For the Mumsnetters - a recipe book recommendation

Some lovely folks on Mumsnet (*waves*!) have been asking about Paleo and recipe books.  Now, to Joe (my personal trainer buddy and Paleo smartypants), this is all going to be way oversimplified, but the premise is this: You eat what the Paleolithic man ate.

Veggies
Fruit
Meat
Fish
Eggs
Nuts
Berries
Water

Paleo man hadn't yet learned to farm, so the following stuff is a no-no

Anything with grain (bread, pasta, etc)
Rice
Potatoes (every once in awhile, you can have sweet potatoes, but no white/jacket potatoes!)
Sugar
Dairy (sorry, no milk in your tea)
Beans
Caffeine
Anything in a box (cereal, oatmeal, macaroni and cheese, etc)

Essentially you are getting all your good complex carbs from the fruit and veg, and cutting out most of the simple carbs that usually go straight to your body as fat.  I know it sounds really restrictive, but it's not.  For example, I just had a huge rocket salad with 2 hard boiled eggs and diced onions/cucumber, topped with a quick dressing I made from the bacon fat and a little coconut milk, rendered down.  Name another diet that uses BACON FAT DRESSING as a good food?  ;) Also, your shopping is really easy, as you only go to the produce and meat section, which are usually right in the front of the store.  Aaaaaaand, you can do it on the cheap!  I got a bag of rocket for £1 at the Co-op, 2 eggs are about 50p (I like free range), about 50 worth of bacon, and maybe 50p worth of chopped veggies.  I bet whatever crap you may be eating from the vending machine cost you that much!

Now, I am doing a modified Paleo, as you can have my coffee when you pry it from my cold dead hands, but other than the first few days of sugar/simple carb withdrawal, it's actually pretty nice.  AAAAAAAAAAAND, you get bacon.  And as mentioned above, bacon is just awesome.

As for a recipe book, the one he recommended to me that I really dig is Everyday Paleo. The lady who wrote it is a mum who needed to make food her kids would like, as well as being quick/pre-planned (so you don't have to spend hours over a stove just to make a sad little piece of boiled salmon).  The instructions are super simple, and she has a great index of what foods are in and out.  Easy peasy.



I hope this gave you a great into to the Paleo diet.  As for exercise, I am doing lots of walking with baby (already did my mile today!), and will be starting back up on the Wii this weekend.

Welcome to Mumsnet readers, and some slight whining about magic pills

First off, welcome to all new Mumsnet readers! I am one half of the family blog Geek Family 2.1 , also on the Mumsnet blogger's network. Glad to have you on board for my weight loss journey. To get you up to speed, read here or just click around. For the rest of you...

SO.  So today I wasted an entire baby's nap looking at pep pills online.  Seriously.  I wasted almost an entire hour reading testimonials that I know are probably bought and paid for talking about how AMAZING these pills are, all in some vain attempt to circumvent the fat-losing process.  I could have spent that hour on the bloody Wii.  Argh.

The plan, as it stands, is to start in earnest on Wednesday, the 22nd.  I'd love to start tomorrow, but I have in the space of the next 5 days:

2 parties, one of which is a group birthday party for my son
1 documentary shooting (can't be mean and going through withdrawal on camera, sorry)
1 sister in law staying for a few days, because...
Hubby is getting wisdom teeth out, and
Baby is getting booster shots.

Screw you to Mars if you think I am going to go through carb withdrawal through THAT.

A vicious circle concerning family and food

I was just talking to my mum on Skype as I was getting baby's food ready.  She was commenting that he seemed very chatty and such, and I said that he woke up STARVING and very happily downed 2 clementine oranges.  (It should be noted that he normally only gets one, but I was peeling for both of us, and he freaked out when he saw mine, and I caved).  A few moments later, she said, and I quote, "It will be so nice in a few months, he can try cereal like Alpha Bits".  I scoffed that I'd like to hold off on him ingesting that much sugar so young (he's 12.5 months), and her answer?

"Ha!  How much sugar does his oranges have?"

o.0

Let's do some math, shall we?

Clementine Orange:  9.2 grams (per 100 grams of orange) of naturally occurring sugars.
Alpha Bits:  37 grams  (per 100 grams of Alpha Bits) of unnaturally occurring sugars, including table sugar and high fructose corn syrup.


Really?  Way to try and make me feel like a shitty mum.  My kid loves oranges - thank God!  He doesn't crave biscuits, he doesn't like cake, he's not even crazy about those baby rice cakes.  He's never had fruit juice (except for when he was very little an incredibly constipated, he had it very watered down), he doesn't drink anything other than milk and water, and will hopefully never have soda.  He loves melon, and apples, and bananas, and carrots, and sweet parsnips.  Shouldn't I be HAPPY that he loves natural foods, versus handing him sugar coated corn treats and calling it a friggin' day?  I guess not.  I guess I have to get shit for feeding him real food, while in the same breath being told to feed him processed food.

What is Paleo, and why am I trying it?

Looking at food options, my safest bet seems to be a modified Paleo diet.  In the interest of full disclosure, I will say I have done a rather strict Paleo diet for a month, about 6 months ago, and it *did* work - I lost about a stone (14 lbs or so).  So I know it works.  The trick is not wanting to kill everything in sight/get a divorce/etc when you go through the carbs withdrawl.  Let me explain...

My best friend Joe (who is a personal trainer, amazing resource on all things Paleo, and just a good chap) has many many posts concerning the diet/lifestyle, but it boils down to this:  You eat what the Paleolithic man would have eaten.  Nuts, berries, animal flesh, and veggies are all big winners.  Dairy products are out (Paleo man didn't farm yet), and grains (bread, cereals, pasta, and rice, all 'farmed') are also out.  You get your fiber from your veggies, not traditional grains.  Also, you avoid white potatoes and beans (nightshade veggies).  Caffeine is out, as is sugar.

I'll say it.  Fuck.

But I'll also say, once you get past the MASSIVE caffeine/sugar withdrawl headaches in the first week or so, you do feel better.  I had more energy, and was more clear thinking.  It's just really, really difficult to deal with if you aren't super prepared.  So, I am doing a modified Paleo.  I'm down with no dairy (I use coconut milk for my daily coffee cream), and I AM having a cup of coffee a day.  I'll have rice from time to time (my husband is Asian, we eat rice...a lot), but at least my rice is long grain, slow cooking, not that short boil in a bag crap.  I'm okay with no bread or pasta, and it will hurt, but no doughnuts.  I still don't understand the whole beans thing, I will have to ask him about that.  The best part about Paleo, though, has to be bacon.  Let me state this very clearly, because it is so super awesome I can't even stand it:

ON THE PALEO DIET YOU GET TO EAT A TON OF BACON, AND THAT IS AWESOME.

We have this cookbook, and every other recipe calls for bacon, and that...well, that is just plain awesome.


As with everything, do talk to your doctor first, to make sure whatever you are attempting is safe within your limits. I'm off to get more bacon.

Diet Pills, or Magic Weight Loss, or Life Lessons

I've been reading up articles on exercise, trying to get myself pumped up to the thought of sweating in front of strangers on a semi-regular basis. All of them say the same thing, though: The keys to weight loss are exercise and smaller portions. There is no 'magic pill', don't bother - just put the work in, and you will feel great! Besides, hard work builds character! No magic pill? God Almighty, I wish there was. I wish there was a magic diet pill that could make me skinny tomorrow. I wish I could pay £500, take a red pill, and like Neo, fall down the rabbit hole to hottie-ness. Hell, I wish that red pill was a red cookie, as an extra f*ck you to my soon-to-be former chubbiness. I'll even settle for 84 little pills, like - Alli - if it meant a perfect bod. Because I have to tell you, folks, I've got character. I've done all the character building bullshit - moved halfway across the world for love, gotten married, had a horrific pregnancy and 66 hour labor (with every complication you could think of), have a chronic disease, the list goes on and on. I've BUILT up enough character, I'm OWED this magic cookie. And yet, I'm not. I'm not owed anything in this life. None of us are. We get what we get, and we either choose to make the best of it or not. I've made some bad choices along the way, most of them involving massive amounts of chocolate, and now I have to make good choices to make it better. I don't have to like it (in fact, I can hate it ever step of the way), but I have to do it. Might as well get stuck in.

OMG I HATE EXERCISE

I hate everything associated with exercise.

I hate the clothes - tight enough that your body can move without a lot of chafing, loose enough that you don't feel cut off, and always, always in the most hideous fabrics imaginable.

I hate sweating.  GAH DO I HATE SWEATING.  That prickly feeling when liquid is slowly running down your face/arms/back/legs?  HORROR.

I hate pre and post group workout chit chat.  I don't care what your kid is up to, or how much gas/petrol is these days.  Just turn on the music and tell me which way to go.

I hate gyms.  Gyms were created for people who love to exercise.  They have mirrors, and machines that face each other (so I guess you can keep talking about your car's fuel mileage while you work your lats).  Sometimes they have trite shit on the walls, posters like "Sweat is weakness leaving the body!" or "No Pain No Gain!".  For people who love to exercise (and you know who they are - women who were probably born in a Lycra thong with a matching water bottle cozy, or the man who is roughly the size of a Chevy Cavalier), this place is Nirvana with a slight odor of feet.  And that's great, as Billy Joel says, "I believe there is a time for meditation in Cathedrals of our own", all that.   But for a person who is *not* a fan of exercise, it is hell.  I can see myself at all angles thanks to the wall-to-wall mirrors, and worse, I can see what everyone else can see - that I am a stranger in a strange land.  I don't fit in.  I am not one of them.  I don't know what certain machines do, or why the hell I would want to use them in the first place.  My bottle of water doesn't match my sweats and tee shirt from the 1990s, which happens to be the last era that I tried stepping into a gym.  I don't particularly like feeling any kind of burn, thank you, much less the burn that comes from touching a piece of equipment that 40 people before me have sweated on and (I can only assume by the smell) improperly cleaned afterwards.

I hate exercise leaders.  You know the ones - super perky people who have never been fat a day in their lives, with so little body fat percentages that they would sink like a stone if I threw them in the nearest pool (which I very well might at the end of a session).  Women who cheerily count out the doldrum of my hour with them in broken numeric code.

"And five more, ladies!  And four, and three, and two...and ten more!"

F*CK YOU STUPID B*TCH YOU JUST SAID 5 MORE, JUST COUNT DOWN TO ONE FOR ONCE OR I SWEAR BY THOR'S LEFT TEAT I WILL BLUDGEON YOU TO DEATH WITH MY SNOOPY WATER BOTTLE.

Hate.  Hate.  Hate.

So the process then becomes finding a way to get cardio without doing stuff I hate.  I already push my kid nearly everywhere (we don't have a car, and I dislike taking the bus/Tube with a pushchair), so at least I get walking exercise.  But, I really do need to find a class.  I need to have the same people see me every week, and whose reactions I can gauge my process.

Kate Moss tells lies

Kate Moss once said "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels". And for her, that may be true. Being skinny have made her a household name, and the envy of women everywhere, even those with a bone structure that ensured they could never look like her, no matter how hard they tried. Even now, she makes serious bank on being nothing more than a walking clothes hanger. And yes, I imagine cocaine and cigarettes don't taste all that great, so her quote makes sense for her. But I have to tell you, Kate, I've had some pretty damn fine meals in my time, I don't see skinny topping that any time soon. Just sayin'.

A Treatise Upon the Word Fatty

I know that some people aren't going to like the fact that this is called 'Fatty Goes to the Olympics', or the web address itself.  I get that.  Fat acceptance is not a progressive issue.  Fat people say that it's the last great thing that everyone can make fun of (and as both a fatty and a mentally ill person, I say no no, the mentally ill are a far greater target of ridicule, but that is neither here nor there).  So why use the word fatty?

Because I am.

I'm pushing at least 250 lbs, maybe more (I won't be weighed till next week), on a 5 foot 7 inch frame.  I huff going up the stairs.  We were coming into England from the US and I had such shortness of breath from the oxygen thin air in the plane that I had to be wheeled out of Heathrow on a stretcher.  No one else on board had any issues.

I.  Am.  Unhealthy.

You may be 400 lbs, and can mountain bike with the best of them.  You may be 350, and have the ticker of a 18 year old gymnast.  You may be 275, and be in better shape than your vegan, yoga loving neighbors.  And good for you if you are.  But I'm not. And while some factors out of my control contributed to this (bipolar meds that killed my metabolism and slapped on 82 lbs in 1.5 years), many did not.  Example?

I know damn well that the crap I put in my face hole paired with my lack of exercise is a pretty damn big problem.

You may have a disease which results in massive weight gain, and I am sorry.  You may have an untreated hormonal imbalance, and I am sorry.  You may have a physical impairment which means you can't exercise, and I am sorry.  You may have a million different things wrong that cause you to gain/not lose weight.  And I am sorry.  Or, you may put a lot of crap in your face hole and then not exercise.  Either way...

I am not speaking for you.  I am speaking for myself.

I am fat.

That is not good.

It is killing me, this entire extra person hanging on my bones.  It makes my joints hurt and my legs swell.  It makes me wheeze and sweat when I walk fast.  It makes the skin on my thighs hurt being rubbed together.

Big may be beautiful, but its beauty is killing me.

So when I say I am a fatty, I mean just that:  I am a fatty.  I don't particularly care if you identify positively or negatively with the word, because this isn't your journal, it's mine.  This isn't your journey, it's mine.  And this isn't your life, it's mine.

How it all began...

January, 2012.  I open my email and find these words staring back at me...

Congratulations! London 2012 Ceremonies are pleased to inform you that you have been successful in your audition to become a Ceremonies Volunteer Performer in the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening or Closing Ceremonies. We hope that you are able to accept this once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of a global event that expresses and celebrates the passion and creativity of the United Kingdom in front of the entire world.

My husband had received his acceptance letter weeks ago, and while I was thrilled for him, I was also gutted.  I'm the one who had signed him up, and encouraged him to try out.  I'm the one who had a 'good job no matter what' gift ready for him when he came home.  *I* should have had that place!

My audition had gone well - as a former theatre artist (my degree is in acting), I could jazz hands and 'give face' with the best of them, but on the other side...well, I was big.  Really big.

In junior high I was a cheerleader, and in high school I was on swim team. At 155 pounds (70.5 kilos for the metric among you), I was wide (I have broad shoulders), but the weight hung well on me.  Unfortunately, everything changed in college.  My freshman 15 was a freshman 40 that never left, and by the time I graduated I was consistently hovering around the 210 mark.  However, I was very active, working as an arts educator for my full time job, and I felt while not healthy, at least reasonably okay about my weight.  Unfortunately, when I was 28 my life took a turn for the worse.  I was diagnosed as bipolar, and put on a drug that both saved me and killed me - Symbyax.  A drug that combined the metabolizing destroying properties of Zyprexa with the pound packing punch of Prozac.  In a year and a half, I gained 82 lbs.  I was perilously close to the big 300.  I was...ugh.  Constant pain, shortness of breath, depression, and everything else that comes along with a body that feels like it was dragging me down.  I got off Symbyax, but couldn't shake the weight.  I tried some of the biggest name products out there - Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Power 90, Slim in 6, weight bands, that crappy little wheel thingie you use to do adjusted push ups with.  That doesn't even take into account the myriad of herbal supplements, 'cleansing' kits, and other capsules full of seaweed, cardboard, and cat poop if their flavor on the way down was to be believed.  I took 40 lbs off in a few years, and then promptly found a great guy, moved halfway around the world to marry him, and got knocked up.  Hello, weight gain again.

So here we are.  I don't even know how much I weigh - I have an appt at my doctors, so I can talk to them about healthy options before I start exercise and eating.  I have several things to contend with, including:

• Bipolar - both the emotional/hormonal changes concerning weight loss, as well as the meds I am currently on
• Asthma - currently managed with ventolin inhaler
• Allergies - seasonal, but kill my lung capacity
• Past back injury - I broke 4 vertebrae in an accident when I was 19, and still have slight mobility issues

BUT, I have a lot going for me, such as

• Kid and hubby I want to be around in the next few years for
• Very supportive inferstructure 
• This blog
• My doctors, including regular practician, psychiatrist, and therapist
• The fact that my fat ass is going to be seen by a billion or so people around the world in a few months.  

Next week, we begin.  Because come summer of 2012, whether I am ready or not, the lights of the world will be shining on me.