Scales And Mirrors – in progress

SCALES & MIRRORS

What’s in a shape?
Everything.
Everything is defined by it –
everything explained by it.

Shape is everything. Without it
there’s nothing. As if
nothing is something,
but without shape why bother?
Even a blob has shape – even a blob
is defined as a blob.

A Teddy bear, a real bear,
a filing cabinet, a picture.
If a picture’s a picture it’s
shaped like one, otherwise
it isn’t a picture.

A blanket is a blanket because of it’s shape.
Ever se
a lamp shade? Didn’t think so,
not on this planet.

The key to understanding all
that surrounds us then, is shape,
not math, not accounting, not science,
not anything but shape.

Shape crafted whether by us
or another or a process
is an art. So, shape, thus craft,
thus art defines our world.
Not energy – except perhaps
that which is required to recognize
or reproduce a shape as a shape, or
art as art, craft as craft.
No shape, no art, no craft, then no us.

A fan.
I can fan myself with a
blanket, but it’s not a fan;
it’s a blanket.
I can put a lamp shade
on my head, but it’s not a hat.

We know this by the shape
of that which we observe.

You can hang a plate on the wall.
That does’nt make the plate the wall.
You can draw a wall on a plate, but
we know what’s the plate and
what’s the image of a wall – on a plate.

I could put a sack on a camel,
but it doesn’t make the sack the camel.

Shapes and images.
Scales and mirrors.
Reality vs reflection.
The two exist simultaneously
to excite our senses
to keep us alert to fraud
in the reality of the senses,
and in the reflective sense,
to help us capture the
beauty and agony in life –
as we learn from the discrepancy.

S&M PART 1

START YOUR ENGINES

God, mygod, 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, mygod, 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 mygod 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 every day, 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 control?

You can’t control something you don’t know 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 clothespin 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!

Scales & 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.

Scales & 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.

Scales & Mirors 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.

Scales & 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?

Scales & 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 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 free samples 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?

Scales & Mirors 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.

Scales & Mirrors PART 8

WARRIORS DO YOGA TO PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR BATTLE

Unleashing karmic garbage through the practice of yoga

vs.

Using the discipline of yoga to prepare yourself for adversity

Yoga, like ballet, puts the body into unnatural positions, through our will, or the will of others (in the case of torture). The mind as well as the body revolts under the pressure until such time it surrenders.

If the body and/or mind fails to ‘surrender’ during the yoga session, the participant experiences a feeling of unease, fear and often disgust for having put one’s self into a position of forced compliance, without achieving effect. “If I’m going to force myself into doing something that is unnatural at least let me succeed at it”, your subconscious mind tells you. Thus, not achieving said compliance leaves one feeling inadequate, thus disturbed – also referred to as karmic garbage. Although professional yogis accept the garbage as inevitable, they don’t seem to know its source. Another more concrete explanation exists, which I will attempt to make clear.

To relax one’s body benefits both mind and body, but doing so is not required to get in touch with one’s soul or spirit. The soul actively engages you, whether your mind or body relaxes or not. Think back to your last crisis and tell me if your soul was out to lunch, floating on a pillow, telling you to ‘let go’ when your life abruptly turned upside down. I don’t think so. Your soul or spirit was on the front lines doing battle right along side you, directing your every move.

Nobody wants to relax during a crisis. Relaxing has its place, but not on the battle field of life. Being alert to subtle changes, aware of your environment including others, ready to assume the position of discomfort if need be is the state of mind that warriors take into battle, and the practice of yoga: assuming unnatural positions, while maintaining composure can help in preparing a warrior for those battles.

Paying attention to the task at hand, while opening channels – all channels – to receive information regarding one’s environment is to train your body and mind to conduct itself with discipline during times of stress. To put yourself into a stressful body contortion, stretching limbs beyond their function, then to expect yourself to relax under those conditions, and feel uplifted for having done it, is a bit masochistic. To relax during times of stress, may be a beneficial temporary time out solution, to refresh you for another battle, but no one can last more than thirty minutes without naturally coming out from the trance-like state once achieved. When forced beyond that limit, again, the body and mind rebel.

The floating of thoughts once considered tantamount to a yogi’s success can be beneficial up to a point of detrimental. Relax and float – but not endlessly. Humans cannot interpret endless, and so again, rebel at the suggestion to do it, feeling unease when floating beyond benefit.

Float to relax, then consciously channel your energy where you want it to go – straight to your to-do list. Give yourself your assignments and trust that if you are supposed to accomplish them, then you will without further pressure and in due time.

You put the leash on your karmic garbage by directing your life, not by letting go of it for somebody else to direct. By putting yourself into unnatural positions you trigger your alarm systems, just when you think you’re supposed to be relaxing, and then because confusion instead of peace and tranquility ensue, you call it garbage – only because you can’t explain why you feel punk when you’re supposed to feel high.

Using yoga to train yourself to find joy in situations of adversity, and by looking upon that endeavor as a warrior looks upon their strategy to win, you accomplish something quite different from the peace and tranquility you set out to capture. A plan is what you accomplish. Peace and tranquility elude captivity. You cannot capture them. But you can design a plan of action by learning to trust your own instincts and by accepting that you have the confidence to achieve our goals under adverse conditions. Forming a plan is ultimately more beneficial to you and those around you, than chasing an elusive feeling of peace. It’s like chasing a rainbow. Even if you find yourself right in the middle of one, you have no control over its direction. Yoga is not all about letting go; it’s all about controlling your thoughts, actions and choosing the paths you need to be on which are best suited to achieving your goals through the acknowledgement and practice of discipline.

Surrender to the discipline and not to an elusive karmic force that you know nothing about. Letting go can be beneficial when you know what you’re letting go of. Defining the goal is a function of discipline, not a willy nilly search for a good feeling. Recognize the source of the bad feeling you call karmic garbage. It’s not your life as everybody claims. It’s the confusion stemming from conflicting signals.

You put yourself in what your mind identifies as a perilous situation, then demand that your body relax through letting go of mental thought and all awareness of your surroundings, which should be used instead to instruct your body, not to ignore it by letting it take care of itself. That’s what you do all the time anyway. Why in yoga practice would you want to continue not paying attention to your body and the environment?

Focus on directing your own life.

If you want to give your life up to the universe, then you put yourself in a position of lockdown. The universe knows about weak links. It’s in a perpetual state of seeking them out. Any weakness it finds, it’s in it, on it, around it till the weak link succumbs to its will – like a snake and a mouse. It’s all about control – not letting go of control. If you need to let go of something, let go of the control you want to have over others. I wish he would do this I wish she would do that I wish they would treat me better. Dictatorial. I control only me. You don’t need a meaningless sound for a mantra. Who says? Make it mean something – something positive, something that will work for you, not the same thing that works for every other human creature. Why would you want that?

Surrender only to yourself. Then work on your warrior skills, knowing that when you place yourself in unnatural positions for extended periods of time, you will indeed feel unease, which will indeed reflect itself through an uncomfortable state of mind – unless you approach it as a warrior. Warriors use these practice situations to better prepare themselves for the discipline required in fighting any battle. Be your own warrior and you’ll gain the control you need through your own practice sessions.

The universe is not a loving place, so don’t offer yourself up to it expecting to change it. Change yourself and maybe the universe will take notice and take a spin with you.

Scales & Mirrors PART 9

Your only goal should just be to lose weight. To set how much in a week or month sets you up to fail. You’ve got the scale and the mirror. That’s all you need to make assessments on how you’re doing and where you want to go.

I see handle bars on my hips in the morning. Sure I’m working out, so it pushes the fat outward from my body, making it more noticeable. Still, I know when I see those handles that I don’t want them, regardless of what the scale says. At that point it’s useless to get on the scale, because even if I lost a couple pounds, those handles didn’t go anywhere.

Okay, so I’m discouraged because I’m not losing fast enough. But I’m not reducing my intake by that much either. Yes, I’m eating less, especially during the day, but not a lot less, so I need to eat even less and increase my metabolism even more. One thing I stopped doing is telling myself I’m starving. I got rid of that bad habit pretty fast. Now it’s time to learn to say no to myself. I know, I’m an adult, an old one, so should already know how to do that.

When I was a child I noticed that adults didn’t say no to themselves very often; it was always no to the kids. I liked that concept of them not having to say no to themselves. Though I didn’t use with word ‘concept’ in my thoughts so young, I couldn’t wait to become an adult so I could do what I wanted instead of what my parents wanted for me. I imagined what it would be like to open the refrigerator and take whatever looked good without regard to Mom’s menu planning. Don’t touch this, don’t touch that. Mom was very organized. If somebody took something that was designated for the supper meal, that meant somebody got less at supper. That never happened, because we all knew better. Some foods were designated as snacks or between meal beverages and others clearly were not.

When I met Steve’s family I was shocked how everybody in his Mom’s and Dad’s house just helped themselves to whatever was in the refrigerator. His mom shopped every day for supper. My mother shopped every two weeks for meals for two weeks, and as needed in-between for bread and milk or for snacks on a week-end night. She always said the same thing on payday, which was grocery shopping day, when she’d buy a big package of cookies, “when they’re gone they’re gone”, which meant we could eat as many as we wanted. There wouldn’t be any more till next payday, unless of course she baked some, which in the early years, she did.

Well, now that I’ve been an adult for a very long time, I realize that those adults – all adults in fact – should have been saying no to themselves and showing their children how to do it in the process – you know, the lead by example maneuver. But back then everybody was too busy to think about stuff like that. Just do what you’re told translated to somebody else making decisions rather than you making them.

So, that’s on the top of my to-do list: learn to say no to self. Don’t wait for somebody else or something else to do it.

Some people complain that when they exercise they don’t lose weight, myself included. The reason is now clear. When scaling back on the food or altering dramatically the intake, the body lowers its metabolic rate to conserve fuel: fat. Okay, you already know this. But when you exercise vigorously to lose weight, an alarm goes off in your brain, because your body is working extraordinarily hard, which means something must be happening in the negative category. Alert. Alert. Alert. Conserve. Conserve. Conserve. You get frustrated because you’re not losing weight while you’re exercising off the charts and eating like a bird and still, not much loss.

So everybody tells you your fat is turning into muscle and muscle weighs more than fat and that’s why you’re so fat? Because all that excess baggage you carry with every movement you make is really muscle? Come on. Listen up. Fat cannot turn into muscle. The two tissues are totally different from one another. There’s no osmosis or transformation of tissue going on. Fat can no more turn into muscle than a bone can turn into blood. Need a blood transfusion? Just break open a bone.

Okay, so you build muscle tissue and you lose fat and some of the fat runs through the muscle like a well-marbled steak, but they’re still separate tissues. Now, you’re essentially all muscle, so what are you complaining about? Because the scale reads fat? You’re giving the scale too much credit for having a brain smarter than your own. Look in the mirror; do you see fat? You can see fat, you know. Even the fat surrounding all your internal organs leaves an impression on the outside of the body – that really thick, dense look in your trunk? Fat takes up space, so everything around it gets shoved aside, literally. Even if you’re blind you can feel the fat. You know what’s fat and what’s muscle so don’t play dumb.

If you want the optimal benefit of weight loss, don’t do anything dramatic to set off alarms. Eat less and less often and exercise mildly in the beginning.

Every now and then throw in a challenging exercise routine, then back off so your body doesn’t raise its flags. In other words, stop before your body tells you to stop.

Increase the exercise by small increments and do the same with food: Decrease consumption in small decrements. Remember the size of your stomach. No. Not your abdomen. Your abdomen is your girth; sure that’s big and you think you have to eat to fill the girth, which you mistake for your food tank. Stop thinking your stomach is your abdomen. Your stomach is this little tank. Stretched though. Like a tank top or like underwear that stretches to cover your fat butt.

The fat you store all around that little tank is your girth, your stash. So why hoard all that fat? Once again, you’re setting off alarms. When anybody starts stockpiling it spells trouble coming, which in turn signals to conserve by saving up, so your metabolism slows to accommodate the anticipated crisis.

Yet the crisis never comes, but still you’re on high alert, stashing more and more. The only way you’re going to come down from high alert without sending out the signal that the catastrophic event just arrived, because now you’re starving yourself on somebody else’s diet, is to decrease gradually – ease off- ease up – slowly.

Increase exercise slowly, showing everything is AOK, then simultaneously decrease your intake slowly and your frequency slowly, then stay consistent, till your body’s alarm system is off and you’re cooling down, losing that extra fluid, moving more efficiently, saying no where appropriate and not gnashing your teeth over it, but delighting in the self control you exhibit on cue, whenever necessary.

Disciplined people don’t set their alarms off much. They anticipate danger and either avoid it or plow through it, in control of what they’re doing, how they’re handling it. The best you can do is to be in control of your own actions, living by your own code, and sticking to it, not reverting to somebody else’s plan when faced with conflicts.

Don’t wait for a catastrophic event to implement a plan that could avoid it.

You be the master of you and an example to everybody else, who might like what they see as a foundation upon which they can build something great for themselves.

Scales & Mirrors PART 10

Today’s Steve’s birthday and I’m going to eat more than usual, because I’m preparing more than usual – or at least I’m going to try with the food I have on hand. This is one of those times when you have to weigh the price you’re willing to pay fat-wise against the enjoyment value of the occasion, because tomorrow and the next day the scale won’t lie for you.

So if you don’t eat all day the day before and the day after it might work for you. People move their food consumption around like they move money around – for the greatest benefit and convenience. Due to tough times we have no extra money so I get creative with the gift too. I already made him a cuff link container out of a cigar box, stained it and lined it with a scrap of burgundy colored velvety upholstery material that I made my valances out of. I recall the woman at the fabric shop telling me I couldn’t make valances out of upholstery material, but that’s the fabric I liked so, ha! Now, what else?

Oh, I know…I’ll iron all his shirts. He’ll like that. The ribbons are already hanging – for a couple of days now. I like to draw a celebration out, even when I’m broke – Steve too. So, I’m going to do an entire birthday meal with what’s on hand – and we haven’t grocery shopped for a while – trying to conserve, since he unexpectedly lost his job and had to scramble to get another one and we lost two paychecks in the meanwhile.

Not to worry. We’ll work something out. That’s the confidence that comes with living a long time. You gain a history of working things out, so when something catastrophic occurs, you know through past experiences that you’ll find your way around it. Circumventing is what I like to call it.

Since I can’t cook, iron and write at the same time, I’ll get back to you tomorrow and let you know how it all turned out. I think I’ll clean the apartment too and have everything sparkling when he walks through the door. Make it look like he’s walking into a hotel suite with a full-service kitchen and his personal animal-free chef.

My plan is to say ‘no’ to second helpings of anything, while keeping the portions small (for me; Steve can do what he wants; it’s his day). I’ll want to savor the occasion however. A party isn’t a party unless one can indulge somewhat. The mild exercise is working to tone my entire body, so I’m looking trimmer than the scale reads. That’s okay.

I’ve never cried over my weight. Don’t you. It’s fixable.

Whew…I’m done with about a half hour till birthday boy gets home. I cooked the meal, vacuumed, picked up, sanitized what needed it, did the dishes, set the table, walked Rose, set the lighting, and set up the scrabble board for a birthday tournament. The hors d’oeuvres are by the board along with a small jug of cheap Chianti wine. We three will be our own music tonight.

THE MENU

Hors d’Oeuvre

Roasted pepper, tomato and sweet onion antipasto with fresh basil vinaigrette, served with fresh-baked rolls

SOUP

Creamy sweet pea with garlic, freshly ground black pepper and tarragon

ENTREE

Linguini marinara with fresh basil, garlic and extra virgin olive oil

DESSERT

Giant apple and ginger peach preserve turnover smudged with grapefruit, ginger icing with a hint of maple

Beverages

Lemonade iced tea, Chianti wine, fresh brewed Columbian coffee

Simple but elegant. I tried not to go overboard with fat. The day after his birthday dinner he ended up in the emergency room. On the day after 9-11. Everybody jokingly blamed it on the meal.

He thinks he’s having a heart attack, we get in the car to go to the hospital and he decides he wants to drive. Insists on it. He probably thought he would speed and I wouldn’t. He starts feeling worse and when he sees a police cruiser pass him he tries to get his attention. the cruiser pulls over and Steve runs out of the car toward them and they used a loud voice enhancer and tell him “GET BACK IN YOUR CAR” repeatedly as Steve’s trying to yell to them to call an ambulance.

When the ambulance came and took him away I tried to follow in my car, but the cruiser pulls me over to say it’s against the law to follow an ambulance. I get to the hospital and it was at least an hour before I got any information on his status. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. It was the most stressful hour of my life. Later he told me that when the guy in the ambulance tried to give him a shot to shock his heart, he refused it. I was wondering why the ambulance was staying put so long. I’m thinking, get him to the hospital, what are you waiting for?

So here he flags down a cruiser to call an ambulance because he’s having a heart attack, then when in the ambulance he refuses the shot that could save his life – he has a needle phobia. His father who was a doctor had to give him his shots when he was sleeping when he was a kid, that’s how afraid of needles he was. My sister had the same needle phobia.

The entire incident reminded me of that God and the helicopter joke. Steve prays to God to help him, so God sends him a cruiser out of the blue, the cop calls him an ambulance and the EMT was ready with a shot to save his life and Steve was still praying for God to help him.

Scales & Mirrors Part 11

1.26.03

A belated Happy New Year to you all. Weighed in at a whopping 197 this AM when I finally found the courage to step on the scale I’ve been avoiding for three months. See what happens when you’re not vigilant? It just creeps up on you. So, what happened????!!! I spent two months making a ghetto apartment habitable after being evicted after being turned down by better housing because of the eviction. Seems my attorney worked for somebody else. Two days after we thought we won, an eviction notice showed up on our door and our big time lawyer quit, with a big gotcha.

Wow. Talk about being stunned. The laws the law in Cleveland and this landlord who seems to own the city or at least the religion he belongs to does, squeezed us until the revenge he sought satisfied him. I cannot believe the viciousness of humans. So for two months, while working to seal the flat off from roaches and rodents, and until we could get a stove and refrigerator we ate out. Pigged out – with no offense intended toward the pig. We didn’t care. We were surviving. Sometimes when you’re surviving you’re supposed to eat. That’s what gets you through the nightmare. One could say, we chewed it up and instead of spitting it out, ate it.

I feel another beginning coming on. Do they ever end? Hopefully not, since it is in new beginnings that we gather the hope required to forge ahead with failings and all. We’ve settled into our ghetto apartment on the third floor with a view of the sky that we call Rose’s Castle. We love it. Believe it or not. No mold except what we brought with us. Radiator heat. High ceilings. $395.00 a month with all the heat and hot water we can use. We tore up the carpets, shined the floors, caulked every seam, every crevice, scraped, painted, adorned until we have a designer ghetto flat. A perfect place to write, a stone’s throw from the lake, a big kitchen, long hallway office: dubbed Famous Hallway Office, and a brand spanking new state of the art computer, security system, printer, scanner, shredder, internet hook-up. Who would believe that we could come back with such a force after falling so hard? No, after being pushed so hard by people who have nothing better to do with the devil in their hearts than to make the lives of others a living hell.

We took our own mold samples before leaving the apartment, had some of them tested, discovered that the health department rigged portions of their initial tests, and I’m in the process of alerting the old tenants. We found a new lawyer, after our HMO refused to pay our bills and after the hospital put me on notice saying that doing their secretarial work was going to be my new second career. I even developed several recipes using my 2 Tablespoons To Thin rule.

We enjoyed a Christmas, and took a vacation in Cleveland, which consisted of things we like to do: namely eat out. So, now we pay the piper. It’s okay though, because we both, hubby and me, made the decision together. It’s time for Boot Camp. We need it; we want it. We had our party after the fall. We picked ourselves up and made a home for ourselves where we’re warm, happy and ready to rock and roll. At first we thought the party was over, now we know the games have just begun.

It’s time to take this bull of a body by its horns and force the weight off. No kidding around. I want to be trim so I will be trim. Remember the scales? I just found another interpretation that just might do the trick.

When you want to be trim more than you want to gorge yourself with fattening unhealthy foods you will have tipped the scales in favor of your own success.

Wave that magic wand Sharon. You have it; use it. And so it will be so. I don’t care what anybody else does, thinks or says. I don’t need to support anybody else’s unhealthy industries. Ever notice how trim CEO’s of large restaurant chains are? Even they don’t eat their own food. Well, Dave Thomas of Wendy’s did, and look what happened to him? I’m not going to pay them, while they make me fat. And all those friends of yours who want you to get fat and unhealthy with them? Will those friends be visiting you in the hospital or nursing home when you’ve half eaten yourself to death? I doubt it. It’s time for you to be your own best friend. That’s the only best friend you will ever need.

I, like you, center my entertainment around food. The more the better. A banquet every other night to soothe your tormented souls is what the devil of a doctor in your mind has been negligently prescribing you. And to what end? To destroy you. That’sthe end part. That’s what that little devil you keep listening to is trying to do.

You’re being brainwashed every day and night of your life, into consuming products that make others rich off of your gluttony fueled by the misery they know all too well that you suffer. They feed off of you like barnacles on a whale, sucking all your money, exchanging it for fat that you need to carry around as proof that they’ve broken your bank. They’re stealing from you, replacing the silver you hand over to them, not with interest, but with fat. FAT!!!!

Stop. Now. Turn around and look in the mirror and stop thinking it’s a fat mirror. Sure it’s fat. Because you’re looking at the real you. Now look at those successful CEOs. Are they fat? I don’t think so. That’s because they’re taking your money, not your fat. The rate of exchange is all wrong. They’re cooking the books – on you – and your fat is the proof.

It’s time to learn how to eat to live. Forever. Not just for a week or a month or a year, but forever. If you go to a party and the party makes you fat, thus unhealthy, stay away from that party as you would stay away from a shot of heroin, a snort of cocaine or a bottle of liquor or a pack of cancer sticks. Would you go to a party where they’re serving heroin? Yes? Well, then you’ve got a problem in addition to your weight. It’s time to party healthy. What? No fun? Since when is eating unhealthy fun? You have been brainwashed. Time for a rewash.

THE WASHING MACHINE EFFECT. I always hear the same story put out by large companies producing products they want you to consume: we give them what they want. That’s why you find cows in your French fries and apple pies at McDonald’s. Who on this green earth ever told McDonald’s they wanted cows in the French fries and desserts?

I’ve got a cow in my French fries and they’ll only remove it if I belong to a particular religious sect, and only if I sue them? Now who is dictating to whom here? I thought they said they give people what they want. I don’t want my vegetables laced with any kind of animal. I want a vegetable to be a vegetable. So, when people started eating less meat, the meat industry found ways to insert meat into products not normally containing meat.

When first arriving in Waterloo, the section of Cleveland we now live in, we went to one of the local restaurants for lunch. I wanted a salad. Every salad on the menu had a different kind of meat in it. So, I asked the waitress if they had any vegetarian salads. She looked at me matter of factly and replied, ‘no’. This is the extent to which the meat and slaughter industries have brainwashed us. A restaurant, with one of those Denny type menus – everything but the kitchen sink on it – yet I couldn’t get a vegetarian salad. I settled for a grilled cheese sandwich and left feeling unhealthy.

Ever wash your own clothes, either at home in a machine or at the laundromat? What happens when you overload the machine? Your clothes don’t get as clean, because they’re packed in too tightly not allowing for the freedom of movement required for the water and detergent to reach every fiber.

Many fat people are malnourished, believe it or not. They stuff their guts so full that the enzymes needed to digest the food, cannot possibly work as efficiently as when a smaller portion is put in the stomach, allowing not only for better digestion, but greater utilization of the vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and carbohydrates. When you over-pack your stomach you produce the same effect as when you pack too many clothes into your washing machine.

Ever see a tracker trailer going uphill with a full load compared to a lighter load? A truck with a full load will crawl up the hill, stressing the engine, and then speed down it by the sheer weight of it. A lighter load climbs and descends the hill with greater ease, proving that the more weight you carry around, the more difficult it’s going to be to move and the greater stress it puts on all your body parts.

WHY ARE YOU FAT? It doesn’t matter. There’s never only one reason anyway. So why bother analyzing yourself. Besides you already know why you’re fat. You eat too much for your activity level. We already discussed this; we don’t need to do it again. Knowing why you’re fat doesn’t change anything. I no longer care why I’m fat. Knowing didn’t solve the problem. You will lose weight when your desire to be trim outweighs your desire to overeat. Plain and simple. Tip your own scales by your own attitude.

My husband and I have made a decision: Boot Camp. I’m getting tough. I don’t want to hear any more whining. I got myself where I am. It doesn’t matter who or what provoked me. If I wasn’t strong enough to resist the provocation, that’s my weakness – and their problem when I get stronger – when I start demanding some interest on the money they took from me.

I want to get off this train of last suppers. How many last suppers does one have to consume, before one stops calling it the last? It’s over. Kaput. No more food. No more excuses. Not a one. I don’t want to hear it. I won’t listen. Just take the darned weight off. What a wimp. What a sorry excuse for an animal.

No, I will not take it easy on me – or you. You’ve had it far too easy for far too long. Now it’s time to put some money into this meter, because this fat piper wants to get paid in cash, not fat, and the only way that can happen is if I can convince you that you can do it by proving to you that I can. That’s the bottom line. When I accomplish that goal, it’s pay day for me. Finally.

Do you have toxic mold anywhere in your living space? Or work space? Or is there toxic mold in the places you hanging out when not at home?

Mold causes weight gain.

I never got back up to 197 pounds again. We vacated the apartment where the wall voids will filled with black mold from water leaks that weren’t repaired properly by maintenance staff. Although we couldn’t see it, except what was on the radiator covers, we breathed it in 24/7 for as long as we lived there. We were sick for a long time after being hospitalized. Daisy Mae our cat died from it. Rose, our dog, survived, but had a rough time like we did.

When I was in the hospital some person named Dr. Hutt (probably a CIA doctor) brought in a research article for me to read as I laid fighting for my life – published by some group from Harvard University called ‘THE BALONEY FACTOR IN MOLD. I was stunned beyond stunned. He said, ‘if we treat you, the treatment itself will give you more brain damage than you already have. Better to take the long approach of being removed from the environment.

Richard Miller, that’s who owned the apartment building. He wouldn’t let us leave unless we paid nearly a year’s rent left on our lease. The mayor’s office said the only way to get us out was to be evicted. Seven years in a ghetto building was our consequential punishment for reporting the mold and contacting authorities when the owner refused to let us go without paying the remainder of the lease.

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.