The ULTIMATE Weapon For The Average Grocery Inflation Fighter & Weight Loser

Just when all hope of economical stimulation seemed to be lost along comes the ULTIMATE weapon against inflation in big chain grocery stores.

I heard about this chain while watching this segment in last night's ABC News Nightline newscast. 

This story reminded me of a low-cost, no-frills chain that's just up the street from where I live (I can't think of the name offhand, but I know it's not the one featured in last night's segment).

Now aside from the political & economical "advantages" as it were (Which you can see in this post (Permalink URL) on my political blog), there are MANY advantages for those of us who are trying to lose weight as well.

First & foremost, it's a low-cost, no-frills grocery chain.  This means MORE $$$ IN YOUR POCKET TO $$$PEND ON WEIGHT LOSS ITEMS.

Secondly, you don't pay for ammenities such as a Deli, a Pharmacy, a Bakery Department, a Floral Department or a specialized Meat Department.  EVERYTHING like that is all pre-packaged WYSIWYG stuff (Except the Pharmacy as that doesn't exist beyond the OTC stuff).

The whole segment reminded me of the way the big grocery store chains operated back in the early to mid-1970s.  Simple & basic.  None of the fancy-schmancy fluff you see in grocery stores nowadays.  In fact, it looks to be more like the membership warehouses (Of which I will provide links to) than anything.

The only difference is the chain, unlike the big membership warehouses, don't sell their items in bulk nor did the article mention anything about them selling stuff in wholesale rather than retail either (Though I could be wrong on that and quite possibly everything else I've said about them so far and therefore will stand most humbly stand corrected if I did in fact make any errors).

I think it's pretty safe to say that if any of the big chains were to operate the way the chain featured in the aforementioned article does, they'd be out of business (Better yet, I think it's even safer to say that the big chains WOULD NOT EVEN **KNOW HOW** to operate like the chain featured in the article does without going out of business).

Well anyway, I just wanted to pass this lil tidbit of info. on to you, my faithful & loyal subscribers, readers, followers, etc. :)

Laters.....

Whole Wheat Waffle Sandwich

INGREDIENTS

===========

*  Whole Wheat Waffles (The blog features the Kellogg's EGGO brand with Nutri-Grain)

*  Peanut Butter (The blog features the Peter Pan brand)

*  Apples

*  Honey

INSTRUCTIONS

============

*  Slice apples till they are thin

*  Toast waffles & spread peanut butter on BOTH sides

*  Apply honey (Be careful of the amount though) & add apple slices

*  Place waffles together & ENJOY

I dunno 'bout you, but this looks MIGHTY GOOD to me. :)

SOURCE - Real World Martha's Weblog

Episode 06 - Update - On-Air Ham Radio Support Nets

FEATURED An update on my current situation, YouTube Groups & an idea of on-air weight loss support nets via Amateur (e.g. Ham) Radio. PLUS Why is there no option to search BY GROUPS on YouTube??

YouTube Groups Referred To:
===========================

YouTube Weight Loss Surgery - Gastric Bypass
YouTube Weight Loss Surgery - General Discussion
YouTube Weight Loss Surgery - Lap Banders
YouTube Weight Loss Surgery - RNY

Episode 05 - The Arrival Of My Health & Wellness Kit

FEATUREDThe arrival of the Health & Wellness Study Kit which I blogged & (I believe) Twittered about arrived earlier this week.

ADDITIONAL LINKS




NEWS ARTICLES ON THE PROGRAM

Article One
Article Two
Article Three

I've Enrolled In A Health & Welless BUT.....

As I indicated in my Twitter Updates, which you can also see to my left, I got a call from some party claiming to be from Medicaid asking if I'd like to be enrolled in a Health and Wellness Nutrition Program. They didn't want any money from me (Which I thought was a little odd), but did ask some questions and offered to send out a kit via FedEx.

But you know what the REALLY odd part of the whole thing was? Medicaid calling me ON THE WEEKEND!!!!

But just for the heck of it, we'll play along with the gag (They needed to send some forms to my both my PCP & Bariatric Surgeon anyway, so they ought to be able to spot what they think might be a fraud case pretty easily) If they actually do deliver on the goods, I'll post a video on my YT channel showing what they sent.

3 Bean Chilli Recipe

Does this look DELICIOUS or what? :)

How The Lap Band System Works

Lap-Band Procedure

For those who are still wondering how it all works, this MySpace TV video gives a detailed description.



CAUTION - No audio.

Online Via Library Only For Awhile (And First Fill Nerves)

As I suspected for a long time now, issues stemming from my surgery which were NOT in any way directly related caused me to lose my Internet access with Qwest (So much for bundling my Internet with cable or, in this case, satellite anymore. Don't even get me started on that! You really don't wanna see me go there).

In any case, I did go in for my first fill. Suffice to say, those of you who said that it wouldn't hurt were right. In addition, they didn't need to do an ultrasound just to find the hole. All Dr. Metz' assistant did was lay me down on the table (I wish they'd use REAL BEDS in those rooms, don't you?) with a pillow under my back. She then had me inhale and then exhale as she put the needle in. After that, she put in the saline.

After that was done, she had me sit up and drink some of my Aquafina to see if it would go down (Afterall if you can't hold filtered water down, what can you hold down?). After some adjustments were made, she then reminded me of the post-fill diet I have to have every time as well as some other nutritional stuff (No she wasn't one of the nutritionalists at CBSI) and then had me make an appointment for my next fill, which will be next month (June 5).

I wanted to do a video of my weigh-in during my first fill, but my cam would only take pictures. If I had thought of it, I'd have snapped a picture and settled for that. But I did do an audio podcast and when I get the chance next week, I'll upload it (I can't upload audio or video from the neighborhood library branch I'm at now, but I can do it from the main library Downtown as long as the file is on a removable storage device such as my iRiver, which I intend to use if it'll let me export video).

Anyway, I anticipate being offline with my PC until at least September HOWEVER I think this will present me with a good opportunity to get a MySpace prescence for my weight loss blog so I can do some real time blogging with my phone (I don't have a Windows-based handset though I'll be sure that the next phone I get will be EVEN IF I have to switch carriers).

Anyway, that's all the news from here. I will get the audio podcast posted and retro-dated next week if at all possible.

Laters...

Online Via Library Only For Awhile (And First Fill Nerves)

As I suspected for a long time now, issues stemming from my surgery which were NOT in any way directly related caused me to lose my Internet access with Qwest (So much for bundling my Internet with cable or, in this case, satellite anymore. Don't even get me started on that! You really don't wanna see me go there).

In any case, I did go in for my first fill. Suffice to say, those of you who said that it wouldn't hurt were right. In addition, they didn't need to do an ultrasound just to find the hole. All Dr. Metz' assistant did was lay me down on the table (I wish they'd use REAL BEDS in those rooms, don't you?) with a pillow under my back. She then had me inhale and then exhale as she put the needle in. After that, she put in the saline.

After that was done, she had me sit up and drink some of my Aquafina to see if it would go down (Afterall if you can't hold filtered water down, what can you hold down?). After some adjustments were made, she then reminded me of the post-fill diet I have to have every time as well as some other nutritional stuff (No she wasn't one of the nutritionalists at CBSI) and then had me make an appointment for my next fill, which will be next month (June 5).

I wanted to do a video of my weigh-in during my first fill, but my cam would only take pictures. If I had thought of it, I'd have snapped a picture and settled for that. But I did do an audio podcast and when I get the chance next week, I'll upload it (I can't upload audio or video from the neighborhood library branch I'm at now, but I can do it from the main library Downtown as long as the file is on a removable storage device such as my iRiver, which I intend to use if it'll let me export video).

Anyway, I anticipate being offline with my PC until at least September HOWEVER I think this will present me with a good opportunity to get a MySpace prescence for my weight loss blog so I can do some real time blogging with my phone (I don't have a Windows-based handset though I'll be sure that the next phone I get will be EVEN IF I have to switch carriers).

Anyway, that's all the news from here. I will get the audio podcast posted and retro-dated next week if at all possible.

Laters...

Episode 03 - What's In MY WHOLE KITCHEN

FEATURED This audio podcast is a spinoff of the YouTube tagged thread called What's In Your Fridge. Only instead of just covering my fridge, I COVERED THE WHOLE FREAKIN' KITCHEN - Cupboards & all

I also include some Nutritional Information that even surprised ME.



To your good health :)



Enjoy.....

Explaining Metabolisms-- Losing Weight Without Starving

Found the following video on YouTube & thought it would be useful for someone.

What this woman says rings ohh so true doesn't it?

Could A Manufacturer Of CHOCOLATE Actually Make Something NUTRIOUS???

It appears so (And it's NOT chocolate either!). Info. here

Seeing is believing ya know...

REPOST - The Fast Food Industry - Getting FAT At OUR Expen$e?

2008 NOTE: The following is a REPOST of an old blog entry from 2003 even though it's retro-dated. I am in the process of consolidating as many of my blogs & podcasts and felt this old post would be appropriate for posting here. Enjoy! :D

Now that I've figured out HOW to blog correctly (I admit yesterday's blog (posted below) didn't look very good in terms of layout compared to other blogs in the various rings), today's blog will be kinda lengthy as I've got quite a few things on my mind. As such, I'm sure I'm gonna be blogging quite a lot, maybe more than once a day (I am a liberal Democrat who doesn't pull punches :-)). I'm also looking at making use of my webcam and making "video blogs" as well so I can show my emotion in each entry. :-)

In the meantime, WHERE OH WHERE do I start? I may as well start with my first bite of food for today (not to mention the downsizing of the fast food industry). Today, I went to Wendy's in an effort to save some $$$ which I would ordinarily spend (or should I $pend?) at Subway. I ordered a Taco Supremo, some chicken strips, and a biggie diet coke (I much prefer Diet Pepsi as it tastes better :-)). What's the big deal you say? Well....How would YOU like it if you spent THREE DOLLARS on a grand total of THREE chicken strips.

That's right. I said THREE chicken strips.

I said to myself there's more strips of chicken in the display ad than there are in front of me. But knowing that I still had the Taco Supremo (which fills me up quite nicely I might add :-)) and the Diet Coke and knowing that there were people who would be blessed to have those three chicken strips, I didn't complain (at least not in a way which might either get me kicked out of the restaurant or arrested :-)). I ate my food and left a happy customer (even though I was $8.91 poorer in the process).

Speaking of the price I paid, is it just me or is the price of fast food going up? I've noticed this at Subway, but then too its expected there because of the various subs and breads they offer. But you would think a place like Wendy's would offer more HEALTHY meal combinations. I was offered one with the Taco Supremo, but I chose to get a biggie coke instead of a regular size one and got the chicken strips as well. My guess is the clerk who took my order probably did NOT charge me for the combo meal and added them as seperate items instead. I dunno. But gee whiz. Before we all know it, a value meal (no matter what the restaurants call it) will soon cost $10 like the pizzarias are charging now (and HAVE been charging for years.

Speaking of the pizzarias, WHY is it they charge more for ONE pizza than the a place like Wendy's would charge for their stuff FOR AN ENTIRE FAMILY?? I don't get it. Would someone in the pizza industry care to explain this to me? (I'll soon be setting up a method in which you can post your response to each of my blogs).

The reason I bring this up is because I recently saw a report on Fox News showing what McDonald's is doing to encourage healthy eating among adults (it was a feature on an adult version of the "Happy Meal" which has a salad as one of the items). There was speculation that McDonald's was on a "health food drive" to stem the tide of lawsuits being filed by people who claim they got fat because of what McDonald's and other fast food chains offer (and were dumb enough to eat EN MASSE).

This got me wondering. IF McDonald's was SERIOUS about encouraging healthy eating habits, WHY don't they substitute a salad in place of that HAMBURGER they put in kids' Happy Meals?? Could it be that they fear they'll lose business if they do?? If so, I've got a wake up call to them.

YOU ALREADY _ARE_ LOSING BUSINESS!!!!!

This is because parents are either brown bagging their kid's lunch or are ponying up more $$$ for the school lunch program so the kids are fed in the school cafeteria. Either way you look at it, they're skipping McDonald's altogether.

I could could go on and on about this whole fast food thing, but I'm sure you get the gist of it by now. It was just a timing thing since I hadn't posted my (hopeful) daily blog yet. See ya tomorrow. :-)

BLOG LINKS PAGE TO LAUNCH WITH MY BLOG FOR TOMORROW!!!

Speaking of tomorrow....Tomorrow's topic will be on SPAM (the kind you get in email, not the kind you eat). Stay tuned.

Cheers for now :-)

Pat

34 LBS. GONE IN THE FIRST MONTH!!!!!

Made it to my appointment today. I knew I had lost weight (At least two pant sizes) but just look at where I was this time last month BEFORE the surgery and then take a good look at where I am now...

MARCH 1st (Just before I began my clear liquid diet in preparation for surgery....

And this is where I stand AS OF TODAY




As you can see, I passed for 19 yards and got a first down. :D

I am SO happy.

And to think my certified trainer of a brother doesn't think lap bands work!! YO BRO - I AM LIVING PROOF!! (Sorry...Just had to toot my horn and do a little sibling bragging :) *LOL!*).

I went from 311 lbs. down to 277 lbs.

As for my dieting, Wendy (One of the nutritionalists at CBSI) said to keep up what I've been doing HOWEVER I also need to do these things as well....

PROTEIN

* Add a teaspoon of ADDITIONAL Nonfat Dry Milk to my cereal (Especially cold cereals) to completely soften it up.

* Get some EAS Protein Powder from WalMart (My Mom has found some at Walgreens)

* Take my DAILY multivitamins (I admit I need to work on this)

* Take Calcium Citrate (1200 mg a day - Something I plan to do once I get the M-O-N-E-Y to do so)

* Drink more water every day (It's hard to do so when it's like BARELY 50 degrees outside)

* Make sure I add a good protein food to each meal (I had shredded cheese to a bowl of macaroni salad and spinach leaves that I had for lunch after my appointment today).

As for returning to normal foods, Wendy also said to SLOWLY integrate them back into my diet pretty much just as I have been with the soft foods diet - Figure out which foods I can eat and handle without any problems and eliminate those I really struggle with.

Beyond that, not much else to add. My next appointment is with this other nutritionalist who works out of Rose Medical Center (I believe that appointment is on Friday). I'll keep you posted as to how that appointment turns out.

Till next time....

One Week Till Normal Foods

Well as I type this, it is now just over 12 hours (At least I hope, more on that in a moment) till my first post-op appointment with Dr. Metz (My surgeon at the Colorado Bariatric Surgery Institute who performed my surgery). It is here where I'll see just how much weight I've lost in just one month.

The reason I say this could be threatened is because in my zeal to get caught up on my cell phone bill (Which I had to have in order to call the RTD access-a-Ride ParaTransit service I use) and pay for other things I ordered last month (Including a refundable $50.00 deposit for another nutritionalist out of Rose Medical Center & an ID watch dog service), I overspent myself and went WAY....WAY into overdraft. This could cause my bank to take away my first Social Security check (I get both SSI & SSDI) and maybe a small part of my second check to cover bank fees (My mom thinks my check would be safer at her tiny credit union, but what she doesn't realize is that ANY financial institution charges fees for things and her tiny credit union is no different).

Anyway, if the bank DOES take away the check, I'll be stuck in a bind unless I can somehow meet my mom at her credit union when she withdraws her money so she can lend me a few dollars to cover me till the 3rd of the month or until my state rent rebate check is deposited into my account (But that's not expected until April 15th). This could cause me to reschedule this appointment, which has already been rescheduled once as it was originally scheduled for March 17th.

If I do make it to my appointment tomorrow, I'll be sure to jot down my Height, Weight & current BMI so I can execute my next offensive play before I get a Delay Of Game penalty. :)

Till tomorrow.....

FOOD NEWS - Kitchen Literacy

....And while watching the two videos below from my YouTube inbox, I stumbled across these three videos on Kitchen Literacy as well.

Very interesting stuff if I do say so myself.

FOOD NEWS: Michael Pollan - In Defense Of Food

I logged onto my main YouTube to see what my favorite fellow YTers had left for me to see and stumbled across these four very interesting videos in my YT inbox.

Tried Some Tuna Fish Tonight For Dinner.......

.....And paid the price for doing so as I barfed it up in two or three globs. I wasn't even eating all that fast either. In fact, I was eating right about where I should be for a soft foods diet.

I thought (Just as my mom did) I could eat tuna fish on a soft foods diet, but obviously not. That leads me to this (Forgive me if this sounds like a rant as it's really not)

Sometimes I have to keep reminding my mom (Who has been so generous and so helpful to me this month) that I may have had a lap band, I still have a certain body part she doesn't that affects the types of foods she can eat. As such, they are two completely different procedures which force us to be on somewhat similar diets (Keywords being somewhat similar).

She also thinks I'm gonna be eating the same kinds of foods she does for the rest of my life (Heck, she even offered to cook dinners for me since I started the soft foods diet). I have to keep reminding her that I'll be able to eat normal foods once again. The only thing is that the selection will just be more nutritiously healthier and in smaller portions. She doesn't have this going for her.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Mom's cooking and again, she's been SUPERB in helping me get through this past month. But I just don't wanna depend on her every friggin' day. I wanna be able to eat my meals just as I did before the surgery, only with foods I'm allowed to eat and in the portions I'm allowed to eat them in.

And yes of course, the manner in which I'm allowed to eat them in too (My mom asked if I wanted a glass of water as I sat at the table waiting to determine whether the Tuna Fish was gonna go down or come right back up. I had to remind her I couldn't drink anything while eating and vice versa).

Anyway....That's all the news that's fit to post for now.

Laters.....

MILESTONE - 2 Weeks Post-Op!

Don't let the posting date of the last video fool you (Look at the date in the video itself). But in any case, I have reached a milestone as of yesterday.

I am now two weeks post-op. That means I can now eat soft foods (Not solids just yet).

But lemme tell you, I'd be lying to you if I said these last two weeks were a breeze. They weren't exactly excruciating either. But they have led to the beginning of things I'm just gonna get used to
though. For instance, the amount of food I eat.

Here's a classic example of what I mean....

Just last week there was a stretch where I was eating MORE THAN ONE helping of food at
lunch and/or dinner AT ONCE. Only thing is my mom (Who's been preparing my meals since she's used to doing it for herself and she did it for my dad when he was alive) NEVER TOLD
ME it was supposed to cover more than one meal.

As such, I was left wondering if my lap band had slipped because of the amount of pureed food I was taking in as a result.

Well I think that question was put to rest last night while I was eating dinner. The reason was I got to eating WAY too fast and things started backing up in the digestive system. I sat there for about five minutes wondering if I was gonna wind up puking some of my dinner up or it was
gonna go down without incident.

Suffice to say that it went down (Albeit SLOWLY!) and I was able to slowly resume eating.

Anyhow, I just started on my new soft foods diet today although I'm still eating stuff from my pre-op diet as well.

Unless my calender is off, I'll be on the soft foods until April 5th at which point I'll be able to eat normal foods (Only in smaller portions than before the surgery) until just before my first lap band restriction when I'll likely have to go back to a pureed diet for a day or two later next month.

Then THE REAL work begins - THE EXCERCISING!!!!

As My Weight Loss World Turns TV Episode 01 (As My World Turns Episode 9)

This video depicts and covers the departure from my
apartment building in the wee hours of the morning
of my surgery thru the arrival at the hospital and
shows me in my private area in the AM Admissions
Department as the nurse is preparing me for surgery.

My only wish is that I had my cam with me during my
entire stay so that I could do a segment post-op as
well as maybe one as I'm getting my excercise. But
alas, things didn't work out that way.

Ohh well. That's the way the cookie crumbles
sometimes....