Scary Halloween Reprise – The Evil of the Candy

Back by popular demand, and in honor of the upcoming mini-sized chocolate orgy …

Click on the audio file –> The Evil of the Candy

Wait for the audio to load, scroll down to see the words, and sing along with me….if you dare….

The Evil of the Candy

The Evil of the Candy [to the tune of “Thriller”]

It’s close to midnight and bratty kids have finished trick or treat
Under the Reeses, you see a sight makes you skip a beat
You try to sleep, but chocolate fills your senses and you want it
You start to drool as Smarties look you right between the eyes
You’re supersized

You know it’s candy, candy night
And no one’s gonna save you from the craving that will strike
Candy, candy night
You’re fighting for your waistline but you’re randy for candy, tonight
oooh….

You hear the fridge slam and realize that your husband’s under foot
He’s got a turkey sandwich but the candy looks too good
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl!
But all the while you know Thanksgiving’s creeping round the bend
It never ends

‘Cause this is candy, candy night
You haven’t got a chance against the thing with forty calories
Candy, candy night
You’re fighting to avoid another handy, candy tonight

Twizzlers are calling, if you’re in the dark then it might not count
There’s always jogging tomorrow, but with achy joints?
This is the end of your points
ooh

They’re out to get you, tomorrow all this junk will be on sale
They will possess you, you’ll never change that number on your scale
Now is the time to slowly back away and have a carrot
But all the while, you’ll play that sweet refrain upon your brain,
Hope you don’t gain

Because it’s candy, candy night
And this can set you back more than cake, cookie or pie
Candy, Candy night
Better hold on tight and have a handy, dandy, piece of candy here tonight

Candy, candy night
And this can set you back more than cake, cookie or pie
Candy, Candy night
So better hold on tight and have a handy, candy ow!

[spoken]

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Fatties slink in search of food
To have their secret interlude

And whosoever shall be found
Shoveling those morsels down
Must stand and face the scale of doom
When e’er they enter Weight Watchers room

 [Freestyle fatties interlude sung here]

The chocolate smell is in the air
The empty wrappers everywhere
And over there, the mirror looms
You cast a glance and see your doom

And though you fight to stay on plan
Your modus operandi
You poor mere mortal can’t resist
The evil of the candy

 [Laughter…….]

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Wow… long summer –trudged through many months of Weight Watchers. Signed up for a couch to 5K program, though I haven’t gotten to the part where I get off the couch just yet. Last week, just as I had resigned myself to a lifetime very gradual, plateau-ish weight loss, my email in-box lit up with the likes of Dr. Oz and his Green Coffee Extract. What was I thinking, relying on a mere sensible diet and exercise regimen?   The Green Coffee Extract pill is a miracle pill that burns fat without diet and exercise.

The science behind it (there is always the science) involves a chemical compound known as chlorogenic acid, which miraculously boosts your metabolism and inhibits the release of glucose. I would bet my raspberry ketones that this is going to be the golden ticket I’ve been waiting for.This is not your mother’s coffee (Maxwell House), and there is no Grande, Venti, Trente Starbuck’s hoop-dee-doo. You take a pill, you eat diminutive portions, and voila!

I would never have heard of this because it went straight to my spam folder. But my blackberry does not discriminate and serves up everything with equal measure. And because I do check my spam email daily – because there are things in there that I actually need – like the Genie Bra (yes I do wear them)—I discovered that Dr. Oz had been sending me daily notices about his newfound miracle.

So, I Iove Dr. Oz. Who doesn’t? He’s non-threatening, wearing his scrubs on TV, with his healthy-personed skin and his strong jaw. I pretend his first name is “Wizard Of” and not “Mehmet.”

I pretend he was separated at birth from my other secret crush…Spock.

If this miracle pill is good enough for Dr. Oz, what could be the risk? The last over-the-counter miracle I tried was Dexatrim, the 1980s formulation. It gave me the shakes and made my mouth taste like aluminum foil. I had to constantly eat bagels so I wouldn’t taste like a soda can and so that my heart would stop palpitating. Poor Dexatrim was no match for my eating prowess. But this? It’s natural! It’s coffee, my favorite substance of all.

I was all set to invest in this latest solution until I decided to go past the first page of google links and found the dubious headline “Dr. Oz Fights to Get His Face Off ‘Miracle’ Weight-Loss Pill Ads.”

Drats! Damn Google. Damn internet. It’s back to the old grind. The roasted, full-bodied, half-caf grind. Guess I have to get off the couch and do the hard work while I’m waiting for the next miracle.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue

And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Game Over, Time to Dance

 

At work we have been using “Lean Startup” practices for building new businesses. No kidding. Even at work, I’m haunted by “lean” initiatives. In Lean Startup, you articulate the assumptions you have about your customers and growth opportunities and then devise experiments to test these assumptions. The key principle is that, rather than build a big, honkin’ whose-a-what-sy and then discover no one wants it, you start small, testing each assumption with real customers, and when things don’t go as you assumed, you pivot—you move in a different direction.

So, here’s the moral of the story. The “What’s the Point” game was a big, fat failure. Everyone hated it, except maybe a couple of people who thought it was maybe, kinda cute.   I imagined it would be hysterically funny and wildly popular, and that it would catapult me to fame. Who knew? I might win an award at the annual “Game Developer’s Conference.”  Thank goodness I canceled the billboard ad.

I am going to “pivot” and end the game.  I rather like to think of it as a pirouette instead of a pivot, both because I love to dance and because I love those damn cookies (3 points for 2 of them, for those of you still playing).

And for the one person who had the heart to play last week (who, in full disclosure, is a close relative, a lifetime member, and a math genius), I calculated the door of that mini-bar fridge to be a whopping 54 points:  16 for the hard liquor (4 x 4 points); 12 for the 2 candy bars; 3 for the granola bar; 9 for the peanuts;  and 14 for the 16-ounce bottle of sorry-ass cheap hotel white wine.

Three intrepid souls played the game, and I am awarding all three of you the special prize I was reserving for week 10.  Are you ready for this? You each win a customized, personalized parody song, created by me, for whatever person or occasion you choose. Congratulations!

And for the rest of you, thank you for your honesty, your kindness, and your reading of the blog!

Game over. Let’s all dance!

 

E Brother is Watching You

The saga of the hotel mini-bar and this week’s “What’s the Point?”

I first encountered the electronic-eye-equipped hotel mini-bar in a hotel in Minneapolis back in 2000. I had just settled into my solo hotel room, exhausted from a convoluted, 10-hour travel excursion, which began with me boarding a propeller plane back in Westchester County, NY, then “changing my mind” after the door was closed and getting off the plane to wait at the airport for a jet.

At first I thought it was a mirage, but no, there was a cute fridge, right there in my private hotel room for my enjoyment, stocked with candy, nuts, sodas, and what-have-you. I decided to allow myself one diet soda and one granola bar. But that didn’t stop me from picking up each and every item and reading the nutrition label, in turn. That’s what I like to do—read labels and compare calorie counts and fat grams. It’s like my lady porn – I’m just looking, not actually eating any of it.

When I checked out of the hotel the next day, I was shocked to see an extra $70 on my bill, with an itemized list of the likes of M&Ms, Pringles, Peanuts, $10,000 bar, and vodka.

“Oh, no.  I did NOT eat and drink that!” I told the desk clerk.  What did he think I was? A pig?

“Did you remove these items from the refrigerator?” he asked, suspiciously.

“Oh….” It dawned on me.  “I was just reading the labels. I looked at everything but I put it all back! I didn’t actually eat any of it. All I had was a Diet Coke and a Healthy Valley Granola Bar. You can even go check my room. It’s all there.”

The desk clerk figured out that it was pathetic, yet true, and he removed all but the two legitimate mini-bar charges. I couldn’t believe that the refrigerator had an actual electronic eye that tracked my movement.  I’m just happy it couldn’t read my mind.

And in that vein, below is the mini- bar door from the Toronto Airport Hilton.  I won’t ask you to guess the price of everything on that door – it’s astronomical – but can you guess the points? What if you ate and everything on that door? What astronomical points value would you consume? Give it a try.  Answer posted on Sunday at 8 AM EST.

Fifty Shades of Weigh

It’s the dirty little secret among women.  There is nothing more painful than stepping on that scale. And yet, when you see a lower number than you thought, it’s so pleasurable. The joy of the slow descent of poundage tickles the senses, awakens your fantasies, and makes you contemplate things you never thought you would consider—like wearing a halter dress.

But it’s oh so unpredictable. One week you’ve had 23 salads, no chocolate, and nary a bite of pizza and you’re up .6 pounds. The next week, you’ve chased a steak dinner with pecan pie and whipped cream and you’re down 2. You begin to wish you could attend your weekly weigh-in dressed in nothing more than panties.  Or blindfolded, so you can’t see your shame.

What shade of weight-crazy are you?  Do you hop from scale to scale to find the “good” one?  Do you secretly hang your foot off the side to lighten up? Do you hold on to a desk, a wall, or a chair to defy gravity? I’m sure you remove all your jewelry and dry your hair. And you remove your eyeglasses, and your keys, and your earrings.  What else? Of course you empty out in the loo. At least twice. Do you wear your thinnest tank top and the barely there slacks?  You’ve managed to pull all the tricks and now what? You are shackled to this weigh-in ritual, week after week after week.

You’re an intelligent, educated, self-respecting human being.  So, why are you chained to the number on the scale?  Get over it. Focus on what matters. Stop flogging yourself. Unless of course you’re into that.

Note: In case you are not aware, Fifty Shades of Grey is a New York Times #1 bestselling erotic novel by E. L. James. Spoiler Alert: The hottest part of the fantasy in the book is this: the heroine is thin and never hungry, and the guy is constantly making her pancakes and eggs and pushing her to eat, eat, eat.  It’s enough to make a gal pant.

“What’s the Point?” – Round 2 Results!

 

Are you ready for this one?   1/2 cup of unsweetened almond milk is a creamy, satisfying 0 points!

That’s a cup of Kashi Good Friends cereal – 4 points; banana – 0 points (unless you’ve had 3 of them already today, in which case you need to start counting them and/or check yourself into the zoo); tea – 0 points.   So, the grand total is 4 POINTS!!

Thanks for playing!  We have 2 contestants running neck-and-neck.

What’s the Point? Round 2

Okay, I will give a hint for this one – that liquid in the measuring cup is unsweetened almond milk, one of the helpful hints from our friend Pixie (whom some of you may recall from “This Cow Had Quite a Laugh.” )  The box behind the cereal box is Chinese tea, a lovely gift given to us by 2 Chinese high school students who have stayed with us this week and performed with their school choir and orchestra at the high school.

A warning about these high fiber cereals:  ease into them.

REMINDER: RULES OF THE GAME:

Guess the Weight Watchers® PointsPlus®  value of the food in the picture.  Results posted Sunday at 8 AM EST.  The winner after 10 rounds gets an amazing prize.  Get to it!

“What’s The Point?” Results – Round 1

 

Points Solution – Round 1

Total Points:  9

Here’s one thing  – that was grape juice, not wine! And it was only 2 ounces, which is 1 point (not a bad bargain, eh?).  I added a point for the olive oil that Jack Sprat cooked the chicken in. That was only half an ounce of challah.  I keep the food scale right near the bread basket so as to encourage myself to  weigh fresh bread before shoveling it in (I’m an inveterate bread shoveler).

Here’s how it stacked up for me:

1/2 cup white rice, cooked   3

1 chicken breast, grilled   3

Olive oil                1

1/2 oz challah     1

1/4 c grape juice 1

Green salad         0

Steamed spinach 0

Stay tuned for the next round of “What’s the Point?” this Thursday.  Let me know what you think of the game.

What’s the Point?

Yes, there’s a new look to the blog and more surprises to come.  To celebrate, I am launching a weekly game, called  “What’s the Point?” Here’s how it works: I post a picture of food on Thursday, and you have until Sunday 8 AM to guess the points value. Each week there is a winner!  After 10 weeks there will be a grand prize (and it’s a good one). All prizes, although valuable, will be zero points.

Okay, here’s the picture.  I call it “Virtuous Friday Night.”  By the way, that amazing spread was prepared by my amazing husband.  I’ll give you a hint, since this is the first week — that is a piece of Challah on the plate. A virtuous serving that I weighed on the scale before placing on the plate. (And yes, I went back for more Challah. I may be virtuous but I’m not inhuman.)

 

[Reminder – this is NOT official Weight Watchers® calculations – it’s Ivy calculations.]

 

 

What to Wear to Macon

I am wondering what to wear to Macon, Georgia.  I am going to something called a “Macon Whoopee” to accept an award for this blog (I know, right? See below…), and it poses a bit of a challenge.   Having now announced to the world that I have been on Weight Watchers™ for close to a year, I am expected  to look like an “after” picture. Sorry world, I am decidedly not yet the “after” picture. Though I am looking a lot better than my “before” pictures (which I have carefully destroyed), I am still the size—even larger than the size—of  many other peoples’ “befores.”

Don’t ask me to share my numbers either. The common notation for online weight sharers is OW/CW/GW, where OW is their Original Weight, CW is their Current Weight, and GW is their Goal Weight. It might look like this:  175/150/137.  Mine reads like this: NOYB/NOYB/NOYB, where NOYB is None of Your Business.  My NOYB policy makes me ineligible to enter Dr. Oz’s Transformation Nation contest, unable to be the cover story of a ladies’ magazine, and an untrustworthy commenter on weight loss message boards.

Still, I am reveling in the fact that my “Little” Black Dress now fits me like a nightgown. (“Whoopee!”)  I have been walking around, looking like a Peanuts character, with baggy shirts, pants, and undies.  So what will I wear? My usual black on black, with groovy low-heeled black boots? Decidedly not Georgian. And not a good choice for 90-degree weather.  Do I buy something in a pass-through size?

I know the Georgia look, having faithfully watched every episode of “Say Yes to the Dress, Atlanta” on TLC.  The ladies are all so feminine and deliciously sassy, and they know how to rock the lipstick and pumps. When I took my child on a college visit to the Savannah College of Art and Design, I developed a lady crush on the admissions counselor. She wore a crisp white blouse, a high-waisted pencil skirt and red high heels.  That’s the kind of look I’d go for. I’d change the crisp blouse into an evening chemise, wear pearls, carry a cardigan, and I’d be set.  The problem is, I can’t walk in heels. Never could. Even at my wedding, I wore 1-inch granny pumps.  My shape doesn’t do well in a pencil skirt either. A pre-school jumbo crayon, maybe.  And my hair?  More  Roseanne Roseannadanna than Reese Witherspoon.

Oh, wait. I think I have an appropriate dress ensemble from when I was “on my way up” to the highest NOYB weight, and I may be back down around there. Dress taken care of. Next thought: what will they be serving at the banquet?!  I can’t wait. Whoopee!

Here is the link to the announcement of the finalists: http://www.columnists.com/?p=14210

Jack Sprat Could Eat No Fat, His Wife Could Eat No Lean – or My Husband is an Ectomorph

My husband is an ectomorph, one of those naturally slender, willowy people who glide through life without their thighs rubbing together. If we met as children, I would have had to stack him up with two other ectomorphs to play see-saw.  He weighed less in college than I weighed in 6^th grade. He’s shaped like a board of matzo. I am an Easter Egg.  Even if I perpendicularize myself–that is, stand sideways while he is front on–I am still wider than he is.  It’s not only that he doesn’t gain weight when he eats.  He just doesn’t love to eat.  If he’s busy, or tired, or a bit distracted, he FORGETS TO EAT.  Who forgets to eat?  Not me. Ever.

At no time are our differences more prominent than when we are traveling.  This week, we traveled Southern California.  As we were traveling during the Jewish holiday of Passover where we could not eat food with leavening, our choices were already limited. And, as we were scheduled to arrive on Easter Sunday, I was in sheer panic that I would starve to death by Monday.

“I’m packing a steamer trunk of Kosher-for-Passover Matzo and Chocolate,” I announced.

“Don’t bother. We’ll bring a few Matzos and get stuff there,” he said.

“A few matzos? What will I eat on the plane? What if everything is closed?  What if no one in California carries matzo? We will be there for 5 DAYS!”

We arrived at the airport and got through security in enough time for me to visit the airport market and stuff my carry-on with hard-boiled eggs, fruit, and nuts.  As soon as the plane landed at noon, I made a discreet call to the Whole Foods of La Jolla, California and learned that they were open until 10 PM that night. Now, all I had worry about was whether the Whole Foods person I spoke with knew what she was talking about, and whether hubby would get so wrapped up in the beauty of sunny Southern California that he would choose to drift around on some stupid beach and lose interest in food.

Hubby’s first words when we got the rental car were “Let’s explore the beach.” He quickly added, “And we can find some lunch in town before checking into the hotel.”  Whew.

I discovered that, indeed, there are fruits and vegetables and proteins in Southern California. I discovered that supermarkets, Trader Joe’s and Peet’s Coffee were open on Easter Sunday, and that there were half-price Passover snacks at Ralph’s. Lo and behold, I did not starve. In fact, I did so much “non-starving” that it took miles and miles of walking to “pass over” any weight gain.  Glad to be home again.

The My-Father’s-in-the-Hospital Diet

Yes, I am still in Weight Watchers. Yes, I am still writing down what I eat, weighing cranberry scone fragments, doing mental math on servings of salmon. I am still thinking about exercising and carrying my sneakers to work with me—just in case the urge strikes me to unstick my butt from the office chair and move.  So what happened?

Five weeks ago my dad went into the hospital for a little something that evolved into a bigger something, which became open heart surgery, intensive care, cardiac rehab, and now, at-home recuperation. All of a sudden, my typical boring life became out of the ordinary. Everything was thrown off balance, life as I knew it faded away, and I had a deep, intense, longing for chocolate. Add to this stew of stress the fact that I spent the whole time with my mom, my four siblings,  assorted sib-in-laws, nieces, nephews, and children, and it was quite the recipe for emo eating. In the great law of physics, where each action has an equal and opposite reaction, I found myself craving everything that the patient was forbidden to eat – which in this case was carbs, salt, sugar, and “bad” fat.

We were taking turns staying in a hotel in New York City to be near Dad. The hotel had a “continental breakfast,” that is a breakfast from the continent of Carboloadia. As starchy, white, and processed as it all was, it was, nevertheless “free” and “included” in the price of the room.  Although there were bananas, apples, and oranges, most of them found their way into my mom’s handbag and up to our hotel room.  And then, I didn’t want to eat them in case she was saving them for herself.  (She didn’t want to eat them because she was saving them for me.) There were the most Un-New-York bagels on the island of Manhattan.  There were hard-boiled eggs, brown tinted (possibly to match the décor of the hotel) swimming in a slow-cooker.  There was cold cereal in large bins, and foam plates for everything. More than once, I chased down my raisin bran with cold pancakes and breakfast syrup .  I drank Sanka.  Ah yes, it was all so continental.

The hospital cafeteria offered sensible lunch options and daily fresh baked cookies (I didn’t have them) as well as freshly baked rolls (I had them). We ate dinners out every night, always at 8:00 PM or later.  My sisters noted that “I was doing well.”  When you have three sisters, no food you eat goes unnoticed. One night I had an orgasmic taste of the best tiramisu I’ve ever had, which followed a meal of pignoli-encrusted Chilean sea bass over wilted spinach. On three nights, I drank wine.

Between my iPad, laptop, smart phone, and note pad, I had plenty of opportunities to track what I ate. And I did, after a fashion.   I will say that I did a ton of city walking, which felt great. I even had my  Weight Watcher’s pedometer, and I discovered that simply by keeping it in my handbag vs. on my waistband, it registered a lot of extra steps thanks to all that extra shaking (am I the only one who will even cheat the pedometer?)

There is nothing more important in this world than the health of your loved ones, and nothing more stressful than having that health endangered. But thankfully, Dad’s on the mend, and somehow, I managed to lose 1.4 pounds!  Glad to be back.

 

Backside

Getting a head start on swimsuit season. By popular demand… another song….. Click on the audio (underlined) here ->

Backside – Ivy Eisenberg

BACKSIDE

 (to the tune of “Landslide”)

Put on these jeans I finally found
The front looked awesome, then I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the three way mirror
Well my backside looked too round

Oh, mirror on the wall
What is fat
Can the woman within my heart rise above that
Can I sail through the changes of midlife lumps
Can I handle the reasons for my spreading rump
Uh oh

Well I’ve been afraid of leggings but I hear they’re back in style
But time makes you chunky
It’s hard to look funky
I’ll be round for awhile

[instrumental]

Well I’ve been afraid of thong-style panties
Dimpled as I am
I’m built like a sumo
My ass fills the room, o
Like two Virginia hams

So, I’ll buy some sweats in slimming brown
I’ll jog 10 miles to lose a pound
And if I see my reflection in the three way mirror
Will my backside still look round

And  now I see my reflection in the three way mirror
Yes my backside still looks round
Yes my backside still looks round

Bitten by the Weight-Loss Bug

My 2012 weight loss got a great kick-start, thanks to a head cold that appeared on January 2 and conveniently attacked my intestines for a couple of days.   I couldn’t have planned it better.  I did have a fever for two days and some distressing belly cramps – just enough to kill my appetite for a good 5 days and send me sashaying into the Weight Watcher’s meeting a number of pounds lighter. After those 5 days, I was starting to believe that a) I will always have a dull headache – bleccch…BUT that b) I will forever have a diminished appetite – hooray!

It was a joy to feed the kids – I couldn’t smell the french fries. It was a joy to go to work—I didn’t start popping up like a gopher and begin rooting around for lunch at 11:20 in the morning. I was too sick to do housework or paperwork, so I was ordered by my family to go to bed and watch the wedding shows on TLC.  By the 7^th day, this past Monday, I really thought that I could live like this forever. My fever was gone and, although it felt like there was a chipmunk running around in my midsection, I was otherwise feeling okay.  I started dreaming about how quickly I would melt down a few sizes and need to buy smaller and smaller clothes.  I rehearsed my victory speech: “Oh, yes, I’ve been working at it. I kicked it up a notch this January. No, I didn’t do a lick of exercise. The weight just fell off….”  I would be the miracle story (results not typical) on the front cover of Weight Watcher’s magazine, with a new haircut and makeup, and a maroon wrap dress to show off my whittled waist. I valiantly survived Tuesday’s all-day offsite work meeting, with its non-stop sumptuous buffet of conference center culinary wonders.

Then on Tuesday evening—damnit—I began to feel like myself again. My intestinal cramps were gone, my appetite came back, and my nostrils started flaring in delight at the Chinese food we brought in for dinner.  I stopped dreaming about weight melting off and instead began contemplating that I might need to double up on my intake to make up for lost time. I’m fully recovered and back to the battlefield, hungry as a horse, lazy as a cat, and wily as a coyote.

2012 More or Less

When you ring in the New Year with unsweetened iced tea, you are up before 10 AM on January 1, racing to get a head start on filling up that clean slate with new beginnings.   I hope to connect with more people this year, and I hope that you all “see less of me.”   Here’s what else I hope for:

Write more         Eat less

Laugh more        Worry less

Walk more          Blob less

Sleep more         Whine less

Hug more            Sneer less

Love more          Hate less

 

What about you?

2011 in review – Thank you all for helping the launch!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 22 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

O’ Oily Night

This post is a week later than I had hoped.  I have been in a food coma, having survived seven of the eight days of Chanukah, which ends at sundown tomorrow night. Forget the holiday dessert swap, the candy canes, the champagne.  The biggest diet wrecker this time of year is the “minor” Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

The Christian household may be adorned with luscious green wreaths and holiday icicle lights.  At Chanukah time, the Jewish household has a curl of oniony smoke emanating from the chimney.

The holiday celebrates that a band of fighters called the Maccabees, sturdy men—all of whom were doubtless too short for their weight—defeated a large Syrian army to reclaim the Jewish Temple. In the temple, they found a jug of oil, with enough fuel to light the ritual lamp for one day. But miracle of miracles, the oil lasted eight days, and this without Calphalon non-stick pans.  For this reason, Chanukah is also called the Festival of Lights.  Note that it is not, under any circumstances, to be considered the Festival of “Lite.”

To celebrate the miracle of survival, we eat everything fried in oil.  The most common food we eat is called “latkes,” which is Yiddish for “28-point-globs-of-fried, grated-potatoes-and-onions-that-make-your-hair-smell-like-Church’s-Fried-Chicken.” Ha, ha, ha, it’s not a joke. Eight latkes are 28 points. That’s a lot of pilates.

There are ways to make the latkes “lite.”   You could bake them on a searing, oil-coated baking sheet or in individual muffin tins. (“That doesn’t count!” my kids screamed, when I said I wanted to try it this year.) You could replace some of the potatoes with zucchini and carrots, which makes them very flavorful and adds vitamins, not to mention some nice Christmas color.  My sister made low-fat apple “latkes,” which were basically like baked apples, held together with a touch of flour.  They were a delicious dessert, but certainly no substitute for the genuine latke.   Or you can just go ahead and celebrate the real, greasy, onion-y, luscious thing, like I did, and resolve to walk 280 minutes at a moderate pace before the next weigh-in.

If you’re in the neighborhood, you’ll see me out there in my track suit, no doubt with a pack of animals trailing the wonderful latke scent that has seeped into my skin, hair, and clothing.

Psst. Here’s my favorite recipe:

 Potato Latkes

4 large potatoes
1 large onion
2 tablespoons matzo meal
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Cooking oil

Wash and peel potatoes and onions. Cut into large chunks and grate by hand or with a food processor.

Drain the grated potato-onion mixture over a pot or bowl, reserving the potato starch/water. The key to crispy latkes is to make sure all the water is drained.

Press down on the mixture every five minutes to hasten the draining process, repeating until the mixture no longer squishes.

Place the potato-onion mixture in a mixing bowl, and blend in the matzo meal, egg, salt and pepper.

Carefully, pour the liquid out of the bowl/pot with the potato water, reserving the thick, starchy paste (potato starch). Scrape this paste out of the bowl and add to the potato-onion-egg mixture, blending well.

Heat 1/2 inch depth of oil in a skillet. Use about 2 rounded tablespoons of potato mixture for each pancake. Drop into skillet and flatten with spatula. Fry pancakes about ten minutes total, turning once. The pancakes should be golden brown.

A la Car Dining

I commute an hour each way back and forth to work, which gives me time to enjoy my favorite passion – in-car dining. The two center cup holders, plus the cup holder on the driver’s side are always filled with water, tea, coffee, or an apple. The landing spot between the driver’s side and the passenger’s side has something spread out with the main course, and the passenger side seat is sometimes sporting another side dish.  The system works beautifully, especially when I remember to brush the crumbs off my chest before entering my office building. If I had my way, the car would be equipped with a little snack tray that pulls out from the steering wheel. The radio knob would be a coffee spigot. And the floor mats would do automatic composting.

On a good day, I’ll pack a nice breakfast to go – a fruit, a peanut butter sandwich on Weight Watcher bread, some fat-free cheese sticks and crackers, or a baggie of high-fiber cereal, with half a cup of almond milk on the side (have not mastered the cereal-with-milk-in-a-bowl maneuver on the parkway).

Sometimes I’m caught short and have to stop at one of the Merritt Parkway Mobil Marts.  The hidden cameras have, I’m sure, captured thousands of hours of footage of me wandering through the mart, scrutinizing every last “nutrition” bar, nut package and Danish-y dessert. I keep hoping for the impossibly high fat/carb/calorie numbers to change. Everything seems to be truck-driver sized and yet,  no trucks are allowed on the parkway.  It was at the Mobil Mart that I discovered a 90-calorie Fiber One Brownie, sitting there on the bottom shelf like a chocolate diamond in the rough.  I’ve since seen the 90-calorie Fiber One Brownie carton empty each time—other people have caught on. I’ve considered “pulling a Loehmann’s” and hiding the brownies behind the pork rinds.  The Mobil Mart will often have part-skim cheese sticks – not a bad alternative, though a few times, the packages were a little dusty.  Then there are times when I’ll buy almonds, count out 10 of them, twist the bag closed, and hide it in the trunk with the spare tire, so I won’t be tempted to overindulge.

If I have to travel between office buildings, I’ll often grab lunch to go, and occasionally, I have an after-work meeting and will grab dinner for the car ride home.  I know where the fruits, veggies, and low-point sandwiches are at every exit.  I can eat a salad while driving  and keeping my eyes on the road the entire time.  Yes, I know this is an unhealthy, unsafe, and icky habit. I am supposed to relax and sit down to a mindful meal with people I care about three times a day.  But hey, at least I’m not picking my nose. What about you?

Suffering from Record Inflation

Economists generally agree that high rates of inflation are caused by an excessive growth of supply, and in my case the supply included cake, cookies, heavy cream, butter, cheese, crackers, chips, candy, pizza, and a 3-ounce glass of white wine.  (And I wasn’t going to drink, darn it.)

Weight Watchers reminds us that Thanksgiving is just ONE meal, but for this point-counter, that ONE meal was surrounded by a week that began with a diner pancake feast and continued with a half-week of festive “work celebrations” (“work celebration” is code word for layer cake), compounded by the mid-week rally of the leftover Halloween candy. It was a week where the only thing that was exercised was my patience.  It was a week where my kitchen was turned into a cooking and baking machine, fueled by enough bites, licks, and tastes to feed Somalia. One of my jobs was to make the sugar-free desserts – and the two made-from-scratch pies had sensible-yet-tasty fillings.  But oh, the butter crusts…can you say double-digit points for a mere twelfth of a pie?  My Weight Watcher eTools points tracker looked like the National Debt Clock, rolling relentlessly forward with no easing in sight.

Thanksgiving was a mere kickoff to a three-day extravaganza of food, family dysfunction, and pizza. Saturday night was capped with a piled-obscenely-high trifle of syrup-soaked pound cake, raspberry sauce, and whipped heavy cream – and I brought the cream. Yes, there were raspberries on top, and thus, it counted as a fruit.  This hearty party weekend decadence concluded a mere 10 hours before the Sunday weigh-in.

I woke up this morning contemplating economies of scale, and donned my barely there underthings, summer tank shirt, and the lightest weigh-in pants I could find that would not get me arrested for public indecency.  I took off my glasses, stepped on the scale, exhaled as deeply as I could without fainting and hoped for the best. Up 1.2 pounds. Could have been worse. I’m praying for a significant downturn next week.

The Evil of the Candy – a Scary Singalong….

The Evil of the Candy

Click on the audio file –> The Evil of the Candy

Wait for the audio to load, scroll down to see the words, and sing along with me….if you dare….

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The Evil of the Candy [to the tune of “Thriller”]

It’s close to midnight and bratty kids have finished trick or treat
Under the Reeses, you see a sight makes you skip a beat
You try to sleep, but chocolate fills your senses and you want it
You start to drool as Smarties look you right between the eyes
You’re supersized

You know it’s candy, candy night
And no one’s gonna save you from the craving that will strike
Candy, candy night
You’re fighting for your waistline but you’re randy for candy, tonight
oooh….

You hear the fridge slam and realize that your husband’s under foot
He’s got a turkey sandwich but the candy looks too good
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl!
But all the while you know Thanksgiving’s creeping round the bend
It never ends

‘Cause this is candy, candy night
You haven’t got a chance against the thing with forty calories
Candy, candy night
You’re fighting to avoid another handy, candy tonight

Twizzlers are calling, if you’re in the dark then it might not count
There’s always jogging tomorrow, but with achy joints?
This is the end of your points
ooh

They’re out to get you, tomorrow all this junk will be on sale
They will possess you, you’ll never change that number on your scale
Now is the time to slowly back away and have a carrot
But all the while, you’ll play that sweet refrain upon your brain,
Hope you don’t gain

Because it’s candy, candy night
And this can set you back more than cake, cookie or pie
Candy, Candy night
Better hold on tight and have a handy, dandy, piece of candy here tonight

Candy, candy night
And this can set you back more than cake, cookie or pie
Candy, Candy night
So better hold on tight and have a handy, candy ow!

[spoken]

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Fatties slink in search of food
To have their secret interlude

And whosoever shall be found
Shoveling those morsels down
Must stand and face the scale of doom
When e’er they enter Weight Watchers room

 [Freestyle fatties interlude sung here]

The chocolate smell is in the air
The empty wrappers everywhere
And over there, the mirror looms
You cast a glance and see your doom

And though you fight to stay on plan
Your modus operandi
You poor mere mortal can’t resist
The evil of the candy

 [Laughter…….]

The Right to Bare Arms

I have finally gotten around to writing this, but only because it is lunch hour at work and I am supposed to be launching my training regimen for the 5K marathon I am planning to enter next May. I’m tired. I think my sneaker lace may be torn. If I sweat too much, I’ll have to wash my armpits in the ladies room here at work.

In the great procrastinator’s triumvirate of writing, bill-paying, and exercise, writing is today’s least-to-avoid activity.  I did take the first step toward more exercise. Eight weeks ago I joined a gym. It’s a great gym. They let you join online, from your computer, without taking so much as a step.  They have Pizza Mondays, they call themselves the “Judgment Free Zone,” and… AND… they greet you the door with a bucket of mini Tootsie Rolls. I am not kidding. (See? I’ve actually gone there.)  I used to belong to the posh, more expensive gym in the area, with a roster of classes, a bevy of buff bodies strolling the floor, and a row of not-so-buff, but presumably well-heeled middle aged men on treadmills in the wee hours of the weekday morns – not that I’m looking.

I decided that, instead of spending $79 per month on a membership that I wouldn’t use, it was more sane to spend $10 per month. My orientation was with two young men who, together, did not equal my age. They showed me the quick circuit and the machines, and they designed a plan for me that included cardio and strength training.  Cardio involved me spending 30 minutes on the treadmill, facing the free weight section and a collection of young, well-toned black men bulking up even more.  The view was so nice that the first day I spent 53 minutes on the treadmill in a stupor until what I thought was indoor rain but then realized was my body sweat pouring out onto the treadmill forced me to stop and dry off.

The strength training circuit had a series of biceps, triceps, back and pectoral muscle exercises all in a row.  Having developed what my sister calls “Hadassah arms” in my 50s, I was happy for all the upper-body work. But where were the adductor and abductor machines, the ones that are supposed to sculpt and tone my jiggly thighs?  (and why do they call them abductor – isn’t that a little scary?) With this new regimen, I would soon develop the physique of a young black man.

I went to the gym twice that first week. I earned 8 activity points and only ate 4 food points worth of tootsie rolls.  At this rate, the cost of the gym would come out to $1.25 a visit – quite the bargain. The next week, I felt I was coming down with something. Plus, I had to pick my daughter up from the train, and there was a lot of work to be done. And something else came up. And I missed my gym visit.  A week later, I got there on the weekend.  Okay, at this rate, it would be $3.33 a visit.  Still not bad. It took me two weeks to get back there and, again, I went on a weekend. Okay, 4 visits in 2 months is still ONLY $5 per visit. I decided I needed motivation.  I needed a goal.  My sister and I decided we’d run (or walk/run) a 5K down in New Jersey. Last weekend I spent so much time
surfing the web for the perfect training plan I ran out of time to hit the gym.

My new plan is to walk three times a week during lunch at work, get to the gym once or twice in the morning before work as well as on the weekend. So, tomorrow morning, I’ll get right to it. Right after I pay my bills. True dat.

True Confessions!

I love the Weight Watchers program, I really do!  But sometimes, I just want to “LOSE 30 LBS in 30 days!”   “Lose fast—and never regain!” “Eat nature’s most fat-burning food!” and have “NO MORE CRAVINGS!”  I have now developed quite the addiction!

So as not to look at the Milky Way Bars and Cool Ranch Doritos when checking out at the supermarket, I’ve been occupying my time by perusing that special brand of Woman’s magazines that are only $1.79!  They’re the ones that have taken out stock in exclamation points!  In just one week, I can beat fatigue! Prevent cancer! Never feel hungry again!   Make a year’s worth of dinners!  Reduce stress! End clutter! And save $100 on my grocery bill!  And I can do all this while having the same hair color and cut as my favorite TV stars, erasing my wrinkles, and baking cute spider-web cupcakes for my child’s classroom! (Oh wait, my child is in college).

The problem is that there is a tad too much schizophrenia sprinkled on top of those turkey-sausage-chili-cheese-mid-week-supper rags.  The same magazine that has me losing more than 100 pounds is telling me to make a jumbo brownie sundae. On one page, I am learning about the miracle superfruit that will give me an all-natural weight loss!  And then there are four pages of ads
for dietary supplements. What gives? The hope and promise of those all-caps, overexclaimed cover headlines tend to fade by page 62, and not even t he inspirational stories or pictures of precious Indiana babies in the autumn leaf piles can lift my spirits.

The magazine should have articles like “Gain all the weight back in 3 days with the miracle  chocolate, peanut butter, whipped cream cake!”  or “Fight fatigue! Stop the damn walking regimen and take a nap already!” “Forget Julia Roberts! Love your ratty, wayward hair!” “Reduce handbag clutter! Throw out those coupons! You never use them anyway!” And the cover story should read “Eat Appropriate Portions of Healthy Food and Do 100 Minutes of Exercise! Maybe You’ll Lose a Pound this Week …..or Maybe Next Week!” Now there’s a miracle I can believe in.

Summer Pants Challenge – Learning to Breathe

There are people who have challenged themselves to swim the English Channel, climb Mount Everest, or collect millions of dollars for famine relief. I, on the other hand, had challenged myself to fit into my “skinny” jeans.

This momentous  event was part of the great “ 2011 Summer Pants Challenge,” launched at my Sunday Weight Watchers meeting.  My goal was to fit into the skinny jeans (which should bear the moniker “skinny jeans for fat people ” ) by the end of the summer. The jeans were designed to fit like a glove (albeit a very, very, very large glove), and they gave me the shape of a Fantasia dancing hippo,  tapered as they were from ankle to waist.  No matter. I’d always felt young, hip, and sexy wearing them.

It was very brave of me to use my skinny jeans for the Summer Pants Challenge.  I bought them five years ago during my “I have to lose weight before I turn 50” phase, and they were in the bottom of bin “D” in my closet.   I have five bins of pants, corresponding to the five sizes I’ve been over the last 20 years, labeled  A through E.  My husband, who doesn’t even know about bin “A” hidden in the attic, thinks I am hanging on to way too many clothes. “I’m going to make a denim quilt with them,” I’ve explained.

I began Weight Watchers wearing the pants in the “E” bin. E” as in “excuse me for living.” The “D” bin holds the pants of “denial.”  I’ve cut all the tags out of the “D” bin pants so I have no idea what size they are.  The “C” bin? “Can’t believe I’m here again.” “B” holds the “Bulging Muffin-top” pants. From the waist down, I’ve looked amazing in the “B” pants. Just don’t lift the Nehru shirt. And up there in the attic sits the holy grail, the “A” bin – “As If…”  My “As If” pants even include a pair of Levi’s with the pants size emblazoned on the outside.

My “E” bin pants are like the pants of someone who’s won “America’s Biggest Gainer.” All that material, the huge circumference of those waistbands – and I filled them out.  As this summer wore on, I noticed that the E bin pants were finally getting very roomy and, dare I say, some were even too droopy to wear anymore.  Even with the slow-cooker method that is the Weight Watchers system (you people who get weighed in tenths of a pound know what I am talking about), I was actually losing weight.

I waited until the Friday before Labor Day to dig out the skinny jeans from the “D” bin. I held them up. What was I thinking? I braced myself and tried the things on.  They slid easily over my knees of course (I’m of average size in the knee department, thank goodness).  They slid up and over my butt. Then the test – the waistband. Would it count if I did my mom’s waistband trick? (The waistband trick:  fasten a rubber band through the button hole then hook the other end of the rubber band to the button. You get a good two inches of post-menopausal breathing room without having to bring your pants to the tailor). I sucked in and fastened the button on the waist and…zipped up the pants.  They zipped up!  They felt okay.  I looked in the “skinny” mirror in my bedroom.  They looked okay.  There was a measure of extra flesh hanging above the pants, but nothing a big peasant shirt wouldn’t cover.   I stepped gingerly over to the bed to try sitting.  I sat. The pants stayed closed.  I did it! I met the summer pants challenge!  I wore the pants that Sunday to the Weight Watchers meeting, and I believe I continued to breathe the whole day.

My next challenge:  climbing Mount Everest.

Battening Down the Hatches

Hurricane’s coming this weekend. First thought—what to eat?

I have a freezer full of Weight Watcher’s ice cream. What if we lose power? Between the “we-must-eat-all-the-ice-cream-before-it-melts” catastrophe and the fact that the height of the hurricane will pass through at the very moment I am supposed to be stepping on the scale at the Weight Watchers meeting, this promises to be a perfect storm of epic proportions.

I hope I have enough to eat in the house. Let’s see…I have cans of olives and bags of almonds from when I was doing the Mediterranean diet. There’s the 20 pound sack of rice from when I was doing the Rice Diet. I have cayenne pepper – what was that one? Baby food  (pretended it was for the nephews, but in truth – it seemed so sane to use baby food for snacks). Then of course, there are some Zone Bars and Atkins Bars – putrid, putrid, putrid. I have dried fruits aplenty from the raw food diet. Yep, they’re still dried. A package of instant Crème Brulee? What’s that doing there? Ah yes – “French Women Don’t Get Fat.” Three Slim-Fast shake cans from the 1990s.

Hmmm, something is there—in the back of the cabinet—behind the acai berry supplements and chocolate-raspberry stevia extract. It’s a bittersweet chocolate bar. What the heck? I was never on the chocolate diet!  The ingredients are rich and pure – and NORMAL—no sorbitol, sucralose, or aspartame.   Oh wait… the wrapper says  “In Case of Emergency—Break Here.”   Whew. All Set. Time to hunker down.

Bashert (beh shayrt’) – a Yiddish word that means “it was meant to be”

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a crappy day at work. So, at 3:30 in the afternoon, I decided that I “needed” a bag of M&Ms from the vending machine.  I went through all the rationalizations – I deserved a treat, I had extra points to spend, I would be so satisfied after I ate them I would forget about dinner, I would eat them one at a time, daintily biting the outer shell off, then slowly sucking on the inner chocolate to make each one last.

The week before I had gotten a bag, spread all the M&Ms on my work desk, counted them and separated them into two piles. Then I put one pile back into the bag, twisted the bag shut and hid it in the back of my bookcase.   I ate the loose M&Ms.  Ten minutes later, I fished the other half from the back of my bookcase and finished those.  To my chocolate-hazed delight, I discovered that the entire bag is only 6 points.

So it was that this day, I wasn’t even going to pretend that I was going to eat half a bag.  I needed all of those little buggers, and I might even chew on the empty bag when I was through. That was the sort of day I was having. I had the six points to spend. I would have celery soup for dinner.  I grabbed 4 quarters and took the long walk of shame down the hall, then down the stairs to the vending area. I could sense the vending machine snicker as I walked toward it. “Aha!” it seemed to say. “Look who’s waddled over for a visit. I knew you’d come back. You’re late today. It’s already 3:30.”

As if by rote, I scanned the entire array, visualizing the nutritional information that was, of course, hidden in the back of each package.  How many times have I stared at
these selections, wondering whether there was a virtuous choice to be made?  If I was playing the low-carb card, I’d get nuts.  On acid-reflux days, I’d get licorice.  Low-fat days, animal crackers.  But today, those little M&M men were smiling at me with devilish delight. They knew what I wanted.

There were three rows of M&Ms. I scrutinized the coils of each row to make sure that, whichever row I selected, the bag would not get stuck.  E5 looked like the safest
bet.   I placed the coins in, pushed E5, watched the coil turn, and….wouldn’t you know the bag of M&Ms got stuck. Grrrrrrr.  I pushed the machine gently. I pushed a little less gently.  I looked down at the flap, wondering whether my arm could fit safely under it and reach way up to the package of M&Ms.  Insane though I was, I was not up for the mortification of having my arm stuck in the machine. I bodyslammed the machine one last time.  Nothing. I had half-expected that an alarm would go off, like the “tilt” alarm on a pinball machine. Thank goodness it wasn’t a pinball machine. (Snack roulette, yes. Pinball, no.)  What to do….What to do….I had debated going all the way back to my desk to get a second set of change, then coming back to retrieve my “just desserts.” I’d done that many times before.

Then I realized that it was “bashert.” I wasn’t meant to eat those M&Ms. Back at my desk, I discovered that I had brought carrots, celery, and apple to the office to snack on. They were no M&Ms, I can tell you that. But they did get me through the day.