Rest In Peace my Beloved Cassidy

He died coming out of anesthesia after his neuter was complete.
Cardiac arrest.
My heart is broken.
My beautiful boy is gone.

naysay while I play

"To escape criticism
do nothing,
say nothing,
be nothing."
- Elbert Hubbard

I was fretting the other day about a few negative comments on my video (click here) that was shot a few days after my gastric bypass surgery in 2006.
Folks have been jabbing at me, making snap judgments, being unkind.

I took it personally.
I let them get to me.
I sniped back at a couple of them.
Sniping didn't make me feel any better.

Between the negative jabs and the blog troll (click here)
I was feeling a little raw.
My confidence was punch drunk.
I wavered in my resolve.

Like a magnet I drew more criticism to me.

My mother, God bless her in her ability to sense when my self esteem is at its most fragile, repeated my fathers' recent frustration with my latest "diet".

After paying for one, just one, of my farm orders he griped to my mother:
Is all this really necessary?

She said she responded to him by saying she didn't know.

Why not?
I asked her.
It IS necessary.
Of course this is necessary I yelled, more so to hear myself say it than to convince her.

She told me to go ahead and do what I thought was good for me but that there's no guarantee.

No guarantee of what? I asked.

That eating all this Amish food would make me healthy.
She said that if it were really a guarantee of good health then everyone would be doing it and nutritionists and dietitians would be recommending it to everyone.

I started to argue with her.
I demanded that she believe in what I was doing.
It is a guaranteed way to be healthy.
People won't do it because it's difficult and inconvenient and they'd rather shop at the supermarket...
and every other argument I could think of.

She held firm.
Nawwww no, she barked.
She dismissed me.
She laughed at me for thinking I was doing something "guaranteed" for my health.
I yelped and fought.
The most she would concede was that if I believed it was helping me than I should continue doing it.

I tried arguing that nothing is guaranteed but she still nawww no-ed me.
I felt betrayed.
I was pissed.

Then I remembered all the OTHER things I was so sure about in my life.
Things that cost her thousands of dollars to support me in.
Things like moving out of the house with a roommate who deep-down hated me.
Things like my first two weight loss surgeries.

Every diet I've ever been on,
every crazy dietary change I've adopted
every program that I was sure was the answer
she's been there with her wallet out to support me.

Now I'm following nourishing traditions and
I'm like the boy who cried wolf.
Now that the wolf (nourishing traditional food) is really here
she's done supporting me.
Maybe what I'm doing is too weird.
Maybe she's not seeing "results" fast enough (you know, obvious drastic weight loss).

Maybe it's a sign from God that I'm actually doing the right thing.

It's different now.
This time it's mine.
The wolf is here and it's me.

Then as swiftly as she kicks my wispy self esteem she builds me up again by telling me how proud she is that I'm toughing it out at two colleges this summer
in
a
wheelchair.

I thanked her for noticing.
The support didn't get me all riled up the way the criticism did.
I'm just a big fleshy stimulus response machine, ain't I?

Maybe the lesson is to have faith in myself.
Maybe I'm supposed to be resolute
even when I might be wrong.

I don't NEED everyone I know to sit in the cheering section.
I've got to play like I'm at an away game.
Focus.
Do my best
and not let a few stray boos get me off my game.

It's not the boos or hoorays that play the game, it's the players.

I'm a player.

Win or lose
good plays or bad
I'm in it.

I'm playing.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
When Apple launched the iPod in 2001, it was ridiculed, according to the Economist magazine.
Innovative companies often ignore what the market is telling them.
Here's Katie Churchill, a home-business builder, telling us to believe in our vision no matter what the naysayers say!
click here or click below

operation rescue

Cassidy kitten taught me the
VERY PHYSICAL
VERY REAL
power of love today.

Q: How do you find love, health, abundance,
or enlightenment?

A: Stop searching. And start seeing what's
been there all along.

- from TUT's Adventurers Club

Sickness is not inevitable.
It is a condition of the mind.
But how do we change our minds??
That's the tough part.

Our minds are stubborn.
We believe that aging and breaking down are what our bodies are designed to do.
I've been treating my body like a burden for years.
No wonder it succumbed to illness.

BUT...and everyone loves a big but...that's not where I'm staying.
When I needed physical strength today it came to me.

After morning love time - when all the cats come into the bedroom to swarm around me on the bed while I do my morning exercises - the kitten followed Hurley up onto the giant hutch to play (see Bosie on top of the hutch in photo below).


Scamper scamper,
play play.
The kitten jumps down onto the chest of drawers (the giant piece of furniture under Uma Thurman that you can't really see in the pic).
In his excitement to be playing someplace new he loses his footing and slides down behind the chest of drawers.

I could hear his little kitten claws trying to latch onto something as he slid down the smooth back of the dresser. Immediately he sent up a doleful wail of desperation.

I lept into rescue mode and started calling to him.
The adult cats converged on the scene of the fall.
Gabriel started to moan pitifully.


You've never seen a crippled person move so fast.
I pulled everything off the top of the dresser: boxes of photos, lamp, vase, plugs, wires and stuffed triceratops.

I flung the giant heavy bags of laundry that were in front of the dresser off to the foot of the bed.
Without removing the drawers (should have removed the drawers but in my panic I didn't)
I tipped the whole heavy chest of drawers forward hoping it would be at such an angle that the kitten could climb up the back to safety.

It was too steep of an angle.
He cried.
I cried.
Xander, a few inches from my face balancing on the edge of the tipped dresser. meowed desperately at me which upset me more since he rarely makes any noise. It was as if he were trying to communicate something to me: save the baby!!

Now the full, heavy drawers were half sticking out of the dresser wedging the whole unit into a stuck position with the open drawers hanging down between the dresser and my bed. The kitten, now frightened by the giant furniture moving above him got himself under it so that I could not stand it back up to pull the drawers out without crushing him.

The big dresser leaned like the tower of Pisa while the big cats clamored around trying to get a look at where the kitten had fallen.
Hurley tried to get a vantage point on the hutch and knocked down figurines, dolls, a vase, lights, and made a broken mess in the middle of all this.

I cried and screamed for God to help me.
I didn't know if I should call someone for help.

I came out into the living room hoping the kitten had gotten free without my seeing him and was maybe roaming around the living room. He was not.

Everything in the bedroom was quiet.
I called to Cassidy.
Nothing.
No mew.
No meow.
The bigger cats were not as interested in the whole scene.

That worried me.
I thought the worst.
Had my kitten died of a heart attack?
Had he been crused somehow?

Bosie was now behind the dresser like a useless Lassie trying to figure out what new territory had opened up.

I looked at the toppled dresser, wedged at an angle and prayed.
God put your hand in this.
Please help me get my kitten.
Please help me.
I prayed aloud.
I cried PLEASE GOD.

I stood on my bed.
With the determination of that urban legend mother who lifted the car to free her child I pulled out the top drawer and tossed it aside, got my arms inside the dresser and pulled the whole thing backwards away from the wall.

You could hear the cracking of formica (or pressboard or whatever cheap crap my dresser was made of back in the early 90s when black laqcuer was in style).

Ploop.
Out hopped Cassidy from behind the mammoth piece of furniture.
With his tail up in happy position he trotted off as if nothing happened.

I laid there in the debris of broken tchokes
and ruined furniture.
My clothes, scarves, socks, laundry and boxes of photos were strewn haphazardly around the room.

How had I done it?

Amazingly, my knee did not hurt.
It still doesn't.

I'm not exactly sure how I managed to do it, but I did.

As an encore, I put the entire bedroom back together
all by myself.

A kitten rescued.
A household taken apart and put back together.
When I needed it most strength came to me.

Maybe it was mine all along.

All it needed was the urgency of love to bring it out.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
See what you want to BE.
How bad do you want change?
click here or click below

Fair on Wheels

Friends are the ones who say they'll push you around the fair in a wheelchair.
Best friends are the ones who actually do it.

I felt like a little kid being pushed around in a stroller.
It was like going back in time to my childhood only last night, my "parents" weren't fighting.

As my buds rode the rides I enjoyed them vicariously, grateful that I wasn't the one strapped into a metal car being flipping around through space.
Two years ago I went on the Swiss Bob. I screamed and braced myself while thinking 'never again'!
Screwing with my center of gravity is not fun the way it used to be.

My thrill ride was being pulled backward over the many bumps, wires and hoses that snake their way across the blacktop between rides and kiosks on the fair ground.

Thank God for my friends who were willing to do that for me.
They never once complained.
They never made me feel like a burden.

When it was time to make my yearly visit to the World's Smallest Woman her little dollhouse venue had already closed. The rain kept the crowds away last night so many attractions shut up early.

As we were proceeding to our car in the handicap parking area I spotted another woman in a wheelchair. It's impolite to stare at people in wheelchairs but it's ok for two wheelchair people to to spend an extra few seconds to check each other out.

We looked at each other as if to say "yeah, me too".
We looked at each others chairs.

She glanced at the brace on my knee and knew my wheelchair days were temporary.
I quickly assessed her condition and knew she was a "lifer".
She'd always needed that chair and always will, at least for long distances.

It was the little woman.

At first I didn't recognize her outside the trappings of her Worlds' Smallest Woman booth. Outside the fair in her black wheelchair in the black parking lot she was just a very small person with legs too short to carry her from the mainway to her car.

Outside the fair we were just two women on wheels checking each other out in the handicap section of the parking lot.

I was happy to see she had a good, motorized chair to get her around.
I was thankful I got to see her as a person instead of an oddity.

I thanked God for my healing knee.
I thanked God for my friends.
And for the first time in God knows how long I looked at the picture
we had take at the front gate (see above) and liked it.
My friends and I looked happy and beautiful.

No complaints this time around.
We really are beautiful.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
At least once a day I pretend I'm Joe Swanson
saying, "Let's do this!!"
lol
click here or click below

then hundreds of dollars appeared

I made a mistake.
See, I THOUGHT I had looked at my checking account balance on what I THOUGHT was my last pay day of the spring semester.

I was wrong.
I must have looked on the wrong day and when I found no new funds
I assumed I would be broke till Summer pay day.

Dead wrong.

There has been $580 sitting in my checking account for weeks and
I
DIDN'T
EVEN
KNOW
IT!!

This was Dorothy's lesson in the Wizard of Oz, right?
She had the ability to go home all along.
The Scarecrow had a brain all along.
The Tin Man had a heart
and the Lion had courage.
All they ever wanted was inside them the whole time.

Their thinking got them all screwed up.
They bought into the lie of deficit.

There's a saying in Buddhism that says:
"The mind is the slayer of the real."

Yesterday's lesson in having-what-I-didn't-think-I-had drove that point home for me.

I've got "it", yet I block myself from "it" till I believe I deserve "it" ...whatever "it" may be: money, healing, peace, love, success.

It's no accident that yesterday I made a commitment to put away money and follow a budget.
Then and only then did I allow myself to be aware of the money I ALREADY had in the bank.

My higher self is a real f#cker, ain't she?
We play these exhausting games while my Guardian Angel dotes after us like a worried nanny.
I'm surprised she hasn't asked for hazard duty pay.

What did I do with the money I found in my account?
I immediately went to the Pathmark and got some fruit, frozen fruit bars and cocoa powder.
(See where my highest values are?)
Next I paid my mother back the advance she had given me on the big paycheck that's coming this Thursday.
Then I put 10% of it aside for savings (big step for me).
Now my farmer gets paid
and tonight my friends and I are going to the State Fair at the Meadowlands!!!
Time for some tigers and racing pigs!!

Let's hope that my higher self and I can agree to let go of all worries and have a good time.

*Lisa's Video Clip of the Day*
No coincidence that this episode of Scrubs was on yesterday.
For some reason I cried when this part came on.
Must be a lesson I need to learn.
And just now I cried again as soon as Turk turned over the organ donor card and the music started up.
Always learnin'.
Learnin' and cryin'.
click here or click below

Rest In Peace my 70's Icons

~
They were two people
I loved from my childhood.
First vinyl album I ever owned?
Jackson Five Greatest Hits.
And I had three different posters of Farrah.


God bless their souls.

budget. budget who's got the budget

"If you can’t manage your emotions,
don’t expect to manage money."
- Warren Buffet

“Whatever’s highest on your value list
you’ll always have money for,
whatever’s lowest you’re going to
run out of money for...
..So if you don’t have a high value on saving money,
investing money
and building wealth,
it’s not going to happen.
It’s a fantasy.
Many people think when they get extra money
then they’ll begin saving...

...That’s not the way to do it.
You've got to let piggy banks
become biggy banks,
you’ve got to save something
every day.”
- Dr. John DeMartini

I ran out of money.
See, I've been working, teaching, since May 18th with no paycheck.
Why?
Summer adjuncts get paid in July and August.
I know that.
That's how it's always been.
I've been teaching every summer for the past 8 years.

BUTTT
I've always taught from late June to early August.
I've never taught from mid May to early July.

This year I started teaching in mid May.
Sooooo I figured I'd get a paycheck in June this year.

WHY WOULD I EXPECT THAT??
Why would I expect that and not find out for sure??
Good question.

I didn't find out for sure because I didn't want to know.

I've been in denial about my finances for years.
My M.O. was to ignore it and hope it would fix itself.

This past year I filed bankruptcy.
I erased $84,000 in medical debt.
That started my slow process of getting a grip.
Slow process.
My grip is still in the process of being gotten.

This past year I pulled most of my student loans out of default.
Worked more, too.
I taught 4 classes at 3 different colleges this past spring.
This summer I'm teaching 4 classes at 2 colleges.

I'm working my ass off (you'd think my ass would be gone by now!)
Yet, with all that work, I ran out of money.

I had to get an advance on my paycheck last week so I could buy food
and even THAT money didn't last.

Payday is July 2nd.
My wallet is empty as of June 25th.

The usual cycle of the Momma prevailed.
When I'm solvent with plenty of cash my mother wants to throw money at me.
I don't need her money so she feels panicky.

She finds reasons to spend money on me.
She overspends on meals.
We get frequent pedicures.
It's like she's crying for me to continue needing her.
She'll hand me her wallet for things when I'm willing and capable of paying with my own.

When I'm broke everything changes.
She gets tight on me.
She lectures me on how she can't "keep this up at her age".
She frets over the credit card bill.
She chooses cheaper restaurants for lunch.
She won't hand me her wallet as often.
She'll be sure to tell me of my father's dissatisfaction with my current level of employment.
At times she's made me cry over it.

Last night she gave me one of those lectures. As an added bonus she included the new "fact"
that my father is "losing his mind" and doesn't remember my calling him on Father's Day.

My eyes spiraled with stress when she said goodbye and I hung up the phone.
I felt stupid and childish.

Maybe, I thought, maybe it's because I'm acting stupid and childish?
Maybe it's time to be more careful with my finances.

In the past I've spent what I had as it came in.
I was afraid that some institution to which I owed money would swoop in and take it before I could use it myself.
Having money filled me with dread so I got rid of it as soon as I got it.

Lately, I've been spending it on good, nourishing foods, supplements and other healthy things but the pattern of spend starve spend starve was still the same.

Last night shook me up.
It's the last lecture I ever want to hear from her.
This is the last famine I ever want to live through.

Time to stop cowering in fear of my student loans.
Time to stop flagellating myself for being employed part time instead of full.
Time to stop fearing that I'll have to change my lifestyle if I look at my finances.
Time to make a budget.

That's right.
I said it.
Budget.

I feel like Fonzie trying to say the word "wrong".

Budget??
Ugh!
I've spent carelessly for so long I don't know what it feels like to say 'no' to myself.
My biggest fear is that I'll have to give up Cable.

But as I listen to Dr. Demartini I hear a different story.
He says we'll always have money for the things we value most.
If I value my Showtime on Demand (Weeds, Dexter, uh...hello?)
then it's in my budget.
If the budget needs to be trimmed, I can find a way.
OR
I can find ways to bring in more money.

I haven't done Ebay in months.
I haven't listed books on Half.com.
I haven't actively sought extra income, so there's the possibility that with careful planning, budgeting, saving, earning and spending, I'll be fine.
I'll be better than fine.
I'll be at peace.

It's a universal law that we must care for and appreciate what we already have before receiving favor and increase.
How can I expect to have more when I'm mismanaging what I have now?

I'm making more money yet I'm still broke and struggling.
I'm just broke at a different level.

I know people who drive BMWs and live in fabulous townhouses and they still have financial woes. They have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. They're short on the mortgage payments.
They can't afford to eat out.
They make in the 6 figures but they're broke like me.
Just broke at a different level.

The experts say that we don't have to have a lot to put money away and have wealth.
We can live comfortably within our means and expect increase if we build wealth.

My current cycle has to stop.
I don't want to live in panic when I have money and in regret when I don't.
It's no fun.

I have a hunch that I'll be happier and more at peace if I make a budget and stick to it.
In the long run I may have more money for the things I enjoy.
Getting a grip on a small purse
will give me the skills to get a grip on a large purse.

That's what I'm banking on anyway.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
John Demartini says we will always have money for
the things that are high on our values list.
If we value money we'll have/make more of it.
We can't complain that we're broke if money is at the bottom of our values list.
A budget is a way to prioritize values.
Managing money wisely brings more money.
Ignoring it makes it go away.
click here or click below

thoughts become bodies!!

Yesterday I tried really hard not to think negative thoughts about the blog troll.
When I felt the urge to indulge in some mental ass-kicking I stopped and reminded myself that she and I are too much alike. My anger at her would really be anger at me. I'd only be ass-kicking myself.

Having angry vengeful thoughts against someone hurts both parties.
We've heard these lessons a thousand times:

"We are shaped by our thoughts. We become what we think." - Buddha

"Thoughts become things." - The Secret

"Thoughts are energy." - Einstein

"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. " - Jesus

Suffice it to say,
thoughts have power.
Thoughts are a type of action.

Is there a difference between shooting someone and thinking about shooting someone??
Of course there is!
To think a harmful thought but then to overcome the urge to act on it is powerful. Don't get me wrong.
There is definitely strength in acting differently than our indulgent thoughts.

But if we wish to be truly enlightened we need to take it a step further and practice right thinking.
Right thoughts lead to right actions,
or so the Buddha says.

Trainer to the trainers Paul Chek explains:
click here or click below

M.O.C.? xyzxyz? fatgirlonthedancefloor??

"As head of the Food and Drug Administration,
Dr. David A. Kessler served two presidents
and battled Congress and Big Tobacco.
But the Harvard-educated pediatrician
discovered he was helpless
against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie...

..."I wouldn’t have been as interested
in the question of why we can’t resist food
if I didn’t have it myself,” he said.
“I gained and lost my body weight
several times over.
I have suits in every size.”...



...One of his main messages is that overeating
is not due to an absence of willpower,
but a biological challenge
made more difficult by the overstimulating food environment
that surrounds us.
“Conditioned hypereating” is a chronic problem
that is made worse by dieting
and needs to be managed
rather than cured, he said.
- from 'How the Food Makers Capture Our Brains'

Deep down, I love myself.
(Whoa. Just as I typed that the sun came out for the first time in weeks!!)
It's true.

I had wonderful self-esteem when I was little-little.
Then I started to develop a personality of my own, began differentiating myself from my mother and all hell broke loose.
But I remember loving myself.
I remember hurling myself into life with total joy and confidence.
The worst consequence was a skinned knee which was promptly soothed by my doting mother.

I dove on hard services, cushy stuff, mud, grass and people.
I climbed.
I threw my arms around strangers and hugged them.
I performed and paraded with no self-consciousness.
I remember the freedom.

In the past I've written (and haven't we all read plenty of articles) about my wounded "inner child" but which child is that?
What age is she?

My little-little Lisa was happy.
Free.
No cares.
No fears.
Only joy and love.

Deep down she's still in there.
Free.
Loving.
Close to creation.
Curious and joyful.

Then she got covered up.
Avalanched.
Ruined.
I let the world convince me of stuff.
I believed the worst about myself.
I did a helluva job scolding, punishing and abusing my inner little-little.

I've spent years trying to unlearn what I had learned about myself, the falsehoods, inaccuracies and disempowering lies.

Apparently, there's one lie that's putting up a fight as I try to disarm it:
the unGodly (that's not hyperbole. I MEAN un-God-ly) lie that
overeaters are addicts...that I'm an addict,
that my desire to eat is me just "wanting to do whatever I want" without discipline or consequences.

The universe has seen fit to send me a blog troll.

She goes by the names fatgirlonthedancefloor or
M.O.C. and I suspect xyzxyzyz.
I'm finding it difficult to have compassion for her as she lashes out at me (anonymously and therefore cowardly) with more venom each time.

I keep telling myself not to take it personally.
I keep telling myself that she's really just projecting onto me what she hates most about herself.

Unfortunately, what she hates most about herself is her fat body and her addictive personality, sore points for me, sore points she's perfectly willing to poke at as she hides behind her weak anonymity.

Online for the most part, she's hiding behind psuedonyms.
The remnants of her fatgirlonthedancefloor days can be found in snippets from her defunct blog (that still show up in a Google search) and a comment left on a fat-positive blog.

When she was masquerading as M.O.C. she wrote the following on Big Fat Delicious:

Needless to say, I too feel your pain. Pants are currently a problem for me. In fact I have two that I rotate...I guess it's a good thing I'm unemployed. I could certainly go and buy more but the prospect of that whole shopping exercise is so depressing and demoralizing that I'm just gonna go with the status quo of my wardrobe. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for stopping by my blog (fatgirlonthedancefloor.wordpress.com)...

Snippets from her fatgirlonthedancefloor blog remaining on Google say:

Fat acceptance, self-acceptance, or recovery? My mind is churning. Are they mutually exclusive? If I accept myself as I am–fat–do I lose the impetus to make ...

and

I had a scary moment today. I almost drank. I found a wine bottle in the garage and almost drank. It was so close. I am so afraid of losing this precious ...

and

My fears are hounding me, haunting me. I am overwhelmed by them. All of my waking moments are plagued by my sense of inadequacy, ...

A fat, female, recovering alcoholic with an eating disorder who, as of 2008, is unemployed and is traumatized by shopping due to her size is coming onto my blog, anonymously (?) to take mean-spirited shots at me and my recovery.
(click here and here and here and scroll down to the comments if you're interested)

W T F??
What am I supposed to do with her?

She's being awful, just awful
and yet I have genuine compassion for her since we have such similar issues.

Of course when I lash out I do it as myself.
I speak as me.
All me.
I own my awfulness (which did get me kicked off a Yahoo support group for gastric bypassers... but I did it as ME!)

I re-read her awful comments and they don't fit me well (but they fit me well enough to compel me to re-read them...so there you go).

They fit her.
They must fit her.
We're the only two people involved and I'm the one who has been accountable, candid and has done plenty of changing over the past three years.

She MUST be talking about herself, seeing things in me that her mirror reflects too cuttingly for her to bear.
It's always easier to project our flaws onto someone else and I think that's what she's doing.

I'm doing it now in a way.
I'm calling her out for being critical in a mean spirited way.
Don't I do that with people?
And if I'm not writing it I'm thinking it.
So am I really much better than she is?

She asked (accused is more like it) me if I'd changed in the past three years then she indicated that I was driving the same car and living in the same place.
So?

I live in an adorable garden apartment in a great neighborhood 15 minutes from Manhattan for less than $900 a month. Why would I move?
The car?
It's shit but it gets me where I need to go for now.

I can't raise my material status if I can't raise my head.
Wellness first, other life areas next and they WILL get handled.
Watch me.

She claims I don't take ownership?
Huh?
How many different ways have I admitted my shortcomings?
How many times have I admitted my faults?
I actually blogged the other day about how WRONG I was back when I was ranting about low fat, high fiber diets (click here).
Like DEAD wrong...like oh-shit-how-could-I-have-said-that wrong.
I admitted it publicly, as me, no hiding.

So she HAS to be projecting her faults onto me, right??

sigh

I dunno.

I've attracted a troll who thinks she's an addict and thinks everyone else is an addict too.
My eating Amish sausage and butter seems downright gluttonous to her since she's defined abstinence as low-fat Weight Watchers food.

My lifestyle is an affront to her.
How dare I nourish and care for myself, she thinks.
How dare I treat myself well when really I'm just a weak willed addict (??)

She can't stand that I'm doing something different.
She can't stand that I just might succeed.

The only way she knows how to help herself happens to be the very way she's failed,
so she sees
"failed addict in denial" everywhere she looks.

Yeah, I do a similiar thing.
I now see adrenal fatigue, candida and malnourishment everywhere I look just because that's what I'm working on myself.

She did make me think, though.
She's made me think of how far I HAVE come in the past 3 years,
how much I've learned, grown, changed.
For someone who thinks she's got a fix on me you'd think she would have noticed.

I guess it's more important that I notice
and I do.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
My critic sounds like a failed 12 Stepper.
Having convinced herself that she's powerless over her substance of choice
she needs to convince herself that she's not alone, that folks like me are in classic
"denial" of our so-called addictions.
Rather than doing the hard work of looking for and correcting the underlying cause of the addictive behavior, folks like her revel in their self-flagellation as they alternate between miserable binge-behavior and miserable "dry drunk" behavior (like lashing out at people anonymously on the internet).
click here or click below

Don't help me with that hand!

"MSG is a food additive that enhances flavors in food.
It virtually has no flavor of its own,
but neurologically causes people to experience
a more intense flavor from the foods
that they eat containing the substance...

...To millions of consumers,
it means experiencing an adverse effect
from the additive and possible adverse health effects
in the future.
To the food industry,
it means increased profits,
a simple way to balance taste in a product line
and mask unwanted tastes,
and to make otherwise unpalatable foods
acceptable...

...A growing number of neuroscientists
believe that MSG may be a
'slow neurotoxin, resulting in
neurodegenerative diseases such as
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
later in life.'"
- Dr. Jack L. Samuels of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation
in MSG: Dangers and Deception

Happy to be part of
Fight Back Fridays!
click here

When Oprah gave away Kentucky "Grilled" Chicken I had mixed feelings, but not enough feelings to write about it.

Now Beyonce is doing a commercial for Hamburger Helper and their "Helping Hand" campaign.
I guess I'm annoyed enough to speak up about it now, but not to bash Beyonce or Oprah.
They have their reasons. I don't know their reasons.
I'm not sure I care what their reasons are.
I'll speculate that they really do believe they're doing the right thing.

What gets my goat is the manipulation of associating a charitable act with a poisonous product.
They pull on our heart strings then make big profits off us with crappy non-foods.
It's just plain sneaky.

It's clever because if I speak up against Beyonce and the Helping Hand campaign I risk appearing callous to the needs of the food banks that stand to benefit from Hamburger Helper sales (click here for their slick ad campaign featuring Ms. Knowles).

There's got to be a better way to raise money to feed the hungry.
Pushing a non-food product disguised as food cannot be the only way to get meals to food banks.
Can it?

Folks who care about health and nutrition (enough to read labels, understand what they're ingesting and make better choices) come across as whining when we speak up about MSG and other chemical additives.
Why?

The effects of eating a toxic diet are not obvious or immediate.
They're cumulative.
It takes time for the SAD (Standard American Diet) to manifest symptoms in the standard American.

Connecting symptoms to food requires differential diagnostics, testing, finances and a doctor who will prescribe the tests. I have yet to meet a mainstream health care provider who will even entertain that disease and diet might be directly connected.

We also have the Smilex factor (click here for my blog on that one).
Sometimes it takes more than one neurotoxic food additive to show up in multiple places in order for illness to manifest.
But put a little aspartame plus MSG plus HFC with your GMO eaten day after day after day and whammo!
You've got an illness that's "all in your mind", falsely attributed to genetics or just plain bad luck.
Suggest to your doctor that you might be sensitive to MSG.
See what kind of response you get.
(click here for a great resource on how to avoid MSG)

I had a student who told me the other day how she learned in a nutrition class that corn syrup is not that bad as long as you eat it in moderation.
Where would she get an idea like that except from research done BY the folks who stand to benefit from corn syrup profits?
These big corporations would much rather "prove" that the American public must be eating "too much" rather than admit that their product is bad.

Rather than be accountable for purveying a poison product they hide the facts, stretch the truth and craft ad campaings designed to associate their neuro-toxic franken-food with charity and good will.
Hence, the Helping Hand debacle.

Consumer advocate agencies, non-profit or not-for-profit, scrape to bring lawsuits against these giant corporations while the FDA helps the bad guys to dodge the bullets Matrix-style (click here to read Samuel's article on the failure of Truth in Labeling Campaign). Imagine that. A federal agency working against consumers. Hmph.

Do I blame Beyonce?
Beyonce is just the mast-head at the front of the ship (click here for the commercial).
She may be the siren whose singing gets the other boats to crash up against the rocks
yet
I'm not sure how accountable she needs to be on this one.

Maybe it's time for us, the consumers, to say No-Thank-You to poison foods.
Maybe send a dollar directly to the charitable organization with a short note saying we'd prefer not to spend money on MSG laced non-foods but that we do support the cause of feeding the hungry.

But let's not feed them Hamburger Helper, ok?

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Dr. Vincent Bellonzi is a chiropractor and a Certified Clinical Nutritionist who's talking about the dangers of MSG. He explains why it makes food tastes "better".
He says we can make dirt taste good with msg.
Ugh!
click here or click below

I starved and over-exercised while people cheered.

There's nothing wrong with me.
Well, there's all kinds of things "wrong" with me but nothing out of the ordinary.

Even NON-gastric-bypass people run themselves down due to malnourishment and compulsive exercise.
Even folks who have never had WLS (Weight Loss Surgery) suffer from bone density loss, thinning hair, joint deterioration, chronic fatigue and inability to lose weight.

It ain't just me.

My hitting a brick wall with my 6 day a week exercise regimen has nothing to do with lack of will, lack of willpower, or any kind of character deficiency on my part.

Anyone who has to suck on a Red Bull to get through their work out is doing to themselves the very thing I've done to myself, the very thing that landed me in a wheelchair: starving.

If you're on a low fat diet, you're starving yourself.
You most likely feel very angry or emotionally erratic because you're hormonally imbalanced.
Lots of highs and lows with your moods, right?
Maybe you get frequent upper respiratory infections.
Maybe you're always at the dentist.
Maybe you suffer sprains and strains or bone problems.
Your joints are creaky.
You're tired much of the time.

These things are NOT normal.
Being middle aged does NOT mean it's time for our bodies to start breaking down.

It's not age that's breaking them down.
We're breaking our bodies down with our poor diets and irresponsible lifestyles (including either NO movement or TOO MUCH of the wrong kind of movement).

I broke my body.
Instead of focusing on health, I focused on losing weight.

I let the world convince me that my body fat was the problem rather than the symptom.
I allowed the medical community to sell me on the idea that all my health problems would go away if I just took off a few hundred pounds.

What REALLY happened?
I have a new set of problems.

I needed to be getting healthy.
Getting healthy CAUSES weight stabilization, not the other way around.

But the world will still cheer my weight loss.
No matter how sick I am they'll look at my Before pictures and tell me that I've come a long way and that I look "great".

They might even look at another gastric bypass post-op who's thin and has kept off their weight and think that person has ultimately succeeded REGARDLESS of their other, less obvious health problems.

Like I said yesterday, this is a mess.
A big fat mess.

But cleaning up messes makes for a good story.
Mine isn't over.

What's the story?

Here is a great video from nutritionist/trainer Sean Croxton.
He didn't realize he was telling my story.
He is.
This is what happened...
click here or click below

I WAS wrong!

I'm looking at the description of my blog on the right side of the screen and thinking I need to make some changes.

I no longer think gastric bypass is simply a "tool".
Nor do I think it's "neutral".
It's far from being a spatula with which one may choose to frost a cake or beat their kids.

Gastric bypass is a serious operation, a serious decision that brings serious consequences.
Nutritionally it's a catastrophe.

Having lived through 3 weight loss surgeries (two of them full incision)
I think I've gained enough life experience to speak to this issue with authority, the issue being the seriousness of weight loss surgery.

Am I an authority on post-op eating?
Not a chance.
Nobody is...yet.
The surgeries are too new to allow us to see their long term effects.

In the meantime, folks who are 3 and 4 years out from their surgeries are reporting all kinds of unforeseen side effects including unexplained seizures (click here for a great blog on seizures after gastric bypass!) and bone breakage (click here for an article on thinning, broken bones after weight loss surgery).

The post-op forums - like the one I got kicked off of on Yahoo - emphasize supplements and protein shakes (click here for a GREAT article on protein shakes OR read Paul Chek's "Eat, Move and Be Healthy" for more on why protein shakes are a poor nutritional substitute for real food) as if our surgically re-arranged digestive tracts will magically absorb the denatured, crappy, fakey supplements they push on us just because they're manufactured for WLS patients.

Weight loss surgery is an industry.
It's goal is weight loss.
They'll fudge the numbers any way they have to so that we see how delightfully thin and healthy we post op people are and if we're not it's because we didn't follow their program.

Yes, I was kicked off a gastric bypass support forum (click here and here for that story) for suggesting that folks eat more natural foods, especially whole grains like brown rice.
For the record, let me admit: I WAS WRONG to give nutritional advice, especially since it proved to be disastrous for me.

Unless your metabolic type is one that requires lots of carbs, it's best to avoid too much brown rice...bulgar...barley...all those grains.

And again, publicly, let me admit that there ended up being some truth to what the ladies said about me on their forum.

I wrote on my blog over 2 years ago:
"They said that I'd be welcome back when I realized that doing it MY way would land me in a wheelchair, make me a "medical mess", and force my body to devour its own organs to make up for my lack of protein."

Well, look at me now.

I crashed due to nutritional deficiencies just as they said I would.
I am in a wheelchair.
My body lost it's ability to heal due to my high grain, low fat, vegetarian, god awful diet.

No wonder they kicked me off their forum.
There I was with a hair across my ass about the super benefits of low fat eating and fibrous grains when that was not the right thing for me.
I needed protein.

BUT and everyone loves a big butt....
I still believe the bypassed way of eating is a dangerous, malnourished poorly researched (skewed in favor of weight loss surgery) way of life.
There's no way I'll believe that fakey supplements can take the place of real food even if they're designed especially for weight loss surgery patients.
Now that I'm post-op, can I even GET the nutrients I need from real food??

The post-ops who are having unexplained seizures are following their post-op rules,
eating their measured portions,
drinking their protein shakes and chewing their calcium pills.
They're STILL suffering major symptoms after their gastric bypass.

And guess what?
The medical community is not eager to admit that these symptoms are a direct result of the bypass. They always seem to find a way to blame the patient or deny that the symptoms have anything to do with the surgery.

This whole thing is a mess.
I've gotten myself into a mess.

A mess on wheels.

A big fat mess on wheels.

I'm feeling a little like Nancy Botwin right now.
I'm in deep doo doo all because of choices
that I made.

The situation looks hopeless
but I'm the hero of this story
and the hero always finds a way.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Paul Chek (a supporter of the Weston A. Price way of eating) believes in metabolic typing (some folks need more carbs, some more protein) and our bio-chemical individuality.
If you cannot access the nutrients in food you will not be able to properly absorb.
Bad news for gastric bypass patients.
Visit http://www.chekinstitute.com for Paul's speaking schedule, to browse his accredited home study courses, to find a CHEK practitioner in your area to help you or simply to read one of Paul's dozens of published articles.
Here he is at the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation in San Diego, CA.
click here or click below

protein cheerleader

Food commercials are so evil.
They talk about calories.
They brag about lack of fat.
They boast all the vitamins they've fortified their product with.

When do we ever hear about the nutritional properties?
Now I'm NOT talking about nutritional values.
Values that have been set by the FDA can be met by spraying chemical vitamins onto a dead, processed food.

What happens when you eat dead, processed foods?
You get a dead, processed body, stiff, bloated, full of mysterious aches and ailments and slow to or unable to heal.

What kills me is how we let the commercials convince us of how we should eat.
Hey, I was convinced.
I was sold on the low-fat/high grain lifestyle for years.
I ate Total with soy milk and thought I was doing my body good.

In this month's Oprah magazine there's a photo of her typical breakfast: a bowl of steel cut Irish oats, fresh fruits and dried fruits and what must be a small pitcher of skim milk.
After a breakfast like that, I'd hate to be Oprah's pancreas.

With all the alternative health care folks who waft through her studio, hasn't anyone told her that she needs protein first thing in the morning??

Someone told me.
I listened.

I keep my blood sugar even all day by starting the day with protein and eating protein with every meal. It's helping me feel less sluggish after I eat. It's keeping me from feeling famished between meals.

When I say "protein" I'm not talking about a shitty Luna bar or protein drink (for info on the dangers of powdered whey protein click here)
I'm talking about meat, fish, eggs or poultry, fat included.

I'm passionate about this traditional diet.
One of my motivators to get well is the ability to be a spokesperson for this way of eating.
My story will be even better because of this awful knee injury.

I'll be going from wheelchair to runway with quite the story to tell:
h0w my high fat, high protein diet saved my life.

But first, let me make it work.
Let me get well.

Yesterday was a rough day.
Getting around in the wheelchair in the pouring rain was discouraging.
Being trapped inside by the pouring rain because of the wheelchair was disheartening.
Now matter how good my attitude is, sometimes I'm just hammered by certain situations.
Good thing a hammer has two sides: one for hammering and one for pulling the nail back out.

That's what a good attitude will do for you.
It will help you to accept what is, feel what you need to feel then move on.

Ok, I need to digest my corned beef and cabbage lunch.
I added extra virgin olive oil to it. Why?
Read what Lori Lipinski, certified nutritionist and contributor to the literature of the Weston A. Price Foundation has to say about that.
Click here.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Think you're doing your body good with that protein shake?
Don't take my word for it.
Listen to nutritionist/trainer Sean Croxton of undergroundwellness.com.
He'll give you "the skinny" on protein bars and shakes.
click here or click below

but you eat meat!!

"Texas beef growers sued Oprah.
She won in court because
she had the money to fight teams
of corporate lawyers.
You don't."
- Roger Ebert in his review of Food, Inc.

I was a hardcore, self-righteous vegan for many years.
How did that work for me?
Look at me now.

(P.S. I'm happy to be part of Fight Back Friday! Click here)

This is what a diet high in carbs (yes, even the high quality, high fiber carbs) did for me.
The bypass didn't help.
Malabsorption of nutrients is a guaranteed way to ensure that you'll always be hungry, always be craving food and eventually lose your ability to heal.
Poor nutrition does that in general.

Our bodies are smart.
When we try to outsmart them with fake foods, diets, surgeries and pharmaceuticals we make our bodies sick.
Nature is powerful.
Nature seeks balance. We screw with the balance of nature we pay the consequences.

In Food, Inc. the filmmakers expose the god-awfulness of our current food industry especially the cruelty to animals that leads to sick meat that leads to sick people.

For the record, I am not advocating eating factory farmed meats.
When I talk about protein consumption
and meat eating
I'm specifically talking about
the meat you get from a local, organic, small farm where the animals DO roam free, eat fresh grass and never need antibiotics.

If you're thinking
MEAT IS MURDER
no matter where I get it from,
then my argument ends here.

I know that even the happy smiling pigs and cows get their throats slit on the small, organic, private farm, but the process, including their deaths, are vastly different than the life to death cycle of the factory farmed animal.

See Food, Inc. or read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" for more on that issue.

But please don't call my meat "dead".
Grass-fed and finised meat is full of enzymes - biological catalysts that create chemical reactions necessary for proper nutrition. Without enzymes we wouldn't be able to build/heal tissue.

"Enzymes are required for healing,
digestion, energy and all functions of the body.
Enzyme rich food is considered clean fuel for the body.
Our goal was to clean the body then feed the body."

- Dr. Michale Hatrak founder of Synergy Release Therapy

I've done enough research and made enough mistakes to know that I'm better off eating meat (grass-fed and finished) than I was bulking up on whole grains and tofu.

I need meat to bring me back to life.

Today I feel like a dead body coming back to life...slowly.

The rain is relentless here in NJ.
I don't know how everyone is doing in the rest of the world but over here we're downright soggy.

It's not like it's just a rainy day with on and off showers.
I'm talking about steady rain from heavy to steady and back again,
the kind of rain that makes it impossible to look too far into the distance.
Sometimes on a rainy day on campus you'll see some folks holding their books over their head for quick shelter or walking with their hoods up.

Not today.
Today is umbrella weather.
Even the tough guys are carrying their bumbershoots.

I was fortunate enough to get a handicapped spot right next to the building where I'm teaching today. Yes, I am grateful, but parking close to the building as a wheelchair bound person is different than parking close to the building as an able person.

As an able person I could hold an umbrella over my head.
I could walk briskly and avoid being soaked too badly.
Doing this in a wheelchair?
God have mercy.

Getting the chair out of the car, setting it up, attaching the foot rests, hanging my backpack on the handles and closing up the car....already I was wringing-wet.
My raincoat was waterlogged.
The three shawls that I had strategically wrapped myself in were water logged and I had not even begun to wheel myself to the building.

Have you ever tried to wheel yourself in a wheel chair with wet hands?

By the time I got myself inside I may as well have just rolled through a carwash in a convertible with the top down.
I was a drenched, dripping mess.

I swear I'll never complain about walking in the rain ever again.

But first, I need to walk.
Getting on my feet requires meat.

Meat
feet
eat
repeat.

Go see Food, Inc. (click here for a theatre near you)
Montclair folks, it will be a the Clairidge June 26th!

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
He talks about the idyllic image of the farm with the silo and the grass and the 1930s farmhouse.
Do your health a favor, find a real farmer who has the silo and the grass and the farmhouse!
Food, Inc. is based on "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan who is featured in the film. click here or click below

I want I see I can

Relational
What would you love for your relationship with your mom & dad?
What about your current or future lover or spouse?

This section of the vision worksheet is pretty easy.
Relationally?
I've been working on my relationships with my parents since...well...since I realized I was a person and not a parasitic symbiotic extension of them.
But really, working on my relationships with them since I moved out at 23.
There have been blow ups, crying confrontations, rehashing of the past and apologies.
Things aren't perfect but they're better.
If anything I'd like to have more time and resources to take care of them.

Spouse or lover?
I don't even know if I WANT to visualize anything in that area.
I would have to imagine being happy in a relationship with someone and I can't.
I don't know what benefit a relationship like that would bring me.
Sex?
A comedian once said that getting married for sex is like buying a 747 airplane to get the free peanuts.
Lots of trouble, little pay off.

I have PLENTY of friends.
Life is good in that area.
I would like to continue having and making friends.

Physical
Health & Fitness
Beauty – art, clothing, jewelry, etc
Material goods & tangibles, acquisitions, toys, real estate, cars, etc

Well this is one that I can sink my teeth into!
Health: walking, running, vibrant energy, clear dewy skin, strong sturdy legs, the urge to dance, sharp vision, unclogged hearing, no colds or coughs, healthy appetite, satiety after eating a good amount of food, strong heart and lungs, nourished body, agile mind, toned muscular but zaftig body, can play in the ocean and walk on the beach without getting tired, balance, no dizzyness, no cellulite, able to do martial arts, can spin around and still stand up straight, normal digestion, fresh breath, strong white teeth, a glow about me, large lung capacity, thick young looking hair, no need for makeup, tight lifted body.

Beauty and material goods - cleaner smoother looking living space but with all my ecclectic stuff on top of a warm color scheme. Big comfy sofas from Pottery Barn. A watch for every color outfit. An organized walk in closet the size of a bedroom complete with dressing area (ala Karen Walker)
Big flat screen tv for enjoying tv and movies. Attractive, new, sexy kitchen stuff. A much bigger living space with big bright open windows, greenery outside, lots of large comfy furntiture. High quality movie memorabilia like maquettes and original issue posters. Hanging lit up starships. Lots of accent lights. Tiffany lamps. Elegant throws. A more comfortable car with a great stereo. Really good health insurance and or lots of money.


Deep down I believe it's all doable.
From this lowly vantage point in my wheelchair with my braced up leg, spent adrenals, compromised digestion, thinning hair and low stamina, I still have the mental energy to cook up some great visions and make them happen.

How?
Well, that's where goal setting comes in.

For right now my goals are in the blinking red light zone.
I am doing what I can to heal my ruptured tendon.
But what if the end of July comes around and I still can't walk?
I had that fear today.
I walked from my bedroom to the kitchen and back again without the crutches just to see if I could.
The knee flared up again so badly I had to take some Alleve.
Not a huge deal but not reassuring either.

Today I stayed up at school all day.
My morning class ended at 1pm.
Had Japanese for lunch.
Came back here to school and stayed awake doing work all afternoon.

All I can think about is sleep.
I'm fantasizing about lying down on one of the sofas in the lobby and konking out like a freshman.
I'm having coffee fantasies, tasting my imaginary Caramel Macchiato.

I'm so damned tired.
But I fought the urge to drink or take anything to perk me up.
I'm just letting the tiredness be and going about my business.

Sometimes resisting the bad things can be just as proactive as proactivity!
I feel like a day resisting caffeine and stimulants is bringing me one day closer to walking...running...dancing.

I can almost see myself running toward me.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Carolyn Myss says we never seem to place limits on what we think we can have,
yet we tend to place limits on what we think we can do.
She says Step One is getting ourselves off the couch.
Step Two is knowing that what we do matters.
We have to do something for ourselves and something for the "whole" every day.
Every single day.
Everyday.
click here

1000th blog!!

Yes, it's true.
I've blogged over 1000 times.

Michael from the Hebrew Mikha'el,
meaning: Who is as God?
His name is a battle cry;
both shield and weapon
in the struggle,
and an eternal trophy of victory.

Gabriel seems to be composed

of the Hebrew words, gebher: man,
and 'el: God.
The voice of the Archangel
and the trumpet of God seem to be the same thing,
having the purpose to convey the divine command
to the dead to rise again
by the power of the Almighty God.

Raphael from the Hebrew rapha': to heal, and 'el: God,
means "God heals," or the "Divine healer."
Raphael is the protector of the young,
the wayfarer, and the pilgrim.


The Archangel Uriel has been called
"the Lord of powerful action".
Uriel personifies the Divine Fire
that comes down from the Third Aspect of Deity
-Universal Mind-
penetrating each plane until It reaches the physical,
creating worlds, universes, and life.
The Book of Enoch describes Uriel as "one of the holy angels,
who is over the world...the leader of them all."

I'm a professor of religion yet I don't know all that much about the choirs of angels.
I know the Archangels are Gabriel, Michael and Raphael with Azreal and Uriel sometimes included. If you Google "archangels" you'll come up with some beautiful Renaissance and Byzantine artwork plus loads of lore on their interactions with the human and heavenly realms.

The only way I know four of their names by heart is
from that Kate Bush song, "Lily" where she sings:
Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire...

I never really expected to ever call on them by name,
but today I needed heavy assistance.
I prayed to them.

Mid morning with thankfully no rain, I drove up to campus to teach my morning class.
I guess more people come to class when there's a bit of sunshine.
Consequently there was no place to park.
There were no handicap spots near the building.

I parked about two football fields away from where I needed to be,
an eternity in wheelchair miles.
Not only did I have to park far I had to wheel myself uphill.

I had time but no time to spare.
I looked at the building sitting higher in the distance than I'd ever seen it and began my wheeling.

The incline made my arms burn, then scream, then weaken.
I strained.
I wheeled six inches and rested, then six more inches, then rested.
Students were breezing past me on their cell phones pretending not to notice me or else noticing me and disregarding me as none-of-their-business
the same way one might hurry past a mother pushing a crying toddler in a stroller.
You notice but move away quickly.

I was tempted to ask one of them to just give me a hand pushing me up the hill.
Shame and determination kept me from asking
but it didn't stop me from praying.

God, you are great.
God is great.
I huffed and puffed for breath as I strained up the hill silently acknowledging God.

I needed help but I didn't want to pray for what I already had.
It felt wrong to ask for strength as if God had not already given me so much.
It felt wrong to ask for help since there were people around me whom I could easily have asked to help me.

Angels!
It occurred to me that angels could help me push my chair.
I prayed for angels.

First I prayed to Gabriel, then Michael then Raphael then Uriel.
Please, I prayed, let me feel the flutter of your wings behind my chair.

At that moment the gardener shouted out to me as he approached,
"I got you babe."

He had been watching me from a few yards away as he was planting seedlings next to our science building. He pushed me across campus, into the building, right up to the elevator.

His name was Danny.

Daniel

From the Hebrew name דָנִיֵּאל (Daniyyel)
meaning "God is my judge".
Daniel was a Hebrew prophet whose story is told
in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.
He lived during the Jewish captivity in Babylon,
where he served in the court of the king,
rising to prominence by interpreting the king's dreams.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Oh thou, who givest sustenance to the universe
From whom all things proceed
To whom all things return
Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun
Hidden by a disc of golden light
That we may know the truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to thy sacred feet
click here or click below

time heals all wounds if...

Is it healed yet?
Is it healed yet?
Is it healed yet?

I've been testing the knee ever so gently, putting a bit of weight on it, taking a few crutchless steps here and there. Things are better. I've still got plenty of healing to do but there is improvement.

I'm only taking a few Alleve tablets rather than my prescription.

I am grateful for my healing.

There is much less angst surrounding my ailment.
The smaller, lighter wheelchair is no longer a two person ordeal to get in and out of the car.

I feel like I can address the other big-bad dragging on my health: adrenal fatigue.
Imagine having a hard core caffeine and stimulant addiction.
Now imagine cutting your caffeine intake by like 90%.

My go-to drug to keep me going is no longer an option.
So, I've just been living life in a state of tiredness.
It's like the feeling you have when you first wake up before you've had your cup of coffee.
That's how I feel all day.

I get through it by telling myself that this is temporary.
The healing will lead to a robust healthy vibrant body that perks up from deep breathing, movement, good food and the smell of essential oils.

I tell myself that reaching for more than my one mug allotment of caffeine will only set me back in my healing. My tired body cannot regenerate in this condition.
My tendon won't heal if I keep taxing my adrenals with unhealthy habits.

Am I doing everything perfectly?
No.
I've been smoking a few extra cigarettes (Sweet Dreams Chocolate or Djarum).
I strategically pop pieces of organic dark chocolate in my mouth when I'm jonesing for coffee.

My thoughts are not where I'd want them to be.
I worry.
I judge.
I have fake conversations in my head where I tell people off.

But I recognize that I want something better.
I want thoughts that are just as satisfying as those victim, persecuted, angry thoughts.
I just want OTHER thoughts,
different thoughts.

Keep the satisfying aspect
toss the angry, bitter, judgmental resentment.
Get rid of thinking I know better than anyone else how they should live their lives.

sigh

Always gotta work on that character.
Always striving for integrity no matter how difficult.
sigh

I know what will put me in a good mood.
Tonight, there is a new episode of Weeds.
Satisfying and not at all angry.

Good times, good times.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
click here or click below

Gratitude VS Positive Thinking

It rained on our garage sale.
We got wet in the same way the Titanic took on a bit of water.

Between 5 of us, none of us thought to prepare for the possibility of rain.

We all read the forecasts.
All week the weather warned of clouds, sun and showers.
We thought...
I don't know what we thought.

We thought "rain" meant
a few showers that would pass, get us a little wet then move on.
We figured our stuff would get a little damp but not enough to ruin anything.

We were wrong.

The showers did not pass quickly.
We had torrential downpours mixed with solid sheets of heavy rain
followed by periods of drizzle followed by heavy rain.
Our stuff got soaked, some of it ruined.

We got soaked.
Soaked to the skin, like so wet our underwear had to be wrung out.

One of my girlfriend's shoes were making sloshing noises as she walked.
The whole thing was funny and sad.

In the middle of all this sopping wet commotion
I was semi-helpless on crutches.
I couldn't carry anything.
I couldn't stand long enough or well enough to do much.
My friends had to do most everything for me.
I felt like a burden, a cold, wet helpless burden, sitting like a lump
while my girlfriends did backbreaking work in the middle of Noah's Ark-style rain.

For lunch we sat under a backyard picnic tent (thanks to the resourcefulness of one of the gals and her husband who delivered it in the rain) watching the driveway full of stuff get drenched.
We made the best of it.
Our host fired up a propane grill under the tent and made burgers.
We drank beer and ate while the world dissolved around us.

Our attitudes were good considering the awfulness of our situation.
We joked as the driveway flooded, soaking our stuff , making it unsellable.

The term "rainy season" became something very real to me.
Imagine weeks and weeks where buckets of rain are thrown on you.
Imagine never believing you'll be warm and dry ever again.

I thought of every Vietnam movie where our troops went slogging through the jungle while the air around them turned to water. I thought of that scene in...was it Forrest Gump or Platoon...where one of the soldiers was drying his socks over the fire because he had seen fungus eat a man's foot right off right off his body.

When the whole world is rain there is no place to hide,
no place to get away from the water,
no way to heat up and dry out.

Our New Jersey lawns are sprouting mushrooms in testimony to the rain.

As we tried to have fun, worked and suffered together, my mind puzzled on how to see something good in what we were going through.

My thoughts rattled off great reasons for our rainy debacle.
We needed to learn lessons.
We needed to learn how resourceful we could be.
We needed to learn to make the best of a bad situation.
We needed to learn to keep a positive attitude.
We needed to learn detachment from stuff.
Need need need
learn learn learn
while a voice inside of me
stood firm in it's opinion
that our situation
sucked.

It was a shitty day.
We were disappointed.
Stuff got ruined.

Sure there was plenty of stuff to be positive about.

But there was something not quite complete about finding the "good" in our situation.

I remember my healer saying something to me.
He asked how I was doing
and I answered that I was "trying to find the good in everything".

He told me that sounded contrived.

Finding the good sounded contrived?
I was offended.
I was mad because I really was working very hard to find something positive in every situation.
He said I should not look for the good.
He said I needed to find the God in everything.

I think I get it now.
There were lots of experiences yesterday.
Lots of labels to be put on our situations.
I kept getting stuck in the notion that being grateful for the "good" was somehow better than seeing the "bad".
Like it's morally superior to keep positive in the middle of a shitty situation.
By trying to only see the "good" I was shortchanging the shittiness of things.
God provides everything and then we judge it good, bad or in between.
We're grateful for the good
and so squeamish about the bad that we try to make something positive out of it
when really all if it is ....just is.
There are no good or bad experiences. There are experiences.
We place labels on stuff we like or don't like.

It occurred to me that being GRATEFUL meant being GRATEFUL.
Being grateful is distinct from seeing the "good" in things.
Being grateful means just that: being grateful.
Not to be grateful for hard times cuz they lead to good things but being grateful because stuff is what it is.
The gratitude is for the experience whether or not they earn good/bad labels.

Yesterday was mostly awful.
Yesterday was full of situations, conditions, feelings and experiences that were yucky, awful, unpleasant and undesirable.
Though I didn't like it I'm grateful for it.

I'm grateful for the experience.
I'm not even sure I need to explain WHY I'm grateful.
I'm not going to say "Thank you for my shitty day because it taught me...bla bla bla."

I'm just going to say, "Thank you for my shitty day."

Period.

I can't explain why.
Maybe I don't have to.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
I'd tell Hal a secret but I don't really have any left, do I?
lol
Here's another installment in The Peep Diaries
(the documentary that I'm going to be in) video blog
from the recent book expo at the Javitz Center in NYC.
click here or click below

Lisa and friends' garage sale!

In the NJ area today?
Come to our garage sale!

27 Althea Street
Clifton, NJ 07013

Lots of stuff!
10:00 am till....

wheelchair fight

"Any illness is a direct message
to you that tells you
how you have not been loving
who you are,
cherishing yourself
in order to be
who you are.
This is the basis
of all healing."
— Barbara Brennan

I exchanged my big honking wheelchair for a less honking wheelchair.
The big honking wheelchair was too much for me to manage on my own.
I needed as smaller one.

The lady at the medical supply store put up a fight, claiming the new wheelchair was too narrow for my big ass and too lightweight for my size.

I held firm.
I need to be able to get the chair in and out of the car without an army of helpers (or at least one friend with the strength of an army).
Sure I'd been lucky/blessed for these past two weeks getting help from friends,
students,
family
and random passers by
who took pity on me as I struggled to get the darn thing in and out of my trunk.

But Monday I start teaching a third summer class (I'm teaching 4 this summer).
In the morning and at night meaning
I would have to get the chair in and out of the car as many times as I teach.
The big honking wheelchair (see picture above) was too cumbersome.

I HAD to get a sleeker, more lightweight chair
and I did.

As I said, I had to put up a bit of a fight with the owner of the medical supply store, but I asserted my will, stayed my ground and got what I needed.

There's power in that.
Power replacing fear...nice theme for summer dontcha think?

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive.
Assertiveness is calm and clear.
Being assertive is a form of self care.
In this video Tracy Goodwin tells us we need to rehearse what we are going to say.
I did.
I rehearsed saying that I MUST have a lighter, smaller wheelchair.
It did not have to be bigger than my butt (as the woman insisted).
It could be snug because I only need it to teach a few hours a day.
I'd deal with the snugness.
It worked out exactly as I imagined it.
I got the lighter, smaller chair.
click here or click below

easily and often

Thanks to anibundel for this!

I feel like shit today...more than usual.
I resent having to be awake.
I'm angry and uncomfortable.
This knee is taking too long to heal.
I'm aggravated and frustrated.

Exactly where I need to be.

I don't FEEL like I'm exactly where I need to be.
I feel like biting the heads off a herd of beanie babies,
drugging myself
and sleeping till Saturday.

But my feelings don't own me.
My feelings are not going to run my life.

Part of me knows that this uncomfortable,
angry,
awful,
bite beanie baby heads
is all part of the healing.

The more impatient I am the more I need to learn patience.
The more angry I am the more I need to practice forgiveness.
The more pain I have the more I must nourish myself.

Detoxing is a helluva thing.
Less caffeine.
No bread.
No grains.
Eating protein and produce regularly.
More fat.
Hardly any sugar.
Lots of deep breathing.

Life felt so much easier when I was jacking up on coffee and energy drinks.
But that way of life was breaking me,
literally, breaking me.
Physically breaking me like a sledgehammer to rock.

How long was my body going to hold out while I lurched around
forcing my body to run on stimulants and starchy foods (brown rice and tofu for instance)?

Time has run already run out.
My knee ruptured and will not heal unless ...
I stay off it
and
nourish my body with good food and good rest.

The result is not instant.
Change of lifestyle isn't like a drug.
One does not get an instant cure.

There 's plenty of sadness for me to feel,
plenty of pain,
plenty of cravings,
lots of tears, headaches and moods.

So when I realized it was time to do part 3 of my Vision Worksheet
I immediately wanted to go back to bed,
scream,
cry and procrastinate.

But as I said, my feelings don't run me.
I'll do it.
Right now.

THEN I may go scream cry and pound my pillows.
For now?
It's time to envision my financial state.
Part 3 of the Vision Worksheet.

Financial
a)Exactly how much money do you want each week, month, year?
b) What is your relationship with money now and what would you like it to be?

a) I want $2000 a week, $8000 a month, $100,000 a year.
b) My relationship with money now has been worrisome and fearful.
I have worried that I won't have enough.
I would like to have money come to me easily and often.
Money comes to me easily and frequently.
I envision a steady stream of more than enough money to create a living environment where me and my loved ones are comfortable, where I can entertain and empower others to have more than enough money as well. I see my efforts bringing riches into my life with money being one of the riches.

I do.
I really do.

There's plenty for everyone.
Abundance is the truth.

I am grateful that I am becoming more open to bringing abundance to me and my loved ones.
Financial freedom is possible, is happening, is mine.

Now can I go scream and cry?

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
"Words are powerful magic.
We create with them whatever we choose."
The music to this one sounds like the opening thing to a cop show!
lol
But watch it.
Let the words penetrate your psyche.
They are true of you let them be true.
click here or click below

Thank God I landed my ass in a wheelchair

"...collecting inspiring stories about people’s transformations through challenging circumstances would immeasurably help twice over, not only to the people who reached an epiphany through telling their stories and getting to a place of gratitude, but also to the countless other people who would read these stories in the Thank God I…^® series."

No glow effect. No soft focus.
Just me starting to glow on my own.
It's been a while since I posted a pic of me
taken by me!

“If you can find a path
with no obstacles,
it probably doesn't lead anywhere.”
-Frank A. Clark

Thank God I landed my ass in this wheelchair.
It took me a while to be grateful.
I TRIED to be grateful.
I SAID I was grateful
but deep down I was forcing the gratitude in order to earn the grace to make my knee injury go away.
And because I'm karmically rigorous, there was no way that kind of bargaining would work.

Kinda like why the psychic healer could not heal my knee injury.
I'm sure his prayers helped me other ways.
For sure he helped me spiritually.
But the knee?
My higher self blocked the healing.
I needed the lessons from this injury more than I needed the relief from the pain.

One of the lessons was gratitude.
Not in a vague way but in a hard, specific way.

So far I'm learning to appreciate my friends.
Hey, I appreciated them before but not like I do now.
Before all this business with the knee I made sure to be self sufficient.
I thought of my friends as an option that I could live without if I had to.
Why?
Just in case they dumped me
or left me
or betrayed me
or I wanted to retreat into addictive solitude.

I didn't want to trust them because there was the chance that trust might be betrayed
This inability to TRUST the ones I loved made me set myself up to be independent (though I'm learning that I never really was independent).

Secondly but not second at all,
I needed to appreciate moving.

Yesterday I was looking at my messy car.
It needs to be vacuumed.
The car mats need to be washed.
Usually I do that in the Spring as part of the Spring cleaning.
This year?
This year I'm learning to accept my situation.
I'm learning to have less anxiety about things not getting done exactly the way I want to do them
AND
more importantly
I'm learning to appreciate the ability to move.

This year, as my adrenal fatigue persisted, I was dreading and procrastinating every task that involved movement.
That dread needed to be "cleaned up" twofold.
I needed to address my physical needs
AND
I needed to address my reluctance to do physical tasks.

I remember I asked God to make me a servant.
Conform me to God's will.
Oh, and make me WANT to exercise.
Make me want to move my body and take care of it.

BAM!

Landed my ass in a wheelchair.

Do I appreciate moving now??
You bet I do.

I LONG to clean out my car.
I WANT to put my own laundry away.
I WISH I could shop for myself.
I want to clean and cook and shop and workout and dance!

I needed this yank to attention.
I needed to be sat down
halted
stilled
(exactly what Vlad told me I needed...to just be...to sit still and learn to appreciate what I had...he said this injury knocked me on my butt for a reason).

Once this leg is healed things will be different, much different.

I will appreciate the ability to do chores, to walk, to shop, to clean.
And God willing, I'll be well enough to do all of it.

For now the term "this is how I roll" has taken on a whole new meaning!
lol

I'm learning to appreciate what I can do now, even in this condition.
I'm learning to appreciate what I had.
I'm learning to appreciate who I have in my life.

Thank God.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Here's one of the storytellers from the "Thank God I..." book series.
Lori Dawn tells us that we can be thankful for things AS THEY HAPPEN rather than 10 years down the road.
click here or click below

the me to be

Ok, it's time for the second part of my Vision Worksheet
from my nutritionist trainer (click here if you haven't already).
Time to think about job, career and/or what I want to do with most of my time.

For the past decade or so my commitments felt like too much.
I had to jack up on stimulants, Red Bull, coffee and energy drinks just to keep up with myself.

One might look at what I've been doing and say "Cut back on your commitments."
Sounds reasonable.
I do tend to take on a lot of activities that rely on me to make them run.

And what if I did cut back?
I could rest more, but
it still would not heal my adrenal fatigue.
Resting is not enough.

In an article claiming that Adrenal Fatigue is really Addison's or Fibromyalgia (fibro was not considered legitimate until recently when big pharma decided to cash in on treating it) a medial doctor explains,

"...your adrenal glands are unable to keep pace with the demands of perpetual fight-or-flight arousal. As a result, they can't produce quite enough of the hormones you need to feel good. Existing blood tests, according to this theory, aren't sensitive enough to detect such a small decline in adrenal function — but your body is. That's why you feel tired, weak and depressed."
- Todd B. Nippoldt, M.D. on The Mayo Clinic website

What am I doing for my adrenal fatigue?
Good food in a
high fat low carb diet,
deep breathing,
chi gong,
whatever exercises my nutritionist/trainer prescribes,
lots of supplemental oils (fermented cod liver oil, virgin coconut oil, olive oil, raw butter),
digestive support (click here),
probiotics,
minerals,
regular sleep patterns,
slowly eliminating caffeine.

Notice what's missing?
Prescription drugs.

No wonder The Mayo Clinic won't take this condition seriously.
But hey.
Screw them.
They can give me advice about how to stay off a ruptured tendon but when it comes to nutrition I'll stick with a holistic nutritionist.

Any wayyyyyy.

Deciding what I want to do with my life has always been hedged in by my lack of energy.
I have to remember that as I envision my future.
I am free to imagine a level of energy commensurate with my vision!

Here we go with Part 2 of my Vision Worksheet

Vocational
a) What would you love to do?
b) What are you passionate about?
c) What kind of people do you want to be around?
d) What kind of responsibilities do you want?

a) I would love to teach, speak, write, create an institute for continuing education for the holistic healing arts and a center for full spectrum healing (including hypnois for mental conditioning, yogic meditation and nutrition for physical healing). I would love to produce books, CDs, DVDs, workshops, a full blown interactive website and a weekly show or podcast.

b) I am passionate about the mind body connection and how we can strengthen our power to heal ourselves and others. I am passionate about metaphysical understanding, spirituality, religion and enlightenment. I am passionate about facilitating compassionate expression of our innermost selves (the divine in all of us). I am passionate about giving and receiving inspiration.

c) I want to be around healers, scholars, motivators, spiritual teachers, religious seekers, yogis, martial artists, lightworkers, occultists, students, coaches, activists, gardeners, food snobs, artists, and visionaries.

d) I want to be responsible for the creative delivery of information, stories and truths about the most ultimate concerns of humankind. I want to be CEO of my own mega kingdom where I have total creative control. I want to run a fabulous institute where energy flows to create positive outcomes. I want to be responsible for delegating what I can to empowered individuals who are on board with my mission. I want to be responsible for supporting non-profit initiatives such as those supporting small organic farms and the Weston A. Price way of nourishing ourselves.

Whew!
That was MUCH easier than the personal/emotional section of the Vision Worksheet.

Right now I'm tired and hungry.
Meh.
What else is new.
I think I'll dip some crisp Amish sausage into some onion chutney and go rest on the couch.
Possibly dozing.

*Lisa's Video Clip of the Day*
Kevin Gianni is THE raw food guy.
He's the creator of The Renegade Health Show.
He gets the following question all the time.
"What is so wrong with soy?"
Today, he explains!
click here or click below

over helping, under receiving

I've had this on my mind since I read it on 'writing for real life' blog a few days ago.
It's making me think.

There's a fine line between helping and over helping people.

I know that I'm very dependent on my friends right now with this injured knee.
I'm learning the value of allowing myself to be helped. I'm appreciating the mutual contributions between me and my loved ones.

Help, contribution, support...these are all good things.
I'd been conditioned to believe that needing people meant I was a weak person.
I'm learning that sometimes strength comes from forgiving one's self for being weak so that others can give a hand up.

I'm cautious as I read the following list.
I'm cautious that it might make me retreat back into that place where I think I have to do it all on my own.

Yet, there is value in considering the items on this list.
I don't want to help others in a way that makes them helpless.
I don't want to be helped in a way that makes me completely weak.

There are balanced ways to share.
We are interconnected.
Bounce one thread in the web and they all bounce.

But to approach our relationships with fear and fury?
That can't be good.

I think this list taken from Melody Beattie's classic book can illuminate behaviors that need to be changed rather than eliminated.

I also think that we all do the things on this list to a certain extent.
However, it's worth considering whether we're doing them too much.

She says we might be co-dependent if we...

-think and feel responsible for other people, for their thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs

-feel anxiety and guilt when other people have a problem

-feel compelled to help people solve their problems

-not knowing what you want or need, or telling yourself that what you want or need isn't important

-think you're not quite good enough

-pick on yourself for everything, including the way you think, feel, look, act and behave

-fear rejection

-take things personally

-believe other people couldn't possible like/love you

-try to prove you're good enough for other people

-worry

-think and talk a lot about other people

-don't feel peaceful, content or happy with yourself

-look for happiness outside yourself

-desperately seek love and approval

-try to prove you're good enough to be loved

-don't take the time to see if other people are good for you

-don't mean what you say

-don't know what you mean

-take yourself too seriously

-ask for what you want or need indirectly - sighing, for example

-find it difficult to get to the point

-aren't sure what the point is

-try to say what you think will please people

-talk too much

-talk negatively about other people

-have a difficult time expressing emotions honestly, openly and appropriately

-talk in self-degrading ways

-apologize for bothering people

-don't trust yourself

-don't trust other people

-are afraid of your own anger

-are frightened of other people's anger

-think people will go away if anger enters the picture

-are afraid to make other people feel anger

-repress your angry feelings

- from Melody Beattie's "Co-dependent No More:
How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself"

Once again, a reminder.
I have plenty of work to do.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
How blessed this kid is to be learning
these lessons at such a young age.
Most of us seem to have to wait till our middle age
when we're sick and desperately looking for answers!
They should be assigning these books in high school.
click here or click below

the payoff is me

"A vision is not a goal.
A vision is much broader
and more compelling than a goal.
It's a complete,
overall picture of your life
that includes personal
and professional endeavors....


...Your goals will be roadside targets
which you can use to measure your progress
on your way to your vision....



...If you don’t have a vision,
life can be like a bumper car ride
where there is no general direction
and you will continually run into walls
or other cars...


...It may even seem fun at times,
but ultimately you will not end up where you choose,
you won’t be fulfilled
and your life will be spent completing
someone else’s vision."
- Burn Sports Vision Worksheet

I'm looking at the Vision Worksheet
from my nutritionist trainer (click here if you haven't already)
and thinking...ugh, do I have to??

That's a bad sign.
When you sit down to create a vision of a life that you will love
and your first instinct is to procrastinate and take a nap instead, you're in trouble.

That's been my go-to response for everything over the past decade or so:
I'm tired leave me alone.

MIND YOU
I don't give in to those urges.
I push myself.
My moods don't make my decisions for me.
But just to be clear: I'd rather be sleeping.

That's not a character flaw.
It's adrenal fatigue.

Adrenal Fatigue??
Don't go looking for the mainstream medical community to explain it.
Remember when fibromyalgia was NOT a legitimate ailment?
Then the drug companies decided to manufacture pills to manage it.
There was big money to be made.
They saw an opportunity for enormous profit.
Now it's fibro is a "real" ailment.

Same with adrenal fatigue.
(click here if you want to learn more about adrenal fatigue)

I have it.
Short, nutshell version of what I have?
Exhaustion.
An actual physical depletion of bodily resources as a result of
awful, crappy low fat and diet foods,
awful, crappy food in general,
poor sleep habits,
caffeine abuse
stimulant abuse
stress
overcommitment
and poor self care.

And that's just the nutshell version.
Wait till I write my book on bouncing back from adrenal fatigue!

In the meantime,
how about I tackle section one of the Vision Worksheet so I can start rebuilding my life.
Ok.
Here we go.
Section One.
Let's read what I'm supposed to be visioning...

I.} Personal (mental/emotional)
a) This is your wealth of knowledge and experience. It's the combination of
facts, skills, talents, and life experiences and your understanding of how the
world works.
b) Emotional balance and perspective?
c) What makes you unique? What do you want to feel most?

sigh
( I am now resisting a nap
resisting playing Word Challenge....decide to do the right thing
aaaaaaand ACTION!)

a) I see myself calm and wise.
I see that everything is unfolding as it should be.
I have the peace that comes with knowing when I need to involve myself and when I need to step back and let things unfold without my involvement.
I understand the source of all things as expressing itself and my partnership with it as a form of the Highest in expressing its glory.
I see myself as aware, awake, at peace and always open to learning more.
I see myself as a teacher and a student perpetually.

b) Emotionally I am joyful, appreciative and light hearted.
I am angry appropriately and not compulsively.
I am loving, forgiving and patient.
I see myself happy, joyful and fascinated (and fascinating).
I am fulfilled by the company of others and at peace when I am alone.
I see myself with love to give without fear of being depleted.
I see myself open to receiving love from others.
I see myself experiencing emotions as an expression of the spectrum of feelings rather than feeling guilty or feeling crazy or too manic.
I am passionate and expressive.
I sense the needs of others and am aware of my own emotional needs placing my well-being first while being kind to others in the process.

c) I am unique because of my particular experiences.
My way of expressing my experiences is illuminating to others.
I have a way of making my life stories relevant to others so that they can learn from me.
Most of all I want to feel joy.

Whew!
That wasn't so bad.
It was kinda nice.

When things feel tough, and they do feel tough, I can look at my visioning and see what the payoff is.

The payoff is me.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
This is a video for those who want to live a more positive, abundant life!
Visit The Good Life blog for inspiring articles: http://www.wealth-prosperity.info
click here or click below

Healthy Breakfast Cereal...oxymoron

"The rats eating the box became lethargic and eventually died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving the corn flakes and water died before the rats that were eating the box! (The last corn flake rat died the day the first box rat died.) But before death, the corn flake rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions."
- Sally Fallon
in "Puffed Grains and Breakfast Cereals:
Should we eat them?"

"Fast-made bread is one of the most destructive implementations into the modern diet. It has become normal fare, and poorly-prepared and poorly-digested wheat is the chief contributor to the current plague of 'gluten-intolerance', obesity, diabetes, candida diseases and many allergenic conditions... Breads are still made this way, even the so-called health breads!"
- Bread Dread: Are you Really Gluten Intolerant?

"When we got married the registry wouldn’t let me put Super Hero as my occupation, they put Home Duties on our marriage certificate instead. But I AM a Super Hero and my Super Hero name is…The Nourisher."
- Nourished Magazine

It's not that I'm anti-carb.
I'm PRO carb.
Carbs include: fruits, vegetables, nuts and dairy.
Yes, those are carbs.

Eliminating grains from my diet is not some wacky stance against carbs.
It's an informed stance against grains and how awful they made me feel.

Even the whole grains made me feel spacey and weak.
I was always hungry.
I never felt sated.
I'd have to eat 3 giant bowls of brown rice before I'd want to stop eating, mostly from exhaustion rather than feeling full.

My poor pancreas, worn out as it is, was tired from pumping out too much insulin over the course of the day. My ppor body was always fighting fighting fighting to maintain an even blood sugar. The grains drained me.
I was suffering from grain drain.

I remember when I became too weak to exercise.
After working out 6 days a week for almost a year I stopped losing weight and was ravenous all the time. My blog reflects the changes in my diet at that time. I loaded on more brown rice and tofu hoping to supply more energy. It didn't work.

"...if your insulin is elevated
and you don’t change your diet to bring it down,
exercising will most likely just deplete your body of fuel
– and your body will fight
to hang onto those big batteries it needs
by conserving fuel any way it can. "
- Fat Head Blog by Tom Naughton

The "big batteries" Tom is talking about in the above quote??
Body fat.
The big batteries are our own fat cells.

My high insulin levels from my grain/starch/carb heavy diet made me lethargic.
Go figure.

So why is the FDA pushing grains (and the oh so virtuous "whole" grains) as being the base of the food pyramid?

Must have something to do with money
cuz health doesn't seem to concern them.

If the FDA had our health as their priority they wouldn't allow Total to put metal filings in their cereal. Don't believe me?
Watch today's video.

Someone on YouTube actually defended the iron filings in cereal saying that our stomach acid mixes with the iron shavings to make iron that our bodies can absorb.
Pardon me for expecting my food to actually contain iron rather than have it added back in artificially.
Expecting the stomach acid to turn metal into food is a swell idea if you have enough stomach acid.
Children, the elderly and folks like me with compromised digestive tracts don't have enough enzymes to break down the metal shavings in the cereal (do we really have to think about the down side of having metal filings in our food?)

Something is wrong with the process of making cereal when the manufacturer has to "fortify" it by adding spray-on vitamins to make their cardboard product into a semi-food product.
Total has 100% of the daily allowances of vitamins because they spray them onto the dead waste they're passing off as cereal.

And don't write me telling me how wonderful Kashi is.
Go read Sally Fallon's articles on the extrusion process (click here)
or the article on puffed cereals (click here)
or a concerned mother's blog about Cheerios and Go Lean (click here)
then tell me how a God-awful product not meant to be consumed daily
is skanking it's way onto our breakfast tables
fully endorsed by the corrupt FDA.

I'm done listening to the wrong advice.
My body is my witness.
I've lived through all the stuff that doesn't work
and gave myself some nice malnourishment, morbid obesity, diabetes and adrenal fatigue
for my trouble.

No more cereal or granola for a long long time.

What have I consumed so far today?
A heaping teaspoon of cocunut oil,
a teaspoon of fermented cod liver oil,
an Amish breakfast sausage,
a mug of tea with Almond milk (almond milk is a fragmented food, I know, I know!) and I'm about to have some sort of high fat protein.

Check in with me a year from now and see if I've finally found the right way to eat.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Is there NOTHING left on the Supermarket shelves,
which we have to be constantly vigilant about?
That's why 80% of my food budget goes to a small, local, biodynamic farmer.
My body is my witness.
If you're having cereal for breakfast,
enjoy your metal filings!
click here or click below

I'm in Sally Blake's Blog!!
click here

heal the gut

"1.) Did nature create this for food?
2.) Is this food in a form that’s healthy for my body? "
- Jordan Rubin's philosophy on eating

I've been masking my symptoms with tea and coffee.
Sure, over the past few months I went from drinking a whole pot of coffee a day down to a giant mug of tea but still, the caffeine was masking my shitty symptoms.

Every time I eat I feel tired afterward.
I crave sweets after I eat.
I'm foggy and miserable for hours.

These are symptoms of poor digestive health.

It would be so easy to just pop some pills and be done with all this but that's not how our bodies heal.

My nutritionist (click here and read now!)
is helping me get my gut in order.
I'm taking digestive enzymes,
strong probiotics
and am not drinking with meals.

The foods and supplements (such as high vitamin cod liver oil from Iceland and raw virgin coconut oil) I'm taking are all meant to soothe and heal my digestive tract so that I can absorb my nutrients.

The symptoms of foggy, tired, dizzy, miserable weakness will vanish.
They're temporary.

Yet,
I wish I had a nice mug of coffee.
I won't drink it though.
I'll stay strong.
My adrenal fatigue will never heal if I keep hammering my body with stimulants.
I'll have to fight through the symptoms to get to the other side.
The other side?
Wellness.

I had a fabulous breakfast just now:
Amish breakfast sausage (grass fed meat)
Bone broth
Raw butter
and two forkfuls of chick peas.

With such a pristine ratio of fat, protein and carbs one would think that I'd feel great!
I don't.
I want to go to bed.

But first, I'll take a digestive enzyme capsule.

In order to heal the body one must first heal the gut.
Gut first, bed next.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Jordan S. Rubin speaks about nutrition in THE BIBLE!
Yep.
He's the founder of Garden of Life products.
He healed himself from near death at 104 pounds by eating living, healthy foods.
He's on fire for God and brimming health.
Listen to him.
click here or click below

meat and coconut oil

Proud to be part of Real Food Wednesdays! (click here)

"The number of baby boomers
who are opting for knee replacement surgery
earlier in life
is growing at an exponential rate,
according to Dr. J. David Blaha,
an orthopedic surgeon at Univesity of Michigan Health System....

...Only a few years ago,
doctors performed between
300,000 to 350,000 knee replacement surgeries annually.
Today that number has risen to a staggering 500,000.
Experts estimate that there could be
as many as 3.2 million annual
knee replacement surgeries just ten years from now...

...Dr. Blaha attritbutes this increase
'to baby boomers wanting to maintain an active lifestyle,'
with no mention of the debilitating effects
from today's processed food diet....

...Lots of baby boomers
are getting knee replacements
simply to be able to walk without pain.
The notion that human beings
should be leading a normal,
active lifestyle well into old age
- without replacing any parts -
seems to have fallen by the wayside."
- Sally Fallon and Mary Enig in
Wise Traditions Volume 9 Number 3

See that picture up there with all those sexy fitness trainers sitting eating lunch at the diner?
They were at the Fast Track to Fitness Millions summit in Morristown, NJ this past week.
Notice what they are and aren't eating.
(Also notice my brilliant nutritionist/trainer sitting at the head of the table in the white hoodie. By the way he's holding his knife and fork he must be eating meat :-)

They're eating
Meat.
Beef.
Fatty, red, bloody meat.

Not a froo froo salad.
Not the steamed vegetarian plate.
Not anemic, pale chicken.
Not some low fat, non-nutritious crap.

And all the white stuff on the table?
The bread, potatoes and starch?
They left it.

These are professional fitness people.
Trainers.
Athletes.
Nutritionists.

What's right with this picture?
(click here for an article by a NON-PROFIT agency with no stake in the beef industry regarding the benefits of eating grass-fed beef).

Here's an excerpt:

"It is true that beef consumption in the United States has gone up during the last eighty years, the period of huge increases in heart disease.

Today we consume 79 pounds of beef per person per year versus 54 in 1909, a 46% increase-but poultry consumption has increased a whopping 280%, from 18 pounds per person per year to 70.

Consumption of vegetable oils, including those that have been hydrogenated, has increased 437%, from 11 pounds per person per year to 59; while consumption of butter, lard and tallow has plummeted from 30 pounds per person per year to just under 10.
Whole milk consumption has declined by almost 50%, while lowfat milk consumption has doubled.

Consumption of eggs, fresh fruits (excluding citrus),
fresh vegetables, fresh potatoes and whole grain products has declined;
but consumption of sugar and other sweeteners has almost doubled.

Why, then, do today's politically correct dietary gurus continue to blame beef consumption for our ills?
Is it because it is the one wholesome food
that has shown an increase over the past ninety years?"
- "It's the Beef"
by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD

Sally and Mary have nothing to gain by promoting traditional eating.

So if you're thinking of those ads that say
"Beef: It's What's for Dinner"
or
"Pork is the other white meat"
think again.

Sally Fallon and Mary Enig are not members of some pro-meat lobby.
They're not going to gain anything financially by speaking the truth about traditional foods.
They're doing good non-commercial research and living the lifestyle.

I think it's important to look at what a person has to gain by promoting a certain way of life before you believe anything they have to say.
We have to look at what THEY've gained by living that way before we take their word for anything.

You shall know them by their fruits.

The folks who are eating the wise, traditional way are more healthy and less angry than the mood swingy, light headed, hyper, sickly vegetarians who are afraid of good fats or animal foods.

Or maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see.
I've done that plenty of times before.
I've projected what I wanted to see in people rather than what was there.
I've put faith in diets that failed me.

This may or may not be the way of life that gets and keeps me healthy.

Only time will tell.

Till then, it's liver and eggs for breakfast right now...
cuz I'm just that sexy.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
I've been taking a heaping teaspoon of raw virgin coconut oil every morning since I saw Antonio last week. It's essential for weight loss and for fighting yeast, pathogens and fungus.
Click here if you dont' believe me!
Don't feel like reading?
Listen to Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness.
He'll tell ya.
Click here or click below

Thank God I...

See what happens
when you start making your bed
every day?
You attract cats!
lol

"What is usually only glimpsed at
through news headlines
("Woman found dead with 400 cats")
is actually a prevalent but misunderstood condition
known as Ailurophilia. "
- Chocoloate Box Entertainment
(the documentary folks doing 'Peep Me'
the film I'm going to be in!)

Welcome to the family, my sixth cat, Cassidy!!
(named after a character from LOST
when I thought the kitten was a female!)

"Consider, for instance,
the third chakra challenges
of a person in a
wheelchair.
The fact that the physical world
is an illusion does not mean
that the wheelchair does not exist
or that her physical problem is not real.
Rather, it means that nothing in the physical world
can contain or limit the power
of the human spirit."
- Carolyn Myss

This is what happens when you ask to be God's servant.
When I asked God how best to be of service
this happened.
I mean, how loudly can God say BAM!

Wheelchair,
bottoming out,
morbidly obese,
unable to lose weight,
too weak to take care of myself,
desperate for answers
help me help me help me.

In other words,
exactly what's supposed to happen.

When you open yourself up spiritually and submit to the higher power
all hell breaks loose.
Mine is NOT a unique story in that respect.
I asked for it, I got it.

Why?
Because I can't be of service to anyone till I've crawled my ass up out of the deep, dark well
with my bare hands.

Yes, that's a picture of Catherine holding Precious from the film Silence of the Lambs.
Dog and girl, both survivors from being trapped at the bottom of a monster's well.

Must crawl up out of the oubliette.

Then and only then will I have gone through the proper initiation to be a healer.

Now, I MUST get the book
"Thank God I ___
Stories of Inspiration for Every Situation"
My nutritionist/trainer is in it telling his story:
Thank God I Burned Out!

I thank God he burned out too or else he would not have learned how to rehabilitate someone like me from severe adrenal fatigue and malnourishment.

And someday, someone will be saying,
Thank God Lisa Sargese
landed her ass in that wheelchair 3 years after gastric bypass or I never
would have been able to learn from her!

Yeah, cuz that's how it goes.
Fill your heart with gratitude and you'll know what to do.

I'm finally learning to be grateful for this knee injury because now it's time to learn.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
John Castagnini and Amanda Kroetsch have made it their mission to compile some of the most challenging issues we face in experiencing gratitude into a book series that will heal and open hearts around the globe by sharing one simple message:
"Our greatest lessons come in the form of our greatest challenges!"
Click here or click below

still tired

I'm so sick of being tired, foggy and half alive.
I've been lurching from one addiction to the next to get me through the day and it's killing me.

From caffeine to Ritalin to over the counter stimulants to get me through my day... to sugary sweet things (even fruit) to feed the gaping open fish mouths of the candida living in my gut.
I don't feel like my life is my own.
I feel like I'm living to feed my gut full of parasites and candida.

I've been up for only a few hours.
I've done some good, productive things though not too strenuous and I'm already dizzy, foggy and ready for a nap.

Time for a change in diet.

I'll tell you one thing I won't be doing to fix this: counting calories.

How much evidence do we need before we see the truth?
Diets are unhealthy.

"...lost weight, of course, but in addition their hair started to fall out, small cuts took longer to heal, their metabolism slowed down so they rarely moved when they didn't have to, they felt cold all the time, they had slower reflexes, they felt weak, their normal interests in the world around them narrowed, they suffered from depression, irritability and food obsessions..."
- Low Calorie Diet Myths

Between the yo yo dieting,
the stimulant abuse,
the low fat NONSENSE,
a gut full of yeast from too many grains
over too many years,
and relentless self-blaming,
I've put myself in this state of lurching illness.

It's a beautiful, sunny, magnificent day and all I can think about is finishing this blog post so I can lie down.
Not good.

But I'll fix it.

Life isn't meant to be half lived.

I want a life that's whole.

*Lisa's Video Pick of the Day*
Eating refined white flour,
bread,
pasta,
rice,
even whole grains,
create an environment for candida to thrive in the gut.
Gluten free? Doesn't matter.
Pasty foods will always make a pasty gut.
Suffering through this detox is enough to convince me never to eat like that again.
This video says DON'T EAT BREAD ALTERNATIVES such as gulten free anything
or low carb bread.
Just don't.
They are "franken-foods" like Frankenstein. Dead but walking around.
Let Catherine from http://www.healthyfitmom.com/blog tell us about better choices.
click here or click below