Sculpin

So. Out there in the atheist blogosphere is this loopy scandal of sockpuppets and lies and misogynistic fixation and secret identities and provocative accusations and the kind of ugly pseudo-journalism that Bob Novak would have produced if he’d been a concern troll. (Oh, Chris Mooney. I remember when you weren’t so obviously full of crap. Those were good days.) At this point I’d need a wiki to keep all of it straight, but Zachary Voch does as good a job at untangling it as anybody.

So there’s a lot of anger flying around out there, especially between New Atheists and the Nice Police. One commenter on Butterflies and Wheels really– well, we all have days when we get an idea and run it into the ground, eh? He’s been advised to brew some chai and take a breather. It’s pretty good advice. I can think of some times when I wish I’d gotten and taken some advice like that.

As usual, as soon as food is mentioned, my attention is thoroughly diverted. One good thing I’ll say for all that mess is that it’s gotten me to revisit my old chai recipe, which I hadn’t thought to make in years. I do like it quite strong, so I think I’ll start calling it:

Predictably Vicious New Atheist Chai
(Hat tip to the spittle-flecked ravings of Jeremy Stangroom for inspiring the title. All ingredients are subject to rational argument. Though if you want to leave out the water, I’ll look at you funny.)

1 cinnamon stick, broken
4 cardamom pods, smushed
4 whole cloves
2 peppercorns
a 3/4″ chunk of ginger, sliced and the cut surfaces scored
2 cups water
milk and sugar to taste
black tea (optional)

Bring the spices to a simmer in the water, then let sit to infuse, covered, for a good eight to ten minutes. For a caffeinated variant, bring the mixture back up to a simmer after about five minutes, add some unperfumed black tea, then immediately turn off the heat again and let it sit for three minutes. Strain and serve with plenty of milk.

Hooping is canceled until future notice, very possibly until next year. There was an unrelated incident a few weeks ago that sent me back to physical therapy. I was pretty bummed. Not that it isn’t great to see my charming PT again, but I would’ve preferred it be under other circumstances.

Instead, I’ve taken up contact juggling, with the help of ContactJuggling.organd the old James Ernest book I happened to come across. It’s more contact dropping, really, and some contact carrying-the-ball-around, plus a few wobbly attempts at isolations. I have a lot of strength and dexterity to build. My left hand hasn’t been too great since I burned it, and lately I’ve noticed that both hands have gotten stupid and weak. I think it’s because I couldn’t do much in the way of daily activity in most of 2009. I didn’t stop to think about the effects on my hands of all that disuse. (So there’s my hot tip: if you’re ever stuck flat on your back for several months, work your hands.)

So, I am the very opposite of a natural contact juggler, if there is such a thing. But it’s fun all the same, even the donkeywork. If you happen to know of any great contact juggling resources, especially ones local to Seattle, please let me know.

In other news, my recent bloodwork came back looking pretty good after all. So, hooray! I do not have to do some long annoying round of endocrinology whatnot. Losing almost 25 pounds was effective for me. Given, with two skinny parents and three skinny grandparents, it’s not too surprising that skinny would be the better phenotype for me. I’m just surprised that it would be that much better. In fact, I’d like to lose a tad more (particularly if these findings hold up) but my dance card’s pretty full for the next couple of months. Practicing weight maintenance is plenty for the time being.

Somebody at work asked me how I did it. “I ate less and moved more,” I said, which was, oh, such the socially wrong thing to say. But beyond that, I’m not entirely sure how I did it; my list of rules didn’t really capture the process. I can tell you, though, that it took up an outsized chunk of mental processing power. Writers, you know how you can feel a poem or essay cooking in the back of your head, even if you’re not consciously working on it? It felt something like that. If I could run top on my own brain, I think I would have seen the weightloss process taking up a lot of my own personal CPU.

I found I had to let some other things slide while I was actively doing the diet thing. It was worth it to me because my blood had turned into an oily sludge that was threatening to kill me. Otherwise, not so much. As glad as I am that I lost that weight, I sense that it would have been exponentially more difficult if I’d been trying also to write a book, design an experiment, raise a child, or foment even a small revolution. There’s only so much passion and focus a person has to give, and dieting takes up a surprising amount of it. It’s made me wonder how much genius — particularly women’s genius — has been lost to dieting.

I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I regret hanging up on a telephone survey person. Because now I’m wondering what on earth her script would have had her say next. Even more, I wonder how long she could have kept up that colossal perkiness. At some point, you’d think, just about anybody would start to deflate.

Our opinions are worth something; that’s why these media researchers can bundle them up and sell them. But we don’t get a cut of that money, not even a micropayment to the charity of our choice. It’s daft. I’m not going to agree to that, and certainly not to someone who’s just pulled me away from my book.

If you enjoy discomfiting people who call you up and bug you for your opinion, you could do worse than to ask whether you’ll be paid.

The problem with being all, “I will eat what I want! Hooray!” is that sometimes what I want is to sit down with a spoon and a jar of tartar sauce; that’s too weird even for me. What can I say? That Captain Toady’s stuff is freakishly good.

Their cocktail sauce is also tasty. Josh and I have been doing a lot of shrimp cocktail lately with little wild Oregon pink shrimp.

At the Lake City market yesterday, a couple of women walked by carrying bundles of huge, brightly striped hoops. I approached and asked, “Um, pardon me, but, uh, what’s with the hoops?” Turns out I was talking to Carrole Johnson of Cirquesse Hoops, who’d been talking to the folks at Mieko’s about starting up a hoop dancing class there. (I didn’t care for Mieko’s, especially after the remodel, but for a hoopdancing class I might rejoin. Maybe.)

I’m sure I was staring at the hoops pretty hungrily. “But,” I said sadly, “I’m not even sure I can hoop. I had a herniated disc.” At which point the other woman, her mother, piped up and said that she was fifty-six years old with a bad back and it had done her a world of good. Meanwhile, Carrole was demonstrating a little bit, and wow does she look graceful. Hm… maybe…

Well, heck, I’m in. Josh and I went right up to Home Depot and picked up a length of 3/4″ 100-psi irrigation tubing and a few connectors. Using these hoopmaking instructions from JasonUnbound, we made a 42-inch hoop with 1.5 pounds of water for weight and took it out for a spin. It’s fun! I suspect it’s a little small for Josh, who was having some trouble with it, but I got it up and spinning awkwardly counter-clockwise, at least for a while. Pretty soon I was dipping my hand into the hoop-space as it went around and a couple of times I even managed to turn with the hoop, more or less.

The extra weight makes it easier to keep the momentum going. It also makes it a wee bit bruising at first. I can’t have been actively hooping for much more than fifteen minutes, but it looks like I’ve been punched over and over by something with tiny fists. I think I’m going to try one of those ridiculous neoprene slimmer belts to give myself a little padding, at least until I’m a bit more fluid. I’ll tell you, I may be bruised, but my back feels great.

On the advice of the generous and indomitable Kitty Kerosene — thanks, Kitty! — I sanded down the inside of the hoop, making it significantly easier to manage. Fancy gaffer tape is in the mail from Identi-Tape, enough to use on an awful lot of hoops. There’s still plenty of tubing left. Come join me!

Carol isn’t the only one who was kind of freaked to hear that I was “on a diet”. I gather I have earned something of a reputation for over-enthusiasm. But here’s what I’m actually doing now.

My rules:

1. Shoot for 1200-1400 calories a day. 1200 is not better than 1400.
2. Write everything down in a food diary.
3. Use smaller bowls.
4. Weigh in daily and track the moving average.
5. Get what exercise I can.
6. Use trustworthy information sources to help decide how to stock the fridge and pantry.
7. Money is not the issue. Shell out for tasty fresh food.
8. The body is the ultimate authority.

The thing is, the body is not my enemy. My body is often a lot smarter than the rest of me. So, I figured, what if I capitalized on that? What if, instead of imposing a lifestyle on myself from without, I were to radically trust myself with my choices? As long as I hit my caloric marks, everything is fair game for eating. But here’s the catch: I have to actually want what I eat. And I mean the food itself — not the idea of the food. Not the marketing of the food, the nostalgia of the food, the cultural significance of the food, or even the supposed dietworthiness of the food. I try to engage with the food object as fully as I can, without preconceptions, and then pay attention to how I feel as I digest it.

And it turns out that — having broken myself of what felt not unlike an addiction to big piles of complex carbohydrates — what I actually want is pretty smart. I do want a whole lot more protein than I would have guessed. I love nuts, beans, olives and olive oil, shrimp cocktail, fancy tuna, fresh fruit, dry Cheerios, cruciferous vegetables, Greek-style yogurt, excellent chocolate, thin whole wheat spaghetti with guasacaca, beef jerky, highly flavored cheese, and the occasional Gardenburger. I hate cheap chocolate, and I’m surprised to find that my body thinks that potato chips aren’t actually all that. Neither are french fries. (I was all “OMG French fries yum!! want!!”, tried one, and was surprised at how much I did not care. I cared that Josh was having a treat and I wasn’t; the treat itself, eh, not really.) And as for industrialized cheese, how did I never notice how weird it smelled? Industrialized food in general — you know, it’s salty and fatty and sweet, but beyond that, it’s kind of boring.

So I’ve lost some twenty pounds by doing the me thing, within some caloric limits. You can call it a New Lifestyle if you like but la la la I can’t hear you.

ETA: okay, there’s one more part: some call it the “no asshole rule”. Nothing drives me to the crunchy snacks quite like anger and frustration. The Buddha is said to have advised that it was better to go alone than in the company of a fool, and I’m taking that advice.

There were some fabulous comments in reply to that last post, but I especially wanted to give time to Carol’s, because what she said stuck with me all day yesterday.

I’ve been calling this thing the Stick’n'Twig Diet in part just because I’m the sort of person who likes that kind of sarcasm, but also in large part as my secret homage to Tom, Josh’s late uncle. I’m sorry I never got to meet Tom, because from all I’ve heard, we would have gotten along like a house afire. Tom had an advanced case of some kind of cardiovascular disease and managed to control it astoundingly well through what I think was probably the Ornish diet. He wound up living several years longer than was predicted. The diet he was on was tough; sticking to it took a whole lot of discipline on his part. I admire his gumption and hope to emulate it, even while working within to a plan that is much less restrictive.

It’s also the “Stick’n'Twig Diet” because I chafe at some of the happy-clappy talk I’ve come across in regards to eating — you know, the sort of language you might come across in magazines aimed at an “Eat Pray Love” kind of audience. (Always with, “It’s not a diet!!” *twinkle* *sparkle* “It’s a way of life!!”) This not-a-diet diet culture bugs me. That stuff reads to me much like virtue language, which I grew up with and learned to thoroughly loathe. You know: good food! bad food! sin! guilt! woe! Except now it acquires a sort of psychobabble/enlightenment overlay. You know, I’m just losing weight. It isn’t a journey into wholeness. I was plenty whole to begin with.

I have to say, it also annoys me when I read, “You know, all that weight didn’t go on in a matter of weeks!!” Yeah, uh, thanks for the reminder that it’ll take a while to take it all off, but in my case, yeah, it kinda did. Triple irritation points if this is couched in language that implies that I have had a life of sinning but, if I am willing to devote my life to reverent obedience to the wisdom of my nutrition guru, I can be redeemed. Ugh. Ugh.

More subtly, I feel that I’d be selling myself a bit short if I started in on how I was adopting a whole new lifestyle. Not to blow my own horn, but — oh what the hell: my natural eating has been brilliant. Yeah, I had my mild fluctuations within roughly a ten-pound range, but in the grand scheme of things, my body’s food intuition has historically been pretty awesome under normal conditions. Consider: I had a disabling case of chronic fatigue syndrome and didn’t leave the BMI’s “normal” range; from what I can tell, that’s not usual. While I do have some old habits* that I want to return to, I really don’t think I have a lifetime of bad habits that I must overcome and jettison. It’s more like I’m choosing the subset of my habits that’ll do me the most good.

No, I respect my body’s intuition. I’ve been lucky. Given enough money for groceries and the absence of crushing stress, my appetites tend to be for pretty healthful foods in amounts roughly appropriate for homeostasis. It’s just that homeostasis isn’t the plan right now.

Calling it a diet — that’s just what works for me, with my own history and the particular ways in which my own psyche is torqued up. I think almost everybody is weird about food, weight, and weight-loss. You’d have to be pretty emotionally heroic not to be, in this culture.

* I do love those tomato-based dishes. A nice spicy batch of chickpeas and cauliflower smothered in a chunky, oniony tomato sauce redolent with turmeric and cumin… Yum. Sorry, Josh. You don’t have to eat any.

Having googled around a bit, I learn that the one-slice sandwich trick is an ancient Weight Watchers technique called the “twofer”. I suppose you do save a hundred calories or so by not having the other slice of bread. To my mind, though, that’s not really the point.

Not that I won’t take it. Some of you know that I’ve been on what I’ve been calling the Stick ‘n’ Twig Diet. It’s not really that dire, particularly because I’ve been using it as an excuse to buy a lot of delicious, expensive fruits, vegetables, and fish. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am a spoiled middle-class hippie now and I can have all the local asparagus I want, thank you very much. I rationalize that while wild Oregon shrimp is expensive, heart attacks are really expensive. I like to think I’ve learned something from my herniated disc experience; cheaping out on the jackhammer rental was not cost-effective.

It’s basically a Mediterranean-type diet that I’m doing, heavily informed by the Harvard School of Public Health and the World’s Healthiest Foods website, with a little special attention to my grain consumption. I’m luckier than many: not only can I afford it in terms of time, money, and energy, but my metabolism seems to be pretty much bog-standard. There is the problem of weight loss exacerbating the dysfunction of damaged nerves, but I’m learning to deal. It appears to be working pretty well. I’m now about ten pounds over my fightin’ weight and I’m not fed up with working at it yet.

Next month I’ll check my blood chemistry, which is the point of all this. Some numbers came back a few months ago that startled me, and my doctor kind of shrugged and said, “Hey, lose some weight.” But, gosh, a lot of things can make those numbers look screwy. There could have been some other things going on besides my thunderous BMI of 26, and there’s been some excellent reason to consider them. (As I said to a friend, “Yeah, I know that when you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses, not zebras — but not if you live down the road from the zebra farm.”) No likely alternate explanation looks to be terribly urgent, from what I can tell, so I didn’t kick up a fuss, but… Look, I like my doctor. I like him very much indeed, overall. But I had to wonder: as long as I was overweight, could I really count on getting timely, appropriate medical treatment? How much did I want to bet? Did I want to bet my health? Because that’s what I was betting.

So I’ve been taking off a chunk of the nearly forty pounds I gained on Depo-Provera back in 2004. Some of that fat I arguably needed; the rest, not so much. It was an interesting experience, gaining that much weight in the space of about three months. I’d known that we lived in a fatphobic society, but I’d had no idea that the fatphobia kicked in at such a moderate weight. As far as I was concerned, my new size was ordinary and unexceptionable. But I could see the social world around me getting subtly chillier — not my friends, but people with whom I’d casually interact.

I told myself I was imagining things. I informed myself that I was just silly and awkward about my new shape, and all I needed was a better wardrobe and to carry myself more gracefully. I bought a few decent shirts, joined a yoga class, and eventually became a Pilates fiend. I felt better than I had since my early twenties, built a ton of muscle, and discovered my inner jock. I learned to carry myself more like a dancer. For a while I sported a diabolically fabulous haircut. And I’m telling you, folks, it wasn’t the clothes, the body language, the confidence, or the mind-body relationship that was most at issue. It was, in fact, the fat.

Now that I’m a good twenty pounds down, I see things happening in reverse. I think I look pretty much the same, but the world is reacting to me differently now. I thought I’d revel in having that privilege back, but the truth is I do not. But there it is: I go out to lunch and the guy at the counter seems really happy to take my order. The young woman wiping down my table is a bit more enthusiastic than I’m used to. I get on the bus and accidentally drop a quarter, and the bus driver grins sympathetically and tells me not to worry about it. The world is warming up again. People seem to act as if they know me. When I’m not feeling baffled at my strangely friendly reception, I feel like a spy from Plumpland, slimmed down for my secret mission among a strange and deluded people.

After all these years, it’s finally happened. Josh has finally acknowledged the deliciousness of my own special sandwich trick. Vindication at last.

It’s possible that other people do this as well, but I don’t believe I’ve heard of anyone trying it who hasn’t heard of it from me. It’s a slightly delicate operation, but I promise it’s worth it. What you do is, you toast one slice of bread to a medium brown. (You’ll have an easier time if it’s a plain white or wheat bread without inclusions.) Then, while it’s still warm, you stand the toast upright on your cutting board and slide a serrated knife right down through the soft middle, parallel to the broad surface of the toast, dividing it into two ultra-thin, crunchy-crackly slices.

This is especially good with egg salad, tuna salad, or thinly sliced leftover Thanksgiving turkey with lots of pepper. Any relatively delicate filling would do. Today’s winning sandwich was a tuna salad loaded with minced celery and a touch of paprika.

I’ve been told more than once that slicing toast like this looks bizarre and borderline insane. Well. They called me mad at the academy, but I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Muah hah hah hah hah om nom nom nom *crunch*