Ask Cranky Fitness: Weight Loss Issues

This is a lopsided Ask Cranky Fitness. Ms. Crabby is off buying garlic to scare off all her overly friendly mosquitoes. (Garlic provides a lot of healthy nutrients, plus it's also good at keeping away sparkly vampires, which can't hurt.) So if you disagree with any of the answers, direct your beef towards me, Merry.

Another anomaly is that one of these questions was actually sent in by a real reader! See if you can spot which one.



Dear Cranky Fitness,

I’m not a competitive person. I like to encourage and support my friends in their weight-loss endeavors. But I’ve got an etiquette dilemma, and maybe you can help.

Last week I ate right, slept well, and worked out more than Madonna – only to have the scale tell me I’d gained a pound. During the same week, a fiendishly cunning evil nemesis pal did no exercise at all, merely cut out wheat from her diet and ate chocolate and potato chips instead. By the end of the week, she’d lost five pounds. My question is: would it be overkill to hire a hit man to take her out? If so, I’ll exercise restraint and merely egg her house. Please advise.

signed, Jealous in Jersey

Dear JJ,

Eggs?

Bad idea. Eggs do not contain wheat. If you really want to be mean, forget the hit man and bring on the pizza delivery man. Or go on at great length about the great new pasta place that you just found. Or... you get the idea. Of course, you could just grit your teeth and congratulate her. One of these days it's going to be your turn -- do you really want to spend an afternoon trying to scrape egg residue off your house?

- Merry

Dear Cranky Fitness,

My bff and I go to a weight loss meeting each week. It’s supposed to help me stay accountable to get weighed in public and listen to people talk about their weight loss efforts. The problem is, I don’t care about anyone else’s weight loss problems; I have enough of my own. I don’t want to alienate my friend – how can I get out of this meeting without hurting her feelings?

- signed, Selfish Friend in SF

Dear SF,

I suppose this is going to sound movie-of-the-week trite, but if she's your friend, can't you talk to her? Work it up tactfully, like "Y'know, instead of going to the meeting, let's go to the gym and work out. Lots of hot sweaty guys in the gym on Monday nights."

On the other hand, maybe going to these meetings will make you a better person. Or a better friend. If they're really helpful to your friend, you might want to keep going for awhile, see if things get better. Or buy ear plugs and spend the hour fantasizing about all the guys in the gym.

- Merry

Dear Cranky Fitness,

This is a question I often get and I find it both compelling, annoying and completely frustrating as I cannot find an answer that satisfies me: How do you not realize your pants are getting tighter, see that you've gained weight on the scale, or notice that you're expanding to the size of a blimp and not just STOP right then and there? How can you put on 20, 50, 100+ pounds without first acknowledging and handling the situation?

As someone who went from a healthy weight to morbidly obese in the span of a couple years - I feel I should have a brilliant answer. i don't.

- Annabel
www.feedmeimcranky.com


Great question, Annabel!

Weight gain acts on your body like a recession on your savings account. If you sit still, inflation's going to catch up to you. Treat your body like a house with a bad mortgage and the 'balloon loan' effect will land you in an unhealthy situation. But until fatty liver or diabetes or such shows up with foreclosure papers, it's easy to ignore reality.

After the first 20, your subconscious kicks in. The average subconscious never wants to face an issue like weight gain, so the natural impulse is to distract the conscious mind with a Bright Shiny Thought or provide anodynes to dull the awareness.

If you don't like your shape, there's a tendency to wear baggy clothes anyway. Harder to face the unpalatable truth if you can find "comfortable" pants that have elastic or a drawstring rather than an unforgiving waistband that gets too tight to be comfortable. A tight waistband is a sign for the subconscious to get to work explaining the problem away.

Common rationalizations sent up from a subconscious can include:

- These pants must have shrunk in the wash.
- Must be that time of the month. (Harder to believe this if the subconscious is male or in the body of a menopausal woman, but hey, a sneaky subconscious will try anything.)
- It's not me, it's the jeans.Clothing manufacturers always mess with size labels.
- I've got too much to deal with right now. I deserve some pizza and television. I'll worry about these pants later. (Notice how the subconscious neatly blames the problem on the pants instead of the body?)


So if you've suffered from the 'balloon loan' effect, it's a sign that you have a Annoyingly Smug Subconscious. Best antidotes for an ASS dilemma are:

- Trying on swimsuits. Fluorescent lighting is a cruel but effective reality check.
- Going to a high school reunion. When you see what time and gravity have done to Suzy Cheerleader or Randy Studlington, it's harder to avoid your own reflection.
- Family reunions. Someone invariably insists on taking your photo at these things. Then they distribute the pics to everyone in the family. The odds of having a family composed 100% of people 'too polite to tell you you've gained weight' are ... well, fairly astronomical.

- Merry

Do you have any better ways to deal with sneaky weight gain, or people who attend weight loss meetings, or for that matter people who manage to lose tons of weight while eating chocolate and potato chips?

Diets & Cults: is there a difference?

I'm a bum.

I was going to post a long, incredibly well-written and irrefutably researched review of Barry Sears' book, Toxic Fat. But I'm going to put that off until next week so I can put this up today.

(Okay, also because I still want to tweak it a bit more. It's not quite right yet.)

I absolutely loved one thing I read in Sears's book. To quote:

"Three things in life are visceral because they are based on belief systems: Religion, politics, and nutrition."

Yep.

Emotions are closely tied in with food

You know how some people get a 'gut feeling'? The gut has such a high concentration of nerve cells that it has been called a second brain. The highest concentration is of course the brain.

No, I don't care what you've heard about some men, it really is in the head brain.

If there's a second brain in the gut, would that explain why people get so emotional about the favorite diet?

Whatever you do, don't disparage the diet

It looks like people develop an emotional attachment to a certain diet, or the philosophy behind it. As an example, take this review that Diet Blog did about Dr. Joel Fuhrman's diet book, Toxic Hunger. It's a pretty straightforward review, but what caught my attention were the comments. People got emotional over whether this diet was, or was not, a good idea.

Putting down a diet plan is a sure fire way to get a ton of comments on your blog. (Ah... the real reason for this post comes out.) The blog Starling Fitness averages a couple of comments on a post; when she wrote a mildly disapproving post about Weight Watchers and the points system, she got 95 comments. People are really into their particular diet.

If this blog were being written by Ms. Crabby, at this point there would be an insightful paragraph or two about why people defend their diet plans like a lioness defending her last cub. Since she ain't here, just imagine that something insightful was said at this point.

Deep, thoughtful moment

Okay, enough already.

Being me, I have to confess that I don't get why this is such an emotional issue. Being healthy is a good thing. Yeah, I got that part. But we're all different, right? So if diet A works for me, and diet B works for Crabby, why should the two of us have a huge argument about which is better?

I think diets are like cults in that people can get really obsessive about them both.

Weight watchers is evil!

It's tempting to disparage a whole lot of diet plans so that the post would get lots and lots of comments. (Weight Watchers is evil! The Zone Diet is followed by Terrorists! Hitler was a vegetarian!) But in all honesty, I don't get it. Why can't we all get along? Or agree to disagree, or something civilized like that?

WW Poetry Contest Winners

[By Crabby]





First off, my apologies for a reduced web presence this week--yet again I am away from home, as I had a chance to join the Lobster on a business trip to New York. I love Manhattan! If anyone spies a confused crab jogging slowly around the reservoir at Central Park or standing in line for cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery, be sure to say hi!

So on to the contest...

Oh my goodness, what a great bunch of entries to choose from!!! The fact that so many of you who don't even eat this kind of stuff composed so many wonderful odes to snacking and desserts made me feel so proud and impressed. What clever readers we have here! Blogging is so much fun when everyone else does the work.

So after I announce the winners, I'll reprint all the poem/haiku entries. I know some readers don't always make it down into the comments, and I didn't want anyone to miss these. And if you see one you like and it has a link, you may want to check out that person's blog. (Apologies in advance to any I inadvertently missed or any links I screwed up.)

So first off, the Random Winner is: KB, who also happened to submit a great haiku about Rugelach.

And the two poetry/haiku winners are: Linda of Fat Don't Wrinkle, and whichever of the clever Grounded Fitness gals submitted the haiku advocating legalized frostitution!



Please email CrabbyMcSlacker @ gmail dot com with your mailing addresses to claim your coupons. Or, if you're not personally into portion-controlled reduced-calorie snack food, you can let us know you'd like to send the coupon to someone else. (Either someone whose address you have, or by having us choosing another winner to replace you). Please check in by Friday night so we can send 'em out or pick new winners.


So, here are the Awesome Snack Food Poetry Entries!

(Author name precedes poem)

By Linda:
Ode to snack

My tummy it's a-growlin'
My PMS is howlin'
Should I throw the towel in
And have a tasty snack?

Which one am I pickin'?
The one that's finger-lickin'
Or stashed up in my kitchen?
Oh where's my tasty snack?

I could eat that one that's real
It has much more appeal
I relish it with zeal
Oh dread for fatty snack.

Then again I could choose
The one that should help me lose
But chemicals it could ooze
Oh zounds - the artifical snack.

I don't house artificial
Now let's make this official
I'm gonna eat a fistful
Of "real food" for my snack.

So if it's for chocolate I am dyin'
Or cake I am-a-cryin'
It's much more satisfyin'
To have a real snack.

I put it in my tummy
Knowing that it's yummy
and heading for my hiney
But I gotta have that snack.

Then to the gym I'm goin'
For liftin' and some rowin'
Some cardio - all owin'
To the eating of my snack.


By Christine:
Snack food, low cal, real
The quandary is on your
lips or on your hips

By Chicken Girl
Tasty and nutritious
candy bar
would be nicer
with more nutritious
and slightly less tasty
so as to better
fulfill
ravenous after-work Chicken Girls
without provoking
The Chocolate Monster.
(NOM NOM NOM!)

*plays bongos*


By NewMe:
Junk is junk
Or so I thunk

But if you must
please don't lust

grab the best
take this test

the real thing for me
just one, not three!


By Grounded Fitness:
Faux twinkie, my love
Legalize frostitution
Your cream coats my soul.

Second Entry:

Title: Longing For the Days of When I Could Eat Whatever I Wanted and Never Saw an Ounce of it Appear Anywhere on my Body

Watch weight with cake
Older metabolism
The toybox is closed


By Alyssa:
Doritos, my love
I think of you everyday
Darn your fat content.


By Mrs. Jelly Belly:
The junk food they are hawkin'
Has us fat chicks all a'gawkin'.

Oh! What a great day!
If we could eat this way

And burn it all off by fawkin'.

By POD:
I used to eat wholesome and felt denied.
I'd act self-righteous while secretly I cried.
During chemo, downing Dove Bars, I gained 30 lbs.
Back on Weight Watchers now, I am 10 down.
Daily I search for a happy medium,
Eating 'fake' foods sometimes quells the dieting tedium.

By Amanda:
Oh god, give me cream
And sugar and butter, too
Life is short, eat real.

By Emily:
Once upon a time I was fat,
On my fat ass I always sat.

I loved me some cake,
so that's all I ate,
And then I discovered a 100cal pack.

Now I can fit in my jeans,
(and you all know how much that means.)

I long for a treat,
but healthy I will eat,
as long as the Olestra doesn't cause leakage.

By Melissa:
Ode to the Lite

No doubt ersatz components test the gut;
False colorings wreak havoc in the cells,
And it were best to leave the package shut
And steel oneself against the tempting smells;
Ah, choc’late cake and caramel pecan,
And lemon sponge and carrot cake could be
My comforts sweet while parked on my divan,
And partners to a half-assed gluttony;
These meretricious treats do fool the mind,
For one imagines they’re a harmless “vice,”
And giving little thought to my behind,
I help myself to just another slice.
So disappear all into the abyss,
And here I sit in artificial bliss.


By TK:
Full cal or NO cal
Low cal is less than useless
It means I'll eat TWO!


By Fit Me Pink:
I love cupcakes
I love cake
I love cookies
I love shakes

I love white bread
Yes I do
The problem comes
When it's time to...poo!

Hemorrhoids are my curse in life
So high fiber foods I must bite
But as long as I eat enough good stuff,
I save some room for what I love!


By Therese
Eat a yummy treat
just a hundred calories?
You have weak tastebuds

By Michelle D:
I love candy bars!
So yummy in my tummy..
Nom Nom Nom!!!

By KB:
Rugelach, so small,
so real, you are my true friend.
Sorbet, I love you.


By Kristen:
There once was a woman so hinky
She asked herself, "Why a fake Twinkie?"
Cause while they look swank
They taste a bit rank
And may never much help you to shrinkie!


By Debby
Its Gotta Be Worthy

I love me some cake
I love me some cream.
High fructose corn syrup, you say?
Get out of the way---
That's the stuff of my dream.

High fat, low fat,
Real or fake,
I don't really care
When it comes to cake.

But its gotta be worthy,
its gotta taste good.
Three points or less
is preferred, if you would.


By Landry's Mom:
I think that I shall never see
successful sweet treat fakery,
Indeed, until my taste buds stall,
I'll not for faux treaties fall.


By Nolafwug:
An ode to my secret love

Oh 100 calorie bag of popcorn,
You are just right
When I want a crunchy, salty snack day or night

With some seasoning sprinkled on liberally
You fill a large bowl so pleasantly
And I crunch away happily

How can they say our love is wrong?
Why must I hide you in the back
So no one will know how I snack?

Oh the shame!
You are reduced fat
You are a hundred calorie pack!

By BlueYellowBlue:
I have lost 115 pounds but
no one will be astounded that
I along the way
have said so many nays but
I have had a lot of sweets
but they, of course aren't beat
by vegetables and fruit
because they make you poot!

Twinkies, candy and cheesecake
and anything else I can bake
are just so good, you see
they are natural, like pee!
So I will lost my weight with fat
in my daily diet so that,
I am not deprived of sweets
or the butter that I eat.

By Lucas:
All hail the great Crabby McSlacker
Giving away treats to all of us snackers
But more than ice cream, cookies and cake
It's Crabby herself that I'd rather take
The wit, the humor, the fresh take on living
That Crabby McSlacker just keeps on giving
While frosting and sprinkles certainly are nice
Crabby is my favorite flavor of spice
So keep your chips, your chocolate and candy
I'll take me some Crabby
Cuz she is just dandy!!!



Aren't these all great??!!! Thanks Everyone who Entered!

Low Cal Snack Foods: Whaddya Think?

[By Crabby]



Yes, this is indeed another Friday Giveaway Post--which will have three winners this week. So, Giveaway Skimmers, feel free to skip the Crab's tedious snack food musings and head straight down to the nitty gritty instructions on how to enter at the bottom of the post. Hint: one winner will be random, but creative readers will have extra chances to win this time.

But for those of you who may have opinions about Diet Processed Foods, pro or con--let's talk about this a moment, shall we?

So out in the "real world," (or at least at your local Big Chain Supermarket), there is plenty of evidence that folks want "low cal," "light," "reduced-fat" and "portion-controlled" convenience foods. A weight-conscious consumer who really craves a candy bar, for example, will often appreciate having a 100 calorie option available instead of just a 350 calorie version--even if the "lighter" version is smaller or tastes different from the original.

Most people "out there" seem to think these low-cal treats are a good thing.

In the land of health and fitness bloggers? Eh, not so much.

Few health bloggers will admit to purchasing a Diet Pepsi or a Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwich or a bright red can of Pringles Light Non-Fat Potato Chips with New and Improved 50% Less Anal Leakage Olestra.

(Though bloggers primarily focused on weight loss seem to be a bit more accepting of Frankenfoods, as long as they taste decent).

Sure, we should probably all be eating fruit for dessert instead of ice cream, and limiting our snacking to handfuls of healthy nuts and celery and carrots dipped in hummus.

But sometimes you just don't want a healthy whole-food snack! You want something yummy. You may have saved up points or calories or you may be planning to run an extra five miles on the treadmill; whatever. The point is: you're craving refined flour and sugar and fat, not a damn carrot.

(Cartoon by NatalieDee)

So what kind of treat do you pick? Reduced calorie, or regular?

Many folks seem to feel there is something more honorable about choosing to have a miniscule portion of a rich, satisfying, full-fat, gourmet dessert. Or perhaps some sort of deep-fried doughy ethnic thing, just like the kind Grandma from the Old Country used to make. Whereas having a half-dozen reduced fat Oreo cookies? That's frequently frowned upon.

Why is that? Any theories?

I suspect many of us may have a few low-cal or portion-controlled snacks stashed away in our kitchens... Anyone? Anyone?

When I was back in calorie-counting mode, I often used low-cal snacks and desserts, and it really helped me to feel like I could have a "treat" without totally blowing my goals. Now that I don't track so closely, I'm more likely to say "screw it, I'll have a big fat bakery cupcake with who knows how many calories" instead, but I can't really argue that this is a more sensible, honorable choice.

To me the key is: do you enjoy that low-cal treat enough that it satisfies your craving? If so, I think having low cal versions of junky foods as a treat is a fine idea! But I'd be curious to hear what the rest of you think.

So Anyway, On to the Giveaway...

As you may have gathered, the fine folks at Weight Watchers are offering up some of their tasty looking snack foods and desserts! ( Workout Mommy says, of their faux Twinkies: "sinfully delicious!" And she also has some to give away, so make sure to head on over to her site too.)

Anyway, three winners will each get a coupon good for "a full box of any item in the Weight Watchers' snack food category." Alas, I'm told that these products are not available internationally and so yet again, this giveaway is just for U.S. residents, dang it.

One of the winners will be chosen randomly--all you have to do is leave a comment. (And if you don't want the coupon because you would rather snack on alfalfa sprouts instead, don't fear commenting--should you win, we can always send it to someone else instead).

The other two winners will be chosen for writing the two best poems having anything to do with snack food, desserts, dieting, or treats! Here at Cranky Fitness, we love reader poetry, it makes reading the comments extra fun! (Haiku is good too). (And if you enter with a poem, you're also included for the random drawing too. So you have three times the chance to win!)

Entry deadline: Midnight EST, Tuesday September 9th. Winners announced Wednesday, Sept 10th; claim your prizes by emailing us before midnight, EST Sept 11.