Broke Ass Fat Bitch: The Beginning of a Frugal Food Journal

I've been watching this show Supersize vs Superskinny pretty much all night since I woke up at around 1am. I'm pretty nocturnal. But it got me thinking about weight and my own body, especially since I've put on quite a bit of weight recently, and I've had two family members hospitalize for weight related injuries.

My father is a classic overeater, and his poor diet eventually wore his body so thin that his digestive tract just up and gave out on him, with his colon bursting in two or three places. He underwent surgery and is doing really well in recovery, but he will have to wear a colostomy bag for at least six months, and whatwith the ruptures, he got a massive infection and has to have daily IV antibiotics and a stint that goes directly into his heart. He is home, but will have to go once a week to the hospital to get checked up and make sure that he's progressing nicely. This is a major pain in the ass because his surgeon is in the city, a 2 hour drive away from where he lives.

My grandma is on the other end of the scale. She's been suffering from anorexia nervosa since the late 1950s-early 1960s and has worn her body so thin that many of her organs are on their last leg. Her bones aren't getting proper nutrition either, and break really easily. She's been hospitalized twice recently, once for a hip replacement, and again because her body went into ketosis, which is a state where you aren't taking in enough food so your body starts eating itself. In order to keep her brain alive, her body decided to eat her muscle mass, and when it ran out of that, it started in on her organs. So her own body ate her heart and kidneys.

I have no idea where I fall on the scale of things. I'm currently heavier than I have been recently, but not as heavy as I've ever been. At my heaviest I weighed 210lbs, and at my lightest in my adult life I think I got down to 125 or something. That was after a year-long weightloss journey, which I began because my father had a heart attack due to his being overweight, and I realized that my own weight had the potential to cause major problems for me, medically.

According to http://www.calculator.net, I need no more than 1370 to maintain my weight, and no more than 800 to lose weight (per day). 800 seems like... nothing. Guess I'd be hard to starve. I'll gain a pound a week if I eat 1870. Also, my current measurements put me at 34.9% body fat, which falls into the obese category. It's supposed to be no more than 25%. My BMI is 30.86; which is obese, but barely. The obesity category starts at 30.

So. Yup. I'm fat. Which is weird, because I don't really look fat. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I don't think I look fat.  But that may be because I live in the US where obesity is really common, and therefore I don't have a good idea of what a body in the healthy weight range looks like. When I look at myself, I wouldn't classify me, based on the visual, as obese. Overweight, yes, but the idea that I would have 35% body fat wouldn't enter my mind. I am not in tune with my body. When I think of an overweight individual, in my culture, I think of someone like my father; and if you compare my body to his, it doesn't look like I'm in danger of any major health problems. But viewed in a vacuum by medical professionals, I have real reason to be concerned. So I've decided to track my eating habits, to see if I can pinpoint my problem.

Being unemployed, like I am, makes it very difficult to eat a healthy diet. That's why I've decided to chronicle my food journal here, on-line. To see if it's possible to eat a healthy, full diet while broke as shit. I live in the rural United States, which may or may not be relevant, because I don't know how we fare compared to other places, in terms of food prices, but I do know that we don't have specialty or bulk stores, meaning that my food choices here are MUCH more limited than when I lived in the city, which had far more competition and selection. Here we've got three grocery stores; Wal-mart, Save-a-Lot, and Food City. That's it.

So without further ado, let's start the food journal.

4/7/15

Measurements

Overbust: 41

Underbust: 33

Waist: 29

Hips: 49

1:00-5:00am: Coffee 582

5:00am: Cereal 280

Breakfast: 962 Already I'm over the weightloss cals. But I've already spotted my first problem. I drink ¼ a cup of sugar in every glass of coffee. I say glass because I don't drink my coffee out of a cup, like a normal person, but out of a metal travel thermos, which easily holds 2-3 cups of coffee and I consider one mug a serving. I'd love to switch to aspertaine or something, but it's so expensive.

Shine on Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon: Rune Factory Frontier


Harvest Moon is an odd game series; inasmuch as it's a game that always has impressive sales, but which no one in polite company will admit to playing. If you tell a joke based on your turnip crop, everyone will laugh, but very few people are willing to sit down and discuss strategy. Therefore, I would consider it a “Hidden Gem” series, but not in the normal sense. It's more of a “guilty pleasure” series. This has lessened considerably since the popularity of the farmville games, which struck me as odd, because it became big, and people spoke of it, I always responded, “Oh. Like Harvest Moon.”

This review is actually an update of a hub that I wrote over three years ago when the game “Rune Factory Frontier” launched. I have since beaten the game, and returned to Hubpages since the Squidoo merge, and RFF remains one of my favorite games, so it's worth revisiting. First of all, if you aren't familiar with Harvest Moon, the additions in Rune Factory will make no sense to you, so we'll revisit the basics before diving into the meat of the review.

Developed by Natsume, the Harvest Moon series is a farming simulator in which the main character comes to own a broken down farm and must make it profitable. Along the way they need to find love, raise a family, and develop friendships with the townspeople along with their financial goals. Generally, there are a few eligible marriage candidates, called “Bachelors” if the player character is female and “Bachalorettes” if the player character is male. They can be wooed into a relationship by talking with them and presenting them with gifts. Each eligible candidate has their own list of likes and dislikes, and their relationship meter will reflect the effort the player has put in to gain their love and respect.

The farm is usually riddled with debris like tree stumps, weeds, rocks, boulders, and sometimes animals like gophers and coyotes that must be disposed of and cleared for planting. Then you can till the ground, plant seeds, water them, and harvest your crops to sell for money. Likewise you can build barns to raise livestock like chickens, cows, sheep, goats, ducks, etc. You can harvest from your critters and sell the milk or eggs or whatever they produce. I promise that this is far more fun than it sounds.

Rune Factory Frontier is a Harvest Moon game released for the Nintendo Wii in 2009 that builds upon these basic concepts with a new adventure angle thrown in. The Rune Factory series is actually considered a spinoff of the Harvest Moon series, and Frontier is the third installment in the spin-off series, after Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon and Rune Factory 2 on the NDS. And I have to say, once you have a taste of the spinoff, it's difficult to go back to the original. Every single change is a marked improvement.

Rather than buying your livestock, you have to go out and tame them, like Pokemon. This gave me a much closer connection to my animals, and much more pride in them. Also, you can take them from your homestead out into the game, where they can help you in battle. Some of them are rideable, and some of them will help you in your fight against enemies. I had a dog I named Sparks, after my real life dog, who adventured with me throughout every dungeon in the game and became a true companion.
You can also collect materials to craft into items that can either be used to upgrade your character, or as gifts to your friends and lovers. These can be dropped from monsters, grown on your farm, mined, or obtained through a series of trades, adding a level of customization that really immerses you in the world of Trampoli. You can craft food, pharmaceuticals, weapons, armor, clothes, toys, jewelry and more. And if you gift someone an article of clothing, and they like it, they'll actually put it on and wear it from then on.
I was severely disappointment in one romance element of the game: Sexuality of the characters. Every character in the game has a romance meter, leading me to believe that you, the protagonist, were bisexual and could romance any character. I desperately wanted to marry Erik, and spent a fortune in gifts for him to no avail. No matter how much you pamper males, you'll never get a single heart on that romance meter. You will advance their friendship meter and unlock 'friend' cutscenes, but it seems that Harvest Moon is severely lacking in lbgt representation, and instead likes to tease people with unnecessary romance meters that do absolutely nothing. The existence of the meter makes it feel like a lie.
Having said that, if you stick to the lady folk there is a much larger pool of bacholorettes than I was accustomed to for a Harvest Moon game. Everyone in your age group is a marriage candidate, and each of the women folk have their own life and story that you will get to know, and need to know in order to properly romance them. Certain elements of the game are changed based on your romance meter with the various ladies, and one of the boss battles can even be skipped entirely if you're dating the right character.
The absolute WORST thing about this game without a doubt isn't even the lie of a romance meter. It's the runies. These little spirits are incredibly important and incredibly annoying. You have to keep them balanced throughout the map, or the crops on your fields won't grow. You birth them by growing crops. So it's a catch 22. And they will eat each other so you have to restock areas every so often to keep them in the green- and if they go in the red, there goes your farm, and by proxy, your livelihood. These things weren't in any of the handheld games, including RF3, which makes me think that the developers learned from their mistake, but good god is this annoying. Especially if you have a crop that takes more than a season to grow, like the flowers you need for the wedding bouquet. So keep a good eye on these little buggers.
So basically, the developers have taken all the best parts of Harvest Moon and added an action-adventure element. The new dungeon exploration is something that was sorely missing from previous titles. I know that some folk want to just sit back when they play HM, but honestly, the controls are so elementary that if you die in a dungeon, it's your own fault. HM is not known for it's difficulty in basic gameplay; in fact, mastery of the series is often measured by perseverance and RPG strategy rather then skill, but Rune Factory seems to merge these components seamlessly in one of the most under-appreciated titles for the Wii. And seeing how under-appreciated the Wii is in general, that's saying something.

OK...  so I've gotten addicted to Tumblr.

http://takocos.tumblr.com

Just throwing that out there.

The Lorax

So, everyone loves Dr Seuss.  And much like how everyone has their favorite Ninja Turtle, everyone has their favorite Dr. Seuss book.  Mine was the Lorax- and this most likely shocks no one, as green as I am and whatnot.  I had a giant "Six by Seuss" book, and the Lorax was in it, then I had another strait-up Lorax book.  I loved them.  I read them far past the age where one would normally read Dr. Seuss.  I had the cartoon, the one that was made, I think, in the 70s, and I watched it until those little grey lines started popping up and destroying it.  I didn't much care for the Lorax's voice in the cartoon- it was to whiny.  I never saw him as someone who was just bitching at you, but as a strait-up threatening kind of warning.  But nonetheless, I loved that cartoon, and I loved that book.

So, I recently watched the new movie, and fell in love all over again.  There's not a character in the book that I didn't love, the Lorax, the cute little Barbaloots, the Swammy Swamns, the Humming Fish, and the Once-ler.  I actually liked the Once-ler because he was one of the few villains that figured out he fucked up.  True, he didn't figure it out quick enough, but at least there was some character growth there.

And I really like that the Once-Ler is given a more human identity in the movie. I know that Geisel left him purposefully ambiguous, but for the various folk all over the internet who keep insisting he's supposed to be a monster- that's simply not true.  Once-Ler is his name, not his species, and this is made clear, I believe in the line where he's kicking the Lorax out.

"Trees?  Trees?  You speak for the trees?  Well, I speak for men, and humanity's needs."  The Once-ler is now, and always has been, HUMAN.  His appearance in the book is not kept ambiguous in because he's a monster, but because it's supposed to allow everyone who reads it to see themselves reflected in him.  It's a story of how human greed blinds him to the plight of the ecosystem he destroys, which was a major problem at the time, and continues to be a major problem today.  It's a social commentary, which may be why it was my favorite book.  Seuss has said that he disliked how most books on the market treated  children like idiots.  He was a firm believer that kids could understand complex ideas, just as long as they were told with vocabulary that they could understand well enough to read on their own.  There are a lot of his books that teach lessons like this (Yurtle cost himself to, remember?  The douchebag turtle?) and that's one of the reasons that he's still beloved, and still relivent today.  Yes, these things were often silly and nonsensical, but they were, by their own logic, real.

So, I loved the actors. This Lorax, DeVito, sounded a lot more like the Lorax did in my head.  Like if you didn't get the hell out of his forest, he was gonna fuck your shit right up.  Not like he was begging you, but like he was warning you.  There were a couple really good songs- How Bad Can I Be is particularly catchy- I've still got the damn thing in my head, had to add it to my youtube playlist and re-listen to it to get it out.  The 3D was pretty good, but not right-over-the-top.  All in all, a really good re-telling of the classic tale.  Stuck as close to the book as you could imagine given that it had to be stretched to movie length, and actually much closer then some other Hollywood interpretations of classic Seuss tales. I was particularly glad that they decided not to go live-action on this one.  I think that the art style was much better for Lorax then live-action would have been.  All in all, an awesome experience.  And I had high hopes, like I said, it was my favorite Seuss book.  But I think you would like it even if it weren't already a favorite.  It's just a good movie.  It's just a good story.

Shirt Design

So... my favorite Dr. Seuss book is the Lorax, and as you all know, a new movie recently came out.  I instantly fell in love with it as well, and I got really bored today, so I decided to make a design tribute to the Thneed company- you know, the evil corporation owned by the Once-Ler that destroys the Truffila forest and makes the land uninhabitable for all the critters there.

I've been thinking about knitting me a thneed, but it looks like it would take absolutely forever and then be retarded after you make it.  I'd say that they really do all the things that the book says they do, but all those things are kinda stupid.

Actually, I just re-read it, most of those things are pretty useful. 

• Shirt
• a sock
• a large glove
• A hat
• Carpet
• Pillow
• Sheet
• curtains
• Covers For Bicycle Seats
• Hammock
• Toothbrush Holder
• Nest For Your Canary
• Thneed Soup That Cures Backache Pain And Chest (how this is possible is unknown)
• Makes A Perfect Windsheild Wiper
• Groom Your Hair When It Gets Mussed

• a sweater

• an umbrella
• towel
• Pants
• Blindfold
• Shoes
• Swimsuit
• Sponge
• Scarf
• Tight rope
• Butterfly net
• Thing for exercise 

I can actually see how most of those things work if the arm/leg thing is detachable, like with buttons or something.  It gives you a million versatile ways to wear it.

Hmm...  this post was basically an ad for my new pic, so I'll do a review of the movie later.

Heroes in a Half-Shell

So, when you were little, what was your favorite show?  Some folk liked Care Bears, some folk liked Thundercats, and some folk, like me, liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I owned a red bandanna, I painted my face green, I made shells out of cardboard, and I pretended that I knew ninjitzu by just jumping around and smashing things.  I owned every cartoon, movie, comic, poster, I bought every toy I could find.  Everyone had a favorite turtle, and as you can see by the pic I drew to the left there, mine was Raphael.

Raph was, in all honesty, the only ninja in the group.  Leo was more of a samuri then a ninja, Donnie would have been happy never going into combat, just being a tech guy, and Mikey...  look, we all know that Mike was just doing the martial arts thing to make his dad happy.  Mike has no ambition and would have sat on his ass watching TV and playing Turtles in Time all damn day.  He put in the minimal amount of effort required to keep Splinter from getting all dissapointed in him.  Raph looked out for him, or he would have been dead in half the battles he fought anyway.



Raphael reminds me of myself.  He doesn't take shit.  He strikes in the dark, swiftly and silently, like a real ninja.  He will put on a trench coat and go watch Critters, despite being a mutant turtle.  He hangs out with a Canadian badass in a hockey mask.  Raphael, without a doubt, is the best turtle.  You're welcome to your own opinion, but Raph will forever hold a special place in my heart.

So, imagine my surprise and delight when I read on NPR that a new turtle movie was coming out!!  The last movie, Turtles Forever, was fucking epic.  I kept waiting on it to suck, and it never did!  The story tied the various universes together seamlessly for fans- it was quite possibly the best crossover that I've ever seen in the history of all time.  It was amazing.  So I ask myself, where will they go from there?  There's a million comic storylines to explore.  We could see the multiverse fighting championships, which would look amazing with today's technological advancements in movie magic- we could get cyborg Donnie, or that time that Leo challenged Hiroko for leadership of the foot clan, and all the grunts backed down, because as Himato's child he totally has a right to do that.  We could revisit dimension X, an multidimensional battle in this day and age would look amazing!

Then I clicked on the article and actually read it.  I must say that...  it struck me as odd.  And I, obviously, am a fan who's ok with watching Vanilla Ice Dance his way through the ending of Turtles 2.  It takes a lot to strike me as odd.  See, the article said that in this edition, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be neither teenagers, nor mutants, nor turtles.  They would, instead, be adult aliens.  For...  some reason.  I'm not sure why.  Michael Bay is directing, which, honestly, cannot be a good sign (ask any hardcore TF fan) and has been making all the press appearances, so...  I don't know exactly how much input he has script wise, but it seems to be disproportionate.  Where are Eastman and Laird?  Does anyone have a link so that I can see what they think about this radical change?  It could greatly influence my opinion, because right now, I'm viewing this movie with a lot of skepticism.  But I don't know if it's my overreaching cynicism, or if this is as... well, off as it sounds.

I'm going to reserve judgement until we see more from this.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

So, you all remember a few days ago when I wrote complaining about how the Scary Stories series decided to change artists for their 30th anniversary edition.  Gammel's work is amazing, yet now, cannot be purchased new anywhere on-line.  I looked at every retailer I could find, and discovered that HarperCollins has discontinued the editions that feature Gammel's work.  Therefore, in protest, I'm offering all the books for download.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones