Merry Christmas

Sad, Confused, Wheezy, and Soon to Be Hungry

So depressing to see the sale go up again, but what did I expect after a week-long binge.

And why did I binge? Because it was vacation and the foods I ate were "forbidden" ones - mostly bakery donuts. I ate my regular breakfast and lunch most days and enjoyed a few days of burgers with the boys, and most of those I ate low-fat veggie burgers. We ate take-out just once — Chinese food, and I chose one of the all-vegetable dishes from the "healthy" menu — and because we didn't hit any mall or movie theater during the week there were no extra snacks. We didn't even do a big traditional meal for Thanksgiving but had burgers with the holiday side dishes (stuffing & cranberries, and my snack later that night was a bowl of Brussel sprouts).

My official gain for the vacation is only 3 1/2 pounds. I used to gain or lose that in one night, depending on how salty the food was that I ate the night before, so why am I so obsessed over it this time? Is it because I really enjoyed eating the same foods as my family for a change? That I ate those treats without any thought of guilt and now it's all come crashing down on me?

Maybe I really should make an effort to re-read the Overcoming Overeating book as the group is doing on Friends of Overcoming Overeating. I really need to absorb the message again.

And I really should toss out that scale!

I think part of my problem is the fact that I've been a bit short of breath and phlegmy from my asthma the past few days. I stopped taking my Singulair at the start of vacation in an effort to see if that medication was the cause of my fatigue, since my doctor says it can't be from my thyroid and fatigue is one of the side effects. I also really didn't get much exercise in this vacation. Usually we're roaming miles through malls or the streets of Manhattan, but this time we had a lot of little pissy things to do closer to home and no money to spend in malls. I really can't do one of my exercise videos while my husband is asleep just a few feet away on the other side of the wall, so that could be a reason for the breathing problem, too. And the weather. We had some rain outside, dry heat inside, and both bother my asthma. So why am I blaming this on my weight?

So this morning I took my Singulair first thing in the morning and already did my Mindful Movements video. I'll be grabbing my oatmeal breakfast as soon as I finish this post, will have my usual salad, rice & veggies for lunch, and dinner is Greeny Beany Soup with a loaf of some sort of whole-grain bread. Even last night I had my traditional banana as an after-dinner snack, but if I feel like some banana bread, I have some slices in the freezer, and I'll eat one without guilt.There's really no way that I want to throw myself back on the dieting merry-go-round. I might not lose much weight, but I'll have my sanity. Well, at least getting a little closer to finding it, that is.

Then again, I do have a doctor's appointment soon, and if I weigh more than the last visit I'll never hear the end of it. Maybe that banana bread better stay in the freezer.

Damn Donuts! And Day 30 of 30

I stepped on the sale yesterday. I didn't want to do it, especially not when fully dressed and after a 24 ounce glass of water, 12 ounce mug of coffee and cup of oatmeal plus fruit breakfast, but it was calling me. When my husband went into the bathroom I gently removed the item of torture and placed in on the flat kitchen floor, took in a deep breath, and stepped on.

It reads 5 pounds heavier than it did at 5 in the morning on November 21st.

I'll get an official reading tomorrow morning at 5am, after my husband goes back to work. I'm certain of a gain - one doesn't share in a few dozen donuts and fudge brownies over a ten day period, plus a few very salty meals (like Chinese food, even though it was low fat and vegan) and not suffer the consequences - but I'm sure it won't be a five pound gain.

I put the sale back into its lair under the bed and promised myself to stick to strict McDougall MWLP until I lose not just those 5 but an additional 130 pounds. We were on our own for dinner again so I made a pot of Broccoli Cheese soup from a post on the McDougall forums earlier this year, and Rainbow Skillet Medley, a MWLP recipe.

Three hours later my husband comes into the room with the dregs of the donuts and insists we finish them off. Like a good little wife I did as he requested. At least those things are now GONE and even he realizes we really can't handle them any more at our age. If either of us feels like something sweet, more than just a piece of fruit, it's going to be made from a McDougall-legal recipe.

Here's to a healthier December!

Richard Simmons and Anorexia

Every now and then, in his Message of the Day, Richard Simmons reminds people how he was anorexic in his younger days and would go on fasts and even purge. Every now and again he also tells people that even though he lost his weight the unhealthy way, we shouldn't follow his example, only his current food and exercise plans. He eats 1600 calories and exercises a minimum of an hour a day of cardio, plus 3 days a week weight training and possibly his "day of rest" he walks an hour.

People who follow his food and exercise plans do lose weight, but Richard has also mentioned a number of times that he meets people a year or more later than many have regained all their weight because they no longer follow his plans. Could it be because according to his charts, an average-height woman at her goal weight should only be eating 1200 calories a day, a level about 200 calories below what the World Health Organization says people around the world should be eating for optimal health? And when a body's intake is consistently below it's needs it slows the metabolism down and retains even more of those calories put into it, so when a person who has been on a restricted food plan finally snaps and has a binge (fully explained in the Overcoming Overeating book) their body gains more weight than if they had just eaten normally all along.

Dr. McDougall, on the other hand, reminds us in his MWLP book and lectures that the body is a magnificent machine that knows what it needs. We don't over-breathe, he says, and if we only ate the foods he deems safe we can't over-eat, either, and that by eating only the allowable foods our bodies will naturally go to their correct weight. Well, many of us have proven otherwise and not lost and have even gained weight eating only MWLP-legal foods, and no, we haven's let things slip in, like oil, higher fat foods, or flour products. Not even the couscous (which was added as as editing mistake) or tortillas (which he allows at the live-in program), ONLY foods listed in the MWLP book. For some of us, we just ate too many calories; for others, once they switched jobs and were no longer active for 12 hours a day, the weight first stopped coming off then started coming back on. Dr. McDougall told us we should eat less starch and more green/yellow vegetables. Gee, then it's more Eat to Live than the starch-based McDougall program, isn't it? And for those of us who still continued to gain, he recommended the Rice Diet - the original one, as followed at the Rice House in Durham, NC to this day, that is 600 - 800 calories of only 1 serving of starch (3 ADA exchanges) and 3 fruit exchanges for all three meals a day. Anyone can lose weight for a while at that calorie level, but eventually metabolisms slow down enough that people have even gained while still eating 800 calories and exercising an hour each day - whey they had the energy to, that is.

So what's the point of this post? No idea, except to bemoan once again how fat I am and the depressing reminders that everything I've done to lose this bulk has failed, from the attempts of my first doctors who had my mom water down my formula when I was a newborn infant to my current physician who refuses to give me enough thyroid hormone replacement to keep my TSH in the normal reference range, insist I restrict myself to 1000 calories and do a minimum of 60 to 90 minutes a day of cardio exercise, then gets angry at me when I can't eat that little and can't exercise that much without making myself ill and come into his office showing a gain instead of a loss. I'm due to go back to him again now for an official weight loss check-up visit (I've seen in in-between for other problems). He already knows that I haven't lost any weight since the last official visit. He knows I still feel like crap from my hypothyroid. He already knows I've been in pain and unable to exercise as much as he wants. So what's the point of even going?

And what do I do next? Do I do again what I did before the last weight loss check-up and starve myself by eating half the amount of oatmeal at breakfast and only salad and soup for dinner for a few weeks and then make the appointment when the scale has finally shown a loss? Do I go and tell him where to shove his scale and get off the merry go round and get labeled non-compliant so no other doc will ever want to go near me in the future?

I hate living like this, but I hate to lose this doc. As much as I disagree with him on so many things, his practice is still one of the best in the city. We can get an appointment the same day, we can talk on the phone with one of the doctors without charge, we can easily get referrals and copies of our paperwork, and with 5 doctors in the practice there's always someone around.

I guess I better go change my menus for the next few weeks so there's soup for dinner every night. Either that or start reading up on the Rice Diet (home version) again.

Two More Food Holidays to Go

Yesterday went quite well, with me staying 100% McDougall for all three meals and dessert, too! I figured I ate enough crap during the rest of vacation, and since I had already planned a McDougall-legal Thanksgiving I may as well stick with the plan.

Black Friday today. We spent our money at the laundromat instead of a mall, We'll spend the rest of the afternoon - my husband's last few hours of vacation time - at home. Our son went out so we have the house to ourselves. Knowing us we'll spend the alone-time either watching bad horror movies or catch up on the past few seasons of Scrubs. It'll be back on sooner than we think!

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring

Food-wise, that is. Yeah, I know it's Thanksgiving, the great American holiday when the rest of the country eats like we binge eaters would do every day, but in this family we really don't eat anything special or make any special plans except for the taping of the Macy's Parade for me to watch Monday when I get the house to myself again.

And we can sleep late. That's always a good thing when we usually wake up before 5am on work days.

The kid wants mac and cheese for lunch and turkey burgers for the holiday dinner; I would prefer chili, and hubby doesn't care, as long as it's hot and plentiful. I have ingredients for all of those meals, plus a heck of a lot more. Being that I'm in charge of cooking, what I'll probably do is put on a nice big pot of vegetable soup early in the day so the house smells like heaven. Hubby will have tuna salad and the kid his mac and cheese for lunch and I'll have my traditional rice and veggies meal. For dinner we'll have the soup, salad, stuffing, French fried potatoes, turkey burgers for the guys and Boca burgers for me. If we're still awake and plan on watching television as a family later on (We rented Hancock so maybe we'll pop that on) the kid will have chocolate ice cream for his dessert and hubby and I will finish up the stale donuts that he bought the other day.

Sounds like a plan.

Jeff Novick YouTube, plus Overcoming Overeating & McDougalling?

His videos were there all along, but this time he made his own YouTube channel and has a few videos he says are rough drafts of his lectures. I haven't been able to see them yet (Need to borrow a faster computer or I'd be here all day waiting for one to load) but someone said the woman in the videos with him is his cousin.

And on another topic, I'm still trying to figure out how to mesh the principles of both McDougall (or just veganism itself) and Overcoming Overeating together. One restricts half the food in the world, the other says no food/food group is to be avoided except when it comes to your personal health (like diabetics avoiding sugar, celiacs avoiding gluten, people with allergies avoiding their allergenic foods). Maybe once the new group gets a bit better established I'll toss it out there, as avoiding fats and high protein foods but eating the OO way towards all the allowable McDougall foods are for personal health reasons.

30 in 30 - Day 24

But being today is day 1 of my husband's vacation I won't be able to write a long, or even anything bordering on intelligent, post today. We've got some local shopping to do and a few DVD's to catch up on, and perhaps we'll also take naps this afternoon. Excitement, huh?

Overcoming Overeating - New Yahoogroup

I've mentioned Overcoming Overeating a number of times to help curb my binge eating behaviors. For those of you who never heard of it before, here's how the authors of the books describe their philosophy from one of the FAQ questions:

Q: If I let go of my food restrictions, won't I just eat everything in sight?!

A: This is a very common fear of people just starting the OO approach. Everyone naturally assumes that if they let go of the food restrictions that they THINK have kept them from overeating, they'll start eating and never stop! However, in reality, the food restrictions were CAUSING the overeating (binging) and by eliminating the restrictions, we can put an end to the "diet-binge cycle". Once we realize we can eat whatever we want, whenever we are hungry (either stomach or mouth), that urgent need to "eat it all NOW" diminishes greatly! To our surprise and amazement, most of us find ourselves eating much less than we previously did while trying to "control" our eating.

Basically it's non-dieting, intuitive eating, natural eating, and all that jazz.

Over the past year or two I got a lot of information from the ladies who post on the "official" OO Support group on Yahoogroups, but lately there's been a lot of tension over there as the owner and one of the moderators are VERY strict about off-topic posts, or even those that the poster thought was on-topic but didn't suit the owner's narrow definition of being on-topic. Because of that, over the years many people started their own Overcoming Overeating groups on Yahoo and Google Groups, but all seem to have been take over by spam. I found out yesterday that another group was just started, Friends of Overcoming Overeating, and the owner of it is urging those of us who have joined to let others know about it so the group can grow.

So, if you've ever had a problem with binge eating or compulsive overeating and found Overeaters Anonymous doesn't work for you, why not give Overcoming Overeating a try and join the new group if you haven't read any of the OO books or the official group if you have (The owner of the official group won't let anyone join unless they can vouch that they've read both Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. The new group has no such requirement).

It's A Problem We're Having, Too

We have an elderly relative who needs assisted living but can't enter until her house is sold, and with what appears to be more houses for sale than not in her town, it looks like that's never going to happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/22home.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

November 22, 2008

Housing Crisis Snares Elderly Who Can’t Sell

By JACK HEALY

The housing crisis has kept thousands of older Americans who need support and care from moving into retirement communities or assisted-living centers, effectively stranding them in their own homes.

Without selling their houses or condominiums, many cannot buy into retirement homes that require a payment of $100,000 to $500,000 just to move in. So they are scratching themselves off waiting lists, canceling plans with packing services and staying put, in houses that fit well 30 years ago, but over the years have become lonely, too large or too treacherous to navigate.

“It is part of the hidden problem of the recession,” said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “Every neighborhood, every family’s got them.”

Facilities that have watched their waiting lists wither and their occupancy rates fall in the last year are now scrambling to bring people through their doors. Some assisted-living centers have called in real estate agents to teach prospective residents about online advertising and how to clean and preen their homes for showings. Others have set up programs with banks to provide bridge loans to homeowners, or are discounting apartments and offering low-interest loans.

The Cedar Community, which provides a range of housing for the elderly in West Bend, Wis., has seen independent-living occupancy rates drop by 4 percent this year. There were so many people waiting for their homes to sell that the facility decided, in some cases, to let new residents pay month-to-month until they could unload their houses and use the proceeds on the facility’s entry deposit.

“We’ve never done that before,” said Tracey MacGregor, a spokeswoman at Cedar Community.

But for people like Ruth Scher, 85, selling their home is a critical first step before moving on, or moving anywhere. Ms. Scher put her two-bedroom condominium in Delray Beach, Fla., on the market last year, but no one has made an offer.

In the 34 years since she moved to South Florida, Ms. Scher’s husband has died, the siblings who moved south from New York to join her have died, and her friends have moved away. She is recovering from a fall that broke her clavicle and suffers from arthritis in one shoulder, and she says it is time to move back.

“It’s lonesome,” Ms. Scher said. “So many other people have passed away or moved away. It’s very lonely. The children would love me to come up and I would love to, but I just can’t sell.”

Ms. Scher hoped to move to a retirement community in Cornwall, N.Y., where she has friends. But in the year her home sat on the market, she could not even find a broker willing to sell the property, she said. She finally de-listed her condominium.

“They tell you, ‘We’re sorry, we can’t get any people to come and look,’ ” Ms. Scher said. “If I can’t sell here, I can’t go nowhere.”

There is no way to say how many older Americans are in similar straits, as no statistics track how many of America’s 4.27 million unsold homes are owned by people 65 or older. But industry groups and administrators at retirement homes call the problem a growing one, which worsened as the financial crisis spread from real estate to lending markets. It has been felt worst in regions hit hardest by the housing bust.

“It remains to be seen whether we have a short-term stress, or whether we’re facing a crisis,” said Mr. Minnix, of the Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. “We’re into brand new territory here. It is deeper and potentially broader.”

Across the country, occupancy rates for independent and assisted-living facilities have fallen slightly in the last year, by about 2 percent through the middle of 2008, according to the National Investment Center for the Seniors Housing and Care Industry.

But the problem is playing out acutely in hard-hit areas like Florida, where the vacancy rate at some facilities is up 20 percent to 30 percent over last year, said Paul Williams, director of government relations for the Assisted Living Federation of America. At Luther Manor, a retiree community in Milwaukee, the number of residents moving into independent living has dropped 20 percent this year. In southern Ohio, 65 percent of the people who visited the Bristol Village retirement community this year said they could not buy a unit because their homes were still hanging around their necks.

For these businesses, each occupied room generates thousands of dollars each year. Retirement condos charge monthly fees ranging from a few hundred dollars to $5,000, while the average price for private-pay care in assisted living is $3,013 per month, or $36,156 per year, according to a MetLife study.

At the Crosby Commons assisted-living center in Shelton, Conn., where waiting lists that once ran two years or more have shrunk to six months, some residents who moved before selling their homes are spending through their savings as they wait, said Lois Poultney, the center’s director. One resident had to move from Crosby’s free-market homes to its subsidized rent-controlled apartments, Ms. Poultney said.

“I’m hearing it over and over again: ‘Mom needs to sell her house before she can afford to move in,’ ” she said.

There are signs some families and retirees are turning to adult day care services as a stopgap. Providers say their business has spiked as people look for an alternative to continuing care or home aides to provide food, companionship and therapeutic services. But Mr. Williams of the Assisted Living Federation said that people who need more day-to-day care, those who have trouble getting up stairs or who need someone to check on them, were taking a risk by staying at home.

“When they’re coming in at 85, they’re coming in very frail and needing services,” he said. “They can’t wait this out. They need the care when they need the care. That’s the scary part. You have people putting it off when they need care right now.”

For Katherine Styberg, 84, that moment of realization came when she slipped on a patch of ice in February and fractured a vertebra. She has to use a cane when she walks now, and she says she has been thinking about how she lives alone, and if she fell in her two-bedroom condominium in Milwaukee, no one could catch her or help her up.

The real estate broker calls Ms. Styberg a day before bringing potential buyers to see her apartment, and a few have come to look around, but no one has made an offer yet.

As parents linger in their homes, they say their children start to worry. Some adult children are even facing financial hardships if they cannot sell their parents’ homes.

In April, Ruth Swessel, 84, of Milwaukee, had a stroke that aggravated the effects of her aging, leaving her unable to follow “Meet the Press” or read the political magazines she once loved. Her daughter, Laura Westling, had to put her into skilled care, and the family began the process of selling Ms. Swessel’s house to pay for the facility’s $60,000 annual cost.

The house has been sitting on the market since the summer, and Ms. Swessel’s family has lowered the price twice, to $174,500 from $189,900, but they have not been able to close a deal. Her children are spending her investments to pay for her care, but Ms. Westling said they did not know what they would do once that money ran out.

“It’s not easy,” she said.

As stock markets have slid in the last year, homes have become a more critical source of wealth for retirees who have watched their mutual funds and 401(k) accounts hollow out. Next to accrued Social Security benefits, housing is the single greatest asset for people 60 to 70 years old, making up 22 percent of their total wealth and outweighing investments and pensions, according to the Center for Retirement Research. For retirees like Herman McHan, who watched the value of his mutual funds fall to $35,000, from $70,000, or Sylvia Merlin, whose portfolio has lost nearly $200,000 of value, owning an interminably on-the-market home compounds the worries of their dwindling investments.

For Ms. Merlin, it is a disconcerting place to be at age 93. She said she and her late husband, Al, had lived modestly to raise their four children, taking one vacation a year, to the Jersey Shore. She is on oxygen now, and finds it harder to get around her fifth-floor apartment outside of Philadelphia. The doorman’s wife takes her to the hairdresser on Fridays, but Ms. Merlin said she wanted more consistent care.

“I’m going to be 94, and I need help,” she said. “Making the bed is difficult. I need a little help taking a shower. Those things are difficult. I was a great cook, but I really don’t cook anymore. I bought the TV dinners, and they’re pretty lousy.”

No one has made an offer on her condominium, and Ms. Merlin said the retirement home had refunded the $1,000 deposit on the $130,000 unit she hoped to buy. Now, instead of moving, she said she had decided to stay.

“I just couldn’t go anywhere until I sold my apartment,” she said. “I and a lot of other oldsters are stuck.”

R. I. P. Pushing Daisies, and Overcoming Overeating/HAES

I just read on a Disney-related mailing list that yes, it's officially canceled. Oh, well. At least Scrubs is taking half its place on Wednesday nights come January, followed by Lost at 9pm. Oh, happy day! I better get hustling re-watching the series. I'm only half-way through season 2, with Charlie set to discover Henry Gale's balloon in the next episode.

But I won't be able to do that next week. Vacation time! We're going to use those precious few days together to sleep late (hopefully), watch plenty of television, shop in at least one mall with a bookstore (I have a list!), and eat whatever we want, starting with a boxful of bakery products my husband will pick up on his way home from work in about 4 hours from now.

One thing I'm specifically going to work on is dropping the guilt from eating food. Already this morning I told my husband no less than four times (twice via email) not to buy the donuts, that I shouldn't be eating them, and each time he told to to shut up, he's buying them anyway, that there's no reason I can't enjoy them. I'm already packing up all my diet and weight loss and "healthy eating" books for the week and bringing out the HAES and fat fiction ones and will soon start reading the revised edition of Overcoming Overeating (Finally!) and have the Intuitive Eating book on reserve at the library. I must admit that I do feel better physically when I eat a more varied diet, one that includes meat and dairy and a wee bit of chocolate. Now to convince myself I'm not going to go to hell or get hauled off by the food police if I do. My son already told me he's hoping I make his favorite butter cookies for Christmas this year, that he misses them the years I'm on a diet and refuse to bake them.

People On-Line Thought I Was Exaggerating

People down South and from the mid-West really have no concept of how bad this economical situation is where I live. They think I live in a mansion because we pay over $1100 a month rent because they have an entire house with an acre of land, 4 bedrooms and two full baths rented for half that amount. When I say I pay over $2 for a stinking head of lettuce they accuse me of buying organic from, well, who knows where.When I mentioned a few years ago that our local hospital was laying off nurses I was told I must be making that up or mis-read something, that there's a nursing shortage. And when I mentioned that local hospitals have not only been closing specialty units (We lost maternity and pediatrics, as well as psyche and almost all out-patient services, like physio-therapy and well-child clinics) but actually going bankrupt, I was laughed it. It's not until I send them articles like these that they believed me.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27809791

Economy is sickening U.S. hospitals
Data shows decline in admissions and increase in patients who can’t pay
The Associated Press
updated 5:14 p.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 19, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. - The dismal economy has American hospitals ailing, with new data showing declines in overall admissions and elective procedures, plus a significant jump in patients who can't pay for care, the American Hospital Association said Wednesday.

Hospitals also have been hurt by losses on their investments due to the turmoil on Wall Street, and many are finding it more expensive to borrow money — if they can at all, according to a report from the association, which represents about 5,000 U.S. hospitals.

"The worst part is the combination of all of the above," said Rich Umbdenstock, the association's president and chief executive.

Some of the hardest-hit hospitals began reducing staffing and services as early as last spring and more will follow, although hospitals are trying to limit the impact on patients, said Umbdenstock. He said hospitals are more likely to eliminate entire services — money-losers or ones with high operating costs — than to make across-the-board cuts that weaken all services.

"There have been hospital closures (this year), particularly in some of the more heavily impacted areas," such as New Jersey, where hospitals are providing more and more unreimbursed care, he said.

The downturn is hitting hospitals worse than other industries, he said, and many already were struggling due to pressures including government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid not paying the full cost of treatment. Hospitals are worried the Obama administration's health care reforms will affect reimbursement rates for those two huge programs, which cover 55 percent of all hospital patients.

A hospital association survey about conditions over the past three months drew responses from 736 hospitals, and the association report also uses figures from the July-September period collected from 557 hospitals that send quarterly reports to a central system run by the Colorado Hospital Association.

The Databank hospitals' investment results amounted to a combined loss of $832 million, compared with a $396 million gain a year earlier — a big problem because normally investment gains help make up for some of the costs not covered by patients and insurers.

Meanwhile, the interest those hospitals paid on borrowed funds jumped by 15 percent in the third quarter, compared to 2007's third quarter, another difficult squeeze because hospitals generally borrow money for expansions and upgrades, multimillion-dollar technology and even sometimes to cover payroll and pay regular vendors.

Other key findings:

* 67 percent of hospitals saw some drop in elective procedures; 6 percent saw a significant drop.
* 63 percent saw some decline in overall admissions; 9 percent saw a bigger drop.
* Inpatient and outpatient surgeries and emergency department visits were all down roughly 1 percent in the third quarter.
* Half of hospitals have seen a moderate or significant jump in uncompensated care, with a jump averaging 8 percent. The association cites unemployed people losing their health insurance.
* Total profit margin at the Database hospitals dropped from an average 6.1 percent in 2007's third quarter to an average loss of 1.6 percent in 2008's third quarter.
* 56 percent of hospitals are reconsidering or postponing renovations or expansions, and about 40 percent are delaying improvements to information technology or other equipment.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27809791/

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© 2008 MSNBC.com

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And this one:

http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/11/19/2008-11-19_price_dropoff_misses_nyc.html

Price dropoff misses N.Y.C.

BY WILLIAM SHERMAN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, November 20th 2008, 1:20 AM

Plummeting energy costs triggered a big drop in consumer prices in the New York area last month - the biggest four-week decrease in 53 years.

The local figures - a 1% decrease for all items in the Consumer Price Index - are roughly in line with the statistics for the nation, according to Department of Labor statistics released Wednesday.

But the October fall is no reason for New Yorkers to celebrate. We're paying more for just about everything including clothing, food and rent, than we were a year ago.

Overall, the metro area CPI is up 4.3% for the year in categories that include a 6.7% spike in food and beverage costs, while apparel is up 4.5%, and rent has grown 5.5%, according to the New York Office of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And one item, the increase in food prices here, including a 0.5% pop up last month, is a mystery to government economists.

"There's really no explanation for rising food prices," said Michael Dolfman, Regional Commissioner for the Bureau.

"When fuel prices go up, you expect merchants to pass those increases on to consumers and fuel is a big component of food costs because food has to be delivered," he added, "but now we have a drastic reduction in fuel costs and we haven't seen reductions in food and commodity costs."

An answer to the mystery was suggested by several retail merchants interviewed. Once prices go up for most goods and services, it's very rare to see them go down.

"Flour is down, but my bread suppliers haven't reduced their prices," said Saul Zabar, owner of Zabar's, the specialty food emporium on Manhattan's West Side.

"I know other commodities are down, eggs and milk but it's the same there. We have to go after the wholesalers and get them to pull their prices down," he said.

Still, there are bright notes for New York consumers that showed inflation is in check, according to the October statistics.

Energy costs fell 9.2% for the month, and medical care, a category that had been rising sharply for the past five years, fell 0.4%.

wsherman@nydailynews.com

Well, Maybe It's Not So Bad

I had some more of that Quaker instant oatmeal today, this time mixing the pumpkin spice in with my regular old fashioned oats. Much better!

Another thing much better is my foot. It still hurts a bit, but not like the past few days. Perhaps I mis-diagnosed myself this time.

Got some decent exercise in, too, Richard's Blast Off video, the original. Of course I had to revise it a bit for my foot and neck, as always, but still worked up a little sweat.

Not much else today.

30 in 30 - Day 18

Too bad I really have nothing to post about.

Ouch!

I have to watch how I step, as I'm pretty sure my plantar fasciitis is coming back. Every time I step down on my left foot the pain starts up again. The first time I had it I was in pain for two years, trying all kinds of exercises and treatments. The only thing that really got rid of it was the new orthotic. I have a feeling I might be needing a new one, not just a re-lining of this old one.

Because of this foot pain I popped that new Richard Simmons DVD in, Sit Tight. It's worse than I feared. Even the exercisers, even RICHARD, had a hard time keeping up with the steps, mixed up the moves, or couldn't keep up. The camera work was shoddy, sometimes focusing on the woman with cerebral palsy as steps were changing to something completely different than what she was doing or even capable of doing, and many times when they showed a group shot you can see that many were either behind, doing the steps wrong, or completely lost and just sitting there waiting to find a place they could jump in to. I lasted a few seconds beyond the 17 minute point when my neck just gave out on me. I'm gonna pay for this today! Here it is, hours later, and I can barely lift my right arm or turn my head. Tomorrow it's back to the nice and slow Mindful Movements.



I wrote yesterday about that Quaker Oats/Walmart pumpkin spice oatmeal, and how I was going to have my first packet this morning. Yuck! A mouthful of grit and chemicals. At least my husband will enjoy the rest of them. Tomorrow I'll be back to my old fashioned oats with plain old fruit mixed in.

I Love Oatmeal!

I have oatmeal for breakfast a minimum of 5 out of every 7 days of the week. Once in a while I'll make scrambled tofu, and every Sunday I have a vegan burrito. But every other day I grab my trusty old 4-Cup Pyrex measuring cup, dump a few raisins in the bottom, add a cup of filtered water and a half cup of old-fashioned oats, nuke for 2 minutes, then add either fruit or a spoon of peanut butter and cocoa powder, mix well, and yum, yum eat. This meal holds me until around 2pm most days, and that's pretty amazing for someone with hypoglycemia!

I like to mix it up with all different fruits, but now and then I just have a yen for something, well, different. The first cool day after a long summer usually finds me opening a can of pureed pumpkin, and for the next week or so, or until I get so sick of it I dump the rest of the can in the garbage, I have pumpkin flavored oats. Well, Quaker has done me one better. I found out on this and other blog posts that Quaker and Walmart are having a promotion of limited time only flavors of instant oatmeal, pumpkin spice and roasted pecan. I'm usually not a fan of instant oatmeal because of the sugar, and even if I had 4 packets of instant the meal doesn't hold me more than an hour because of that, but I couldn't pass up buying these yesterday at the tiny Walmart in Harrison, NJ. (I call it "tiny" because it's about a quarter the size of the Walmarts I used to go to when we lived in Kissimmee, Florida. God, I miss that place and can't wait to move back when hubby retires!) It's always jammed, filthy, aisles are over-crowded and the lines take forever to get through, but it's the only Walmart I've got so I'm stuck. It was worth the 15 minute wait on line to pay for my 4 boxes of oatmeal. Today was burrito day, but tomorrow morning I'll be diving into my first bowl of Quaker Pumpkin Spice Walmart-only oatmeal, and it better be good!

If I didn't Have Neck Problems Before . . .

. . . I would certainly have them after doing the Sit Tight video by Richard Simmons!

What was he thinking? More specifically, how did the choreography by Anne Czarkowski pass muster with any medical expert? Perhaps it didn't - maybe these videos aren't observed by anyone in the medical field before release? Being a video for the handicapped I assumed it would be.

Anne is one of Richard's trainers in his gym, Slimmons. She's the tall blonde front and center in the first Sweatin' to the Oldies video, and has been with Richard since the opening of the gym, I believe. The Sweatin' videos, which even Richard has admitted lately while on the publicity tours, are still the fan favorite, even at 20 years of age. Perhaps that's because the woman who choreographed them, Dorain Grusman, made sure that the moves were easy enough for everyone of every fitness level to do, that they were repeated enough times that people could do them right instead of changing steps every 4 beats, like this, and many of the other newer (past 10 years) videos of Richard's. Heck, some of the steps changed in a 2-count!

And so fast! I always watch an exercise video before doing it, and this one made my head spin. 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 and stop, video's over. Huh? I'm still trying to figure out what the heck the move was 10 steps ago!

I realize a video for people in wheelchairs has to focus on upper body work, but do with a bit more slowly and safely, okay? People's necks were whipping around so fast I thought they would get whiplash! And the arm flailing! I thought I was in a revival meeting at times! I can't do those moves with my neuritis and osteoarthritis without harming my neck and back. I need this video to be slowed down to at least half the speed. His original video for the handicapped, Reach for Fitness, not only was do-able sitting or standing by people of any fitness level, but the moves were much slower and simpler to do. If my old tape didn't break I would still be doing that one on my achy days. This one can only be done on days I feel in tip-top shape.

Another $20 tossed into the garbage in the futile pursuit of fitness, another $20 in the pocket of the weight loss industry. I wonder what the return policy is like? When I returned the BlastOff set back to QVC a few years ago I got every penny back, as they had a no questions asked return policy. I hope Richard has one, too. Nope, "damaged or defective" merchandise and replacement product given. Oh, well.

Only 210 More Minutes to Go for the Week

All these studies coming out that say nope, a low cal diet isn't going to do the trick if you want permanent weight loss. What you really need is to exercise yourself into a frenzy. Oh, and if you want the weight to stay off? Well, then you're going to have to keep increasing the amount of exercise you do each day until eventually you'll have to exercise aerobically 18 hours a day (The last 8 hours your body needs to rest or your brain explodes, or use those hours to do weight work and build those muscles up, fuck mental health). You an also eat starvation level calories while doing all this until you'll eventually won't be able to eat any food at all without gaining weight, as your metabolism will have slowed down to keep up with all the exercise.

The more and more I read and just observe as I go through life, the more I realize the only way to be thin is to be born with the right set of genes.

Sure, there are those rare reports - so rare that these people get magazine articles written about them - who lose a hundred or more pounds and keep the weight off, usually until the article gets published. Those are the people who were born at a normal weight, normal to thin their entire childhood and young adulthood, gained weight after some event in their lives - childbirth, medical problem, certain medications, injuries, etc. - and as soon as they started exercising again or stopped eating 10,000 calories of food each day went back to the size they were before the event. The people who were born fat, were fat as children - even while on very low calorie diets throughout very active childhoods - and their young adulthoods will stay fat into their old age, no matter what food plan they follow, no matter how much exercise they do. It's been proven time and time again. Read any weight loss message board or blog and you'll find thousands of us, some who are still trying to lose weight in their 70's and have been trying since their childhoods.

Anyway, all this leads me to this thread on the McDougall forums. How do people do it? How can they get in a few hundred minutes of exercise every week and still have a life? Or joints? I pull a muscle doing a Richard Simmons stretching tape that others have said put them to sleep and have dislocated my shoulder doing a toning video of his. Leslie Sansone's WalkAerobics videos now aggravate my sciatica, and for a long time I couldn't do them - or even walk too far in "real life" - because of Achille's tendinitis and plantar fasciitis. I once blew my knees out falling off my bike, and I was in my 20's back then, and three times broke my left wrist while on roller skates.

I was very active as a child, always running, climbing, biking, playing ball, and since we had no car, walking every where I wanted to go. Our school had calisthenics in the schoolyard every morning for at least 15 minutes before the bell rang and again before the bell after lunch. Gym class brought more formal exercise, and because I was fat, my parents had me do workouts with Jack LaLanne every morning before school and repeat them again after dinner (Yep, on a full stomach. Well, as full as it gets on 1000 calories a day, which is the diet I was on for just about every year of my childhood, from toddlerhood through adolescence and continued into my adult life with the occasional dip into the 800's when the doc and my mom got frustrated because I wasn't losing). I stayed fat. When I hit high school and no longer had the time to do all that exercise, and PE class consisted not of calisthenics but sports and the President's Physical Fitness Test, I did gain a bit of weight, but not that much, probably 20 pounds, mostly because I was rebounding from yet another stint at less than 1000 calories and going through puberty (which didn't hit until the winter of eighth grade).

I was an active young adult, first working as a nurses aide (now known as health assistants or something) while going through nursing school, then as an LPN working the occasional 16 hour shift in ICU-CCU, while going to school for my RN and degree, then working as an RN, still doing the occasional double shift, but also running a household and caring for my m-i-l who had Alzheimer's and leukemia. And this was when hospitals weren't as automated as they are now. We washed bedpans, we shook down mercury thermometers, we hand-cranked beds and flipped mattresses every day, we delivered all the patient food trays, lifted them in and out of beds without hoists or lifts. Nursing was very demanding physical work! Not like it is now in the two hospitals I recently visited people at. Not only was everything electronic and computerized, but nurses, even the aides, no longer did a lot of anything physical. Lifts and hoists to move patients, bedpan wrappers so when the patient is done you just tie off the plastic bag, specialty people coming in to do things the nurses used to do themselves. In one hospital the nurses didn't even give out meds, there were med technicians who did all that. The nurses mostly stayed in the nursing station working on computers. What happened to nursing care? The gentle reassuring touch that told the patient everything is going to work out all right?

I lost all train of thought. All I remember about it now is that there always were fat people, there always were skinny people, and no matter what one does, there really isn't any way to turn one into the other permanently. Just take what you got and be happy with it.

Longevity Soup

Five ingredient recipes are beloved by everyone, and if they follow the rules of The McDougall Plan, so much the better. Dr. McDougall has a nutritionist in his employ named Jeff Novick. Now, not everything Jeff says is 100% McDougall, like his insistence on people popping their daily foods eaten into something called the CRON-ometer, a nutritional information database developed by the CRON - Calorie Restriction for Optimal Nutrition, the people who believe that eating a super-low calorie diet prolongs life, which, ironically, is a higher calorie diet than what most doctors put their fatties on. He wants you to make sure your daily foods cover all those micronutrients, like selenium and folic acid, and that the calorie count stays fairly low - he insists normal healthy adults can live on 1200 to 1500 calories a day, even have enough energy to bike a few hours and do an hour or more of other aerobic exercise. Dr. McDougall, in every one of his books, tells us not to count calories or go bat-shit checking every little nutrient, that as long as we eat a diverse diet within his guidelines we have everything covered except for B-12, and for that he recommends a B-12 injection every three years.

But one of the things Jeff did that I do agree with is post his file of 5-ingredient recipes. Today's soup comes from that file. He calls it Longevity Soup.

Longevity Soup
1) 1 can whole tomatoes, 1 can pureed
2) Your favorite beans (I use kidney or garbanzo)
3) 1.5- 2 lbs of Your favorite frozen veggies plus 1 lb of frozen collards
4) Your favorite starch (potato, sweet potato, rice, barley) cooked separate then added
5) your favorite seasoning (I use fresh ginger, garlic)

I used a bit more tomatoes - 2 giant cans of crushed and a 15 ounce of diced. I added a small bag of mixed frozen vegetables as well as 2 giant chopped carrots and spinach instead of collards. Instead of adding a starch into the pot I'm making a loaf of bread to go with the soup. And garlic. Plenty of garlic. I also added 2 giant cans of water. It looks and smells fantastic!

The bread, on the other hand, has more ingredients than the soup. It's a new-to-me recipe and I'm making it for the first time, so let's see how it goes, shall we? I'm omitting the oil and using dried parsley and celery flakes and had to add a bit of liquid (I used water) to moisten the dough as it kneaded.


* Exported from MasterCook *

Veggie Bread

Recipe By :Sandra L. Woodruff
Serving Size : 12 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : ABM breads Whole Wheat


Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
1 teaspoon yeast -- instant, bread machine
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon oil -- or lecithin granules
1 tablespoon honey -- or barley malt
3/4 cup buttermilk -- non-fat, OR
3/4 cup non-dairy milk and 1 teaspoon
vinegar
1/4 cup grated carrot
1/4 cup celery -- finely chopped
2 tablespoons green onion -- finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley -- minced

Put everything in your machine according to the manufacturer's
instructions, on the whole wheat setting if you have one.

Source:
"Smart Bread Machine Recipes - Healthy, Whole Grain, and Delicious"
Copyright:
"1994"
Yield:
"1 pound"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Per Serving: 97 Calories; 2g Fat (14.8% calories
from fat); 4g Protein; 18g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 1mg
Cholesterol; 178mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 0
Vegetable; 0 Non-Fat Milk; 1/2 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.


Nutr. Assoc. : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

It All Comes from Eating Too Much

Remember that line from Winnie the Pooh? Rabbit says it to Pooh after he gets stuck in the rabbit hole. I, like Pooh, love to eat. I'm not that much of a honey-lover, but give me a ring of kielbasa and mashed potatoes and I'm in culinary heaven.

Mmmmm, kielbasa!!



(Gee, remember the episode of Scrubs when Dr. Molly Clock, played by Heather Graham, uttered those famous words?)


I think I know what I'm making for our anniversary dinner tonight. We pretty much decided against pizza last night. Right now we have so much leftovers in the refrigerator that we'll still be eating them over the weekend, so my husband suggested instead of making our traditional anniversary pizza tonight we'll work on the leftovers. At the time I agreed, but I don't want leftovers! Come on! 31 years of marriage and we celebrate it with leftovers?!?! If he doesn't want pizza, fine, but maybe phallic shaped meat would be more symbolic. I'll concede defeat with the leftover bread.

Yes, I am a food lover. I eat when hungry; I eat when happy or sad; I eat when nervous or relaxed; I eat to celebrate or to mourn. But mostly, I eat because I love the taste of the food. And what's so wrong about that?

So tonight we celebrate. If we're lucky, besides celebrating Thirty-one-derful years of marriage, we'll celebrate getting the kid's ultrasound results (Yep, still waiting) and getting our Rosie back from the garage without too big a dent in our credit card (Still waiting for that, too). Unlike 31 years ago, we'll be celebrating with our son and will most likely spend the night like every other night - watching Jeopardy, 21, then popping a DVD in the machine, maybe Kung-Fu Panda or hey, what about a Dr. Clock episode of Scrubs?

Dear Veterans

Thank you.

Half Asleep

I wish my doctor would believe me when I tell him my thyroid is low and I not only need another lab test but an increase in my meds. I'm so tired I'm napping every afternoon and still falling asleep in front of the tv, some nights as early as 7 pm. I can't do the amount of exercise I need to do, even want to do, because I get part way through and experience severe muscle aches and tiredness as well as loose my "umph." Exercise isn't effective if you're just going through the motions without putting any effort into it. But the doc says I've been stable for 3 months and he feels there's no need for a test, no need for a med increase. Although even LabCorp finally dropped the reference range, my doc is one of those who feels any TSH level under 10 is fine and dandy. It doesn't matter if a patient has a TSH as low as 1.x and still feels like shit. His prescription is to eat less and exercise more. He gave me the same orders when I first complained about my chronic fatigue and hypoglycemia 25 years ago. Ah, an old story on this blog, not worth rehashing again.

Our main car, a 1996 (?) Toyota Corolla, is still at the garage as they try figure out why the brake lights stay on even though the brake isn't being depressed and the headlights aren't turned on. They already changed all the fuses and did a few diagnostics, but I guess it's going to take a while. A few years ago our other car, a Toyota Camry Wagon LE, had rear lights that wouldn't light, the opposite problem. It took four different garages before the cause was found and even then it was only partially fixed - the lights now come on but the inside light doesn't. That was the car that was hit twice in the left front bumper as well as was involved in the fireball when it was parked next to the garage when the gas station we had it at (for those electrical repairs) exploded. Aside from a few minor dings and discoloration in the back tinted windshield from the heat of that of that fire in 2003 the car is going as good as new.

Soup and homemade bread for dinner yesterday and today again. Butternut squash soup and bread yesterday, minestrone soup and sun-dried tomato bread today. Tomorrow is our 31st anniversary - pizza!

Gotta go get my Amazon order in. MXC discs 4 and 5 finally came out today, as well as Scrubs season 7. I still didn't finish watching season 4 on DVD. As soon as those discs were delivered the episodes started playing in constant rotation on Comedy Central. But MXC - a.k.a. Most Extreme Elimination Challange? We've been waiting for these discs for ages and will watch them at least a dozen times, then start with season one and watch them all over again.

Thanksgiving Already?

It's coming very soon. The first harbinger was all the sales in the grocery store and the "seasonal" aisle filled with pumpkin pie fixings and stuffing boxes. Then yesterday's newspaper had photos from the annual testing of the Macy's Parade balloons. And of course, all the Christmas commercials on tv and songs on the radio. Last night my fingers got twitchy and I almost pulled out my Brian Setzer Christmas album! Ack!

All this means I have to seriously start thinking about what we're going to eat that day. My husband said pizza, the kid prefers burgers or mac & cheese, I wouldn't mind a traditional turkey dinner but nobody wants dried out meat, so I suggested Bryanna's soy and seitan vegan turkey loaf, but my son wants nothing to do with either tofu or seitan and my husband reminded me that it makes a three pound loaf and only 2 of us would be eating it.

So, I may just do what I did other years and make up a bunch of side dishes. Everyone enjoys mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, roasted carrots and Brussel sprouts, peas, stuffing, and biscuits. I might even make up that mac and cheese. Yeah, who needs a dead bird.

The previous post asked if I will ever get back to 100% McDougall compliance, and I can honestly answer "No."

Life is too short, food tastes too good.

I live to eat, not eat to live. If all I wanted to do was eat to live I would eat the protein/enzyme slop they fed Neo in the Matrix movie. I go out of my way to find new recipes, to try new foods, to avoid repetition in my meals. If I'm served a bland meal, I'll finish it, but look around for something different to eat also, Dr. McDougall recommends eating bland foods and chosing the same 5 or so meals to serve over and over, to avoid stimulating the taste buds. I go bonkers eating the same things three days a week - pizza on Friday, spaghetti on Saturday and burgers on Sunday. I purposely make my pizza different every week, choose a different sauce and protein addition to the spaghetti, and different burger toppings, just to mix it up a bit. I don't even like eating the same "holiday" foods each year and have had Thanksgivings where we had mac and cheese and pizza on Christmas, just to avoid getting into a food rut.

I've found that no matter what food plan I choose to follow, my weight stays about the same. Looking over my off-line journals I've been within the same 10 pound weight range for almost 20 years. One year I was up 20 - that was the year I first injured my neck and had foot problems, both of which resulted in not being able to exercise or even *move* without pain. Two years later I was down 20 from where I am today, but that was the result of a starvation diet, eating 800 calories or less each day and still not being able to exercise as much as I had prior to my injuries. To this day I still can't do much exercise without injuring myself, aggravate an old injury, or cause a CFS flare-up which would put me in bed for a week. My weight isn't back to my all time high, just to where it was before I hurt my neck. I go up and down 10 pounds, sometimes within the same month. It's not going anywhere so I really should just accept it and not obsess over it, but after 55 years of weight loss diets, it's hard to stop.

Spending Like There's No Tomorrow

Unfortunately, it's all stuff we need. Fortunately, all of what I ordered helps lower my grocery store bills.

First was my twice-yearly Mail Order Catalog spending spree, where I bought more vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, cHreese, and a few pieces of Primal Strips. This replaces all the meat and cheese (and boxes of mac & cheese) in our house. I know Dr. McDougall is against soy-based meat substitutes because of the isolated soy proteins and plain old protein itself, but with my hypoglycemia I need to have readily available protein foods when the shakes hit, something that can be carried in my purse or coat pocket. It's better than grabbing a Slim Jim, right?

Next was Spices, Inc., where I stocked up on dehydrated tomatoes, peppers, and a few other items. Great for tossing into pizza dough to add flavor and nutrition, and some times the only veggies I get into my boys.

Then came something for mama that would help her eat less, further reducing grocery store bills. Another exercise video from Richard Simmons, Sit Tight. On days my arthritis and sciatica act up I use that as an excuse not to do any workout, not even Mindful Movements. Now I'll have a workout specifically designed to be done from a chair for those painful days.

Lastly, my annual SAF yeast order from the King Arthur catalog. I adore this yeast and nobody in my city even sells it in those expensive little packets, much less in bulk. Our city fathers banned warehouse stores, too, so even the cheaper brands are unaccessible without an hour's drive, so each year I order 2 pounds and keep them in the freezer.

With winter rapidly approaching, not to mention another Depression, I'll feel much better once my pantry is stocked up again.

Hippies!

I really wish I had saved everything from my past! It's all back in style now!

One of those things is cloth grocery bags. Back in the 1970's I was one of the few people in my city who brought my own tote bags to grocery stores. It was probably an article in The Mother Earth News Magazine that prompted me, and also gave me my first bag pattern. Okay, so most of the store managers insisted on also giving me my items in a paper bag and I could then do with it what I wanted, and I would usually step aside to a non-used checkout aisle and remove things from the paper bag and put them into my cloth bag, fold up the paper bag, and leave it. After a while it just became too time consuming, or I would forget to bring my bag, or our little family of two expanded, necessitating many bags, but over the years my using of the cloth bags fell out of favor.

Flash forward 25 - 30 years. Now some stores are offering incentives if you use your own bag, and in NYC they're thinking of charging a 5 cent tax per bag if you use plastic. Our mayor-elect (swearing in isn't until next week) also thinks it's a good idea and is thinking of doing the same thing. Ever since Earth Day 2008 local grocery stores have been selling their own bags - some are canvass, others are plastic, but all are ugly and have the store's logo prominently displayed. The prices vary widely, too. Some stores have them as low as 99 cents each, while others are charging an outrageous $10 or more. And they're cheesy and shoddily made, too. So many people are complaining how they have to buy new bags at least monthly to replace bags whose handles fell off or bags that ripped under the strain.

The solution to those problems is to make my own again. I have plenty of unused fabric in my stash, mostly novelty calicoes that I was going to use either for quilts or aprons but never got around to making. I also have a load of heavier fabrics that were bought ages ago from a fabric warehouse store that went out of business. I never used those fabrics for their intended purchases because being a "warehouse" that sold second-quality fabric and bolt ends there was some damage to every piece that wasn't noticed before purchase and probably hidden by the women who did the cutting. They never cut the fabric right in front of you - the cutting table was about 20 feet behind a counter along the back wall of the store so the employee's back was to you, blocking your view of the fabric on the table. Hey, it was the ONLY fabric store our city had for over 20 years, and since it closed, all we had was a non-closed crafting store that sold some fabric of almost similar quality but at 3 times the cost. That place lasted less than 3 years before the chain went bankrupt and we're now fabric-less again.

Anyway, my big job for next week is to start making my own fabric grocery bags again. My husband estimates that 12 should be plentiful, and both he and the kid, the 2 main carriers of said bags, prefer the traditional plastic bag style to the squared off tote bag with narrow strap style. They would also prefer a not-too-girly print or better yet, a solid color, but reversible will do if I insist on cutsie things for when I go shopping. I found exactly what I was looking for on this craft blog post. The instructor shows plenty of photos and gives clear, precise, step by step instructions on how to make a cloth reversible grocery bag in the plastic bag style, complete with its own built-in storage pocket so you can fold it up and tuck it into itself for a nice, neat package to tuck into your pocket or purse while shopping.



That reminds me of another thing owners of today's cloth bags complains about - carrying those empty bags around the store. Those tote-style bags are bulky, especially the plastic or plastic-lined ones, so if you have a lot of shopping to do and use a lot of bags they take up a lot of room in your already-bulging cart. Then you have to worry about someone swiping your bags from your cart when your head is turned. I've seen it happen. The same type of women who think nothing of leaving their purse in the wagon while they walk back to the next aisle to grab an item they forgot leave their empty bags unattended in the cart. I've seen people push their cart past the unwatched cart, grab a bag or 2, and keep on walking. Since everyone has the same ugly bag sold by the store, there's no way to prove ownership of the empty bag, because usually the same type of person who leaves her valuables unattended also never thinks to put their name in their bags.

So, if I get one a day done I'll be happy, but with everything that's been going on around here lately, I'll be happy to get one a week. I'll try photograph them as they're finished and post the pics.

November Menu Is Set

November Menu Is Set

It's been a crazy month so far, between the kid's job interviews and medical problems, the election, 3 doctor's appointments, lab and radiology (some for me, some for my son). Then the gloomy weather - I don't remember the last time I saw the sun. Oh, wait - it was as I was coming home from the opthamologist with my eyes fully dilated from the drops he gave me, and because it was raining when I went in I didn't bring my sunglasses so I was in pain for the next few hours.

And it's not over yet. My son is still waiting for the doctor to call him back with the results (He was out of the office at the time my son was told to call), and he still hasn't heard back from the job interview, but in that case she did say in 3 weeks and it's only been less than 2. I hope he hears something soon - his first student loan payment is due in 2 weeks.

And I'm still jerking myself back and forth between vegan foods and SAD (Standard American Diet). Don't get me wrong - I do love the healthy vegan foods that are available. It's just that some of it is so darn expensive! Rice milk is more than twice the cost of powdered skim; a batch of scrambled tofu costs about ten times more than 2 scrambled eggs; vegetarian sausage is more than twice the price of real sausage and sometimes has the same amount of fat, unless I make it from scratch. And I miss dairy cheese and yogurts. Not only are they much cheaper than vegan versions but they taste so much better.

But I really should avoid them. Tonight we were supposed to have this mushroom and barley thing, but my mushrooms turned fuzzy, so we're having burgers instead. I have no veggie burgers made right now so we'll have the turkey burgers that I have in the freezer. At least I have plenty of stone ground whole wheat burger rolls. I have plenty of fruit for snacks, especially bananas and apples, but have to get used to not putting peanut butter on them, or in my morning oatmeal. I made a tofu scramble this morning and felt guilty because of the price, but I was just so sick of oatmeal and needed a change.

And the dinner menus are not just chosen but printed out and hanging in the kitchen for all to see for the rest of the month. I have December's planned but not printed, too. Out of all these meals, every one is McDougall legal, as long as I eat cheeseless pizzas on Fridays, that is. :) This month we have 2 birthdays, and in both cases they want pizza, so again, a cheeseless pizza for me, with cheese for the birthday boys.

Our 31st anniversary is also this month. On the day of our wedding, my husband and I never got to eat dinner. As soon as the meals at the head table were served we were called by the photographer to get the cutting of the cake pictures. While we were gone the waitstaff cleared our plates! We complained loudly, even calling them idiots - Didn't they notice that every plate for the entire bridal party was untouched? They had no food left in the kitchen (Even the band ate their meals while we were getting snapped) so we were to go hungry. The kitchen helpers felt sorry for us and did give all of us a larger piece of cake each, but we were still going table to table asking our relatives if there was any FOOD. Our best man's mother and an usher's wife had some leftovers that they ate up, but the rest of us had to make do with some candy from the machine in the bar.

My husband and I were almost the last people to leave the reception. What the heck, we were paying for this party and not leaving for our honeymoon until the next day so why not?! As soon as we got to our apartment we popped a frozen pizza into the oven, put Tom Waits on the stereo, and started counting the money and signing the checks from the envelopes, as my mom was going to deposit it into the bank for us while we were gone. Every anniversary we go through the same routine - we eat frozen pizza while Tom Waits is playing on the stereo, and since we have no money we just count our blessings.

For You Monster Magazine Fans Out There

A read this plea today from bobbie on the Bad Movies group on Yahoogroups. For those of you who have memorized the script from every monster movie ever made, this is for you. For those who aren't fans, or are too young to know who Forrest J. Ackerman even is, go to his WikiPedia page or the Wiki page for his life's work, Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine.


Some of you may have heard this, as it has been posted in several
groups. Forry Ackerman is very ill. He has pneumonia and, considering
his age, many of us are very worried.

If anyone would like to send a card to cheer him up, please mail it to:


FORREST J ACKERMAN
4511 Russell Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
90027

(Thanks to good fan Jeff for posting this.)

When??

When will I ever learn?

Will I ever get back to 100% compliance to the McDougall Plan?

There has been so much stress going on in my (our) life (lives) right now, and I'm (we're) such an emotional eater, that I usually go off plan before breakfast is even over. For example:
On Plan - Scrambled Tofu with loads of veggies cooked in a non-stick pan
Off Plan - Scrambled eggs (2) fried in a bit of butter and served on a white-flour roll with a slice of cheese on top

On Plan - oatmeal and raisins with natural (no sugar) applesauce and a pinch of cinnamon
Off Plan - oatmeal & raisins & peanut butter & chocolate chips

On Plan - no-fat added bean burrito
Off Plan - cold pizza with extra cheese & meat

You know the old 12-Step Program slogan, "Each Day A New Beginning?" Today is yet another new beginning. At least I had the on-plan version of oatmeal already, lunch will be a salad with garbanzo beans, and dinner will be rice and veggies and a vegetable soup.

How much does it really cost to eat a healthy diet?

Money Is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons

By TARA PARKER-POPE

How much does it really cost to eat a healthy diet?

Economists, health researchers and consumers are struggling to answer that question as food prices rise and the economy slumps. The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day, or even less; in the United States, the daily food-stamp allowance is typically just a few dollars per person, while the average American eats $7 worth of food per day.

Even middle-class people struggle to put healthful food on the table. Studies show that junk foods tend to cost less than fruits, vegetables and other healthful foods, whose prices continue to rise.

This fall a couple in Encinitas, Calif., conducted their own experiment to find out what it was like to live for a month on just a dollar a day for food. Overnight, their diets changed significantly. The budget forced them to give up many store-bought foods and dinners out. Even bread and canned refried beans were too expensive.

Instead, the couple — Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, both high school social studies teachers — bought raw beans, rice, cornmeal and oatmeal in bulk, and made their own bread and tortillas. Fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t an option. Ms. Leonard’s mother was so worried about scurvy, a result of vitamin C deficiency, that they made room in their budget for Tang orange drink mix. (They don’t eat meat — not that they could have afforded it.)

Breakfast consisted of oatmeal; lunch was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Dinner often consisted of beans, rice and homemade tortillas. Homemade pancakes were affordable, but syrup was not; a local restaurant gave them a few free syrup packets.

One of the biggest changes was the time they had to spend in meal preparation.

“If you’re buying raw materials, you’re spending more time preparing things,” Mr. Greenslate said. “We’d come home after working 10 to 11 hours and have to roll out tortillas. If you’re already really hungry at that point, it’s tough.”

While he lost weight on the budget diet, Mr. Greenslate said, the larger issue was his lack of energy. During the experiment he was no longer able to work out at the gym.

A few times they found a bag of carrots or lettuce that was within their budget, but produce was usually too expensive. They foraged for lemons on the trees in their neighborhood to squeeze juice into their water.

Ms. Leonard said that after the 30-day experiment, one of the first foods she ate was a strawberry. “I almost cried,” she said.

The couple acknowledged that the experiment was something of a luxury, given that many people have no choice about how much to spend on food.

“People in our situation have the leisure to be concerned about issues like this,” Ms. Leonard said. “If we were actually living in this situation, I would not be taking the time to be concerned about what I could and could not have; I’d be worried about survival.”

Researchers say the experiment reflects many of the challenges that poor people actually face. When food stamps and income checks run low toward the end of the month, they often do scrape by on a dollar a day or less. But many people don’t know how to prepare foods from scratch, or lack the time.

“You have to know how to cook beans and rice, how to make tortillas, how to soak lentils,” said Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. “Many people don’t have the knowledge or the time if they’re working two jobs.”

Last year, Dr. Drewnowski led a study, published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, comparing the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area. The study showed that “energy dense” junk foods, which pack the most calories and fewest nutrients per gram, were far less expensive than nutrient-rich, lower-calorie foods like fruits and vegetables. The prices of the most healthful foods surged 19.5 percent over the two-year study period, while the junk food prices dropped 1.8 percent.

Obesity researchers worry that these trends will push consumers toward less healthful foods. “The message for this year and next year is going to be affordable nutrition,” Dr. Drewnowski said. “It’s not the food pyramid, it’s the budget pyramid.”

The experiment in California was hardly the first of its kind, though the teachers’ budget was tighter than most. Last month Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan and her family took a weeklong “food stamp challenge,” spending only $5.87 per day per person on food — the Michigan food stamp allotment. She told reporters that she ended up buying a lot of macaroni and cheese. Last year Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon lived for a week on his state’s $3-a-day food stamp allocation.

Ms. Leonard and Mr. Greenslate, who chronicled their dollar-a-day experience on their blog, onedollardietproject.wordpress.com, say they are looking at other ways to explore how difficult it is for people with limited income to eat a healthful diet.

“I challenge anyone to try to live on a dollar a day and eat fresh food in this country,” Mr. Greenslate said. “I would love to be proven wrong.”

well@nytimes.com

The Director Who Films Your LIfe Test

I had a problem embedding the code so just copy/pasted it all here. The link to the test is after the results.

Your romantic comedy-drama of a life is now in the hands of Laverne. We almost put Ron Howard in this spot, but we figured you wouldn't want the part of your dad played by Ron's little brother Clint (who's in EVERY one of his films). Penny will hire Squiggy, instead. She directed A League Of Their Own, Big, Awakenings, and Riding In Cars With Boys among few others.

The Director Who Films Your Life

I would rather have Clint Howard - I loved him in his role of Eaglebauer in Rock and Roll High School, and just about every zany character he plays in Adam Sandler movies. With all his famous friends and relatives in the "business" I'm sure he's make a great movie!

NaBloPoMo Day 3

I know I promised to write a post a day for a month, but what does one write when there's nothing new to say?

Should I blog about my son's current health problems? Nah, that would be a HIPPA violation.

About my food problems? Nah, you're all sick of that stuff.

The weather? What can one say about November in New Jersey, when it's too cool to be a "nice" fall day and too warm to be the harbinger of winter.

Landlord? Crazy aunt? Depressed husband? Failed recipes?

I guess I really don't have anything to say today.

Another Reason to Post

Yes, another reason to post daily, at least through the month on November - NaBloPoMo - National Blog Post Month!



So, I may not make a lot of sense, I may whine and moan, curse or pray, but at least something will get written. At least VeganMoFo is over so I'm no longer posting daily recipes. :)

I won't be posting to the official NaBloPoMo site for their feed, just here and my LJ blog. With Thanksgiving, our vacation, and the kid's current health problem, I may not be able to make a daily post, but I'll try.