Line Dancing Tuesday

We haven't been to the line dancing class in two or three weeks.  I bet it's going to be HARD today!  LOL!  Mark and I have really been enjoying it, and yet neither of us can remember the songs or steps once we leave.  Do you think they are pumping amnesiac drugs through the air conditioning system?

I have spent three weeks practicing for the auditions last night, and still I blew a line in the first song I did.  Blah, blah...goes one of the lines.  Even though the music was in front of me, by the time I glanced down and found the line, the line was over!  Sheesh.  Then they ran way behind time, so I was there from 5-7 and they didn't get to the second song.  I had to sing another two hour rehearsal until 9, then sit through 9 guys singing one of their audition pieces and six other ladies singing my song before I got up there to sing.  By then I was tired, exhausted, and barely cared anymore.  The lady who came after me, the last one, did a fabulous job.  I am not holding out much hope that I am going to get either of these songs.  Oh, well....that's life in show business.  LOL!

On the positive side:
1.  I won three games at Mah Jongg yesterday, including the very first two that I played.
2.  I am down two pounds this morning, and today should be an awesome day calorie-wise. I expect to report that two pounds (or maybe even a smidge more?) tomorrow on the official day.
3.  Our friend Al got released from the hospital yesterday after his stem cell transplant.  WOW!!  That was about a week earlier than predicted. He has been a SUPERMAN through this entire year of cancer treatment.  The stem cell transplant went super well, too.

I am down to the final two little articles from Diabetic Living magazine.  One is super short, so I'm just going to do both of them today and finish this up.

Eating breakfast protects against obesity.

MAYBE!

"How long and how many times have you heard this one?  It has attained the status of absolute truth among the widely accepted principles of weight loss.  There's one problem.  There's no solid research to back it up. 'People have always heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day,' Casazza says. 'We're not saying that it isn't. It may be for reasons other than being preventive against obesity.  What we are saying is that skipping breakfast doesn't make you any more or less likely to lose weight.'  What matters far more is how many calories you eat over the course of the day, not when you eat them. If you're not hungry in the morning, don't force something down. When you do get hungry, choose foods that support your weight loss goal."

This sounds logical to me.  I know many weight loss programs insist on breakfast.  Personally, I love breakfast and I'm usually hungry within an hour of waking up. I'm more than ready to eat something.  The rationale in most programs is that if you skip breakfast, you will overeat at lunch or have an inappropriate mid-morning snack because you are too hungry to be sensible.  That is probably true for lots of people.  On the other hand, I went a year in high school by skipping breakfast and lunch.  I only ate dinner and a bedtime snack and I lost weight.  I lost it very slowly, and I probably slowed my metabolism down for the rest of my life by living near starvation for so long. I would NOT recommend that to anyone, but when I was 17 in the 1960s, I didn't know any better.  Still, I totally agree that it is calories taken in over the course of the day that really counts.  If someone isn't hungry for breakfast and doesn't overeat at lunch, then it should make no difference whether they ate breakfast or not.  In fact, on my program now, if I skipped the meager 180 calories I eat at breakfast, I could add them into a bigger meal later in the day.  I have sometimes had a big "brunch," combining the breakfast and lunch calories, just because that made the day go smoother. 

Breast-feeding protects children against obesity.

FALSE!

"As if there aren't enough things to worry about with an infant, this tsk-tsking has been thrown on the pile for years.  But babies, who are breast-fed are no fatter or thinner as adults than those who aren't. 'This is one of the areas where we got a lot of pushback,' Casazza says. 'People just didn't want to hear this.'  But that doesn't change its lack of factual basis. Whether a new mother breast-feeds or not is a complex decision based on multiple factors--this shouldn't be one of them."

I agree completely.  I was not a breast-fed baby and neither was my sister.  I was fat.  She was thin.  It was apparent early in our lives that her eating habits and relationship with food were completely different from mine.  Both our parents were overweight as adults, but not as children or young adults.  I breast-fed both of my babies.  Neither is fat.  They are both active and healthy adults.  I really don't think breast-feeding has anything to do with adult weight, but it certainly is the healthiest thing to do for an infant for many other reasons. I am glad I was able to breast feed my children!

LOL!  I just remembered that breast feeding babies is supposed to help protect against future breast cancer.  NOT!  Guess that's an old myth as well.