Fenton

Ha! I think it counts as a SuperNSV if the person is specifically struck by your weight loss enough to comment on it to your husband!

Down one more pound - five to go for the century...

47 years as one of five children - eat fast or go hungry! Not really. But I really started to put on weight during my internship - in UK hospitals, at least back in the mid-80's - all of the food was fried. It took the English *decades* to learn about salads... Thanks for the heads-up, Harley. I'll certainly stop by and check out Jamba. I think it's important that we don't feel restricted from certain restaurants; not so much for the deprivation of the particular food as for the feeling that we're being deprived of particular restaurant experiences. Wow was THAT poorly phrased!

What sort of low cal Jamba Juices do you recommend Harley? There's one near me, and if it's low cal and Protein positive, that sounds good to me! I've been living like a king today. For lunch I had homemade lobster salad, then for dinner I had the other half of my entree from dinner out last night. Plus three Flintstones One A Day Sour Gummies!

You just step onto a platform! What's the big deal? Go Rhonda! I had an off day yesterday, so you may beat me!

I think another thing we respond to is the myth of "the jolly fat person". Obese people, for the most part, get that way because they're desperately unhappy with their lives, and they've learned that food makes them feel better. For a while, at least...

Ha, Cathy. I've managed to really irritate my brother by evangelizing for the lap band.

That interscale variability is a pain in the ass! I weigh myself at my office, and refuse to allow them to weigh me at the doctor's office - I just tell them my current scale weight and they accept it. Which is reasonable, since the scales at work are verified and certified every year or so. chocolate splurges? The Mars bar is a standby favourite - I have one a week, probably. I love the chocolate bread pudding that the Dessert TRuck serves (it's a small truck that appears five or six nights a week on a couple of busy Greenwich Village corners, serving a small selection of high end Desserts to go). If I were buying chocolate assortments, I'd go with Larry Burdick chocolates, from Walpole NH (Burdick Chocolate - gourmet handmade confections; artisanal and world class quality) - great flavours, perfect packaging, too expensive and inconvenient to get your hands on other than as a gift (unless, of course, you live in the Boston area, where they have cafe-boutiques!). For individual chocolates, I like the Michel Cluizel dark chocolate salted caramels that they serve at the Dessert Bar at ABC Carpet in NYC, and the ginger truffles at la Maison du Chocolat.

That's great! Both Lynn for her course correction, and Penny for refusing all temptation. Actually, a few days ago I astonished myself by having half a Mars bar one day, then putting it in the cupboard to have the other half the next day. But I forgot I had it! And didn't end up eating the second half until two days later. It's an odd one, but it really is a first for me.

Haha! Yes, perhaps you're right. But still: chocolate and ice cream are the rocks on which many bandsters have foundered. Let US not make that mistake! (By "US" here, I mean, you, me, all of us. Not, like, "The United States".)

Oh, I am SUCH a hardcore ice cream and chocolate junkie, to the extent that when I was writing more about food, I'd always get assigned the ice cream or chocolate stories! Luckily, I'm a chocolate snob, and am not too seduced by most chocolate bars in the US. Unluckily, I live in NYC, where I can get access to decent English chocolate bars as well as to all the different artisanal chocolate makers. Plus I'm a friend to many pastry chefs, and if I go out to eat, Desserts arrive unbidden. And at one level it's great, but at another - aaarggghhh! But I limit the damage to the occasional restaurant meal (now probably about once or twice a week, whereas before I was out every day), and the occasional chocolate bar, which I cut in half and make last two days, so I don't feel deprived, but it's not the end of the world diet-wise. Also, I eat dinner early in the evening, so I'll still be active for a while afterwards, hopefully burnin' up the damnable calories!

So. Today I took one of my first steps towards my snowboarding goal: I bought a couple of introductory books and a DVD about learning to snowboard. I'm going to use them for inspiration - you can't learn snowboarding from a book, obvs, but I think it'll help motivate me...

Christine, it might not make you feel any better, but people don't automatically notice that I'm down 100 pounds (yeah yeah - 100 pounds give or take!). I think when you have a lot to lose, it takes a while to become obvious - with my thin friends, I notice if they've lost 10 pounds, but at my size, well, we shall see. I do think that, over time, the weight loss looks more and more striking.

Oh! I am SUCH a liar! I bought some vanilla ice cream when I had a date over to my house who I was trying to impress with a fancy dinner ending with a fancy dessert! But the date was a disaster - she had cat allergies (once again those two little bastids are playing havoc with my life), and we were forced to go out to a restaurant instead. But I only bought a single serving container, and ate it over the next two days, in a controlled way, to get rid of it.

The head stuff is hard. I think you have to say to yourself, for example, "I'm not going to let my a$$hole office mate have the satisfaction of making me put on weight. Every piece of chocolate I eat is a defeat for me, and a victory for her." The first step is recognizing that you're in jeopardy, and the cause of it. If things are going badly at home, at least 50% of that is out of your control; what you put in your mouth is something that you control completely. My surgeon warned me when I first saw him that the real band killers were ice cream and chocolate; I've assiduously avoided the two ever since. This doesn't mean that I don't have a silent internal cheer when I see a little scoop of ice cream on my plate, but i haven't bought ice cream since I got banded.

Sue, that's so horrible. Somehow, murder in the country seems so much more awful than murder in the city. I'm glad you stayed close to your ex's family.

Oh, that reminds me: when I was researching the nutritional solidness of my shake, I learned something about which I'd always wondered. I'd always asked myself whether a ripe, sweet banana is more calorific than a bland, unripe one. It seemd that the answer would be No - for that to happen, the banana would have to create calories, which would mean that it would be creating energy, which didn't seem likely. I figured that it had to be due to the balance of sugars and starches - sugars are stored in an unripe banana in the form of starch, which is converted to sugar as the banana ripens. What I learned this week was that a ripe banana has a much higher glycemic index than an unripe one, meaning that the sugars are higher, and get into the bloodstream faster when the banana is ripe. Not mind-expanding, really, but interesting. To me, at least!

I am an individual devoted to ritual. Every morning, I have the same thing: that peanut butter/banana Protein shake that I love so dearly, and which keeps the Fentonian machine well-oiled and humming until about 1:30PM or so. The flavour depends on the banana, I've realized, so I'm kind of psychotic in my banana selection. They must be absolutely ripe - on the border of over-ripe - so the batch I bought yesterday aren't quite ready, and are ripening in a paper bag on my counter. They'll probably be good to go tonight, so I'll peel them and freeze them overnight, and return to my staple tomorrow. Today, though, without my frozen bananas, I had to go a different route. I took my vanilla SFO, my Protein powder and my salt (key!), and mixed in three tablespoons of blueberry sauce (after reading a piece in the NYT about the 11 Great Foods We Are Not Eating, which includes frozen blueberries, I decided that that was One Great food I Would Be Eating). It blended up into a rather unattractive grey liquid, but was pretty tasty. However, without the frozen banana, it doesn't have that Dairy Queen Blizzard-type consistency that the banana one offers. Now it's barely 10 AM, and already my stomach is starting to rumble. Oh well. I'll remind myself that a rumbling stomach is the sound of fat-burning in action, and I'll have lunch a little early today...

Oh please! You know how much we (or, rather, many of us) hate having our photos taken! I'm documenting my progress with photos on the 15th or so of every month, but no way am I putting them up! I'll post my author photos when I have the next cover done, sometime early next year, when I'll have made some REAL progress!

Even though I'm well past my liquid diet phase, I have the same delicious protein shake for breakfast every morning: 1 can of Slimfast Optima French Vanilla (Low Carb); 1 banana; three heaping tablespoons of whey protein powder; two tablespoons of powdered peanut butter, and this is key: one large pinch of coarse salt. I keep the blender container and banana in the freezer, and put the SFO in the freezer about half an hour before I'm going to make it - this way I get an icy cold shake with the density of a soda fountain shake. It's DELICIOUS.

So, next week, on the Magic Day, I shall write a check for $100 to Heifer. And can there be any doubt which livestock I'll be choosing to give? Ducks, baby. Five flocks of ducks.

So, it's time for me to pony up - next week, touch wood, I should hit my 100 Pound Loss marker. I'd said that I was going to, at each 50 lb increment, give my total weight loss in dollars to Heifer.org, which uses donated money to buy livestock for poor people around the world. By chance, there was a piece about the work Heifer does in the NYTimes on Thursday. Here it is - it's quite inspiring and kind of charming: July 3, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist The Luckiest Girl By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF This year’s college graduates owe their success to many factors, from hectoring parents to cherished remedies for hangovers. But one of the most remarkable of the new graduates, Beatrice Biira, credits something utterly improbable: a goat. “I am one of the luckiest girls in the world,” Beatrice declared at her graduation party after earning her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College. Indeed, and it’s appropriate that the goat that changed her life was named Luck. Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?” and “What can I do?” The tale begins in the rolling hills of western Uganda, where Beatrice was born and raised. As a girl, she desperately yearned for an education, but it seemed hopeless: Her parents were peasants who couldn’t afford to send her to school. The years passed and Beatrice stayed home to help with the chores. She was on track to become one more illiterate African woman, another of the continent’s squandered human resources. In the meantime, in Niantic, Conn., the children of the Niantic Community Church wanted to donate money for a good cause. They decided to buy goats for African villagers through Heifer International, a venerable aid group based in Arkansas that helps impoverished farming families. A dairy goat in Heifer’s online gift catalog costs $120; a flock of chicks or ducklings costs just $20. One of the goats bought by the Niantic church went to Beatrice’s parents and soon produced twins. When the kid goats were weaned, the children drank the goat’s milk for a nutritional boost and sold the surplus milk for extra money. The cash from the milk accumulated, and Beatrice’s parents decided that they could now afford to send their daughter to school. She was much older than the other first graders, but she was so overjoyed that she studied diligently and rose to be the best student in the school. An American visiting the school was impressed and wrote a children’s book, “Beatrice’s Goat,” about how the gift of a goat had enabled a bright girl to go to school. The book was published in 2000 and became a children’s best seller — but there is now room for a more remarkable sequel. Beatrice was such an outstanding student that she won a scholarship, not only to Uganda’s best girls’ high school, but also to a prep school in Massachusetts and then to Connecticut College. A group of 20 donors to Heifer International — coordinated by a retired staff member named Rosalee Sinn, who fell in love with Beatrice when she saw her at age 10 — financed the girl’s living expenses. A few years ago, Beatrice spoke at a Heifer event attended by Jeffrey Sachs, the economist. Mr. Sachs was impressed and devised what he jokingly called the “Beatrice Theorem” of development economics: small inputs can lead to large outcomes. Granted, foreign assistance doesn’t always work and is much harder than it looks. “I won’t lie to you. Corruption is high in Uganda,” Beatrice acknowledges. A crooked local official might have distributed the goats by demanding that girls sleep with him in exchange. Or Beatrice’s goat might have died or been stolen. Or unpasteurized milk might have sickened or killed Beatrice. In short, millions of things could go wrong. But when there’s a good model in place, they often go right. That’s why villagers in western Uganda recently held a special Mass and a feast to Celebrate the first local person to earn a college degree in America. Moreover, Africa will soon have a new asset: a well-trained professional to improve governance. Beatrice plans to earn a master’s degree at the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas and then return to Africa to work for an aid group. Beatrice dreams of working on projects to help women earn and manage money more effectively, partly because she has seen in her own village how cash is always controlled by men. Sometimes they spent it partying with buddies at a bar, rather than educating their children. Changing that culture won’t be easy, Beatrice says, but it can be done. When people ask how they can help in the fight against poverty, there are a thousand good answers, from sponsoring a child to supporting a grass-roots organization through globalgiving.com. (I’ve listed specific suggestions on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and on facebook.com/kristof). The challenges of global poverty are vast and complex, far beyond anyone’s power to resolve, and buying a farm animal for a poor family won’t solve them. But Beatrice’s giddy happiness these days is still a reminder that each of us does have the power to make a difference — to transform a girl’s life with something as simple and cheap as a little goat. I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.

And another thing! As I was stirring my Benefiber this morning, a hair drifted down off my head and fell into the glass. And I realized that that was my life as a bandster in a nutshell: constipation and hair loss.

Thanks, A - I like how I wrote the city, too. (Patting self on back...) In Naples, I'm staying with friends - the county's Chief Medical Examiner is my BFF since we trained together in Miami, and her husband is an ex-cop and a gun nut, so they're perfect contacts for S. Florida murder and mayhem-type stuff. But they're not real restaurant people, so I've managed to avoid that world. Although, in fact, paying too much money for tiny perfect plates would probably be better for me than paying very little for the massive quantities of food that is the custom at most chain restaurants. One NSV: when I look at my photo on the hardcover of PRECIOUS BLOOD, I can recognize how much weight I have lost.

Sueangel - I envy you your house on a lake in W. Mass! Cool and quiet, I bet. My dream writing location! Thanks for your nice words about my book. I'm working on the sequel, A HARD DEATH, now; it'll be out late 2009 here, maybe a little sooner in the UK. A HARD DEATH is set in South Florida, so in a couple of weeks I'm heading down to Naples for a week of research (and ridiculous humidity and bugs). I'm kind of bracing myself - I have manageable eating patterns for New York City, and hope that I don't screw up when I don't know where to go to get something that I'd normally eat. Or, rather, I don't know that if we go to the OUtback Steakhouse, I'll be able to completely abstain from a taste of the ole Bloomin' Onion... But you bandsters - Keri, Harley and Sueangel off the top of my head - have all vacationed without taking much of a hit at all, so I shall use you as my inspiration and example! I've already started looking into gyms down there - I'm going to try to do at least an hour or two a day, since I won't be walking as much as I do in NYC.