Cheryl Katz

Michael Ruhlman has written a post, America’s Fat Problem, which expresses well how I’ve been feeling about the idea of food and nutrition but haven’t been able to adequately describe.

I’ve been loathe to switch from full to skim milk (just don’t like it) or to use fat free cheese (yuck!) I have always known that when I have problems with eating, it’s not the food’s fault; my portion control is to blame. My two prong approach, as of last week, has been to up fresh fruits and veggies and avoid prepared and processed foods. I’ve also avoided sweets and fatty foods, but only because I need to change my habits before I confront things that have tempted me to overeat in the past.

I’m not going to wax nutritional here. I’ll leave it to Ruhlman.

Also, isn’t that photograph gorgeous?

I recently discovered the Google 15 iGoogle widget.  The idea is that you record your weight at the same time every day, and it provides you with a moving average of your weight that is a better indication of weight loss progress than one day’s static number.

I like this for a variety of reasons.  First, it turns the weight check procedure into a daily habit.  Hard to hang too much significance on the thing that comes just between brushing one’s teeth and the shower, at least in my opinion.  Second, in my previous method of weighing in once a week, at the same time on the same day of the week each time, it doesn’t take into account the natural fluctuations of weight.  So I had no idea if I was having a slight up day or had had a big up day earlier, and was back to losing again.  With the Google 15, I can see each daily number as well as the overall trend.  So while two days this week I had very small gains, the average trend was toward loss.  It continued to be an encouraging process despite what I might otherwise have written off as a disappointment.

In general, I’m a fan of turning weight loss and nutrition into a numbers game.  My problem with food is that it tends to be too circumstantial, too emotional.  If I can disassociate my emotions from my nutrition, I tend to have more success.

I discovered it through a weight loss board on Ravelry.  Yup, crafters think and talk about other stuff, too.  I know if this is of interest and use to me, that it may be for others as well.

Here is something I don’t understand about the economic slowdown we’ve been seeing and hearing about lately (for me, this is all based on NPR.)  Forgive my shallow knowledge of how economic systems work – layperson speaking.

The Fed and the federal government seem to think that we’re heading into a recession, and that the solution is to get people spending more money.  But there has been all this buzz in recent years about how Americans on the average are saving NOTHING and are in monstrous piles of debt.  If we are in an economic slowdown caused by people hanging on to their money for whatever reasons there may be, but the level of spending we’ve fallen from was too high to begin with, then doesn’t it stand to reason that to a certain extent our economy has been based on reckless American consumerism, and that if everyone spent and saved responsibly perhaps we wouldn’t be in such a jam?

In the middle of typing that paragraph I had a conversation about it with my husband, who successfully conveyed just how complicated a crazy little thing like “an economy” can be.  But still.

It goes further than economics – buying bigger, better, newer cars drives up resource-intensive automotive manufacturing.  Using more fuel, whose price then goes up not just because of increased consumption but because of decreased supply on top of the whim of oil companies. I chose the auto industry because I think that auto production is especially dangerous to the environment, and because it is a big industry, requiring many different types of materials, and a product which touches most people’s lives in the US.

Buying a used car saves money, reduces debt, but then would not trigger the expansion of the auto industry.  The outcome of any monetary expenditure would be economic growth, but in the case of a used auto, its impact would be felt at a slower rate.

It’s bad to buy things we don’t need, which is what I feel we’re being encouraged to do.  A tax rebate plan to get people to spend money rather than save it seems like a dangerous idea.

I guess I’m just a little peeved at America’s collective financial irresponsibility, and I wish it were possible to rehabilitate the economy in such a way that it wasn’t dependent on people overextending their budgets and credit.  People buying things they don’t need has an impact far beyond the economic markets – environmental, psychological, etc.  Not to mention the impact on consumers’ personal finances.

I realize I’ve jumped around a little here.  I’ve just had these thoughts and questions in my head for some time, so I’m eager to have this post written and move on.  I welcome your thoughts on this matter, please share your comments!

I just got a package from Nicole.  (It makes me almost sing the “We just got a letter” song I remember from when I watched Blues Clues with my friend Jenn’s kids years ago.)

It contained many articles of awesome, including but not limited to the first BEST FRIENDS bracelet I’ve had in the last hundred twenty years! Squee!  She made it herself, and it has a New York charm on it, and it is so special to me, I can’t stop smiling.

It also contained my first ever Star of David.

Pictures later.  I have to focus on not letting my smile carry me away, so I can get some work done.

When I put the lonely, single ad unit in the rightmost sidebar over there, I selected the “womens’ interests” channel.  Most of the ads I’ve spotted have been totally lame, yet totally forgettable.

But right now there’s a John McCain ad, which I find hilarious.  He must be advertising on the womens’ interest ad channel, and I find that hilarious, too.  The ad isn’t there because I support him.  It’s there because he’s trying to reach readers of blogs who want to display items of interest to women.

Since when has any republican candidate said anything specifically of interest to women?

I’m laughing all the way over to AdSense to tweak my settings.

Oops, I missed the Oscars.

I couldn’t have gone to a party even if I’d been invited to one, since Ben wasn’t home from his trip yet, and Sami went down at 7:30.

But that’s OK, because truthfully, I don’t really care about the Oscars.

I’ve been thinking and posting a lot lately about weight loss.  So much drive to change my body, to make it be something that it was before I was pregnant, something it may not have been for even 10 years before that.  (I’m not 18 any more, ya know?)

Many of the changes I’m making are healthy ones, but at the end of the day, part of my self-negotiations is always a little bit of shame about my size.

In light of all this, I would like to remind myself of The Shape of a Mother, and to share it with you.  The way my stomach has changed since carrying Sami in it is PERMANENT.  I am not sure I’d want it any other way.  I may want and need to lose the baby/stress/life weight, but I’d never want to “undo” my baby space.

I don’t look at the site nearly enough.  It is so important to stay body positive, to remember that a person isn’t defined by their weight alone, and that if carrying around a few extra pounds were the price I have to pay for the child I love (even though we all know it isn’t), it would be worth it.

Besides, there’s beauty in a curved belly.  We can’t all be washboards; how boring!

I dragged myself and Sami to the Farmers’ Market this morning, despite the overflowing gutters on every street corner.

The rain wasn’t all that hard, and had started to lighten up before we headed home. I had brought my raincoat to throw over the stroller in case its standard shade wasn’t enough, but Sami fared just fine, bundled up in her coat and shielded by the stroller. I had an umbrella but didn’t do quite so well. My pants were soaked half way up to my knees.

In any case, I discovered that I am deeply in love with pink lady apples. I bought them from a vendor of organic produce (shock! gasp! at the farmers’ market!) but while I remember what they looked like and where they were located, I couldn’t tell you the name of any one vendor from another. In any case, I tried these apples, and gave Sami a sliver as well. She chucked hers to the footrest of her stroller and grunted for my chunk. We traded. And we both gave the Pink Lady our stamp of approval. I’m a big fan of Golden Delicious apples and these are like GDs +1.  Incidentally, ours did not appear to be branded in any way, other than the name being used as the variety, contrary to what the link above might suggest.
Jen found possibly the largest, sweetest unripe-looking grapefruit on the face of the earth, and we each bought 3 for $2. When I run out of the 20 lb box of Costco oranges (at a rate of 2 oranges a day, that will be, like, three weeks from now?) I plan to buy the 20 lb bag from that same vendor. Fresh, local organic oranges are so much better!

I picked up a bag of crimini mushrooms, whose purpose has yet to appear to me in a vision, though I’m seeing maybe a mushroom risotto-style barley dish. I’ve really been into barley and quinoa lately.

Finally, I stocked up on the frozen tamales Ben and I love. They’re hand made and fresh, but kept frozen for longer shelf life. Which suits us just fine. Ben likes easy foods for office lunches, and I just frankly love tamales.

Ah, farmers’ market. Not only do you count as a single serving of daily physical activity, but I have a sneaking suspicion that buying my food from your vendors will help me along my health and fitness goals….

In my head, this would be me.  In reality, I probably wouldn’t say anything to anybody but Ben.

Sorry this humour is at someone else’s expense.  At least she seems to appreciate that as well.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514&sc=emaf

This is a story I heard on NPR the other day, link via NoirBettie at Through the Looking Glass.

I’m a bit of a Nervous Nellie as a mom, fraught with worry as I enter a new phase, and definitely uptight when I think forward to what might be coming. I tend to give a lot of thought to the matter of whether I’m giving Sami enough stimulation when I’m home with her. While I think about structuring her time, I really very rarely do – she’s free to roam the living room at will and the house as long as I’m around to monitor her exploits, and even if she’s playing with the dustpan on the floor as she did the other day, babbling to herself with her newfound sounds, I rarely interfere and frankly graciously accept the short spurt of Net Surfing Time I’ve been allotted.

So this story gave me substantial food for thought. I clearly worry too much. It’s not a stretch to say that Sami is an imaginitive kid. She is still pre-verbal, but I gave her some lettuce with her lunch today to see what she’d do with it. She ate the first leaf, and put the second on her head, laughing maniacally. I’m not sure what was going through her head, but I do find it heartening that she thought it was hysterical.

I’ve read about unschooling before and find the idea of child-directed learning appealing. As an adult, I enjoy most the activities I fall into through exploration; I started spinning and taught myself with a few minutes of guidance from an expert basically by trial and error, through doing research about knitting and yarns. Such a powerful method for an adult must leave a child, unencumbered by a lifetime of structure, with limitless learning potential, driven by their own pursuits!

I also know that I cannot be the one to stay home and educate my child – while I loved the year I spent at home with her beyond measure on a very deep level, the isolation and self-criticism and the depression they led to nearly destroyed me, and I imagine that even a traditional, structured school would be better for Sami in the long run than prolonged exposure to a self-destructive mother.  I really admire the people of whom I know who have made the committment, and can handle the experience, of being completely responsible for the education of their children.  That is an incredible undertaking, and an impressive accomplishment-in-progress.

Can Sami have both? Can she attend traditional-style schools in the day time but be encouraged to follow her interests at home? I imagine that if she has the right teachers and if Ben and I get our acts together, the two philosophies could be dovetailed nicely. I think that out-of-the-box, for lack of a more succinct term, thinking can be useful in all types of problem solving, even ones encountered within a structured framework. It may be self-consolation, but I can’t abide the idea that one precludes the other.

All of this said, I will now officially stop worrying if Sami’s play time is “educational” enough. I already minimize her exposure to television, and make sure that exposure includes active engagement with the characters, music and me. I like the idea of activities rather than toys, but I think that Sami already does, too (hence, the recent interest in sweeping with a hand brush and dustpan, wiping the floor with a towel, taking simple toys apart and putting them back together.) So this is the part where I’m supposed to Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Play. I think I can do that.

I am going to do a little more directed research into education methods, for my own fortification.