Soup Recipe

Boredom is a quick killer of healthy eating habits, but it's hard to find new flavors that tickle the taste buds, remain healthy, and are still easy and convenient.  This is one I found on the internet and did not change enough to call my own, but it was so delicious, I had to share it immediately!

French Chicken Stew

• 4 cups sliced button mushrooms
• 1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 medium carrots, thinly diagonally sliced (or one bag frozen crinkle cut carrots)
• 2 medium red potatoes, cut in 1-inch pieces 
• 1/2 cup fresh green beans, cut in 1-inch pieces (or half a bag of frozen green beans)
• 1/2 cup pitted ripe olives, halved
• 2 cups water
• 2 chicken boullion cubes
• 2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca (Minute Tapioca)
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 lb skinless, boneless chicken breast cut into chunks
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 2 1/2 cups tomato pasta sauce

Directions:
(optional for softer potatoes) Boil potatoes for 10 minutes before cutting into cubes or microwave for 2 minutes.

In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker, combine all ingredients with chicken on top. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 8 - 10 hours. 

If divided into about 10 1-cup servings: approx 200 calories

If you're not counting calories, it makes a fantastic comfort food with a grilled cheese sandwich and has a lot of delicious vegetables!

More on the medical industry.

Open letter to all doctors everywhere

Dear Doctors everywhere,

First off, I'd like to remind you that everyone is different.  I'd like to ask you not to judge a book by its cover.  If you saw my test results and then came in to talk to a skinny person, the conversation would have gone much differently.  You would have asked questions and let that person be a part of their health plan.

I have never been afforded such dignity.

It is my feeling that at least half of what comes out of your mouth should be questions.  The other half can be advice, but the questions should come first and if the advice discounts the questions, then let me remind you to always listen to your patient's answers!

Do not assume. It makes an ass of only YOU in this situation.

Also, the BMI has been discounted as an acceptable gauge to determine healthy weight in adults by nearly the entire scientific community EXCEPT DOCTORS.  Maybe you should go back to test results.  I'll grant you that my weight is a problem, but my friend is barely above the anorexic looking weight she used to be and was told she is obese at her last appointment.  She looks good, she's healthy, and she's super active.  My brother in law runs every day, looks super healthy, and everyone assumes he is, but his BAD Cholesterol is through the roof AND his GOOD Cholesterol is extremely low.  His doctor does not make him feel ashamed.

Consider that for a moment.  Are you shaming your patients?  Then stop it.

Now I'd like to point out that if an anorexic or bulimic person walks into your office and says he/she is depressed, you are likely to suggest therapy and sympathetic intervention.  You don't just say "Eat more" or "binge less" and send them on their way, do you?  No.  It's well proven to be about mental health (control issues ARE mental health problems, people!)

So why are fat people not considered as possibly having a root cause?  No.  It's just lack of will power.  That's dismissive.  I think anorexic people lack will power to look in the mirror and be okay with themselves.  (Whether I really believe that or not is beside the point.  You see where I'm going with that argument, right?)

And when I mentioned in my appointment that I lost a bunch of weight, got depressed, and gave up, why did that not alarm you?  Frankly, it should have.  Frankly, I've considered suicide at least a dozen times in the last two years.  Frankly, I don't know how to ask for help because when I do, people tell me losing weight is the answer.

But it wasn't the fucking answer.

Sincerely,
Patients everywhere (especially the overweight, chubby, fat, and obese ones)

Reboot 2014

Why wait until New Year's?  The holidays will be rough, but this isn't about weight loss or anything.  I'm here reminding myself not to lose control, though.  It's a problem.

Doctors
I'm not afraid of doctors.  I simply hate them.  I find them arrogant, narrow-minded, and judgmental.

Case in point.  Bio screen turned up blood pressure that was actually high enough to scare me.  Trust me.  That is beyond scary for a normal person.  So, made an appointment with a doctor.  We had to hunt down a new doctor because I didn't like that last one I had, the one before that, or, actually, any doctor I've ever had (except the OB/GYN my sister recommended who turned out to be awesome, but who cannot, of course, help with this problem.)

So, I go to this new guy.  Blood pressure was down a little from last week.  Good.  Not quite so scary.  Still securely in HYPERTENSION ALERT! category, not just "concerning".  He was nice.  Really nice.  Great guy.  Seemed smart.

He looked at me, made a judgement, and then began talking arrogantly as though he knew my life, and then when I tried to explain things, he narrow-mindedly pursued his judgement.  He started by saying "If you add salt to your food..."  Okay, a good doctor starts with "Do you add salt to your food?" Because the answer is no.  I have pretty much NEVER added salt to my food. So I tell him this and then say I look for low sodium soups and when I make homemade soup, I buy low sodium broths.  I say I realize they still have a lot, but I don't have them often.  Then he says "well, those soups have a lot of salt.  So do lunch meats.  Pretty much any processed foods."  Again, did he ask what I eat regularly?  Did he really acknowledge that I already knew they had sodium, but I don't eat them often?  No.  So he talks about salts in processed foods, none of which I eat, btw.  I have lunch meat, like, once a month and soups maybe once a week in the winter.

I could go on, but basically the whole appointment went this way.  He didn't ask me ANY questions.  he just talked AT me.  I had to interrupt him to tell him I had lost a bunch of weight, but I had surgery, got depressed, gave up, and gained back most of the weight.  He said "because fad diets don't really work.  You just gain it back."  Well, y'all here know it wasn't a FAD diet! Right!?  It was so insulting!

So he put me on a water pill to flush my system of water and sodium hoping that will help.  Well, I do hope it helps because it's cheap and it's not something your body adjusts to so that you can never get off of it like other blood pressure meds, but a part of me hopes it doesn't work so I can say "See?  It wasn't just about the sodium!"

I asked him about side effects and he mentioned peeing a lot and such so I specifically asked about potassium because that's usually a concern with water pills and he said "it's a good idea, but this one's pretty mild" so I'm thinking okay.  We'll see.

But I just know, KNOW that when I go in next week that he's going to be all proud of the weight I've lost.  Notice he did not mention that side effect, but it will happen.  I just wonder if he's going to try to spin it like "doesn't that make you want to lose more?"

Oh yeah, and he never asked me if I get any exercise.  He just lectured me about how getting out for even 10 minutes at a time if that's all I can handle will do a world of good.

I wonder if he walks 1 1/2 - 2 miles every day.  We walk a minimum of 30 minutes if we don't know the distance we're going (we do the mile and a half in about 30 minutes at home) which sometimes includes hills or terrain that slows us down.  Either way, it was rather narrow-minded of him to assume 10 minutes might be hard for me, don't you think?

Refocusing my efforts
Btw, the rest of my test results are on the high to mid level green HEALTHY so kiss my grits, everyone who thinks fat automatically equals UNhealthy!!  Based on weight alone, they say I'm a risk.  This is my frustration.  It's the things like cholesterol and blood glucose that should be putting you in "high risk", right?  Not the weight ALONE?  Okay, the BP, but they referenced the weight first in my report.

As I said, I'm not really going for weight loss, though, but once in a while I've been letting myself lose it a little.  I'm going to slow down and enjoy.  I want to feel better so I can do more, but I have this foot injury that's been slowing me down a lot.  It's getting better, but I am reminded of my age by how long it is taking.

I'm recording all my stuffs on SparkPeople.  It didn't work for me before, but I had already been doing great on my own.  I feel like maybe it will be easier to reboot with the app's assistance and I figure maybe I can record what I eat (I'm not really changing my eating habits this week.  I want a week to gauge myself.) and the sodium is low, I can stick it in his damned face.

$$$$!!!
Not to mention, I was a new patient so they wouldn't count it as preventative care?  WTF!  $105 later for him to listen to my breath sounds and insult me.  Plus come back in one week after charting my BP and taking the water pill to see how it's going.  Probably another $105.

I miss $30 co pays right now.

And if he says I have to come back in another week, I will tell him to Fuck Off and I'll leave.

Yeah, this is kind of becoming that place where I vent the difference between beauty and value, because it has been my belief that people value you if you are beautiful and in the end, even those who say they value you because of the person you are will end up relating it to beauty they perceive.

http://jazzylittledrops.tumblr.com/post/48118645174/why-doves-real-beauty-sketches-video-makes-me

I watched the Dove video, then saw a link to that and loved it because parts of it addressed things I thought.  Other parts brought up things I didn't even think about.  Love to be challenged.

I know it's easy to compliment or notice appearance before anything else.  It's surface.  It's convenient.  In some cases, a person I didn't immediately think was gorgeous will become so as I get to know them.  In other cases, of course, someone will seem attractive until they open their mouth.  What we think about someone's appearance can be affected by what we know of their personality, but there is definitely too narrow a view on what would be considered immediately attractive to begin with.

The issue not mentioned in that article is that those people met the person they described.  What if one of them had been a nasty beast?  Would her sketch have come out the way it did?  One wonders.  Anyway, read the article.  It has a link to the video in it.  Watch it.  Think beyond the initial shallow surface view...

I'm going to take a moment here to post a whole YouTube channel full of videos.  They are done by our friend and for the most part, they just go through workout poses we have seen before, but give great tips on how to do it right.

There is also a great video about dying a dress purple.  HA!

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6pgwMhTatj1FlHzmXx-G0w/videos

Desserts

Number 1
I like my treats and in the summer, I love my treats frozen.  Yeah, you can get delicious frozen treats by Weight Watchers for more than $5.  You can get some decent 100 calorie pops by Creamies for about $3.50.  Snickers makes a 100 calorie treat that, it turns out, is just too small even when I'm dieting.

Meanwhile, in the category of "that's kinda obvious" a box of Jello pudding is about $1 and makes 4 1/2 cup servings.  Well, at the dollar store, we found popsicle molds that hold about 2 ounces so one box makes 8 pops.  Yes, Jello Puddin' Pops.  Remember the days?  A serving made with skim milk is less than 100 calories and you can have all kinds of fun.  We made Cookies and Cream last week and this week I used cheesecake flavor, then crushed some graham crackers and mixed it in at the last moment to make something that turned out especially delicious.  Butterscotch is a standard fave in this house, but I also bought banana cream (I am going to try pureed bananas in it) and lemon cream to try later.

My personal tip?  Whip 400 times or for about 1-1/2 minutes instead of the 2 minutes recommended.  It thickens fast and is hard to get into the mold.  If you mix it just before that level, you can pour it like juice, then freeze.  Also, while I like the sugar free pudding for snacking, I do not like it as much frozen.  Pudding cannot be made with soy because it doesn't thicken, but if you are going to freeze them, does it matter?  So if you like pudding, but have switched to soy, this is a way to still enjoy pudding.

Number 2
Popcorn is a pretty great diet treat, but what to do when you are either bored or have a sweet tooth?  I bought a popcorn machine so that I could control exactly what went on my popcorn.  After making Holiday chocolate treats, I had leftover candy melts and came up with an idea.

Pop the popcorn without butter, salt, or anything else.  Lay out on a cookie sheet.  Melt just a few ounces of chocolate in the microwave just until smooth.  Use a fork to pick some up out of my measuring cup, then spin in small circles over the popcorn.  When it cools, you have a tasty treat with just a hint of sweet.  You can buy candy melts in many flavors including dark mint (tastes like junior mints, but way fewer calories!), milk chocolate, and eggnog (special at Christmas time).  Recently I found a bag of special flavored rasberry sherbet.  It made a really tasty popcorn treat for out last movie night.

When Your Mother Says She's Fat

I know to be careful.  I try to see myself positively every day so that my daughter doesn't intuitively figure out that I know I'm fat, I think I'm ugly, and somehow this automatically makes me stupid and unimportant.  It doesn't matter.  The reality is it's impossible not to feel that sometimes when society makes it 100% clear what the expectations are.

Great article here...

When Your Mother Says She's Fat