Eating healthy does NOT have to be boring. In fact, healthy "substitute" foods are pointless if they don't taste good because we won't eat them, at least more than once. If I'm going to sacrifice real-deal full fat pizza for something healthy, I want to enjoy it. I also want it to be easy to fix, and I don't want to make my own pizza dough. Cooking, I'm afraid, is not my passion. Eating is, though. Thanks to Kevin and Shari, "Monday Masters" Weight Watchers' members at the York, Pennsylvania, chapter (Commerce Plaza), I have discovered a product so amazing that building a tasty, low-cal, low-points pizza is a cinch: Flatout Flatbread (pictured above, straight from my refrig to my scanner). The recipe is fast and easy: from refrig to plate, about 30-35 minutes, depending how fancy you want your pizza. I'll just give you a basic 5-point recipe (200 calories), and you can tweak it to your own tastes (for example, I like more spi

In a desperate attempt to get help with her weight , Pauline Potter , deemed the heaviest woman in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records , has turned to the media for help. According to a September 6, 2011, Huff Post Weird News story , Ms. Potter was not interested in gaining Guinness fame for the sake of of being obese but to reach out for help. Pauline, all I can say is that I understand your desire to get healthy and slimmer. I can't pretend to understand what it's like weighing 700 pounds, but I do know what it's like weighing over 200 and not being able to fit in chairs and restaurant booths properly. I know what it's like just being able to lock the seat belt on an airplane, knowing that I was just 10-15 pounds from an extension. I understand how icky it feels when someone points at you and pokes fun at your body. (Once, at the mall, some lunkhead boys shot rubber bands at my rear end.) I also understand not being able to walk a block without bein

However, I'm NOT the food police, and you will never see me collaring people in public about their eating habits and choices. Not my style. However, it's sometimes tempting... Instead, I'll offer my unsolicited advice here. Today, at a restaurant, I overhead two somewhat rotund ladies order sweet tea. Well, they weren't terribly overweight, but enough that I wanted to shout, "No, no, no!!! Please order the unsweetened tea and use artificial sweetner or drink it plain." Here's why: A 21-ounce serving of McDonalds' sweet tea has 180 calories! Okay, that might not sound like a lot, but if you add it into your daily diet, over the course of a year, that translates into 67,700 empty calories, and a potential weight gain of 18.77 pounds! Also, consumers often go for refills, yet another 180 calories (135,400 per year, 38.7 yearly weight gain!). Of course, if that's a normal part of your 1,500-1,800 per day allotment, then this might not

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. --Alexander Pope It is true that most diets fail, especially during the maintenance phase. Why do 93-95% of dieters regain most (and sometimes more) of their lost weight? I think the answer is pretty simple--dieters often sabotage their own efforts by making these common mistakes: --Eating too little food. Whenever we try starving ourselves, our bodies are programmed to seek out more food. Ultimately, biology will win the diet war, perhaps even resulting in a rebound effect, which is why so many failed dieters often gain more weight than they originally lost. Eat enough nutritious food and you will lose weight, perhaps not as fast as you would like, but a steady weight loss will be much easier to maintain. --Viewing "the diet" as a temporary nuisance. Not a good idea; in order to keep the weight off, you have to view your "diet" as a per

Elephants and grandchildren never forget. --Andy Rooney Ha, ha, isn't that the truth? I am currently working on a domain name project called Name for the Day . The blog is half built, but I love the background (shown in the above image) and the layout. I'm thinking of making some changes on this site, namely a new template, perhaps a new background. Also, there is way too much introductory material... On Monday, Jerry and I had Rhia, our granddaughter, so we went miniature golfing; it was hotter than Hades (97 degrees!!!), but it didn't seem to bother Rhia at all. We, on the other hand, looked and felt wilted, even though we were drinking lots of water. Jerry actually felt a bit sick on his stomach. We sometimes forget that we're (gasp!) senior citizens. I hadn't been miniature golfing in years, and we were all terrible at it. I did, however, make a hole-in-one, but it was just plain dumb luck. Rhia held the golf club like a baseball bat, despite our bes

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there. --Matthew Fox In today's paper, there was an editorial by a young female editor about having to endure "cat-calling" and other harassing behavior by men on the street. Does that crap still happen? I don't know why some men think such behavior is, in any way, acceptable. Women (and children) need to feel safe out in public and men hitting on women (even if it's just in "jest") can be frightening. Also, yelling at and mocking overweight people is a big no-no. Okay, I get if someone doesn't "like" fat people, and no matter how much I wish I could change the heart of haters, one can think whatever he or she wants. However, one should keep one's thoughts and feelings inward and move o

Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own. --Jean Toomer Food Pushers. Pressure Feeders. Whatever you call them, these are people in your life--parents, grandparents, siblings, children, other relatives, friends, and co-workers--who, for whatever reason, try to force food on you. Guess what? You do NOT have to accept it. That does not mean that you can't ever eat any goodies--sure you can--but make sure it's on your terms, not someone else's. I'm not sure why our friends and family like to push food at us, especially when they know we are trying to make life-long dietary changes. Some possible reasons can be found here . When someone insists on your taking an unwanted food (for whatever reason), one of the best responses I have discovered: "It looks good, but I must decline because it's not in my plan for today. But I'd love to take a small piece home for later." That way, you can save the food f

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things. --Chaim Potok Just a diet tip, which works very well for me, that I'd like to pass along. Perhaps it will work for you. I drink decaffeinated flavored hot tea year round, even on hot days. A big mug of hot tea can keep the wolf (true hunger) at bay, at least for a short time. In addition, if I have a craving, often hot tea will stop it or, at the very least, keep me from bingeing on the desired food. It is true that thirst can often masquerade as hunger, so keeping hydrated can help. However, I find plain water boring and diet soda too bubbly, and I'm not overly fond of iced tea, but I love coffee and hot tea. Sometimes I even combine them. A caveat: for every day, either use artificial sweetner or nothing; otherwise, you're sabotaging your efforts. Oh, and if you're an iced tea lover, avoid sweetened commercial iced teas--they tend to be filled with sugar. At the very least, check out th

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other. --Abraham Lincoln How well does Weight Watchers do in helping their members manage maintenance? I know for a fact that Weight Watchers offers a good maintenance program for its graduates, a.k.a. Lifetime members, but why do so many members fail at maintenance and, as a consequence, end up returning again and again to WW to lose the weight they have regained? To understand WW members' frustration, one just has to go on this posting on Weight Watchers' Facebook. When Consumer Reports rated the best diet programs, the editors rated Weight Watchers as the second best program, basing their opinion on the fact the fact that soup, high in sodium, was offered as a menu option to help dieters to stave off hunger. Never mind that this was just a sample menu among many other sample menus. In other words, Consumer Reports was splitting hairs and needed to justify selecting another progr

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. --Winston Churchill Today on Facebook, Weight Watchers posted the following: “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” Over 200 people commented, some agreeing with the comment and others having difficulties getting back to the program. It doesn't matter what diet program one is on--it isn't easy staying the course every single day, day after day. Some days are just plain crazy busy, and yet others are filled with food traps, sometimes ones we set ourselves. Yesterday, I was hungry all day; eating healthy snacks didn't seem to help. I wanted something with carbs and fat, so, at Ruby Tuesday's, I ordered the cheddar mashed potatoes as a side. It wasn't a wrong choice, per se, but it wasn't a wise choice because I know that mashed potatoes, my Achilles Heel, kicks up the old nasty hunger meter. I ended up using 11 extra points--again, not wrong, but possibly unwise, given the upc

NOTE TO HCG SPAMMERS: Nice try, but save your energy. I'm not allowing comments with links to HCG (or any other diet site) on this post or any other post. In the middle ages, people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today's shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead. --Charles Krauthammer First of all, I want to say up front that, for the most part, I respect Dr. Oz immensely. He offers a lot of good medical information and explains it in a way that the non-medical community can understand. However, he's wrong for advocating HCG injections for weight loss, at least until the protocols have been tested further. HCG, a hormone found in the urine of pregnant women, has not been approved by the FDA as a weight loss drug. Indeed, since 1975, the FDA has required the following statement to appear on HCG labels and advertisments: HCG has not been demonstrat

You've got IT , so flaunt it! --The webmaster No matter what weight, age, race, ethic group, sex, sexual orientation, etc., sometimes we just need to strut our stuff. Even if we don't feel especially outstanding in any significant way, at times we need to present ourselves to the world in the way we want to be seen. As an overweight older person, I want to present myself in the best light possible; I'm not going to wear a belly-exposing tee-shirt or shorts that expose my butt cheeks or crack. I'm going to wear clothes that minimize my physical weaknesses, for example, my large upper arms and my bustiness (yes, I see that as a weakness and a burden I have endured since age 12). On the other hand, I like my legs and don't mind showing a little upper leg. I also love jewelry, mostly stone necklaces and ostentatious bling rings with huge stones, the bigger, the better, most of them fake or inexpensive stones. The point is: we should flaunt those attribut

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. --Elisabeth Kubler-Ross When I'm eating at home, making healthy choices is fairly easy, given that we stock our fridge and cupboards with good foods and tasty treats that don't sabotage our daily diet (and forever) diet. However, eating out does pose special problems. How foods are prepared can be unknown, so it's important to make the best possible choices while still enjoying the dining out experience. Yesterday, we were on our way home from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and, starving, we needed to stop for dinner. Jerry, my husband, wanted to go to a Chinese buffet, but I was too hungry to avoid the myriad temptations that all-you-can-eat Chinese food offers, so I begged off. He really wanted to go, but respected my wishes (Thank you, sweetie! I owe you one!), and we went to Cracker Barrel instead. I'm not over

Journeys Nicole’s latest letter arrives just a few days before Sheldon and I leave for Sioux City. How does she expect me to answer? I just don’t understand her, this brown-eyed child of mine, this child who has demanded her independence from day one. From a distance, you see this lovely 20-year-old girl, with long black hair, long legs, slim body. When she sashays into a room, she makes an entrance. Heads turn. Men drool. Women round up their men and cling to them. You wonder how she slides through life so effortlessly. But when you meet her up close, you notice that her eyes are glazed, her hair not quite clean, her teeth gray, her skin bad, her mind dulled from years of drug and alcohol abuse. Not the willful child who struggled out of my body. Read more here .

When I try to get work in the US all they say is that I need to lose weight--but I bet they never said that to Mae West. --Charlotte Church When Consumer Reports rated the best diet programs, the editors rated Jenny Craig the top program, basing their findings on a study funded, in part, by no other than Jenny Craig. Consumer Reports made a lame attempt to use this small study (in which the participants were given, for two years of free Jenny Craig food and waived program fees) to prove that, overall, Jenny Craig members kept the weight off the longest. Well, duh... But now I would like to cut through the BS and see how well Jenny Craig (and, eventually, other programs) really works in the weight maintenance department. We all know that weight loss programs, even dangerous ones (which Jenny Craig is not), work for taking weight off. For example, I could go on a fasting diet for a week and lose a significant amount of weight, although it's not likely I'll keep the

I eat morons like you for breakfast. You're gonna be crying before this is over. -- Judge Judy I have the world's strangest dreams. What's more, after I scratch my head and say, "What the hey?" I often find important messages within them. You see, I believe that our dreams are simply extensions of our daytime thought processes and just tumble out in our subconscious minds as these strange scenarios and allegories, seemingly apropos of nothing. The other night, my dream involved Judge Judy. Now, I don't watch Judge Judy; she's a bit too mean for my taste, often not giving her defendants and plaintiffs much benefit of the doubt. It seems as though she has already pre-decided her rulings based on the case files, not the people before her. I squirm when she browbeats people in her courtroom; I watch TV or movies to be entertained and/or informed, not to watch other people being demeaned, even the obvious lowlifes. Yet Judge Judy was the star o

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed. --Homer How can you tell the difference between "mouth" hunger and body hunger? Sometimes it's difficult to tell, especially if one has been overeating for years: all hunger seems the same. However, you can train your body to differentiate between the two types of hunger. The first place to start is the Hunger and Fullness chart. Note that mouth hunger is not based on the need for body fuel, but a yearning for specific foods and/or food groups, usually fat and carbohydrates. Body hunger is based on a need for fuel. Read more here.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. --Thomas Jefferson Sorry to disappoint, but this post has nothing to do with anything racy, unless you consider eating a racy topic. Harvey Rapp, in our interview last week, said something interesting about taste: that for him the first bite of a meal is always extremely enjoyable but then becomes less so with each subsequent bite. The pleasure principle at work. Enjoying our meals makes perfect evolutionary sense; if we suddenly hated eating (like we hate getting shots, even though they are usually good for us), we would avoid eating whenever possible, and our species would die out, for we would happily starve ourselves to death. It seems that naturally thin people have a near-perfect equilibrium with their hunger/satiety cues, and they think nothing about it. Lucky them. For the rest of us, something has gone haywire in the way we interact with food; for some of us, it may be genetic (e

Funky, Cool Fish Statue, Skopje, Macedonia, Located near the center and along my walking path _________________________ All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. --Friedrich Nietzsche Could YOU walk a 5k TODAY? Yes, you could! Just for today, decide to walk a 5k. Don't worry about tomorrow, for you should decide what you do tomorrow, tomorrow. No matter where you are right now or how old you are, if you have legs and are able to walk at all, you can walk a 5k (3.1 miles) today . HOW you do it does not matter; you can break up your 5k in small increments, even 10-15 minute sessions throughout the day: at work, at the grocery store, and at home. You don't need any special equipment, just a pair of comfortable shoes and a bottle of water (to keep yourself hydrated). You don't need to walk fast; you just need to move. In fact, for the long haul, slow as she goes is more sustainable. Our bodies were built for walking, and when we don't do it re

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. --Tony Robbins We are not likely to find the best answers unless we ask the right questions. Yesterday, my first interview with a naturally thin person (Harvey Rapp) was a real eye opener; I literally stumbled upon, by accident, some interesting facts about slim people. Serendipity. Of course, an interview with one person does not prove anything definitive, but this particular interview revealed some of the "secret" questions I should be adding to my questionnaire. Without my having asked--because I was unaware of the right questions--Harvey offered some stunning insights. To find out, you'll have to read the interview . We have two groups of people: those who struggle with weight and food issues and those who don't. And there is often a lack of understanding between the two groups, which can cause conflict. For example, I can't tell you how often I have heard these