DNA with Dr.Hsien-Hsien Lei

Fellow pro-blogger Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei has recently announced the birth of a new blog, Eye on DNA, and I just wanted to wish her the best of luck. Lei or Hsien, as some people call her, is a great writer who can really break down some intense scientific mumbo jumbo into verbiage that the average person can understand.

While it may not seem like DNA is related to fighting fat after 40, it actually has a lot more to do with it than you can image. I think many of us are predestined to a certain degree. Like it or not, as much as we can fight off the battle of the bulge, a lot of comes down to our genes and what our ancestors bestowed upon us, the good, the bad, and the fat.

Smart Snacking, I Hope

Two of my three classes are over with, and I just have to give a final (and grade the final, calculate, and upload of course), and then I'm done with class number three. This third class is my only traditional "in the classroom" class because my other two were web-based. Because of that and the fact that for the most part this has been a wonderful group of students - all women - nine total - and all but one really worked hard for me this semester - I wanted to treat them while they take their final, sort of ease the tension a little because I know they'll be totally freaked.

So today while shopping I had to figure out what I could get them that would not impact my diet. Obviously, these snacks are really for them, but I don't want to bring something that will tempt me, even if I only nibble.

As I strolled down the snack isle, past the Oreos, the Yo-Yos, the yummy wedding cookie with the white powdered sugar...well, you get the picture...I had to find what I'm calling "smart snacking." One wonderful find was a box of individually wrapped bags of gold fish crackers, nine a bunch. Ah, nine students, nine little bags, this was good!

But, I needed cookies too. I remembered that one student didn't like chocolate (I know, weird, yes), so I found a box of tea cookies; something like ten cookies only have 140 calories. Excellent!

Finally, for the chocolate lovers, I opted for a zip lock bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. Again, calorie count wasn't killer, but even better, they zipped up so if there are any left I can easily hand them to a student to bring home to one of her children.

I've really enjoyed this class. Most of the students were in my class last semester and have just been a wonderful way for me to return to teaching after stopping for about a year so I could write my dissertation. They are all so eager to learn and serious about school, so different than most of my web students who turned in just about every assignment late and had more excuses than you could imagine.

I remember one class when I was explaining how to find good sources for a research paper they were working on, and I mentioned the difference between something like People magazine and a peer reviewed journal. I told them that they were scholars now, so they had to be very particular about what they used to support their analysis. One woman's eyes just popped open when I said that. The look on her face was "Me, a scholar?" And, then she sort of sat up straight in her chair and looked right back at me, so proud of herself, as well she should be.

Young Dancer Needs Your Vote!

Ah, to be young again! This is my 17 year old niece demonstrating a number of dance methods including ballet, jazz, and tap. In fact, at the end of this video she has some wicked tap going on!

View it here and then go to Youth Noise to vote. She also has it posted there, but the quality isn't as good I don't think. Look for the stars at the bottom of the page once you get there and click to add your vote.

I know I'm totally prejudice, but I've viewed a number of the videos that are at the top now, and I think she beat them big time!

Shocked & Amazed

I came this close to not stepping on the scale today, even though I promised that Tuesdays would be my weigh-in day.

First, there was our anniversary dinner on Saturday night. Though I had plans to try not to leave there totally stuffed, I also knew this was going to be really hard, so I kept my calorie count down to about 500 before going to dinner that evening, living off of a little fruit and vegies most of the day. And, as I had predicted, even with bringing half of my entree home (macadamia nut encrusted snapper with vegies and rosemary infused potatoes), I still managed to feel like I needed someone to carry me out to the car.

So, okay, then back on track on Sunday. I did eat my leftovers, but other than that, I again relied on vegies and fruit to keep everything else low. I even skipped my one real glass of OJ for the week. (heavy sigh)

Monday, again I'm back on track. This day was our actual anniversary - 4/30 - celebrating 19 years - Wow! But I was good and by about 7p.m. had only taken in around 1,000 calories. C. also had suggested upping my water in-take to counter balance my Saturday fling, which I did. Thank goodness, too, because my adorable DH came home with German wine and yummy cheeses to sample.

So, that's why this a.m., as I rolled out of bed, it came to mind that maybe I should skip the weigh-in. I really expected bad news. In fact, as I planted my tootsies on the scale, I was thinking, "Just don't let me have gained anything, and I'll be thrilled."

But, no! I actually lost 2.4 lbs! Yes, I'm still in shock.

I went back to my food journal to see when I seriously started all of this and it dates back to 4/19, so that's 12 days, just shy of two weeks. It is still sinking in. This is actually working, even with my occasional tumbles off the wagon. My goal for the month of May is to get 5lbs off. That's about 1lb a week, so I think I can do it.

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No Hoochie Koochie Today

I'm at about a week now writing down my food and trying to keep the calories down under 1700. I weighed in Tuesday, and I called C. and reported. Granted, I could drive all the way to her house, and she even offered to charge me $10 just like Weight Watchers, but I figured I'd just call and report once a week. I have been fighting (sometimes unsuccessfully) the urge to step on the scale every day. It's just too depressing, but today I noticed that getting my pants zipped did not require me to do a major hoochie koochie dance around my bedroom. So, hopefully I'll see some progress when I weigh-in again on Tuesday.

I already know that my calorie in-take is not significantly low enough for me to see major results, so I'm bracing myself to not see much of a difference on Tuesday. While I may have cut back my calorie in-take by 300 to 500 calories, in the grand scheme of things, that is not a ton. That's why when I used to do WW and cut my calorie in-take from a little over 2,000 down to 1,200 I would see about a five pound loss in the first week. That is tempting...but I have to keep reminding myself that I'm in this for the long haul. I'm looking for long-term, sustainable progress versus short term gains.


On a similar note, when I spoke with C. recently I finally talked her into upping her calories a little, reminding her of the voo-doo she was doing to her metabolism, the very thing she has warned me about over and over again. She admitted that after increasing it by a few hundred calories, she wasn't nearly as hungry and she still managed to get another 1/2 pound off. I felt like the student teaching the teacher, but ha! I was right!
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Polishing My Crystal Ball

It's just about the end of the semester for all three classes I'm teaching. Two are web classes I teach through a junior college and the third is in a traditional classroom setting at a small branch campus of a private university. However, while in many respects the students are totally different (even though all of the classes are English related subjects), they share one thing: about this time of the semester I start getting asked to look into my crystal ball and tell each student his/her grade.

Usually the requests starts with something like, "I need to get an A in this class" followed by "Can you tell me my grade?"

Of course, this is before all their work as been submitted let alone graded. (I'm still working on my other magic trick of grading work that hasn't actually been sent to me yet.)

I imagine they envision me constantly typing in numbers into my spread sheets so I have an up to the minute number for their grades. But, the ugly truth is that I usually wait to do all the icky math stuff because not all students make it through the end of the semester. My web classes, especially, have a very high drop out rate. Heck, it's not usual for me to never, ever hear from a number of them. For whatever reason, they've signed up but never actually log onto the class. Again, I have no magic trick up my sleeve to help them.

So, what do I tell these students "who really need an A" at this point in the semester with only a week or so to go? I refer them to the syllabus which clearly lists all the percentages for each assignment. Then I suggest that they do a wonderful job on the final exam to help bring their grade up if necessary.

I know this sounds very cruel and cold to them, especially via email. But, obviously, I have to protect myself. I cannot predict any one's performance and I am far from a math wizard who can calculate grades in my head without the help of good old Excel.

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Anti-Frumping Tips

I had a girlfriend in college many years ago, S., who told me about how she lived with a British dude in the UK for about a year. S. was crazy about him, even though he yelled at her for using too much toilet paper and his friends thought she was a tramp because she ordered a whole pint versus a half pint of beer when they went to the local pub.

With all this, though, she was ga-ga over this guy, so one of the things she used to do was wake up a few minutes before him every morning and apply a little rouge and mascara and slip back into bed beside him, thus giving the impression that she naturally woke up looking gorgeous (and she was...I'm sure still is a very pretty woman) every morning.

Now, I am not ready to go to these lengths, but this story came to mind recently after my epiphany in front of the freezer the other day. Therefore, in my recent efforts to avoid looking like a fat old frump when DH comes home, I've come up with a few tips.

• About an hour or so before he comes home, I take a sort of personal inventory and de-frump as necessary. For example, I dab on a little make-up, add a few pieces of jewelry, change the baggy, stained t-shirt for a shirt that actually hangs in my closet, find anything but my track pants to wear, brush my hair, etc.
• It's too depressing to go shopping, and as it is I have no time and have never been much of a shopper (I want the clothes in my closet; I just don't want to go get them), so I ordered a few shirts and a pair of denim capris from L.L. Bean.
• I hold off on getting the PJs on until closer to bed time. I'm also considering...maybe when next pay day rolls around...of getting some actual nighties that have matching tops and bottoms. I'm not talking Victoria Secret or anything, but something other than the baggy drawstring pants I got form Sam's and the old About.com t-shirts I normally wear.

Generally speaking too, as D. commented recently, I've noticed I feel better during the day when I don't start out so frumpy. It is amazing how your own appearance can affect your attitude. Look like a frump - feel like a frump - look put together - feel put together.

Muscle Mamma

While I use hand weight when doing my Walk Away the Pounds - Leslie SansoneDVDs, that's about it. They are just your basic 2lb weights. I don't have her idiotic looking weighted balls or wacky belt thing she uses in one of the other DVDs I've got from her, but I definitely notice a difference when using my hand weights. It bumps up the intensity of the whole exercise. That said, the other day, it occurred to me that I'm probably at the stage where I can add on to the whole weight thing, especially considering my age and the issues we old ladies have with osteoporosis. This was confirmed when I spoke with a friend of mine, CM, at my CLJ who does personal training on the side.

I was telling her about how C. is not only struggling to get those last two before the holidays pounds off but that even with that off she's noticed that her hips are an inch larger than before. Two pounds obviously aint gonna equal an inch - no way - no how.

CM asked me if C. was working out with weights at all because she said that this would make a difference since cardio can burn fat but if you aren't careful you can burn muscle too. Weight training will tighten up areas and build the muscle she needs to squeeze back into those size 6s.

Armed with this new information, I called C. that night and reported. Come to find out, C. had not been doing weights over the past few months until she realized just a few days previous to my call that she'd been doing that before the 10lb addition. Just with all the traveling she'd been doing, she wasn't able to do her weight routine. Then once back at home, she had spaced and was just trying to do cardio like a mad woman. She also cut back to 1400 calories a day.

I argued with her a little about how she's always on me about keeping calories too low and how it can f-up your metabolism, but she is so desperate she just can't stand not wearing her clothes and she will not buy any size 8s. She's got one pair of pants she got at Chicos and a few dresses and that's it. Fashion be damned!

This whole story brought home the idea that I'm ready to take on a little weight training, and I mean little because while my *ss is huge, my arms are pretty much sticks still. Wiggly sticks, but still very little meat on them, so I'll have to take it slowly. However, I plan on my errands/groceries day to stop by Wal-fart and pick up some 5lb dumb bells. Hopefully, I can manage to carry them out of the store without hurting myself.

Geneen Roth's Take

Upon the advice of one of my readers, I took at look at Geneen Roths' book, When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair,and while I don't think I'm one of the people she is talking about, I did find a few tid bits of helpful information. Actually, it reinforced something I have been thinking about lately.

First, here's my take on Roth's take: She's really writing (it seems) for people who have some major control issues. I'm not talking about eating that piece of cake that shows up in the brake room or even that extra slice of pizza at lunch. Roth talks about people who stand in front of their frig and stuff whatever they see into their mouths or people who eat an entire bag of chocolate chip cooks while hiding in the closet. These people have major emotional "hunger" issues, not your basic, I'm full so stop eating issues or I just feel like snacking, which is where I feel fits me a little better.

That said, however, her main message is that people who have weight issues (no matter how big or small) often are just plain old not nice to themselves, and we need to be nice, to cut ourselves some slack now and then rather than consider ourselves bad people. That's a message I can totally relate to, and here's why....

As I mentioned in a previous post, my DH gingerly asked me if I was planning on returning to WW. As he said this, I was holding open the freezer door displaying my latest stash of WW frozen dinners. My assemble consisted of an old stained t-shirt with cat hair all over it; a ratty over sized sweater that didn't match anything else I was wearing; a pair of elasto-waist pants I'd gotten for $5 at the drug store; and my haute-couture kitty cat slippers. My hair on this special occasion was flipped up in an elastic band half up and half down, and need I mention that I had zero make up and had a zit on my right cheek?

To say I felt fat and old is sort of an understatement. And, of course, poor DH had no idea of the arrow he had zigged at my heart with his innocent question.

Standing there with the freezer door open, his comments in the air like we were in a cartoon, I felt the fog lift a little. We are getting ready to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary, and since I work at home 4 days a week and I usually leave after him on the days I do work, this is how this man, my husband, normally sees me on a day-t0-day basis! I look like crap! I feel like crap!

After closing the door and calmly replying to him that I was seriously thinking about WW but hadn't made up my mind yet, I resolved that no matter how fat and how 40 I was, I was not going to look like this again in front of him. He deserved better...and even more...so do I. Just because I don't want to buy more "fat" clothes does not mean I have to look like a homeless person....in my home!

And, back to Geneen Roth, this is something she pretty much says (among many other things), that we need to feel good about ourselves no matter what our size. Now, I'm not saying that I plan to dress up in an evening gown to go grocery shopping, though I'm sure Mr. Sushi-Guy would give me a few extra pieces of my favorite crab roll if I did, but I can still look more "put together," and thus maybe feel more together in general.

Why Librarians Are Fat

After loading up my freezer with Weight Watcher frozen dinners, recently on sale for 50% off, my husband gingerly asked me, "So, what's the deal? Are you back on Weight Watchers?" (Did I noticed a hopeful tone to his voice?)

This brought out the little black book and my writing down what I eat again, and I've been so good for the past few days. Then I arrive at my CLJ today to find the following: 3 small candy bars on my desk; 3 half-eaten bags of chips and leftover cake in the breakroom; and two bags of donut holes in circulation. What the *ell?!!

Why is it that everyone at work seems to want to sabotage your diet? Sunday when I worked, it was a clerk's birthday. This brought out the birthday cake and pizza. Monday a coworker made yet another cake and brought it in. She didn't want her family to eat it because they all need to lose a few pounds. Of course, she's a stick (she smokes) and so decides to bring it in to work to protect her children from gaining more weight.

Why do people feel a need to do this? Is it because work sucks so we use food as a way to get through the day?

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Middle Age? Moi?

Today I was working at my crappy library job (from now on referred to as CLJ), and the other librarian working in reference with me started telling me a story.

R. just moved to the area recently from Hawaii and was proceeding to tell me how rude she thought people were around here. (This, BTW, does not include the rude members of the reference staff at this particular CLJ, which poor thing has also been shocked to discover after only working here a month.)

Of course, typical true Floridian that I am, I tried to blame most of the bad behavior on Yankees who are transplants down here and don't know any better. Everything is better up in New York or Wherever, etc. etc. And they enjoy telling us poor, stupid Floridians this at any possible occasion.

So, R. continues to illustrate her point and begins with, "This lady, she was, you know, middle aged, around 40..."

I stopped her, "40! Middle aged!?"

"Yes," R. replied.

Then I went onto explain to this not even 30-something child that 40 is not middle age. That middle age doesn't even start until...er...50....er...no...55...yes...at least 55 before it even starts!

She looks at me like "oh, crap, she's just as crazy as my insane supervisor!" and then I explain to her that I'm 43. She tells me she thought I was in my 30s, apologizes, and continues.

But, I'm still a little rattled. I mean, really. People live into their 100s today, so no way is 40 middle age!

Threw the Internet

Ahh...sometimes you just have to laugh when it comes to teaching; otherwise, you'd (meaning me) go crazy.

Yesterday, I had to work all day at my crappy library job. When I got home, I had a mailbox full of papers to grade for one of the on-line classes I'm teaching. I tried to get through the essays that were drafts or outlines first because I was just too tired to do any real grading. When I opened up one email from a student who has been late on every single assignment this semester (his email was marked urgent!), I read something to the affect of, "Dr. P. Please read my attached outline and draft as soon as possible so that I'm not late with the final essay."

Ah, okay, so if I don't read this right now, then this poor guy is going to be late, and it is going to be all my fault!

I stopped, took a sip of my wine, and realized it was 8:30 (I was at work from 9-6) and time for me to stop working.

So, this morning I feel more pity for this student and decide to look at his paper right away. A quick glance at the outline shows that his thesis sentence is a fragment. I close the document. Why even look? He's already gone to the draft.

I open up the draft and start to read: comma splice...mark it....missing comma after intro clause...mark it... and then I get to a sentence (again, I'm paraphrasing here), "Threw the internet I have learned a lot, even more than when I watch television or go to school."

Hey, he did spell "a lot" correctly!

Back to More Exercising

No big surprise, I still find I continue to have trouble writing down my calorie intake. I just don't like to do it, period, the end, don't like!!!

S0, I'm back to trying to exercise more, preferably 2 times a day when possible. Right now, that means, if I'm lucky, 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. Hopefully, I can ramp this up as time goes on. I was doing really well with this strategy for awhile, at least as far as doing it regularly if not actually having the lbs melt off of my body, and then I got sick, and it's as usual back to square one.

Oh, and I'm wondering...Is housework...as in cleaning...considered exercise? I'm thinking it does. I cleaned up my bead corner the other day, and I was exhausted. Then there's lugging around my 500lb. vacuum cleaner. Weight lifting, maybe?

I'll have to think about that some more. Right now, it's still back to Walk Away the Pounds with Leslie.

Will We Ever Be Happy?

I mentioned to C. the other day that we should do lunch again with a mutal friend of ours. The three of us haven't gotten together in a while, and this other person, J. had been emailing me about a get together, which I thought was a nice idea. We are all bead buddies, and it's nice to hang with those in the bead-know sometimes.

When I told C. this, she said, yes, but we need to do something other than eat. She was losing her 10lbs now, doing well, and just can't bring herself to go out to eat, even salad bars are off limits. Eventually, she suggested we bring lunch to her house, whatever we wanted to eat at least, while she at her own food, which from what I gather often consists of an entire bag of frozen broccoli, no butter of course.

Then she went on to tell me about how she still wants to get down to 125 lbs. Right now, she's on the edge of getting back down to the 130s, which means her size 6s again, which to me means she looks great. I started to hear the same wacko comments of hers, and I know once she gets down to the 130s, she's going to start in with the "I want to be a size 4" thing again.

I tried to reason with her. At size 6, even at her 5'2" frame, she looked fabulous, and hey, it wasn't easy to mantain, as she so well knows now. So, what gives? Will she, will any of us, ever manage to be happy, even when we finally meet our goals? Is it enough?

Needles are NBD

Well, I have to take it all back. My husband is not a needle wimp. In fact, he has really stepped up and been the first of both of us to give my kitty his shot solo. I'm going to attempt it on my own tonight. Kitty has been so good. He's getting eye goop put in his eyes for an infection along with liquid antibiotics 2xs a day, and now shots 2xs a day...such a trooper.

But, the needles are really tiny. I honestly don't think he feels a thing. The hardest part - and this is where he takes after moi - is the not eating for 12 hours. He can only have one meal ever 12 hours, so that means nothing in between. The vet said I could maybe give him a kibble or two to just fake him out, but if we have issues with the insulin not working, then I'll even have to cut that out.

But, otherwise, the shot issue has not been that big of a deal.

But Will You Charge Me $10?

So, as suspected, C. has started to lose that 10 lbs. she gained, and with the weight loss comes her usual opinions of Weight Watchers. I knew it would come at some point. It just took her a half a pound before she started in on me about how WW is all set up to take your money, that they really have no intention of helping anyone permanently lose weight because if they did so they wouldn't have suckers like me going back time after time to get the weight back off.

Of course, I protested a little: "But, the weigh-ins make me more accountable."

"You want to get weighed in every week? Come to my house and I'll make you stand on my scale!"

"But, will you charge me $10?"

Diabetes in the Family

Like myself, one of my cats (I've got 3 now) has always fought the battle of the bulge. Over the past few years, though, he has made a lot of progress and slimmed down. I put him on Science Diet r/d and was very careful about measuring out his daily dose of food. In fact, all three of my cats have to eat different food, and two of the three have had weight issues, so I have ended up measuring out and putting each cat's food in a jar with her/his name on it every day. They eat what's in the jar, and that's it, except for my one skinny cat who has discovered the benefits of barfing after every meal. I've got food up on a file cabinet for him b/c he's the only one skinny enough to jump up that high.

Unfortunately, my efforts may have not been enough for one of my cats who was just diagnosed with diabetes. Today my husband and I will meet with the vet and learn how to start giving him twice daily injections of insulin. I've done some reading up on it, and I'm pretty prepared for what we will have to do, but I'm afraid my husband is still in La La Land.

We have to feed and give his shots every 12 hours. And that means on the dot, not 12 1/2 hours or 10 hours, but 12. Period. My husband, M., is under the impressions that as long as it's done twice a day we'll be fine. He has this image of us doing it togther, him holding the cat me poking him with the needle. Of course, this is not a realistic picture because due to our work and life demands, mainly work actually, there's no way we will both be around at the same time in 12 hours incriments every single day.

This means we both will need to learn to give the shots solo. I've hinted at this, but I thought it best to just let the doctor drill it into his brain. While I'm not thrilled about giving my cat shots, I've had a lot of experience with older animals and have had to do all kinds of scray stuff to keep them comfortable in their later years. But, I've usually managed to keep M. out of it as much as possible b/c, well, he's a whimp when it comes to this kind of thing. So, I'm really more concerned about dealing with his freaking out (which I expect to happen today) than I am about giving my poor cat shots.

Wa, Wa, Wa

After my pity party earlier, I decided to listen to my horoscope and become "creative" today. First I caught up on all my blogging work and got my newsletter done for my About.com site. Then, I spent some time on my next jewelry book proposal and I'm already on page 8! So there!

I also emailed someone I know who knows someone that might be interested in my book, and if I keep this up, I might actually get this baby to them in a few weeks. Of course, there's some jewelry to make, but some of it I already have at this stage. So things are looking up. I'm not going to let one publisher get to me. Hello! I've got 5 books published arleady, sucka! (Rocky theme song plays in the background...)

A Week of Rejection

My horoscope said I would be extra creative today, but instead I feel extra dissapointed. It's been a week of rejections for me. First, I found out that a book deal I thought I might get was given to another writer. Why? I'm not sure, and it's not really one of those things you can ask. I'm trying not to take it personally, but it's hard when you have this big long discussion with an editor one day about it only to hear a few months later that another writer got the project.

Following this, I got the rejection letter for a teaching job I interviewed for. Granted, it was kind of a relief because I was getting cold feet about taking it and was wondering how I was going to gracefully decline if I should get it, but still, it's another rejection.

These are the sort of things that can really play your with head and bring in all kinds of self-doubts; those chattering monkeys start to get really loud.

Another Day

I had lunch yesterday with C., chowed at the Ruby Tuesday salad bar. She is totally freaking because since December she's gained 10 lbs. Of course, she has also traveled a lot, mainly due to her son's wedding, ending up making multiple trips to meet relatives and then finally spending a week in the Bahamas for the wedding. I, of course, felt badly for her, but I also tried to remind her of how far she's come. Yes, she may be up to a size 8 now, but that's a far cry from the size 28 she was wearing 6+ years ago.

As we munched on salad, I confessed to her that I was seriously considering returning to Weight Watchers. Yes, it would be a short term solution, but I was willing to live with that if it meant I could get my weight off in four or so months. Normally, she would have tried to talk me out of it and tell me that I could do it myself, but in her present situation, she sort of shrugged her shoulders. Still just talking with her helped, and I realized I need to give it one more effort before I start paying a company to stand on its scale every week. Maybe I will end up returning because accountability is a powerful tool when dieting, but it's not like I don't know how to do this. So, here's to a new day. I'm going to give myself about a month. If I don't manage to lose something by the end of April, then it's back to WW.