Ensam är stark. “Alone is strong.”
–Swedish Proverb
Forgive the long silence. I cracked my head on a wall last week and writing has been difficult till now.
My favorite Swedish proverb is actually Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” However there’s no doubt that the Swedes are standing alone just now; they are certainly also standing strong.
Because I have been overweight for over 30 years I have heard and (mostly) read thousands of people in slimming magazines, on problem pages and in person talk about food addictions and cravings and bingeing. And in all those anecdotes, I have never heard of anyone bingeing on meat, fish, eggs or green veggies.
The person quoted above was responding to this poor woman:
I have always been the type to “polish off the whole box”. I have tried every strategy, dieting, not dieting, trying to distract myself… but I am a like a child, if there is cereal, bread, chocolate or cakes in the house I demolish them…If I’m honest, i can just polish off a whole packet of wheatgerm crackers
“Curviest” went on to suggest that the problem was carb addiction, not a lack of self control in general, and told them she’d seen these cravings disappear in 24 hours by having someone eat nothing but meat and fat for a whole day.
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.
― Larry Lorenzoni
It’s been a little silent because on Monday I got a concussion. This was unfortunate, as I’m entering “birthday week,” that time of year that exists in nearly every school, office or family, in which a disproportionate number of birthdays fall in a short amount of time.
You may be wondering how I got the concussion, and I can tell you that it was something thrilling and exciting and memorable, which will definitely be a scene in the made-for-TV movie they make about me, where I bent over to get an extension cord and forgot there was a corner of concrete-over-rebar wall right behind the curtain.
No real gentleman weighs more than 300 pounds.
–William Howard Taft
It’s been all over the news the last few days: William Howard Taft, our 27th president and later supreme court justice, struggled with his weight just like you and me, the lowly peons, do.
Chocolate says “I’m sorry” so much better than words.
–Rachel Vincent
Well friends, it has been a while. I don’t have any chocolate, either. But if you’ve been reading then you know that I’ve been on the road. I touched down from Asia on July 3. Since then I’ve been in Washington, Montana, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Germany and Greece. After Greece I didn’t have my iPad’s keyboard for a while, and I’m not one for typing on screens.
Andere Länder, andere Sitten.
–German Proverb
So today I was in Germany for a while. I had a ten hour layover in Frankfurt and I took off into the city on the regional trains to spend three hours hiking about Worms. Running about it, actually.
If it’s getting hard to keep track of where I am, I’m sorry. A friend gave me this trip as a gift, to go see family posted abroad for work. I haven’t seen them in years, so that’s the background to this little story.
I got off the plane after a miserable flight (note: Lufthansa seems to have the smallest seats of any airline ever, and that is saying a lot. I’ve flown all over Asia 145 pounds heavier than I am now and I was never so cramped as I was on this trup.) I wanted some food when I got off, and the first thing I found was a little restaurant in the airport advertising breakfast. More than half the breakfast choices were very heavy in fat and protein with only some token carbohydrates to go with them.
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
–Thomas Sowell
A little insanity is good early in the morning. It keeps you young. It revives your zest for life. When I was staying with Brother 4 a few weeks ago, their 1-year-old provided that for me in the form of various games such as “Crazy Head.”
Now that I’m away from their place, I am forced to search for insanity in the news. Thankfully, it’s not hard to find. I was assaulted by an insane article a little bit ago in Time. The gist of the article is a common one:
Vegetables are interesting, but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
–Fran Lebowitz
I spent some time this week with The Vegetarian. I just met her, but I think she’s due her own capitalized title. A lovely person and not at all evangelistic about her food choices. Credit where credit is due, after all. She doesn’t do it because of any religious or ethical scruples, but because she believes it to be the best way to avoid cancer. But when you’re eating butter, oil, and steaks, and she’s eating chips and salads, one of you is bound to notice something. We didn’t argue or even really discuss, but we did briefly explain our opposing views.
She got where she is by reading, if I recall the title correctly, The Food Revolution. In another post we’ll take a look at that book, but for now let’s go paradoxing, shall we? It’s a little like parasailing, only not at all.
I would like to promise it’ll be fun, but as I’m now in a plane at 38,000 feet crossing the entire United States–and we are currently over North Dakota–I’m afraid we’re shockingly short on fun. And room. And food. Thank goodness I don’t need to eat every two hours, because I don’t have $17 to shell out for a tiny box of “food.”
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.
― Garrison Keillor
Last week the Roommate’s colleague rescued some kittens out of the trash. The poor little things were so tiny that anyone could see they were way too small to be taken from their mother. The lady had heard them crying in the dumpster.
She pulled the pathetic things out of the garbage. The garbage was behind the local restaurant…which didn’t bode well for Mother, I should say.
I don’t want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.
–Doug Copeland
I’m going to say some things about vegetables now. It might hurt their feelings, but I’m not going to say it to their faces. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t repeat it to your asparagus, either. Hang on, here we go:
Ask Me How It Happened 