Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS page 41

[Artemis-MA]

I wish they made real small loaves of bread at my favorite bakery. It's an artisan bakery, and I used to go in and buy a loaf, still warm, flavor of the day, and eat a few handfuls of it while the warmth and aroma percolated.

I've made the decision that I am allowing myself to buy three loaves of bread a year there. That sounds about right. Eat a warm wad, slice off a bit for a tomato (if in season) sandwich and freeze the rest.

On the same note, we have two superb pizzerias around here. I am allowed the occasional indulgence (I last indulged in June, I think.)

I've been officially low carb for a year now. I've lost 35 pounds and aim to lose another ten or something. And at this point I'm exploring Primal. But I wouldn't stress the occasional lapse. (I am realizing I signed up for the Challenge, and that I've also signed up for a food plan next weekend at an event I am going to... somewhere that weekend I will be eating stuffed portobello mushrooms, and I'm sure there will be grain in there.)

[Gay Panda]

You know how Cadbury eggs are getting less appealing as they taste increasingly sickly sweet? Think about that garlic bread. Yummmmmmy butter. Savory garlic. And something to spread it on. Meh. As you stay primal over time, you may find that bread is a garlic-butter vehicle you care less about as you love more and more the garlic-butter and other delicious flavors you're using it to transport to your mouth and shrinking panda tummy.

Consider thinking about the concept of trying garlic butter on other things. Ask for it on the side and put it over your steak. Or potatoes if you eat white potatoes (I don't bother). I know you are not a veggie aficionado/a, but garlic butter over squash, wilted kale, sautéed onions, shredded brussels sprouts, or many many other things -- would be Awesome. (I am not sure about garlic butter over sweet potatoes but now I want to try it.)

The thought of Cadbury Eggs becoming less appealing? :::sob:::

I have been putting garlic butter on my steaks, how funny that you wrote that! It's delicious. There is actually half a rib eye in my fridge thus prepared, and I am trying to motivate myself to get off my comfy recliner and claim it for the Panda Cause.

[ItinerantChild]

I'll never be able to look a Cadbury's Creme Egg square in the face ever again.

How much weight have you lost Panda? I've lost 10lbs (4.6k) which sounds very little in numbers. But try lifting that in dumbells! My God they are heavy! And so I work out (loosely phrased) with 10lb dumbbells. and when I have lost 15lb I shall up my dumbbell weight and rejoice. It feels good lifting the amount you have lost.

Skip to the last chapter on sled racing. You can guess the middle bits. Anything for an easy life eh?

[Gay Panda]

I'll never be able to look a Cadbury's Creme Egg square in the face ever again.

How much weight have you lost Panda? I've lost 10lbs (4.6k) which sounds very little in numbers. But try lifting that in dumbells! My God they are heavy! And so I work out (loosely phrased) with 10lb dumbbells. and when I have lost 15lb I shall up my dumbbell weight and rejoice. It feels good lifting the amount you have lost.

Skip to the last chapter on sled racing. You can guess the middle bits. Anything for an easy life eh?

When I look at Cadbury Eggs now, I apologize to their abused brethren. Is nothing sacred?

My all-time High Score is 231 pounds of panda. It's hardly impressive by Guinness World Record standards, but my body has poor load-bearing capabilities and 231 made me hurt. In March when I started taking MDA seriously, I was 217. Because of a Drive-By Breading incident a few days ago giving me water retention, I am currently about 189. So that's 42 pounds total and 28 since March. Congratulations on your 10 pound loss! Every one is a victory and I hope that you're lifting that 15 pound dumbbell soon!

I would skip to the last chapter, but I'm such a bad liar that I'm afraid my friend will see it all over my face. Breaking it down into daily four-page torture sessions helps. Because really, what is so bad that you can't get through four lousy pages?! Especially when there are pictures.

[Gay Panda]

(I am realizing I signed up for the Challenge, and that I've also signed up for a food plan next weekend at an event I am going to...)

That is always how it works. I am glad that my 30 Day Challenge has little to do with food. It's like sending a psychic message out to the universe for someone to perversely bring ice cream cake to my house when this would never happen otherwise.

[ItinerantChild]

Panda, oh great and lovely one.
Have you tried treading on the scales and trying to make up your 'before' weight with towels? I am a very sad person and I have tried this. I didn't have enough towels..... Is this a good thing?

[Gay Panda]

Panda, oh great and lovely one.
Have you tried treading on the scales and trying to make up your 'before' weight with towels? I am a very sad person and I have tried this. I didn't have enough towels..... Is this a good thing?

I would think that this would be a very good thing! Usually I just lift a 10-pound bag of kibble for Primal Coach Kitty and realize that I've lost more than four bags' worth of weight. Still have a few more bags to go.

[Gay Panda]

Day Two of Gay Panda’s Challenge

I love that I posted a 30-Day Challenge for myself and had almost completely forgotten about it by the very next day. But today I did not forget.

A: Read. I got through pages 5-8. Two of these pages had pictures. If a travelogue is told well, it can be fascinating. If not, then you have a deadly dull experience ahead. And if told by someone trying desperately to be deep and reflective, then it’s agonizing. Yesterday’s ‘ancient winds’ was followed by today’s ‘restless winds’. Is this opposed to winds at rest? Then it would be still. I hope the winds are doing something new tomorrow in pages 9-12. This reminds me of my best friend’s and my Twilight experiment, in which we marked every page in which Bella Swan cried and I averaged it out. Answer: she cried once per every 25 pages before she turned into a vampire. CHECK.

B: Exercise. Half an hour on the primal treadmill, at a slow pace with three short sprints. Then I put on Ke$ha’s song Tik Tok and heavy lifted Primal Coach Kitty. Ke$ha makes the kitty purr, but Gay Panda thinks that Ke$ha needs a bath and a delousing, and has a stupid stage name. I also stretched, resentfully. CHECK.

C: Agents. Successfully procrastinated through another day!

D: Floss. Don’t have to until tomorrow, and that’s good, because my gums still hate me from yesterday.

[Gay Panda]

PART ONE: When I was young, I worried that I had inherited the family ability to metamorphose.

The Panda Clan should keep therapists on retainer, and they could retire millionaires by age forty and afford their own therapists-on-retainer to deal with the post-traumatic stress of treating us. The grandpandas were violent alcoholics who churned out many mentally disturbed cubs, who then went on to produce their own. We’ve got paranoid schizophrenics and mean drunks, drug and animal and child abusers, those who enroll in psychiatric facilities and join militias, live in squalor and view education as suspicious. One is so unbalanced that when I hear about mass shootings in a certain state, I cringe in anticipation that the newscaster will say his name. Another just refuses to hire Scorpios*.

As a cub, I feared that this would be my future. I thought it was a natural process of biology: caterpillar to butterfly. One day I would be myself, the next day I would take a sip of beer and turn into a raging alcoholic who threw hammers at people like Grandfather Panda. I understood the term ‘disease of alcoholism’ as meaning that they, literally, had a disease. You don’t blame someone for cancer or leprosy or Ebola, because who contracts these on purpose? You can’t blame them. They don’t bear personal responsibility for their leprosy. It happens.

So I looked at alcoholism as dissolving all personal responsibility. You made the mistake of drinking, you metamorphosed, and forever more you could do whatever heinousness you wanted because your illness of alcoholism absolved you of your actions. This frightened the hell out of me. I wanted to think that people wielded more control over their lives than this. It gave alcohol such power in my mind, as if a shot of tequila was going to transform a mild-mannered Gay Panda into a screaming, bar-fighting Gay Panda who cracked bottles over people’s heads and yelled obscenities at the cops as they shoved me into the drunk tank to sober up.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way. I don’t drink often, but when I do indulge, I end up in a giggly heap wanting nachos. The metamorphosis never happened; I’m just Gay Panda with less inhibition. Under the shyness, I really am just giggling and wanting nachos. If I were to start drinking to cope with the hardness of life, I refuse to absolve myself. It was a choice that I made, a very bad choice. It may progress to the disease where my body is so accustomed to alcohol that it cannot function without it, but it was a choice to get my body to that state in the first place.

[Gay Panda]

PART TWO: I believe that this misunderstanding of mine from cubhood is behind my fear of losing control with non-primal food. In almost all regards, the Panda Clan Crazy Train passed me right on by. OCD, depression, and shyness, well, those pale in comparison. My record and my home are clean, and the only person I’ve ever pointed a gun at was made of paper at a shooting range. (But I showed Paper Target Man who was boss**.) However, it is still in the back of my mind some substance will trigger a metamorphosis into a non-fabulous butterfly of destruction.

In a few weeks, I’m going to a celebration. I want to have a margarita and a piece of pizza. I haven’t had a drink since July, and pizza hasn’t graced my palate since March. I fear that I will lose control, that the margarita paired with pizza will lead to total dietary chaos, and someone will find me huddled in a corner, stuffing my face with red cinnamon bears and sourdough bread and chocolate-covered pretzels and Coke and growling like a feral creature. Suddenly, new posts will cease from Primal With A Side Of FABULOUS, and you will wonder what happened to me. I metamorphosed. I realize that this is just the adult food equivalent of my cubhood alcohol fear. It’s coming from the same place.

It looks so illogical when you read this, doesn’t it? But the age that we are intellectually and what we are emotionally don’t always match. I’ve resolved to have the drink and pizza after a month of rumination on the matter. Being so rigid that I deny myself everything will suck the fun out of the celebration. I allowed myself to start drinking years ago because I refused to believe that alcohol was more powerful than I was. And it wasn’t. Every drink that I take is my choice, not a compulsion from the alcohol. Drunk or sober, I am responsible for my actions. Food is not going to be more powerful either. So I’m going to trust that I can handle it, and that the cravings those substances will induce will not get the better of me.

Fortunately, it goads me to think of playing Put A Ring On It any more than I have to for my internal Mr. Magazine Times. I love that I’ve lost weight; I don’t want another appointment with Mistress GERD ever again. So Gay Panda is a little afraid that posts will vanish after the 21st of this month, but not too afraid. On the chance that they do, please leave a threatening message after the beep. It will be a reminder that I am in control of what goes into my body, and a kick in the pants that I need to wipe the red cinnamon bear slobber off my chin and find myself a nice filet mignon.