obesity
Why My Kids Think Ice Cream expires in 24 hours and a Spicy Pork Roast recipe I invented….beware!
For Valentine’s Day, I surprised the kids with strawberry muffins and a few little gifts. Here’s a picture: One was missing because she is in college ( and doing AWESOME I must add!!). But I’m down to three at home now. How crazy is that? I bought those flowers for myself. This is something I started doing years ago but then for some reason I just stopped doing it. That seems to be a pattern with me. Doing things that really work…and then randomly stopping. (Duly noted….I’ll be having a few conversations with myself later about this….lol) But I think it’s important to treat yourself. This is a non-food way to do that and it always brightens …
My Hiding Place
As I have been returning to the routines of life that really work for me, I am reminded once again of how important it is for me to seek God in the morning before I even start my day. This is something that seemed to fade away from me for awhile. The more weight I lost the ‘busier’ I became. No longer trapped inside a body that struggled to move, I was free! The world opened up to me. I went to new places and met new people. And soon I was no longer feeling this daily desperation that I had before. Pain no longer woke me in the night. Walking across the room was effortless. I no longer noticed every step that I took the …
Weekend Update
Welcome to the weekend! Thursday morning I woke up and made my way straight to the coffee. My routine in the morning for the past two weeks has been coffee, water, coffee, water…. I’m continuing to put lemon and lime slices in my water to make it more interesting. The other day I even bought some mint leaves in the vegetable section of the grocery store (In case, like me, you also didn’t know where they were located). I ended up over there because I was buying fresh bay leaves for a recipe. By the way did you know you’re to take OUT the bay leaves when you’re done cooking? I learned that as well So while in that section I saw mint. …
Plan for the Week
Fail to Plan or Plan to Fail! That’s the name of the game! I’ll be sharing my weekly plan with you all on Mondays to keep myself accountable and for anyone who wants to come along. My plan is what it’s always been. The same plan that helped me lose 250 pounds in the first place. Kicking sugar out of my life and breaking free from food obsession. I suggest two paths for making this happen. The first you can find here where I wrote a lengthy post about Sugar Addiction and a very simple eating plan that consists of nothing but liquid shakes every 2 hours for the first week or so. The second path is the one I am currently on. It is the …
Lent: Giving up Defeat
If you’re someone who is familiar with the season of Lent, then you know it’s the time of year many focus on sacrificing something for God. Giving something up that may get in the way of your relationship with Him. Whatever takes your focus from growing spiritually. In the past I have automatically gone straight to the standard things that most everyone decides to give up. A quick survey on the internet reveals some of these things as the top choices to try and give up during Lent: Chocolate Alcohol Cussing Soda Meat Social Media And the list goes on and on If I’m being honest, I’ve always rather envied people who give up any type of food for Lent. Because to me …
12 Pounds Down—Moving along!
I’VE LOST TWELVE POUNDS! Woo hooo… But last week got so busy with the kids and everything else that I just didn’t get a chance to come back and give you an update. Let me take a moment to update you not just on my weight loss but also on my family. I feel like I’ve been sharing with you my life here for so long now that I need to fill you in on the kids!! So many of you have become like extended family to me and I appreciate that. So consider this like the belated Christmas card where you insert that letter telling everyone what’s been going on with the children!! First–did I tell you we got a puppy…
Turn and Run! This one isn’t uplifting..
Nothing fancy but a quick update. I just don’t want to disappear and have people wonder if I can ever be consistent again with blogging. I hate blogging when things aren’t going well but on the other hand I’ve found a lot of people out there struggle with the same things so here we go. Life is hard. It wasn’t meant to be easy. But sometimes I feel as if I’ve really hit my limit. I don’t consider myself to be an especially strong person anyway emotionally so I feel at times like I’m not going to be able to get to the other side of what is happening. I even wonder lately if there even IS an “other …
Sometimes fat is bliss
I’ve been re-visiting Hillel Schwartz’ columns for Dimensions, published 1997-1999. That magazine always struck me as the budget Playboy-wannabe for fat admirers, rooted in the anti-feminism that has cramped fat activism since the early days. I can’t say that I was ever much of a fan of it, but I like Schwartz’ work on fat very much and his Never Satisfied was a revelation to me when I first read it in the early 1990s. To say the author and historian is eclectic is an understatement. I am currently reading his self-published work about caring for people when they are dying. But I regard him as a founder of Fat Studies, as someone who took fat seriously as a subject when few others did …
How to support Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement
I am publishing a book about fat activism (edited to add, it’s out now! Get it here) that I think is original and powerful. People who have read it agree so far, you can see some of their comments on the publisher’s website. The book is due out in January, aka diet season.HammerOn Press is a small affair. There is no publicity department or generous expenses allowance. It is me and another person. We need your help in getting this book out into the world. If you’ve ever felt indebted to me, now’s your chance for payback!You don’t have to have masses of time or money, you don’t need to know loads of people, small actions make a difference. Does this need to be said? …
Good citizenship and fat hate cards
In 2005 I was invited to give the keynote at NOLOSE, a great honour. I said that a storm was coming and that although fat hatred was bad enough now, it was going to get a lot worse. I was talking about and getting my head around the global obesity epidemic. This is a moral panic about fat people instigated by the World Health Organisation through its 2000 report on obesity, authored by people with interests in the weight loss industry, which, unsurprisingly became the textbook for global interventions. Where fat hate had previously been a matter for people and their health practitioners, their families and random strangers in the street, it was now enshrined in policy, a major coup for the weight loss industry. What has happened in …
Pre-Order my book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement!
My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is going to be published on 4 January 2016. I picked this date because it is the beginning of the new year weight loss season and the first day back to work for people who have to hustle for a living. I thought that this would be when readers would need something really encouraging about hope and social change at this bleak time of year.But then there is the holiday season and there are people out there who might want to get a copy for themselves or for those they love, or their enemies, or as a philanthropic gesture because they’ve seen A Muppet Christmas Carol and now understand the error of their ways. What about them? They can’t wait …
Archiving Fat Activism
My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is built on research. Some of this research involved interviewing people and some involved sifting through archival material.I went to archives to look for fat activism because there are very few books and papers available that document it so I needed to look at original source material and try and piece things together. I drifted into archival work, it wasn’t part of the original plan for the research but I just kept getting pulled further in because the things I found there were very moving and exciting to see. Where I often feel isolated in my present-day fat activism, in the archive I could clearly see myself and others as part of a much bigger movement, it …