Guest Bloggers Working for Peanuts--Review and Giveaway

What's way better than one of Crabby's weird product reviews and giveaways? How about an even weirder one by the infamous Sinner Ella DeVil? She will be telling you about MV Best Virginia Cocktail Peanuts and is hosting our giveaway if you want to win some. (And sorry, U.S. mailing address required, dang it).

If Sinner's name sounds familiar, it's either because you've caught one of the rare posts at her amusing blog No Illusions Here: Fitness Reality, or because you've wandered down to the Cranky Fitness comments and thought: OMG, WHO THE F--CK IS THIS WOMAN??!! And I mean that in the nicest of ways. She's awesome and her call her writing "original" is an understatement.

Are you guessing the Virginia Cocktail Peanuts people are getting a tad nervous by now?

You’re gonna LOVE my nuts!

by Sinner Ella DeVil

Greetings, Cranky Fitness readers! I’ve come to tell the tale of some delicious nuts and grace you with the chance to win your very own can of them for the low and amazingly awesome price of FREE!

You may be asking yourself, “Who is this crazy woman spouting the word synonymous with male reproductive parts?”

Let me assure you, I have plenty of wit and sarcasm to share, but for the purpose of this post, I will tone it down a LITTLE bit. I do run a half-assed fitness based blog that is sparse on post updates and will be plagiarizing myself to double post on my own blog. Let’s just move along, shall we?

Now, I’ve reeled you in with my 4th grade "You're Going to Love My Nuts" joke. What’s it all about? Well, I hope everyone here has heard of the former Slap Chop guy turned Sham Wow guy turned alleged criminal via some very bad choices. (Note from the Crab: if not, you can check out his  SlapChop infomercial, or to blast a few extra calories, dance along to the remix version)). He uses the slap chop to beat the tar out of some peanuts and use them for the infomercial. I’m not touting the amazingness that is the slap chop or the creepiness that is that dude. I am, however going to grace you with the glory that is MV’s Best Virginia Cocktail Fine Virginia Peanuts.

I had the pleasure of sampling the Cajun flavor, as I’m not big on sweet stuff. (Yeah, I know I’m a freak.) These aren’t your typical peanuts. They’re quite large and don’t have that peanutty oomph to them that we’re all used to. While they do still have the peanut taste, it’s not as strong as you would expect. And you may see that the label shows what some may think are really spicy ingredients, but I assure you that they are not “make your eyes water” spicy. The spice is quite mild and enjoyable.

These nuts are pretty big.

I have fairly large, borderline man hands.

Had I been able to stop shoving them in my face long enough, I would have chopped some up (with my knock off version of a Slap Chop) to put on a salad, but alas, I was hungry and they were MMMMmmmmmmmm Gooooooood.

There are a variety of flavors to choose from. They currently offer Sea Salt, Toffee, Jalapeno, Milk Chocolate, the above mentioned Cajun and Unsalted flavors on the Virginia Cocktail Peanuts website.

I am looking forward to trying the toffee flavor next, despite my give or take attitude toward sweet foods. And at $5 per tin, they’re reasonably affordable for that next get together on your calendar. (Or your gluttonous venture into the world of sweet and savory nuts.)

Now, if you’re allergic to nuts, avoid. DUH! But, if you like a variety of flavor, texture, and trying new stuff, I HIGHLY recommend these cocktail peanuts.

(This is me, post 4 mile run, about to stuff my face and make inappropriate yummy noises while I beat my children back with sticks and tell them to go eat fruit roll ups. After all, this is for research purposes):

Now, on to the BEST PART!!! For a limited time, you’re able to comment here, on the Cranky Fitness blog to enter to win your very own tin of delicious nuts. Below, in the comment section, just leave a note, sentence, a 4th grade joke with or without innuendo, a line of prose, or whatever letting me know what flavor you’d be interested in trying from MV’s Best and we’ll draw a winner via the ever popular and GREAT AND POWERFUL RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR. (say this out loud with the “Wizard of Oz Wizard voice” or it’s not as entertaining).

Once the winner has been drawn, we’ll announce it here and/or my slacker blog on Tuesday May 1 as well as possibly send an email to you (if your address is ascertainable), and you’ll have until Friday May 4th at around noon (give or take 3 hours depending on which coast you live on) to respond to one or both of us with your US mailing address.

Disclaimer: Should the Great and Powerful RNG decide to be a pain, one of us will just pull out a commenter from the list and notify them.

Have great day, Cranky readers and go have an adventure!

Hanging Out on a Friday

Photo: Tancread

So this is yet another Friday where I'm going to be sending y'all over to our Product Review page. This week I'm going to talk about... well, I'll leave you in suspense for a moment or two. But this mysterious thingy promises to replace a home gym and "provide everything you need to build strength, increase your flexibility, spot-train, and fit in a comprehensive, healthy workout anytime you want, anywhere you want."

Sound intriguing? Well just hang on a moment...

Before I send you along for the review, you might be wondering: but where's the Friday giveaway? Well, next week we got more stuff, but this week your best bet is probably to head over for the $100 in free groceries you can win at the Juice. And yeah, you gotta register (once) but then you're good for other ongoing Blogher giveaways too, including laptop computers, $1000 gift cards, etc. Oh, and if you have any interest in clothes swapping, or dressing your kids on the cheap, the theme at the Juice this week was "swap parties!" However, being fashion-impaired, I weighed in instead on house swapping and wife swapping. (And, um, yeah it's a paid gig but I'm feeling a little lonely over there so if anyone stops by and says hi you will earn my eternal gratitude!)

So have any of you guessed from my italicized hints what the fitness product I got to try out, or do you feel like I left you dangling? Well, strap on your seat belts, because I'm going to tell you what I thought of the TRX Suspension Training system over at our Product Page.

And have a great weekend everyone!

Got Sleep? No? Cranky Fitness SleepPhones Giveaway!

One, two, three....Oh crap. There's just too damn many.
Photo: natala007

I am lucky not to suffer from chronic insomnia. From what I hear, it's an extremely frustrating affliction. Sure, some nights I'll be excited or worried about something, and it will take a little longer to settle down, but generally, I'm one of those lucky folks who reliably drifts off to sleep within 10 minutes or so after I go to bed.

Unless...

Some stupid @$#%&*%@ jerk is out there making noise when I'm trying to fall asleep.

Well yeah, it's true that on summer nights we do love to leave our windows open. Oh, and we tend to go to bed early. And there happens to be a big ol' condo complex right behind us.

And so inevitably some selfish, obnoxious oblivious louts will get very drunk and yell and scream and sing and blast their music in the middle of the night. They are clearly jerks. But then so are chirping birds, crying babies, barking dogs, or even otherwise nice neighbors who dare to converse outdoors anytime after, say, 9 p.m.

When I'm trying to sleep my definition of jerkitude gets very expansive. I too am sometimes a noisy jerk, but somehow this never occurs to me at the time.

Anyway, so how does one deal with noisy jerks, or with insomnia problems generally?

Well, please follow me to our Review and Giveaway Page where we can discuss some options! One of these is a product called SleepPhones, which I've gotten to try and will tell you all about. Plus, you'll get the chance to win some SleepPhones of your own!

(Read the rest of the post and enter the contest here.)

iPosture Review and Giveaway!

What the heck is an iPosture? Well, it's "an intuitive electronic device designed to improve posture."And in a rare proactive move, I actually sought out the chance to review one. Why? Because one thing no one has ever said about me: "Crabby McSlacker, she's no slouch!"

It's true: in addition to being a slacker, I also have a Posture Problem.

So if you're wondering what the iPosture does, whether it does it well, and how to win one of your own, please follow me over to a brand new post on the Cranky Fitness Product Review Page!

Emergency Exit

Please do not be alarmed: this is a test of our Emergency Product Review Broadcasting system.

I repeat, this is only a test. There is an actual post hiding here behind the "read more" below about reducing one's sugar/Splenda/whatever intake.

However, to reach this post you must click on a link. And then, warning: things may start to get weird.

If this were an actual Product Review Emergency, we would be sending you away from Cranky Fitness because we'd otherwise be violating Blogher's rules by posting a review here.

This post does not actually violate those guidelines, which is why it is Only A Test.

Soon, however, we anticipate a genuine product review emergency! We will be doing a review and a giveaway of an awesome-sounding, high-value product that we think you will be excited about having a chance to win. What's the emergency? Well, we wanted to keep one ourselves! We couldn't do that without sending you away to our new, slightly uglier, product review page. In the future, we will hope to score more cool free stuff give you helpful information about other products by conducting extensive testing in our Cranky Fitness Laboratory.



Today, however, it's just a test post about sweetener. But please let us know if anything weird happens when you go to the new page to read more!

What the hell is a Kettlebell? Sarah Lurie's Workout DVD

[By Merry]A product review? On Cranky Fitness?

Yes, I know. I do product reviews about as often as I say something nice about... well, about pretty much anything. I made an exception in this case because I was intrigued by the name. What the hell is a kettlebell? Something that rings when it's made a pot of tea?

What the hell is a kettlebell?
Turns out it's a hand weight with a luggage handle on top. Cute as the dickens.

Don't knock the power of 'cute'! Hand weights are like people: both are much more likely to get picked up if they're cute. The son of Charlotte (from The Great Fitness Experiment) named her kettlebell 'Tinkerbell'.

What are you supposed to do with it?

Hey, it's a hand weight. You do the math.
(Sorry. I always wanted an excuse to use that expression.)

Okay, in case you're as mathematically challenged as I am, there is help. Sarah Lurie has put together some fitness DVDs showing how to get a workout with a kettlebell. What's really cool is that her DVDs combine working out aerobically with lifting weights. To someone like me, who would rather clean house than lift weights, this idea out-wows sliced bread.

The DVD I was given was called Kettlebell Basics, but Gofit.net has a list of several different DVDs that you can choose from.

Reasons to use a kettleball
1 - It's fun. Doing something different spices up a workout routine, which means I'm more likely to keep exercising.

2 - It's a workout. For several of these exercises, you hold the kettleball with both hands, thus using more muscles than you would with holding a weight in just one hand. Kind of like using a snowboard rather than two separate skis. With a snowboard, you end up using more core muscles because you're desperately trying to stay vertical.

3 - While it's nice to use muscles I wouldn't ordinarily put into play, even nicer is the idea of lifting weights while getting a cardio workout. Sarah Lurie guides you through a series of exercises that have you doing lunges, squats, and such like while raising and lowering the kettlebell. (The handle makes it much easier to swing the weight around than it would be to swing a regular hand weight.)

Things I didn't like so muchTo be completely fair and unbiased, there were a couple things I didn't like.

- Between exercises, the DVD lists key bullet points about form, things to keep in mind. Which would probably be useful if the font weren't so small that I couldn't read the text from 4 feet away.

- One of the exercises involve grasping the kettlebell with both hands, swinging it between my legs and then up to above my shoulders. These people have great faith in my ability not to accidentally lose my grip on the kettlebell and send it flying across the room. [Some manual dexterity is required to use a kettlebell.]


To read another review of Sarah Lurie's Kettlebell Workout DVDs, check out Workout Mommy's blog.

What about you? Have you tried using one of these things before, and if so did you like it?


P.S. My apologies to Nitmos. Here at Cranky Fitness, we are keenly aware of the robust necessity of remaining dynamically sensitive to our readers' needs. However, this is a serious product review, and it would be totally inappropriate to work in any gratuitous Martina Navratilova references. Besides, I could not find any indication that she had ever used this product.

Give-Aways and Gorilla Legs

[By Crabby]


Cranky Fitness is always looking for new ideas to steal from other blogs mix things up a little. And we can't help noticing that there are some other bloggers that are far ahead of us in the give-away department.

As we understand it, our pal MizFit actually goes out and finds cool things that readers might like, things that bear some relation to the subject of her blog, (fitness), and then she obtains these items and gives them away to readers!

Isn't that cool?

But that sounds like way too much work. We usually wait until someone offers us something to give away, which doesn't happen all that often. If we were motivated and proactive enough to contact folks who had cool heath-related products, we'd be begging them for advertising revenue, not free samples.

On the other hand, sometimes people contact us and offer up stuff to review. Most times we say no, because the blog might get even more boring if we took up every single review opportunity that came along. (And honestly, we were getting a lot of laxative offers for a while. Perhaps they think the reason we're so Cranky here at Cranky Fitness is because we're constipated? We're not, I swear.)

But anyway, the last two email offers we got I thought I'd experiment with a new approach. I said: well, we might not review it, but can we give the stuff away to our readers?

And they said yes!

So if this approach continues to work, we might start giving stuff away on Fridays if there's anything on hand. Unless otherwise noted, a Random Number Generator will be used to choose among people who enter by commenting.

Next week, I believe we may have one or more exercise dvd's (still working on the details) but this week... we got razors!

Five of these!



Another blog-pal Stephanie, who also frequently gives things away, says these razors are great.

Do razors have anything to do with health and fitness? Well, gosh, no they don't. But they're free so let's talk about them, shall we?

Each razor has FOUR RAZOR BLADES on it! Because God knows you can't get a close enough shave with just three. (I'm wondering, however, how long this razor-blade escalation will continue. It used to be one, then two, then three, now four... what do you think: Five? Seven? Will there one day be a new Schick Century Razor with 100 razor blades?)

And why do so many of us women even remove our leg hair in the first place? It seems silly and sexist that only one gender is allowed to have leg hair. Alas, I tried go "natural" back in college, being a feminist and all. This approach works great if you are blond or have nice soft sparse downy hair.

I don't.



Seriously. I couldn't pretend I didn't care that I grow long dense thick fur rather than leg hair so I ended that experiment. (But now I tend to get waxed, so don't need to hog the razors for myself).

Unfortunately, though, they only want U.S. winners, which on this blog is inconvenient. We love our Canadians and other international readers! (A Canadian ended up winning the Lipton Bike, by the way, which made us quite happy).

However, for U.S. residents, this means you have a really good chance of winning one of these babies. Will we even get 5 non-Canadian comments?

So if you have any observations about hair removal, or you would like to win a nifty razor, please leave a comment and check back Monday.

Note: Another good place to check for health related give-aways is Healthbolt, which is a fun place to hang out anyway. They've been doing round-ups of free stuff, often on Sundays.

Morning Run

This guest post was written by Fury Gekijou--she describes herself as an "ex-patriot, barely-reformed couch-potato living and working in Japan who occasionally loses her mind in the quest for fitness." You can read about her 3-month misadventure training for her first triathlon at Tri Tri Birdie.


It's morning, a beautiful, mild spring morning and I am getting dressed for my run.

I put on my Technical Top. A bra. A technical bra. No kidding. The last time I considered a bra technical was back in my teens when I first started wearing one – a contraption made of elastic, fabric, hooks, wires, et cetera. My “technical” sports bra doesn’t even have any moving parts (unless you count me), but it’s made of this fabulous material that I am certain justifies its ridiculous cost. It’s sleek and black. It was designed by a team of engineers in Japan. It cost a lot of money. I’m not large-breasted by any means, so I am sure any regular, non-technical sports bra would do. Heck, I could probably do the support thing old-skool, with three ace-bandages wrapped around my chest., but the ad for technical bra was so enticing and the website was so cool and...

On go the running tights. Not just any old tights mind you, but Technical Tights. They’re black, kind of shiny, hydrophobic, breathe, stretch, have reflectors, zippers, natty grey flat seaming which make my stubby, chubby legs look long and lean and these tights' instructions claim they have “memory.” I don’t want anything that has been on my butt to “remember” anything! Regardless of how advanced the tights are, they still slide down, so during my run I go: RunrunrunrunrunrunYANKhoprunrunrunrunrunYANKhop.

I put on running socks, also considered “technical” clothing. The socks are made of a material that wicks. Socks don’t have wicking, candles do...but they are the “official sock” of some running team and they're black. Not shiny, but they are black.

Shoes next. My shoes are shiny, too, but not black. I don't like black sneakers. So mine are silver and yellow. The shoes have so many features that they came with an instruction booklet, written in five different languages. I lost the instruction book, so I don’t remember any of the features. I do remember that they lace in some weird way that I had to look at the left shoe (pre-laced thank goodness) to figure out how to lace the right. The shoes have treads and bubbles and gussets and grommets and look very advanced. But they still wear out at an alarming rate. So I bought three more pairs. Why? I can’t wear more than a pair at once. It’s good to have two pairs to alternate and distribute mileage across...but the third pair? I was just in a gear frenzy and got greedy.

I put on my “technical/performance” sunglasses, but the 110-dollar glasses really don’t make me perform any better. In some small way the purchase of my glasses probably made some Visa Credit Card shareholder’s portfolio perform a little better, but my running didn’t improve. I think they make me look cooler but I will confess that sometimes I think my technical/performance shades don’t work any better than the perfectly functional cheapo pair from Dick’s that they replaced. Note: If you sit on expensive technical sunglasses, they go “crunch” just the same as the cheapo ones.

I put the headphones of an MP3 player over my head and into my ears. The player itself is tiny and light – a vast improvement over the big, clunky cassette Walkman I used to use. The player fits in the palm of my hand – or even more conveniently, in my “technical top” sports bra. Sometimes the earphones rub me the wrong way and make the inside of my ears sore. They can make a player that weighs less than three ounces, but they can’t make earbuds that fit comfortably in my ears.

Continuing on with the gear parade, I strap a heart-rate monitor around my chest and put the receiver on my wrist. It looks like a watch, but in addition to telling me the time, the receiver tells me my heart rate (which always spikes when I put the transmitter on because the contacts are always COLD even when I dampen them using warm water). It also tells me how many calories were burned and the date.

I neglected to get a heart rate monitor that has a stopwatch function or does splits, so on the OTHER wrist there’s a stopwatch. It’s a pretty basic one, but I paid extra for the black finish because...well, because it looked more technical. If I’m not careful, the stopwatch, heart monitor and MP3 player all cause interference with each other. In a computerized twist on the old Groucho Marx joke, I thought I was dead the other day because there was no reading on the heart rate monitor.

I put a pedometer on my waist to track how far I run. It occasionally falls off, which means I have to pick it up. This involves stopping. Stopping makes my heart rate drop a little and causes the alarm on the receiver to beep, letting me know that I am not performing at optimal aerobic level. The beeping usually startles me, so that I forget to pause the stopwatch and that in turn messes up my time and/or my splits and then I can’t figure out how long it took me to run the mile before the pedometer fell off. Oh, and sometimes the shock of the impact resets the pedometer. Grrrr. I'm saving up for a GPS unit that will do everything: heart rate, mileage, splits, locations, my tax return, but I have to wait till I recover from the cost of having to replace the expensive technical sunglasses I sat on.

The electronic devices are all battery-powered. The batteries wear out. But never all at once, so I am constantly changing batteries. I’ll be pleased to tell you that I can change batteries in two devices AT ONCE, in the 4:30am darkness and still keep a 10 minute per mile pace (believe me 10 minute mile is an absolutely blistering, technical-tights-melting pace for me). This is an essential life skill we’re talking about here.

All geared up, I head for the door, ready to go out and run. My husband (ensconced on the sofa) notices me and looks, well, frightened. I guess it’s justified, with my looking very much like a Borg what with all the wires and gadgets and black Lycra.

"I’m going for a run," I snarl.

"You don’t seem very happy to be going for a run. You know, when you first started, you were always so happy to go for a run, even when you couldn’t go very far... but now I think you aren’t as happy, and I think..." He pauses and looks at me. "You had less stuff..."

Ever watch kids run around? They go quickly or slowly but they laugh and they smile. They are un-selfconcious, not caring how fast they go or what they are wearing. They're naturals. You can tell that for them, it just feels good to run. It was like that for me when I began, even though I could barely make it to the end of the driveway. It felt so good to go, to run for another minute than the day I did before, to go just a little bit further. In the first few months, it felt especially good to stop. I felt the camaraderie of other runners out in the heat, the rain, the snow, the wind. It felt just as good to run alone. I did all this with very little equipment, just the basics – enough to keep me comfortable and safe from injury. As I added mileage, I added stuff. I’m not sure why. "Just Buy It" syndrome, I guess. I’m sure I’m not the only person guilty of this. The big tragedy isn’t the waste of money but the wasting of what is for me the joy of running; the pleasure of moving for moving’s sake. The electronics sometimes distract me from that.

I take off the player. I take off the glasses, the monitor, the receiver, the stopwatch, and the pedometer. I’m not a competitive runner; I run for fitness, for enjoyment, for the pleasure of being in my body, for the sheer joy of just moving. I don’t need detailed reports on my runs; I just need to know I did my best. My mind, body and soul can tell me that, with no electronics at all.

Have a good workout. =)

Cranky Fitness Takes a Nap

[By Crabby]

Do you like to nap?

When napping isn't scaring us by being correlated with strokes, we're all for it here at Cranky Fitness. If you have the sort of daily schedule in which you can slip a nap in, we say: go for it!

However, for me a nap is kind of like a massage: very enjoyable, but I'm never sure if I'm getting any therapeutic benefit from it. (When I get a massage it feels lovely, but I don't tend to find myself any less sore or tight the next day. In fact I'm often more sore and tight the next day, though my wallet does tend to feel a bit looser and lighter.)

Naps are cheaper than massages (I was going to say free, but read on--this post is actually a product review) but I'm not sure if they work for me. If I take a nap because I'm feeling sleepy and groggy, I enjoy it very much, but I tend to wake up feeling pretty much the same way. But my understanding is: for most people, power napping is a smart thing to do. Most people who are not Crabby McSlacker feel more energetic after a nap. Crabby just enjoys the hell out of them.

So when I got a pitch for a software product that would enable me to take an "energizer nap" and have all kinds of afternoon energy, I thought: cool! Especially if I can try it out without paying for it. I'm all for free things, and for having more afternoon energy. Plus, I loved the idea that it would give me a good excuse to experimental naps every day for a week or so in the name of blogging.

The thing is called "Pzizz", and I tried the Energizer nap version. ($29.95) It also comes in another version ($25.95; or $49.95 for both) that helps you go to sleep at night if you have insomnia. (Sorry Merry: perhaps I should have offered you this review opportunity instead of the laxatives?) More information about the product is available at the Pzizz website.

Pzizz isn't a CD; it's software you download and use to generate somewhat customized audios that you can listen to on your headphones while you nap. You can choose how long you want it and it adjusts accordingly. It plays music and has background sounds and a guy talks to you and gives you helpful suggestions about relaxing.

I call him Mr. Pzizz.

So here, in no particular order, are some thoughts about Mr. Pzizz and his software:

Good Things About Mr. Pzizz:

1. Mr. Pzizz says slightly different things each time he talks to you. This is because each time you want to use the recording you generate a new version. This is a VERY COOL feature! I've tried lots of relaxation and self-hypnosis tapes and they get old really fast--this will be an even nicer feature if they keep their promise to provide free updates. The more new things Mr. Pzizz is able to say, the better I like him. Right now, he still seems to repeat himself quite a bit from nap to nap, but there's usually at least something new.

2. Over time, you start to associate Mr. Pzizz with feeling sleepy. I can barely type right now, for example, because even the name Pzizz makes me very, very tired. When I started doing the Pzizz thing I didn't nap at all during the recording, I just thought it was supposed to relax you. Now I put on the headphones and conk out fairly quickly.

3. You can adjust the volume of Mr. Pzizz so that's he's quite audible over the sounds and music, if you want to hear his suggestions loud and clear. Or you can make it so you can barely hear him if you just want to snooze while he natters on.

4. Mr. Pzizz uses binaural-beat technology, which theoretically can help you "entrain your brain" to reach states of relaxation more quickly. (There is also a free version of binaural beat audio here, but it's not a whole fancy program like Pzizz.) Does this technology really work to help you relax more deeply? I'm not sure--but I bet it will if you think it will.

5. Because I promised Mr. Pzziz I'd give him a try, this got me in the habit of allocating 25 min a day to either relaxation or napping. Otherwise, I never get around to it. If you fork over money for the software, you may feel a similar commitment to your own relaxation just to justify the $29.95.

Not So Good Things About Pzizz:

1. Could they have thought of a less appealing name for a product than Pzizz? "Pzizzing" sounds like something you'd end up doing after eating too many beans for lunch, not something you'd pay money to do on purpose.

2. I can't quite figure out if you're supposed to be sleeping during these sessions, or just relaxing and absorbing hypnotic suggestions.

Both relaxation and napping have their benefits, but in my mind these are two different, mutually exclusive things. So if you're picky about whether you want to learn to relax, or to actually fall asleep, you might want a different product--or at least one with clearer instructions.

3. There aren't much in the way of "energizing" suggestions--just a couple of sentences when it's time to "wake up." So if you're like me and having a nap itself doesn't give you a whole bunch of energy, then you don't get much additional help from Mr. Pzizz. I've been really enjoying my little relaxation/nap experiences, but I haven't noticed any sudden burst of afternoon energy.

4. Technical issues: because you have to generate a new recording each time, it's hard to just jump in and nap. You need to wait (less than a minute, but still) for it to generate. And there's also no rewind button. So if you get all ready for your nap, start the recording, and then realize you need to pee or get a drink of water or something, too bad. You have to start over and generate a new nap.

5. It's $29.95.

Bottom Line: Would I buy it? Quite possibly! But then I've shelled out money for all kinds of odd relaxation/meditation stuff before, like Kelly Howell's CD's or the extremely freaky "Sphinx of the Imagination" by Hypnotica. I'm crap at relaxing on my own. And having spent a number of afternoons with Mr Pzizz I've actually grown quite fond of him. (I don't know if this will be a brief fling or a long-term relationship, but I do know I have a hot date with him this afternoon...)

How about you folks, how do you feel about naps, do they refresh you? Do you ever get to take them? Or how about relaxation tapes--ever buy any?

Is anyone else getting sleepy just reading this?

Exercise Equipment : We Have Opinions!

[By Crabby]

No, this isn't a useful product review of the best and worst fitness equipment out there. (There are plenty of those around and they all contradict each other). This is just a list of things I like and why. Chances are, you'll all have opinions of your own that are different—because of course you're all wrong we're all unique individuals, and isn't that what make the world a wonderful place!

(Note: at some point soon we'll also do a “worst exercise equipment” list. After all, this blog is not called Cheerful Fitness is it?)

So here we go,

Crabby's Entirely Subjective List of Best Exercise Equipment Ever:

Big-Ass Weight Machines: And yes, I love the girly kind where you just move the little pins, not the macho kind where you lug big plates around and try to wrestle them onto each new machine like you're building the damn thing from scratch.

It’s very out-of-fashion to like these anymore. You're supposed to be doing free weights or having a personal trainer devise sadistic unendurable creative ways to use your own body weight to get stronger or whatever. It's uncool to use a machine to isolate just one set of muscles at at time.

Well, screw that. I like to sit down on a comfortable machine and only be miserable in one body part at a time. (And I only do one set apiece, at the heaviest weights possible, so it doesn't last long). Is using a bunch of big machines like this less efficient? Is it less functional for carrying groceries or hand-to-hand combat with invading aliens? I don't give a crap. I can still schlep groceries with the best of them; the aliens have not yet arrived; and I like my big-ass machines.

Elliptical Machine: This is another relatively wimpy choice, in some people's eyes, compared to the treadmill or the stairmaster. But getting on a treadmill to walk or run just makes it obvious that you're not outside, where such activities are much more entertaining. Even though I do use a treadmill, it is essentially a compromise machine. And a stair-stepper (especially the backwards escalator kind) is a torture device. Whereas an elliptical machine?

An elliptical machine is a RIDE! If used properly, (or actually, improperly) an elliptical machine is fun! Here's how to make it a piece of playground equipment and much less of a chore.

You must:

• Play awesome kick-ass music with exactly the right cadence so that each step is to the beat.
• Get a machine without the stupid handlebars, or if you can't find one, try to avoid getting smacked by them when you forget they're there.
• Pump your arms vigorously and cultivate the ability to balance, both going forward and backwards. (This must be good for some core muscle or other, don't you think?). Finally, the most important part:
• Launch yourself higher in the air than you need to on each upswing so that you feel like you're sproinging along like an antelope to the beat.

It's fun, really.

WARNING: Following these instructions puts more stress on your knees and may result in your looking like an ass. (Especially if you close your eyes, add some dance moves, and lip synch to the music. But that part is totally optional).

Big Bouncy Inflatable Ball. I know you’re supposed to do all sorts of challenging exercises on it and that it will get your core muscles in great shape, but I lost the little pamphlet that came with it. (And also the pump, so it’s kind of squishy now).

But what I love about the big goofy green ball in our basement is that it’s a great way to stretch out my back. I sit down on it, then lean back until my head dangles upside down, trying to keep my feet somewhat balanced on the ground so I don’t lose control and crash-land on my head and split my skull open. Once equilibrium is obtained, however, it's a great stretch--you can feel all the little vertebrae spreading out and relaxing and putting their feet up, happy to have a little personal space for once.

It’s also my impression (based on something I read somewhere long ago that probably isn’t even true), that using gravity to pull your spine apart will keep you from shrinking as you get older. If this is a totally preposterous theory, don't tell me, because part of the fun of the stretch is my belief that it's making me taller.

Ipod
Well, duh. Gotta have tunes. (On the other hand, this device, or at least my old-fashioned version of it, has enough infuriating quirks that it will also be appearing on Crabby's Entirely Subjective List of The Worst Exercise Equipment Ever Invented.)

Heart Rate Monitor
Notice how I'm running out of steam here, and all of a sudden the sections are getting shorter? Sure, I started off with lots of energy, but now, wow, this is getting old. I'm tired. Am I putting out enough effort still or am I just going through the motions and secretly slacking?

Well, if you're exercising instead of blogging and the same questions come up, you'll have an answer--if you own a handy-dandy heart rate monitor!

(So was that the lamest segue ever??)

Actually, part of the reason for not saying much down here is that I already wrote a whole post on the awesomeness of heart rate monitors. The bottom line? They give you a concrete number to fixate on and become completely obsessed with inform you about your progress. (And you can also use them as handy biofeedback devices).

Anyway, I've been opining for long enough--I want to hear about other people's favorites. That is, if you have any opinions about exercise equipment... or anything else for that matter. At Cranky Fitness, we love opinions!

Best (and Worst) of 2007

[By Mary and Crabby]

Once a year, bloggers around the planet put up a post about the year in review, and Cranky Fitness is no exception. Even though we don't care all that much about 2007 anymore, it being over and all, we think it's a great tradition because we can get out of doing boring research about new stuff gain some useful perspective on the year gone by!


Color of the year
According the NY Times (sorry, free subscription required), the color of the year is Pantone blue iris. (Sort of a bluish greyish, we think.) The NY Times quotes Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, as saying: “Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspects of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”

The official Cranky Fitness take on this news: Whatever.

Word of the year
According to Merriam-Webster, the word of the year is W00t. (With two zeros, not the letter O twice.)

Yawn. By the time a word makes it into a word-of-the-year category, it's fossilized to the point of belonging in a museum, not a dictionary.

Runner-up Person of the year
Actually, Vladimir Putin was Time's Person of the year, but we thought -- how many books has he written? And if he has written any, has anyone read them? So instead we're going to focus on J.K. Rowling, who was runner-up person of the year. We like her better.

Most Memorable New Product
According to this consumer survey, immediately following the iPhone, Windows Vista (really?), and Febreeze scented candles (c'mon, who are these people?), the Most Memorable New Products of the year were:

4. Domino's Oreo Dessert Pizza;

5. Alli Weight Loss Capsules;

6. Oreo Cakesters;

7. Diet Coke Plus; and

8. Subway Fresh Fit Meals.

Fill in your own cynical comment about how f*cked up this is here: _______

(And personally, Crabby would nominate the Two-Assed Toilet.)


But why should the fun stop there?

Who cares what the rest of the world thinks? They're too busy eating Oreo products with Alli chasers. Instead, let's get some Cranky Fitness "Best's" and "Worst's" going. Feel free to chime in on the following categories or make up some of your own.

Favorite exercise of the year:
Mary nominates:

• Giving that index finger a workout as I beckon the cabana boy to refresh my vodka-and-lime.
• My favorite exercise is always the one I just finished.

Crabby nominates:

• Leisurely walks to the Ice Cream Parlor.
• The suspiciously orgasmic looking iGallop workout.

Best excuse of the year:
Mary nominates:

• I'll go workout as soon as I finish reading the paper, drinking this cup of coffee, reading War & Peace.
• I just joined this new religion that abhors exercise and makes me wear this funny robe all the time.
  

Crabby nominates:

• There are workmen replacing the sewer outside, mere feet away from the closed blinds of our basement home gym. The workmen will intuitively sense odd-looking stretches and bouncy anatomical parts within and will throw down their shovels in order to try to peer in. They will then laugh hysterically and cause total humiliation.*

*Note: this was an actual excuse used just last month.


Best “I-know-I’ll-pay-for-this-later” dessert of the year:

Mary nominates:

Chocolate "suicide" cake, a triple layer of chocolate cake with a Valrhona bitter sweet chocolate sour cream frosting. (From Cafe de Marco's website, which is guaranteed to add on the calories just by reading the menu.)

Crabby nominates:

Not being a gourmet, Crabby's favorite treat is the low-brow Safeway grocery store cake. But this is important: she must plop one slab of chocolate cake on top of another slab of vanilla and eat them in combination. This necessitates, unfortunately, the purchase of two huge-ass slices to get both flavor together. Ah, shucks.

Neatest online game of the year:
Mary nominates Free Rice and Crabby seconds it.

According to Snopes.com, the site first started operating on October 7. On that day only 830 grains of rice were donated. As of November 17, the number of grains of rice that had been given away was 2,457,120,420.


Quote of the year:

Mary's nomination: "Never wear anything that panics the cat – P.J. O’Rourke".

And yet again, Crabby takes the low road and nominates:

"I have a wide stance when going to the bathroom." - Idaho Senator Larry Craig.

Are there any bests or worsts of the year that you think need to be commemorated in Ethernet Eternity? Was it a good year for you... or not so much?

Cranky Christmas List

[Posted by Crabby]


So if you happen to celebrate Christmas, or some other winter holiday (Festivus, anyone?) you may be racking your brains right now trying to find gifts for your loved ones. Alternatively, you may be trying to defend against Wildly Inappropriate Presents yourself by telling your loved ones what you actually want.

But that's not always easy. Things we really want (fame, fortune, happiness, beauty, love, inner peace, flat abs, round-the-world luxury cruises) usually can't be purchased at a department store. And if we really really want something and it's realistic and affordable? Guess what, we probably already went out and bought it.

A useful health and fitness blog might, at this point, make some suggestions for healthy products you could ask for or give to your friends... but we're not in that kind of mood today! Instead, it's time for a test. Sharpen your pencils.

Don't worry, it's multiple choice and it's only one question.

(By the way, for those of you have actually made a Christmas list already and want to share it, Lady Rose over at the Diet Pulpit is collecting them. She'll link to your blog if you post your list on it).

Anyway, on with the quiz!


Which of these five items would Crabby Like For Christmas?

(And yes, these are all real; several are from the "Solutions" catalog, which comes in the mail and is sort of like a Sharper Image for women).



1. Dog Fingerpainting Kit!

With everything your dog needs to create three one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

For only $24.95!

True, Crabby doesn't have a dog, and $25 does seem rather a lot to spend for what's probably $2 worth of paint and some saran wrap. But look how intellectual those doggies look, and maybe they didn't look that way before they started!


[Note: Precious little doggy French beret not included. But there is a "surprise toy." Perhaps it's a pack of Gauloises!]

[One more note: Due to technical difficulties (Crabby doesn't know how to format this properly) we need a little more text to fill in here just to make sure the next picture doesn't crawl up here and cause trouble like it did on Preview.]

[Okay, maybe just one more paragraph, to be sure. Note to self: center photo next time, fer goodnesssake!]



2. Screw With Your Loved Ones: The Gift That Won't Start Giving


"Solve the maze... Claim the gift!"

Yep, you put a gift inside--suggestions include money and jewelry--but the recipient has to "guide a steel ball through a maze" first to get the gift! Nice, huh?

[Note: Sledgehammer, anvil, and divorce lawyer not included].


3. The Slanket!



Whoa: It's Blanket with Sleeves -- a Slanket! You have to love an item so totally original they had to give it a new name. How come no one ever thought of this handy item before? (Oh wait, maybe they did... about 5000* years ago! Some obscure item called a robe).

*Or 50,000 or 3,000 or whatever. Anyone know when robes were invented? It probably wasn't 2007.


4. The Two-Assed Toilet


It's a "TwoDaLoo - A Supertoilet That Saves Rocky Marriages and The Planet."

Yes, it's a real product, not a gag, although apparently it's not in production yet. And good news, if you don't feel like chatting with your Significant Other over your mutual morning business, there's an upgraded version that includes "a seven inch LCD television and iPod docking station!" Note: Minimum order 12.


5. Gum Drops!


Do we need to explain Gum Drops? No we do not. They are Candy.


Time To Put Down Your Pencils!

So are you ready with your guesses? Is The Suspense getting to be too much?

Crabby chooses (Surprise!), number 3, The Slanket.

You thought it was going to be the gumdrops, didn't you?

True, gumdrops are candy, but they are not good candy. A good candy, by definition, is a chocolate-based confection. It may also contain caramel, nuts, and certain non-fruit flavored nougats. Crabby would not waste treadmill time on gumdrops.

So why The Slanket, aside from its cool name?

Well, Crabby has been considering the idea of starting her own religion, Crabbyism. Or perhaps Crankyism, that's good too. So she'll need to stock up on Slankets because don't they look like perfect apparel for starting your own cult or fringe religion? Just look at the woman wearing her garment. She seems so totally bonkers and brainwashable happy!

So, are any of you hankering for any particular sort of holiday gift? Ever received anything awful? Any other thoughts about gifts, whether naughty or nice? (And just pretend you don't notice this post has nothing to do with Health or Fitness--that can be your gift to Cranky Fitness).

Belated Review: Nature Valley Nut Crunch Bars

“Free Food! Yeeeehaw! Sign me up!”

This may not be an actual quote, as Crabby doesn’t use the word Yeehaw all that often. She could have said “Yay!” or “Hooray!” or “Holy Crap!” But whatever the exclamation, it was uttered because Crabby was VERY EXCITED to find out several weeks ago that General Mills was willing to send her stuff to eat for free.

And the Nice Crunch Bar people sent the package as promised! Two whole boxes (one Peanut, one Almond) of said crunch bars; a press kit; and a Special Bonus Gift--a hideous burlap tote bag! Really, the poor tote bag is the ugliest thing you can imagine, you can only feel sorry for it.

However, Free Product Sending People, please do not be angry at Crabby's callous treatment of your homely tote bag. Crabby loves Free Stuff and wants you to keep sending more! And particularly products that claim to be (a) healthy and (b) tasty.

Caveat: Cranky Fitness can not, however, accept and keep things that cost more than $40 in exchange for a review. (Or at least not while those nifty BlogHer ads are running in her sidebar. She signed a contract promising not to!) Also, Crabby will always disclose when something she reviews was given to her fer nothin'.

This will give readers the chance to ask themselves: can you trust the Crab? Would she suck up to a manufacturer simply to get more free stuff in the future? (Well, actually, she might! Maybe for a free week at a luxury spa or something. But not for a few freakin' snack bars).

And by the way, Crabby also apologizes to the Free Stuff People and her readers for the tardiness of this review. By now, Back in Skinny Jeans (and probably lots of other blogs too) have already reviewed these Nut Crunch Bar Thingies and Crabby is way late to the party. But she's here now, so lets get to it!

So how do the Nature Valley Nut Crunch Bars Taste?

Actually, they're pretty damn good.

Really--they're way more yummy than Crabby thought they'd be. They're sweet and salty and crunchy and taste pretty much like a real candy bar that you'd buy on purpose, not like an Energy Bar or Granola Bar or some other Compromise Food. Crabby's main taste objection: slightly more salty than necessary.

As it happened, Crabby's family was visiting when the package arrived, and Four out of Five Crab tasters said the same thing: Mmmm! One out of Five said: Eh. Not too bad. As for Lobsters: both Lobster and Lobster Mom said: Yumm! So it's not just the Crab who thinks they're tasty.

Almond was the flavor of choice amongst Crabs (and the Lobster) but the Peanut Bars weren't bad either. (By the time the bars got to Lobster Mom, there was only Peanut left).

What else is Good about these bars?

They're mostly nuts and don't have a lot of other ingredients. The nuts give them 7 grams of protein. And they're pretty cheap: a package of six retails for less than $3.50.

And like all Snack Bars, they're convenient. Toss one in your purse or backpack and you've got a semi-healthy treat that could keep you from making a far more disastrous snack choice instead--let's say hunger hits unexpectedly in front of a Ben and Jerry's or Pizza Hut or something. Stuff the bar in your mouth and Run Away!

What's Not So Good about them?

Among the handful of other ingredients: sugar and corn syrup. That's why they're tasty. And they're not whole food, like an apple. But you knew that--snack bars don't count as "real" food.

Also, they're about 200 calories (depending on flavor) and they're not all that big. This is a fairly high calorie budget for a treat that feels small. There are other smallish bars out there that are closer to 100 calories. But to be fair, they don't taste nearly as good as this one. Also, there are plenty of energy bars that are way more than 200 calories that taste like vitamin-and-protein-fortified, sugar-sweetened grout.

One could theoretically eat half of one of these Nut Crunch Bars for a tasty 100 calorie treat--but Crabby, despite several attempts, was unable to stop with "just a couple bites." They're too small and too yummy for that. Open the package--face it, the bar is gone.

So does anyone here even eat energy/snack bars? Have any favorites, or loathe the whole concept? What do you look for in a snack?

(And an unrelated P.S.--Crabby urges you, if you're the sort who doesn't mind surveys, to take the BlogHer survey in the sidebar. Crabby hasn't done it yet herself, but will soon. She hopes it's not too annoying! Anyway, she'd love to make Cranky Fitness look more popular than it actually is by having thousands and thousands more than two people click on the link!)

LATE-BREAKING CRUNCH BAR UPDATE:

Apparently, the awesome Weetabix at Elastic Waist likes these crunch bars too! For some reason, this makes Crabby very happy.

"Healthy" Convenience Foods: The Never-ending Quest

Are you one of those virtuous people who eats only natural whole foods, often purchased from local growers or grown yourself? Do you, without fail, take these wholesome ingredients and lovingly fashion them into delicious meals and snacks, cooking everything from scratch?

Good for you! Could you please come over to Crabby's house now and do the same for her?

Ah well, it was worth a try.

Whole foods and home cooking with only healthy ingredients is what the magazines act like we're all doing, and it's certainly the ideal. We all know a diet of mostly processed food is a Really Stupid Idea. (For example, this recent depressing study noted that British four year olds were getting roughly twice as much salt as they should from processed foods and that it was already showing up in their blood pressure readings).

But if you're not totally dedicated, exceptionally creative, and super well-organized, it can be a struggle. You need time, and nearby healthy food retailers, and cooperative (or at least coercible) family members in order to have any hope of banishing processed convenience foods from your life. It's theoretically possible. However, it ain't happening anytime soon at the Crab and Lobster household.

So for those of us who are perhaps not so creative or dedicated: we have our little repertoire of home cooked meals, which we make as often as we can stand. And we have our favorite restaurants and semi-healthy take-out options. (Crabby just discovered Pizzeria Paradiso, a D.C. pizza place that makes a tasty pie with a whole wheat crust. Paired with a salad: a quick dinner with minimal guilt!

Some of the time though, we end up buying stuff that's been pre-made or processed and packaged up for later. We buy crackers or bread or frozen enchiladas or pancake mixes or lunch-meats or canned beans or tofutti cuties. And as soon as we push our carts past the pyramids of fresh produce and venture into the rest of the grocery store? We have to pass through the gates of CompromiseLand.

(This is different from Don'tGiveaCrapWorld, where the majority of people seem to shop. Their stores are vast and their aisles are packed with tons of tempting options).

You know the drill. Say you've seen an ad for a new breakfast cereal. It promises to be whole grain and healthy but tasty, packed with healthy fruit and nuts. You are skeptical but perhaps you're just a tiny bit tired of your same old oatmeal every day, and you're tempted by the idea of the sweet crunch of a "regular" breakfast cereal like everyone else gets to eat. You locate the box and maybe it IS healthier than most! It's fairly low in calories, high fiber, a decent amount of protein, but whoa... look at all that sodium! And it's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup!

Do you buy it?

Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Crabby's kitchen cupboards contain an embarrassing quantity of products that are "the best she could do." They're better than most but there's usually something wrong with them. They're not a total all out Junky but Yummy Treat, like transfat-packed cookies or something. But then they're not a virtuous sack of dried lentils, either.

Convenience Foods are on Crabby's mind more than usual lately, because she has just moved within four blocks of the Holy Grail for Almost-Healthy Convenience Food: A Trader Joe's!

Have you been there? Crabby has visited other locations over the years but hadn't ever lived close by enough to become a regular. So every couple of days she comes back with some new convenience item to try: Pre-cooked Microwaveable Brown Rice! Unsalted Blue Tortilla Chips! Fancy Greek Yogurt! Whole Wheat Pretzels! Dark-Chocolate Covered Almonds! Cheap Frozen Calamari! Black Bean Taquitos! Whole Wheat Low-Carb Tortillas!

So far, most of these Trader Joe items seem to be pretty reasonable compromise foods. They taste anywhere from OK to yummy, and they do their best to eliminate or minimize Bad Things. Some she will probably get tired of soon because that often happens--the novelty of the new item fades and somehow the "packaged" part of the flavor starts to stand out more. Crabby is rather promiscuous when it comes to convenience foods and few go on to become household staples.

Crabby's current favorite item is the Fage Nonfat Greek Yogurt, which is incredibly rich and tasty and high in protein (and expensive!). When mixed with vanilla and the sweetener of your choice, it tastes like freakin' cheese cake. (The Trader Joe's brand of Greek Yogurt, while much cheaper, tastes kind of salty and sour). The Scariest Item she's brought home? It's those low carb tortillas. The ingredients sound more appropriate for insulating your house than wrapping around a pile of beans and cheese and putting in your mouth. But the dang things only have 50 calories, they have an insane amount of fiber and protein, and they don't even taste bad.

It's funny though: we all have our own idea about what a Somewhat Acceptable Compromise Convenience Foods is--and our ideas may be totally different!

So while there are lots of Scummy Marketeers trying to lie to us about blatantly unhealthy food, even the products that are Sincerely Trying to be Good still end up falling short for many of us. Because Weight Watcher people need to prioritize their Points, and whole-food crunchy people need everything be as natural and organic as possible, while others are being extra careful about saturated fats or white flour or sugar or sodium or calories or fiber or transfats or the correct ratio of Omega 3's to Omega 6's.

Then there's the fact that everyone has their own personal health histories and nutritional goals. Plus, sometimes "reasonably healthy and convenient" means "astronomically expensive" and not everyone can go down that road. And some people stubbornly insist that their convenience food actually taste good!

The result is, while most whole foods work for nearly everyone, any packaged product is going to seem like a Toxic Poison to someone and a Gift From Heaven to someone else. It's sort of like looking for the perfect iTunes workout playlist: everyone agrees it's a great thing to have, but no two people would chose the same one. And other people's choices can seem downright ridiculous!

So Crabby would never presume to come up with a list of Best and Healthiest Convenience Foods. But she's still curious to hear about what you all look for and what you've found that's good! She would love some new ideas. (Has anyone, for instance, found a whole wheat pasta that doesn't taste like the box it came in?) Or, in contrast, since she tends to be a sucker for ads about Some Favorite Old Forbidden Convenience Food which has had a New Healthy Makeover, what should she be warned to stay far, far away from?

Broccoli in Your Tea? Product Review, Part 2

So sorry! After keeping readers guessing what product Crabby would be reviewing for an entire day, Crabby will now reveal that it was something far less entertaining than her Smart Readers' ideas. More on that below!

But the first Free Thing Crabby received as a Blogger was not smoking-cessation yogurt or caffeinated soap, but Tea with Broccoli in it! (Okay, so the Brassica Tea people may not even know she is a blogger. But she Hinted and they Sent and for that she is grateful. Had they sent Magic Instant Six-Pack Abdominal Creme or Melt-the-Pounds-Away Chocolate Ice Cream she would have been Even More Grateful, but this was pretty cool too).

Crabby was curious about these teas because they contain a very potent antioxidant called SGS. This is the same stuff that comes in Broccoli and Broccoli Sprouts! Anyway, SGS is a kick-ass cancer-fighter and all-around nutritional Superstar.

If you want to read more about SGS, the Brassica people have a collection of research over at their blog. It's a list of actual scientific studies, so Crabby is not too embarrassed to send you over there even though they're also selling the tea and the Broccoli sprouts. (And they also have less technical, more user-friendly info at their site too).

And Crabby likes the Brassica people! They're scientists associated with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and they sound smart and well-informed. For whatever reason, Crabby trusts them when they say something is good for her. But any actual scientists among Crabby's readers who have different information, please feel free to weigh in and set Crabby straight.

Crabby knows some of you disapprove of any food on principal that has been supplemented or tinkered with by scientists. But Crabby does not fear all Franken-Food! To her, it sort of depends on whether the Tinkering is done to make food healthier, or just more profitable. And adding some extra Really Good for Your stuff to tea seemed like a fine idea to Crabby. (The Brassica people, by the way, still tell you to eat your vegetables; you don't get out of it entirely by drinking their tea. Crabby appreciates their honesty on this point, as much as she'd like to replace 90% of her vegetables with cupcakes).

So Crabby was thrilled to get her samples in the mail yesterday, but then she started to worry. What if the tea tasted, well, like broccoli? Being an honest Crab, she knew she'd have to say so, but she really hoped she wouldn't have to be mean to the nice Brassica people.

So she brewed up a cup of Green Tea with Orange and...

It tasted just fine! No broccoli-ness was detectable. Hooray!

(Caveat: Crabby made that cup the way a normal person would, with just one teabag, but usually, she drinks her tea in a Freakish Way. She puts in anywhere from 4-7 teabags in a mug, all different colors and flavors, brews it for 5-10 minutes, then dumps in Splenda (horrors!) and milk. She's really more of a coffee drinker so "normal" tea tastes too watery for her to enjoy. The Brassica tea, it turns out, also tastes good when a bunch of different flavors are combined in freakishly large quantities).

The SGS tea has actually been around for a few years, but it was new to Crabby. She will be ordering some soon and paying with her very own money!

More information about the tea and about ordering it can be found at the BrassicaTea website.

Now Crabby said she would acknowledge the most amusing Reader Guess about what she might be reviewing, but that is so hard when there were many funny ones! For readers who do not regularly visit the Comments Section (click on the link at the end of the post that says how many comments there are), do go back to yesterday's post and see what commenter's guessed. Crabby had many favorites, including one that the author seems to have removed! She hopes it will reappear someday.

So Crabby appreciates all your creative guesses. She hates to just pick one! But having said she would, she found Katieo's guess that Crabby would be testing samples of this appalling food item, to be perhaps the most Amusing. And for those who have not, for some reason, been visiting Sister Skinny on a daily basis, do not miss this recent post of Katieo's, which is very much worth clicking an additional link to read.

Thanks to all who guessed! And to any of you who have either more ideas, Very Silly or Not, for products Crabby should check out in the future, or any other comments about Tea or FrankenFood or Anything at all, please feel free to share your thoughts!

Crabby Reviews a Product! (Eventually). Part 1

Oddly enough, Crabby doesn't often get asked to review health products. Which is too bad because: (a) she is very opinionated; and (b) she loves the idea of getting free stuff to try!

It's true that Crabby does make fun of products sometimes, or tell readers they probably don't need them. And even when she's basically endorsing something, her quotes are not the sort one would likely see displayed with pride on a manufacturer's website:

Applegate Farms Nitrite-Free Organic Smoked Chicken "doesn't taste like fresh chicken; it tastes like lunch meat. But Crabby means that in a good way!"

Or, on Journey to the Wild Devine, a biofeedback game she enjoyed: "I think it helped with stress management, but I don't really remember. And it was kind of expensive. But, well, it was really fun!"

Crabby did get an email once asking her try a laxative. Er, uh, a Fiber Supplement. Crabby didn't need one, so she declined.

But then recently she came across a product she was curious about, and so she asked a question at the product's website. She dropped a few Broad Hints and lo and behold, they let her try it! This, of course, is not the same thing as actually being sought after to review something, but Crabby will take Free any way she can get it.

At this point a normal blogger would now tell you about the product, and whether she liked it or not.

But guess what? That's not 'til tomorrow. Crabby is hoping to create Suspense, as well as to create Two Posts out of material for One.

So instead, she will leave you to guess, if you care to, what she is reviewing and what she might say about it. The more Wild and Unlikely your Guess, of course the Better. Though she has no prizes to award, the Most Amusing Guess (and Guesser) will be gratefully acknowledged by Crabby. And accurate guesses/guessers will too!

The whole issue of bloggers reviewing things is a tricky one, and Crabby is curious about what other bloggers and readers of blogs think about it. Because Crabby has googled products she is interested in and come across reviews in blogs. How does she know whether to believe them? She did not know until recently that some bloggers get paid to say nice things about products.

That's clearly scummy! And it also seems a bit suspicious if a blogger keeps getting expensive products in return for saying really nice things about them. But what if they really truly think they're wonderful? Though Crabby dreams of the day when she will face this ethical dilemma, she will just emphasize the fact that she would never lie to her Smart Readers in order to get free stuff.

At this point, though, Crabby is happy to try out things that people want to send her and she will tell her readers, honestly, what she thinks. But manufacturers and retailers, beware--she actually means "honestly."

So if anyone has any Real or Silly Guesses about what product Crabby is testing out, or any thoughts about bloggers reviewing products, or any left-over but still tasty opinions about anything else in the Universe, please feel free to share them here!

Amazing "Portion Control Tool" Helps Diabetics Reduce Meds

A fun new study on portion control out of the University of Calgary found that diabetics using a special "portion control tool" lost weight--in fact, as much weight as they would have by going on medication.

Seventeen percent of participants using this special "tool" lost five percent or more of their body weight. And twenty six percent who used the "portion control tool" were able to decrease their use of diabetic medications. Hooray! That's impressive.

And what was this cutting edge "portion control tool" that was so successful?

It's a plate! A really funny-looking plate! Well, it's actually kind of cute, especially if like your plates on the whimsical side.

Crabby doesn't want to make a habit out of using people's pictures without permission (sorry, IGallop), or at least not until she figures out what the rules are. So she'll refer you to the Diet Plate website to show you what it looks like. Sort of adorable, no?

The study that used the Diet Plate has already been discussed all over the blogosphere by people much smarter than Crabby. So you may have already formed your own opinions. But that won't stop Crabby from tossing in her two cents! After all Portion Control is a favorite subject here at Cranky Fitness. (And Crabby has lots more sneaky tricks, but she doesn't want to use them up just yet. She's going to need material for future posts).

So one thing Crabby likes about this study is that it's more proof of one of her favorite theories: people are dimwits! And this is very good news, because we can use our own dimwittedness to great advantage.

Because of course there's no reason you can't put less food on your plate all by yourself. If you know you need to eat less, then eat less. But we don't do it! Now, however, maybe we will because someone has invented a "special" plate. It's actually clever: it's got smaller surface area than normal (but a nice big rim), and they've put little lines on it that label various parts of our meal and set limits on how much to eat. And research says it actually works! How cool (and dumb) is that?

However, there's one surprising downside to the amazing new Diet Plate: it costs $30! Doesn't that seem awfully high for one plate? If you want a matching bowl with that, and the whole "plan," it will run you quite a bit more. (Crabby was going to give you that figure too, but the website went down as she was writing this because the Diet Plate people were getting too much traffic!)

Rather than spend $30, Crabby prefers to just take the idea, which is free, and eat on a smaller plate. (And actually, Smart Readers already suggested this idea back in the comment section of the previous portion control post). And perhaps we can use some sort of barely edible garnish, like skinny carrot sticks or celery slivers, as a divider to make sure we go way easy on the potatoes and way less easy on the broccoli.

Or, better yet, we can wait a few weeks for some discount chain to crank out a cheap Diet Plate knock-off. (Is that too mean? But Crabby sort of thinks the Diet Plate People have it coming for trying to charge $30 for one plate). On the other hand, if you've got the cash and don't want to wait or try to arrange garnishes or paint lines on your plate--just go ahead and order it! If it helps, it's worth thirty bucks. Crabby promises she won't make fun of you.

Oh, and another thing that tickles Crabby about the Diet Plate people is their marketing. Here's one of the come-ons for this plan:

"Want to eat with your family without being made to feel different because you want to lose weight?"

Then buy the Diet Plate?

Because Lord knows, eating off your own weirdly painted and brightly colored "special plate" will make you feel much less conspicuous when dinnertime comes around!

Unless, of course, you decide to spring for special Diet Plates for the whole family... Oh.

Actually, Crabby thinks the whole idea is a good one. She just thinks it could be cheaper. She is someone who is easily fooled by the shape and size of the containers her food is served in, so she would probably be a good candidate for her own Very Special Plate!

So what do you guys think? (And no need to stay on topic--any thoughts about anything are always welcome at Cranky Fitness).