The return of Mr. Bento...

I fell in love with Mr. Bento in 2007. I had unhealthy lunch habits and he inspired me to make healthier (and more attractive) decisions. I used Mr. Bento frequently and even joined Flickr groups for Bento lovers. After I left my job as managing editor for a magazine to work in politics (lunch was usually carrot salad and grilled chicken from the Chic-fil-A next to the campaign office, if I had time to eat) and later, worked from home, I got out of my Bento habit.


Tuscan white bean & tuna with cottage cheese, fruit, mixed greens.

Now that I have a regular schedule again (and have had one for almost four months), it was time to break out the Bento from storage (the cabinet above the fridge where no-one ever looks) and stop eating lunch like a 12-year-old. Yes, Lunchables are an affordable and easy way to control calorie intake, but turkey + cheese + crackers - any green vegetables EVER = an ass that doesn't fit into my skinny jeans. I have also gotten into the habit of shopping for produce at farmer's markets on the weekends and saving all of that healthy stuff for home eating just wasn't practical.


Spicy noodles, yogurt and fruit, granola, avocado.

So I'm cooking again. I made a Tuscan white bean tuna salad last weekend (and even soaked the beans overnight and cooked them myself). I made spicy whole wheat noodles yesterday. I have a list of Bento-friendly recipes to try. My goal is to Bento my lunch every day between now and the end of the year. Two days in, I already feel healthier. My ass expects to wear my skinny jeans around the end of next week. And I have lovely, lovely lunches that I'm not embarrassed to break out in front of coworkers. Proud of me!

Today I believe in happiness...

After a marvelous weekend that began with a Saturday morning trip to another farmer's market (there are many in Austin) as I kept my eye on the cloudy skies, hoping the weather wasn't being a tease again.

It wasn't. I spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the sound of rain outside, reading some new pages of a friend's book in progress, catching up on more "Doctor Who" (the first David Tennant season), napping and being a bit lazy. I steamed lovely tamales from the Farmer's Market for dinner (chicken mole and spinach/caramelized onion).


I happily spent Saturday evening watching television and drowsing off to the sound of rain on the roof. Sunday morning felt like Christmas morning, waking up before dawn to thunder, lightning and more (!) rain. For those of you outside of Texas, I am not usually obsessed with rain. I am currently obsessed with rain because we haven't had any significant rainfall in Austin since MARCH. March, people, and if you've never seen what a drought looks like I'll sum it up: depressing as shit. Brown lawns, brown leaves, brown trees, yards turned to dust and dirt, highways lined with brown grass. Oh, and there's the fires that happen spontaneously because everything turned to kindling over the dry summer.

On this wonderful Sunday morning there were puddles everywhere and it was raining so hard the puppy wouldn't go outside (but the front porch was just fiiine...). I trekked to Starbuck (happily in the rain), got my usual gigantic (trenta) iced coffee and settled in to work on some copy and line editing. The rain let up long enough for me to walk the dog and it was wonderfully cool and breezy. I wore a hoodie.

My point...if you're expecting me to lead you to one...I had several in-the-moment-I'm-happy-right-now pauses throughout the weekend. Just for the little things. Like tamales. And rain. And my dog's third birthday (my sweet Lulu went from this to this in such a short time!). I'm happy right now.

And now.

Now.

Today I get to be...

Another smart woman with diabetes.

My so-savvy friend Amy wrote the book on it: A Smart Woman's Guide to Diabetes: Authentic Advice on Everything from Eating to Dating and Motherhood and let me give some "As" for her "Qs" in this article on her web site.

Amy is a freelance writer and writes about lots of things for lots of places. I'm honored that she included me in her book and on her book web site. She's one of the people I relied upon for advice way back when I was diagnosed.

Time flies, which means I am old...

I can't shake a story I heard on NPR's "All Things Considered" last week by one of my favorite reporters, Robert Krulwich (his stories are always fascinating). It isn't the first time someone has asked the question, "Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older?" but it is one of the best explanations I've heard. Everything is new when you're young. When you're older, it isn't. There are a few other theories in the story, but the bottom line is that it's true. I left Charleston more than a month ago, I've been living and working in Austin for over a month - and that month has gone by like a DAY.

Sort of. There have been wonderful moments, wheeling a cart through a grocery store or eating lunch at a great Tex Mex place downtown (Guero's last week - yum), when it has occurred to me that I will not run into a single person I know. I don't have to be on guard all the time. I can turn the bitch alert off and not even worry about it. I'm not talking about the wonderful friends and family and other people I miss in Charleston. I'm talking about the "didn't you used to be Kelly Love Johnson" gossipy bitches, the "hey can I pick your brain over lunch" mooches, the "bless your heart, are you ill?" fake people (I've been asked that question when I went out without makeup in Charleston). There is an amazing freedom in being in a city where no-one knows you, where you can leave the house wearing tights, boots, a ripped Depeche Mode t-shirt, sunglasses, and hair like a rat's nest and no one will look at you twice. Or even once. There's no-one here to ask me why I'm no longer writing for/working for the magazine I used to work for. I can be whoever I want to be - who I really am, once I find out who that is.

But I've also been working, so time has flown by. I even began to wonder why my days seemed so short, why I was tired so early (only an hour time difference, folks), and even while writing this, wondering why I haven't been able to write a damn word in my own voice. Until now.

Last year was hard, for me and many people I know for a variety of reasons. The economy, layoffs, the unemployment rate in South Carolina. For me, 2009 will always be "the bad year" when I lost my SELF. I forgot who I was. I stopped believing in myself. I lost faith in humanity, in people I once cared about, and in me. I was my own worst enemy - and a dangerous one. I had to pick up and move to another city halfway across the country to get enough perspective to realize how bad things were. Mostly because I'm really good at pretending things are OK when they're not.

Last year, because it was full of "novelty" for me, so to speak - I've never experienced some of the emotions, the personal crises, and the joylessness that I felt then - made my days, weeks, and months feel like a fucking eternity. I was so focused on survival that I stopped having fun. Time did not fly in 2009.

But it is now. Which means I have perspective. It also means that I'm back. Oh, and I'm old.

Care and feeding of a writer...

When I was still working at my day job, I didn't have time to do a lot of home cooking. Most often, dinners consisted of takeout, Earthfare or Whole Foods deli, or delivery. Now that I'm working from home again, I have time to cook for myself. It's definitely healthier and (surprisingly) I'm better at it than I thought I would be. Even though I had to call a friend and ask how to cook fresh broccoli. I have Food Network on in the background on my office television for most of the day and have made a lot of the recipes (found a good one for broccoli with garlic and olive oil from Rachael Ray). I baked a chicken (OK, I did forget to take out the bag of ick stuffed inside until it was halfway done, but the chicken was still good). I made homemade pizza with wheat crust. I located my wok, which hasn't been used in about five years, and made stir fry. I've discovered that I actually like the chopping of the vegetables, the prepping of the food, and even shopping for the recipes.

It never occurred to me that my newfound experimentation with cooking would have an impact on others. And I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've probably ordered takeout from the same Chinese Food place (very healthy, no MSG, and they have brown rice) two or three times a week for the past five years. Yesterday, I discovered a menu from said restaurant under my door with the following hand-scrawled note:

"Just stopped by to see how you were. We haven't heard from you in a while and we miss you. Signed, Joe."

Joe was my regular delivery guy. We knew each other by name. In fact, when my friend Aleigh was visiting after I had surgery in January and we ordered Chinese food, she answered the door and Joe was very surprised to see her face instead of mine.

I might have to give them a ring one night this week and skip the home cooking, just because I miss Joe too. And I have yet been able to recreate their sesame buckwheat soba noodles on my own.

Drink your juice, Shelby...

Kris Carr, filmmaker and author of Crazy Sexy Cancer, and Dr. Mehmet Oz were on Oprah last year and they both talked about the "green drinks" they make every morning. Basically, they just throw anything green from the fridge into the juicer - cucumber, kale, celery, broccoli, etc. Dr. Oz's book, You on a Diet, has been my health bible since I started reading it in September.

Since I'm not a fan of most raw, green veggies (except avocado, baby greens, and spinach), I thought juicing might be a good way to get more green nutrients (right now I get them in pill form with a whole food multi vitamin. After a little research (mostly on Kris's blog, reading what her readers recommend), I bought a Breville juicer. I used it a LOT at first. I felt great, had a ton of energy, my blood sugar was stable, and my skin looked so good I got carded. Then, as with many of my "magic" solutions (exercise bands, belly dancing DVDs, raw food diet), my juice obsession gradually waned.

My first excuse was that juicing takes time. I can buy somewhat "fresh" unpasteurized juice, grab a bottle, and take it with me in two seconds. Juicing (even with a juicer that eats apples whole) is at least a 20-minute affair, including cleanup. My second is that I was throwing away produce. Unless I juiced twice a day for the amount of organic produce I bought, I ended up with bad fruit and vegetables. So even though store-bought juice is more expensive and not "alive," I've justified myself out of juicing for almost three months now.

As a result, I think I look tired and older than my RealAge. I definitely lack energy. And my super bad habit of skipping meals was screwing with my blood sugar enough to make me worry that I'm being a very bad diabetic.

This weekend, I decided to break my own curse and return to juicing. I bought a cart full of fruits and veggies, not a single processed item, and even if I have to juice three times a day I'm not going to throw anything out this week. This morning I had tomato, celery, parsley, spinach and watercress. Yesterday I had carrot/ginger/apple - twice. And now I'm searching through my favorite healthy web sites for more juice recipes. I have a pile of cucumbers, but haven't yet found the right cucumber-something combo. And cucumber by itself is OK, but not delish. Any ideas? I thought about cucumber-chocolate, but besides grossing me out I think that defeats the purpose.

Ouch.

It hurts to type.

I overworked my arms at the gym on Monday, felt fine yesterday, and woke up this morning cursing. It's mostly in the pectoral or lat something or other (I prefer the term "breasticles") area and my triceps (at least, I think that's what the flabby under-the-arm part is called). I couldn't raise my arms over my head to blow dry my hair this morning. On the plus side, I really enjoy the bench press and the pain is "good" pain. Yes, you should definitely want to kick my ass for saying that.

Last week, I did a cardio challenge class (okay, HALF a cardio challenge class) and I thought I was going to die during the class. Two words: Ball squats. Two more: Side lunges. But the real pain set in about 36 hours later. I had to use the handicapped stall in the bathroom because I needed something to hold onto when I sat down.

No pain, no gain, right? Actually, no pain, no loss. Riiiiight.

I love Drugstore.com and I love candy...

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with this picture?

I was highly amused that adding diabetic testing supplies and a new meter (little! pink! easy!) would garner candy as a "great last minute idea." Usually the suggested impulse buys on Drugstore.com are geared toward your current or past purchases. This one says "Diabetics love to eat candy. Buy some candy!"

Hey, Drugstore.com? You know I love you, but trust me, if I had any extra space on my empty carbs dance card it would be filled up with Jack Daniels or icy cold Belvidere. And you'd have to wrap that awful scarf around my cold, dead throat in order for me to wear it. I'm diabetic, not crazy.

Things that I am today...

Disturbed by dark movie hangover: I watched both The King and Reign Over Me in one day this weekend. Both were good enough to get a Netflix 5 stars from me, but The King was disturbing enough to keep me fixated on it for a while.

Irritated with new Blogger design tools and my other web site in general. I had to take the graphics down because Blogger keeps screwing with the code. I don't mean to be all "I hate change" about it, but the old Blogger code was so much easier.

Tired because I woke up at 1:30 am because I had a (giant, malovent, Palmetto) bug ON MY ARM. Flinging it off woke me up, but hunting it down and killing it and leaving its carcass in the hall for the others to see and fear because I CANNOT GO TO SLEEP IF A BUG IS IN MY ROOM invoked an adrenalin rush that kept me awake until almost 3:30am. Insomniacs loooove 3:30am.

Optimistic that I'll meet my health goals for the year. I feel positive about this for the first time in a long time. And I'm not just saying that so this doesn't turn into a Bitch List.

Fortunate. I feel this way most days. And most days I have to remind myself.

Prosperous. Just puttin' it out there.

AND excited because Kris Carr is going to be on Oprah today (with my Current Very Favorite Person, Dr. Mehmet Oz). Kris's book was the first to come out under the Skirt! Books imprint (mine is the last one in 2007) and I'll ride those publicity coattails quite happily. Besides that, she's just an amazing person and has touched a lot of lives with her film and book. Today. 4 o'clock. Be there or be square.

Learning to love canned salmon...

I'm working the Perricone Prescription this month, which means giving up the chicken, the red meat, and any form of processed food whatsoever. That's the easy part. The thing I worried most about was eating salmon five times a week. Not just any salmon - it has to be wild Alaskan. If you can find it fresh, it's uber expensive. Dr. P recommends canned and I found the brand he mentioned in his book at a local grocery for under $2 a can.
A. It's gross. You have to dump it into a bowl and pick out the skin and bones.
B. It looks and smells like cat food.
C. I was glad I had fresh lemons because I needed them to get the salmon reek off my hands after digging through the mess.
D. Eating it plain? Ew.

So last night I decided to try one of the healthy recipes: little bit of lowfat cream cheese, little bit of eggless mayo, horseradish, green onion, dash of Worchestershire. Mix it up, add crumbled up canned salmon. Spread on low carb whole grain wrap, add fresh blanched asparagus (asparagi?). Roll it up. Eat.

It was tasty and I must have done a pretty good job of bone removal, because the only crunch was from the green onion. I made a second wrap to bring for lunch today, thereby hitting my five times a week salmon goal. Yay, me!

Morning BS...

Blood sugar, I mean. Mine has been high in the morning in the past and I've been struggling with how to get it down. For a while, eating a little protein before bed worked. Exercise in early evening also seemed to help. But the numbers are creeping back up and that's not good. I'm a type 2 diabetic and have really good control over my blood glucose levels (not with insulin; with food), but lately it seems like diabetes has become my part-time job.

Last bloodwork, my BG and A1c were great, cholesterol slightly elevated (which is normal for me), but my triglycerides were sky high (up 300 + points from the test 3 months earlier). If anything, I've been exercising more and eating better. I tried a month of high fiber/no bad anything (ask me if I ever want to SEE brown rice again...), new test: 100 points up on triglycerides.

I'm currently reading Dr. Oz's YOU: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger and it has a lot of good info about cholesterol and preventing heart disease, but not much about how triglycerides can be reduced (only that they're an indicator of heart problems...anything over 150 is high and mine are in the 700s). Also that worrying about it is going to make it worse. The only way I know how to get anything done is to worry about it. I can run two minute sprints at 5.8 and have my heart rate down to 140 immediately after. People with heart disease can't do that, can they?

Where am I going with this? More treadmill, more bicycling, more fiber, more raw foods. Less worrying, lowfat dairy products, and red meat. Reading Dr. Oz's other book, You: On a Diet. Quit the bitching. Watching more Discovery Health (I know, I am a fan of the man they call "Oz"...love his new show The Truth About Food) and less TBS (hard not to get pulled in by those Family Guy marathons though).

Besides, shouldn't everyone's health be like a second job?

Cravings...

I once read somewhere that cravings are the body's signal that it is missing something - like craving citrus fruit means that your body needs vitamin C, craving milk or cheese means you need calcium, and so on.
Lately I've been craving red meat - the redder, the better - and since I'm trying to keep my red meat consumption to a minimum, my freezer is full of meat substitutes: MorningStar Farms Corn Dogs, soy dogs, edamame , and veggie burgers. But yesterday evening, one of my neighbors was cooking dinner on the grill and I could smell it even inside the house with the windows shut. I didn't feel like cooking, so I called Hot Mustard for delivery. Even though the charbroiled meat smell wafting through the house wanted me to order the ribs, I ended up with light, healthy sushi and edamame. That I pretended was a juicy burger and fries.

Today I crave my Nana's meat pie (sort of like a British "pasty"), Steak-Ums (even though I haven't had one of those since the 80s), and fried Spam. I will be having none of it, but on the plus side, I have taken 3.25 years off of my "RealAge."

Why don't I ever crave lettuce? Or carrots? Or green grapes?

Finally making use of the Bento...

I've mentioned Mr. Bento before, and I bought him in April, but it's taken me this long to work up the energy to put him to work. After seeing myself in recent wedding photos (see previous post), I decided it was time to make grocery shopping for healthy food and actually cooking it part of my regular weekend routine so I can bring lunches to work that include more than packaged cheese sticks, sliced turkey, canned soup, or Kashi bars (because I am apparently one of those few people who can gain weight on eating 1500 calories a day). The secret for me is eating more calories at regular intervals, which usually means six small meals a day. And bento dining is perfect for that.


This is today's Mr. Bento lunch: Salmon with dill and lemon, black-eyed pea and corn salad (also known as "Texas Caviar"), and berries with cottage cheese. I made everything myself - none of it is from the Earthfare deli (though I'm not above cheating with that from time to time). And since Mr. Bento keeps food cold (or hot) for six hours, I didn't even have to try and squeeze him into the tiny fridge at work. The salmon and half the Texas Caviar was lunch; the other half and berries I saved for a late afternoon meal.

Now I can join the Mr. Bento Flickr pool, instead of perusing the photos when I'm hungry and wishing I was the kind of person who makes a healthy, tasty home-cooked lunch every day. Because now I am.