Fat Gals on Television--Drop Dead Diva and Huge and why I watch them...

Warning: I ramble like mad. Sorry. Don't feel like revising and proofing over and over to get to essay-like laser focus. Heh.

Television--and cinema--tend not to depict US folks the way we really look. Most of us aren't toned, trim beauties and hunks with white-white teeth and perfect makeup, hair, clothes who look stunning the second we wake up and don't look droopy and pooped the moment we go to bed.

Go to a mall (one not frequented in high numbers by foreign tourists) and look around. What do we look like? For the most part, we're decently groomed, but not glamorous. There will be the occasional really elegant or really updated stylish types, but most just go for comfort. And we tend toward the pudgy side of things, with many of us walking around sporting quite a bit more adipose tissue than is desirable, fashionable, even healthful.

But on television, size 2 rules among women. Should an actress dare to show 10 lbs more than she should by the Hollywood standard, she's gonna have her butt or belly or thighs pasted across tabloids and talked about on Access Hollywood or TMZ and some celebrity blogger will taunt her. (Jennifer Love Hewitt can attest to this.)

Should a formerly glamorous beauty turn flabby and fat (Elizabeth Taylor years ago, Kirstie Alley today), she will be made fun of by late night hosts and everyone under the sun. Maybe they'll be sponsored by some convenience diet program. Because, God forbid, a celebrity look like the rest of us.

Oh, and don't grow old. That's another sin, unless you're a man, who can still get great roles and be a romantic lead at age 65+ (Harrison Ford, Sean Connery,Robert Redford, etc).

But television is right there in our homes, and while it will happily lead or reflect changes in public mores and attitudes about sex or family structure or work or etc, it's sometimes really slow in showing the changing face --and ass--of America.

As a Latina, I know that some years ago I kept asking, "Where the hell are we? We're like 20% of the population, so where are we?" I mean, Freddie Prinze and Desi Arnaz are way in the past. What's happening now?

Then  Jennifer Lopez made box office, Cristina Aguilera and Ricky Martin and Shakira made the charts and MTV's videos, and George Lopez's show gave us a family-face. Sophia Vergara is on Modern Family now (and funny, too). Cute young Latin performers are on TV (the half-Puerto Rican family on Wizards of Waverly Place). Hunkorama Adam Rodriguez makes the girls go mmmm on CSI: Miami. (Although, really, for a city that's more than 50% Hispanic, that show needs some more Latin face flavor and don't get me going on CSI: NY's dearth of Hispanics.)

So, I ask less often about the ethnicity factor and more often about the fat factor. Where are the pudgies, chubbies, zaftigs, chunkies, and fatties? We're a fat country. We're not a country of ectomorphs. We're roundies. J-Lo made the big Latin butt popular among non-black, non-Latin folks, will Drop Dead Diva and HUGE make the bigger gal popular in television programming of the future?

Dunno, but I tune in. I loved DDD from day one and haven't missed an episode. The actors are excellent and the show is fun and funny while often addressing important issues other than fat-related ones. Even my husband sits to watch with me without fail. The lead actress is plus-size who comes across smart AND pretty AND talented. She may have the soul of a skinny blonde inside, but what we see is an attractive, successful lawyer of a Lane Bryant size brunette. And it's about fricken time a plus-size lead actress can be seen as SEXY AND COMPETENT.

While we've seen big gals featured before--notably Roseanne, whose eponymous show let us into the often cantakerously dysfunctional world of a supersized wife/mom/blue-collar worker. But Roseanne wasn't put out there as desirable or super-successful. She was the tough-talking, no nonsense, unglamorous big gal married to a blue-collar supersized hubby with often rebellious kids.

But at least she wasn't a vindictive whack job like Mimi in Drew Carey Show--with the clown makeup and insane outfits that said, "I'm fat, so yeah, I am a big joke." It was okay for Drew to be the fat guy who gets the cute gal. Mimi was just the fat gal with no fashion sense and a psychosis.

Blasting to the past a bit, I have fond memories of tuning in to a new show called THE PRACTICE and seeing a size 22 or so Camryn Mannheim as a regular (even with her notable man woes). A less-cute precursor to DROP DEAD DIVA's Jane, she was a a smart lawyer gal (though not as brilliant as others in the team). Again, though, unlike DDD's Jane, who gets warm "almost passionate" looks from one of her colleagues and has a passionate relationship (spoiler: now off) with a prosecutor, Camryn's character was not drawn as an effervescent object of like and some lust.

Anyone remember LESS THAN PERFECT?  A show with two less-than-slim gals. Both Sherri Shepherd and Sara Rue have lost weight now, and Sara, who was the show's lead actress, now plugs Jenny Craig. But hey, I liked seeing a show with gals who displayed more "average" American bodies.

Back to today: I'll say this--at least the characters in HUGE are more like regular fat teens. Some are overprotected and meek, some are rebellious, some are super-hot-to-trot, all have issues with either their bodies or society's rejection of their bodies or both.

I don't remember my teen years as being all lightness and joy. I was chubby --by my own estimation and by size category, as I wore a size 10 at start of my teens and a 12 by graduation from high school. Old school measurements, not the revised ones of today, meaning I wasn't really THAT  big, geesh. My hips were 41 inches at age 18, and I weighed 139 pounds, which I remember one cousin going, "Whoa!" when I measured them. I wish my hips were that "big" now (for reference, they're 54.5 inches) . I used to read diet books that had calculations that told me I should weigh 123. Right. Yeah. Like that ever happened.

No wonder I couldn't enjoy being NORMAL weight

I rode bike. I did yoga. I walked for miles. I swam for hours in my sister's complex's pool. I loved the beach and let my poochy belly (got it from mom) show in bathing suits. I didn't FEEL fat in my activities. But society/diet books told me I was overweight and should reduce. So, I couldn't enjoy my body fully, though I was normal.

It makes me furious to this day to think about it.

So, even with HUGE not being anything outstanding yet --one can hope. I base that hope on the really charismatic presence of unkempt, snarky, cellulite-baring Nikki Blonsky. (I never saw this gal in anything else she's done, but man, she's good, good in a way Ricki Lake never, ever was when she was "the cool young fat actress of the moment." Although, to give Ricki her props, she's gotten better. Saw her in an indie flick not too long ago, and thought, "Oh, she's finally learned to act.")

HUGE is the television drama version that reminded me of an MTV documentary I watched a while back that showed teens at a weight loss camp.  It had the same vibe as HUGE, maybe was an inspiration, dunno.

 Some critique the fact that the show doesn't feature someone with total body acceptance without reservations (ie even Will has issues). Well, I had fat friends as a teen. Not merely "a bit fatter than me", but fat. Big. Round. Obese.

And not one had total body acceptance. Every single one wanted to lose weight. One underwent a radical weight loss over one summer vacation: left school in spring quite obese, and returned to the new year's term normal weight. She must have pretty much fasted, and protein fasts were very popular in the seventies. She got a huge boost of confidence, was more active in social events, and got a boyfriend. Clearly, it made a "huge" difference to her life.

I'd find it unrealistic if the characters in HUGE really were totally happy being large in a society that hates large, big in a culture that considers big a fatal flaw, particularly for females. I might believe in a character that believes in fat/self acceptance, but still wishes she could "fit in" to a slimmer world just cause it's EASIER. I've heard that view spoken by gays: "It would just be easier to be straight." Doesn't mean they hate themselves, just means that they wish day to day life was less full of obstacles.

I suspect Nikki Blonsky's "Will" may say she likes herself the way she is and it's going to prove to be nearly all talk by season's end. Maybe she doesn't have the profound self-loathing so many of us have had/have about our fat, but I suspect that it was universal in my teen circle in high school: the chubs all wanted to have the figure of the bat girls, cheerleaders, desired girls in school. The ones the boys rated 9 or 10. We wanted to shop in normal clothes stores, not Lane Bryant.

But even so, a drama needs conflict. External and internal. Otherwise, boring.

HUGE has an assortment of issues under the skin of its fat characters, and I hope the show improves so I don't just tune in cause "Hey, a show with fellow fatties." No, I want it to be a show that really delves into the issues big teens (and by extension big adults) face in a big-despising society.

At least Gina Torres and Nikki make it really watchable (as do a couple other actors doing a very nice job, imo). I like these two ladies a lot. They both have charisma.

And I admit, that I had this moment of intense sympathy and even admiration when Gina Torres' camp director character, when offered a special food one evening, says, "I don't eat after dinner. Ever." (I paraphrase, as I don't remember the exact wording of the script.) And she repeats it.  This is a character who has lost a lot of weight and is paying the price, in terms of discipline and self-sacrifice, to keep it off. The total seriousness and even bit of anger in the tone as the lines were delivered gave me chills.

It's not easy being fat. But it's not easy staying slim, either, as I think we're going to see more of in the show.

So, I'm hanging in there with DROP DEAD DIVA (yay, me loves Jane!) and HUGE (just okay, but me loves Gina and Nikki). I'm all for employing the fat in Hollywood. :D

School Lunches; Jamie Oliver and Chicken Nuggets; Weight Loss Shows; Shapelovers again, and Strawberries galore; Five Fruit Frenzy at Jamba Juice

Easter Sunday I was over at my big bro's home. He has two grandkids and I got a look at the elementary school lunch menu. It was taped to the fridge and smack in front of my face as I stored the extra chicken satay.

What crap we feed our kids. How come taxpayer dollars go to feed kids fattening, unhealthful crap? Chicken nuggets. Meat pizza (I'm guessing NOT on a whole grain crust or with low-fat cheese). Hot dogs (omigod). Corn Dogs (doubleomigod).

A quick google got this article with this summary of research findings regarding obesity and these crap school lunches:

Research presented this past weekend at a meeting of the Annual College of Cardiology determined that kids who eat lunches served by their schools are almost 60 percent more likely to be overweight or obese when compared to children who bring their lunch from home. The survey of nearly 1,300 Michigan-based sixth graders, taken over three years, also found that school lunch eaters ate more fat-intensive meats and sugar, as well as fewer vegetables than their counterparts—which contributed to them showing elevated levels of bad cholesterol in their bloodstreams.

If I were Empress of the US, school lunches would be the epitome of healthful, balanced eating to give kids a great start and energy to get through their studies. Whole grains. Nothing fried. No caffeine. Nothing with sugar (except for rare treats on a holiday times or other special occasions). No sugar-laden chocolate milk, for sure. No sodas--diet or otherwise. No junk chips (unless baked and low-salt and ideally made from something that has fiber). Fruit cups would have no added sugar. Certainly no hot dogs would be featured. Egads.

I know, they'll say this: kids won't eat healthful stuff.

Guess what? Tough patooties. Give parents before school starts an idea of a menu and what items are included. "If your child has not been trained at home to eat these foods, then please pack as suitable brown bag or bento or boxed lunch for them each day."

I figure it's up to parents to train kids to eat fruits, veggies, whole grains, etc. If they don't, then make lunch. I, as a taxpayer, don't wanna finance the ticking time bomb that is obesity and diabetes. I am a product of this junk food lunch system training kids to want and like more and more crap. (I remember grilled cheese sandwiches DRiPPING with margarine, fatty meat pizzas, oily fried chicken, sloppy joes on white buns, oily fries, huge-sized cookies.) Funny, cause at home we got rice, beans, salad with avocado and olive oil, and things that were far less damaging than what schools gave.

So, today, I caught Jamie Oliver on The Doctors (where I got a look at a liver and a heart that probably look like mine, given I'm obese. Ick.) He was showing kids how gross chicken nuggets can be made. It was vile. But when he fried them up and asked which of the kids would eat them, all of them raised their hands. Even after seeing the globs of fat and goo that went into the nuggets, they'd eat 'em. Hah. Jamie was shocked.

They also showed the crazy amounts of salt and sugar in kid's lunch meals. One could weep.

I really am amazed parents tolerate those menus. Corn dogs. CORN DOGS???

Insane.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I caught a couple episodes of LOST IT! on Discovery Health channel. I wanted to see if the stories could up my mojo factor. It's always nice to see folks get it off and feel happier and healthier. One lady did WW. One did Jenny Craig. One guy did hypnosis tapes, which actually looked maybe interesting.

I'm not feeling all that motivated, but I did feel a tad more hopeful watching. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gotta admit that the Shapelover meals this week have been very good. Their food is tastier than when I first tried them more than a year ago (for a brief while). Very tasty. Yesterday, I had the Normandy Beef consomme, and while it wasn't so much consommeish (it had thick veggies in there), it was really delicious and hearty.

Hubby really liked his pork fricasse with carrots that I served him with the mashed new potatoes that came with my blue cheese beef dish. Today, for lunch, I had a pesto beef lasagna for lunch that was excellent, if a tad tad tad salty (prolly the cheese sprinkled on top was to blame for that). It came with a tomato basil onion salad that had a lovely balsamic/basil flavor. The chocolate berry dessert was so good for 70 calories. Mmm.

Been eating a lot of strawberries, too. The harvest right now is huge from Central Florida, so prices are low and berries are sweet. :D  I hope you check for them when you go shopping this week. Good for ya!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hubby went to get some home repair stuff, and I asked him to pick me up some carrot juice and the new Five Fruit Frenzy smoothie that Jamba Juice has been highlighting as having "five servings of fruit in a 16 oz serving." I asked for the smaller size (in case I'm not wild about it, anyway). It's got strawberries, blueberries, banana, mango, peaches--ye five fruits there--mixed in peach juice, berry juice with ice.  I'm a sucker for mango, so I hope this is numsy.

If ya wanna try it, get a dollar off with a printable coupon until 4/10.

DragonFire Factoid: Oops, We Got Fatter As A Nation...AGAIN!

Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, and there’s no end in sight to this dangerous trend. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2007 25.6 percent of Americans were obese. But in 2008, it crept up to 26.1 percent.

There are six states that can dubiously boast the fact that over 30 percent of their citizens are obese: Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Colorado is the only state in which less than 20 percent of its citizens are not obese.

Crazy Weight Loss Methods

Olympic Athletes, like some dieters at large, try crazy, dangerous weight loss schemes, such as those outlined in this article.

These are not new wacko methods, either. I had a boyfriend in high school who was on the wrestling team, and he did the rubber-suit thing and the spitting up and the water pills before weigh-ins. (He was also on the softball team, but didn't do crazy stuff for that, that I can recall.)

Some THE BIGGEST LOSER finalists use nutty methods to get low, low, low for the final weigh-in--including eating lots of asparagus and taking water pills. They can gain as much as 32 pounds in the days after that last weigh-in, because it was water loss, not fat.

It's lucky none of them collapsed from heart failure.

A distressing number of us dieters have at some time come to rely on pills (water or "speed" or laxatives), saran wrap (my boyfriend in high school's sister would sit around all day before a big date wrapped in plastic wrap to fit into her dress better!), eating only X meal bar, drinking only X protein shake, etc.

Anything that is dehydrating is causing you to lose water, not fat. We don't need to lose water, generally. (Some folks have a medical condition that causes excessive fluid retention, and they DO need to lose water.) Even when we eat Chinese or high-sodium, what we need to lose is SODIUM, excess sodium, not water. Water just happens to wash it out, so ironically, we need to drink MORE water to lose excess water weight.

One of the things that causes some of us to overeat is THIRST--ie, not recognizing the mouth-hunger we feel is for water, fluid, not solids, food.

So, getting dehydrated will backfire for dieters. You lose the water, you'll feel thirsty, you end up maybe EATING MORE than you would have, and the water comes back, along with some pounds.

Anything that is very-low-calorie is setting you up for a binge, a fall, a lower metabolism. Anything that is not real food in life-long sustainable meal plans is not gonna cut it except for short term.

And even when something seems safe, cause your doctor gives it to you, is NO GUARANTEE. Remember Fen-Phen? It killed the wife of a former mayor of my city some years ago.

Rely on anything other than good food in smaller portions and near-daily to daily exercise (calories in, calories out), and you may be stepping into the long and wide danger zone of side-effects.

I can understand why these athletes and dieters get crazy. Don't we all wish we could find the magic bullet? Sigh.

But I think some things should not be faciliated. In athletics, for instance, weigh-ins should be minutes before an event, to make sure athletes are discouraged from doing these things. Trust me, no athlete is going to be ABLE to compete dehydrated. They'll pass out. They'll learn to calibrate those scales and stay well enough under that even a scale change gets them in their class.


In real life, I think doctors should be discouraged from offering pills until after a patient has had a round with 1. dietitians 2. behavioral therapists 3. a personal trainer or someone who can confirm they are exercising. In other words, I think taking pills should have the same sort of tough accountability as, say, getting bariatric surgery (where you have to have psych assessments, go on a diet first, etc).

Pills shouldn't be easy. Pills like this should NOT be over the counter, either. That's asking for folks to abuse them. Like Sudafed is now (cause of Meth issues), water and other diet pills should have to go through a pharmacist.

Sounds tough, but I'd rather not have dieters (and athletes) ruin their kidneys and hearts for something bound to fail.

No diet pill has been shown to lead to successful long-term weight loss. And many have side effects that mean folks can't stay on them long. You probably know (or have been) someone who tried some and gained back the weight.

Diets fail regularly, too, we know; but at least being on a sound weight-loss plan means you're focusing on good nutrition--veggies, fruits, lean dairy and proteins, clean water--and not just popping some chemical that'll make you buzzed-hyper (cause it's either got enough caffeine for 12 cups of coffee or has ephedra or has some other "speed" drug) or make you poop your pants.

If you wouldn't let your kid take an iffy drug, why would you let yourself take it?

It's hard to learn to do it right, to put up with gradual losses rather than "superfast weight loss", to tolerate 1 to 2 pounds a week (or less), to plateau. But that's how you do it SAFELY.

And as a bonus, that's one way to maybe avoid the maximum amount of sag. If you lose very slowly, you have a better chance to being able to tone up and minimize the hanging skin (though for folks like me, who got to morbid obese status, there's about a ZERO chance of our evading the hanging, loose, wrinkled skin that losing weight leaves behind. One good reason never to get heavy to start. I wish I had known before about that. Honest to God, I didn't until a few years ago. It's horrifying to me! It might have kept me under 200, those pics!)

Getting to 299 was the big awakening I needed to stop the upward creep and start the slow downward trek. (Very slow, as it turns out.) I did not want to see 300 on my home scale. I didn't. (Though I did with clothes on at the doc's office: 303!)

People have died from using diet pills and water pills. People (including athletes) have died from extreme weight loss measures. People even die on the surgical table for legitimate and medically-okayed bariatric surgery (a small %, but it's a risk, always, to go under the knife.)

Let's find a way to do it safely--all of us. Let's think long-term, not "this week!" Let's not die in our quest to be healthy. Let's be sane.

And when you're tempted to speed things up with an iffy method, remember Karen Carpenter, remember Steve Bechler, remember Patricia Mishcon.

Leave extreme dieting to reckless thrill-seekers...and dumb-ass Olympians.

~~
~~

Tyranny of Skinny Ideal

I had a really "feel good" day yesterday, despite only sleeping 5 hours. (I only got five last night, too, cause I was up till 4 am doing some work.) I had energy like I hadn't had in a long while, and I felt...vivid! I decided my mood needed something vibrant, so I washed and straightened my hair into a glossy waterfall, painted my toenails an orange-red, and put on my summeriest lipstick--Manhunt, which looks orangey-red on me, though I already got my man--with some Lychee Luxe lipglass on top for extra shine. I felt glowy.

My Pilates teacher said she noticed I was walking differently, looked brighter, and seemed slimmer.

Heh.

So, on with the tortuous, but satisfying workout. During a point where my trainer was adjusting some springs on the Reformer, I looked over to the corner with the ladder barrel, where an impossibly slender and tall creature of blessed looks (must be another model, I swear) was leaning on the barrel, pushing disgustingly at the non-existent fat on her thighs. I kid you not. This gal only had the amount of fat humans need to live and no more. But her face in that mirror was disapproving.

What was she disgusted with?

You know how when you sit there is that downward pressure that makes your body spread a bit. It's normal. Has to happen. Gravity, weight, pressure--it's impossible not to have SOME thigh spread when you lean your weight back on your lower body, pressing against leather. Flesh gives.

Well, she judged herself so harshly for being human.

Mind you, she was a very pretty, very very thin, very tall human with legs a couple miles long. Most women would give a few toes and fingers and maybe an ear to have her figure.

She judged herself nonetheless.

How crazy is that?

I look in the mirror at the gym and feel horror, but I'm misshapen from an assortment of ills and bad habits. That gal was not. She should have been reveling in her near-perfection.

I think one day she'll be 68 and look at a photo of herself at this age (20's) and think, "Geesh. I was a hottie. I was SKINNY. Why the hell did I think something was wrong with me?"

I know I look at pics of myself in high school, when I felt so very ugly and chubby, and I think, "Um, not THAT bad. I wish I was that weight now."

I was 135 at my lowest, mostly around 139. Magazines told me I should be 120, 123 tops. I remember that number: 123. It was the Holy Grail back then for me in th 70's. I did yoga. I biked. I never got below 135. I hated, loathed, hated my body for it.

Unless I get some wasting disease or an eating disorder, I'll never be under 135. And now, I'll be happy to be under 200, and delirious to be under 175.

Perspective. Changes everything.

I'm trying to enjoy what I can do now, even if the mirror sometimes scares me. I woke up today and didn't toss on some baggy cotton tee. I treated myself with care. I put on a sexy black plunging v-neck tank top and decided to start being kinder to the me in the mirror, while I work harder at becoming healthier.

Cause, you know, I ain't getting yesterday back, or this last minute I spent typing here. Or my high school weight (realistically.)

And sometimes, when I was in the moment, I had such a warped attitude and judged myself harshly because some stupid ass magazines and charts said the right number was 123 or less. I berated myself. I was cruel to ME.

Internally, in my mind, in my spirit, I became my own enemy.

That fresh, slim, flexible, fit young woman at the studio was, for that moment, in that mirror, her enemy.

And it made me sad.

She's missing this moment, this moment when God blessed her with beauty and health and a body that fits the social ideal so perfectly. She is at a peak--and she's letting it get away in those moments of self-disgust and self-judging.

I'm too old (maybe a bit mature) to have felt spasms of envy (as I might have 10 years ago). A sense of regret at never having known what it felt like to be like THAT, yes, but nothing dark.

I felt mad, too, that we impose such harsh expectations on women. Damn.

So, I should treat this me that I am now with some mercy, cause when I'm 68, I might look back in a pic and think, "I wasn't as horrible as I thought," and I might wish to be this age again.

Once Upon A Starvation Diet: "KimKins Like" Diet For a Size Zero

Kimkins likes to tout that celebrities use "Kimkins-like" diets in order to lose weight fast. Yeah, despite that some of the celebrities she names are renown for their macrobiotic ways, which allows them brown rice and popcorn, which are carbs Kimkins would not stand for. And never mind that celebrities can have eating disorders and be obessive about food, too.

More Kimmer lies. More Kimkins aggressive marketing full of half-truths and outright fibs.

I'll show you a Kimkins-like diet. A real Kimkins-like diet...

Here's a gal who really ate a diet like the Kimkins Diet in her obsessive quest to become a size zero (US sizing). Small bits of lean protein, small servings of low-carb veggies, and starvation level calories:

Now, here I was, eight weeks after the experiment began - depressed and suffering from insomnia, headaches and mood swings. I was so tired I could barely get dressed in the morning. But my waist had shrunk 31/2in, I'd lost 17lb and 50 per cent of my body fat, and for the first time in my life, I was thin.

The exhaustion and other symptoms have been reported by other refugees from Kimkins. And even by some loyalists who refuse to accept that FAST is not necessarily GOOD.

Well, if you break your health, sometimes, you don't get it back. Young and resilient folks may. But some of us, well, when the thyroid is shot, it stays shot. When the eating disorder shows up it stays put. When the obsession strikes, it takes up residence for a long time. Starving can wreak havoc on your metabolism. Starving can set you up for some serious binges. I'm not talking a bag of chips and some cookies. I'm talking, "I can't stop eating. I'm so hungry!" binges.

Please, lose it healthfully.
Lose it while taking good care of youself.
Lose it while eating good foods with assorted nutrients from various sources. Not just small bits of chicken and egg whites and and some spinach or asparagus and broccoli.

You need food with colors, all those glorious colors God put into food to catch your eye and signal, "I'm nutritious! Eat me!:
You need healthy fats--essential fatty acids so your machinery works properly.
You need calcium in generous doses.
You need B-vitamins to keep your energy up and other vital functions.
You need FIBER, for pete's sake, to keep you regular and lower colon cancer risks.
You need potassium for a healthy blood pressure and other functions.
You need lycopene.
You need vitamin C.

Getting these things from supplements because you've cut your calories to 800 or 700 or 500 or 300 or less says something. It says your diet is wonky and nuts. Supplements are supposed to be just that--supplementation added to an already decent diet. It makes up for "holes" or is used for specific conditions according to a nutritionist or doctor's suggestions. Supplements are not supposed to be a routine part of an purposefully inadequate, malnourishing way of eating.

A crappy diet plus vitamins is still a crappy diet.

Don't starve yourself for ANY REASON.

Slow and steady is better than fast and half-dead-y. Easy and adaptive is better than speedy and compulsive. Gentle and persistent is better than frantic and destructive.

Prudence over vanity, people. Rational over emotional. Self-merciful over self-damaging.

Okay, rant and warning for the day delivered.

Go on to your regular schedule of taking good, good, good care of your body, mind, and spirit.

Why You Must Be Careful as You Diet...

This list is one small example of why, in our skinny-obsessed culture, we must be vigilant not to fall into the "I want to be as skinny as Jessica Alba or Angelina Jolie or Heather Locklear or Madonna or Victoria Beckham" trap. Aspiring whole-heartedly to reaching a radical slenderness can be the first step to an ED.

Eating disorders abound. You do know that, right? Many of the lovely celebrities we applaud for slenderness and super-toned bodies have had issues with or still struggle with their eating. Setting unrealistic standards sets people up for EDs. Don't use a super-slim celebrity as your role model. Think health first, beauty second.

Make sure you keep your relationship with food sane. Make sure you focus on your own body, because your anatomy and physiology--your height, your structure, your metabolism, your genetics, your medical issues, your strengths, your weaknesses--are uniquely yours. Many of you will not fit into a size 4 without crazy dieting and daily hours of exercise.

And some of you, even with crazy dieting, will never reach a size 4 or a 2. It's not meant for you. Picking a number because it's fashionable is not really smart.

Pick numbers because they make sense.

Unrealistic expectations can enslave you.

So: Set reasonable goals. Once you meet those, then you'll know how low your body can sanely, comfortably, healthfully go AND MAINTAN with joy in your life. If it's only to a size 16, 14, or 12. Or 10. Or 8, then so be it. Accept your individual reality. Not everyone was created to be tiny. And some who are only get there by starving or purging. And that is crazy.

For folks from certain spiritual traditions, eating excessively is called the sin of gluttony. Focusing too much on food, even if one is thinner, could be a form of gluttony, because all the thin-glutton thinks about is what to eat: what they can't eat, what they won't eat, what they shouldn't eat, what they can eat, is it time to eat, no, don't eat, can't eat. Whether too much, or too little, it's two extremes of the same problem.

(Note: When making weight-loss or weight-gain efforts, yes, one must think a lot about it for the sake of establishing new customs and habits and preferences. So, yes, you and I will have to think and plan and relearn, but if you feel a compulsive or out-of control sort of craziness about food, beware. That might be a sign. Just regular frustration at making changes and cutting calories, etc--we all have to deal with that until we learn how to eat properly and portion accurately. It's a sad fact. Just don't tip over into obession and mania.)

A person who binges is a glutton, no matter the size. But a person whose main concern is looking-good is vain. In some religions, that's a sin, too, and a traditionally "deadly" one. Eating too much, so much that you become badly overweight or obese, is self-destructive. The vanity that leads to starving in order to be a size 4 is also a kind of self-destruction, only it gets praised by people who don't see the costs of it to the individual's peace of mind or soul.

Find equilibrium. Enjoy eating. Enjoy meals. Learn how to eat with pleasure, but without gaining. Balance. That's what we all need to seek. Neither to be overly vain about our appearance nor to be careless of our health (which does affect appearance, yes.) Neither to starve nor to binge. To care enough about ourselves to eat well and present ourselves with dignity and self-respect, no matter what number is on the back of our clothing.

Are you bingeing and purging? Are you cutting down your calories to an ill-advised low level (ie, regularly eating fewer than roughly 1200 calories without strict medical supervision)? Is all you care about losing it FAST, not losing it soundly? Are you frequently skipping meals or utilizing fasting for weight loss? Are you afraid to eat? Do you eat only one kind of food? Do you hide food/sneak food/eat closeted? Do you feel yourself overwhelmed because of your patterns of eating, and you see they are destructive in some way to your health?

If you suspect that you have an ED, please, please get help. Please. Call your insurance. Research online. See a psychologist that specializes in food issues.

If you are afraid, then find a friend to talk honestly about it. If you can't afford a psychologist or counselor, then find someone wise to listen and advise, someone who's overcome the same problem, or someone maybe from your religious community (many religious counselors will take patients who can't pay). Or maybe find a support group that doesn't cost an arm or a leg, like Overeaters Anonymous.

But, please, stop, ponder, and be careful as you make changes to your diet and as you set goals. Always, be kind to your spirit and body and mind.

Banshee Wails...at the Entertainment Industry

Once, interviewing C.C. DeVille, the guitarist for Poison who’s known for his over-the-top antics, I was asking about his comeback from rock ’n’ roll excesses: Drugs, alcohol and weight gain.

“You can be the biggest drug addict in the world, and they will still like you in this town. But if you’re fat, they treat you like a leper,” he said to me. “You know what I’m talking about, right?”

--Chelsea J. Carter, "From 'Morbid Obesity' to 'Wow!'

Dragonfire Factoid: Fat Friendships

Much like a virus, obesity can spread from person to person, according to a new study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. When one person gained weight, their close friends tended to gain weight also. Having a friend who was obese would increase your likelihood of becoming obese by 57 %. Having a neighbor who gained weight had no effect and having a family member who gained weight had less of an effect than a friend who gained weight.

--from Study: Obese Friends Could Make You Fat