Kirstie Alley Loses 50 Pounds. Big Yawn... What's REALLY Interesting? Regular Janes Who do it!

I don't know about y'all, but when some rich, pampered celebrity loses weight (for the umpteenth time), it's just not a big deal. Not to the rest of us who don't have chefs, trainers, assistants, and oodles of money at our disposal to go to whatever doctor, spa, bootcamp of our desires or just to set up a 1000 sq ft home gym with all the trimmings.

I mean, if I were rich, I could just go to some super-luxurious dieting spa for a whole summer and lose 50 pounds while having my pedicures, manicures, hair treatments, eyebrow threading, and whatever nips and tucks a celebrity needs to stay in the game.  All with maid and laundry service and plush robes and soothing music and gorgeous scenery. Big whoops. How hard can THAT be?

She lost, what, 75 pounds on Jenny Craig? Now she's lost 50 on her Organic Liaison.

I'll be impressed if she made 45K a year, had to exercise on her own or in a gym class with a bunch of other sweaty regular janes, had to cook her own meals AND the meals of others in her household who weren't on a diet, had to resist temptation without a bunch of cheerleaders and therapists (or auditors, whatever) at her beck and call. And if she kept it off for 5+ years.

Lots of regular Joe and Jane bloggers online have lost a lot more, kept it off for years, and had to struggle to do it with small budgets, tending to family needs, without household help,  and pressed hard for personal time to exercise and cook. THOSE people impress me. A lot. You are my inspiration, y'all!

Celebrity with dieting entourage making moolah from products and a tv show during her weight loss efforts...again? Yeah, right...uimpressed.

I wonder how the viewership was for the show. Is? Is it still on? I know I lost interest fast, just as I did for the Carnie Wilson one.

I think TBL, as over-the-top and crazy as it is--and for the money that show makes, they should give everyone who makes it to the final 6 100K and the winner 1 million!--at least shows regular folks getting the special attention every celebrity has access to (hardcore trainers, dietitians, setting). They pay for their access to all that with humiliation and absence of family--tough prices, but worth it for those who take advantage for their losses.

Trust me. If I hit the lottery, I'd be making an appointment at some in-patient weight loss luxury locale before I can count my cash. And if the lottery was big enough, I'd have meals cooked for me in a lovely cozy kitchen. And my Pilates trainer would come daily in the AM. And I'd have cognitive therapy a couple times a week.

I see no excuse for staying obese if you have every tool at your disposal barring some serious trauma thing that's linked to food.

Me, I may have physiological reasons that would be a huge obstacle to lithe slenderness, but I'm obese cause I'm just lazy and eat too much. Yep. I sit too much and eat too much. And I like to eat what's easy cause I hate to cook (ie, takeout, delivery). But I've always done well if there was "authority" over me--be it nuns or a trainer. If I had someone there every day saying "This is what you'll eat" , that's what I'd eat.

I consistently exercise cause my lazy ass does what my trainer says. Something in me wants to make the goals externally set for me by a person in "authority". Maybe that's from Catholic School training. :)  If I had a spa chef at my disposal, I'd eat low-cal tasty spa food and be happy. If I had a daily trainer telling me to move my butt, I'd move my butt. (If I could afford it, I'd pay for that NOW.)

I do see where therapy is called for as I do have compulsive and neurosis issues,  but really, once you have the tools and helpers, if you can't lose weight and get healthier (and I don't mean skinny as a rail, I just mean healthy, even if some chub, as I don't believe a bit extra fat is a big deal), then there's something else going on (spiritual, mental, emotional, ethical,  whatever) that needs to be addressed. It's not just about food or movement at that point, if you've got a cook and a trainer and an assistant and a maid that takes care of everything mundane for you. It's something else.

What that 'else" is, in me or Kirstie or anyone else,  I won't guess, though I do consider it my job to self-analyze. I'm sure I have stuff lurking inside I"m not as clued in about as I'd like, though I am hugely introspective. (Which is a depressing thing, as we introspective types see so many of our faults, we then start loathing ourselves a bit. I suspect narcissists never introspect. Ugly stuff in the human innards.)

Well, how ranty did I get? Sorry.

I just hate seeing all the glowing applause and kudos to the celebrity dieter when the no-name ones out there--well, some have names on their blogs--do it without fanfare, without big compensation, without photoshopping their progress pics, without chefs or trainers, without make-up artists. Who just show their gradual and sometimes stunning transformations in simple smartphone shots. Who are making changes big and small to what they eat and how they move for life. Who don't get standing ovations on Oprah for showing off pounds lost. THOSE people impress me and keep me going on days when it feels like too much, because they are the majority of us struggling against the temptations. The stay-at-home mom. The busy doctor. The teacher. The restaurant employee. The mechanic. The farmer. The farmer's wife.

You guys who lost it and kept it off, or who are still losing it, but losing lots and giving us tips and encouragement on your blogs: You are my heroes.

Restarting the Organic Co-op and Planning for a New Life

718 days, 11 hours to go...

Today, I get to pick up my organic co-op food share. I've done this before, and I had stopped due to summer storms and just some sort of ennui. But they have a coordinator closer to my house (I hate, hate, hate driving), so I'm back on board.

I'm looking forward to the honeycrisp apples, cantaloupe, pluots, and strawberries, of course, and the Holland peppers (mmmm) and Bibb lettuce.  I need to find me a nice set of recipes for kohlrabi (I have no idea what this is, mind you) and Rainbow Chard and candy cane beets (look really pretty in the pic).

There's more mundane stuff, too, like broccoli, fair trade bananas (handy, as hubby has a banana-a-day habit), oranges, slicing tomatoes, shallots, and celery. We're gonna have some sort of squash. I'd rather it be spaghetti squash, then I can have a low carb "pasta" lunch and supper this week. Acorn and butternut don't do much for me, though I might consider "souping" the butternut if that turns out to be the offering. One of the fruit options will be kiwi or black plums. I adore black plums. I hate kiwi. Guess which one I'm rooting for? :)

So, yesterday, while checking on the google map where the new coordinator's house is, I felt genuinely happy to be back on board with the co-op, starting this fresh blog, getting my vision mojo going...and I head out to fill my latest thyroid med prescription from the endo --and yes, part of the reason I buffaloed up is my thyroid done died on me a couple decades ago, and yeah, I have the same thing Linda Ronstadt has, and yeah, you saw how she lost her slim, sexy, rock-hottie figure when it got her. I was already overweight to start with, so things got REAL big.

Back to me, there, happy, looking-forward. Heading to CVS.

And I can't go. It's drizzling and I have NO FRICKEN WINDSHIELD WIPERS.

Some lowlife thief ripped off my wipers. Geesh.

So, I can't drive in the rain. I have to wait until hubby gets home to get my Rx filled and then this am, new wipers. Oh, not just new wipers, a bit of repair, cause the FRICKEN LOWLIFE who took my wipers didn't just slide them out. They damaged the mechanism.

I curse them with jumbo grape-sized bleeding piles for life.

Funny thing is, I've had worse crime happen to me. I had my purse stolen (and that put me out about 2000 smackers, when all was tallied.) I grew up in a bad neighborhood. I got beat up by a would-be robber. Our apartment was burglarized various times.  I was terrorized by a rapist who, though I was spared, attacked another woman in our building. We came back from our honeymoon to find we'd had our place ransacked (and some wedding presents gone, mostly cash.)

Overall, lucky, considering where we lived.

But, somehow, this "petty" crime just got to me. I think because of the recent issues locally--policeman getting killed, a SWAT team exploding the early morning --and I mean that literally, as the house shook and woke us up at 5 am and change, due to the authorities blowing in the door of a suspected drug dealer across the alley in the back from us--lots of burglaries reported, car break-ins, a rapist on the loose (and seeing dozens of police cars with lights flashing is a startling thing).


I think this little straw just crashed it all down: We aren't safe here. The neighborhood has gone to shit. Time to move.

We may still have some nice neighbors to the left and to the right we've known for years (in one case more then 25), but little by little, the slumbering little 'hood only two blocks from the police station, the mayor, the firefighters, the community theater...has turned crime-infested and scary. The economic downturn prolly didn't help, as I notice fewer stable renters around us, and a continuing movement, in and out, which tells me these are not people who are economically stable at all. And, in some cases, really loud and rude, leaving beer bottles in the street (and sometimes things I will not name). Fighting in the hallways of their building (which I consider really totally uncivil and low class). Got an issue with your significant other or relative? Then take it inside or go to your priest or rabbi or iman or a counselor. I should not have to hear you yell at the top of your throat that your woman or your man is a shithead--whether in English, Spanish, or Creole-- thank you very much.

But it has set a fire under me to move.

I never wanted to live here, not from the start. It was for hubby's sake, really. He'd lost his ma and grandma in quick succession (one one year, one the next) and this was where he grew up and where his mom died (and later became the place MY dad died). But this is not home to me. And it's a cumbersome albatross of a property. I wanted to ditch it in '98. Then I said, okay, by 2002, we'll be out. That gives him time to grieve, adjust, etc. Well, here we are, post-boom (what a missed chance to rid ourselves of this place), and selling now is gonna be one hard chore. Not to mention the neighborhood, a pleasant and peaceful one in our dating days, is now full of LOWLIFES WHO STEAL HUBCAPS AND WIPERS AND GARDEN HOSES and do graffiti on the wall (yeah, that was nice) and have no respect at all for property of others.

I need to change my body. But I also need to change my address. While being here is convenient in some ways (within 20 mins of 2 of my 3 siblings, very near my Pilates studio, near my alma mater where I am considering returning, near the beaches, near state parks, near the best shopping mall in this whole county, maybe two counties, near a two hospitals--which with my health issues is nothing to sneeze at as being near an emergency room is absolutely essential. Still. I'm tired of feeling like we've got a burden on our backs.

I want to simplify. I want to be able to pick up and MOVE at a moment's notice if hubby gets a better job opportunity, given he's highly skilled and needs that mobility in case the big opening comes along. I want to stop being a homeowner, and I want to rent for a while. Maybe I never wanna buy again, dunno. We've been homeowners since 1983, the year we married, and I hate worrying about plumbing, roofs, painting, renovating, hurricanes.

If a hurricane comes and flattens the place I live, I want it NOT to be mine. I want to be able to say, "buh-bye, outta here".

Maybe having my wipers stolen, a small event, really, that set me back some time, aggravation, and 50 bucks, was just a nice little catalyst to make me focus on what the hell I want besides the weight thing.

Time to set down new timelines. Ones for a move. Ones for other tranformations. One for retirement.

Time is running out. It really, really is.

I dunno, something about setting the weight goal and looking at a timeline and pondering transformation--plus a small, but irritating criminal event--have gotten me to just want to up and change all sorts of things and set all sorts of goals. But it is a good thing. I've been crushed by depression for so many years (that really bad 3.5 year bout after mom died was bad, bad, but nothing like the one when my health broke and I had to quit working. I was suicidal back then.) I'm feeling hopeful and scared, but a good scared. It's the scared that realizes change is essential or might as well buy that cemetery plot right now.

Not to knock funeral pre-planning, but ya know what I mean, right?

I'm really bad at completing projects. But, hey, I got very little life left, if one is baldly truthful about it, I'm on the downhill side of the human life span, since there pretty much is bupkis of a chance of me making it over 100, ya know?

The time is now. It has ALWAYS been now, just is more now than ever.

I think this may actually be my midlife crisis. I have been mulling over my flaws, regretting so many opportunities lost, feeling anger at the issues I let get me down, feeling old, feeling vulnerable, feeling like I wasted my potential, feeling trapped in possessions, all sort of things. At the same time, I feel great happiness and satisfaction with my marriage, love the time I'm spending with siblings and their progeny, feel healthier and more energetic than 42 pounds and a few years ago, and my sex life really did take off dizzily with menopause. Woo!

So, maybe not a full-on crisis, but a midlife re-evaluation and meditation?

Whatever. I want change. All sorts of change. I have no clue where to start, so I have to figure this out. I want measurable steps to getting to A, B, and C. And I want to start RIGHT THIS MONTH. Next year this time, I want a discernibly DIFFERENT environment and pattern of life. Keeping the joyful, loving, happy, and satisfying aspects, ditching the confining, depressing, anxious, fearful, self-conscious, and self-destructive ones.

My entrapment is a lot more than just fat. It's habits, all sorts of habits, and fears. I'm neurotic. No kidding. I worry about so much it's exhausting. I think my hoarding (be it fat, books, clothes, shoes, etc) is about building a comfortable hiding place and feeling secure.

Merciful Lord, have mercy on me and help me big time to get out of these habits and fears!

I wrote more than I intended. I think I was mentally just "typing" out my ruminations and feelings, and I have to change my subject header, since this was supposed to be about the co-op. hah. Forgive my rant. I think I just needed to do that.

You out there: Be well. Eat well. EAT LESS. EAT SMARTER. Move. Drink water. Keep hope. Make something in your life better today. Love someone more today.  Just be well. Let's be better than we've been. Let's be MORE "well." :D

Okay, I got things to do and a life-ditch to dig out of...
Later..