On this April Fool's Day, I feel like stating the obvious: depression is not productive. At the age of 49 and three quarters, I'm still learning how to manage my chronic depression, which sometimes gets triggered by a specific circumstance, but often shows up with no...
Previous post on weight & health: Wheat is the culprit I've spent most of my life as a thin person. I was a skinny kid and then a gym rat who constantly struggled to stay down at a size 10 or under. My raging sweet tooth that never stopped somehow never tipped the...
After my year of austerity (drastically reduced sugar, dairy and grains), I totally indulged last week when I visited familia in Houston, Texas. I ate cookies and cupcakes and pie. I also had grain-y foods like pancakes and tamales because I wanted to take a break...
I'm amazed to blog this, but after a year of struggling with horrific cramping, today is day two of my period and I'm not in agony! Four ibuprofen every 3-4 hours has kept me comfortable, as in PAIN-FREE. Oh, my god. I'm so, so grateful. I can hardly believe it. I'd...
This was just too ridiculous for me to ignore. First, I LOVE Halloween and foods that are black, like jelly beans and olives. Second, I still like hamburgers, even though I now eat them without the bun. Third, the idea of a scary hamburger made me laugh out loud. A...
Previous post on weight & health: Physical vs. emotional Last November I cut grains, sugar, dairy and caffeine out of my diet. That means that on most days of the week I didn't indulge in any of those things, but periodically I had each of them in turn as the...
Doing "cleanses" is a popular practice, which usually means temporarily purging certain foods from your diet and taking some kind of supplement (often a juice or shake) to help your body release toxins. I think afterwards many people just go back to the way they were...
Last November, I cut out sugar, grains, dairy and caffeine at the suggestion of a doctor who identified those things as contributing to my hormones being out of balance. Having gone on this type of diet a few times in my life, it's felt familiar even though it's also...
Previous post on weight & health: The tyranny of sugar is over In my last post I wrote that I believe I could get physically hooked on sugar again, but not emotionally. Those can be hard to distinguish, but what I mean is that when I cut out sugar last November,...
49 candles ablaze Previous post on food & fatness: Sweet dreams Now I know I've truly turned a corner on my sugar addiction. On the morning after my birthday party, with a quarter of my birthday cake sitting in my refrigerator, I wasn't even tempted to have cake...
Previous post on weight & health: Kicking a sugar addiction Last night I dreamt I was eating layer cake. I scooped off the sculpted yet gooey white frosting with my finger and wrapped my mouth around it. In other dreams I've abstained from desserts or only...
Previous post on food & fatness: The pain has receded I am in the process of trying to kick my addiction to sugar. For almost seven months, since November 2014, I've done a pretty good job of reducing my ingestion of sugar of all forms, which means I've...
Previous post on weight & health: Hooray for fat yoga! I finally had a mostly decent menstrual experience two weeks ago. I'd been suffering since November from horrible cramping that made me cry. On a scale of 1 to 10, the pain's grip spent hours at 10,...
Released last May 2014 Katie Couric produced and narrates the documentary Fed Up, which might seem like just another film about the effects of the standard American diet on our health, but this one has a very specific and heartbreaking focus: the effects of sugar on...
Previous post on weight & health: Trying to eat well to avoid pain Yesterday I attended the Asian Human Services Spring Health Fair where I got "my numbers" checked. That refers to my blood glucose level, cholesterol level, blood pressure and weight. The one I'm...