Life is Healthy

There's a young woman who went ahead with a gastric bypass operation seven weeks ago. She is also one of the best writers I've encountered anywhere online.

She has been blogging about her weight loss struggles for over two years.

She made the decision to go ahead with weight loss surgery after much thought. And before she went through with it she had horrible second thoughts. But she went ahead with the operation on November 7th. A few days later she told us how painful it was. However, since November 20th she has not posted at all. Her blog seems to be abandoned and a lot of her readers (including myself) are very worried about her.

Her site is at Hello, I am Fat.

Update January 19th: Relief and good news. She's back and just posted on her blog again. She's lost a lot of weight already, still having a very hard time post-surgery but appears to be recovering and feeling better each day.

I made a strange New Year's resolution this year. Of course I want to lose weight, but that is a daily mind struggle; I know what I need to do. So I didn't make any specific New Year's resolutions around that this year.

Lately I've been having apocalyptic thoughts about the future of the earth. I really think that due to global warming we may be in danger of living in an almost unbearable environment very soon.

So I need to start making a conscientious effort to reduce my personal impact on the overall deterioration of the Earth's environment.

I want to use our car as little as possible. I want to try walking instead for many of the trips I would normally consider jumping into the car. For longer trips and some family outings, I am going to suggest to my husband that we take the bus for some of these. Although we do very few of them as it is, I'm also going to be less keen to do these longer car outings this year.

I will try to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits. I'll focus more on buying local and organic produce that doesn't require long-distance freight, freezer facilities and lots of processing, chemicals and packaging.

I want to consume as little plastic as possible this year. I don't usually give much thought to the plastic bags I collect in my regular shopping rounds. I use the grocery plastic bags for my garbage bags, and with a toddler in diapers, I find I'm filling up about two plastic bags of garbage per day but it would be a small but significant step if I declined bags for all my small purchases. For example, I went to buy some makeup the other day and the cashier went to put it in a small plastic bag and I just said I didn't need it and put it in my pocket instead. It's such a small step but over the course of the year it must make a bit of an impact.

I want to cut down on plastic in other ways. I want to forego more of the take-out variety of foods that are served in plastic or plasticky containers. I eat very little take-out food as is, but I want to cut this down to almost zero. I do tend to buy take-out coffee in paper cups with plastic lids quite often. I want to cut that down significantly.

I will also try to use up less of the clear plastic bags that I buy my fruits and vegetables in. They should be reused and I will try doing that.

I'm feeling in the mood to reduce my consumption in general.

I've been buying most of my clothes in second hand shops for many years now. In the city where I live we are lucky to have an incredible selection with designer labels galore. There's no need to buy the clothes new, especially as I am forever hopeful I'll be reducing my size a couple of times this year.

As far as my child is concerned, I want to focus on buying only used toys for this year. He's too young to know the difference anyway and by the time he's older maybe he will agree with my sentiment. His third birthday will be in a couple of weeks. We want to get him a nice tricycle. Our city has some great used sporting goods places. There is no need to get him a brand-new one. Am I weird or what? I actually feel almost repulsed when I walk into a place such as Toys 'R Us and see all the plastic and all the chemical goop that is being sold by the ton every day.

I think that if I follow through on most of these ideas (especially the walking bit!) I will lose weight as a side bonus to helping keep the earth's environment habitable for a few more years.

I'd love to hear other ideas people have in this regard.

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas at my girlfriend’s parents’. Poker. There are just three of us left in:
– My girlfriend’s “Monday night is cards night” cousin,
– Me, who, whilst I wouldn’t describe myself as a card sharp, did once play poker every lunchtime for a year, and I reckon that my knowledge of probabilities will help me (eg I know, understand and can explain how many people you’d need in a room for it to be more likely than not that two of them share a birthday – go on, have a guess),
– My girlfriend’s mum.

They say that if you want to know what your girlfriend will be like in 30 years to look at her mother. Well, I’m sitting back with my feet up and my slippers on. My girlfriend's mum is absolutely lovely, and spends most of her spare time enjoying cooking wonderful food. She doesn’t seem to have any other hobby in life (except perhaps finding ever more inventive excuses for accidentally touching my bottom). She does not, as far as I am aware, frequent casinos or gambling websites. When she deals there’s an even chance that we won’t all have the same number of cards, or someone will be trying to get a pair for the Rules of Bridge card. Her attempt at a riffle shuffle nearly blinded half the table. She is either very, very bad at cards or very, very good at bluffing.

The three of us have been locked into the final rounds for over an hour, and she has just asked if she gets anything for all her cards being the same colour. Other choice lines from her this evening have been “What’s a flush again?” (more rounds than not) and “Two pairs? Oh, well done. I only had three nines.”

Do you really need me to tell you who won? I just hope that her daughter’s inherited this skill as well. That way as well as being well-cooked for for life I’ll be very, very rich. And, er, have my bottom touched a lot.

Collusion and deception have been common practice regarding water resources for centuries. Hopefully, this will atone for the damage caused to Owens Valley.


A Century Later, Los Angeles Atones For Water Sins

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: January 1, 2007

INDEPENDENCE, Calif. — It may fall short of a feel-good sequel to “Chinatown,” the movie based on the notorious, somewhat shady water grab by Los Angeles that allowed the city to bloom from a semi-arid desert.
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Mike Prather, an environmental advocate, walked a dry part of Owens Lake, which emptied when the Owens River was diverted to Los Angeles.
J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times


As part of a project to restore water to the Owens Valley, a dam redirects water going to Los Angeles, causing it to flow into the Owens River.

But in one of the largest river restoration efforts in the West, water is again flowing along a 62-mile stretch of the Owens River after a dry spell of nearly a century.

That part of the river had been left mostly drained when upstream water, fed by snowmelt from the towering Sierra Nevada, was channeled 233 miles south to fill swimming pools and bathtubs throughout Los Angeles.

The restored flow is among several long-awaited steps the city is taking to help make amends for the environmental consequences of its water maneuvering, most notably the drying up of Owens Lake, an area more than three times the size of Manhattan, here in the Owens Valley.
Los Angeles agreed in December to expand efforts to control toxic dust storms that erupt from what is left of the lake, a 110-square-mile body that emptied when the river was diverted to Los Angeles through an aqueduct opened in 1913.

The lake’s salty, mineral-laced basin has been the largest single source of particulate pollution in the country. It looks so otherworldly that it doubled as a desolate planet in the movie “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”

To restore the river, Los Angeles built automated gates at the point where the river veers into the aqueduct. The gates steer some water into the original riverbed, setting the stage for the growth of cottonwood trees and other plants and the return of waterfowl and other animals.
Much of the water eventually returns to the aqueduct, though some of it is being used for lake irrigation and other projects.

Environmentalists here say they are keeping an eye on Los Angeles for backsliding, but they acknowledge that the new efforts will make a significant difference.

More at the link.
~~~~~~~~~
More resources:

The Owens Valley Land Grab

Images of Owens Valley
You must look at these images to see the full extent of the damage done to this region.

Hi, I'm Dade Freeman, that's me, well part of me anyway. I'm just an average guy with big dreams and little hope.

The purpose of this blog is to keep you informed of how my life is going and also as a kind of diary for me too.
I'm a nomadic creature with no place to call home, although currently Spain is where I'm at, although lived most of my life in the UK (all around).
Having a short attention span means I need a lot of things to keep me occupied, the net does a great job of that. When I'm not at my wonderful Macbook pro you may find me with my Canon 450d.
I have recently took up photography (hopefully as a serious venture) which I am enjoying immensely although tough learning curve involved.

Anyway this blog will feature what I do on a daily, weekly and sometimes hourly basis. It highlights things that amuse me and is simply the ramblings of an ageing man on the world as I see it!

Hope you like it ;)

My Social Networks

My father-in-law was visiting us over the holidays and he commented on how I wear too much black. He said I would look younger and slimmer if I only wore some lighter colored clothes.

Well I thanked him for his fashion guru advice and told him he's the first person I've heard say that a woman looks slimmer in white or light colors. I think almost every woman knows that black makes you look a bit slimmer.

This reminds me that I saw a photo of Catherine Zeta Jones in a black outfit from about a month ago and I was going to post about how she seems to have lost a lot of weight over the past months. This was before I saw photos of her two weeks later (from an event on December 14th) where she is wearing the red dress. It's amazing how she can look so different weight-wise in a matter of just two weeks.

People Magazine is hitting the newsstands tomorrow with their annual "Half their Size" weight loss issue. Check it out when you do your grocery shopping over the next week. They always have some very inspirational stories of people who've lost over a hundred pounds.

This year they feature Mary Smith, who went from size 28 to a size 4 with low-carb eating, Janene Campbell who lost 207 pounds in two years with the help of LA Weight Loss and Tiana Silva who lost 150 pounds by walking, cardio kick-boxing and lifting weights.

They also interview Mia Tyler who's happy to be a plus-size model and says that if you feel healthy, some extra pounds shouldn't get in the way of your happiness.

I wasn't able to find a photo of the upcoming issue but above is their cover for last year, featuring success stories by Cathi Lee and Angela Hefel amongst many others.