Essays

Diet Bankruptcy?

November 3, 2011

I keep waiting for the analogy of diet and finance to break down, and it just won’t.  Well, I thought, there’s no analog to bankruptcy; how do you wipe away a huge calorie debt by taking one extreme step that will have serious long-term consequences?  And then it hit me– gastric bypass is diet bankruptcy. Too [...]

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Scary Halloween Leftovers

October 31, 2011

I hope you were strong.  I hope  you didn’t let the diabolical marketers who put the Halloween candy out in July or August entice you into buying it, seeing it around the house, and then eating it so you were forced to buy it again.  Personally, I think there should be a law that stores cannot put Halloween [...]

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Rewarding Your Just Desserts

October 27, 2011

How many times have you heard diet pundits advise, “Never reward yourself with food”?  How ridiculous is that?  The phrase “comfort food” wouldn’t have any meaning if we didn’t get an emotional boost from our favorite foods.  Besides, from the time we’re toddlers, we get the clear message that when we endure something bad, we [...]

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Of Thighs and Thyroids

October 25, 2011

When I was 39, my doctor informed me that I had virtually no thyroid function left.  I went screaming home and called my mother in a panic, and she calmly commented, “Of course your thyroid stopped working– you’re about the age when mine stopped working.”  Okay, I thought to myself, thanks a heap for the heads-up.  I [...]

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Getting Your Genes Into Your Jeans

October 21, 2011

Any number of people have remarked that one of the smartest things you can do to be healthy is to, “choose your parents wisely.”  That’s doubly important when it comes to your weight.  I feel very fortunate that I had normal-to-thin parents with no life-threatening inherited diseases (a few quirks here and there, but no [...]

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Hey, Little Girl, the First One is Free…

October 20, 2011

Today I’d like to address a scourge on Society, a class of nefarious evildoers determined to corrupt the innocent and lead them down them the long, dark road of addiction.  Of course I’m talking about the store employees at your local Krispy Kreme donut shop. We’re Givin’ ‘em Away! Sometimes the siren song of that [...]

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It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

October 18, 2011

If you were ever near a TV in the 70s, you probably remember the series of ads where an off-camera narrator tried to foist Chiffon Margarine off on Mother Nature instead of butter.  She responded with the phrase, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” accompanied by thunder and lightning to express her displeasure.  It’s [...]

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Mea Gulpa (or, forgive me for blowing my diet)

October 18, 2011

A few years back, when a certain psychologist (I’ll call him “Dr. Bill”) was hawking diet advice via the TV show of his good friend (let’s call her “O”), I watched just long enough for the top of my head to blow off.  I mean, in the first place, where does a 6-foot-4-inch, um, portly man, [...]

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Do I Really Want to Lose Weight?

October 12, 2011

I don’t know, do you? I am a healthy size 14, which apparently makes me the average American woman.  I would like to be a healthy size 12.  I was a size 10 before I had my son, but between the spreading of my ribs that he managed with his little baby knees plus developing [...]

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Survival of the Fattest

October 11, 2011

From the time some long-ago humanlike ancestor decided it would be cool to walk upright, all the way up to today, the leading cause of death has been starvation.  (Horribly, in some parts of the world, it still is.)  Wars and pandemics can’t begin to match starvation’s body count.  So what’s a Mother Nature to [...]

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