Dinner at the Haiku

water goblet’s frost

fresh lemon, sliced, tangy

secret diet food

brown cocoa drop slides

outside white porcelain cup

hungry finger seeks

tear glistens, men’s food

chicken breasts, grilled, marked

gristle good enough

her jigsaw dinner

old brown soggy scraps, plated

mother’s daily meal

mandoline music

fingers pluck barbed steel blades

slicing cucumbers

picture courtesy of Carlos Porto’s portfolio

Tap your Way to Weight Loss

Wouldn’t it be great if someone could wave a magic wand and get rid of  food cravings?

Surprisingly, there are techniques to do just that. And it works.

Tapping, also known as EFT, is a simple technique of tapping on points of the body based on Chinese acupuncture meridians while thinking about a problem.  This releases negative energy and the problem is solved. The technique is quick and easy to learn.

Paul McKenna is the author of “I can Make you Thin” and is a famous hypnotist from England. His techniques include tapping and Neuro Linguistic Programming. His website has a simple explanation of the tapping technique. There are videos of the technique but you have to a member to see them. Tapping results in reprogramming neural networks in the brain.

Tapping is also called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), an emotional, needle free version of acupuncture based on the connection between the body’s subtle energies, emotions, and health.

For more information about using EFT see their website and read the many articles on weight loss.

The EFT community is very generous in providing free information, including this free interactive video.

Diet Quotations

In the Middle Ages, they had guillotines, stretch racks, whips and cahins.  Nowadays, we have a much more effective torture device called the bathroom scale.  ~Stephen Phillips

I’ve been on a diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet! ~ Erma Bombeck

We never repent having eaten too little. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Food is like sex:  when you abstain, even the worst stuff begins to look good.  ~Beth McCollister

I have a great diet.  You’re allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.  ~Ed Bluestone

I’m not overweight.  I’m just nine inches too short.  ~Shelley Winters

My advice if you insist on slimming:  Eat as much as you like – just don’t swallow it.  ~Harry Secombe

It would be far easier to lose weight permanently if replacement parts weren’t so handy in the refrigerator.  ~Hugh Allen

A waist is a terrible thing to mind.  ~Tom Wilson

Fat is not a moral problem.  It’s an oral problem.  ~Jane Thomas Noland

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say “when.”  ~P.G. Wodehouse

Hope is a very thin diet. ~ Thomas Shadwell

Charlton Hunger

Charlton Hunger was waiting for me when I got home yesterday..

He looked me up and down, whistled and said in his deep voice, “We’ve had this date a long time coming.”

I turned away but he knew I was raw cookie dough in his hands. He smoothed back his perfectly coiffed hair, straightened the lapels of his tuxedo and laughed.  Looking at me tenderly, he said, “It’s not like I’m holding a rifle to your head and forcing you to eat.”

I thrust a chair between us. He straddled the chair and pulled me closer. Slowly, he rose and whispered in my ear. As his tender lips grazed mine, I inhaled the delicious smells of my favourite forbidden foods.

I shoved him away. “Please stop. These foods are not for me.”

When his strong arms clutched me, I trembled against the force of his embrace and was lost in the delicate kiss of those foods. I gasped and said, “You’re not playing fair.”

He cocked his eyebrow and ran one finger across my chin. “I never play fair. My first name says it all but remember by middle name.”

I stammered, “Cheet.”

He leaned forward, caressed my lower lip and I opened my mouth, shamelessly, like a wonton dumpling. My breath quickened and my tongue grazed something in my mouth, warm, sweet and tempting.

“More,” I said, “please, don’t stop. That little taste was a tease.”

Charlton Hunger walked behind me and I leaned against his body. His sweet nuzzling made my lips pout for more. “Yes,” he said, “let me support you. I can help you.”

I tore away from him. “No,” I screamed, “you’ll hurt me. I feel disgusted with myself afterwards.”

His strong hands massaged my tired shoulders. “Shh, it’s me. We’ve been together a long time. We first met when your father forbade you candy.”

“And you said it was okay. I liked being with you.”

He nodded with a satisfied grin.

“But I’m not a child any more. Look what being with you has done to me.”

“Now Vicki, don’t be so hard on yourself. You know you enjoy it.”

I blushed. He pressed his advantage. “Your brilliance created me. I’m your rebel lover.”

“No,” I said, “I’m not a rebel.”

“Vicki, your eating is your rebellion.”

I hung my head. Gently, he pulled my chin up and said, “I care about you. I want to help you.”

My voice said, “I can’t. I’ve worked so hard.” but my mouth sought his, wanting more. My Lips, my tongue, and my throat urged for more. I inhaled, surprised by the tantalizing aroma. I asked, “Charlton, are you wearing chocolate aftershave?”

“The better to tempt you my dear.”

His words were like a splash of cold water. “Charlton, what we had was wonderful but I moved on. I need healthy food.”

He smirked. “Forgive me, I have been foolish. Would you like an apple?”

“You’re tempting me with an apple?”

“Vicki, don’t be paranoid. Think, easy as apple pie, Johnny Appleseed, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

“I feel like the pig being stuffed with the apple before roasting.”

“Vicki, keep your metaphors straight. The cyber bully needs you as a sacrificial lamb. You’re the apple of my eye.”

Charlton Hunger was so strong. I needed his strength. I asked, “Do you love me?”

His laugh was gritty. “No one says I love you in a fairy tale. They feed each other. Take my gift.”

I opened my mouth and bit, into a candy apple. Once again, Charlton Hunger ambushed me. I glared at him. “You tricked me.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “What did you expect?”

“But you knew I was tired, lonely and hungry.”

He wriggled his hips. “Vicki, you know I only come when you call me.”

“So it’s my fault.”

He sighed. “Don’t be hard on yourself.”

I spun around, looked at him directly and said, “I don’t want you around.”

He looked insulted but asked, “What do you want?”

“I don’t want to be hungry. I want to get beyond the fat door.”

He jerked his thumb in my direction. “Is that what you really want?”

I nodded.

In a puff of smoke his last words were, “Then I can’t help you.”

Diet, Sex and Fitness

reach for your mate instead of your plate

Least dieting get boring, Sue McGarvie has written a new book, “Lean and Lusty: the Libido Diet.” Ms. McGarvie is a registered sex therapist and host of Canada’s ‘Sunday Night Sex with Sue.’

She wrote her book because she believes that low libido affects 53% of women who are either under or overweight, have been on the birth control pill, and have food, skin or digestive sensitivities or environmental allergies, and would much rather clean the bathroom than have sex with loving partners.

Ms. McGarvie never explains her program for addressing low libido but she assures us that changing her hormones worked for her and her clients and she dropped 175 pounds delighting her partner.

The book is marketed as a benefit for dropping extra pounds.

I’m still unclear exactly what Ms. McGarvie is proposing.

But I’m sure that Ms. McGarview, who declared personal bankruptcy after the sudden closure of her Love and Romance shops in 2005 and whose pictures show a transition to a skinnier lady, will find gold.

Some of her other books are:

The G Spot orgasm and other adventures in mind blowing orgasms.

Premature Ejaculation.

Improving Penis Size

Ms. McGarvie’s book, “Lean and Lusty: the Libido Diet” is not available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Nor is the idea of sex and fitness new.

Other books to investigate are:

• The Ultimate Sex Diet: The Super Sex Diet That Works by Kerry McCloskey
• The Orgasmic Diet: A Revolutionary Plan to Lift Your Libido and Bring You to Orgasm by Marrena Lindberg
• The Great American Sex Diet: Where the Only Thing You Nibble On… Is Your Partner! by Laura Corn
• The Sex Diet: for Women! by Hope Carson
• The Better Sex Diet by Lynn Fischer

Twisted Tongues: New Diet Tortures

the most painful way to lose weight

Would you pay a doctor to sew a patch onto your tongue to cause you hideous pain every time you ate solid food?  Apparently, people are willing to do that just to lose weight.

During a reversible procedure that takes less than an hour, you could be fitted with a custom patch for the tongue which makes chewing of solid foods very difficult and painful, limiting you to a liquid diet.

For $2000 (regularly priced $2800) Dr. Chugay can surgically implant a postage stamp piece of mesh on your tongue and guarantee you absolute pain.  Patients are forced to follow a liquid diet and can lose up to 20 pounds in the first month.

Is the tongue patch worth it?

I suppose, for people who have been willing to swallow tape worms, the tongue patch is benign.

Chugay’s technique does nothing to inspire long-term behavioral change nor it does it do much for self-esteem.

But then Dr. Chugay concentrates on making money from the self-esteem challenged. Pick a body part and Dr. Chugay can lift, augment and surgically enhance.

At his Beverly Hills clinic, Dr Nicholas Chugay specialises in people who are dissatisfied with the image in the mirror. If you do not want to look like yourself you can visit Dr. Chugay for a total transformation into a celebrity body double.

Or perhaps you can choose from other services at his one stop shop for body dissatisfaction. How about a new chest implant for the man in your life? Not enough? Dr. Chugay recommends penile augmentation.

Since Dr. Chugay trained in Rio de Janeiro, here is a theme song for him. (with apologies to the Album: Dante’s Inferno)

When my tongue

When my tongue pains me I go to Rio

De Janeiro

My-oh-me-oh

I go wild and then I have to do the Chugay

darn the solid

Now I’m person of superb pain.

Is Your Life on Hold until you Diet?

I lived with the doctrine of waiting for life until I was the right size. Every day I said to myself, when I lose weight I’m going to.   Here’s my list of 10 things I thought I couldn’t do until I lost the weight:

• Take Dancing classes
• Wear sexy clothes
• Stand up for myself
• Tell off my principal,  Ron Tuff
• Take time for me
• Stop being a doormat for everyone else
• Let Cyndi, my cousin, really have it
• Finally go on a honeymoon with Joe
• Wear make-up and look pretty
• Follow up my  life’s ambition and become a chef

Guess what?  I found the person I wanted before I hit the magical number on the scale. Watching the changes in my life was like seeing  dominoes fall on top of one another. One thing led to another. Dieting became part of the process of paying attention to my needs and making me a priority.

There’s a new book coming out this fall, called, 101 Things to Do Before You Diet: Because Looking Great Isn’t Only About the Weight. Mimi Spencer, fashion writer for the Daily Mail suggests we look our best right now and buy the dress we love instead of waiting.

She advises, “Stop measuring yourself against a warped societal norm, and start enjoying what you’ve got.”

I hope you enjoy the philosophy and the book. Check out her column for fashion suggestions too.

Eating Out Low Carb

“A diet is when you watch what you eat and wish you could eat what you watch.”
— Hermione Gingold

Do you have to give up low carb when you leave the house?

Not necessarily.  Try these tricks for restaurants and eating at relatives and friends.

1) Ask for the simplest method of cooking. Tell everyone that plain grilled food is what the doctor ordered.  Fish is delicious simply grilled.  You may prefer your meats this way too. This eliminates the problems of sauces, coatings and marinades.

2) Plain steamed vegetables and salads with the dressings on the side work well.

3) You may have to ask the restaurant to prepare a special dinner for you. Phoning ahead eliminates any embarrassment.

4) Always check what the price will be when making a special order at a restaurant. Once, I ordered grilled fish and a salad and was overcharged for two full meals.

5) It becomes a little trickier for large catered events from work and life cycle parties from friends and relatives.  Here are some options:

• ask the organizer, or hostess to order food for you
• if this becomes an issue, offer to phone the caterer yourself

6) Follow the habit of Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas, who lost 110 pounds after he was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2003. Mr. Huckabee packed cooler with foods he could eat and carried it to the fancy luncheons.

7) I usually find that most places and people are co-operative. Sometimes, I meet a brick wall. If offering to bring my own food still does not work, I suggest I join everyone for coffee and eat at home.

Another option is to check the online for friendlier options.  A few years ago, a number of restaurants had special low carb options but the trend now is to emphasize price. If you like fast food, check out about low carb diets for specific information.

9) You may be lucky enough to find a restaurant that tweaks the menu.

• Ruby Tuesday offers a Smart Eating menu, included calories, fat, net carb, and fibre information.
• At Chilis.com you can download nutritional information but most of their foods were way too high in fat, calories and carbs for me.
• Denny’sdid provide a  Carb-Watch menu supplement but now there is only online nutritional information to download.

10) Finally there are internet guides for eating low carb. However, the economy has not been kind to restaurants and it is wise to check first if the descriptions online match what is being served.

Fat: Blame Officer Krupke!

Dieting – Let’s Play The Blame Game

Remember the great lyrics from West Side Story by Stephen Sondheim by the delinquents explaining their plight to Office Krupke?

Everyone wants to blame someone else for rising obesity rates. More than one-third of adults — 72 million people — and 16 percent of children in America are obese.

Here’s some choices.

Blame Big Government

• The nation’s farm subsidies farmers to overproduce corn, soybeans and other commodities leading to  in cheap, unhealthy foods using cheap processed food, oils and sweeteners that are calorie-rich and nutrition-poor.

Blame Big Food

• According to David Kessler, author of “The End of Overeating”, manufacturers deliberately load foods high in fat, salt and sugar to alter the brain’s chemistry and this compels people to overeat.

Blame Restaurants Big and Small

• The Centre for Science in the Public Interests condemns huge portion sizes that entice diners to pig out. Because of lawsuits pending against fast food restaurants because of these super size meals, the U.S. House of Representatives twice introduced bills to outlaw fast-food lawsuits. No legislation has yet passed both houses of Congress. Similar measures have been introduced in about 20 states.

Blame the Parents

• How easy to blame Mom and Dad. In England, Social workers are placing obese children on the Child Protection Register (previously, suspected neglect, or physical or sexual abuse). In extreme cases children have been placed in foster care.

Blame the TV

• Let’s face it. A lot more junk food is mass media marketed to us and our children than healthy alternatives. People buy the food that is highly advertised. Advertising works or they would not continue it.

Blame the Economy

• Cheap food is fattening. With the lousy economy, people can’t afford healthy food. It’s much cheaper to have sugar-packed, no-nutrient colas than milk.

Blame Aliens or the Fat Bug

• airborne “adenovirus” germ could be causing the fat plague
• inflammatory protein may be responsible for obesity-linked diseases
• female sex hormone might be the problem
• tributyltin present in some boat paints, and also used for preserving woods and textiles, and as a pesticide, might be responsible for obesity
• a molecule, called IKKß/NF-κB, in the brain pathway is responsible for obesity

Blame the Consumer

• The argument is that people have choices and that fat people have made poor choices. If they made better choices there would be no obesity.

Does blaming help?

What difference does it make whose fault it is?

Maybe the solution is to aware of the problems and take responsibility of our own eating.

Are You Game to Diet?

Why Should the Scale Have all the Fun?

There’s a new book out called, The Game On Diet, developed by Az Ferguson to help “Grey’s Anatomy” writer Krista Vernoff lose her post-baby weight.  The way the game is played is that points are earned for your team if you follow the behaviour for dieting (such as exercising) rather than for weight loss.

Points are earned for:

• eating five small meals a day
• drinking three liters of water a day
• sleeping for at least seven hours, exercising for twenty minutes
• changing one other, seemingly unrelated habit

People are much more motivated to make the changes to lose weight when their lives are not dominated by a scale.  The interesting part of this game is that everyone can play. Just as there are handicaps in golf, participants could have different point allocations for following a gluten free diet or just living a healthier lifestyle. Even children could play and learn to eat vegetables instead of candy.

The question is: Isn’t dieting already a game? Like all games, diets (even when they define themselves as NOT A DIET) have rules and sub-rules about what can be eaten, when it can be eaten and the value of the food (calories, points, Fat or Carb count) and following these rules define the winner.  Like any game, dieters:

• Follow rules
• Have a defined outcome (weight)
• Have extra value with that outcome (look sexy)
• Are involved in playing the game (even if they do not follow the rules)
• Have penalties for not following the rules

The greatest frustration for most dieters is that the scale seems to win all the time even if they do lose weight.

There are numerous serious video games using RPG (role player game) to encourage people to try on new behaviours as part of a game.  Clive Thompson sees dieters who win at the points games do so because they see it as game.  Just as in a RPG, players roll a virtual character managing inventory and resources to achieve a goal.  Great game players hack the eating system with plates of tasty red peppers and cherry tomatoes.

Some people use their cell phones to make dieting a game.

• Teen girls supported each other by texting helpful messages
• Some friends use their cell phone to take pictures of your food (or exercise) as picture journals
• Serious gamers text messaging DIET1 with the restaurant’s name and menu item to receive the calorie, fat, carb, and protein content
• Techies love the cell phone apps to keep their daily totals

Since dieting is already a game, wouldn’t it be a great idea to make it some fun. Why let the scale have all the pleasure?  The Game on Diet sounds like a fantastic plan.