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Judynyc

Sun, Mar-01-09 11:55

Refuse to Regain

Refuse To Regain -blog

Quote:

Overcoming the Centipede Syndrome
Posted: 27 Feb 2009 10:10 AM PST
By Lynn Haraldson-Bering
After reading all your comments and emails in response to Barbara’s last blog, the more convinced I am that maintainers share more in common than people realize. Many of your answers had similar themes, and I could relate to every one of them.
Maintenance feels like a secret society sometimes, only without initiations or secret handshakes. We’ve all paid our dues, though, and if there is one word I culled from your responses to best summarize weight-loss and maintenance it would be “patience.”
I’ve been thinking about one of the questions Barbara asked: “What is the one thing that you want to tell people who are losing weight right now?” I wondered about the 300-pound me and if she’d have listened to the 127-pound me. While I was in awe of and somewhat motivated by people who’d lost the kind of weight I wanted to lose, mostly I was intimidated. I never adopted the attitude, “If SHE did it I can do it” because I didn’t know for sure I could do it. After all, like many of you, I’d been down that losing road before and look where it got me. I wanted this time to be the last time. I wanted to be a success and keep it off for good, but until I developed patience, that wasn’t going to happen. And you couldn’t tell the 300-pound me that. I had to learn it by myself.
When I began losing weight in January 2005, I suffered from what I call Centipede Syndrome. When I was a kid, my bedroom was in the basement. It was a nicely finished basement, but a basement nonetheless, and no amount of drywall could keep out the creepy crawlies.
One night I was reading in bed and I felt something on my leg. I threw back the covers and a centipede was crawling up my calf. I screamed and brushed it off and, well, kept screaming. My dad ran downstairs and rescued me from the centipede I’d flung back into my bed, but all night and for weeks to come, I slept in pants and with the blankets tucked all around me.
When I “woke up,” so to speak, and realized I was 300 pounds, it was like a centipede was crawling up my leg. “Get the weight off me NOW!” was the frantic mindset I was in. It was like I was feeling all the years of weight-related embarrassment all at once and I was completely impatient with weight loss. Just as I was all the other times I’d been down the scale.
I tried and failed several times in those early months to shake that sense of the urgency. I celebrated the big losses and criticized the small ones. I developed charts and graphs that I used to estimate how long it would take me to get to certain weights based on my average losses. I pored over them day in and day out until something clicked. I don’t even remember what it was. Maybe I was just tired of the stress. But something caused me to slow down and stop looking so far ahead, and to concentrate on the day, the meal, and the moment.
I don’t know if patience is inherent for some folks, but it was definitely a learned skill for me. And I have to hone that skill every day. I recently had a root canal and was given a steroid shot afterwards. My dentist also treated me for an infection in one of the roots and I took antibiotics for 10 days. My weight went from 127 to 132 overnight and stayed there for a few days. Slowly it crept to 130, 129, 128 and finally, today, back to 127. It took almost three weeks to get back to “normal.” But surprisingly I didn’t panic. I knew I’d done nothing different in terms of diet and exercise and I trusted that my body was responding to the medications. A few times I wondered if aliens had taken the real me and replaced me with this person of some advanced patience. Then I realized that’s what comes with time and trust. Patience.
The 300-pound me didn’t understand that. I know I’d heard it. People said it all the time, “You’ve got to be patient with the process.” But I didn’t really hear it until I started living it.
Today on the elliptical I listened to the song “Gonna Fly Now” from the movie “Rocky.” There aren’t many words in the lyrics, but they are powerful, and combined with the dramatic furor of trumpets and drums and strings, they give me goose bumps. I thought about the 300-pound me and how an elliptical was as far away from possible as going to the moon, but somehow she thought she could. And she did.
So my fellow maintainers in this secret society, thank you very much for your willingness to share your insights and advice. I recommend you download the theme from “Rocky” and allow yourself to feel the good vibes for developing the patience necessary to do this day in and day out.
“Trying hard now
it's so hard now
trying hard now
Getting strong now
won't be long now
getting strong now
Gonna fly now
flying high now
gonna fly, fly, fly...”

I loved this blog from Refuse to Regain. Its in repsonse to a blog from the other day asking us questions about our maintenance and weight loss for an interview that is with Dr Oz kinda for Oprah. ;)
Here's a link to "from 0 t o Oz":
http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...om-0-to-0z.html
lots of good stuff in the comments section.

Enomarb

Tue, Mar-03-09 13:20

thanks, Judy. Everything helps- this is our long haul journey!!
E

Judynyc

Tue, Mar-03-09 14:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enomarb

thanks, Judy. Everything helps- this is our long haul journey!!
E

Yup! It sure is!! :agree: We need more of this kind of stuff!!

Your welcome!!

Judynyc

Wed, Mar-04-09 09:19

One Against the Many: Time to Take a Broader Perspective Blog

One Against the Many: Time to Take a Broader Perspective
Posted: 03 Mar 2009 05:52 PM PST
By Barbara Berkeley
Yet another disappointing weight loss trial.
On February 26, the New England Journal published the results of a study of 881 adults being treated for obesity with varying food plans. The purpose of this study was to determine whether certain nutrient combinations were superior to others in promoting weight loss. Patients were assigned to one of four diets and followed for two years. The length of the trial was unusual because very few weight loss studies extend past one year.
At the end of the day, all the participants were basically in the same place. The media went into their usual frenzy, reporting that these results proved that no one diet was any better than any other. But a closer look at the data showed something very different.
First, the study showed that, yet again, people lost weight and then began to regain it. Second, it proved that even under monitored conditions, people were unable to stick to precise ratios of fat, carbs and protein. In the end, participants could not sustain diets that required detailed counting nor could they really sustain calorie reduction. The average subject on any diet had lost about 13 pounds at 6 months. By two years, and despite group and individual counseling sessions, losses averaged only 7-9 pounds and weight regain was continuing in a seemingly inevitable upward path. Granted, these results are better than no intervention at all. At least the average participant was still at a lower weight than where he or she had started, yet the curve suggested that this situation was not to be long-lived.
Writing in an editorial in the New England Journal, Dr. Martijn Katan commented, “The inability of the (study) volunteers to maintain their diets must give us pause…Even these highly motivated, intelligent participants who were coached by expert professionals could not achieve the weight losses needed to reverse the obesity epidemic…Evidently, individual treatment is powerless against an environment that offers so many high-calorie foods and labor-saving devices.”
Dr. Katan then suggested a paradigm shift. He went on to describe a total–community approach that was tried with great success in two small towns in France. Called EPODE (a French acronym for Together Let’s Prevent Obesity in Children), the program used multiple fronts to bring down obesity levels in kids.
“Everyone from the mayor to shop owners, schoolteachers, doctors, pharmacists, caterers, restaurant owners, sports associations, the media, scientists, and various branches of town government joined in an effort to encourage children to eat better and move around more. The towns built sporting facilities and playgrounds, mapped out walking itineraries, and hired sports instructors. Famillies were offered cooking workshops and families at risk were offered individual counseling.”
Within 3 years, the prevalance of overweight in children in EPODE areas was 8.8% whereas it had climbed to 17.8% in neighboring communities. The program is now in place in 200 European towns.
Dr. Katan concluded:
“Like cholera, obesity may be a problem that cannot be solved by individual persons but that requires community action…The apparent success of such community interventions suggests that we may need a new approach to preventing and to treating obesity and that it must be a total-environmental approach that involves and activates entire neighborhoods and communities. It is an approach that deserves serious investigation, because the only effective alternative that we have a present for halting the obesity epidemic is large-scale gastric surgery.”
This assessment rings completely true to me. Day after day I read about the successes of people like you who follow this website. But day after day in my medical practice, I deal with the realities of endless numbers of patients who can’t make permanent change work. These are sincere, determined people who very much want to change. But they can’t. Why not?
I believe that it is because the modern environment is leaning on them like a crushing weight. It leans on most of them so heavily that they can’t be successful. Permanent maintainers are an unusual group in that they have found ways to shelter themselves from this pressure. This takes a certain unique level of determination, imagination and interest, and an ingenuity that may not be available to the majority. Even the most determined may be crushed when life circumstances divert their attention and make them more vulnerable. Unless one’s healthy lifestyle has become utterly ingrained, it is apt to be obliterated when a parent gets hospitalized, a child goes through a crisis or a divorce threatens.
It’s clear that the individual approach to permanent lifestyle change is not working, but that doesn’t say much about either the approach or the individual if we haven’t given that person a fair chance. After all, how can we expect someone to climb a mountain when they’re saddled with a thousand-pound environmental back pack?
As Dr. Katan suggests, let’s think about lightening the load.
1. Let’s have the new administration turn the tide by lobbying for new initiatives that would make taking care of your health “cool.” Bring back the Presidential Physical Fitness tests and awards that were part of every gym class during the Kennedy years. Appoint a Wellness Czar who would start nationwide health challenges and set an agenda for clear health goals we want to accomplish.
2. There is a lot of talk about being more responsible. Banks, investors, mortgage holders and big business all have suffered from going beyond their reach; consuming too much. The same can be said for Americans regarding their health. Besides reorganizing our insurance industry, we need to call on our citizens to become responsible about their health. That means setting national standards and trying to get there. Responsibility is “in.” We should extend the message to taking care of our bodies. That, much more than electronic medical records, will ultimately have the greatest impact on the cost of health care in the future.
3. We should reduce the amount of food stimulation in the environment by getting rid of food ads for kids and by running nutritional information in a crawl at the bottom of the screen over food ads for adults (as they do in France). Cigarettes have a warning and so should many food ads.
4. Our stimulus package spending should include the building of bike paths, walking courses, community fitness facilities and other wellness related projects.
5. We should move lots of people (the community at large) toward wanting to take better care of themselves. If everyone wants to do something, no one person is an outlier. I believe the way to do this is to incentivize healthy behaviors. That might mean giving insurance discounts, bonus pay or other perks to people who keep their weight stable from year to year, or to those who can prove they have attended exercise sessions, or to people who are successfully keeping off at least some of the weight they have lost.
6. Having just worked on a project that created six weeks of menus for a magazine, I can tell you that I was amazed at the calories in most of the foods we eat. We could make it a lot easier for people if all restaurants were required to post calories next to their menu items.
7. And what about one of my favorite ideas (although most people don’t like it): the food-free workplace. Food in the office would have to be confined to designated eating spots like break rooms or cafeterias. Second-hand food exposure is a major environmental “lean” for people who are trying hard to control weight. Like second-hand smoke, the presence of food where it’s not wanted triggers all sorts of brain and gut responses. Since obesity causes as many deaths a year as smoking, why don’t we take it equally seriously in the work environment?
I believe that creating a healthy America will ‘take a village’. At a time when bold new projects seem to be in vogue, there couldn’t be a better moment for action.

http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...erspective.html

jschwab

Wed, Mar-04-09 10:04

I think things like the Presidential Fitness tests are great. I was terrible at it at the time (except the gymnastics part), but now I have a barometer. Hey, I could not run a mile in high school and now I can run 10! I had no idea they didn't still do this...

Judynyc

Tue, Mar-10-09 08:26

Food Free Workplace

Refuse To Regain

The Food Free Workplace: A Sore Subject Revisited
Posted: 09 Mar 2009 06:31 AM PDT
DR. OZ UPDATE: Barbara will be a guest on the the Dr. Oz radio show this Wednesday, March 11, however, the show will air anywhere from a day or two to as much as a week after taping. The only way to find out when it's on the schedule is to check under Dr. Oz on www.oprah.com/radio. It will air on XM channel 156 or Sirius 195 (if you have the Sirius/XM package). XM offers a free month of listening on their web site. We will keep our eyes on the schedule and let you know the air date.

Quote:

By Barbara Berkeley
I think it would be safe to say that I have rarely come up with an idea that has taken as thorough a bashing as the Food Free Workplace. It’s worth repeating that the FFW simply suggests that food at work be confined to areas that are away from desks and work centers, not that people stop eating, eat less or even monitor their choices. Nevertheless, the mere mention of controlling access to food inevitably brings forth a flood of criticism and a lot of talk about preserving rights.
For those of you who have written to say that you dislike the FFW, let me assure you that you are not alone. I have a doctor friend, for example, who had been worried about his office staff as he watched the majority become seriously overweight. He noticed daily food consumption at desks and more and more junk food being brought to work. He felt that there was also a problem being created by big lunches being brought in by drug company representatives. He asked my opinion on what to do. I suggested that he sit down with his employees and sincerely tell them how much he cared about their health. I then suggested that he ask the drug reps to limit lunches to healthy foods and that he set an office policy that eating was fine in the office kitchen, but not elsewhere. These ideas went over like the proverbial lead balloon. The office staff threatened to quit, citing their rights. Under continuing pressure, the doctor relented.
Undeterred, I naively went on to suggest the FFW idea to the CEO of a company that was spending large amounts of money paying for diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and other obesity related issues in its employees. The CEO liked the idea, but said that it would “cause a revolution” in his company so he was afraid of suggesting it. He was probably right. Is the FFW simply a really bad idea?
No one likes the feeling of Big Brother dictating what we can and can’t do. Nevertheless, I continue to find the ferocity of the response to this fairly mild policy both fascinating and baffling. Further discussion leads to some controversial political topics, but I think we all know each other well enough at this point to have this debate. So here goes.
A number of you have pointed to the fact that you simply had to learn how to deal with food being around all the time; that this was a vital skill of maintenance. I admire you for that more than you can know. But the fact is that people who have successfully learned to negotiate the constant presence of food are few and far between. The vast majority of people who would like to lose weight are defeated by the nearness of food, which stimulates powerful responses in the brain and gut. Successful maintainers represent a small minority: the group of people who have figured out how to live a singular life within an overwhelmingly unhealthy food environment. When someone says that people just have to learn how to deal with this environment, I hear a variant of what NOWs (never over weight people) say about those who weigh too much, “They just have to just stop eating.” We all know that this is a vast oversimplification. And it places blame on the overweight person, making them seem both irresponsible and gluttonous.
By the way, I am not running from the issue of personal responsibility. We need to do a better job of encouraging people to take responsibility for their own eating choices. That must be a major part of any plan to get our country well again. But the effort against overweight (the consequences of which effect all of us in terms of health care spending) must have a multilateral front. All I am suggesting is that most obese people in this country are buckling under environmental pressure. There has to be some way to give people a fighting chance.
Invoking rights starts us down a complex path. If you make choices that severely impact your health and lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, and if those bills drive up the cost of everyone else’s health insurance, is that choice your right? It always has been your right in America to make “bad” choices up to a point. We do have helmet laws, seatbelt laws and so on. The question becomes this: with the entire population aging and obesity related illness killing 300,000 people a year is this really still about rights? No one wants intervention from schools, businesses or government, but what happens when certain behaviors start to seriously impact our ability to pay for healthcare? Just as with the banking industry, government may be forced to step in if too many people opt for consumption rather than frugality. If you enjoy bringing doughnuts to your desk, but another person is trying to keep weight off and is bothered by the constant unwanted exposure to food, whose rights are pre-eminent? Whose rights are more important? It could be argued that the rights of the person whose health is being impacted have greater weight.
I always thought that in suggesting ideas that would relieve a bit of the pressure of the food culture, I was on the side of those who were waging the long-term weight battle. What I’ve found, though, is that very few people like the idea of giving up choice, even in so minor a thing as where to eat the food you bring. It remains an interesting question and one that obviously provokes strong responses. I’ve had my say, feel free to let me have it if you disagree.

Judynyc

Fri, Mar-20-09 17:16

I thought this worthy of bringing here:

Quote:

Refuse To Regain

Cursed
Posted: 18 Mar 2009 05:01 PM PDT
By Barbara Berkeley
When my husband and I were medical residents in Boston, we often would try to escape from the harsh world of the hospital by going to a place called “1001 Plays,” an early version of today’s video arcade. We’d try to drown out the stresses of the day by shooting things in the form of PacMen or Space Invaders. The silly sound effects and sparkly graphics usually worked, but only up to a point. Inevitably someone right near us would start talking about medicine. Their gallbladder needed fixing, or they were due for a stress test, or they weren’t sure if their thyroid medicine was the right dose. No matter where we fled, we couldn’t avoid being near someone who was talking about illness. We decided that this annoying phenomenon needed a name so, in honor of the father of modern medicine, Sir William Osler, we called it “Osler’s Curse.”
Now, many years later, I find that I am haunted by a curse of similar persistence. Perhaps The Atkins Curse? It seems that everyone around me is constantly bringing up the topic of diet. It doesn’t matter whether they know what I do for a living or not. Give them a minute and they’ll start talking about losing weight. This particular curse drives me crazy. Part of it is that I simply can’t get away from the subject. But for the most part, what truly bothers me is the offhand way people look at their overweight state. Most people complain about being too heavy, but treat it as trivial. They want to lose some pounds and are sure they know how to keep them from coming back. They’ll get to it one of these days. I generally listen politely. What I really want to do is take them by the shoulders and talk some sense into them.
There are two ways to look at fat accumulation. The general perception is that being overweight just means that someone has eaten too much and their body has stored the excess. Kind of like an overstuffed pillow. If you look at it this way, it’s hard to get very excited about being overweight.
But suppose you look at weight in a completely different way? Suppose that weight gain only happens when there is a real problem with how the body is working. In other words, suppose fat is a symptom of something else? If that’s true, gaining weight is an alarm that’s ringing; a flashing red light. It’s your first indication that something is very wrong.
This is the way I look at overweight. It may be caused by the behavior of overeating, but that behavior has led to a disturbance in the body; a disturbance that is showing up as fat accumulation and signals a problem with the way the body uses sugar, controls blood pressure and manufactures artery-clogging cholesterol.
Overweight trivial? What about this little item that appeared in the paper recently?
“In an age when the adult populations of most industrialized nations have grown significantly taller, the average height of black women in the United States has been receding, beginning with those born in the late 1960s…..The main culprit appears to be diet.”
The gap between the height of white women and their black counterparts is:
“Truly phenomenal,” according to John Komlos, an economist and historian who mas made a specialty of studying human heights. “Such a steep decline is practically unprecedented in modern U.S. history….The only reasonable explanation we can come up with is diet and the obesity epidemic among middle and low income black women.”
The article goes on to make the following point:
Over the last three decades, the prevalence of obesity among white Americans has tripled, while among blacks it has increased five-fold. Black females were hardest hit: almost 80 percent of black females are overweight or obese compared with 62 percent of the total female population, according to the CDC.
I found it interesting that this particular finding did not receive the wide publicity accorded to other obesity related news items. Diet and obesity can actually stunt growth! The fate of obese people who are of lower income or belong to a minority group tends to get less press. That’s shameful because we’re all headed in the same direction. Johns Hopkins University published a paper last year that predicted a whopping overweight and obesity rate of 86 percent in the population at large by 2030. The huge burden of disease that will come along with such an increase is expected to raise obesity related health-care spending from the current $100 billion to over $960 billion per year.
And what about this little article in the Internal Medicine News? A study from the NIH has shown that more than 40 percent (40 percent!!!!) of American adults have blood sugar that is too high. And right above that, an article documents a newly discovered connection between a diabetes diagnosis in midlife (common in overweight people) and a doubling of the risk of dementia.
These headlines represent a tiny fraction of the articles I read each day predicting doom and gloom from our modern obesity epidemic. I walk through my everyday world carrying this information like a heavy weight, while all around me, I am subjected to The Atkins Curse – the conversations about the latest diet book, whether a colon cleanse can help you lose weight, the vow to get serious about that belly just as soon as the next cruise is over.
Honestly. It’s time to get serious now.

Some interesting stats in there!!

Judynyc

Sun, Apr-05-09 09:35

Quote:

Refuse To Regain

The Unsatisfactory “M” Word
Posted: 04 Apr 2009 01:21 PM PDT
By Barbara Berkeley
As anyone who has read this blog knows, I have the sometimes annoying tendency to create new words and terms. Primarian, Scream Weight, Gong Food, IBM….the list goes on. I don’t do this to be cute. Honestly, I don’t. I’m just attempting to reframe the language of weight loss. So much of what we say about weight loss and maintenance appears wrong to me. And we keep repeating the same phrases over and over. My compulsive creation of new words is my brain’s way of trying to speak about weight in a different language.

Recently, I’ve become increasingly unhappy with the word “maintenance.” To maintain simply means to keep things at a steady state. It’s a boring word; one with absolutely no passion or appeal. Who wants to aspire to maintain? It seems like an endless drag.

When I look at what you have written and when I speak to maintainers, I am struck by the fact that all of you are far more than a stable scale number. Successful maintainers are something else entirely. They are changelings: people who have been able to permanently remake themselves. They’ve gone from one side of the world to the other. There has got to be a better descriptor for this new state than “maintenance.”

I’ve been unable to get my mind around the right word to substitute for “maintainer.” In my book, I call long-term successes Weight Mentors, but that really doesn’t capture the morphing from one being to another that characterizes you changelings. (Neither does “changeling,” by the way).
Dr. Oz asked me the following question during our radio interview: “What is the moment that causes someone to go from a person who’s been struggling with weight forever to someone who can permanently control their weight?” I couldn’t tell him because I don’t know the answer. To be honest, it seems no one else does either. All we can say is that the switch seems to flip for some people at some undetermined moment. (Should we call you “The Flipped?” I think not!) It’s very unsatisfactory to think that this flipping is unpredictable, but in a way there’s something wonderfully hopeful about it. The fact that a transformation like this can happen even after many unsuccessful attempts tells us that it can happen to anyone with enough persistence.

Maintainers seem to be particularly alive. I suspect this has a multitude of explanations. They live a life that is closer to the life nature intended, consuming purer fuels and using the body actively. They have a daily purpose: health. They have a sense of accomplishment that reflects very real achievement. None of this is boring. None of this has much to do with simply keeping things on an even keel.

In other words, maintainers aren’t simply maintaining. Using this word to describe them seriously shortchanges what they’ve done and continue to do. If you’re a “maintainer,” you’re reveling in a new way of being. You’re exploring and enjoying a brand new territory. You’re continuing to educate yourself about the new neighborhood you now inhabit. It’s an interesting, compelling, challenging process, not at all conveyed by the “m” word.
So what is the word that describes this new way of being? Like “maintenance” and “maintainer” it should have two forms, one to describe the state and one to describe those who inhabit that state. Give it some thought.

I really enjoyed reading her blog today. I do think that those of us who are maintaining, don't give ourselves enough credit for what we're actually doing. :agree: :thup:

Demi	Mon, Apr-06-09 05:24

I follow the Refuse to Regain blog too, and have just ordered her book Refuse to Regain!: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned! I'm really looking forward to reading it :)

As enomarb so eloquently put it:

Quote:

Originally Posted by enomarb

Everything helps- this is our long haul journey!!

There's currently so little guidance and advice out there for those of us on maintenance, that I tend to devour anything that I do come across.

Judynyc

Mon, Apr-06-09 08:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Demi

There's currently so little guidance and advice out there for those of us on maintenance, that I tend to devour anything that I do come across.

I know....it felt like I was like navigatng through a mine field when I first got there. :daze: very scary!! :eek:

pengu1

Tue, Apr-07-09 17:40

I dislike the concept of a mine field. It Seems like the word isn't scary enough, and that you can't see what you are about to get into.

I compare it to navigating the dog walk at an Interstate Highway rest stop. You can see dog poo everywhere, and if you step in it, it gets all over you and it takes forever for you to get it off.

Kind of like body fat. :(

Judynyc

Tue, Apr-07-09 21:20

:lol: I'd much rather step in dog poop than a mine field! At least you can wash it off your shoes....whereas in a mine field, you just may not need shoes any more.

I suppose it depends on your point of view. :)

Judynyc

Tue, Apr-14-09 07:52

Refuse to Regain Blog:
April 13, 2009
Going The Distance
By Barbara Berkeley

I loved this entry on Jonathan’s www.jack-sprat.net blog. With his permission, I’ve reproduced it below:

Persister

While I was out running this morning I tripped and had kind of a tough spill. But fortunately, other than my phone, nothing was damaged. (Well, my pride was a bit wounded.) I have a bruise on my chest and a scrape on my knee, but no blood was shed, no muscles pulled, no joints twisted, etc. so all things considered, it was a relatively fortuitous fall, and much less scary than when I have tripped and fallen in the dark running on a weekday morning. I was able to get right back up and continue on, even if I was a little bit shaken.

As I continued, and got back into the rhythm of running, I started to get annoyed. I noticed that time and again, someone would run right past me, sailing forward as if I were standing still. It really began to bug me that they could all go so fast, so easily. Regardless of age or gender, everyone seemed to be just cruising along at top speed while I felt as though I were plodding. All of my running and training and efforts, and here I was, slow as the proverbial tortoise.
So I’ll be honest and tell you that at that point, I strongly considered giving up. My phone is smashed, but I can still use the keypad, and I thought about giving Devin a call and asking him to come get me. It was a sort of petulant, pouty feeling, one which I often had as a child.

This week, in the blog “Refuse to Regain,” Barbara Berkeley talked about her dissatisfaction with the word “maintenance” to describe the process of remaining slender after having lost weight. She noted that it didn’t really do justice to use the word maintenance to explain such an “interesting, compelling, challenging process.”

I agree that it’s hard to come up with just the right word. I’d suggest “persister” if that was a real word. Because what I did today after first falling and then being passed by a whole bunch of runners was stop and assess the truth of what I was feeling, acknowledging the frustration and difficulty….and then I JUST KEPT GOING.

In the end, I ran over six more miles until I got home, and as I was getting pretty close to finishing, I had that blissful, “this is the best day ever” kind of feeling. Legs pumping, lungs pulsating, eyes and ears taking everything in around me — it was awesome.

That’s what weight maintenance is like to me. There are lots of times when I trip and fall and think about giving up. There are times when I get angry that “everyone else has it so much easier than me.” There are times when it just seems too painful, too unpleasant and too scary to keep moving forward. But then I pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep going. And I never, ever regret it.

One of the most important mental attitudes any maintainer can develop is the confidence that he or she can persist. Like any of the skills of maintenance, this confidence comes with practice. Getting to this feeling may take awhile, which means many moments of simply forcing one’s self to keep going without being at all sure of success. Many of you have written to describe this experience in relation to exercise. You started off by simply forcing yourselves to do it. You grew more confident in your ability to persist. Finally the persistence morphed into love.

There is a commercial currently running on TV which shows a man going out in the morning for a run. He heads onto a wooded path and begins to jog. In the first mile of his run, roots trip him and plants send thick vines out like lassos to wrap him up and keep him from moving on. But he persists. As the early going passes off, he breaks through the sabotaging foliage onto a clear, wide path. The rest of the run is laid out easily and joyfully before him.

The topic of persistence has particular meaning in the days following holidays. This past week, with its Easter and Passover foods, tends to be a hard one for the dietarily remodeled. Holidays link food with family, love, ritual and even the divine. Special foods have always been part of cultural tradition and none of us want to completely sever that connection. Yet we learn to persist through the moment even if those chocolate bunnies nip at our heels or those matzoh balls plop pounds of weight on the morning scale. Even if we cannot control the moment, we manage to stumble back from the fall. The path lies wide and joyful ahead of us and we can truly say that “this is the best day ever.”

Enomarb

Fri, Apr-17-09 07:00

hi Judy-
Thanks for that last post. I really enjoy reading the new and different things you find. I agree- it does take persistence and practice and commitment to get to the confidence that you can do it. And do it and do it and do it and.......

Judynyc

Fri, Apr-17-09 09:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enomarb

Your welcome Eno and Thanks!!

It kind of funny to me that these ladies want to find new words for what we do now.
In my experience of this whole thing, I do think that someting actually clicked inside me as I was in weight loss mode. I started to realize that I needed to find many types of foods that I likede so that I would not become bored with my new way of eating. Its important for me to not be bored or I wander.
So I began to try many new things.
The word sustainability is key for me. Having a wide range of foods to be able to chose from is what makes this sustainable for me.
Also, being to very willing to get on that scale and actually monitor my weight, was key to being good at maintaining.
I also had to learn that when I made rules for myself, that I could and would follow them....and I do still do that 3 yrs into my maintenance. :cool:

I don't really know which plans those ladies at Refuse to Regain used to lose their weight. But from reading some of it and seeing how much exercise they say they do, I tend to think that they do low fat, high carb plans. But I don't really know. :)

Demi	Fri, Apr-17-09 10:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Judynyc

I don't really know which plans those ladies at Refuse to Regain used to lose their weight. But from reading some of it and seeing how much exercise they say they do, I tend to think that they do low fat, high carb plans. But I don't really know. :)

According to Lynn Haraldson Bering's blog, she lost her weight with WW, but I haven’t been able to find any mention of how Dr. Barbara Berkeley lost her weight.

However, I am currently reading Dr Berkeley's book Refuse to Regain - 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned, and her recommendation for eating for weight maintenance is to follow the 'ancient diet' and become, what she calls, a Primarian eater. It is her take on the Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherer diet.

Quote:

The strategy that I advocate derives from a most basic principle: eat what nature intended you to eat and nothing else. I call this diet a "Primarian" eating plan, meaning a diet consisting mostly of the primary or original foods our ancient ancestors consumed.

Primarian foods are the original, simple foods of our planet. They include lean animal products, vegetables, fruits, eggs, fish, nuts, seeds and berries.
Our genetic makeup is designed to eat the foods that humans ate for millions of years.
We are poorly designed to eat modern, altered foods.
In addition to minimizing altered foods, POWs should also avoid grains and other Newcomer starches.

POW = Previously Overweight
Altered Foods: Foods of the past 100 years which are changed, added to or otherwise manipulated
Newcomer Foods: Foods introduced with the advent of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago
Primary Foods: Foods that come mostly unchanged from nature and could have been eaten by ancient man

From Refuse to Regain - 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned by Dr Barbara Berkeley

On top of the primary foods listed, she also includes some 'newer' foods in the form of low-fat/non-fat diary, selected oils (olive, canola, avocado, flaxseed or walnut, NO vegetable oils), non-starchy legumes, occasional alcohol and acceptable treats (i.e., SF jello, LF frozen yoghurt). These foods are allowed because they do not appear to cause weight gain or cravings when consumed reasonably.

Foods to be avoided are grains, corn (incl. popcorn), cereals, products made from flour, rice, potatoes, sugar, honey, juices, sweets, pasta and sweetened drinks. There are other no-no's such as no hot dogs, deli meats, 'heart-healthy' margarines, trans fats.

Obviously, there's quite a lot more about it in the book, but it does give you some idea of where she is coming from.

Judynyc

Fri, Apr-17-09 10:50

Very interesting Demi!!! :thup:

Thank you! :rose:

camaromom

Mon, Apr-20-09 07:03

Just wanted to pop in and say that I LOVED the links to this site and I will be visiting it again. Finally something focused not on loss, but maintaining. Real shortage of information for that.

Demi	Fri, Apr-24-09 11:46

From Refuse to Regain:

Quote:

April 22, 2009

"FAT: What No One Is Telling You" Challenges Fat Prejudice

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

This week I watched the PBS documentary “FAT: What No One Is Telling You.” It not only brought back a lot of memories, but it challenged me to better understand the complexity of obesity.

While Barbara works in the field of obesity, my only understanding of the issue is through my own personal experience as a formerly obese person, and through what I read and see in my daily life.

I identified with two of the women profiled, Rosie and Mary. While Rosie had gastric bypass, her reasons for losing weight were very similar to mine, and probably many of yours, too. Aside from the usual desire to walk without pain and to sit on the floor and get up again without it being a major endeavor, Rosie talked about wanting to be “normal,” to be in control, and to not be viewed as fat and therefore weak. She no longer wanted to be the butt of jokes.

Then there was Mary, who is a comedian and was often the butt of her own jokes. Her story, particularly her “ah ha” moment, was something I related to. She was in a park sitting in her car and crying. Her mother was dying of cancer, but at that moment she wasn’t crying over her mother like she usually did. She was crying, she said, because she wanted more from life. Then two guys pulled up and got out of their car. One of the guys said to the other, “Wonder what her problem is?” His friend said that she was probably crying because she was fat and nobody wanted her.

When I heard this, I was offended by their meanness and sad for Mary, but she called it her “epiphany.” She realized she WAS crying because she was fat. She asked herself how she could ever be happy if she couldn’t control what she put in her mouth. People, she said, stop at the physical when assessing each other and she wanted to change what people saw. I understood completely.

It was the other people in the documentary, including one of the producers, who challenged me to assess my “fat prejudice.” Not a comfortable challenge, to be sure, because I’m asking myself, after losing 170 pounds: How do I really see overweight and obese people?

Carla, who was thin as a child but gained weight when she began working in the corporate world, is trying to lose weight. She’d had a particularly stressful day and although she wasn’t hungry, bought ice cream on the way home from work. She said she knew going for a walk would make her feel better, but all she wanted to do was put on her pajamas and eat ice cream. Because that’s not my experience with food, and especially not something I struggled with while losing weight, my first gut reaction was, “Why? Why is she sabotaging all her good efforts?”

Ah…because the problem with obesity is that it is densely complex. My own experience is one of millions, and no two obese people are alike. Not physically in how their fat is distributed, not in their metabolic rates, not in their emotional health, not in their relationship with food and physical activity, and not in the reasons why and how they are obese, be it cultural, genetic, or psychological. There are as many ways to get obese, stay obese, and not be obese as there are people who are obese.

When producer Tom Spain was asked, “What was surprising to you during your journey through this?” he responded:

“The big surprise, and the big dilemma, is the complexity. One researcher told me early on: If you're going to deal with the subject, you have to honor the complexity...I've since learned this is a social phenomenon, an emotional phenomenon, a genetic phenomenon, it's a food supply phenomena. It's such a vast subject that's way beyond the reach of medicine or weight loss programs...it's just huge. That's something that was a surprise and a dilemma because the job of a filmmaker is to take an issue and make it clear and simple. And our message is that this is not clear and this is not simple.”

So how do I, as a person who’s been down the obesity path a few times and is now not obese, honor that complexity?

First impressions is a running theme in the “FAT” documentary. Many of the people interviewed said they wanted to lose weight so others would see them for who they really are. I remember that was one of my reasons for losing weight, too. But our bodies are not our personalities. God knows there are as many malicious skinny people out there as there are good-hearted overweight people. We can’t know someone’s nature simply by assessing their body size. But how do we teach the world to honor an entire person and not judge them based on body size?

When I visited my home state of Minnesota in 2007, I weighed 132 pounds. I went to a convenience store in a small town to buy ice. The woman behind the counter was morbidly obese. She didn’t greet me when I walked in, and when I asked her where the ice was, she merely pointed to the corner of the store. Another woman came out of the back room and joined the woman behind the counter. She, too, was morbidly obese. When I got to the counter, I smiled and said hello. Both of them just looked me up and down with scowls on their faces. I felt like Clint Eastwood when he rode into town in “High Plains Drifter.”

When I got to my car, I wondered if they were rude because I was thin or because I was a stranger or because they were just having a bad day. Thinking back, after watching “FAT,” I wondered if maybe I sent out an anti-fat vibe, the same one I picked up on time and again from non-obese people when I was morbidly obese, whether it was real or imagined. It’s not like I could say to them, “Hey, I used to be just like you!” I had to acknowledge that my first impression was that I saw two very obese women. How in my subconscious did I measure and judge them based solely on that observation?

Watching “FAT,” I realize I’m one of the lucky ones. My mind was prepared to lose weight, and that “switch” we talk about, the one that kicks us into permanent weight-loss mode, stayed in the “on” position during my final journey down the scale. I was also lucky because my body responded to the “eat less, move more” approach. While maintaining my weight is not something I’d describe as easy, I know I won’t gain 170 pounds because I’m in a place – physically and emotionally – that works for me. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, and I suppose if I did I could make a million dollars because if every overweight and obese person thought like I do now and had the same physical makeup as me, everyone would be on their way to thin.

“FAT” doesn’t answer as many questions as it asks, and it left me with lingering doubts about my perceived notions about obese and overweight people. It’s a challenge I am anxious to pursue and perhaps, but not likely, remedy anytime soon. Even after years of being intimately familiar with obesity, I’m only now beginning to learn just how viciously complex a subject it is.

You can watch “FAT” online or check the site for dates in which it will air in your area.

http://refusetoregain.com:80/my_weblog/

Enomarb

Mon, Apr-27-09 13:16

hi-
Demi, thanks for that post. I just watched the whole PBS show- I think it was worth watching, but can be summed up pretty quickly-
[1]Fat people are discriminated against and are unhappy in our society.
[2]Losing weight and keping it off is very hard.
[3]We don't really know why people are fat and we don't know how to help.

Aeryn

Wed, Apr-29-09 13:07

This blog is awesome. Thanks so much for posting about it here, Judy; and thanks to Demi as well for posting entries from it. I didn't know it existed.

Demi, I read with interest the excerpt you posted from Dr. Berkeley's book. I notice you mentioned "low-fat or non-fat dairy" but not regular dairy. Does she advise against eating full-fat cheese, yogurt, and cream?

SidC	Sun, May-03-09 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by demi

This is essentially what I've been doing for the last six years with great success. However, full-fat yogurt has never caused me any problems - I have it almost every morning. The last I heard, there is some reason to believe that the carb count on yogurt is overstated on the nutrition label (see yogurt. Sorry - there was another link that talked about why the carb count on yogurt was overstated, but I can't find it at the moment. It was something about how the carbs were counted as a residual, after tallying up calories due to proteins and fats and ascribing everything else to carbs. Anyone else remember that or that reference?)

Good blogs, nice thread - thanks to both Judy and Demi.

Demi	Tue, May-12-09 11:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aeryn

Demi, I read with interest the excerpt you posted from Dr. Berkeley's book. I notice you mentioned "low-fat or non-fat dairy" but not regular dairy. Does she advise against eating full-fat cheese, yogurt, and cream?

Her advice is that we shouldn't consume any saturated fats, citing major sources as cheese, butter, fatty meat and baked goods.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SidC

I've not had a problem with full-fat yoghurt either, and like you, have it most mornings in the form of Greek yoghurt. I do find, however, that I need to keep an eye on my cheese intake.

With regard to your reference about carbs in yogurt, it sounds as though you could be referring to 'The Yogurt Exception', and, if so, you might find this thread an interesting read: The truth about carbs in yogurt

Demi	Tue, May-12-09 11:51

From Refuse to Regain:

Quote:

May 12, 2009

Question to Readers From Readers: Is Maintenance Possible?

RTR reader Rebecca from Washington D.C. poses a very basic yet incredibly complex question: Is maintenance really possible? Barbara and I will chime in with our thoughts later in the week, but we’re more interested in what you have to say on this subject. As always, leave a comment or send email to refusetoregain~gmail.com.

Here’s Rebecca’s email:

I've been reading your blog for the past several months. It's an excellent website. Kirstie Alley's recent interview on Oprah triggered me to write. One issue that I'd be grateful if you'd address are your views on why it is that maintenance seems to be so difficult for virtually everyone to achieve.

I'm 46 years old, and I have recently lost the same 30 pounds that I've lost four times before in my life since I was 18. After 5 months of changing my eating habits, I'm back down to a comfortable weight range, where I'm wearing size 10 clothes, instead of the plus size clothes I was wearing. (My exercise habits have been good for the past 15 years or so; I've done 30-45 minutes of cardio and strength training regularly for this period.)

Each time previously, I maintained the weight loss (sometimes for a number of years), but somehow found myself back at the weight at which I started. I'm old enough to know that I do not have this figured out, and I am really struggling with thoughts about maintenance, the approach to take, and, most fundamentally, whether maintenance really is possible.

My life feels so much better when I am thinner. Being thinner doesn't fix everything, of course. But I feel so much better in my clothes, and I love not feeling out of control around food. I love not feeling anxious that I may be setting myself up for the unhealthiness of diabetes. More than with any previous weight loss experience, I feel that I've actually changed what I am eating (cut out processed food, refined carbs, sugar) in a way that has minimized "binge-y" feelings. Yet I still feel extremely worried and insecure about maintenance.

In my own life, besides myself, virtually every woman I know has been unable to maintain her loss over the long term. The only woman I know who has done so (a friend of my mother who has maintained probably for 20 plus years) is a long-time member of Overeaters' Anonymous. I see that the blogger on "pastaqueen.com" (linked on your home page) just announced a weight gain of 35 pounds, and other bloggers seem to have had the same experience (dietnakedblog.com, yawwblog.blogspot.com/). Oprah Winfrey and Kirstie Alley recently discussed the issue and their recent weight gains on Oprah's show.

Kate Harding, and the other fat acceptance bloggers, basically argue that maintaining weight loss is impossible, and women should simply accept themselves at the weight at which they wind up. I must say, I have a feeling like, "If Oprah can't maintain with all of the support and resources available to her, how is it possible for the average woman?" All of the scientific studies seem to suggest that it's impossible to maintain a weight loss (although I suppose there are those 10% of the persons who have done it).

Thank you for any thoughts, and thank you for this website.

http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...e-possible.html

mammac-5

Thu, May-14-09 05:36

Hey, y'all! I've been gone for a while enduring extreme academic stress...but now I'm done until August.

Judy, I need that link or page number to find the basics for South Beach, please. Time to get back on the horse!!

Corinne

Judynyc

Thu, May-14-09 06:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by mammac-5

Welcome Back Corinne!! :wave:

Here's a link to the thread where I post the food lists and meal plan charts for phase I and II.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...00&page=1&pp=15

Its the 2nd and 3rd posts, so that you can isolate the post for printing. :wave:

mammac-5

Thu, May-14-09 10:36

Thanks, Judy. It's been a rough few months -- I was taking a lot of hours to be ready for grad school while also continuing to work. Not to mention some personal family stress...so

So I'm back and bringing a few extra pounds with me. My original goal weight was 155, but I hovered between 148-150 most of last summer. Today I was 160. So bummed! But I know it's all doable and I'm thinking of it like an illness...I'm glad I caught it early!

I'll be starting at Vanderbilt University in August so I've got a busy summer ahead of me. But there is NO WAY I'm buying uniforms and new jeans in larger sizes so 150, here I come! Now that classes are done for a while I'm dedicated to getting more gym time and eating healthier. I really started slipping on the junk foods lately so that's the first thing to go.

Thanks for letting me re-up into the group. I've missed it a lot.

Judynyc

Sun, May-17-09 20:14

Refuse To Regain

Quote:

Responding to Rebecca: The Two Questions
Posted: 17 May 2009 01:53 PM PDT
By Barbara Berkeley
Our recent post featuring Rebecca’s question about the possiblity of long-term maintenance has been one of our most viewed and discussed entries. We knew there would be lots of terrific responses from readers and our expectations have been more than fulfilled. Your comments and encouragement have been superb. Thanks to all who have written. As usual, your words are thoughtful, well-written, and completely on target.
Lynn and I decided that we would post our responses to Rebecca after most of you had a chance to comment first. Since we are now a week or so out, I thought I’d write from my own perspective. Please feel free to continue commenting on the original post, however. This is a question that can’t be discussed too much.

As a clinician, I see two very distinct questions in the maintenance puzzle. Rebecca addresses both in her email, but most of our responders spoke to just one. The two questions are:
1. Is there something physical or psychological that makes regain inevitable?
2. Are there specific behaviors that allow someone to successfully maintain?
Those of you who are doing a good job staying at steady weight have figured out an answer for question two. As a result, most of you spoke to that second question in your responses. In the real world, the second question is, in fact, the more important one. If you’ve got that one licked, question one becomes nothing more than a curiosity.

For clinicians, though, the first question is hugely important. If doctors and scientists knew whether something hormonal or physical drove the body to regain weight, they might potentially design a treatment that would make maintenance much easier. Question one boils down to this: do we regain weight because we simply fall back into bad habits or do we regain because we have a physiologic disorder that encourages - even demands - that fat be reaccumulated?

Of course, we don’t know the answer. At this point, we can only take an educated guess. Based on patient observations, the information I have on human physiology and what little direct evidence exists, I have formulated the following opinion, but it’s only that - an opinion.

It seems to me that when someone starts to accumulate fat fairly extensively, something has already gone wrong with the body’s innate calorie balance mechanism. (For more on this theory, see earlier post on IBM). This malfunction can occur because the balance mechanism has had years of exposure to the SAD (Standard American Diet) or because of excessive caloric intake over shorter periods. It seems to me that once the system has malfunctioned, it tends to remain fragile permanently. This fragility predisposes POWs to weight regain unless they are extremely careful to avoid it. The analogy I often use in the office is that of the knee that has suffered a cartilage tear. If you stop exercising on that knee, it can heal up. Eventually you may be walking on it just fine. However, if you go back to stressing that knee (say, by running the marathon), it will probably start being a problem again. It remains fragile, a weak point in the body. This is one of the reasons that I believe so strongly in preventing weight gain in children. If we can prevent kids from weakening their IBMs, they will not have to struggle with bodies that tend to regain weight easily. Heading obesity off at the pass is the biggest favor we can do for the next generation of American children.

Reduced bodies belong to people who have already proved that they gain weight easily. That tendency remains. On the other hand, it flies in the face of any logic to claim that maintaining weight loss is impossible. Since the caloric balance system has been weakened, the answer to maintenance lies in finding a formula that avoids putting stress on that weak point. Once the formula is known, success comes from constant attention to this very individual plan.

A starting formula for weight maintenance is laid out in Refuse to Regain, but this is just one type of jumping-off point. Since the hormone that is most central to weight gain is insulin, a Primarian diet keeps weight off by asking the body for very little insulin secretion. Some individuals may have additional problems with fatty foods and salt. Each maintainer needs to start at some sort of baseline and work out his or her personal formula while watching the scale. The diet and lifestyle changes that only you can discover should become clear once the scale pivots around a fluctuation of several pounds. If you are staying within that small range, you have found the right formula for you. One person’s formula will not be the same as another’s, but certain constants are generally found.

First, total calories are kept rather low. Second, starches and sugars and much less prominent than in the SAD. Third, the diet tends to be low in saturated fats. Within these general guidelines, various maintainers will be able to add more or less foods, depending on their personal sensitivities.
Is it possible to maintain over the long run? Clearly, the answer is yes. But the effort takes constant attention, little tweaks to diet and behavior, and a real desire to be successful. There are many people in the world who eat diets that don’t conform to SAD norms. Each one of these people proves that various types of dietary formulas can be sustained permanently if they are important enough to the individual.

Nothing I’ve written above addresses the psychological components of regain. There is no question at all that many people regain because they use food in a drug-like way. This does not mean that they are weak or without willpower. It simply means that they have succumbed to the way most Americans eat--for the thrill of it. If a new maintainer finds that he or she is driven to eat by stresses or simply by habit, that person will benefit greatly from more intensive support. If eating is truly functioning as medication, psychological counseling may be in order. If it’s more a matter of habit, participation in group meetings or talking to other maintainers on the internet may work just as well.

Obesity is not destiny. If I did not believe that, I would have to close my doors and stop practicing. Having said that, I also believe that to truly love and care for your body (particularly when such care involves constant attention) is the stuff of personal heroism. Let’s continue to affirm that each one of us is capable of being a hero. As a community, we can assure those who are still in doubt that maintenance is not only possible, it’s a larger experience that will change the way you view not only your weight- but your life.

SidC	Tue, May-19-09 23:22

Demi, thanks for the link to Doreen's post. That was the one I was trying to remember. I started eating a fair amount of full-fat yogurt based on the Dr. Eades claim during OWL (1/2 cup with breakfast almost every day, and unsparingly in dinners and salads) and have also never noticed any adverse effects.

I do not think that any of us are doomed to regaining, unless we buy into the standard nutritionists' mantra that fat is forbidden and it's OK to eat simple white starches and low-fat foods. As Bowden said, "fat is not the enemy." Yes, transfats are evil. And I don't load my plate with saturated fats (though I'd much rather have a pat of butter than a tsp of sugar.) The unsaturated fats are good for you, and a little bit of fat for a snack (a few almonds, a bit of cheese) will sate the appetite for hours. Invariably, when someone trying Atkin's tells me that they're hungry all the time, it's because they are trying to do LC and low fat. Big mistake.

Quote:

Is it possible to maintain over the long run? Clearly, the answer is yes. But the effort takes constant attention, little tweaks to diet and behavior, and a real desire to be successful. There are many people in the world who eat diets that don’t conform to SAD norms. Each one of these people proves that various types of dietary formulas can be sustained permanently if they are important enough to the individual.

Yes, it takes constant attention. Is this surprising? Excelling at anything takes constant attention, whether it be a sport, intellectual achievement, or perfecting an omelette. It is a journey, and it does require that we change our habits. It's not a "diet." It is, truly, a change in our way of life. The Standard American Diet is a formula for failure.

But the formula for success does seem to vary individually. Atkins works for me, SB works for Judy, and I'm sure other maintaners all have their own tweaks. One thing I think has been crucial for me is being brutal about what works and not making exceptions. It makes for the occasional social awkwardness, but no, I don't have to eat a piece of chocolate cake just because it's your birthday.

Judynyc

Wed, May-20-09 08:16

As I sit here with my 1/2 cup of full fat( yes, I do eat full fat yogurt! :p ) Fage yogurt...I salute you!! :wave:

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