Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Dietary Drivel


So I am about to embark on that age-old and very popular struggle for weight loss. Better yet, I’m going to be paying people to tell me what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. It sounds dreary and pointless, I know. I’m taking solace, however, in the fact that this programme is meant to be a lifestyle change, I’m meant to learn how to eat healthy. Better yet, this isn’t a cookie cutter diet. It is 100% personalised, based on my glycemic index and whatever else they take into account from my blood. Like excess protein created by the IGA Nephropathy, which is threatening me with a kidney transplant in the next twenty years. I don’t want a kidney transplant. I’d rather keep all my own internal organs, thank you very much.
While most people pay other people to help them lose weight for vanity, my vanity only covers about 40% of my motivation. The rest is health. I go to the gym; I eat relatively healthy as it is right now. Except I still eat pre-packaged food and junk food. And while my lifestyle is great for maintaining my weight (I haven’t gained or lost even a fraction of a kilo in the past year) it is not conducent to me losing weight. And if I want to avoid the family curse of diabetes, it’s the losing weight part that is most important.
I tend to gain muscle mass as quickly as, or faster than, I lose fatty weight. So my goals in weight loss are an either/or sort of scenario. Either I want to lose 30 kilos, or I want to be a nice size 10. And not just at Old Navy, either. A universal size 10. Relatively speaking. I do, however, want to make a considerable dent in my weight numerically speaking by the next time I see my specialist. That is to say that I want to lose somewhere between 15 and 30 pounds by March. So what does this “paid to be personal” weight loss plan give me to accomplish this sort of goal? Well, let’s air it all out so you can judge me and bully me into staying on track!
So this plan started with blood work. The blood work was to get an idea of my overall health, my glycemic index, cholesterol level, and all of that fun stuff. In my case, my cholesterol is a smidgen high, so for the next twelve weeks I’m limited in my intake of red meats. Then I get another blood test. Yay! From the blood analysis I am given a list of foods I can have, and a chart of the different food combinations I can have. My distaste for beans means that I will be having a lot of chicken. Good thing I like chicken!
I do have to weigh myself and my food, which might be a pain, but it will also be interesting. This diet is going to force me to cook, and to come up with new recipes, and fun stuff like that. Speaking of recipes, anyone know any good ways to cook beans? Fucking beans.
I get to eat 3 times a day, with no less than 5 hours between meals, and I have to have dinner at least 2 hours before bed. I also have to drink 2 litres of water daily. I can also have tea (without milk) and, though not recommended, diet colas (in moderation). So yay for not being limited to water and only water! It also allows me to cheat with one meal bi-weekly (which is great with Thanksgiving coming up soon!)
I will have a consultant who I can phone or e-mail who will help me with anything and everything I need help with, as well as keep on top of me with weekly check-ins where I have to update her on my weight and measurements. The blogosphere will only be burdened with monthly check-ins, however. If I remember. This whole diet thing starts tomorrow (only because I didn’t get to do shopping until today. And I just remembered I forgot to buy sugar substitute. Whey.) I also get a personal grand tour of a new gym in Fergus that I will probably be joining.
So, interweb, it is time to put that cyber-bullying to good use! Keep me in line!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Missing the Boat.


Today’s world is constantly shrinking. Far off and remote countries are becoming easily accessible, be it through travel, or through vicarious experiences on the internet or TV. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a stretch that, as the globe shrinks, understanding and compassion between cultures increases. It shouldn’t be, but apparently it is a huge stretch. A gaping chasm, even. Instead of diminishing stereotypes, this close-knit global community just seems to create more stereotypes, giving them a vast, if not gullible, audience. So while the phenomenon of globalisation should, in theory, bring the peoples of the Earth closer together, it instead helps to magnify stereotypes and raise fear and intolerance. A pretty bold statement, to be sure, but often hyperbole is needed for illustration.
What has brought about this little rant of mine? Well, it has been in the news a lot recently, especially in Canada, and I think Australia as well. Asylum seekers seem to be getting a bad rap. Third world refugees in desperate search for asylum from turmoil and danger in their home countries try to find their way to first world nations, such as Canada and Australia, hoping for reprieve from the situations plaguing them in their home countries. It’s a shame that we tend to view these people as terrorists or liars without offering them compassion or the chance to make their case.
This discomfort with the common treatment of refugees was sparked by the news story in Canada of the boat coming from Sri Lanka full of Tamils. It was compounded when this video dealing with the asylum seeker issue in the Australian election was brought to my attention. If the world is shrinking into a global community, why are we becoming increasingly discriminatory? Is this sudden shrinking of the globe, the blurring of national identities scaring us so much that we have to face it with a greater force of stubborn prejudice and “national pride”?
In Australia many scholars have written on the subject, and especially in the past ten years, they have deplored and lamented how the Australian government has treated asylum seekers shamefully, undermining what they view as the dual purpose of Australia’s government, as it was set forth in the ‘70s and ‘80s. That is to atone and apologise for the sins of its past whilst acknowledging that the country must also open its doors as a refuge, a place of solace, for the oppressed of the world. Some scholars have gone as far as to call the Australian government’s treatment of refugees as “rotten”. This is illustrated by recent governments who have made a strong effort to make “Asylum Seeker” synonymous with “Illegal Immigrant” a notion that is blatantly false, and harmful to those people in genuine peril, fleeing their homes for a new sanctuary.
This villainous attack on refugees is made all the more lamentable when you look at the fact that, as of 2005, there were eight thousand community-based refugees in Australian. Most of these refugees tend to be Sri Lankan, which is interesting in that Canada is having problems with Tamils. Also in that it has been statistically illustrated that refugee recognition rates are lower for those that come from poorer countries. But I’m not Australian; so I won’t dwell on their asylum seekers, instead, let us turn to Canada! (Blame Canada.)
Canada has recently received a boatload of Tamils on our Vancouver port, and not for the first time. However, it seems that a second boatload in less than a decade have made us less than accepting. Instead of deploring the conditions in which these people came over, packed into the boat like sardines in a tin can, and offering these human beings a sort of welcoming comfort, we labelled them “terrorists” before they even arrived on our shores, and accused them of human trafficking. No one mourned the Tamil who died at sea. Overall, Canadians were rather hostile toward the Tamils. A poll showed that 70% of Canadians felt that we should force the Tamils to return to Sri Lanka and face persecution. In Alberta, Canada’s province of traditional conservatism, only 17% of those polled believed that the Tamils should be given the opportunity to stay.
And we call ourselves a multicultural nation? A proud mosaic, accepting of others’ cultural differences? Maybe on the paper-thin surface. Due to the sudden influx of refugees, which the government has labelled the “Mass Arrival,” Harper’s government is planning to put forth a motion to Parliament to increase the duration of a refugee’s detention from 48 hours to 2 weeks. What exactly will this accomplish? No, seriously, I missed the news story. What will this accomplish?
Maybe Canada and Australia have such a hard time accepting third world refugees because they’re following the examples set by Mother England? After all, the UK did not allow for the 1951 Geneva Convention on human rights to supersede national immigration laws until 1993. Isn’t that a long time to basically scoff at international law? Maybe I’m just being ridiculous to think that, in today’s world, we should be more welcoming and understanding of the plight of other human beings. Shouldn’t we be above blind witch hunts against “terrorists” just because of a person’s visible religion, culture, or nationality? I was taught not to judge a book by its cover, which I thought meant withholding judgement until you met or talked to someone. But I guess it is easier to make a snap judgement and then hand the onus over to proving you wrong. This doesn’t make sense to me. But then again, fear is more powerful, and more malleable, than understanding.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Summer Wine.


Have you noticed a distinct lack of activity recently? It isn’t just because I’m a lazy git, though that is part of the explanation. I was actually on a mini-holiday with my family. We had five days (Sunday - Thursday) to venture up to northern Ontario and visit with family. The five days we had overlapped with the camping dates of the family members we were visiting, so we decided to spend two of our days at Pancake Bay with them before taking off the rest of the way up to Wawa just to be able to spend some time in our grandparents’ old house.
It was a delightfully short visit, and I took pictures. Lots of pictures. So I thought that I would use this blog as a little online travel journal, at least just this once. That’s a lie. I’ll probably use it as a travel journal every time I go somewhere and take pictures. Luckily, that doesn’t happen often.
This holiday was so short mainly due to the fact that Fan Expo started on Friday, and Ashley had already booked a posh hotel for us to spend a weekend stocking Stan Lee. The upside to such a short holiday is that it doesn’t give my back the opportunity to create massive amounts of pain in protest, and it doesn’t give my aunt the chance to get judgemental and preachy. Or at least not unbearingly judgemental and preachy. We shall come to that. But first, let us talk about camping!
A week ago Saturday I headed up to Pancake Bay with my family. The plan was really quite simple – we were going to meet up with my aunt and her family, and spend a couple of days camping with them before heading up to Wawa for a couple of days. It really was a whirlwind holiday which commenced with a 12 hour journey in a red pickup truck.
The campsite was very pretty and fairly close to the lake, which was a calm and pristine blue when we arrived. After setting up the campsite, which was as easy as pi, I wandered off to the beach so that I could dig my feet into the sand and work on my thesis proposal. Which I did. For two hours. Actually, writing out my thesis took a full twenty minutes, the rest of the time was spent watching the water. When I finally decided to join the family I helped my baby cousin cook a hotdog in the bonfire for dinner, then took the kids swimming after dinner.
The next day I hiked up to the lookout to enjoyed the breath-taking view of Lake Superior for a while. It was a solid 11km hike that I decided to go on, and it was worth every step, even the wobbly ones near the end. Of course, after getting back to civilisation I have been informed that I was very silly for doing this and shot my knee to all hell. I do this often, however, so it doesn’t really bother me.
On our last day Lake Superior had a little rumble and was creating some nice sized waves so Heidi and I decided to take the kids and the dogs down to the dog beach for a little swim. Only one kid decided to come, and after 45 minutes of walking, we managed to go for a little bit of a swim. Felix didn’t have a good time, seeing as the waves rolling onto the shore were at least thrice his size, but Zeus and Annika loved it. Annika loved it so much, in fact, that I had to swim out to get her at least four times. After all, I wasn’t willing to go back to camp and say “sorry, I lost your youngest to Superior’s undertow.” Everyone had a good time, and it was a nice way to end the camping segment of our holiday.
Up in Wawa life was nice and relaxed. We didn’t get in until about 8, so that first day didn’t really amount to much. But the next day, which was also our only full day there, was chalk full of fun. The morning consisted of bumming around reading journal articles, but the afternoon was comprised of a trip out to camp, a walk around the old family lodge, a trip to the High Falls, and a visit with my grandparents. The evening brought wine and my brother’s fabulous cooking, a really rather tasty treat. It also brought my aunt raving about altmeds. I should get a medal for keeping my mouth shut.
The holiday was capped by another twelve hour stretch in the truck, which was only broken up by stops at trading posts (at one of which I bought myself a new pair of moccasins!) and refuelling. By the time we got home, I was in hurry mode to do laundry, have dinner, and do a wee bit of packing so that the three hours I had to get ready Friday morning could be spent doing the running around that had to be done. Which it was.
FanExpo was a great cap to my holidays, as Ashley and I stayed in the Royal York and got to live the life of posh geeks for the weekend. It was a geeky heaven that was highlighted by a Dalek, Stan Lee, William Shatner, and awesome commissions in need of framing.