Emphatically ~~ GONE !
When I decided to lose weight the tape measure was not my friend ~ the tape measure did not fit around my waist. I hated it. And, I hated my waist. I wanted the weight gone.
I discovered that when I moved the tape up, just under my breasts, it fit. So I pretended that was my waist and ordered a dress based on the measurement. Surprise! Surprise! The dress didn’t fit and I wanted the weight gone even more than before.
Two months later with three minutes exercise a day and no dieting ~ I got into the dress. After a year of a little exercise and a lot of envisioning myself in shape I’d lost 80 pounds and almost a dozen inches. Goodbye Flab !!!
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” Gandhi
“By Envisioning Myself in Shape and other easy things ~ I lost 11 inches around my waist! Almost an inch a month!” Karen Kline, August 2007
5/10/2006 ~ It’s dawned on me that I need pictures of women in pretty clothes to help me imagine being like them ~ no longer fat. I need encouraging quotes to help me believe I can look different ~ because the mirror’s been telling me, “It’s hopeless.”
Originally this page was narrative about how I focused on “weight gone” using pictures from catalogs interspersed with quotes. Thing was, I didn’t keep changing the pictures. Now I have a site devoted to Looking Good ~ Check it out ~ But somehow it’s actually devoted to Foreclosure Awareness rather than fashion.
How much exercise?
6/18/06 ~ I don’t know if you’ve ever measured how much exercise it takes to lose weight ~ but, I have. Sort of.
Some months ago I was determined to lose weight. For breakfast/lunch I had three saltines with a single slice of cheese divided among them. I ate half the entree Kitchen Angels brings because I had tetanus. No soup or bread, and I froze the dessert.
After two weeks I’d lost 1 pound. And each day I’d been starving ~ I needed to lose 100 pounds. This starving thing did not seem like the way.
Then, I got depressed and ate all the frozen desserts in two days. You know what, I didn’t gain any weight.
That made me wonder: Why did I lose so little when I ate so little, then not gain when I ate weeks of desserts in two days?
I decided the reason I lost so little was that I’m in bed all the time. Zero exercise. Tetanus is tricky ~ if I do a bit too much my muscles tighten, bending me over.
It seemed my only hope was walking in my garden, gradually increasing the distance.
I was up to four times around my garden, when my beautiful condo was taken and stress caused sudden pain and falling. I stopped walking. But my clothes are still loose and I’m spending time, again, looking at clothes and imagining myself in them with more weight gone.
“Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion.” Dorthea Brande, 1893-1948
“When we create something, we always create it first in a thought form. If we are basically positive in attitude, expecting and envisioning pleasure, satisfaction and happiness, we will attract and create people, situations, and events which conform to our positive expectations.” Shakti Gawain-
Celebratory shopping
1/31/2016 ~ I’ve been buying from Roaman’s: they carry things with the “look” I like. Despite being old I’m still partial to the romantic, somewhat peasant look. I love my denim skirt because it goes with so many tops. It’s well made, as is everything I’ve ordered to date. Their sizing seems to run a little large.
Weight Gone thanks to Brown Rice
6/30/06 ~ In the 60s when I had recently moved to Santa Fe with friends from Stevens Point, Wisconsin ~ Yes, I’m a pretty old lady ~ certainly old, maybe not that pretty ~ one of our friends was a commercial artist who wanted to be a genuine, starving artist, only he was heavy-set. His name was Richard. Maybe his last name will come to me. Anyway, he introduced us to the brown rice diet: you could eat all the brown rice you wanted, with anything on it that you wanted, like brown sugar or white sugar or honey, if you were looking for something sweet.
Well, low and behold, we all lost weight. We decided brown rice was so boring that we gradually ate less and less. Almost magically we found the weight gone.
A different take on brown rice
I have a different take on it now. Here’s why: in 2003, just as the privy pit began to undermine so much in my life, Miria L’auroel wrote to say thanks for the B12 information on my site. She said her fingernails had ridges and that B12 was making a difference. She said she had been a chemist, but had gotten sick and decided to devote her life to what she loves, her music, and in fact her Good Night Mister Moon is on iTunes and Amazon now.
In any case, she warned me that hydrogen sulfide from the privy pit is dangerous to health. She also said to look into the Eat Right for Your Blood Type diet by Dr. d’Adamo, and gave me the link for its food database. The food database has changed, significantly. There’s less text per food item, but overall the information remains highly valuable.
I didn’t know my blood type, so I found foods in the database that were “beneficial for all”, or “neutral for all”, and I ate those things. One was brown rice.
At the same time I read that brown rice was good if you had pernicious anemia. My mother had pernicious anemia and if I had not found out about my low vitamin B12 level I believe I would have developed it. Vitamin B12 research shows that pernicious anemia results from low vitamin B12 levels ~ that once someone’s B12 has been low for a long time, less and less intrinsic factor is produced. You need Intrinsic factor to get vitamin B12 from your stomach into your small intestines where it can be absorbed.
Okay, so after ten days of consistently eating brown rice, I lost several pounds. But, more significantly, my gastrointestinal system regulated in a way that it had not done in at least ten years. I was amazed.
Then in 2004 I got tetanus and Kitchen Angels was going to bring me food every weekday. I thought it would be easier if I took what they offered, rather than saying I needed brown rice ~ They bring totally amazing food. I am so grateful.
Once I could be up long enough to peel an onion and cut it into a cooking pot, I made brown rice for lunch (I like the short grain sticky brown rice) with chicken. I can eat all the brown rice I want when I need something to offset stress, like when they foreclosed and auctioned my condo without notice to me. I can eat bowls and bowls of brown rice to “sponge” some of the stress out of my system and I don’t gain any weight. My consistently loosening clothes are like lyrics to some Weight Gone song.
“Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.” L. Frank Baum
Letter re Brown Rice
6/30/06 ~ Continued ~ Bobbette, who helps me through a state agency because of how debilitating tetanus is, said it sounded so boring to eat brown rice all the time. I can see how it might sound that way, but this is what I emailed her:
I’ve been thinking about how brown rice never bores me.
I was thinking about when I worked at the Lamplighter, I was never bored by donuts. I used to get so depressed, and I would eat half a dozen.
That was before I was having enough B12 not to be depressed.
When I make chicken and brown rice, I put lots of black pepper on the chicken and a bit of salt. I sprinkle on quite a bit of sage then throw in a few kubabas ~ that’s Polish for whole allspice. Oh, and I started out with olive oil and a couple of cut up yellow onions. Yellow onions reduce the incidence of skin cancer. They are very good for us. Then I add water. When it’s boiling I throw in a mug of short grain brown rice. It smells so good when it’s cooking. It is never boring. It is sooooo good.
But right now I’ve been adding ginger because ginger helps ward off depression; I need to do everything I can not to sink under recent events. The most upsetting thing is that the court refused to acknowledge the case law I cited, which should have been controlling. So, I need to give it to the Angel of Divine Love. Otherwise it is too depressing and actually disorienting to find out you can’t trust the court, that there is no rule of law.
Okay, so I’ve been using ginger and pepper, a bit of salt and sometimes curry powder on the chicken. (Michelle buys me the boneless, skinless breasts and I’ve been having at least one huge one a day.) I feel as if I need the protein, as if my body is really craving the protein.
It’s strange because I ate so much rice with the chicken right after those first hearings. But now I seem to want the chicken more, and I’m not as hungry as I used to be.
Okay, so you could use a lot of different spices. Think of how good brown rice would be with green chili. Yum. Or, you could put in squash and onions and ~ that would be really good with brown rice in it. But get the sticky kind, because it’s more, I don’t know, more like mashed potatoes or dumplings or, even sort of like the tortillas in our breakfast burritos. Mushy. It’s really different than the white rice that is so … stand alone proper. I hate how it doesn’t stick together. Sticky brown rice sticks together.
Dress Shopping ~ Not Snacking
7/1/06 ~Last night I looked at a couple hundred dresses and had no snacks whatsoever. I didn’t even think about snacks.
7/13/06 ~ I forgot to mention something that illustrates an important point: On Saturday I burned my brown rice into a charcoal lump stuck to the bottom of my pot. Remembering acid’s spectacular ability to clean pots, I boiled expired spaghetti sauce in my pot. (The sauce was Hunt’s and reminded me of Rob Hunt, director of the condo association, who wanted to get my condo for cheap… and low and behold, I’m told it’s his real estate agent who bought my condo at the foreclosure sale I had no idea about. I remember talking to Rob Hunt shortly after 9/11; he was saying he’d been flying and was stranded in a few places, but luckily he had a home in each.)
Okay, so while the tomatoes were boiling, it smelled so good I thought about spaghetti. But there’s a huge difference between spaghetti and brown rice. For instance, after I’d sadly burned my brown rice, I still had enough to eat with fresh cherry tomatoes from my garden. I had two small heaps and I felt satisfied after I ate it. So when I stopped eating it was because I felt satisfied, not because I was trying to lose weight.
During my poverty days after the privy pit I used to eat HUGE bowls of Ramen Noodles, at a total cost of twenty-seven cents. I’d feel full, in the sense of my stomach feeling jam packed, but I wouldn’t feel satisfied. I’ve tried taking vitamins when I eat cheap food, to produce a satisfied feeling. It helps a little, but not enough.
Similarly, GMO food is lacking in nutrient content and can leave you feeling hungry.
What makes brown rice so great is that it’s satisfying. It makes my body feel as if it has what it needs. Plus, I think brown rice scours the gastrointestinal system because after two weeks of eating brown rice there’s a fresh feeling. I like the fresh feeling, and Iike the weight gone.
“Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.” James Allen.
2/3/2016 ~ I was surprised how refreshing it was to look at necklaces made in different parts of the world from gems, glass, wood, etc. I spent 3 days looking at all the necklaces at Novica and finally chose this one. I’ve now received it, and it’s very happy making.
Pain played a role in my weight gain
7/15/06 ~ I started taking serrapeptase last night. I was told about it last Sunday, and my order arrived yesterday. It’s supposed to reduce pain, swelling, and the plaque that clogs arteries. My friend Maggie sent me an email about it after reading one of my pages. So, I ordered some. I’m hopeful. Pain has played an enormous role in my weight gain and I think that’s a common problem when moving makes pain worse. We’ll see.
7/17/06 ~ About the serrapeptase ~ Yesterday my left leg felt like it used to when my B12 was very low – sort of extremely tingly ~~ not in a good way ~~ sort of a pre-frostbite kind of feeling. I’d had a B12 shot in the morning so it wasn’t from low B12. Still, I took the full dose of three serrapeptase. Today I didn’t have the feeling and it seemed as if the varicose veins by my left ankle were smaller. I took photos.
12/26/06 ~ I’ve been taking Serrapeptase before I go to sleep at night and in the morning when I wake up, before it’s time to get up. There was a week of intense pain in my thoracic diaphragm, which has tended to bode ill. That pain has been so bad in the past that I can’t make it beyond the edge of my deck. Now, when I don’t want to take Ibuprofen because the Periodontist said it weakens my jaw bone where old dental implants are causing an infection, I take Serrapeptase, and it helps. It’s not like an aspirin that makes pain go away, but it for sure dulls the pain. I’m sure that by not taking Ibuprofen anymore I’m helping my liver. (I’m also taking Milk Thistle, because I’m sure my liver has been over worked.)
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” Mark Twain
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau
Why I’m fat… ?
7/7/07 ~ There’s one big thing that I haven’t talked about. It falls in the “Why I’m Fat” category. Obviously, since I’ve already talked about exercise, it’s not lack of exercise making me fat ~ Well, it is, or was, but there’s more to it than that and not eating brown rice.
Basically, I’ve had a weight problem since I was eleven. I had my appendix out, I gained weight and it never left. Though, up until now I was more, “too tall” than “too fat.”
Okay, so, my mother was always angry at me. I don’t remember her ever hugging me. She blamed me for her marriage breaking up, saying that I had come too early. I wished she’d had an abortion if she didn’t want me, but it was too late for that so it was meaningless to even think about it.
In college I went out every night so that I would avoid her. I drank water most of the time, so it wasn’t a drinking problem. In the morning I didn’t get up until after she’d left for work.
But still, it was constant stress.
When I had a chance to orient the freshmen at university I applied immediately because I would live in a dorm. (My grandparents lived almost across the street from Old Main, and mom and my brother lived several blocks further away.) I don’t remember getting paid, but accommodation and meals were free. What I remember is losing weight and thinking it was because I wasn’t worrying so much.
“It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.” Sören Kierkegaard
“Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein.
2/3/2016 ~ There were almost two thousand necklaces to look at, and I looked at each. It felt like meditating, to fill my mind with images of gems and glass, silver, wood, and even plastic strung together by artists all over the world. I felt the way I used to feel when I could walk in the woods, up on the mountain, or on a beach. I felt connected. So, I ordered these beads from Ghana. They’ve arrived and are lovely.
Feeling Good helps me lose weight
7/07/2007 ~ Continued ~ The next telling thing came a decade later when a London truant officer invited me to a party ~ My son and I were living in a derelict building ~ I wasn’t getting him to school on time.
People from Iran and all over the world were at the party. It was at the time of the Iran hostages so finding the Iranians to be so nice made an indelible impression. It was such a warm, friendly event.
The next day plaque, called “tartar” back then, kept coming loose from my teeth. Dentists had always told me I had an unusually large amount and I’d never before had it drop off on its own. I thought I must have eaten a lot more garlic dip than I ever had before, and it dissolved the plaque.
Years later I was back in Santa Fe and I had to go to court. I’d gone before and had felt so intimidated that I was tongue tied and lost.
Worried that I’d lose again, I asked people who knew and liked me to come, and many made time and did: The feeling of all those people in court with me was amazing, and, I won.
The next day plaque fell off my teeth in chunks.
Those are the only times that plaque spontaneously fell off. But, once I began having B12 replacement therapy plaque stopped building up and I needed a fraction as many cleanings.
So, it looks as if stress causes our bodies to make plaque that can be unmade by warm, supportive friends, love and B12 ~
(A friend with Parkinson’s Disease told me that Parkinson’s involves a build-up of plaque in the brain.)
Here’s what I think: I’m losing weight more easily because B12 replacement makes me feel good the way I did in university when I was able to live away from home and my mother’s constant anger at me. I think that speeds up my metabolism. Not only that, my skin is pretty firm. By that I mean that I’ve lost several inches and my skin gets quite wrinkly, but then it gets firm again. So I think it’s the B12 ~ Methylcobalamin is the most effective.
Also, the B12 is making my cellulite far less noticeable (or, maybe it’s the serrapeptase) I’m inclined to think it’s the B12 because in London I was major thin at one point and I had horrid cellulite. I remember wondering how I could be the thinnest I’d ever been in my life yet still have cellulite pitting my thighs. It just didn’t seem fair.
At the time things were dire. (I had no idea there were going to be decades of dire.) My gums used to bleed, my periods would be so heavy I couldn’t go out. When the bleeding stopped and I went to visit friends, they would comment on how pale I was.
I was younger then, so I think my body was better able to cope, whereas by 1997 the stress was too much for my body which was no longer as resilient and I got permanent nerve damage.
The long and short of it is that I am slimming ~ That’s what they used to say in London; they would never say they were “dieting” rather, they would say they were “slimming.” I just loved it! I know I am slimming because the dress I ordered that was too small, was so small in fact that it was hard to get out of, and I feared I was stuck, well, now it is so loose I can grab a handful of fabric, which gives me a nice feeling.
I wanted the weight gone and now that so much of it is, I smile more.
“I learned the most important lesson of my life: that the extraordinary is not the birthright of a chosen and privileged few, but of all people, even the humblest. That is my one certainty: we are all the manifestation of the divinity of God.” Paulo Coelho
Over 50 pounds haven’t come back
10/19/2008 ~ I’ve lost over 50 pounds that haven’t come back and lots of inches and I’m healthier.
But.. .Sigh! My skin looked so good. Then stress levels rose and it looked like crepe paper. So discouraging. But it’s getting better. Today I ordered a blazer and skirt from Ulla Popken that I’ve wanted for a year. In measuring myself I found I’m not as slim as I wanted to be by now. At the doctor’s last week I learned my weight, 226. That’s more than 50 pounds lighter than when I began. But it’s been three years. I thought I’d be to my ideal weight by now, but stress has interfered. Stress makes an intense pain strike my hip and I lose my balance. Once that happens I’m afraid to walk. 5 minutes of walking is so little, but if I fell and broke a bone it would make things so difficult. With stress I gain back part of what I lose.
Update ~ 80 pounds haven’t come back
10/12/2013 ~ I’ve now lost over 80 pounds, in total, that haven’t come back. I’m MUCH healthier, and happier. It’s just so happy making to have the weight gone.
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Serrapeptase is excellent in treating cellulite, stretch marks and varicose veins!