those Smoothie mixes? Check it out:

I don't think those are whole, organic ingredients. I wonder why the "Yellow 5" is in there. Is that to give the shake the perfect color? Was it too white? Some of the stuff is actually sort of natural, although very processed. For example, carrageenan is derived from seaweed.

I wonder how they come up with this stuff, a combination of non-fat milk and natural and not so natural ingredients that tastes like a milkshake (or so they claim). Imagine that job, let's take some di-glycerides, mix it with some acsesulfame, add some tocopherols. I wonder how years of eating this kind of stuff affects our bodies.

Note: MizFit's comment cracked me up. The truth is, I may not be willing to do this clean eating 100%. While I was tossing and turning last night (couldn't sleep), I thought about what impact this change would make on my life. The truth, a lot of giving up stuff I love and extra work for me. I'd have to give up convenience foods, even ones from the "natural" foods stores. And exactly how will it affect my health at this point in my life at the old age of 53? Probably not much.

All things in moderation, right? I'll lean towards more whole foods and organic, and of course, free-range chicken and beef (grass fed beef), but an occasional chemically created root beer float for one Point, honestly, how can I pass that up?