NaBloPoMo 30: 16 Pounds; What Do You Get?

OK, I found the little card they fill out every time I get weighed at Weight Watchers, and the official, not-making-it-up-in-my-head number is 176.8.

This depresses me a little. I was so thrilled to get under 175. (OK, all you thin people can roll your eyes. You don't know what I'm talking about until you've been fatter than a whale omelet, 'K?)

But hey! It's OK, because may I remind you (on this, the last stop on our mutual NaBloPoMo journey) that achieving fitness is a process? And that I can get below 175 again? Probably by next week? (Or maybe the week after.)

To prove it, let me remind you of where I've gotten so far:

1. If you ever meet me IRL and admire my engagement or wedding rings, feel free to ask to try them on. They will actually come off my fingers now. A few months ago, this was not the case.

2. I went to the gym this morning. I had a ton of appointments, so I could only work out for 35 minutes. Not only did I jog/run/move my ass on the treadmill for 35 minutes, some of that time was going 5.5 miles an hour. And I was listening to an audiobook at the time. Not the "Workout" playlist that only a couple of months ago, I relied on to keep my ass moving. (This is the one with Madonna's "Express Yourself," George Michael's "I Want Your Sex," The Rolling Stones "Bitch," The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" and a heaping helping of other proofs that I am middle-aged and out of it.)

3. A friend of mine treated me to lunch at the Zodiac Room at Neiman Marcus today. I totally ignored the popovers and strawberry butter. Also, I ate salad for lunch and drank Diet Pepsi. And did not have dessert. And didn't mind at all.

4. My size 16 blue jeans, the ones I bought at the Brooks Brothers outlet in Kittery, are in a bag to bring to the thrift shop.

5. The new bras I bought to kick off the whole diet process are starting to get loose.

6. So are the size 14 jeans I bought at Target.

7. My mother thinks I look terrific. So does my mother-in-law. So does my husband.

8. A ton of old clothes that were too tight now fit.

9. My husband is getting a lot more grabby.

10. I actually believe I can do this. Not just lose another 30 pounds--take part in that sprint Triathlon I signed up for.

And so, with NaBloPoMo finally over, the sun setting in the west, and a Friday evening glass of wine calling my name, I leave you this, from Fussypants:

NaBloPoMo 29: Tired

I'm tired of blogging every day, even when I don't have anything to say.

I'm tired of cell phone calls, driving back and forth to the city, getting up early, and being too exhausted to oversee homework properly.

I really, really, want the renovations to be over.

All this makes me grumpy. And mean.

Mean enough to make fun of Madonna's daughter's eyebrows. An innocent child! And yet, I mocked her.

Wanna see?

NaBloPoMo 28: 176.2, or, The Day of ... (dunh , dunh dunh dunh) Reckoning

I went to my Weight Watchers meeting today. There are about 40 of us at this meeting. Every week they announce how many total pounds the group has lost. This week it was 25.

NO THANKS TO ME.

I posted a gain of 1.6 pounds from two weeks ago.

I guess a (pick one)

a) plate
b) refrigerator
c) aircraft carrier

full of pie will do that to a girl.

NaBloPoMo 27: Fruitlands, or, Apple Slump

OK, people. The kidding around is pretty much over.

Tomorrow is weigh-in day for Weight Watchers, and today, I finally started tracking my points again. For the first time in a week, I wasn't eyeballing portions and kinda/sorta keeping track of what into my mouth--or saying "fuck it" and eating four pieces of pie. This was back on track, and that means tracking: 2 points for this morning's oatmeal, 11 points for this afternoon's egg salad sandwich, and 4 points' worth of wine with dinner.

I managed to keep the total to 26 points. That's a little higher than I'm supposed to go; my daily total is supposed to be 22. But WW gives you five extra points a day, and I decided to go ahead and use them. What the hell--this is detox. I might have had some kind of fit if I went straight from The Pie to a Thousand Places Diet^TM to teeny, tiny little birdy meals.

Or not. But this is a process, you know. I'm not one of those people who says "I want to lose 40 pounds by Christmas." I'm more the type who says: "OK, let's see how easily and painlessly I can lose a dress size or two."

So I'm back on track. And the weird thing is, I already feel better. Remember how I just couldn't overeat on Thanksgiving? Well, I guess this proves that what they've been telling me all my life is true: your stomach really does shrink after a while. I feel so much better eating this amount of food.

God, I really hate it when I come across as some kind of 21st century Louisa May Alcott character on a diet. Go on, you can tell me. I sound like Marmee, don't I? Or Polly in An Old Fashioned Girl?

But I can't help it. It's true.

NaBloPoMo 26: Home again, home again, jiggety jig

We finally managed to get on the plane and fly back to Chicago. Thanksgiving's over, and tomorrow morning it's up with the birds to drive the kids to school in the suburbs, then head right back downtown to attend one of those special events for which Chicago is so duly famous: the Second Mortgage Paper Signing Fun Fest.

Frankly, I don't even know what's going on with this refinancing situation, but never fear, intrepid readers; I will be well and truly informed before the pen hits the paper. I may even stop blogging long enough to ask That Stud Muffin I Married whether we're trying for lower interest rates or whether he's planning on getting a big hunk of cash back, and then flying to Rio with some chippy from the typing pool.

And for those of you who have been counting the days (and some of you have been keeping better track of these things than I have) the End of my house renovation woe Is Near. The lovely blue and white tiles I picked out for my daughter's bathroom--the ones apparently hand-painted by Portuguese nuns or some such--have arrived. And so, very soon, like tomorrow or maybe the next day, my house will be filled to bursting with the Polish tile guys and the Ukrainian plumbers and the Mexican electricians ... I don't know about the floor guy, but I'm sure he speaks something wildly exotic, too. Frankly, the place is going to remind me of the United Nations--noisy, incomprehensible, and ineffectual.

Then, I've got the post-construction cleanup people showing up December 6th, and us moving back in on December 7th.

This means that we've gone through three months of commuting, added 3,000 miles to the odometer of my minivan, spent an extra $60 on gas every week, exceeded my cell phone minutes to the tune of a couple of extra hundred dollars a month--all so that my house can be jam-packed with workmen who don't speak English--and oh yes: I get a new kitchen and two new bathrooms.

OK, I'll stop complaining.

But no wonder I'm signing my life away tomorrow at the bank.

And then, when I've moved back into the house, we'll all find out whether I'll continue to spend three hours a day at the gym.

Or will I revert to my former slothful ways?

Right now, my money's on the gym thing continuing. I've got some stuffing to burn off.

NaBloPoMo 25: Mixed feelings

1) I've really enjoyed sitting around like a slug this weekend!
2) I can't wait to get back to the gym.

1) I've certainly eaten well ... mmm, turkey and stuffing and gravy and homemade cranberry sauce ...
2) Sheesh, would it kill people to offer me a salad?

1) There's no such thing as too much wine!
2) I'd kill for an ice-cold Diet Coke.

1) I'm wondering whether the pie was worth the calories.
2)The Airborne definitely is.

1) OMG, my kids are so charming and funny and adorable!
2) See if you can rearrange the following words to make a sentence: "School, your, now, butts, back, get, to."

1) Goodbye, New Hampshire.
2) Hello, Chicago.

NaBloPoMo 24: I Try to Behave Myself

Today was spent trying to crawl back onto the wagon. This is not because I've become oh-so-virtuous. It's because my patented "Pie to a Thousand Places Diet^TM" became an impossibility after I ate the last half-slice at some point after dinner last night.

Yes, that was four, count 'em, four slices of pie IN ONE DAY.

So now, it's back on program. Time to bring out the tried and true friendly foods. Among which I count

Orville Redenbacher's microwave popcorn


Quaker Weight Control instant oatmeal

zapped the normal way, but with the addition of about a half a cup of frozen blueberries


or raspberries

and some low-carb, high fiber wraps to hold slices of turkey breast, shredded lettuce, sliced cucumber, and homemade cranberry relish.

And lots of water.

And not quite so many glasses of wine.

There. I hope you're satisfied.

NaBloPoMo 23: That crashing sound is me, falling off the wagon

It's 1:20 in the afternoon.

I've eaten three pieces of pie. Two apple (that I baked) and one pumpkin (that my father-in-law baked.)

All with whipped cream.

That's all I've eaten today. Fuck Weight Watchers! Today I'm on the pie diet!

NaBloPoMo 22: Weight Watchers Ruined My Thanksgiving, and other insights.

I just couldn't do it, people. I couldn't stuff myself.

OK, let's be accurate. I managed to stuff myself, but on not very much food, at least, by my pre-Weight Watchers standards.

I had a plate--and not a heaping plate--of food. I had some salad, too. I tried all three kinds of pie.

But I discovered that I'm not so much a glutton as I am an alcoholic. Because the food? Much of which I cooked? Was delicious. But what I really wanted to do is stop eating and just drink more wine. Lots more. I've been pretty much holding myself to two glasses of wine a day, usually much less, and there I was, sitting at the table for hours, yet incapable of taking another bite of food. At times like that, drinking heavily starts to make all kinds of sense.

This is what helped, and consider this your Thanksgiving present: a cup of black coffee with a shot of Courvoisier. It seems to cut right through all that food.

Oh, and here's another present, this one in the guise of an amazing insight: people who say Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday aren't usually doing the cooking.

As for me? Thanksgiving is fine. I'm just glad I'm not in the kitchen anymore. Or the dining room. I'm sitting down. Resting. Not talking. And I'm not eating, either.

NaBloPoMo 21: Same Thing, But Different

I don't see any reason to type in anything about Thanksgiving.

Mind you, we're still in the planning stages. But honestly, so little has changed. We're having exactly the same people, and pretty much the same menu.

And? Another broken dishwasher, just when I'm going to have a truckload of dishes to wash.

Can you feel the whining tonight?

NaBloPoMo 20: The World's Most Fattening Salad

We're flying to New Hampshire tonight. We'll arrive somewhere around midnight. This means that tomorrow is the day we'll do it all. All the shopping and all of the prep for Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws.

And so, I am making lists. Because I know my husband, and he'll want to be up and at the store tomorrow morning by 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. And a spouse with a list in his hand and an plan of attack in his heart? Is a happy spouse.

And so I'm typing in the recipe for Fran Drescher's Incredibly Fattening Not-Caesar Salad (from a Self or Shape magazine article that appeared in 1980, long before Fran became famous for her portrayal of The Nanny.)

This salad is my default for any festive occasion. It has the peculiar virtue of being both delicious and outrageously fattening. As such, it provides a nice challenge for those dieting slackers who think that they can safely double up on salad to avoid overeating on Thanksgiving Dinner chez Poppy. Because I have a cruel streak--small, but robust--I enjoy this sort of thing. Sorry, slackers. Stay away from the salad. Look around for some celery sticks and baby carrots instead.

The weird thing is that I lost the clipping with the ingredient list a long time ago, and have been preparing this recipe from memory ever since. And since my memory is not reliable, I need to start thinking about it now, so I write everything down and don't discover on Thanksgiving Day that I've forgotten about the pine nuts. Again.

The Healthy Stuff:

a head of Romaine lettuce
a head or two of Boston lettuce
a head Red Leaf lettuce
two endives
two avocados
two tbsp minced red onion
a container of those grape tomatoes, halved

The Fattening Stuff:

a quarter cup of pine nuts/pignoli
a package of blue cheese crumbles (I think it's 4 oz.)
a box of seasoned croutons (and Joke can bite me)

The Killer Dressing:

Olive Oil
Mayonnaise
Balsamic vinegar
Prepared horseradish

Get a big jar or measuring cup of some kind. Start with a quarter cup of mayonnaise. Mix in a roughly equal amount of olive oil. Add balsamic vinegar to taste. I mix in enough to get it the color of a latte. And then, for a big salad, add at least two heaping tablespoons of white prepared horseradish, and no, I am not kidding. I make about a cup of this glop, to be sure I have enough.

Arrange the washed-dried-and broken-into-bite-sized-pieces (no shirking!) lettuce in a bowl nicely, with the sliced endive, halved tomatoes, minced red onion, and chopped avocado on top. Add the pine nuts, croutons, and cheese. Pour the prepared salad dressing over the salad and toss until the blue cheese and avocado start to break down and get incorporated into the delicious, but monstrously fattening melange.

NaBloPoMo 19: Sorbet

For a bit of refreshment, today I'm providing you with a sorbet. For once, I'm not going to talk very much about dieting, except in my labels.

Instead, I'm going to show you the kitchen renovation that's been tormenting me for months.

OK. This is the only picture I managed to take of the before:



and this is During, except from the opposite end of the kitchen.



It's not much of a change, right?

Well, there are some differences. New floor, new window, new cabinets. But it's going to be the exactly the same layout. Same appliances. And I'm sorry, but I like white cabinets, so the new ones look almost exactly the same as the old ones.

It's sort of like listening to someone talk about dieting and then finding out she only plans to lose seven pounds. Right?

NaBloPoMo 18: The Secret to Happiness

Wait, come back! I promise, I'll mention dieting and weight loss at some point. OK?

But first I have to tell you a big secret, internet. The secret to happiness.

This is it: 1. do everything you want to do, and 2. don't do anything you don't want to do.

That's it. It's that simple, yet profound.

Now let me tell you how I managed it.

First of all, I got the croup. Maybe a better person can do whatever she wants (lying around like a slug all weekend long) and not doing whatever she doesn't want to do (three rehearsals, a church service, and an evening at the opera, not to mention the dishes) without using some illness or other as a crutch, but I'm a beginner at this, and I needed a truly heart-rending, in-your-face, hey! I'm sick! excuse in order to get away with blatant amounts of not doing the dishes, sleeping late, and ignoring my children.

And the croup worked perfectly. Between my hoarse, raspy voice, and my constant sneezing, coughing, and nose-blowing, a man would have to be completely clueless not to realize that my usual performance as ideal spouse (combining the good-natured humor of Hazel, the lovable maid in the eponymous television show with the efficiency of the robot from The Jetsons) is going to be somewhat diminished.

And so this weekend I read Deluxe, How Luxury Lost its Luster, a whole lot of Look Me in the Eye, watched Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, watched a whole season of Blackadder as well as some DVD extras, listened to the Bartimaeous Trilogy, Book 1: The Amulet of Samarkand, posted a whole lot of insulting remarks on the Weight Watchers community boards, and gave myself a pedicure.

And now for the diet and fitness update I promised you. I did not work out at all, and my diet? What diet? I don't have much of an appetite when I can't smell anything. Even with all the zinc tablets, hot orange-flavored fizzy drinks, and quarts of hot tea with lemon, I should have been fine, because I don't think lemons have many points. Neither does zinc, I'm sure.

Unfortunately, even when I have no sense of smell, I can still taste sweet and salty flavors, and I ended up inhaling a certain amount (OK, two bags) of microwave popcorn. Which I washed down with quarts of lemonade. I'm afraid when I add up the points, the total will leave me reeling in disbelief, and I'll have to take to my bed. Again.

But even if I do go up a pound or two, what does it matter, when I've discovered the secret of happiness?

NaBloPoMo 17: Towel, Thrown In

I canceled my rehearsal. I gave away our opera tickets and canceled the babysitter.

Apparently, I'll do pretty much anything to spend a weekend sitting around doing nothing. Including get sick as a dawg.

To cheer myself up, I'm including this button in this post.



I so totally RAWK, she croaked, reaching for another Kleenex.

NaBloPoMo 16: TGIF

I'm sick.

My throat is sore. My glands are incredibly swollen. My nose is running like a faucet.

Ordinarily I'd have a double rehearsal tomorrow, plus a few more hours on Saturday, but I'd decided incipient laryngitis means I get to email my choir director and beg off. Because hell hath no fury like a group of professional singers who have been infected with laryngitis.

Tomorrow night, I'm going to the opera to see La Boheme--but it's OK because Mimi dies at the end, anyway.

Diet and Fitness update: I'm kind of tired of being on a diet, but I don't really have much of an appetite because I can't smell or taste anything. So that's good. I guess.

And if you think this entry is lackluster, stay away from today's Mamarazzi post.

NaBloPoMo 15: 174.6

So I went to my Weight Watchers meeting yesterday and managed to lose another 1.4 pounds. It seems like less, though, because they wrote down the wrong amount last week. Which means I spent a whole week thinking I weighed 175 when I actually weighed 176!!!

With a little effort, I could work this up to a full-on Britney Spears-level body dimorphism where I think I look HAWT walking around in sequined hot pants and stripper boots.

But I'll spare you.

So anyway, my son and I caught the cold my daughter had last week. We're sitting around sniffling, pumping ourselves full of tea and vitamin C, and I, personally, have so much zinc in my body at this very moment that I'm probably going to set off the airport metal detectors next week when we fly to New Hampshire for our wholesome New England Thanksgiving.

Correction. Our wholesome FATTENING New England Thanksgiving.

Now, unlike some people, I don't idolize Thanksgiving, partly because nobody gives me any presents, and partly because when I was growing up, the food was pretty uninspiring. The Bible tells me to honor my mother and father, so I won't mention how the addition of a glass of Ocean Spray cranberry juice cocktail and a big Lenox dish of celery sticks and black olives to a meal of wet-tissue-flavored turkey and mashed potatoes doesn't exactly have my tastebuds doing handsprings. I mean ... this is not exciting stuff.

But when I do the cooking? It's pretty great.

So anyway, here is a favorite side dish of mine that I fully intend to prepare even though a serving is 5 Weight Watchers points. But it is sooooo good and sooooo indigenously American. (Which is the point, if you ask me. The more turkey, sweet potatoes, wild rice, pecans, and corn products on the menu, the better.) And check out the healthy fats and fiber and whole grains and no animal products, so the vegans will be happy. Also! You can make it the day before--just don't add the toasted nuts until close to serving time or they'll get soggy.

Wild Rice Salad

1 cup raisins (I like to use a mix of Golden and regular, but whatever you like is fine--and dried cranberries might be good, too)
1 cup wild rice
4 1/4 cups water
1 cup pecan halves if you're feeling flush, or 3/4 cup pecan pieces
3/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

Soak the raisins in hot water to cover until plump. Drain well. Rinse the rice several times. Cook the rice in 4 1/4 cups water in a rice cooker until the grains split open. Spread the pecans in a single layer in a shallow baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until toasted. Check the pecans as soon as their aroma is noticeable. Mix the rice, raisins, and green onions in a large bowl. Whisk the olive oil, vinegar, and pepper in a small bowl. Pour over the rice mixture and toss. Chill, covered, until serving time. Add the pecans and mix lightly. Yield: 12 servings

NaBloPoMo 14: Weighing In

I have a little free time before my Weight Watchers meeting, so I thought I'd come by the house and print out an email so I can get my child properly registered for lunchtime chess.

This is something I agreed to do last Saturday, when I was boarding a plane in Baltimore, MD. So OK, that would explain some of the delay, because in case you haven't noticed? It's Wednesday.

Would anyone please explain WHY it seems so IMPOSSIBLE to fill out a piece of paper, attach a check, and drop it off at the school?

1. On Sunday, the woman who asked me to do it didn't email the form to me because she had stomach flu.

2. On Monday, I called her to find out where the form was. Later that day she sent me the email. But on Mondays I'm out of the house driving around and being homeless for 12 hours, so when I got home, I was too zonked to check email.

3. On Tuesday? I forgot.

4. Now it's Wednesday. Here I am, sitting in my unheated, dust-filled house, brimful of form-filling-out zeal, and I can't get my printer to print out the form. I think ... "Hmmm, maybe the printer will work better if I print the document from MSWord ... " only to discover that I haven't installed MSWord on this computer, because two days after we bought it, we moved out of the house so a bunch of construction workers could come in and destroy half the rooms. So now it's off to the public library, where I hope my tax dollars are paying for plenty of ink cartridges or whatever the hell it is that I need to print out this form, but lack.

Did I mention it's Weight Watchers meeting day? And I'm getting weighed in about half an hour? And I'm hungry?

There's a correlation here: Five days for one piece of paper is beginning to feel like five days and achieving a weight loss of half a pound. If that.

It's lucky that I'm not a stress eater. I'm not a stress eater. I'M NOT.

NaBloPoMo 13: Blather, blather everywhere, but not a thought to think

OK, I realize that I do go on and on.

And that if I really want to fully engage my audience, I need to upload incriminating pictures of my flab.

But that would involve my getting all organized with the digital camera thing. And we already know that's not going to happen.

So I put one of those childish ticker things in my sidebar.

BTW, I discovered that the cafe at my gym offers free wireless. Will this be the end of my fitness freak phase? Will Poppy revert to couch potato status? Stay tuned.

NaBloPoMo 12: Gobbledegook--it's what's for breakfast!

Apparently it's just not enough that I have two kids with special needs that require non-stop IEP meetings to discuss their RX of AS and determine whether the alphabet soup that is my children is brought to you by the letters ADD, OCD, and LMNOP.

No, now that I'm the helpless pawn of the fitness industry, I have a whole bunch of new Alpha-Bits to master.

Unfortunately, I haven't mastered them yet.

Last June I had a RMR Resting Metabolic Rate test. Today I had a second one. There is good news and bad. The good?

I've lost 18 pounds, or just under 10 percent of my body weight.

I've gotten better at burning fat. There are five fitness heart rate zones, and the further up the ladder you can get, the more efficiently you're burning fat. When I started, my best fat burning was happening at 108 beats a minute, which is no more than a moderate walking pace. Now it's occurring when I'm in Zone 2, when my heart rate is between 108 and 124 beats a minute. This means I have a higher degree of cardio fitness, and my body has become a better fat burning machine.

This is the bad news:

My Resting Metabolic Rate has plummeted from 1500 to 1038 calories a day.

I'm going to have to push myself and work out harder. Much harder. Like spending half an hour a day making sure my heart beats between 140 and 155 beats per minute. (Is it OK with everyone if I do this by watching scary movies?)

The kidding around is pretty much over. I really need to lift weights.

And the worst news is:

I don't really understand this stuff.

I glaze over like a doughnut when it's explained to me.

NaBloPoMo 11: Forward to the Past

I'm heading to a class reunion today. I'll be seeing "kids" I haven't seen since I turned 13.

For the record, I did not reach puberty until I was 14. And I didn't become fully grown until I was 15.

This means that today, a lot of people will be seeing me who haven't seen me since I looked like a lanky 12-year-old.

I'm sure it will be fine. I mean, space/time continua being what they are, I'm fairly certain some of the other girls blossomed and put forth secondary sex characteristics, and now, like me, are watching these blossoms over-ripen and head for the compost pile.

So I'm sure it will be fine. After all, we're adults. And no one will stare, or point, or anything immature like that.

But if they do? I'm planning on smothering them with my GIANT BREASTS.

NaBloPoMo 10: Too. Much. Travel.

This morning I got up and had my usual breakfast. I eat the instant oatmeal Weight Watchers sells at their meetings. The maple and brown sugar flavor. I put a cup of frozen blueberries in it, and it tastes like blueberry pancakes. And only 2 points!

That was it for the phytonutrients until dinner.

I headed to Midway airport and took a flight to Baltimore, then to Providence, RI, where I rented a car and drove to my brother's house in Wellesley, MA.

Lunch consisted of:

A packet of Ritz snack crackers
A packet of peanuts
A cup of coffee
A refill
Two packets of peanuts
A diet coke

By the time I got to Henry's (Blackbird and Susie Sunshine, repeat after me, HI HENRY!) I had all the allure of a piece of petrified, flavorless chewing gum that had been stuck to the bottom of an airplane seat.

Dinner helped. I had spinach salad and tuna prepared three ways. And two glasses of red wine.

But honestly, travel food is sooooooooooooooooo bad.

I have to pack something for the trip home.

NaBloPoMo 9: The good, the bad, and the fattening

I took a day off from my usual hamster-in-a-wheel treadmill-trotting today.

(Yes, I'm aware that it's oh-so-ironic that I was just bragging about needing my exercise endorphins. Whatever.)

Because I also need rewards. Fitting into the clothes I already owned that got too tight is great, but I have to admit, the idea of buying something new has a lot of allure. So after some debate (because I couldn't decide whether it was stupid to buy a coat that fits me now, when I have no intention of staying the size I am now) I bought a new coat.



Isn't it pretty? Well ... not pretty. Classic. Actually, I think it moves past classic into completely comatose, but for better or worse, that's the kind of taste I have. I've been jonesing for a camel's hair coat since 1990, when I first saw Carolyn Farina wear one as Audrey Rouget inMetropolitan .

I just realized something. That was seventeen years ago. And I've lost 17 pounds. The coat, she was fated to be mine!

Then, after a busy day of shopping and getting my hair cut, I came home and ate everything in the apartment. All that stuff I buy "for the kids." The Halloween candy the neighbors had out "for the kids."

It makes me wonder why my kids don't weigh 175 pounds too.

But my son got his braces off today. That means I don't have the handy excuse of eating the chewy stuff for him. So that's good.

But I'm not looking forward to adding up my points. Earth to Poppy: eat more lunch.

This weekend I have a reunion with a bunch of people I haven't seen since seventh grade. I'm already anticipating the naked terror I'll see on their faces when they realize what puberty did to me.

NaBloPoMo 8: Swimming with endorphins

Yesterday I received a rather unpleasant voice mail.* Someone wanted to rip me a couple of new nostrils, or maybe two nostrils and an anus.

At any rate, I was mildly perturbed by the situation. I pondered it long and hard.

What I didn't do? Is binge eat. Or drink more than the usual glass of wine with dinner.

Instead, I found myself thinking: "I can't wait to head to the gym tomorrow and get on the treadmill."

Pal Fiddledeedee said it best: "Just imagine--the gym rats and tennis playing girls were right all along."

Exercise is the best, cheapest, OTC treatment for anxiety and depression. Two months of gym going, and I'm addicted.

I don't crave Doritos. I crave enDorphins

*Understated a la WASP. But then I thought, how will anyone be able to tell that I was upset? So I stuck in some italics.

NaBloPoMo 7: 175.2, or, In which I out myself

I didn't think I could make it to this week's Weight Watcher's meeting because I had to take my daughter to the pediatrician for a walk-in visit, and you just never know how that will go. I mean, the cold and flu season is starting up, and who knows how many walk-ins there will be, or how much time we're going to have to spend in an examining room, reading bad magazines and listening to a baby wail two doors down?

(Personally, I feel extremely lucky not to be live-blogging from the pediatrician's waiting room.)

But hey! We got out pretty quickly, so before we went to pick up her prescription, I let her sit in the van (watching Madonna's Immaculate Collection videos on my iPod)* while I ran in and got weighed.

Good news! I lost another 1.8 pounds and now weigh 175.2, for a total loss so far of 17.6 pounds.

The weird thing is how happy I am to weigh 175 pounds.

---
Women keep so many secrets. They hide their age, their weight, the number of lovers they've had, their bra size, and their IQ ... but not your Poppy!

I freely admit that my weight, in pounds, is currently higher than my IQ.
---

Let's talk numbers, shall we?

135: what I weighed when I reached my full height in 10th grade
150: what I weighed my senior year, when I broke up with my first boyfriend--the one who used to bug me about my weight
163: what I weighed when I graduated from high school
150: my fighting weight in college, when I swam half a mile a day, lifted weights, and walked everywhere I went
148: what I weighed when I met my husband
180: what I weighed nine years later when I got pregnant with our son (1994)
211: what I weighed when I delivered him (1995)
170: what I weighed six weeks later (1995)
200: what I weighed when I delivered my daughter (1997)
160: what I weighed six weeks later (1997)
178: what I weighed when I went on the South Beach Diet (2003)
146: what I weighed about three months later
193: what I weighed when I started Weight Watchers (2007)
175: what I weigh now.

Looking at these numbers, I can see that 160 pounds is a perfectly reasonable weight-loss goal, as long as I'm not planning to sit around on my ass all day long. Even 150 is attainable, as long as I ditch the car, walk everywhere I go, only eat food I've grown myself, go to the gym five days a week, stop drinking, and become a lumberjack.

---

Sorry to be so boring, yet up close and personal--revealing, even. But don't worry. I don't foresee any posts about the ups and downs of my bra size. Or my IQ.

* Oh, the irony of watching over her body like a hawk, and then corrupting her girlish world view with my god-awful work-out video crack.

NaBloPoMo 6: A Quiz: Are You Fat?

The weird thing about getting fat is that it seems to happen overnight. You're going along in your usual not very exciting, certainly not very dramatic way, and someone takes a picture of you at BlogHer, and boom! You're fat.

And you think, "What the hell happened?"

Trust me. You didn't get fat overnight. No really, you didn't. You know how long it takes to lose weight? Well, it takes just as long to gain it. You have to have been doing a lot of wrong stuff for a long time before you get to be 40 or 50 pounds overweight. Ask me how I know.

So how does this happen? ("Sleep-eating?" she asked herself hopefully.)

No, not sleep eating.

So here's today's insight: just as alcoholism is a disease of denial, so is fatism. Fat people have all the body dysmorphic problems that teeny tiny little anorexic people have. You know how Mary Kate Olson looks at herself in the mirror and thinks she looks hot? Well, fat people do the same thing.

We think we look fine, even cute, when hello? We're fat. We think we don't really eat that much, when hello? We do.

Yes, we really do eat that much. Trust me on this. Spend a single day on Weight Watchers measuring every bite of food that goes into your mouth, and you will discover two things: the first is what being hungry feels like. The second is that you have been eating massive amounts of food.

To help you escape the cloud of unknowing that you may have wrapped around yourself like a puffy down comforter made of blubber,* here is a quiz! It's extremely scientific, having been tested on a well-known blogger whom I shan't name, because I've done myself enough damage, OK?

1. When someone starts to take your picture, do you flip them the bird, even if your hair looks great?
2. Do you have to lie down on the bed--and possibly use various non-clothing-related household implements--in order to zip your jeans?
3. Have you accused your dry cleaner of shrinking your clothes?
4. Are you convinced that your clothes dryer is running too hot?
5. Do you remain faithful to your spouse in part because it's impossible to remove your wedding ring?
6. Would you describe yourself as big boned, voluptuous, or buxom?
7. Do you have no idea how much you actually weigh?
8. Do you suspect that your actual weight is completely unrelated to your driver's license weight?
9. Are you considering a new career as a department store Santa?
10. Do you want fries with that?

If you answered "yes" to any of the questions, you are my new best friend and are now a dues-paying member of the Poppy Buxom diet support group.

* What a metaphor! That, my friends, is two degrees in English literature talking.

NaBloPoMo 5: It would be wonderful if the following activities burned lots of calories:

1. Driving
2. Blabbing people's heads off
3. Blow-drying my hair
4. Sitting in my son's IEP meeting
5. Wondering whether I was going to be late to my daughter's Girl Scout Meeting
6. Feeling my daughter's forehead; deciding she's running a fever; bringing her home
7. Bringing my daughter a cup of tea in bed
8. Sorting laundry
9. Hauling wet clothes out of the washing machine
10. Folding clothes and putting them away

and, of course, in a perfect world, the top calorie-burning activity would be

11. blogging

But nooooooo ... that's not enough activity. That won't squeeze the fat out of my fat cells. So I hopped around on the elliptical for an hour, and then swam 14 lengths of the pool. Which is only something like a seventeenth of a mile.

Can anyone tell me WHY I signed up for a sprint Triathlon? I can't figure it out. I may be losing fat cells, but I'm losing brain cells, too.

NaBloPoMo 4: Eat Your Goddamned Salad

First let me tell you how my diet is coming along. After all, you don't want to hear what I have to say about diet unless I can demonstrate that I know how to lose weight.

OK. Today I got dressed for church, and picked a pair of pants I own as perfect for wearing under a choir robe. They're by Karen Kane. They're a size 14, and are made of some miracle fiber with some stretch. My husband mentioned that these pants were looking a bit baggy. I then decided to determine whether they had gotten too big, using my handy method of removing them without unsnapping or unzipping them. And it took a couple of tugs, but off they came.

This means my pants are too big. Which means I'm losing weight. And that means I know what I'm talking about.

So let me tell you the difference between deprivation and satisfaction.

Deprivation is a dinner with 1 serving of broiled chicken, 1/2 cup of rice, and a half a cup of steamed broccoli. And a glass of wine.

Satisfaction is the same dinner with two big helpings of tossed green salad with tomato and avocado, dressed with a vinaigrette made of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, salt, and pepper.

These two meals are are a world apart.

The first has you finishing your last bite five minutes after you sat down.

The second has you still eating at 20 minutes and counting.

Also, you need to include a little good fat in your diet. It's good for your heart. It keeps you full longer. And not to get into TMI-land, but a little olive oil is good for what ails you. And the salad dressing takes care of that.

So eat your salad. And don't come whining to me that you're hungry and constipated.

Just leave off the fried croutons, pine nuts, blue cheese, etc., etc. (I don't need to tell you that Bac-Os are both sad and disgusting, right?)

NaBloPoMo 3: The Chubby Book Slut Reviews a Few

Yo, internet!

So I survived two days with my husband's weirdo aging hippy former-Hare Krishna birth mother (called that because she left home when he was four to become a Hare Krishna and go live on a commune in West Virginia for 10 years, so he was legally adopted and raised by his stepmother.)

Come to think of it, maybe I'll save the story of my wacky in-laws for one of those long winter nights when I have nothing to say. Or next year's NaBloPoMo.

So anyway, I haven't mentioned any of the millions of diet and fitness books I've been reading. This is because I've been using the library's terminals to post, and I don't think I can save graphics on the library's hard drives. And I need to spice up my reviews with pictures of the book covers. So that, you know, you can skip my blathering and judge the books by the covers. Hee!

So anyway, without further ado, I'm now going to review a few diet and fitness books.

To make things easier for the more visual, sound-bite oriented of you, I will rank the books according to a system I just invented. It's brilliant. Good books are rated on a scale of five smoothies; bad books are rated on a scale of five Big Macs.

Oh great, now I want a smoothie.

And now, the books.


1. The Philosopher's Diet, by Richard A. Watson Five Smoothies

I first read this book 19 years ago when I was biking and running and dieting and skeered out of my mind that I wasn't going to fit into my Laura Ashley wedding dress. I fell in love with Watson's writing style and the way he takes the subject of losing weight and uses it to expound upon much weightier subjects (pun intended.) I read it about every year or so, and it has held up well. (Better than Laura Ashley, in fact. What ever happened to that company?)

Watson is smart, funny, opinionated as hell--even a bit curmudgeonly. He knows you're full of paltry, half-assed excuses for being overweight and unfit. He slaps you around a bit--this is Richard A. Watson, not Richard Simmons. He talks about Life. And Death. And the fact that philosophers schedule time to think. If you're a blogger, you do, too, so you'll probably enjoy this book.


2. The Fiber35Diet: Nature's Weight Loss Secret, by Brenda Watson, C.N.C. Three Smoothies

I admit I've only skimmed this one and shouldn't really be reviewing it yet, but it's right next to me, and I didn't get to be 50 pounds overweight by jumping up and running all over my apartment looking for some book I've finished reading.

So I'll be shallow and review a book before I've finished reading it. And while I'm being shallow, what's with the InterCap style title? Does anyone else think it looks idiotic? I mean, how can you write a book about eating fiber and give it a title that looks constipated?

OK, while I was looking for the frontispiece to see whether this InterTitle nonsense appears there, too, I noticed that the author has already written three books with the words "cleansing," "digestive," and "detoxification" in the title. I think you need to know this up front. Otherwise, you'll turn a page and find out that you're going much deeper into the subject of colonics--pun intended-- than maybe you're ready for.

Other than that, this book is actually pretty good. It has the same breathless, one-note quality that you find in books where the author has discovered The Reason We're All Fat. (It's Carbs! No, it's fat! No, you dummy--it's a lack of protein!) I've read enough books like that to know that you can go on about your personal weight loss Holy Grail only so long before you start to sound like a broken record. But Watson (what's with all the authors named Watson?) only talks about fiber for 90 pages. The other 150 pages discuss: metabolic boosters, cardio training, strength training, oh dear here comes the chapter about detoxing, supplements, phytonutrients, the role of various hormones, and recipes.

NaBloPoMo 2: "Oil ... me"

Today at the gym I ran into my friend Fiddledeedee, so we decided to work out together.

We did 15 minutes on one set of treadmills only to get kicked off, so we switched to a different pair of machines and worked out for another hour. Which is nothing for her, or actually, for me. I routinely spend two hours doing aerobic stuff, and Fiddledeedee is also setting endurance records.

I alternated walking and running, and discovered (by means of my NON-STOP BLATHERING) that I was in a good aerobic state throughout. You know, moderate. Not gasping.

Which means I probably need to work harder. (Except when the gossip is really good.)

After working out we went to the cafe for some coffee. Unfortunately the gossip and coffee were way too good, so when I finally got out of the chair, my muscles had kind of seized up. I felt like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. I needed someone to oil me, or lacking that, a long hot shower.

Why is it that if I stand and stand and stand and let water pour over me at home, I feel like a guilty water-wasting environment despoiler, whereas when I do exactly the same thing at the gym, it doesn't bother me at all?

I figure that it's because someone else is paying the water bill. Either that, or my judgment is affected by the self-righteous glow I get from spending over an hour on the treadmill.

After the gym I went to Best Buy and bought videos and a new CD, then to Ulta to pick up more supplies for my gym bag. One sign that I've been working out a lot is the rapidly diminishing supply of shampoo, cleanser, and body lotion. Whereas those bottles are pretty much gathering dust at home because in case you haven't noticed, I've become a gym rat.

Food? Well, I ate my usual egg salad sandwich for lunch, and my usual pizza and red wine for dinner. All very high quality, and we make the pizza at home, so I control the amount of cheese and even sneak whole wheat flour into the dough ... but you know what? It's Friday, and Weight Watchers can bite me.

Also my mother in law is visiting. The former Hare Krishna one from Florida. And while I'm not much on stress eating, I think I'm being good not to dive head first into my kids' Halloween treat sacks.

NaBloPoMo 1: 177, or, Dieting is Not Pretty

For the past week, I've been wondering what in the hell I'm going to come up with to post about daily. What the hell do I have to say that's all that interesting? To the internet, I mean. I'm easily amused. I'm an intellectual, and that means I can keep myself busy all day long, thinking deep thoughts about transubstantiation. Or ants. Or how they get the jelly into a jelly doughnut.

But you, internet, are less easily amused. You, internet, are a cranky child, always demanding another story. And a better one.

Well, tough luck, internet. You have been warned. I'm going to be boring. For an entire month, I'm going to talk about ... dieting. And fitness.

And I'm not going to hide behind euphemisms and vague language. I'm talking real numbers, internet.

So here we are. It's day one of NaBloPoMo, and I'm 5' 7". I weigh 177 pounds. This gives me a Body Mass Index of 28, and that makes me Officially Overweight.

The upper range of a healthy weight for me is 160, and that's where I'm planning to go. (I'm actually planning on going lower. I've weighed 160 pounds, and I'm still fat at that weight. I'm much better at 148.) But life will be much better even at 160 pounds. My doctor won't lecture me, and little kids will stop making fun of me when I pass them on the street.

Oh, and one other thing. On August 29th, I joined Weight Watchers. At my first weigh in? I weighed 192.8 pounds. And that means while I was posting about being homeless and living at the gym, or how I was so obsessed with bathroom tile, I was lightheaded from hunger and not responsible for what I said.

But it also means I've already lost 15.8 pounds.

Excuse me while I pat myself on my slightly-less-chubby back.