What are YOU Making ‘Fat’ Mean?

Image from Dove.

My friend Carla shared this article on her Facebook page and it sucked me right in.

Here’s a snippet from “Why ‘Love Your Body’ Campaigns Aren’t Working” written by Isabel Foxen Duke

Like an unfortunately large percentage of women in the U.S., I grew up criticizing my body and dieting regularly from a young age. I spent years of my life terrified I would never get “there,” the place where my weight and all perceived rewards of thinness would finally fall into place. Getting thin was the only answer I could think of to most of my problems, and conversely, “being fat” or gaining weight, meant “losing” — it meant never achieving, never being loved, never “having it all.”

I remember seeing body-positive campaigns like Dove’s Real Beauty or Victoria Secret’s Love Your Body — campaigns that encourage women to “love the skin they’re in” — and thinking “that’s nice, but I still wish I was thinner.”

I would see images of “real women” and think to myself, I don’t want to be one. I wanted to get ahead, stand out, be special, and I didn’t see how accepting my body the way it was would get me “there” — the place where my life would begin. I believed my dreams were 20 lbs. away from me, and what seemed like a forced, new ideal of beauty on a billboard didn’t seem to change that.

I could have written that word. for. word.

The article goes on to say the strides in media are great for the younger generations but those who have already been programmed to hate their bodies need to “ ‘unlearn’ the rewards and punishments they experienced around weight as children…”

I’ve talked about how my dad planted the seeds of my body-image issues at a young age — click here to read an open letter I wrote to him in haste. 

The unconscious lessons he taught me won’t be undone by seeing “real” woman in billboards or magazines, but I agree with the author, these campaigns are still important. We as a culture need to be exposed to a wide variety of body types and sizes in mainstream media.

My experience with my dad coupled with a constant stream of super skinny model images of the ’80s and ’90s, cemented my body image issues.

Isabel asks in the article: What are YOU making “fat” mean?

My answer is simple: Being fat meant I was unworthy and unattractive. It’s why I was forgettable, unpopular and shy. Fat allowed me to stay safe, hidden and unimportant.

For 8 years I’ve been working on all these feelings in parallel with actually losing the weight I gained in fear I was fat when I really wasn’t. (How many of you look back at photos from high school in disbelief of how skinny you were?) My biggest hurdle has always been self-worth and confidence. Being unlovable and unworthy were always my underlying fear despite being in a supportive relationship.

This is why I think having kids helped me gain the confidence to break the cycle I was in. Giving birth was a life-changing experience for me. I finally felt the unconditional love a child brings into your life. This love taught me to value myself and my body for what it was, giving me the confidence to break the dieting and negative self worth cycles I was in.

I didn’t realize how many feelings this article stirred up in me until I started writing. All I knew after reading it was I had to make this the question of the week:

What are YOU making “fat” mean?

Note: I explored these feelings before specifically in My Core Hurt Eating – A MUST Read for those that Overeat.

View the original article here

Making Monday Marvelous

I decided to treat today like a traditional Sensational Sunday. After an event like FitBloggin’ I could easily find myself in funkville.

So once Little Guy got on the bus I made myself a fun breakfast and grabbed the camera..

Click here to see what I made, a Thai Inspired Basil and Melon Salad with Peanuts. It felt SO good to make my own meal and play around with fun flavors.

Then Little Bean and I had some fun deconstruction the arrangement.

It was a bit of "back to reality" in my messy house with a grumpy toddler.

But we forged ahead and started the laundry.

He’s not really as useful as his Big Brother, YET!

Late morning snack.

I had some yogurt topped with granola and honey.

I also had the BEST company!

When Little Bean went to nap I worked a bit (hey, someone has to plan FitBloggin’13!) and had lunch with The Husband.

I had some leftover pork roast with potatoes and carrots that I made the night before FitBloggin.

Ahhh babies. You clean. They Mess.

It’s a viscous cycle.

Watermelon and Email Snack Break!

Big Brother home from school!

Lawn Mower Races.

Fun afternoon treat!

Little Bean’s Favorite chore!

Loving the Fall weather!

Dinner was a quick Fish Stick plate with peas, broccoli and cauliflower.

That picture CRACKS ME Up! Ryan loves doing fake poses anymore and this was the only one I had all 3 looking at me.

Bath post haircuts.

This will probably be the last bath shot I share. Someone’s getting too old but they were just so cute!

Stories and bed..

Now I’m watching The Revolution (not sold yet) and contemplating going to the gym early tomorrow. I really want to go to bed but sleep sounds so good right now. I’m going to try to get this up asap so I’m well rested. 5:30AM comes awfully fast!

View the original article here

OM making changes.

DiZclaimer: This post is long & navel-gazing. Consider this yer warning to grab a snack & settle in or CLICK AWAY! CLICK AWAY! You decide.

On May the 6th at 915 I made a decision and I over-shared.

I wasnt yet a right angle—but I felt it coming on.

I also felt overwhelmed with brain-stuff (work, end of school year activities, planning for summer worktime & playtime) and *struggled* to turn my mind off at night.

As much as I longed to ignore it–my heart was telling me I needed yoga.

Not a yoga DVD.

Not a few downward dogs on my own.

I knew in my core (literal & figurative) I needed a yoga class in a structured, guided setting.

I kind of hate the classes.  They tend to stress me out.  My workout time is at the asscrack of dawn quite early & classes feel like an intrusion on my work-day.

My hamstrings and low-back **insisted** I needed this intrusion.

I announced.  I committed.  I was skeptical I’d follow through.

I hoped I would. I knew I needed it.  I still was uncertain.

Enter New Balance’s Anue yoga line.

It was right around this time they reached out and offered to send me a selection of apparel.  And, quite frankly, had it not been right.at.that.time, Id probably have passed.

Im in the place of striving for LESS STUFF not more.

Im paring down and passing along opportunities to others who might be a better fit.

Intellectually I  knew what I wore to yoga class wasnt  really important.  ANYTHING I owned would do.

I said yes to the items below quickfastandinahurry. 

Im a misfit.  Im not very zen. Im a weights-woman.  I possess the balance of a drunken frat boy. 

Whether it was entirely unnecessary or not I WANTED to have the proper external trappings for yoga given the fact I knew during a daytime class Id have the internal, decidedly NOT zen monkey-mind going.

I received the treats (so so so grateful for them).

I mentally committed to a yoga class that afternoon.

I out-loud announced my plan to the only other awake person in the domicile: The Tornado.

She looked at me quizzically (in her inimitable six year old way) & immediately informed me there was no need for a class.  She would teach me yoga.

Right then. In her pajamas. At 5 in the morning.

The pictures below were all orchestrated by her. 

The yoga sequence below made me realize, yet again, how frequently the best cure for my frazzle & the stress and the MIND OF A MONKEY comes simply from making the conscious choice to stop and be present.

Box O'New Balance TREATS.

"Do this!!"

"Mama why you so STILL?!"

"NOW THIS!!"

"0ooh I like!"

"Annnd open!"

"Feels nice!"

"And now relax. Do this."

OM.

(I realize this post is already too long.  More than you’d ever want to know about my return to yoga is coming soon.)

My question for you today is a simple one:

Have you ever felt the need for “proper apparel” for a fitness endeavor?  Did it feel to you—as it did to me–-a sort of ‘fake it till you make it’ at least I’ll appear ZEN look “right” sort of thing?

Or are you one who struts into every fitness situation knowing you own it &  proper apparel be damned?

These are the items pictured above: Dipped dress in blue. Soaring shell in purple.  Crop pant.  I wholly, completely and utterly loved all of them.  I covet them in their other colors now, too.  Comfy, quality breathable fabrics, amazing cut/style.  Questions on fit, sizing etc? HIT ME UP BELOW.

FTC the Anue clothing was free. The opinions & yoga-craziness are all my own.

View the original article here

Smoothie making challenge sponsored by Egg Beaters.

Today we’re kicking it OLD SCHOOL.

Come with me as I make a smoothie & frolic in my kitchen surrounded by 80's style pop-ups.

(yes. you can keep the volume OFF & still steal my wiZdom & challenge. it’s a winwin up in herre.)

Oh, and there’s kale.

Lots and lots of kale.

Join me.

I challenge you.

This post is sponsored by Egg Beaters 100% Egg Whites.  The pop-ups & overall eggcraziness is all my own.

Pin It

Tags: Egg Beaters 100% Egg Whites, Shrek Shakes, smoothies

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Making Through <b>Weight Loss</b> Changes With <b>Weight Loss</b> Surgery <b>...</b>

With more people becoming more and more health conscious, people tend to try out almost all sorts of weight loss programs. The kind of program that one engages into varies depending on the lifestyle that one has. For more adventurous people, the weight loss challenge of going through rigid weight loss training and exercise is seen with a positive outlook.

But for non athletic inclined individuals, all they see in the program is pain and agony that they certainly are not determined to last. Another alternative is the diet menu for weight loss which is not too acceptable for many people because they find it too hard to control their appetite. The next solution consists of the weight loss pills which could be very temporary and costly solution. One permanent and promising solution is the weight loss surgery which at present is advised by many who are members of the weight loss surgery message boards.

As mentioned by many of the weight loss experts, the decision to take weight loss surgery can be very difficult for many people. Nonetheless, when you decide to take the surgery, you need to be prepared and conditioned for the process. It would require you to know the details that you need to know about the entire process. Weight loss surgery message boards provided for by many of the online weight loss surgery support groups, is a great venue for you to learn some of these procedures from the first hand experiences of those who were also able to take the surgeries.

Likewise, out of these weight loss surgery message boards, you would be able to know the insights of others on the process like you can ask them things that bother you. During the pre-operation stage, many things may trouble you which cause some of your apprehensions like what the surgery is really like, the pains that you need to undergo, the benefits that it may bring and most especially the changes that may possibly happen after the surgery. Through the message boards, you are able to know the best insights and answers for your concerns from people who know exactly how it is like.

The main thrust of the program is really to prepare you not only physically but also emotionally and psychologically for the weight loss surgery. The message boards provide a venue for people to help you throughout the process who are always there to guide you and to comfort you in a life changing decision that you are to take and to help you recover and adjust with the changes after the surgery. The members of the message boards are there to support you in every way of your journey to a healthier and fitter you.

Anthony Thedford has been writing information articles for years. For more information on weight loss surgery message boards , please visit our website http://www.infosearchlive.com/weightloss/Weight-Loss/Weight-Loss.php.

Article from articlesbase.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2011 at 6:12 pm and is filed under 111. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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The making of the CHOCOLATE & VICODIN book trailer

Behold, the grand unveiling of the CHOCOLATE & VICODIN book trailer:

Yes, books are now required to have video trailers. When I say “required,” they are not actually required, you are just highly pressured into making one, like babies are for couples in their 30's. When my first book, Half-Assed came out in April of 2008, video book trailers were just starting to become the norm, but no one told me that until after the book came out! So, I threw something together using my weight-loss progress photos that came out fairly well. (48,000 views can’t be wrong, right?)

This time around I decided to seek advice from actual publishing professionals before making my trailer. I also viewed some trailers to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Research. (Yes, spending hours on YouTube can be considered research)
Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author friend who’s done lots of (Not Safe For Work) book trailers, and she said to keep it under two minutes and to make it match the tone of your book. It also shouldn’t be an ad, since no one wants to watch an ad (unless it’s one of those creme de la creme Superbowl ads). She said, “The main point is to catch people’s attention and get them to watch the video, rather than a hard sell on the book.”

I searched YouTube for “book trailers” and came up with some very good and very bad trailers. There are a lot of awful gothic/supernatural/romance trailers that feature lots of moody establishing shots, interspersed with titles, and a melodramatic soundtracks. Thankfully there are also some good trailers. Here are some of the best I found, all of which made me want to learn more about the books they advertised:

Night of the Living Trekkies
Quark Books is a publisher most famous for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. They also clearly spend mad cash on their trailers. This looks like a trailer for an actual film, not just a book. Honestly, I think the book would be a letdown after seeing this trailer.

Leviathan
This one has great animation and gives you a good taste of the storyline without giving it all away. But like the previous trailer, it’s way outside my budget and realm of expertise.

The Happiness Project
This one looks like something I could make, the animation coordinates well with the music, it gets the point across and overall seems to express the tone of the book.

Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece
This one makes hilarious use of YouTube’s captioning feature, which makes me think the book is probably pretty funny, too. The production values also seemed within my reach.

Planning (to do awful things to teddy bears)
I wrote up five script treatments for trailers, which are just short summaries of what the trailer would be. I picked the one I thought would play best visually. (You can’t really film a headache). It featured a stuffed animal undergoing various treatments that didn’t cure my headache. I had considered showing myself undergoing treatments, but that would be harder to film since I didn’t want someone sticking needles in me unless they were professionally accredited to do so. I also thought abusing a teddy bear and making it smoke pot would be wonderfully ridiculous (but I might just be twisted). I liked this approach because it didn’t require me to appear in the trailer, which would have made me feel self-conscious. I prefer not to be the center of attention.

I wrote out a full script describing what titles would flash on screen and what visuals I needed to film. Then I made a list of all the props I’d need. I purged a lot of my possessions before I moved in last July, so any stuffed animals I had left were ones that I didn’t want to maim. Instead I had to go to Toys R’ Us for the first time in I don’t know how many years. I felt like a truly depraved individual as I shuffled up and down the aisles amongst parents and their innocent lil’ children while I was thinking, “Who shall I cast in my teddy bear porno?”

Let the camera roll (and shake)

Once I had my props and a script, I set up my filming area. I taped some dark contact paper against a wall so the light-colored teddy bear would show up against the background. Then I used masking tape to bind the bear’s legs in place and to stick his butt to the table. I positioned a directional desk lamp on top of the box to give me better lighting. I set my Flip camera on top of a stack of books and taped it to the top one so it wouldn’t bounce that much when I was filming.

I went through my shot list and crossed off shots as I got them, usually doing several takes to make sure I got something usable. I ran into a few issues during filming.

When I dropped my big mixture of expired painkillers in front of the camera they moved so quickly that you couldn’t tell the resulting blur was made of pills. I found that tossing the pills at the bear read better on camera.When I filmed the bear smoking a joint, it took me about five takes before I was able to start the lighter in one try. I’m not a smoker, so I’m unpracticed in that skill. I was also so focused on the lighter that I was mildly concerned I might set the bear on fire and burn down the apartment complex. Then when the firefighters asked me what I had been doing, my only explanation would be, “Oh, I was just shooting a book trailer.”I was happy that I had a hypodermic needle for the Botox shot, but I only had it because it was in the anaphylaxis kit that came with my IV treatment kit a few years ago. It seemed appropriate that everything came full circle that way.

Post production (aka OH MY FUCKING GOD I HATE DIGITAL VIDEO!!!)
Now I had to edit the trailer, so I downloaded the videos to my computer. Well, I tried to. The FlipShare program kept crapping out on me, and then when I finally had transferred the MP4 files to my hard drive, Vista kept freaking out whenever it tried to read a file, causing an error box to appear and the Explorer window to refresh. Then, in a moment of pure stupid-a-tude, I saved one of the video files to the desktop, which caused the computer to loop in an endless cycle of error windows that kept popping up as soon as I closed them, locking me out of my computer.

It was at this point that I said, “Fuck this shit. I’m getting a new computer.” And I did.

Yes, it was my video book trailer that finally sent me over the edge to make a $1000 purchase I had been planning on making for a few months. I was going to wait until I knew how much money I had left after taxes to replace my 3-year-old laptop, but I decided to just get the damn computer now so I could finish the trailer.

Several days later, the UPS man delivered my computer and I was able to install the 30-day trial version of Adobe Premiere to do my video editing. I couldn’t use this on the old laptop because it required a 64-bit operating system. Premiere was the program I learned to use in a college video editing class, so I was familiar enough with it to get my editing done surprisingly quickly. It only took 2-3 hours.

I needed to have copyright approval to use any music in the trailer because I’d like to get my publisher to place it on my Amazon page. I didn’t want to get sued for violating someone’s copyright. I thought about using some royalty-free music which you can find via Google, but then I remembered that my friend Jenny plays bass in the band The Odyssey Favor, so they let me use one of their songs. I then exported the video in a web-friendly format. After a few friends viewed it and promised me it didn’t suck (and I hope they didn’t lie), I uploaded it for all the world to see.

I hope you guys like it! At the very least I hope it makes you want to learn more about the book (or start a coalition to protect teddy bears). Feel free to post it on your own sites, tweet the link, scream the web address from the rooftops or what have you. I assure you that no teddy bears were permanently harmed in the making of this video.

"Smart, unflinchingly honest, and laugh-out-loud funny."– Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice

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