Today I was in Redington beach with my honey, just the two of us.
We took care of some business, then went swimming. I tell ya: sea jogging is killer, but only a few hours after you're done! While you are doing it, it is the most fun thing to do, and you don't even sweat while doing it.
If I lived near a beach, I doubt I would have any weight problems. It is too warm to overeat, and there are so many fun water activities.
Today, while shopping for a 3-minute egg timer at Bed, Bath and Beyond (the little hourglass kind, to time Stefan's potty sitting-- whole other post) I found a display of the Fullbar.
Created by a bariatric surgeon, these bars are supposed to stretch the upper part of your stomach, tricking your brain into thinking you are full. They are to be eaten 30 minutes before meals, and are purported to make you eat less.
Since it was way after lunchtime and I was very hungry, I grabbed two to try: the peanut butter and the cocoa chip.
I ate the cocoa one in the car, then followed with a drink of water.
My first impression was that they were glorified Rice Krispie treats. Kinda spongy, OK in flavor, but nothing to write home about. The bar did make me feel full, but then, so would anything that would soak up water and expand inside the stomach.
The Fullbar is a good idea, but has 30g of carbs, which I consider to be rather high - not worth it, given the so-so flavor factor.
Moreover, I suspect I could get the same results by eating a rice cake with some dark chocolate, (or peanut butter) and avoid ingesting the following ingredients: Brown Rice Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel Oil, Anhydrous Dextrose, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Soy Protein Concentrate, Honey, Gum Arabic, Glycerin, Agave Syrup, Canola Oil, (more) Salt, and (the mystery) Natural Flavors.
I actually intend to try that tomorrow. I could eat the rice cake and chocolate separately, therefore having more bites to take and more chewing to do.
Man. That sounds pathetic.Or funny, depending on your perspective.
Not to mention that the name of this thing cuts it really close to FUBAR.
I had the shortest fuse in the universe, and would have given anything to escape and just go somewhere quiet, but I had things at home that absolutely had to get done.
You see, I am going through carb withdrawal. After a few weeks of eating absolutely anything I wanted, I have reached the point where, if I don't cease and desist immediately, all the hard work over the past year will have gone to, um, waist. As in, "I spelled it that way because I feel my inner Michelin Woman taking over."
Today my only carb fix was whatever was in a tiny portion of dark chocolate chips from Ghirardelli. I would have killed for some cookies. Or some caramel. But I held strong.
Oh, and I got in about 30 minutes of hooping, which I am happy to report, I enjoyed.
Need to focus on patting myself on the back for doing that half hour, rather than beat myself up because I didn't hoop for a full hour.
But you can bet I'll do the full hour tomorrow. Because Michelin Woman must be kept at bay.
PS-- Check out the photo Janet Jackson chose to place on her website. Interesting that she would choose this one, huh?
My long-awaited new hoop arrived moments ago, from Customhoop.com. I already have the two-pounder, but it has been giving me problems, namely, too much pressure on my pelvic area. It just feels as if I am doing some sort of damage if I hoop for extended periods with it, so I ordered one that is one pound, only.
Excuses are no longer an option.
The hoop is here, my brother-in-law is downstairs picking up my niece and Stefan is resting (hopefully napping, soon) so all I have to do now is put on a show *I* want to watch, and go for it.
My Pilates teacher also called, twice, wanting to know if I intend to restart in the fall. The answer is: I don't know. I took a break because she had knee surgery, and, truthfully, because I needed a break, too. Not from the training, which is great, but from another thing I *have* to do, another place I *have* to be.
The biggest stress in my life is the tight schedule, that during the school year, is crazy, and not very flexible. So, I do not know what I want to do. Yeah, I do know what I want to do: keep my money and buy a Reformer, and work out when *I* want to. Problem is, more often than not, I do not want to.
Good grief, I think the greatest difficulty for people is overcoming their intrinsic laziness. Which I intend to do right after I click on "publish post."
So, I have allowed myself enough time to be sad and wallow in my Michael Jackson funk.
Today, I think I'm done. This is how I have dealt with sadness over the past 10 years or so. It works for me. I give myself a limited time to be bummed, after which, it's, "OK, that's enough, get over it already, let it go, and face the sunshine."
Unfortunately, Michael Jackson never did that. After weeks of reading up on him, I have come to the following conclusion:
Attitude killed Michael Jackson.
I challenge you to think of anyone, past or present, who has had a 100% perfect life. All of us are born with one deck or another stacked against us. It is what you choose to do with that deck that makes the difference. You can either wallow in your misfortune, or you grab those lemons and make, not only lemonade, but heck, a lemon drop martini!
Michael chose, instead, to let his lemons rot. In the end, they wound up looking like those you find in the corner of your refrigerator drawer-- you know the ones, with the greenish, fuzzy mold, the ones that that fall apart into a pile of stinky slime when you attempt to pick them up.
A shame, because along with those lemons, he was dealt a wealth of exotic, unique fruit. Yet he chose to focus on the lemons, lemons, lemons, until he self-destructed.
This light bulb went on in my head last night, when I found this 1993 footage of Michael being honored by his sister, Janet, at the 35th Annual Grammy Awards. Part one shows how he managed to accomplish so very much, and how appreciated and admired he was for his works and charity. Part 1
In part two, however, after he accepts the award and makes a great joke about finally dispelling the myth that he and Janet are one and the same, instead of focusing on the wonderful fruits for which he was just honored, he turns right around and goes on and on about the lemons. Part2
At the risk of sounding devoid of compassion, I must admit that it was an eye-rolling moment for me. "Oh, get over it, already, " I muttered.
Michael lived his life lamenting what "was done to him." He did not take responsibility for the bad things; no, they were all done to him.
And at that moment, I was able to let go of my anguish and grief, realizing that no matter who you are, your life is what you choose to make of it.
Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.
And now, in your honor, I head downstairs to make myself a thriller of a lemon drop martini.
Something is going on with me. What? I am not sure. I wake up in a pool of sweat, often in the middle of the night, and during the day I have very little energy. It is as if someone pulled my plug, and I am running on low battery.
I know menopause has her bony toe in my door, attempting to begin pushing it open. That would explain the night sweats. But why didn't this happen a few months ago, when I was avoiding carb overload and doing such a great job controlling myself?
I eat healthfully in the morning, and by evening, the Carb Monster shows up, demanding to be fed, like the grotesque Little Shop of Horrors plant.
When it rumbles, "Feed me!" I go on autopilot.
And, no, I still have not brushed the dust off my hoop, nor done anything more with my me time than lie around, or sit here, watching Michael Jackson videos and reading biographies and magazines about him. At times I think I'm over his death, and a few hours later, here I am, crying over some rare little sun-breaks-through-clouds smile he gave during an award show or interview.
Why?
After over a month of feeling like a fool, I think I've finally figured out what's happening to me. I think somewhere deep inside, I am feeling as if Michael Jackson's death is the slow beginning of the end for me. A vibrant, talented person who was always somewhere out there during my entire lifetime is now gone, lying in a refrigerator at Forest Lawn Cemetery. His lightning-fast dancing feet have been stilled, his unmistakable voice, silenced.
He is not coming back. Ever.
I realize I am not only mourning and grieving for Michael Jackson.
Ever since June 25, I have been more and more obsessed with Michael Jackson. I have been voraciously taking in, daily, anything and everything I can find on him. I have perused You Tube, watched countless interviews with him and with people who knew him, sat through footage of videos, older and newer, even the press coverage of the now infamous sex molestation trials.
Over the past month, I have obsessively searched for an answer to the question, "What happened?" His premature death is haunting me, and the more I read about him, the more perplexed and fascinated I become.
The last time I had really paid attention to Michael Jackson was when he came out with "Bad." After that, I got turned off by the constant plastic surgeries and reports of his increasingly strange behavior. He ceased to be an amazing artist and began to be a tabloid caricature, not worthy of more than a passing glance and a shake of the head.
But he was always there, someone who was part of everyday life, appearing now and then in the press as an eccentric has-been, who dangled his (suspiciously white) baby off a balcony and further distorted his already messed-up face every 6 months. I would read yet another weirdo Jackson story, roll my eyes, and pay zero attention to any and all music and work he released.
I was actually on Twitter the moment TMZ reported that he was being taken to the hospital, in cardiac arrest-- and I remember thinking it must be a mistake.
The man was, give a few years, my age, and way too young for heart failure. An hour later, I sat there, unable to believe the words on the screen: "Michael Jackson has died."
Michael Jackson, dead? Impossible. People I've "known" since childhood who are my age can't die. They can't. Especially slender people with dancer's bodies, who get a lot of exercise and have personal chefs cooking up nutritious meals.
I had no idea, at the time, of his drug habit, his insane usage of anesthesia, of all things, for sleep, nor of his anorexic tendencies. He restricted himself to one meal a day. He would go for days without eating, and, when he was working, sometimes his manager would feed him his usual once-a-day meal of broccoli and grilled chicken, as one would feed a child, because Michael would be so engrossed in what he was composing that he just would not take the time to eat.
The next few posts will be about Michael Jackson.
Why? What does this have to do with an exercise blog?
Ah, glad you asked. You see, Michael was suffering from a horrible thing calledBody Dysmorphic Disorder. In an interview I saw with Oprah, he admitted that he could not look in the mirror because he was never happy with what he saw. That when he was a teenager, his father had called him ugly and teased him about his face, making him so self-conscious that he cried, wanting to die.
Gee... sounds familiar.
I still hear my dad saying, "You are fat. " The last time he said it wasn't too long ago; it was when I was pregnant with my older son. I was so proud of myself, because I only gained 22 pounds over the course of the entire pregnancy, and yet at 5 months, when all I had was a teeny bump, he said, "Yeah, you've gained weight, but you will lose it, I'm sure, later. Oh, but your belly will be stretched. It's going to hang."
I was devastated. I truly expected, "You look wonderful and are doing so well, controlling the weight." But, no, as he had beginning when I was 13, he went on and on about me being fat and how I had to "Take weight off."
Parental tapes are so deeply embedded in the subconscious. Even after our parents stop criticizing us, the tapes play in our minds, over and over again, and they are very, very hard to tune out.
Some of us are lucky, and find a support system that keeps us from repeatedly listening to the tapes, and hopefully stops us from being self-destructive. Others, who are not so lucky, go about battling their demons alone, and end up irreparably damaged and full of self-loathing.
And some end up dead.
I stop here tonight, and am posting a picture published in Ebony in 1985. It is an artist's rendition of what Michael Jackson might look like when he turned 40. Of course, back then, all he had done was narrow his nose, making him absolutely adorable. He didn't need to do a thing more; he had a gorgeous facial structure, sexy lips, soulful eyes, and a smile to die for. Tragic, that he was unable to see just how beautiful he truly was. Even more tragic, that instead of looking like this when he turned 40, he ended looking like...well, like exactly what he tried so desperately to avoid.
Used to be that solo drinkers were considered closet alcoholics.
I remember back in the 90s when the wine mania began in the United States, hearing women say, "I am at home, enjoying a glass of wine," and thinking, "Drunk. Boozer. Dipsomaniac."
How could one drink alone? It was unthinkable.
Fast forward almost 20 years, and here I am, at 4 PM, BWD (Blogging while Drinking) and actually feeling pretty good about it, given the recent research on Resveratrol and the mounting evidence that one daily glass of wine can be beneficial.
Add to that another day of repeatedly interrupting screaming and crying fits, while trying to figure out which of the three needed to be reprimanded, and I am actually thinking I earned the darned thing. I have my hoop ready to go, and am looking forward to a nice, core-tightening, back-loosening session. But first, I intend to relish every drop of my Feteasca Neagra, my favorite wine in the whole, wide world. Not only is its lush, berry/plum bouquet inimitable, but Romanian wine never gives me heartburn and sulfite headaches, which, sadly, a niceChâteauLafitteinevitably does. Cheers.
Wow. It has been almost a year since I posted here. How to encapsulate a whole year in a blog post? Well, if I keep it about fitness, then it shouldn't be too hard.
I feel myself slipping again. For the longest while, I had control, and somewhere along the line I got lazy and lost focus.
Much easier to scarf down Starbucks coffee ice cream with Mrs. Richardson's butterscotch caramel topping and candied pecans mixed in. All on a wonderful Oreo cone. MMMM... caramel.
Yeah, I am still a caramel junkie. It seems to be my downfall. 5PM seems to be the time I usually stop being good and just go on autopilot, looking for sweets. It is also the time when I look forward to my niece being picked up, turning me back into a caretaker of only two, as opposed to three, children.
Oh, I could go on and on about the current childcare arrangement, which has been going on now for almost three years. In the beginning, it was easier, because when the nanny left, my niece would nap, and so would Stefan, so I was able to wind down and, yes, hoop.
Nowadays, not only has the schedule become much more demanding (her parents demanded that I stop the naps because she was still bouncing off the walls at 11PM) but so has she. The child is used to saying, "I WANT" and it being handed to her 99% of the time, with no demands that she employ a nicer way of requesting. And although that doesn't work with me, it works with the nanny, who often gets leave early because it is just easier to deal with the kids myself.
You see, you don't mess with Auntie Rose.
Recently, the phenomenon of tattling has begun, and the parents get "MAMA I WANTED A LOLLIPOP AND AUNTIE AND NANNY SAID NO!" right as they walk in, which, of course, will get her three lollipops. And my nanny will get a very dirty look.
Enough complaining, because it isn't nice. OK, one more thing and then I'll change the subject: the LOUD meltdowns and the drama fits are starting to really try my patience. If I am anywhere in sight, they don't occur. But if I am not around, such as upstairs...you get the picture.
So Auntie Rose stress eats. And stress eats more when third child is picked up late. This week it is happening a lot, because BIL is overseas, and SIL is rarely capable of being on time-- unless it's a concert or other fun event, in which case she is the first to be ready.
So, when the house is finally quiet and my boys are watching TV and chilling, my thoughts and footsteps turn to the freezer.
The pounds and flab are slowly creeping back, and if I am not careful, I will be in really big (literally) trouble.
Which is why, starting tomorrow, I am back on the hoop, baby.
