Next week (the week of February 13th, 2012) I will be publishing four Resource Pages to help you learn about my four favorite babycare topics – cloth diapering, breastfeeding, baby-wearing, and cosleeping. To celebrate and promote these posts, I’m bringing you this huge giveaway.

PLEASE NOTE: This giveaway ends 8:00pm EST, Sunday, February 19, 2012 and is only eligible for addresses in the contiguous US.

A single winner will be chosen at random to receive a Moses basket full of goodies for baby including 10 prefold diapers, a pocket diaper/diaper cover, a heartbeat teddy bear, 3 onesies, 2 hats, a blanket, 5 washcloths, sign language flashcards, and more! If you need a gift for someone who is expecting a baby or you want your own basket full of baby stuff, this is the giveaway for you! Keep reading for what all is included with the basket and how you can enter to win.

WHAT IS INCLUDED:

• Moses Basket – Sturdy enough to carry your baby around in, attractive enough to add to any room, and makes a perfect pass-along-gift to the next baby in your community.
• Carter’s Diaper Bag – Cute flowers on the outside, pink stripes on the inside, lots of pockets, a waterproof lining, and a changing pad for diaper changes on the go.
• 10 Prefold Diapers – High quality, newborn size prefold diapers, measuring 10″x14″. I bought almost all of my cloth diapers secondhand on DiaperSwappers.com and I highly recommend the site to everyone I talk to about diapers.
• 2 Diaper Pins & a Snappi – I like the old fashioned diaper pins, but some people prefer the newfangled Snappi. Your choice!
• Blueberry Pocket Diaper – Can be used as a cover on top of a prefold or can be used as a pocket by stuffing it with a prefold or other absorbent insert. Fleece inner lining, a waterproof PUL outer layer, and a fuzzy red marbled design.
• 3 Onesies – 3 white, short-sleeve Gerber onesies – the classic baby outfit!
• 2 knit hats - One white and one blue
• Kiddopotamous SwaddleMe - This yellow cotton swaddler makes it easy to swaddle your baby without having to learn a complicated folding technique, even if your baby is quite a wiggler!
• Sign2Me Actions & Opposites Pack - English, Spanish, and American Sign Language flash cards to learn words like “again”, “sleep”, “on”, “off”, “hot”, and “cold”. Buy additional packs such as Animals & Colors and Objects & Emotions on the Sign2Me website.
• 2 Bath Scrubies – One is a small whale that slips over your fingers from Circo. The other is a full hand puppet from Toysmith. Both make bath time cute and fun.
• 5 Washcloths – These terrycloth washcloths are the right size and softness for all kinds of baby uses. Use them as washcloths, diaper inserts, spit up cloths, diaper wipes, etc. It’s up to you!
• Blanket – A super-plush baby blanket in soft pastels. You’ll wish you had one in your size!
• Dex Womb Sounds Bear - Makes a heartbeat sound with adjustable volume. Can be attached to a crib, or you can take out the battery pack and it’s simply a teddy bear.

APPROXIMATE RETAIL VALUE: $150
PLEASE NOTE: The diaper bag, cloth diapers, diaper cover, and Moses basket are all quality secondhand items. The other items are new and completely unused but are not in original packaging or attached to original tags. There is so much baby stuff floating around in the world, I rarely advocate buying new stuff for babies, even as gifts and even for giveaways!

HOW TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

MANDATORY ENTRY: In order to be eligible for this giveaway, you MUST leave a comment on this post telling me which item you most want to win (although the winner gets them all!) Be sure to leave a valid email address with this comment so that I can contact you if you win!

BONUS ENTRIES: After you’ve completed the mandatory entry, you can increase your chances of winning by doing these bonus entries. You must leave a separate comment on this post for each bonus entry so that each entry can be counted individually. If you have already done the entry requirement (already subscribe by RSS, for example) you can still leave a comment to get that entry.

• Subscribe to LoveLiveGrow by email or RSS for 1 entry.
• Like LoveLiveGrow on Facebook for 1 entry.
• Follow @IssaWaters on Twitter and leave your Twitter name in the comment for 1 entry.
• Post about this giveaway on your Facebook page or wall. Leave the link in your comment here for 1 entry. Be sure to attach the URL for this post in your update! You can use this text: Enter to win the Snuggle Baby Gift Basket Giveaway from @LoveLiveGrow. Moses basket, Carter’s diaper bag, cloth diapers, and MORE! $150 ARV. Contiguous US residents only. Ends Feb 19. 
• Tweet about this giveaway up to 5 times total, at least 24 hours apart for 1 entry each. You can tweet this text: #Win Snuggle Baby Gift Basket #Giveaway from @IssaWaters! Moses basket, diapers, diaper bag & MORE! $150ARV,2/19,cont.US http://ow.ly/8ZboY 
• Put the LoveLiveGrow button on your blog or other website for 2 entries. You can grab the code from the sidebar of any LoveLiveGrow page. Leave your site URL in the comments.
• Put LoveLiveGrow in your text blogroll for 2 entries. Leave your site URL in the comment.
• Make a post on your blog announcing this giveaway for 5 entries. Must be posted by 1:00pm EST, Wednesday, February 15, 2012. Leave the post URL in the comments.
• Leave a comment on one of the Resource Pages posted on LoveLiveGrow the week of February 13, 2012. Each Resource Page asks at the end if you have suggestions for other information that should be included. Leave a comment for 1 entry. You can earn 4 extra entries by commenting on all 4 Resource Pages.

RULES:

• The giveaway ends 8:00pm EST, Sunday, February 19, 2012.
• Contest open to contiguous U.S. mailing addresses only.
• Leave each entry as a separate comment so I can count them all.
• For actions like following and subscribing, if you already follow or subscribe, just let me know in your comment.
• For tasks that earn you multiple entries, you can copy and paste the comment with a #1, #2, etc.
• You don’t have to do any of the bonus entries, but you do have to complete the first mandatory one.
• I will pick the winner through Random.org after the giveaway closes and send the winner an email notification. If I can’t reach the winner or don’t hear back within 3 days, I will pick a new winner.
• If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at erosissa@gmail.com

Good Luck!

As he gets bigger and heavier, his desire to be connected to my body strains on me differently than when he only weighed 10 pounds.

As he gets more vocal, his voice frequently takes on that high-pitched lilt that I want to call “whining”.

As he gets more mobile, he bonks and bangs into things, and then he cries.

As he gets more dexterous, he also gets himself stuck and frustrated more often, and then he cries.

It would be so easy to resent him. It would be so easy to be bothered by how much attention he wants. It would be so easy to get frustrated when he won’t let me set him down without him whining. It would be so easy to get irritated at how often he needs to be helped getting around or getting into things.

But I know that it must be hard to be a baby. It must be hard to have all these new skills falling into place so rapidly, so that each day is bigger than the last. It must be hard to need so much and to need someone else to provide it with such limited tools to help make that happen.

When Dylan whines or cries, I can interpret those sounds in all sorts of ways. I can assign them negative meanings like demanding, manipulative, clingy, needy, pushy. Those meanings arise in my own mind, where I have thoughts, feelings, and baggage that get in the way of real communication with my child. If I stop for a moment and try to imagine the meaning that originates from Dylan’s own mind, I arrive at something different.

As the tiny person that he is, Dylan has a very limited range of emotion. His emotions are new, young, sharp. His whining or crying usually expresses one of two simple feelings. One is the angry confusion of not being able to physically do something. Dylan has been enjoying opening cabinets and drawers, and when he encounters one that’s stuck he gets upset at his inability to do a physical action that he expected to be able to do. When I try to view the huge world from his perspective, I find myself having great compassion for Dylan’s experience and a great capacity to want to help him navigate it.

The second main emotion arises when I set Dylan down or walk away from him when he doesn’t want me to. There are lots of times where he plays for long periods completely separate from me. But there are other times when he wants to be very close. If I set him down or move too far away, he starts to protest. When I get out of my own mind, where unhelpful words like “clingy” originate, I see that what Dylan is expressing is fear. He needs me. Literally and completely needs me for his survival. I am his food and his warmth and his protector. It’s true that he’s getting bigger and smarter, and he moves away from me more often than he used to. It’s also true that he still needs me, and there are some times, maybe when he’s tired or hungry or hurt or overstimulated or confused, when that need is sharper than other times. When he tries to express that need, it comes out in a sound that’s not always pleasant to my ears. So instead, I translate it. I imagine that he’s saying, “Mama, I’m scared. Please stay closer.” Instead of responding to a child who’s “whining”, I respond to a child who is afraid. I find that it’s more pleasant on my heart and more pleasant on our relationship.

There will be a time in the future when Dylan doesn’t really need me much at all. There will be times in the future where he doesn’t have much to say to me at all. Right now, when he needs me so much and when what he has to say is so important, it’s really important that I listen. And when I listen, it’s important that I hear what he’s really saying.

Last month, an amazing thing happened. I actually made money from this blog! As far as jobs go, it was a teeny-tiny amount that barely even counts. But! I got paid to blog! I am a professional writer! Haha! I love blogging, and it’s amazingly awesome to be paid for it, no matter how small the amount.

I was so excited, I had to get a picture of the check before I deposited it:

I’m wearing Dylan in a mei tai carrier, and I love how he’s peeking around in this photo!

Anyway, just had to share my good news with you. Thank you to all of you who read here! I wouldn’t do it without you!

This photo comes from reader Jo, who says, "I come from a loooong line of ‘husky’ waist-less people, and I come by it VERY honestly. I love these pictures of my grandparents. They remind me of who I am."

I’ve written about how diets don’t work, which means it’s pretty difficult to make a fat person thin. It’s popular to blame fat people for that, but it turns out the story is a little more complicated. I’ve found a few other interesting places to dive into, including tales of thin people who try to get fat and the research on the genetics of fatness. After that, let’s tackle the big, bad willpower thing that everyone’s always going on about!

Making Thin People Fat

Dr Ethan Sims is famous for experimenting with trying to make thin people fat. He used prison inmates who would earn early release from their sentences if they could gain 20-25% of their weight. The inmates ate and ate, some eating as much as 10,000 calories a day while also reducing their activity. As the experiment went on, they had a worse and worse time of it, some developing an aversion to meals. Some of the men completed the task. Some of the men dropped out. Some were unable to gain the required weight, even though they were eating more than the men who were successful. For the men who had gained weight, their metabolisms increased by as much as 50% which means their bodies began burning way more calories than they normally did. In order to sustain their new size they had to aggressively eat 10 times more than “calories in/calories out” suggests should have been necessary for their new weights. As soon as the study was over, the men who had gained weight effortlessly dropped back to their previous weights and stayed there.

While not as scientific, similar results were obtained during a UK documentary (headless fattie alert). 10 thin people spent a month trying to eat enough to reach excessive calorie targets while not exercising and trying not to walk very much. One participant put on 8 pounds. Another put on 12 pounds. One put on just 1 pound. Another put on 12 pounds but saw a decrease in body fat percentage. Another put on 10 pounds, but his appearance didn’t seem to change. Despite his lack of activity, the weight had gone on as muscle instead of fat as his metabolism rose 30%. What happened after the experiment? Those who had gained dropped back to their previous weights without dieting or exercising.

It seems that it’s as difficult to make a thin person fat as it is to make a fat person thin.

Genetics

When asking whether you’re in control of how fat you are, we have to start with your genes. It turns out that genetics plays a huge role.

In one experiment, pairs of twins were fed 1000 extra calories a day, 6 days a week, for over 5 months. If the calories in/calories out people were right, the subjects should have all gained the same amount. Instead, their weight gains ranged from 9.5 pounds to 29 pounds. Furthermore, each set of twins gained the same amount as each other, and they put that extra weight on the same body area.

Another study looked at 673 pairs of twins, including identical twins, fraternal twins, twins reared together, and those reared apart. Here, again, it turns out that genetics are the key. Identical twins had the same BMIs, whether they were raised together or not. Fraternal twins varied more, even when they were raised together. The study concluded that weight is about 70% heritable, and that “childhood environment has little or no influence”. This didn’t really surprise the researchers, since this finding agreed with previous research.

When looking at 540 adult adoptees who had been adopted in their infancy, the adoptees were as fat or as thin as their biological parents, and their weight had no relation to that of their adoptive parents. The researchers concluded that “genetic influences have an important role in determining human fatness in adults, whereas the family environment alone has no apparent effect.”

Variation in weight is genetic. To put that 70% figure into perspective, think of other things you think of as genetic. Breast cancer? Only 30% heritable. Weight is also more heritable than heart disease, hypertension, or schizophrenia.

Starvation

In 1959, Dr Jules Hirsch performed experiments with fat people so that he could learn what happened to their fat cells when they lost weight. Through a rigorous, scientifically monitored diet, the fat people spent 8 months turning into thin people. The participants lost 100 pounds on average, but after the diet program was over they put the weight right back on, and Dr Hirsch wanted to know why. He and Dr Rudolph L Leibel repeated the diet with more fat people, to the same results. During the experiments, the doctors measured the participants’ metabolism, vital statistics, and psychiatric conditions, leading them to discover some interesting things. After they began to lose weight, the metabolisms of the fat people nose-dived. Whereas before the diet they burned the same number of calories per square meter of body surface as did thin people, after losing weight they burned as much as 24% fewer calories per square meter of surface area. The participants also developed issues with food: they dreamed about food, fantasized about food, fantasized about cheating on the diet, hid foods in their rooms, and binged. They became anxious, depressed, and even suicidal. This collection of symptoms even had a name, because it had been seen before.

In 1944, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment took 36 men of “normal” weight who lived in a dormitory for the duration of the experiment, and provided a thorough and fascinating look into what’s really going on when people reduce their caloric intake. The men walked about 3 miles a day and had their calories adjusted each week to help them achieve a weight-loss goal of 2.5 pounds a week. Their average calories for the “semi-starvation” period was 1600 a day. Want to guess what happened? They experienced dizziness, soreness, hair loss, hysteria, hypochondria, loss of sex drive, social withdrawal, severe emotional distress, and almost all of them became depressed. Their body temperatures, respiration, and heart rates declined. Some had swelling in their extremities. Some had ringing in their ears. One participant cut off three of his fingers. One became suicidal. They became obsessively preoccupied with food. They were irritable and anxious when calorie-adjusting time came. They couldn’t leave the dorm alone to ensure that they wouldn’t sneak food. They developed elaborate eating rituals and ways to make their food last longer. The semi-starvation period lasted almost 6 months, followed by a 3 month controlled re-feeding period. Some symptoms like dizziness and lethargy went away quickly, but others such as hunger and loss of sex drive lasted for many months.

The physical and emotional state of these men was called “semi-starvation neurosis”. Now go back to Dr Hirsch’s fat subjects who lost weight. They had the same emotional issues and metabolic measurements, leading the researchers to an interesting new conclusion: fat people who lose lots of weight might look like thin people, but they are actually fat people who are starving. All the people who lived at the hospital for these experiments developed the physical and psychological markers of starvation.

The Mythical Willpower

Thin people have trouble gaining weight, which means that fat people aren’t just thin-people-who-got-fat. Fat people who lose weight become fat-people-who-are-starving, and genetics help tell the tale of which is which. Even with that information, the anti-fat people always swing back around to willpower. They’ll concede that some people will have a harder time of it than others, but that if you just knuckle-down and try really hard you, too, can be thin. In Dr Hirsch’s study, a handful of people remained thin. They did so by essentially making being thin their life’s work, such as by becoming Weight Watchers leaders, and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation. Setting aside the casual cruelty of people wanting you to starve, let’s look at what that actually means inside your body.

Some of the research with twins I mentioned earlier provided evidence that people have a “natural” weight to which they will gravitate, sometimes called a “set point”. This set point might span 10-20 pounds or so. Losing or gaining more than that will be very difficult. Whenever you lose or gain much more than that, your metabolism shifts to compensate and nudge you back to your set point.

Efforts to lose weight kick in other powerful biological responses. Increasing research is showing that reducing weight is countered by various neurochemical changes that increase the urge to eat and decrease energy expenditure. For example, food restriction and weight loss decreases leptin, a protein hormone. This decrease initiates aggressive food-seeking behavior. A gastrointestinal hormone called ghrelin is responsible for feelings of hunger and this hormone increases when food is restricted. There are also cortico-limbic controls that regulate eating and that kick into overdrive when deprived. Peptide YY is a hormone that helps determine your appetite by communicating with multiple parts of your brain to regulate how much you eat and the pleasure involved in eating.

These things cannot be controlled by willpower. These are powerful biological controls as basic as those related to breathing, blinking, sleeping, and pissing and shitting. Your so called “willpower” is simply not in charge. You can’t just “decide” to eat less. You can’t just “try harder”. We’re talking about how your body works here. We’re talking about your body working. When you try to eat less, your body compensates to help you fix the problem. You can call it a lack of willpower and discipline but the evidence shows that the resistance is biological.

Conclusion

The conclusions are the same, study after study. Diets don’t work. You cannot generally make fat people thin or thin people fat. Genetics play a huge role in deciding which is which. Your bodily processes take care of the rest. It’s as simple as that.