Category / SCALES & MIRRORS

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (part 7) ©

I wanted to move mountains not become one. Gluttony is the only sin you can’t hide. It’s right out there, staring everybody in the face. A sin isn’t just an offense against someone else or something else, it’s every bit as much a sin against one’s self. If you can’t control your gluttony, then you’re a danger to yourself. Period. That doesn’t mean that fat people strike out against themselves instead of others. Aggression knows no fat boundaries as we saw in Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister to Israel now deceased. Once regarded by me as the most violent man on the face of the earth – to others and himself – which means he was a danger to everybody. Out of control, eating a lamb a day, killing ten Palestinians a day, blowing up buildings, bombing schools, hospitals, libraries, bulldozing Palestinian homes to make way for Jewish colonies, taking people’s ability to survive and thrive away from them, uprooting their crops, bombing their police stations, ambulances. I could go on and on, but I won’t. It’s time to diet. I thought Ariel Sharon should lead those who aren’t starving in the world in losing weight. Perhaps if he had shifted his focus from destruction to discipline he would have found the peace he kept claiming he sought. Unfortunately he succumbed to his life style of excess and recklessness. Let him not be the example you seek to emulate in achieving your goals. No human is immune to reckless living.

Exercise isn’t going to make you lose weight unless you obsess on it, making it a second career – or full-time hobby. Toning, however, takes little time and effort, produces almost immediate results and makes you lose inches, making you look slimmer than you are, while you go about losing the excess fat baggage you carry around with you. You know it’s always there. Even in your sleep, every single second of your life your fat stays steady, like a friend you take with you as a companion wherever you go, whatever you do it’s there for you. You’ll feel a little vulnerable as you begin to shed that friend. You’ll wonder why you don’t feel more confident now that the fat is almost gone. You miss that power feeling the fat gave you. A crutch? It didn’t feel like a crutch. What then? A support. A massive support. A barrier – don’t mess with me. You can’t get too close, my troops surround me protecting me giving me the strength and courage and confidence to do what I really want to do. Lose that and who wouldn’t feel vulnerable.

You’ll get those power feelings back as you sculpt your body as you sculpted your life. That’s the real power that no diet can take from you.  Your body is yours. The fat was on loan. You knew you’d have to give it up eventually.  Waiting won’t help. You’ll just feel badly once you get it done that you waited so long. Well, maybe you needed to, but need is a loaded word. Ariel Sharon killed himself with his life style. You need to want to survive for you and only you. Okay use somebody else to get you started, then shift the focus back to you. You can bend your own rules. Really. You made them, now make an adjustment. If somebody holds you to something just because you said it, don’t let them prevent you from changing your mind. That prevention gives them too much power over you. That they want that power over you should sound off at least one of your alarms. You do have alarms you know. Every animal does.

You don’t need to go to a spa or to set aside a big block of time to tone. In fact, you don’t even have to change clothes. Business suit, dress, it doesn’t matter. Toning isn’t going to make you sweat a lot.

Cardiovascular exercise, an autonomic response common to all animals in this kingdom we share, inherent in who we all are, strengthens the networks of vessels that deliver oxygen and nutrients via blood to all your tissues, most importantly the brain.

I designed a new, simple toning exercise. I get instant results in how I feel and look. I work from the middle out. I can’t do sit ups because of my injuries, so I take two pound weights (and I’ll progress to five maybe ten pounds), one in each hand hanging down in front of me, while standing, and bend slowly forward to the floor, stretching, then straighten back up. I do short rapid repetitions at all levels along the route from the floor to over my head with knees slightly bent, then with knees straightened but not locked – until my muscles burn and a little beyond, so that when I stop I can feel the energy release from those areas. That one exercise, that corresponds to the area of focus called the lifeline in yoga, strengthens all my body muscles, the entire front of me from head to toes and the entire back of me from head to toes and the entire sides of me. I then use a long pole to do stretching in all positions: front, back, side to side overhead. Then twist with the shoulders and whatever else I think to do with it: curls, behind back raising it toward shoulders to strengthen between blades and do it over and over again and instantly I convert this old jalopy of a body into a race car on cruise control – at least in my mind, and the mind is where it’s all happening.

Every day I do this. No pain involved, and I’m walking on air. Don’t anybody burst my bubble now and explain what’s happening as some dumb theory of ‘any exercise will do that’. Not for me it won’t. I’ve tried all the any’s and this does it. I can do it fully clothed, at home, in the office, while watching T.V. No stress, no strain,  no sweat, no pain. And what I like about it is it’s all done standing up without access to a gym. And no exercise hangover. Wow. It’s something I enjoy doing. Whenever I think of doing it I have yet to feel dread. That’s warrior-style. To dread keeping toned is counterproductive to the warrior mindset. You don’t need to hate to do something in order for it to be effective for you. It’s like eating animal-free. Why suffer through tastebud punishment, when you can eat like royalty should be eating at half the cost? In addition to the survival advantage for those who prepare their own meals: no one can poison you, plus the strategies used to either follow instructions accurately or improvise, condition the brain for rapid action and reaction. The tastier the better. When you break from battle, a few o-o-hs and ah-h-hs and m-m-ms at meal time go along way toward soothing frayed nerves.

Some may inquire, why do we have to do battle, why can’t we live peacefully? Warriors love peace. That’s what a true warrior pursues – yet through non-violent means. Even if the entire world were at peace, we still would be battling the effects of the elements, disease, overpopulation, the need for food, medicine, clothing, shelter, schooling and jobs for all beings. And since disagreements will still arise in progressive democracies (not to be confused with dictator democracies that rule from a single mind with a veto), we need to prepare to do battle. Battle need not equate with violence unless you want it to. Why anyone would want it to and subsequently pursue that course of action is a mutation that is overdo for extinction. Extinction of a behavioral pattern can be induced by non-violent means.

You might think if you lose weight or exercise at someone else’s suggestion that they’ll take the credit when you become fit and trim. Not to worry. Nobody can do it for you. If someone could, they’d be the most popular and richest person on the planet. Similarly, nobody can motivate you, but you. All anyone can do is tell you what works for them and then you decide what works for you.

to be continued…

 

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by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (part 6) ©

Being skinny isn’t the answer.

Young girls who want to stay skinny aren’t prepared for womanhood. They want to keep their prepubescent figures, not ready to accept the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood. Guys who require that of women, want children for girlfriends and spouses, not adults. Forcing women to stay children is common to many cultures where men dominate. It’s a whole lot easier to dominate a child than an adult, so they keep their adult women children, by demanding they barely eat in order to keep the fat that goes along with womanhood off the bones they think they own.

For those who keep forgetting that they ate – those suffering from a short-term memory problem – put yourself on a schedule, once, twice or thrice a day, like you would take prescribed medicine. When a doctor prescribes you medicine, they don’t give you carte blanche to take it whenever and however you want, do they? If so, then you won’t get well. So what makes you think that the fuel you place in your body – medicine is what it is – is any different? If you don’t think that food can make you well or lack of it ill, try starving yourself and see how long you live without it.

Unless you’re preparing for a dry spell, whereby you need that fat to survive, thus the ‘trying to be your own camel’ trick, shed it and feel the weight of the burden you thought was psychological lift. It’s the only way to go. There are no benefits to being fat. Name me one valid one. No. Fat people freeze to death as quickly as trim people. In fact, if I’m going to freeze to death, I’d rather it be quickly. Why prolong the agony? If you’re fat and swimming in the arctic, you’re not only fat, you’re crazy fat.

You control the brakes.

There’s a wall? It just goes up – as you promise never to eat again, or only one meal or two or three. You defy yourself by marching to the tune of that guy or gal in your stomach screaming at you. You defy yourself, but not anybody else. I’ll show them. I’ll eat whatever and whenever I want. You know what? People only care about your fat when you’re fat. It’s like quitting smoking. Everybody cares if you smoke, but when you don’t they never mention it.

Nobody cares. So, praise yourself for your personal accomplishments. They’re personal. People don’t praise you for accomplishing something personal and keep at it. You’re the one who needs to keep at it. When you do something for the group or society, then maybe expect some praise, but if you don’t get it, once again, be your own best fan. That’s it. You have one fan that’s you.

Be your own best fan. Then keep your mouth shut about it. Nobody wants to know how much you love or admire yourself. Learn to rely on yourself for your own gratification, not a dead animal or an uprooted plant spun into some kind of fantasy object that resembles nothing that actually grows.

Sugar-free drinks don’t help you stay trim, in fact, they might have the opposite effect by tricking your brain into thinking you’re actually drinking sugar. It tastes like sugar, feels like sugar, smells like sugar, then it must be sugar.

Counting. People with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, mainly those who dominate the writing and publishing industries, count everything that can be counted and when they run out of things to count, they invent something to count. A half of this, a half of that, how many halves in…well you get the picture. My landlord called in response to a letter I wrote him and was concerned that I mentioned a word associated with mold more than once – twice exactly. Black. He should have been getting the meaning of the letter instead of counting and fixating on how many times I mentioned that the mold in my apartment is colored black.

I can’t do that. My brain rebels. I know what’s fat and what’s not. And if you’re fat, so do you. Just look at yourself and ask what you ate to get that way? Got a memory problem? I woke up one morning thinking I weighed 154 and the scale read 184. Two months later I weighed 195. My husband’s before picture disappointingly looked like his after picture after two months of eating whatever we wanted – on vacation – at home – isn’t always a good thing, when your entertainment becomes your daily meals. Let’s relax; let’s eat. Let’s recreate; let’s eat. Let’s go on vacation; let’s eat. Those poor among us who don’t have funds to do all the things that cost money, eat for recreation. It’s a cheap party. Stay home, put on a video and stoke up the barbecue. Buy at the grocery store – discount store – and you’ve saved a bundle that ends up on your backside two months later.

I was stunned – even started blaming it on the black mold in our apartment, or maybe somebody spiked my diet Pepsi with fat gaining chemicals. The old ‘blame somebody else’ standby trick. This is a cookbook, by the way. I’m the finest Animal-Free Chef in the world. I don’t replicate recipes, I design them. I’ve been trying to get a book published forever. I kept going back to the drawing board, when it wasn’t the recipes that were the problem; it was that the public wasn’t ready for something so good. Publishers didn’t believe that vegetarian could be exquisite.

Ever think of vegetarian when you think of comfort food? No? Mashed potatoes? Did you forget those? String beans cooked till they turn to mush? Chocolate chip cookies? Most comfort food is vegetarian. Macaroni and cheese? Most people in the world still think that cheese, milk and eggs are plants. The reason we don’t associate comfort food or good tasting food with plants is because of the good job the media does to discourage it – as a favor to the people over at BIG BUSINESS who give kick backs to the folks who promote their products. Ever see a skinny Disc Jockey? I don’t know why I just capitalized DJ. I’ve never seen one period, but I hear them talking a lot about trying to lose weight and how bi-i-g-g-g they were before they tried this herbal substance called ‘stomach bloater’. Just what a fat person needs, something to stretch their already over-stretched stomach further.

Nobody wants bloat as a solution to anything.

Some people get fat fast, some slow, some were overfed from birth and never broke through that feeding barrier.

It’s not always a slow road to body transformation, whether losing or gaining. One size or process does not fit all or almost all. Sure food is a factor. Amount is a factor, since our stomach tanks can only hold so much. Types of foods are factors, but there’s shaky ground surrounding food types. Timing may be a factor, though it’s probably a factor for some not almost all.

Have you ever lost weight and kept it off by something someone said to you or by something you read that spoke to you?

to be continued…

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales and Mirrors (Part 5) ©

Two tablespoons to trim: oil that is. No more than that in any given recipe. Recipe, not serving. Why any? Because I know you won’t stick to none. I won’t either. And at times I’ll go beyond my own rule. Some oil/fat is probably good for you. It’s not because of all the reasons you’ve already heard: this oil does this and another oil does that and if you take all that’s recommended of all the oils and plans to incorporate them into your diet, you’ll get all the essential nutrients you need that are covered by fat.

The other result however is that you will become three persons in one.

Isn’t that what governmental forces already have in place as their plans for you, for the purpose of keeping everybody in business and everybody employed, that you essentially have to get fat to support their economic agenda? The pharmaceutical industry, the multitudinous fields of medicine are already working with that model. They’re even making bigger seats for you on buses and planes and trains, and they’re making it against the law to body-shame you for being so fat, because they know it’s not your fault; it’s their plan.

Your body isn’t designed to eat one of every fruit, vegetable, six servings of breads and cereals, so many of dairy, eggs and flesh, beans, nuts, legumes, other grains, oils, fats every single day. Those standards are all recommended by the people in power who wash each others backs in order to stay in business – to stay wealthy. They contribute to political campaigns expecting leaders elected through their money to make policy and laws to keep the public wanting their products, to prevent them from finding out the truth about their products and when per chance they do, then there are laws in place to prevent legal recourse.

A daily recommendation is the prize that every major industry covets.

Entire industries have been built around your body-type and your eating habits, and the people who run these industries are not going to give up those profits by tearing down those industries without a fight to keep you locked inside of your body-type.

So, just in case you all of a sudden break out of their mold and get a conscience regarding the harm your fat is doing to the planet, and decide to shed those pounds, my only hope is that through the suffering you experienced building that fat storage tank of a body, that you learned some coping skills, because you’re going to need them in the tough times ahead dealing with the industries that claimed to love you until you woke up to the reality of your freedom rights instead of waking up again as the lining to their purses. You’re not a piece of fabric.

They will attempt to destroy you. Better dead and fat (yeah, teach everybody else with similar musings by making you an example) than reformed and in control of your own body thus a threat to their economic viability.

It’s a war you’ve unwittingly put yourself into. Best of the world to you on your journey to reclaim your body – as yours. You’re not an industry.

Grazing. If you want to look like a cow then eat like one – all day long. This joke about grazing keeping weight off is somebody’s plan that didn’t get tested before publication. Once you prime the pump it’s over – unless you discipline yourself. Remember, “discipline is the key to all success” says word warrior davies-tight.

You need snacks only when you graze, precisely because you’ve primed your pump to eat every hour or two. Set a schedule: three, two or one time(s) a day. Yes, people can remain perfectly healthy on one meal a day. Other animals do it. How many times a day do you feed your dog? What’s so wrong with the feeling of hunger – as long as you know eventually you’ll eat? Hunger pangs are not signs of impending doom telling you to eat now. Hunger pangs serve another purpose.

Hunger pangs are a physical sign that your internal body is being physically cleaned, swept, vacuumed, washed, rinsed, flushed – just what your body is supposed to do after it assimilates what it needs from the food you ingested. It cleans itself in preparation for the next ingestion. Let it happen. Ingesting more food blocks the process.

Hunger pangs do not tell you that you’re starving, so stop telling yourself you are. No wonder your nerve impulses went awry – you keep telling yourself you’re starving when you’re not. If somebody really is starving, they’re not telling themselves they are. And when they finally eat, they can’t eat a horse; they’re lucky if they can down a couple bites of wet bread. People starving have tiny stomachs that hurt when anything is placed in them.

You on the other hand have a stretched to over-capacity stomach, that you oddly think needs filling ten times or more per day, then you complain when you can’t move from the discomfort. Twenty minutes later you’re starving again. Starving what or whom may I ask? You sound like you’ve got a person in your stomach calling out orders. Next time that happens, yell back, “Who do you think is paying for all this food?”. Tell yourself the same thing you tell your child, “wait till super time”, or “you just ate”, or “later”.

The world regards Americans as wimps. And they’re pretty much right-on. A fat society reflects an over-indulgent, lazy society. Sitting ducks. Fat ducks. Not a good image. Now don’t tell me how much you work. Get trim, compare, then tell me. Better yet, tell yourself. I don’t need to know; I already know.

You need to replace your “O” rings to fix those leaky fatcets. Exercise your lips, so you can keep your mouth shut. Then retrain your arms to do something other than reach for food. Break those patterns by putting up road blocks to those nerve impulses. Create new neural pathways that avoid food. Refuel when needed, using only the highest quality. When you put gas, oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, steering wheel fluid in your car, do you fill beyond capacity? Of course not. You fill to the level designed for optimal performance.

Now if you don’t care about optimal performance why are you wanting to lose weight?

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (part 4) ©

Use a mirror and a scale. Those are your two best friends when losing weight and getting fit. Looking at your face isn’t enough. Like many people, I don’t gain a lot of weight in my face, so according to my face I’m thin.

The one thing everybody fears more than death is losing their memory, cognitive abilities or brain function, yet nobody thinks to take better care of their brains. Who focuses on that, except those who sell crossword puzzle books, promising you cognitive cures if you buy their books and do their puzzles?

When’s the last time you thought about your brain health? Think? That’s all you need to do to keep your brain healthy? Use it or lose it? Well, I think I’ll just start thinking my spinal cord injury, dystonia and degenerative spine disease away with crossword puzzles. Be realistic, crossword puzzles aren’t going to cure a damaged brain any more than they can cure a damaged spinal cord. The problem isn’t with the mind; it’s a physical problem, a brain problem.

You can’t trust doctors to tell you the truth; they don’t know the truth. They have the same worries everybody else has. But even if they did know how to stop cognitive decline, they’d still have to play the greasy palm game with big business, and they know who butters their bread. Margarine of course, for them, but they’ll tell you it doesn’t matter much – for you. In fact, they won’t even bring up diet. They’d rather keep you coming back for pills, tethered to them and to their ‘bottom line’ for your entire life.

Enslaved is the better word. Not many like that word though. It hits too close to reality. It’s sort of like the Bush’s creating an environmentally progressive homestead, then telling everybody else to stay in the coal mines. Coal mines are on the way ‘out’ by the way – but I’m shifting to a different book – literally. I’m writing five books, maybe six, simultaneously and I’ve given myself six months to do it, so every now and then I’ll lose track of what book I’m in or get a thought that needs to go in another book, but I won’t be able to get to another program in time, so please excuse the mix up when it occurs.

I’m leaving the mix up in however, because it’s real and I know you need real. You’ve been lied to so often and manipulated by people seeking to use you for their benefit, that I want you to know I won’t do that. Anyway, as a small digression, I’m writing a plan for the world. I hope it’s this one. Government forces have disrupted my life for so long that I reached a point where I simply had to switch them off and write, while being disrupted, because I couldn’t get them to stop.

I’ve been given, or was born with, a gift that I feel the need to share. This book that we’re in now: Scales and Mirrors, is the number one, most important of the five, or maybe six, because it deals with the individual and the God that I communicate with (outside of any religion) indicates that the well-being of the individual comes first. Happy, healthy, strong individuals make happy, healthy, strong groups.

Further, when you feel good about yourself, your interactions with others improves, thus facilitates instead of blocks effective communication and cooperation. Happy people simply want to work together toward positive not sinister goals. Many may disagree with that philosophy, but chances are they’re in the minority of privileged individuals who want to control everybody else.

So back to Scales and Mirrors.

You need to use your own common sense. If it’s bad for any part of your body, it’s worse for your brain.

People fear mental illness more than the plague. Perhaps because of the stigma associated with it, perpetuated by the very professions that treat it, people shy away from all references to the brain. It’s just too scary to think about. The brain is so powerful, that, well…you’re reluctant to approach it.

What?! too afraid to approach your own brain, like hands off? No wonder you’re out of control. You let everybody else, except you, manipulate your thoughts. All the industries trying to get into your pockets telling you how much, when, where, what to eat, while your brain battles the brainwashers to stay in charge. Who are you going to let control your life, your actions, your brain? You or somebody after your money? I’ll take my brain by a long shot.

Still I got fat – because I wasn’t paying full attention to my body and my real needs. Naively I thought I should be able to eat what I wanted to eat as long as I was physically active, or that I should be able to eat what everybody else was eating. I got waylaid. Sidetracked. Got in the habit of staying fit by taking care of a large house that turned into a small apartment over night. Then I got stressed out. Then I started eating like those around me. Then I did the procrastination trick, then scale avoidance, and lastly, developed a mirror aversion. Those scales are never right anyway. And the mirrors: one makes me look fat and the other makes me look thin.

Then I got stuck on the thin image I always had of myself. Growing up thin, I simply kept that picture of myself in my mind – not because I was afraid to lose it, but because I grew accustomed to it. I wear the same size underpants whether I weigh 125 pounds or 195 pounds. Go figure.

A mirror helps, but not when somebody else makes the suggestion. You feel badly enough without some so-called friend pointing it out to you. I guess you have to be ready. I see in my mind’s eye a picture of a person laying in bed who is as big as the bed and wonder why it took so long for that person to get ready? So I’m approaching it from a different angle.

I’ve always regarded my brain as the most vital organ in my body. Now it’s past time to treat it as such. I love you brain. I’m going to take such good care of you…What? My body is a reflection of my brain health? Oops. I’d better get straight to it. I want a healthy brain. One that listens when I speak and talks back when I inquire. I want interaction between me and it. I want all those nerve impulses going to the right places unencumbered by the results of unhealthy habits. I want a sleek, smooth, quick fighting machine – not a bunch of chaotic never quite there mixed up signals.

to be continued…

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (Part 3) ©

So you exercised yesterday and felt good afterwards. Yet today you don’t feel like it. Why, because it felt good? I thought people who overeat are pleasure seekers? Then why deny yourself the pleasure of exercise? Oh boy, here comes the whining again. Just do it. Regularly. Not once every two months. Every day. Not three times a week. Every darned day.

I owned a home once. When I moved into an apartment and quit smoking I gained thirty pounds. All that going up and down stairs all day, yard work, cleaning a big house was exercise and when I no longer had to do it, I failed to replace it with something that needed to be structured and planned. The apartment was simply too small to give me a natural workout. That doesn’t mean I had to make exercising a career, but I needed to spend some time everyday doing it. If I didn’t, the weight might still come off as I drop my intake even further, but the goal was to lose weight, firm up, get strong – while staying healthy. If I drop my intake too much I won’t stay healthy.

Stop the food obsession. I used to think there were two types of people, because that’s what the media told me – those who live to eat and those who eat to live. In my view, eating to live didn’t necessarily mean eating healthy, since many people who didn’t eat much, didn’t eat for health reasons either. Their diet often consisted of a small variety of foods. Conversely, those who live to eat, often consume high quality foods, in many categories; it’s just that they eat almost all the time and don’t pay so much attention to salt, sugar and fat content.

Now that I’ve stepped back from the brain washing big business does to keep you fat, and from the big government influence that helps big business keep you fat, I realize that there’s a third category that nobody told you about. It’s called the professional person’s category: those who eat for both pleasure and health, which means savoring smaller, less frequent quantities of a variety of exquisite tasting foods that are also prepared and combined in healthier ways.

When teamed with disciplined exercise regimes, staying trim, healthy and happy, enjoying all the fruits of life without the accompanying fat baggage, thus the obsession, you can have your slice of cake and eat it too; you just can’t have the whole cake at once.

If somebody says you can’t have something, you want it all the more. Like potato chips. “Bet you can’t eat just one”. Bet I can eat none and put you out business for making me fat with your slogan.

If you’re fat, chances are you’re depressed. Lose the fat, lose the depression. Depression is all about not being in control. Being fit is all about control over one’s self. Why do we admire trim, fit people? Because they demonstrate self-control. A well-disciplined person looks disciplined. However, don’t mistake having discipline over the way one looks and feels with worthiness as an individual. Being trim and fit does not a good person make. Your character is not reflected in your fat or level of fitness. How you feel about yourself is. Character isn’t only determined by how you treat others, equally important is how you treat yourself.

If somebody weighs three hundred pounds and says they like being that way, they’re lying. Nobody likes their movements restricted and that’s just what a lot of fat or muscle does, it restricts your ability to move unencumbered. Constantly obsessing over being too fat, whether you are or not, becomes destructive unless you possess the will to change your status.

Become a dog trainer. Treat yourself like the animal you are. You measure the food you give to your dog or cat. You measure how much body mass you have at the beginning of every day by weighing yourself. So, measure your food, then ration it. Your stomach is no bigger that an adult fist. Why try to force an amount the size of a basketball into a container the size of a softball? If you eat so much that it hurts, then when you stop hurting you regard that as a signal to eat again, you’re never going to feel real hunger again, because you raised the bar on what hunger means – it means you stopped hurting. So why would you want to put more food into your stomach knowing that it will hurt again? When your stomach stops hurting, it doesn’t mean you’re hungry. Hunger pangs are different from the hurt of an overstuffed stomach. You know that. Get to know it again.

While the world economy spins out of control, and it will since everybody’s been cooking their books, getting rich and making all of us fat, start thinking about saving money in the food department. How much do you spend on food? Oh, you think if you go on a diet, it’s going to cost you? Not when you add up what you spend at the grocery stores, pizza, sub and burger shops, restaurants, vending machines, coffee shops and on and on. Face it. Your fat cost a lot of money. Lose the fat and save some money.

If you’re losing weight, you don’t want to put anything in your stomach that you can’t identify. It isn’t your duty to keep restaurants and slaughter industries in business. Ever notice how these CEO’s don’t get fat? They’re feeding you their garbage, while they get rich off of what you eat, while they stay trim. Don’t participate. You owe no one. You’re the consumer.

They’ll give you Mad Cow Disease, salmonella, ecoli, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a host of other life-threatening illnesses without batting an eye, just so long as you keep buying their product. They have a pig in a holding pen with your name on it if you can afford the two hundred thousand dollars for the transplant. What happens when the blood vessels in your brain get clogged? Has anybody promised you a brain transplant? I don’t think so.

All these CEO’s and researchers tell you to ‘use it’ or ‘lose it’. They say nothing about the effects of being obese or eating a bad diet on the brain. You didn’t think that fat deposits occur everywhere else in the body except the brain, did you? Who told you that? And you believed them? Heart health, because we can get rich doing transplants, but no brain health, because we can’t do a brain transplant.

I don’t care how many crossword puzzles you do, they aren’t going to clean the blood vessels in your brain. Oh, you didn’t think you had to do that? What, somehow the brain cleans itself? Yeah, right. Your brain is your most vital organ. You can cut the blood supply to the heart and it can live to pump another day. Cut the oxygen supply to your brain for more than one minute, and you’re as good as brain-dead. One minute. If you’re fat, your brain is clogged. No wonder you can’t think about anything but food. Your brain is food. Your brain is so saturated with fat, the signals are all mixed up. You’ve got a multitude of shorts in your circuit board.

A brain cleaning is what you need. If you clean your brain, you won’t have to worry so much about your heart. Shift the focus. Get into brain gear. That’s where it’s all happening. Everything happens in the brain. Tell that brain you want more food and hear that brain scream: Stop. Stop. You’re killing me with all that fat. I can’t operate like this. I need air. Can’t get through. I’m clogged up. Help. Help. Alert. Alert. SOS. SOS. Can’t you read? Do you copy? Do you copy? Over and what? No. No. Don’t do that. Don’t go. Let’s talk. I’m drowning. If I drown you drown. Wake up. Alarm. Alarm. Going down. What? No. No. Not, don’t give a darn. I care. I care. We’re going places. You and me. Can’t you see? Just put the fork down. Please. Please. Put the spoon down and the knife. Stop eating. I’m on overload trying to process everything you keep shoving at me.

I’m burning out. Stop the fat chain. Train. I don’t care what you call it. Just stop doing it. I want a better life. For me and you. We can do magic together. Save lots of money too. Go, go, go. What? Don’t say you can’t. I can’t do this all by myself. What do you think, I’m your slave? I’ll shut down. I’ll shut down. I don’t want to, but if you make me, we both die. You know that. You didn’t? Well you know it now.

So let’s think this through. Oh, God. No. I can’t think any more. I’m drowning. Just stop eating so I can turn these lights back on. You’re zapping us of all our energy. I had to shut down nearly all the electricity just to accommodate your last pizza. Did you have to eat every single slice? A whole cow? Do you want to die? What? Another piece of pie? No. No. Do you really want a pig heart? A pig brain too? Who’s going to replace your brain? All these little blood vessels are stretched beyond their capacity. Switch. Just pull that one switch. Tell me it’s okay and you’ll alter your treatment of me, allowing for a free flow of ideas, making the appropriate connections. One spark ignites another and like a chain reaction all lights go on. Your circuit board lights up like a Christmas tree, making us and all the world happy, because we won’t need a brain transplant, because you caught the disease in time. You shut off the fat flow. Can you do that? Am I getting through?

You don’t give up do you? I like your tenacity. My brain. Wow. What a work horse. Anything you want you get. You want no more fat, you get no more fat. You want more oxygen through exercise, you get that too. Sorry it took so long. You’re right, all the crossword puzzles in the world aren’t going to help a diseased brain. All that fat deadens the electrical impulses, short-circuiting the messages before they’re scheduled to arrive, placing the brain in chaos.

Don’t turn back now.

Don’t worry. Once the switch is on, it stays on. All systems are a go. Ready or not – you’re ON.

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Mirror Mirror On The Wall…

Mirror mirror on the wall are you a friend after all?

Yes my fair lady you appear to have melted a few pounds.

Success feels best when I can see it – no matter what the scales say.

Scales are fickle and yes mirrors lie. And I still do believe that all my mirrors are fat ones, but who cares when it’s the fat mirror telling a skinny lie? Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas!

Yesterday was my father’s death day. He worked me hard, but the result of a new apartment via the rearrangement of everything in it made me happy and organized. I got a ten-hour continuous work-out.

The first thing the priest said when he eulogized my father was: You will never forget December 5th 1998 and we will never forget Tom Davies. The year of the elephant I mused in my mind, as I knew that my mother when meeting with the priest after Dad died brought with her Dad’s greatest artwork – a wood sculpted elephant, that Mom told the priest Tom would have wanted him to have. The wood he used was the same wood that Savage Arms used for their sporting rifle butts, usually walnut.

Though he was a tool and process engineer at Savage Arms till retirement – a self-taught or more accurately a natural-born engineer – he didn’t hunt, nor did he own a gun. He spent the last years of his life sculpting animals and giving them to people he knew.

Although he didn’t hunt, he did fish since he was a kid and in his later years, let go the fish he caught.

So on this special day, knowing my father was in the house, in addition to the ten-hour move-the-furniture from room to room, I walked the building floors, up and down, then the stairs up and down. All it equalled was .88 miles and 8 floors. Yet my total for the day in miles was 3.1 miles. So in moving-the-furniture I walked 2.22 miles in a small apartment. I also cleaned while I moved – you know, under where everything was – made repairs as need, spackled the tiny nail holes in the walls. I did a little walk with Lilly, did my cords, weights, stretches, balance exercises, isometrics.

When I was done, my father said, go out and get yourself and the old man a beer. He got Beck’s though prefers Stella, but the convenience store stopped selling Stella in the big bottles. So what. Beck’s beer is as good. There’s a key on the bottle. I didn’t notice that before. I got an Old English 24 oz. and enjoyed every gulp and swig. No sippin’ tonight. Down she goes.

All for the tusks of an elephant. They kill the body to take the bone.

Next downed elephant takes it’s master down too. So it is written by the hand of Tom Davies’ daughter on the day after he died.

Happy is with us all.

Thank you.

Thanks-a-million or two or three or more. Always counting the pennies till one day they magically turn into the mirror of the wish.

And yes, I will have a great day as I remind myself as I sit on the edge of the bed in the early morning writing his soul that I already am having a great day.

I think I’ll put my corduroy slacks on. They’ll fit. The mirror told me so.

It’s going to be a cold one – with Canadian Cold Air rushing into Cleveland – but a great one.

I bought a new used coat. Bugaboo. Three in one. I love it. Perfect fit – and warm, for this quick to chill body of mine.

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (part 2) ©

Horrors. I had no idea. Of course I had no idea, I didn’t weigh myself. Sure my clothes were a little snug, a lot snug, but that “I’ll do it tomorrow’ mentality kept creeping in: the old procrastination trick so I can have today what I promise I won’t have tomorrow. THE LAST SUPPER – before the big diet push. Steve and I have done that ad nauseam. We have had so many last suppers that I can’t begin to count how many.

Promises, promises, promises. Now reverse those promises you never kept – every single one of them – and don’t eat today what you think you can take off tomorrow. You’re never right. Here’s a little brain exercise; this is a test. “I already ate” is a good trick every time you think of food, simply say, “I already ate”, which you did, at some point, so you’re not lying to yourself. But so what if you are? Your brain tricks you all the time, so give it back, trick your brain. If nothing else it will let you know how often you think about food or wanting to eat. Every single time you think of food say, “I already ate”. Even if you still eat, say it anyway to develop the habit and train your brain. Your brain is like the Wild West – uncivilized. Tame it, train it. You be its master, not the other way around.

My God, no wonder you’re not productive in your life, your mind is always on your stomach. It doesn’t matter why. Stop trying to psychoanalyze yourself. You lost control for a while, that’s all. It happens to everyone in one form or another. So you lost it for a long time. So what. Now you found it. Stop crying. I know you hate the way you look. Stop right there. One successful day is all you need. And discipline. Don’t whine about all the diets you’ve tried, and nothing works for you. You’re an animal and all animals respond the same way to amounts of food.

You cannot eat a hundred baked potatoes as long as there’s no margarine on them. It isn’t true. Simply not so. Face the facts of it. Feed a dog lots of treats and big meals and the dog gains weight. Feed the dog no treats and measured meals and the dog loses weight. All animals fall into the same category – lose weight the same way. Less makes you lose; more makes you gain.

You keep trying to find a secret formula – count this, count that, don’t count something else. Measure everything, measure nothing, eat lots of this and none of something else, combine certain foods in certain forms in certain ways and bingo – you’re trim and fit just like that. Put it in a jar, sell it and get rich. The solution is right before your eyes: you and the scale. The scale and the mirror; that’s all you need. You’re smart enough to figure out what you need to do based on the view and the reading.

I weighed myself today. Ouch. I tried on three pairs of slacks, before I just went for the stretch pants. Even those were tight. Does that mean I reward myself with food? Aw heck, I’m already fat, one more meal, one more day won’t matter. Here we go with the ‘last supper’ mentality. Yes it does matter – if you really do want to lose all that fat you carry around with you. Unless of course you’re hoarding it. I suppose you could be hoarding fat, holding onto it, because it brings you some kind of satisfaction. I don’t think so. There couldn’t be that many hoarders on the planet. There are a lot of fat people, so you’ve got some company. Before long it may become fashionable to be fat. It’s never fashionable to be sick though. So before that fashion statement becomes a reality, let’s just go with healthy, which means shedding some fat by eating better and moving around more.

Food is a powerful reward. Almost as powerful as money. But walking the earth with power in your stride feels better than both.

If I want to lose more why would I eat more to do it? That’s a contradiction.

‘I have to eat breakfast. I have to eat three lunches. I can’t help myself, I need it.’ You’re whining again. Why do people always look for excuses to stay fat? ‘I’ve always been heavy’. Yeah, because you always ate too much and too much of the wrong foods. ‘I hardly eat anything, and look at me’. Yeah, right. How about those three candy bars you ate last night?

I’m not going to tell you to record what you eat, because it’s too depressing. You already know what you eat, and how much. Let’s not make a career out of losing weight. Making it into a second full-time job is not going to work for you long term. Live your life, weigh yourself, look at yourself in the so-called fat mirror in your home that refuses to see you as thin. EAT LESS – of everything.

Cheating? Treats? Why do it? How is it that when you’re curing gluttony everybody says it’s okay to cheat? It’s not okay to cheat in any other area of life. Because somebody puts something in front of you, then that’s a signal to eat it? Or what? If they tell you to shoot yourself in the foot, you’ll do that too?

You don’t enjoy eating. I know you don’t. Nobody who’s fat does. You’re on a destructive cycle that needs to stop and you’re the only one who can put on the brakes. So everything else in your life is out of control? Well, the good news is that the amount and type of food that you put into your system is under your control only, unless you’re in prison or a nursing home.

If you look at a skinny person eating a bunch of food, they’re probably throwing it up afterwards. You don’t want that either. Besides, you don’t want to be skinny. Skinny isn’t healthy. And so what if an advertisement tempts you, or everybody else eating like gluttons and not gaining weight makes you envious. Those people only eat a lot in front of others. At home they starve themselves. No one can eat and drink like a glutton and stay thin for long. It’s a myth.

to be continued…

 

by Chef Sharon Davies-Tight

Scales And Mirrors (part 1) ©

START YOUR ENGINES

God, my god, puts the needs of the individual not the group first. It only makes sense that the stronger the individual, the stronger the group. In any military, the stronger the soldier, the stronger the entire unit, thus the reason for the rigorous training. When I said a while back in a Word Warrior essay that my assignment was to address the plan for the group and leave the individual to other numerous and equally qualified people, I trust that god, my god, would not only delegate that function, but it was my understanding that it already had. In fact, the needs of the individual are addressed in every self-help book on the market, from A to Z, instructing the individual precisely on how to become a better functioning, happy, productive, contributing individual, so why need me?

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the delegation plagued itself with the insufferable internal, perpetual infighting, back-biting and self-service that produced nothing of lasting value, except perhaps frustration, which is a good place along that path for me to step in and try to make things right. So…for better or worse…since this was not an assignment I anticipated, I’m doing the whole enchilada – animal-free of course! After all, if my god can tell me what’s right for the group, the same should go for the individual – and like it or not that god has now increased my work load to include you. And frankly, now that I’m settled in to do it, I think we’re going to have fun in the process. If nothing else I’ll make you laugh, which should, if exercised with frequency, shake, rattle and roll those cells of yours into a different, and hopefully better alignment and/or configuration designed to suit you and your world.

Lots of us eat out of frustration.

INSTRUCTIONS: WEIGH SELF DAILY, so YOU know where YOU stand. BY IGNORING THE SCALE WE GIVE OURSELVES A FALSE fat meter reading, SINCE OUR EXPECTATIONS REGARDING WEIGHT ARE ALWAYS GREATER THAN THE NUMBERS PROVE. Look at self in full length mirror, nude, daily.VIGILANCE IS KEY. WHEN YOU GO TO MARKET can you guess by looking at the fruits and vegetables HOW MUCH THEY WEIGH? I THINK NOT. SO WEIGH YOURSELF EVERYDAY, NO MATTER IF IT DISCOURAGES YOU. WOULDN’T IT BE BETTER to be discouraged AND KNOW THAT YOU CAN CONTROL HOW MUCH YOU LOSE OR GAIN THAT VERY DAY, rather than being left in the dark, WHILE THE SCALE CLIMBS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL? YOU CAN’T CONTROL SOMETHING you don’t know. SIMPLY SAYING you MUST LOSE WEIGHT IS NOT ENOUGH. DO THE MATH OF IT. FATTEN UP, EAT MORE. SLIM DOWN, EAT LESS. SIMPLE FORMULA. 

YOU CAN’T KNOW WHETHER TO EAT MORE OR LESS UNLESS YOU KNOW YOUR WEIGHT and know exactly how you look. IF YOU’RE FRUSTRATED BY the numbers and the vision staring back at you from the looking-glass, YOU NEED A TARGET and a method to change the numbers and the view. The target is to lose weight and the method: scales and mirrors. YOU DON’T HAVE TO COUNT GRAMS of food. IF YOU HAVE A WEIGHT PROBLEM, YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT’S FATTENING you up – UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN EATING BLIND-FOLDED WITH A CLOSED PIN OVER YOUR NOSE ALL THE WHILE YOU GAINED IT. DON’T ACT DUMB. YOU KNOW HOW YOU GAINED IT. NOW YOU LOSE IT THE SAME WAY. BACK UP. TAKE AWAY THAT WHICH MADE YOU FAT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

GREETINGS!

to be continued…