Shangri-La 9-12-2006

7-14-2006 Friday

Started Jimmy, Christopher & me on the Shangri-La Diet.


9-12-2006 Tuesday

Jimmy has lost 10 pounds, Christopher 5, Catherine —2 & +2.

oh, wait! no. that's not right. Catherine is —2.

Turns out The Daily Plate only tracks 5 or 6 weeks at a time at a time.... so all our July data has been dropped out.

Jimmy's weight loss curve is pretty much straight down; Christopher has been plateaued for a month (apparently we need those 6 hours a day of tennis camp); mine is down, then up then plateaued.

"self-experimentation" notes^*

I lost weight when I switched from ELOO^** to sugar water, then regained plateaued when I switched back to ELOO because sugar water is a pain in the tochus.

Early on Jimmy seemed not to be faring well, so I switched him to sugar water & he began losing steadily. After vacation I got lazy, put him back on ELOO, and he's still losing steadily.

Christopher's going on sugar water today. He's not happy about it, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile one of his chums told him that his mother thinks it's disgusting Christopher has to drink olive oil.

My reputation in the community is growing!

Martine is still offering Christopher junk food behind my back. Yesterday she tried to give him something from Dunkin' Donuts. He managed to say 'no' before she got whatever it was out of the bag and showed it to him. Martine has fattened me up every time I've lost weight (as a welcome side effect from various meds); the instant I start looking skinny she starts going to Dunkin' Donuts & buying oversized blueberry muffins, then presenting them to me as a "gift" mid-afternoon, the very moment I am least likely to resist temptation.

I'm in a black mood.

This time she's busted, regardless of whether that makes her mad at Christopher for "telling."




points off

Ed, Christopher, & I took a goofy test in Why Gender Matters on "how masculine are you?"

One of the items was "I can get people to do what I want them to do, even when they don't want to"

I got zero on that one.




as I was saying ....

Not only is Martine setting Christopher up to gain weight, she's setting him up to lie to Ed & me about what he's eating. How long is he going to be able to resist Dunkin' Donuts? I can't resist the stuff at all when you put it under my nose. Once he starts eating Dunkin' Donuts, he'll start not-telling us about it, or fibbing if we ask.

I already addressed this issue with Ed, who is skinny, and has never once, in his entire adult life, needed to lose so much as an ounce of weight.

Christopher walks home with his thin friends every day, and they stop at the corner deli and buy junk food.

So Ed told Christopher he couldn't buy anything. His friends can buy crap; he can't.

I told Ed, who agreed, that he was setting Christopher up to lie to us. There's no way a kid is going to be able to obey his dad and resist junk food while all his friends are chowing down. It's not just the food; it's the social issue. Under a no-junk-food-after-school rule he'd be the fat boy who has to do what his daddy tells him. That would be his rep.

So the rule is one piece of junk food a day — and get it with your friends, after school, not at lunchtime. And yes, our school sells junk food in the cafeteria. We have a brand-new super-expensive super-fancy high-ceilinged cafeteria chock-ful of crap to eat. oh, and sushi. We have a sushi bar in our school cafeteria. So the kids can eat sushi and brownies for lunch.

I'm pretty sure there's a huge amount of parent pressure about this. At least, I hope there is. Plus we have our state-mandated Wellness Committee looking into things. (federally mandated? pdf file) Changes are being made. But if it were up to me I'd take every bit of food-crap out of the place. No vending machines, no pastries, no potato chips — just get it all the hell out of there. EVERY diet book on the planet tells you NOT TO HAVE CRAP IN YOUR HOUSE. So I miraculously manage to purge most of the CRAP from my own house (except for the stuff squirrelled away in meat drawers and ovens, of course) while my school sets out a luscious array of junk before the kids and then tells them in their state-mandated Health Class to "eat healthy."

Thanks, guys!

Christopher is packing his lunch every day, and taking only enough money to buy one piece of junk food after school, nothing at lunch.

Then he doesn't go to the cafeteria at all during the lunch break. He eats his lunch outside, then runs around on the football field that our new principal seems to have been instrumental in getting opened up to the kids. (THANK YOU)

Of course, in keeping with our family motto, Ed went to the store and bought Christopher some microwaveable soup-in-a-cups on grounds that soup is filling.

Soup is filling, but microwaving a cup of soup means going into the cafeteria.

I feel besieged. (Did I mention I'm in a black mood?)

Cup-a-soup is staying home.


All of this is making me believe the guy Drudge linked to the other day, the climate change researcher who says civilization was not a step up.

Civilisation was a last resort - a means of organising society and food production and distribution, in the face of deteriorating environmental conditions.