Unscheduled Rant

Today's post was supposed to be about teen suicide, since the alarming news is that there is suddenly a lot more of it happening, especially among girls.

No one knows whether this is just an anomalous blip or an actual trend. (Fortunately, it's still very rare; rates are about 1/100,000). The experts didn't seem to offer any convincing theories, either, about why the rates went up, other than the usual "life is hard for teens now" sort of thing.

Crabby was going to chime in and say, somewhat predictably, that life has never been easy and each generation going back through time has had some Pretty Intense Stuff to deal with. But then Crabby realized she really doesn't have much of a clue and should probably just shut up about it, especially since (a) suicide is a very complicated problem and (b) she doesn't have any teens herself to know what they're actually dealing with.

However, we can still talk about teen suicide in the Comments, as some of you may have some more actual info, theories, or observations about this that could help Crabby understand better what might be up with that.

The main reason the suicide post got interrupted, however, was that Crabby found herself so flustered and mad she couldn't concentrate and had to get a little rant out of the way.

Yesterday morning, for the second time in two weeks, she was nearly killed while crossing the street, in the designated crosswalk, with the right of way, by a car eager to make a left-hand turn on top of her.

Note: neither of these were fake crosswalks, the kind put in optimistically mid-block or at uncontrolled intersections, where theoretically the pedestrian might have the right away but no pedestrian is foolish enough to rely upon it. These were both real crosswalks at actual controlled intersections.

In both cases, Crabby was already well into the crosswalk before either car started to make their turn. So she was smack in front of these drivers when they not only turned, but then decided to head right for her and speed up in order to force her to run the rest of the way across. In neither case was there an oncoming car that the left-hand turner was trying to avoid colliding with. And had Crabby not sprinted either of these times, she would have been hit. No lie. Both these cars were so sure of Crabby's willingness to run to avoid being hit that they were going too fast to be able to stop.

This is a situation in which people are prone to exaggerate, but Crabby truly feared for her life each time. Had she tripped and stumbled or decided to stubbornly keep walking a normal speed, she would be writing this post from a hospital bed.

Or perhaps not writing it at all.

Crabby is not sure this has ever happened to her before--at least not in such a terrifying way, and certainly not twice in two weeks! She was actually warned by a Smart Reader about D.C. drivers, but except for these two bizarre instances, she has not noticed the driving being any worse here than other major metropolitan areas. Many drivers here are actually quite considerate!

And having lived in Manhattan for two years, Crabby knows something about aggressive driving. She knows that "the right of way" and "who really gets to go now" are two different concepts. She also knows that when a pedestrian wants to cross the street and a driver wants to make a turn, there are competing interests and a certain amount of strategizing goes on--a pedestrian who has just taken a few steps of the curb, for instance, knows she may need to stop her progress if a car decides to turn right in front of her.

But damn it, if you are a driver wanting to make a left turn and the pedestrian is now right smack in front of you, GAME OVER. You lost that one. Sorry, now you have to wait, as painful as that is for you. You do not Proceed Anyway and try to Hit the Pedestrian! If you are in such a F*cking Hurry, keep in mind that a mangled body on the hood of your car is going to take up quite a bit of your morning, and perhaps even the rest of your life, to sort out!

Is this some sort of horrible new trend? Or just an unlucky coincidence? Do people suddenly think they are starring in their own Hollywood Action films or video games when they get behind the wheel and that there will be no real life consequences when they do crazy reckless things? (Hmm... the teen suicide statistics... a theory begins to take form...)

Anyway, at least there is a semi-satisfying epilogue:

In yesterday morning's incident, Crabby actually discovered the vehicle pulled over a few blocks away. It was some sort of government-looking thing (probably local), all white with some red stars or something on it, and the woman driving it was wearing a blue uniform. Crabby actually got the license number, and discovered there was a "How's My Driving?" bumper sticker on the back of the car! But unfortunately, the number didn't have a handy acronym like 1-800-WTF-LADY??!! or anything, and the driver saw Crabby staring at the back of her car, recognized her, and pulled away before Crabby could attempt to memorize the phone number.

Crabby may never find out what agency or company this woman worked for (any D.C. folks have any suspects? This was in Georgetown, if it makes any difference). But she does have the license number and the date and time in case she ever does figure it out. And even better? Crabby had the satisfaction of watching this woman, who nearly hit her, realize that the person she tried to mow down was now attempting to Rat Her Out. Perhaps she even worried about it a bit, and took a bit less menacing approach towards the next annoying pedestrian who had the nerve to be in a crosswalk in front of her.

So drive safe, folks, and look both ways before crossing the street, and even if you do, be prepared to sprint through intersections away from insanely reckless drivers!

Guest Post: Sara from Healthbolt on The Cookie Diet!

Cranky Fitness is quite pleased to bring you a Guest Post today from Sara Ost! She hosts the amazing Healthbolt blog (which is a must-read for both Useful Information as well as Totally Weird but Strangely Addictive Off-beat Health news). And not only that--Sara is a frequent contributor and Important Person over at Mark's Daily Apple, another incredible resource for healthy living!

Sarah is going to give us her opinion about the Hollywood Cookie Diet--think she's a big fan? Hmmm, let's find out...



The Fact That They Aren’t Cupcakes Is Almost Beside the Point

Another fad diet is in our midst, friends: the Hollywood Cookie Diet.

Though it’s been around for several years, the cookie diet is experiencing a resurgence amongst certain celebrities hoping to shed what little body fat they have left. Which, collectively, is probably less than my left butt cheek.

The cookie diet – whether in its latest Tinseltown incarnation or not – is just wrong. Not because this diet of four to six* puny cookies daily adds up to only 800 calories (dieters must “supplement” with a portion of meat at dinner in order to avoid what is known in medical terminology as “agonizing starvation”). Not because a steady intake of cookies is about as nutritious as a can of Red Bull with a cocaine chaser. Not because this diet is expensive, or boring, or lacking in calcium, or impossible to sustain for the long haul. And not because cookies are not fruits, vegetables, or anything else that most people would consider part of a reasonably healthy weight loss plan. And not even because the cookie diet is fatally flawed.

Why would anyone subsist on the cookie diet when there are cupcakes in this world?

(I mean, come on: it’s a cake! In a cup! And it’s cute! What does cookie really accomplish, other than to further the general suffix confusion of the English language? There’s no tease with cupcake. It’s phonetic, and it’s wonderful. You know exactly what you’re getting: a warm, precious cup of fluffy sweetness, sized just for you. Note that Marie Antoinette did not say “let them eat cookies”. Technically, she did not say anything about cakes, either, but historical accuracy is beside the point. And the point is that cupcakes are better than cookies.)

But pesky issues of deficiency and malnutrition aside, the real reason the cookie diet is silly is because it ruins all the fun of cheating. In fact, even a cupcake diet would ruin one of life’s greatest joys: totally blowing your normally healthy diet at least once a month, preferably with a fat, fizzy glass of champagne. Failing that, a good roll in the hay.

The cookie diet is an assault on all that is delicious and decadent in this world. It’s been said, but evidently not nearly enough: If you’re going to have a cookie, have a cookie. I’m not sure why anyone would cough up their hard-earned cupcake cash to subsist on bad cookies (they’re made of oatmeal, wheat, bran, and rice, although the new starlet version does include a sprinkling of chocolate if you like). If the name of the game is cutting calories to get that My Diet Is My Religion look, you could easily live on cupcakes instead, and for less money. Why, you could even bake yourself up some chocolatey (chocolatie?), gooey, chewy cookies yourself and eat those if you’re partial to cookies. If you’re going to get osteoporosis, why not make it sweet osteoporosis?

But I digress. Treats are special because they are just that: treats. The cookie diet is the worst of both worlds: it ruins treats and it ruins regular waistline-minding meals. Besides, with so many delicious, sustainable, healthier ways to lose weight – the Sonoma Diet, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, the just-eat-healthy-most-of-the-time diet – there’s just no need to subsist on glorified oat pellets your pet ferret would probably ignore. What say you, Crabby readers?


*six cookies on the original diet; four on the new Hollywood version

"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?

Go Back Outside And Play!

Crabby plans to resume playtime herself, any minute now. So this is not a real post, just one of those pretend weekend ones to prove she is still alive. (Note: that is NOT her in the photo! She is a crab so she can not leap into the air like that. Nor is she male).

The main reason for this non-post is just to say a huge Thank You to all the nice people who linked to or commented on her "Give Up on Being Perfect" post. In particular, she'd like to thank the amazing Roni at Roni's Weight Watchen Page and Roni's awesome readers--and Goodness, there are a lot of you!

For those of you who haven't ventured over there yet, Roni has a great site with tons of helpful suggestions, particularly if you're on the Weight Watcher's program. Crabby was probably the last health and fitness blogger in the universe to discover this great resource. And unlike Crabby, Roni even Knows Something about Cooking! So there are lots of great recipes as well as humor and practical advice and inspiration.

However, Crabby also needs to warn her readers, Beware! (Not of Roni, who seems very nice; rather of Future Posts at Cranky Fitness).

At first Crabby was almost sort of embarrassed to run a post reminding you of things you already knew. But no one made fun of her so she may do it again! She loves spouting off about the motivational aspects of healthy living because it's fun and it doesn't even require googling. So she's thinking maybe once a week or so of doing similar sorts of Motivational/Reminder posts. (Probably later in the week, in case you're trying to avoid them.)

So thanks again and see you all tomorrow!

Friday Freakishness

Yep, it's time again for Friday's random health and not-so-health related linkage!

First up: Soldiers in Iraq, particularly female soldiers, are going off and getting cosmetic surgery without permission, according to this interesting blog post. (The source is actually a military site with ads like "Imagine...No Liberals!" so caution is advised). Anyway, these unauthorized surgeries are becoming more popular because troops are getting paid more now than they used to, and medical procedures over there are cheap.

Apparently military folks are getting breast augmentation, nose jobs, liposuction and tummy tucks, which are sometimes botched by unqualified doctors! Crabby knows the first thing she'd think of doing if sent off to a foreign land to fight a bloody war is go get elective cosmetic surgery. How 'bout you? But unfortunately, troops are ending up sidelined from duty for extended periods when they should be off doing soldiery things instead.

And via Healthbolt, always a favorite source of amusing but educational health items: A speed-dating study out of Indiana University came to this conclusion: men look for beauty in assessing potential partners, while women seek wealth and financial security. Shocking, declares Cranky Fitness, just shocking!

The study also found that women were pickier than men. While men on average wanted to see about one out of two of the women again, the women wanted to meet only a third of the men. (The article didn't say which third--lets just be tasteful and assume the top third, from the chest up.)

And now a weird, too-small-to-be-useful, but intriguing study of Poets and Suicide, brought to Cranky Fitness by PsyBlog, a thoughtful psychology blog that Crabby somehow hadn't come across before. The study (which can be found here) used a computer program to analyze the text of 300 poems written by 20 different poets, half of whom eventually committed suicide. What sort of differences did they find in their poems?

Suicidal poets were not more likely to use words associated with negative emotions or mention death than the non-suicidal poets. However, they were more likely to use the first-person singular (I, me, my) than non-suicidal poets. And suicidal poets focused on sex more than non-suicidal poets.

So: "There once was a man from Nantucket..." was simply a cry for help? (Note: Crabby did not even realize there was a non-obscene version of this limerick, but apparently it all started off quite innocently!)

Now we make the leap from Surgery, Sex, and Death... to Fitness! But at least it's not Boring Old Normal Fitness.

So Kelly from Fitness Fixation, whom Crabby already adores, wrote a very funny post recently about blogging and swearing. (Her Mom even pipes up in the Comments; it's really cute). However, Crabby couldn't quite figure out how to sell that as health-related. But it turns out Kelly has another great post over at That'sfit in which she tells us How to Get Fit by Slinging Your Beloved Family Members Around Like Human Barbells! Now THAT is fitness related, so we're good! (And actually, the post contains some really smart ideas about exercising with your kids).

But here's where it starts to get weirder, because, well, Crabby doesn't have any kids so she was googling around looking for instructions on how to use one's pets as barbells. (Not for real! Just to find a funny picture, she swears).

Alas, no funny (free) pictures, but she did find some weird animal exercise stuff! She'll spare you the rest of them but she'll leave you with this bit of strangeness: (Warning: you may want to Turn Down Your Sound because this contains annoying music).

Crabby has NO idea what to make of that.

Anyway, she hopes you all have a great weekend! Crabby may stop by the blog and post something inconsequential, or she may go outside instead and play in the sunshine!

UPDATE: Well, Crabby was playing in the sunshine, but she returned home from her exciting adventures to discover her Feed was Suddenly Invalid! Crabby needs to feel Validated as much and as often as possible--so to be told that she now has Zero subscribers was a bit of a shock. She's going to Monkey Around with this post and see if perhaps the embedded YouTube video destroyed her feed, since that's the only thing unusual about it. She'll replace it with a link and see if that helps.