mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Come visit my new primary blog

2008-11-10T19:46:33-08:00

As you may have noticed, there hasn't been a whole hell of a lot of action on this blog in recent months. That's mainly because I've been spending more of my creative energies these days on other topics and in other places. This reflects my determination to integrate this healthy eating/weight management routine into the rest of my life, as opposed to continuing to make my whole world revolve around the health/food thing.

What this means for this here blog is that, at least for the time being, it's going to go dormant. I'll definitely be keeping it online, but more as an archive than an active blog.

If you'd like to keep following my little life (mis)adventures, I happily invite you to check out the blog that is now the "front door" to my website: The Duck's Nest. There you'll find me going on not only about food and health, but a wide variety of other things that amuse, interest, concern, and/or obsess me. Fun times!

Back in the saddle (yet) again

2008-07-24T12:39:42-07:00

Hey, I'm back! Didja miss me?

I must say, the past couple of months have been some of the most exhausting, tumultuous, often-frustrating, but ultimately rewarding times I have ever known--and I've known some tumultuous times in my time, let me tell you. To recap, here's what I've been up to:

For the first time in years, I acted in a play. I played multiple supporting roles in a production of Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, including this one absolutely killer character, a disabled lesbian rabbi in a wheelchair who's the star of her own cable-access talk show, kind of a lesbian version of Dr. Laura. Community theatre, I have found from past experience, has this tendency to completely take over your life--and so that happened with this production. But that doesn't mean I didn't have the time of my life! Plus you would not believe the terrific upper-body workout I got from pushing myself around in that wheelchair!
The same weekend as the play, I had a major speaking role in my church's annual Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual / Transgender Pride service. I was originally scheduled to be the major planner in charge of the service, but fortunately I was able to delegate that out. But I was still tapped to lead this one liturgy I wrote specifically for the service, and it turned into a really beautiful thing.
Just last weekend, I rode herd on our church's contingent in San Diego's Pride Parade (yes, San Diego does their Pride celebration a month later than everyone else--I'm not totally sure why but I think it's to not conflict with the major Pride celebrations up in LA, Long Beach, and etc.) We'd chartered a trackless trolley from a local tourist-tour outfit, and then festooned it with banners and streamers and stuff, and then had a contingent of walkers and riders and parasol-twirlers. I am far from the first to observe that trying to organize a bunch of Unitarian Universalists is like herding cats--I luv all you folks, but damn were my nerves shot after that! But all's well that ends well, and everyone had a good time.
Oh yeah--and somewhere about six weeks back, Mr. E, the elderly gentleman for whom I am live-in caretaker had another major health weirdness. Once again he recovered remarkably quickly, but for a couple of days in there we really thought we were gonna lose him ... and then for a week afterward we were concerned he'd need to go to skilled care. He's about 96% recovered at this point--dude has more lives than a cat. It's just me who's still reeling a little, even six weeks later.

In the midst of all this, my food admittedly got a bit random--hey, you try rehearsing for four hours straight, and then leaving rehearsal to find the only eateries still open are the 24-hour burrito joints. But even with all that, I managed to keep my weight on that same ol' plateau it's been hugging for months now. And with the physical workout from the rehearsals--not only the aforementioned wheelchair-jockeying but also an actual dance number!--I think I may actually have lost an inch or two in body measurements. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure I have--teeshirts that had previously fit snugly are now giving me some ease around the arms and bust. Yowza.

But, in some ways even more momentous than that, I found doing theatre to be a major epiphany for me. At least some of it had to do with how well my parts suited me--it felt like I completely knew how Rabbi Sharon was supposed to be from the moment I cold-read her part in auditions. But even without that, acting just felt so totally right, like something I had been meant to do all along but am only getting around to now. All those frustrated creative juices I used to pour into my preaching, and have only sporadically put to use more recently doing spoken-word, came surging up with a vengeance when I was raging on stage. I dunno what it all means, and I dunno if this was just a fluke and the next play won't be anywhere near this level of epiphany-hood, but I am determined that there will be a next play, and I will follow up to see if this is my calling for the next hunk of my life.

Life on the plateau continues

2008-05-11T16:00:55-07:00

I'm having another one of those hectic life periods--just add a community theatre project, an additional freelance gig, and some other random assorted volunteer commitments, and voila: schedule overload! But meanwhile, I continue to cruise along on the same weight plateau of 192 pounds I've been on for several weeks now. Given that a hectic schedule used to mean excuses to eat crazy while pulling all-nighters at the computer, I consider this plateau a raging success--it means I'm maintaining my food disciplines even when life gets crazy. Either that, or all this excess activity is wearing off any slight food excesses I might have committed. Either way, I call it good. (Though I'll be glad when I get to the end of this latest round of deadlines and can have myself a little vacation-at-home.)

Somewhere in there, I did also succeed in finishing The Omnivore's Dilemma, and while I do have a few criticisms of the book here and there, by and large it's really made a strong impression on me. I'm now on the library waiting list for Pollen's followup book, In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto, in which he sets out his nutritional desideratum: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," and then lays out all the obstacles to achieving that goal in American mainstream processed-food culture. I can't wait! (Although given the waiting list at the local library--last I checked, I was #72 in the queue!--it looks like waiting is what I'm doing.)

Confronting the omnivore's dilemma

2008-04-27T22:13:42-07:00

You would think by now that I'd have read The Omnivore's Dilemma, given how much I have appreciated Michael Pollan's point of view in various articles and interviews. But finally, after several weeks of waiting to move up from #47 on the public library reserve waiting list, I succeeded in getting my hands on a copy--and boy am I ever finding it ... well, "enjoyable" is not quite the right word when you're talking about a book explaining exactly why and how our current industrial agriculture arrangements are wildly unsustainable from ecological and public health standpoints. Try "sadly enlightening," in the same vein that earned economics the sobriquet "the dismal science."

I'm only a third of the way through so far, but already I'm finding quotes that are just screaming out to me "post me in your blog!" So here's one now:

"... growing corn is the most efficient way to get energy--calories--from an acre of Iowa farmland. That corn-made calorie can find its way into our bodies in the form of an animal fat, a sugar, or a starch, such is the protean nature of the carbon in that big kernel. But as productive and protean as the corn plant is, finally it is a set of human choices that have made these molecules quite as cheap as they have become: a quarter century of farm policies designed to encourage the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other. Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest." (page 108)

So that quote should make it crystal-clear why this book is eminently on-topic for this blog: obesity, like any other public health concern, doesn't just happen in a vaccuum (whether biological, ecological, economic, or political). If a population is constantly bombarded by exhortations to consume some of the bazillions of food products processed in one way or another from that heavily government-subsidized mountain of cheap corn, sooner or later they're gonna get some of it on 'em, or in 'e,--and that'll inevitably show up on bathroom scales and glucose tolerance tests across the country.

P.S. Check out this previous post in this blog for a link to a video of Pollan moderating a vigorous panel discussion of the politics of obesity.

My new exercise routine: community theatre!

2008-04-22T15:48:58-07:00

I'm sitting here typing with my left leg elevated and an ice pack on my knee, all thanks to my latest exercise routine--and I'm pleased as punch about it!

You see, I saw an audition notice go by from the community theatre group associated with the big hippy-groovy Unitarian Universalist church I hang out at, and found myself sorely tempted. I hadn't done theatre since back in my college and immediately post-college days, and I really missed it. Of course, some of why theatre fell off my personal radar scope had to do with my weight--not only that, for better or worse, many theatre groups have a certain "look" in mind for various roles, and fat is usually not part of that look; but also, as my weight continued to rise and interfere with my mobility, I simply was no longer physically up to it.

Plus then I got older, and more involved in other, more "serious" things, and kind of put frivolous things like theatre away in mothballs.

But now, I sat there looking at this audition notice and going "well, why the heck not?" For one thing, this particular group--especially because of its UU social-action headset--has a strong track record of casting actors of "non-traditional" appearance. Plus the play in question--Paul Rudnick's "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told"--totally appealed to me with its brash humor (it's a humorous take on the Bible and religion from a gay liberation perspective). Plus now, even though I am still a fat broad, I'm not nearly so "broad" -- or immobilized -- as I had been. I could do this! All I needed was to make it through the auditions. No small thing, that--but you can't win if you don't play ...

So I went down and auditioned, and lo and behold I got a really juicy supporting role! (Actually, three roles--the play is structured so that the non-pricipal actors all play multiple roles.) Hurrah! So now all I have to do is actually survive the rehearsals...

The reason I'm icing my knee today is because last night we worked with the choreographer for the first time. Man, you wouldn't think that a mere ninety minutes of intermittent movement could take so much effort, but by the time I got home last night I was definitely a hurtin' unit. Fortunately, none of the moves are all that difficult (though remembering them all and doing them up to tempo is going to take some work), and a couple of hot baths plus that icepack seem to be handling the hurtin' bit.

It's my hope that, as rehearsals continue, my body will rise to the occasion and get used to this heightened level of activity, so that I won't be the walking wounded the day after a rehearsal (or the day after a show, for that matter). And now I'm feeling an additional motivation for regular exercise--getting my body sufficiently conditioned that it'll be ready for each rehearsal and less prone to injury. I may also invest in a simple knee brace from the local big-box pharmacy store or some such.

But anyway--this is my new creative project, and it's not only helping with my bod, it's also an opportunity made possible by all the work I've already done on my bod so far. So I've totally psyched to be doing this, and if there's even the slightest chance that any of you folks out there will be in San Diego the weekend of July 11th/12th, I hope you'll consider coming to the show and watching me be a whacko on stage for a paying audience. More details on the when/where/etc. as I get 'em.

Random notes on post-cane leg strengthening

2008-04-19T21:16:25-07:00

At this point I've pretty much totally abandoned my cane, except for extremely long walks or times when my legs are feeling ouchy. Which they do rather more frequently than I had expected, as re-training my leg muscles not to depend on a cane is proving to be ... interesting.

It's not just that my left leg, the one with the bum knee that I had been favoring, needs to strengthen up the muscles surronding that knee. All my leg muscles had gotten used to leaning on that cane, and are now having to readjust to having my center of gravity back in its normal alignment. Among other things, this means that walks require a lot more physical exertion than I'd been used to--all those muscles working in directions they had gotten out of the habit of experiencing.

I had already experienced the phenomenon of my balance shifting as I took off weight--every time I went dancing, I spent the first several minutes feeling like a spaz because my center of gravity wasn't where I was expecting it to be, causing me to almost lose my balance whenever I attempted to bust a move. Usually by the end of the evening I had compensated--only to go through the whole process again the next night out, when my weight distribution had changed once again. This is like that, only more so. Suddenly I'm calling on muscle control from my toes on up to keep me walking in a staight line without torquing a knee or twisting an ankle.

I also think some of my struggle is due to the fact that I need to replace my walking shoes. I have good quality New Balance shoes, but at this point they're two years old, and while they're still reasonably whole the heels have worn down just enough that I don't think they're holding my feet in the proper alignment any more, making my muscles work even harder. Dang--those things are expensive. But I've learned from hard experience that good walking shoes are one of those things it does not pay to cheap out on--you really get what you pay for, and bad shoes can really screw up delicate knees.

Two news items about the interplay of genetics and weight

2008-04-15T23:54:44-07:00

Link: Genes May Determine Obesity After Weight Surgery

Link: Genes May Be to Blame for Picky Eaters.

So if genetics plays a role in post-bariatric surgery weight, wouldn't it also play a role in weight before surgery as well? And if genetics influences picky eating, wouldn't it also influence the opposite of such eating patterns too? In other words, if one is wondering why the hell weight management can be such a struggle, the answer may well be that one is attempting to change behaviors that are at least partly hardwired into ones genes. Not that one should just roll over and give up the struggle. But I for one feel it helps me to have an accurate assessment of what it is I'm up against.

Science wishy-washy on health benefits of water? Or ... not?

2008-04-08T20:28:29-07:00

Link: Science wishy-washy on health benefits of water - Diet and nutrition- msnbc.com.

Somehow this article reads to me like the authors are straining out gnats (from their water) and swallowing camels (instead of water).

For instance, I don't get why these two kidney specialists are blaming the "complementary and alternative medicine worlds" for the water-drinking thing. When I accepted their challenge and Googled "water health,' one of the very first hits was this sober-sided pro-water missive from none other than the Mayo Clinic, hardly a hippy-dippy health purveyor ... and in fact, they do go about stressing that everyone's water needs are different, and that studies have been inconclusive, and so on and so forth.

But while the kidney specialists aver that "there is no rational basis for the widespread belief that people need to drink eight glasses of water a day, and it is unclear where this recommendation came from," the Mayo Clinic webpage has a totally commonsensical explanation for that figure:

"Replacement approach. The average urine output for adults is 1.5 liters a day. You lose close to an additional liter of water a day through breathing, sweating and bowel movements. Food usually accounts for 20 percent of your total fluid intake, so if you consume 2 liters of water or other beverages a day (a little more than 8 cups) along with your normal diet, you will typically replace the lost fluids."

It's possible that weirdnesses like these were introduced by the Reuters staff writer--I've seen that kind of thing a lot. Alas, however, the original journal article on which this Reuters item is based is only available to paid subscribers, so there's no way to judge how the researchers originally explained their work, let alone how strong their data was, or not.

Regardless of this article, I'm going to keep aiming for my eight 8-ounce glasses of water daily, simply because I have established that I personally feel better when I do that--not to mention the instructions that came with my gout medication which said I should be drinking a minimum of eight glasses, and probably more like 12.

Which brings me to the kidney experts' distinction that water drinking is effective in the case of certain health conditions.

Now gout is a health condition caused by excess uric acid in the blood. Extra water drinking is specifically recommended to gout patients to help the kidneys flush out both the excess uric acid and the medication. So I'm sorry, it just makes no sense to me to maintain that water is effective at flushing toxins only when a doctor has hung a diagnosis on your condition, but not at any other time.

But don't take my word on this stuff--after all, I'm most definitely not a doctor. As in all other things regarding your body, see for yourself what amount and schedule of water drinking feels right to you ... and then make sure you get that. That's what I'm trying to do.

Healthy dish of the day: bun rieu oc

2008-04-04T17:19:15-07:00

As I've observed before, Vietnamese cuisine may be some of the friendliest food out there for people looking to eat light and healthy. Especially when it comes to soups. A big bowl of pho, for instance, with all the veggie mix-ins and the right-size portions of meat and noodles, can keep me satisfied for hours. And when you get tired of all the variations on pho, there's a whole galaxy of other soups to try.

Pictured is one such star of the Vietnamese soup galaxy, bun rieu oc, which contains round rice noodles (bun) and the meat of little bitty snails (oc), plus tomatoes, cilantro, onions, fried shallots, and assorted other goodies in a crab (rieu) broth; usually the meat left from making the crab broth is formed into crumbly little patties and added to the soup.

This bowlful is the dac biet (special) version at one of my favorite local Vietnamese joints, Mien Trung. In addition to being an extra-large portion, it contains some extra garnishes of cooked pork blood and fried tofu puffs. The broth has a great chile kick that does not blot out the rich crab flavor; and unlike other versions of this soup I've had, the snails are super-tender, with just the slightest bit of chewiness (in other places the snails can be tough as rubber erasers). Mien Trung also supplies an especially generous side-plate of veggie mix-ins, plus a little saucer of deliciously savory dipping sauce.

Another thing I really dig about Vietnamese soups is that the garnishes are not just there for looks, but make functional contributions to the dish. The fried shallot garnish, for instance--their savory taste spreads out to flavor the whole bowlful of soup. And I love the veggie mix-ins--stir them all in while the soup is still steaming hot, and not only does the broth cook them, but they also cool the broth down to a more mouth-friendly temperature.

The only downside to Vietnamese soups is that, with all those ingredients and garnishes, they're a little labor-intensive for the home cook (especially the single home cook). But when a huge bowl like the one pictured goes for less than six bucks, I'm totally content to let the experts pound the crabs and shell the snails for me.

P.S. For those who are wondering, my weight is still plateaued at 192 pounds. I've decided that from now on I'll only make a separate post on my weight if it does something other than plateauing.

Are fears of a fat planet overblown? - Diet and nutrition- msnbc.com

2008-03-27T17:52:08-07:00

Link: Are fears of a fat planet overblown? - Diet and nutrition- msnbc.com.

Here we go, a compendium of all the issues various skeptics have raised concerning the so-called "obesity epidemic." The first page of the article mainly covers various contrarian opinions and studies, including the infamous "obesity paradox" in which researchers grudgingly admit that fat people actually survive some conditions better than thin people. But it's the second page where things really get down and dirty--where the article starts following the money to see who stands to profit from the war on obesity--and who might even be feuling the war to benefit their own bottom lines:

"Experts on both sides of the obesity debate have often criticized WHO's overweight and obesity measures, saying they are too low. When WHO defined the body mass index scores constituting normal, overweight and obese, they appeared to be the result of an independent expert committee convened by WHO. Yet the 1997 Geneva consultation was held jointly with the International Obesity Task Force, an advocacy group whose self-described mission is "to inform the world about the urgency of the (obesity) problem." According to the task force's most recent available annual report, more than 70 percent of their funding came from Abbott Laboratories and F. Hoffman La-Roche, companies which make top-selling anti-fat pills."

Obviously, there are indeed health benefits to taking off a reasonable amount of weight in a reasonable way--I'm proof of that. But the so-called War on Obesity, as far as I can see, is not about reasonable (let alone inexpensive) approaches to the problem. It's about scare tactics, knee-jerk rejection of data that doesn't fit the official party line, and big profits for the medical, pharmaceutical, and diet industries.