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Posts Tagged ‘Oprah’

The Diet Diatribe

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 19, 2023| 3 Comments »

I just had my annual physical with Dr M, an internist/palliative care doctor I love. She sits and faces me, not the computer, she talks about life in general and listens to me, she asks questions about my health and the family (spoiler – she’s a friend of the Bride and Groom). My doctor looks in my ears, listens to my heart and figures out what immunizations I need, like the pneumonia vaccine. Ouch, that hurts going in! Then just before giving me a clean bill of health, right as I was about to hop off the table, she looked at the weight her nurse had noted in my chart that day.

In fact, she flipped all the way back to 2016 and spoke aloud my weight each year…

It wasn’t an actual surprise and I should have seen it coming. After all, I rarely get on a scale and the past 18 months has seen my mobility greatly compromised by my bone density. In other words, I knew I needed to work on building up my strength and endurance, on walking more and starting to lift small weights again. And I’d just gone through my closet for the winter, unearthing sweaters that did feel a bit snug. Subconsciously I knew it was time to move more and eat less. Still, having my doctor point out the obvious facts in such a kind, non-judgmental way was edifying.

I need to lose weight! My AHA moment had arrived. No more blaming the incremental, ballooning pounds on a Mr T presidency, a Pandemic, and my osteoporosis. It’s time to try to pull up those big girl pants and get down to business. Dr M suggested smaller portions while also telling me not to worry about it until after the holidays. Sure, right at the bell of a New Year I could join the throngs of people starting their weight loss journey like salmon swimming upstream. Until then, don’t worry about it.

Well if you know me, telling me NOT to worry about something is a perfect way to keep me worrying, especially since I hadn’t been worrying about my weight so much to begin with. I was just avoiding scales! Call me a humbug, but I’m not starting a food journal, never did and never will. I’m not paying someone else to keep me on track, like Weight Watchers (WW) or Noom. And I told Dr M that I absolutely won’t take Ozempic, and she immediately agreed with me… even if Oprah has decided to jump onboard the diabetes drug weight loss train.

I’ve watched Oprah pull a wagon of fat across the stage in her heyday. Oprah is the Phil Donahue to my generation of women; the second wave of feminists who threw out pantyhose and girdles but decided to try and emulate Twiggy anyway. The big O is still on WW’s Board and stands to make millions more by endorsing an easy fix – the shot that costs hundreds of dollars and promises to curb your appetite. It’s like our whole country has just given up, willpower and lifestyle be damned. And Oprah has given us her blessing to shoot up (It’s not a magic pill, it’s a once-weekly injection for Type 2 diabetes). Let’s see what Sima Sistani, the new CEO of WW had to say when she spoke with All Things Considered:

Ms. Winfrey, along with the rest of our board, stands by our business vision and our program offerings. But we all know that her story has been one that has been a generational story and one that mimics so many people who, on a day to day basis, struggle with the same shame and bias where weight loss has been associated with a preoccupation around thinness. And what we’re trying to do is reshape that conversation around weight health. It’s not a matter of vanity. This is about the degree to which weight impacts your health and your quality of life. And for decades, we’ve discussed weight and dieting and obesity in terms that isolate people and often demotivate them.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/18/1219710239/weightwatchers-oprah-ozempic-drugs-wegovy

When I confessed my conversation with Dr M to the Bride, she said, “DIETS DON’T WORK!” She knew Sistani at Duke; they were undergrads together and Sistani belonged to the same sorority as the Bride’s roomie. Disordered eating was everywhere on the Duke campus in the 90s, but when wasn’t a woman trying to fit into her culture’s idea of beauty? Tattoos, piercings, foot-binding, neck-lengthening chokers, corsets. Even Egyptian women wore eyeliner! So why shouldn’t we starve ourselves today? The thing is, I’m already injecting a drug to build back bone, I’d rather not inject something else for a disease I don’t have.

I’m not here to shame you if Ozempic or Wegovy are your golden tickets. Just don’t think any of these companies are acting as your fiduciary. Maybe the problem is simply capitalism. After all the pharmaceutical industry wins, Weight Watchers wins, and the consumer pays to lose weight. I told the Bride to fight back, weave her yoga teaching into her medical practice for an integrative approach to health and wellness. Borrow from the East and practice preventative medicine. Let’s all eat like we live in a Blue Zone. Break the next generation of feminists free of body dysmorphia, our last self-loathing trap.

At least my shoe size hasn’t changed! Merry Christmas Everyone, be kind to yourselves.

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Dear Martha

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2020| 1 Comment »

“Dear Martha:

“I just listened to your Insta video, or podcast, whatever. I always loved your columns in Oprah magazine. Unlike Dr Phil, who can be off-putting, your brand of self-help-psycho-babble resonated with me. But dear Dr Beck, this time you lost me.

“You lost me at meditating for an hour (OR MORE) every day. “‘I meditate for an hour every day,’ you said… even though you were unbearably “itchy” at first.

 “I’ve tried meditating for 10 minutes at a time. That is if the mail person doesn’t come to the door to regurgitate lots of paper through the slot onto the living room floor which causes Ms Bean to bark herself silly. She hates the mail invasion almost as much as she hates squirrels.  

“But I enjoyed listening to you this morning, because Bob was in the shower and because after all it was The Martha Beck talking in her Gathering (virtual) Room about “How to Hang in There When You Feel Like Giving Up!” https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/v=720387682089216&ref=watch_permalink”     Thanks for listening!

In a nutshell, Martha Beck talks about how every atom in the universe is in a constant push for growth. There’s a “push/pull” happening all the time; which made me think of Bob making sourdough bread. Two gorgeous loaves have just popped out of the oven. But I digress – Beck was talking about feeling overwhelmed in the middle of a pandemic. She had two solutions for us:

1) Let Go when there are a lot of expectations and competing forces in our lives. You don’t have to be in charge of everything all the time. Problems will be solved if we can stop and breathe – expand and contract our lungs. Great Grandma Ada would say in Yiddish, it will all press out.

2) Let Go of Yourself! Obviously the world will not be the same when this virus has run its course, and neither will we. If you used to ride the subway to work, maybe you stay home. Or ride your bike. But we must accept that our identity is fluid, or as Ada tells me, “Everyone is in crisis mode!” The tide is either coming or going.

Now to me, this all sounds nice, but it also sounds like giving up! What if somebody stole your car, and you don’t know whether your kid’s school is going to reopen next month. Or maybe your husband is working in the Covid ICU, and your nanny gets sick? It’s easy to be Zen-like, but somebody has to deal with the insurance and the nanny agencies.

My semi-quarantine world isn’t quite so complicated. Sometimes I’m competing with Bob for space in the kitchen – my zucchini bread vs his sourdough. And why does every Zoom exercise class I want to take, happen on Tuesdays? Overall, we can’t complain. My Covid/travel fantasy life is happy watching the PBS show “Escape to the Chateau.” https://thechateau.tv/ A couple with two young children buy and restore an 18th Century Chateau de la Motte Husson in France. They put in an elevator, and build a geodesic dome on their moat.

They’re eccentric Brits and I adore them! Angel loves taxidermy and collects stuffed, dead, wild animals and Dick can cook or fix just about anything. Who doesn’t love a good mid-to-later life crisis? When we built our VA mountain house, I thought that was IT for me. I’d moved South, something I thought I’d never do, we built our dream home and didn’t get divorced; I expected to leave that house feet first!

But here I am, finding my way in a city I love. Hosting a socially distant, bring-your-own cocktail party on a 90+ degree night for friends in the garden, because we all have to give up one identity, in order to grow into a future one.

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Inclusion Riders

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Gone are the days when a Hollywood studio could basically “own” its talent. But we’ve all heard of actors having to sign away their lives for a certain number of pictures over a period of years. Now with the #metoo movement, more than a few casting couches have been exposed. Once you achieved “star” status, the pressure might ease up a little; but did you know that over one hundred years ago at Universal Studios women were writing and directing many of the early silent films?

As director Ida May Park, another of the Universal Women, remarked in 1920, “Films are made for women, [who] compose the large majority of our fans.” That’s true today, when females make up 52% of the moviegoing audience. Yet filmmaking is top-heavy with male-driven stories, written, directed and produced primarily by men. Surely the mismatch has a role in the drop in box office receipts at movie theaters.  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-sharp-universal-studios-women-20171112-story.html

Last night, I understand Frances McDormand made an impassioned plea at the Oscars. Still haven’t seen “Three Billboards” but it’s on my list! Calling attention to an “inclusion rider” was her way of telling her peers that they can take back their power in numbers if everyone adds this rider to their contract. Simply put, you are calling for diversity of your cast and crew – you’d like the movie you are about to shoot represent all of the varied shades of the American people. All ages and sexes would be nice as well. And, I would add, maybe even women screenwriters?

With the exception of Star Wars, I’ve often felt that studios are so worried about box office numbers, they have lately been putting out any and all iterations of comic/book/super/action/heroes. Adolescent boy material can be good for awhile, but as a culture we’ve come close to overdosing. Women like a movie with a good storyline, that’s all. We don’t want gratuitous scenes of random violence and torture, we don’t need loud car chases and crashes.

Although, I must admit “Wonder Woman” was a long time coming.

Let’s take a look at that fish story. That’s what I call “The Shape of Water.” Bob loved it and I came away with a mawah feeling. I’m not sure why, maybe I’m just too practical to think a woman might fall for a fish. It had periods of light for sure, but best movie Oscar?  I told Bob I can’t wait to see one of my favorite actors, Jennifer Lawrence, in Red Sparrow. It’s only topping out at about 45M in the US, hmmm, then I read a Jezebel review and thought, WHY? Rape, sexual humiliation and torture, when Lawrence’s character is not walking aimlessly around a street…I feel like Nancy Kerrigan all the darn time.

When the Bride and I were driving home from our family forum on healthy sex, she happened to mention that unlike her peers, she remembers that as a teen we would allow her to see films with sex scenes in them, but not violent films filled with guns. I of course remember taking her to see an “Alien” movie because I’d read that Sigourney Weaver was the first female action star – and ended up covering her eyes for most of it! Sometimes you wonder what sticks during those parenting years.

I cannot wait to see “A Wrinkle in Time,” written, directed and starring women of all possible shapes, sizes and colors and ages. I wonder if Oprah, Reese and Mindy had inclusion riders in their contracts? Here is my favorite local historic home, hey Hollywood scouts, let’s see what goes on behind that door!    IMG_2373 2

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Emotional Hygiene

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Mindfulness. I’ve been reading alot about this lately, and the Bride asked if I’d like to attend a Mindful Parenting and Grandparenting course with her, “Sure,” I said, who wouldn’t?

Of course my yogi daughter practices some of these techniques, like meditation, to deal with the stress of her job. You never know what’s coming through the door in an ER, and like the life of a pilot – who is on remote control until he has to land a plane in the Hudson River – she sews up a lot of cuts until someone tries to overdose (or, insert any catastrophic event).

Saying you want to “Be Here Now!” doesn’t do it for me. I need practical tips and strategies to stay in the moment and quiet my monkey brain. This morning someone wanted to follow my Instagram, and instead of immediately deleting her, I scooted over to her page @mindfuleatsnutrition. She is a “Dietician helping people make peace with food.” Some algorithm somewhere must have sensed I was at war with vegetables, since I’m always looking up new and ingenious ways to prepare okra.

She is part of the “No More Dieting” movement. Throw away your scales ladies, listen to your inner voice and practice “mindful eating.” Don’t buy pre-packaged Nutri-System meals that taste like mush, don’t join Weight Watchers and tie yourself to counting points, or whatever it is they are counting these days. Full disclosure, I did join WW before turning 60 since I was inching towards plus sizes. But by 65 I’d gained that weight back, as dieting almost always does.

Oprah, do you really think teenage girls should start attending WW with their moms?

Great Grandma Ada kept marveling at how much weight I’d lost last week. It’s true, I’d lost some weight this year because I’m not eating cookies or ice cream at night and I’m walking around this city with Ms Bean. I tend to lose weight when I’m stressed; like in my substitute teaching days when I went on my own fractional diet, eating only half of whatever was on my plate. Moving can be a wee bit stressful. There are no good and bad foods as I’ve said before, and our weight is only half of the problem.

Physical hygiene is half of self-love; caring for ourselves enough to visit a dentist regularly, to keep moving, to eat healthy by choosing more vegetables and less protein. To adore avocados!

Emotional hygiene means caring enough about ourselves to avoid negativity. To seek out a therapist if nothing else helps. To rid ourselves of the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” complex and stop judging others. It’s been shown that people who hang around with depressed people start to feel depressed themselves, just like that study that said if your friends are always choosing fried foods, so will you. It may be time to start practicing mindfulness and you don’t have to be hippy-dippy to do it. I never went to Woodstock! I’ll be reporting back from our course in March.

You’ve got to put that plane’s oxygen mask on yourself first, if you want to get your babies out alive. It’s like the Dalai Lama said this morning:

Compassion suits our physical condition, whereas anger, fear and distrust are harmful to our well-being. Therefore, just as we learn the importance of physical hygiene to physical health, to ensure healthy minds, we need to learn some kind of emotional hygiene.

Is mindfulness your super power?

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“Humble Roots”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on January 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

#OPRAH2020

I grew up on Phil Donohue, watching my foster mom, Nell, hang on every word that came out of his mouth. She was a first generation American, who never learned how to drive and didn’t work outside the home because her husband asked her not to, politely. I would come home from school, tear off my Catholic school uniform and put on “play clothes” to join her on the couch, before tearing off into the neighborhood on my bike.

Yes, I was a tomboy, and proud of it!

We had a linoleum kitchen floor in our four room (not bedroom mind you), four room house in Victory Gardens. There’s a black and white picture of toddler me in a droopy diaper hiding in a space between the stove and the refrigerator, presumably during hide ‘n seek. We came from humble roots, coal mining families on Daddy Jim’s side and Slovakian dissidents from Nell’s; I knew they passed money to the mailman to fund the IRA.

My kids grew up on Oprah! So when I listened to her speech at the Golden Globes the other night, I knew something was afoot. She started off with a memory – sitting on her linoleum floor… “In 1964, I was a little girl sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother’s house in Milwaukee, watching Anne Bancroft present the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards. She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history: ‘The winner is Sidney Poitier.”

This is known as the Hook, the catch phrase memory of “humble roots” for every stump speech of every candidate running for any political office in our great land. See, I’m just like you, even though they’ve amassed tons of wealth, they started out with nothing, less than nothing…

I was recently talking with my sister Kay and our brother Dr Jim on a conference call, and listened as Jim recounted how he would go out with our late brother Mike on Christmas Eve to pick the prettiest Christmas tree. Because they were almost giving them away for a nickle. Because the Flapper was so poor.

“Did you also have to dumpster dive for food?” I asked him.

They laughed and said no, we hadn’t been that poor. The Flapper made it through the Great Depression and taught us never to leave a light on in a room. And after four years in the darkness (if he lasts that long), with this semi-literate, entitled, bone-headed purported billionaire in the People’s House, I’m willing to bet the pendulum just might swing back – way back toward the sunshine. With enough luck and organizing, we “might could” nominate a black woman, one who shines from within, for the White House! Yes Oprah, preach Oprah PREACH!!

And in the midst of a sea of black designer gowns that nobody wanted to talk about, she said this:

“Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived, as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. And for too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”

Oprah brought this sad, compelling story about a gang rape of an innocent black woman in the Jim Crow South of 1944 to light. I felt my eyes filling with tears even as I registered that this sounds like a woman ready to run for office. She brought us the personal story, the anecdote about injustice, that made me remember why I was a Democrat in the first place. All the while we know that Oprah had been raped as a child, we know her story, and we know all those #MeToo stories that have been circulating about the abuse of power by powerful men.

And all I can think is that their Time is UP! They are fired! We have our very own reality TV star in the wings and she is fired up and ready to go. It’s as if a storm has swept through our country and we can now smell the beginning of new air. It’s the sun after a hurricane. We must fight against voter suppression, we must fight for basic human rights and one-payer healthcare. This is the time to take our country back! Please Oprah, I hope you will run. There’s “A new day on the horizon.”

Here is Bob with Berdelle, our 91 year old neighbor, at the TN State House today because you’re never too old to be a revolutionary!

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For Art’s Sake

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

There’s good news and there’s bad news this week. On the good side – Our do-nothing-Congress has passed a 1+ Trillion dollar budget deal that should keep our government humming along for the next nine months. On the bad side – Congress has defunded ALL portrait painting, which is pretty stupid since I understand that every single Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense doesn’t need an official oil-based portrait painted costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each.

But no more Presidential portraits? Are you kidding me? Even I have had my portrait painted, by my sister mind you! This may have started my fondness for hats.

The Author, age 15 in Oklahoma

The Author, age 15 in “Oklahoma”

You know that gallery at the Smithsonian with all of our Presidents hanging regally along its walls in a continuing line of American history? Well, it’s about to stop short. Someone on the blogosphere somewhere said it’s because we can’t have a “president of color” up there with Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy and really? I suppose this means no more First Ladies either.

The horse-trading was done by only about four dozen of Congress’ 533 members, working in private. What’s supposed to be 12 separate spending bills was combined into one mammoth stack that finances the government through Sept. 30.http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/16/5-things-to-know-about-deal-to-avert-shutdown-of-u-s-government/

It’s the “working in private” part that bothers me, behind closed doors in a secret session, along with the sheer lunacy of stopping a tradition that deserves to be maintained. I tend to think very forest for the trees about art. Artists are really doing our society a favor. They reflect back to us what’s going on in everyday life, with a different spin, giving us a new perspective. Enlightening, illuminating and just plain enriching our thirsty souls. Sometimes art can even change history. Think of the photograph of a child about to be shot in Vietnam. Think about the mini-series Roots. Think about a little Goldfinch.

Today the Oscar nominees were announced. Nothing new or unusual except Ms Oprah was denied again for her role in The Butler. A movie about a man who served how many presidents through sweeping social changes in our country. A true story, but one obviously overlooked in Hollywood. Instead a movie about a real political shakedown in NJ in the late 70s, the Abscam scandal, was the basis for the big winner, American Hustle.

“…today offering bribes in exchange for legislation seems almost quaint. The lobbyists do the same things we did, only to a much greater degree,” said John Good, a former FBI supervisor who oughtta know.http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-the-players-in-abscam-the-real-life-american-hustle-the-bribes-now-seem-quaint/2013/12/26/d67648c2-6c15-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

I wonder who’s writing the Chris Christie biopic now? Maybe we need to get some art lobbyists up on the Hill. You know, bring in the big guns – the owners of auctions houses and film industry moguls, maybe a few museum directors? At least we need to appoint a Secretary of Culture, every other country in the free world has one! We don’t need to paint their portrait either. But we DO need President Obama’s portrait painted.

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization,” President Kennedy once remarked, “than full recognition of the place of the artist.” http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/should-the-us-have-a-secretary-of-culture/277409/

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