Rebecca Mastey's Blog

Guest Appearance

I made my first blog guest appearance last week over at Piotr’s tech-money-Linux-life-win blog. If you’re interested in reading my ramblings on taking the first steps to freelance writing, you can click right here and read the post. It’s accompanied by an interesting graphic, which I’m having a hard time deciphering. It’s either a spotted praying mantis or an out of focus fountain pen.

What prompted this philanthropic content for Piotr’s wayward blog, you might ask. It wasn’t exactly philanthropic. As you can see at the end of the post, there’s a nice little link to my new project, Write Translation. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about getting traffic, until I remembered the obvious. Piotr’s blog is a) cool, b) trafficked and c) relevant.

He was kind enough to write up a guest post for Write Translation, which you can also read (and simultaneously increase my Google Analytics hit count) by clicking here.

In case you’re curious, Write Translation is a little project dedicated to all those non-native (English) writers. Those people who are legitimately skilled at stringing together words, just…in a different language. There’s a problem among writers, native and non, that ends up with clients expecting a 5,000 word article for two bucks. Honestly, it hasn’t gotten that bad yet, but it’s getting there.

So, Write Translation is made for all those wordsmiths that just can’t English. With luck, it will help them English gooder. At the very least, it’ll be fun.

As a final plus, I have learned to spell – but not yet pronounce – Piotr’s last name.

K R Z Y Z E K.

Update: Neglect

Well, I’ve been neglecting this section of the site for a reason. It’s really, really hard to admit defeat, or, rather, to refuse to admit defeat and keep fighting as its ugly face mocks you.

Things went well for the first few days. Then, of course, my motivation began to slip. Life happened. Older kids got sick. Then I got sick. Then they got sick again.

Add in work, and housework, and the way he cried when he just wanted food and no part of my crazy attempt to resurrect the dead horse. The way I cried when I realized what a complete and udder (hyuck hyuck) failure this has been.

I’m trying to not get discouraged. I can always start again and he is nursing more than he was 3 weeks ago. He’s also more apt to nurse than he was. My darling friend, who shall be known only as B1, suggested that I start bringing him to bed with me. Since I’m lying on the couch typing this while he sits snugly in his sleepy-bouncy-chair, it’s fairly obvious I’ve ignored the advice in favor of something else. I’ll pick him up when the caffeine wears off and I hit the hay.

One thing’s for sure, though. It’s not going to happen within the 28 days, since I only have 5 days left. That’s OK. He’ll get there, and I’ll stop avoiding accountability out of guilt, too.

High insulin levels help you lose weight – at what cost?

I read an interesting study on the links between insulin levels and weight. The researchers suggest that a high insulin level is negatively associated with weight gain, which, in turn, suggests a high-glycemic diet is a benefit to those attempting to lose weight. I don’t have access to the full-text version, but the abstract alone left me scratching my head.

Reduced insulin secretion: an independent predictor of body weight gain

Relatively reduced insulin secretion, therefore, is a significant and independent predictor of the tendency to gain weight and adiposity in Pima Indians. The presence of relative insulin resistance also conferred an independent reduction in the risk of weight gain in some regression analyses. We conclude that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia are unlikely to play a causal role in the development of obesity, and that relatively reduced insulin secretion is a marker of an increased risk of weight gain in this population.

Without knowing the methodology of the study, it’s impossible to say how (if at all) the researchers controlled for the high rate – 50% + – of insulin-resistance among the Pima Indians. It’s also impossible to say if they found any causal or correlative relationship between the insulin-resistance and weight-loss, but failed to mention it in the abstract.

However, it’s clear that the researchers wanted to drive home the point that a high insulin-level conferred weight-loss, while a relatively reduced level was at least correlative to weight-gain. Let’s take a look at why this could be.

In an even cursory examination of the initial effects of Type II Diabetes, it’s obvious that a high-insulin level is correlative to weight-loss. Type II diabetics are insulin resistant – their cells do not respond to the insulin as do the cells of non-diabetics. In a normal individual, insulin drives the use and storage of circulating blood glucose, which results in blood glucose spikes and drops and, eventually, weight gain.

In a diabetic, though, the cells don’t respond to insulin. The circulating insulin can knock on the cell’s door all the day, demanding it take in the circulating glucose, but the cell won’t respond. This leads to incredibly high blood glucose levels and weight loss. Since the cells aren’t taking in the easily utilized glucose, they fall back on fat stores. The utilization of fat stores releases ketone bodies, which, in uncontrolled diabetics, results in ketoacidosis.

In another study that examines the relationship between weight gain and Type II diabetes, the researchers note the different responses to insulin among different ages. In the young, most studies conclude that high insulin levels are positively associated with weight gain. In the aged, many studies show, to one degree or another, a negative association between the two.

Obesity and Weight Gain Are Associated with Increased Incidence of Hyperinsulinemia in Non-Diabetic Men

On the contrary, higher levels of insulin predicted a gain in body weight and obesity in Pima Indian children [9] and in U.S. black and white young adults [12]. It has been suggested that hyperinsulinemia promotes weight gain in children and young adults, and that subsequent increase in insulin resistance and compensatory hyperinsulinemia then limits further weight gain in adults [9, 27].

The simplest explanation is that the young are not insulin-resistant and their cells respond to the call to store the glucose. As we age, we develop insulin-resistance and our cells are unable to utilize the circulating glucose. The former will result in weight gain, while the latter will result in weight loss.

If we’re solely concerned about achieving a healthy weight, then older individuals should aim for a higher insulin level. A high insulin level will encourage cells to stop responding to the insulin and utilize stored fat for energy. However, as the researchers note, high insulin levels come at a price.

These prospective population-based data emphasize the importance of avoiding obesity and weight gain during adulthood to prevent hyperinsulinemia [excessive insulin production] and, eventually, type 2 diabetes.

The high insulin levels may aid in short-term weight loss, but excessive insulin is a known precursor to diabetes. I’m still searching for the full text of the original study, and hope the researchers addressed this problem.

Local: District 158 less than honest (surprise!)

A long time ago, when I wrote on a different blog, I talked a little bit about Larry Snow. I don’t remember much about Larry Snow anymore, since he’s not extraordinarily relevant, but I do know that his name represented something insidious about District 158. Mostly, that it always seems to be BSing everyone in McCo.

I was meandering through The McHenry County Blog and saw a post about the Huntley District Supervisor calling out Krug via an editorial on the NWHerald. A commenter mentioned Larry Snow, and in a strange twist of serendipity my interest was piqued. If you don’t know who Krug is, don’t know where Huntley is, or have no idea what the NWHerald is, you can probably stop reading now because, well, you just won’t care.

The long and short of it is this: Chris Krug, executive editor, called District 158 on a $7-something million dollar projected deficit for 2011.

Here’s a fair-use snippet with background information linked throughout.

Somehow, District 158, which was running with a $1.8 million surplus in 2007-08, is now projecting that it will be $7.1 million in the hole in 2010. If you go back a bit deeper into the archives, you can find a story we wrote that included information on the district’s past financial situation. In that story, we documented that District 158 had a surplus of $6.3 million in 2004-05….

…And this is the same district that caved in, on a 6-0 vote, to approve massive increases in teacher compensation in the fall of 2008. How big? Well, as the economy was rusting like the door off an old Norge refrigerator and unemployment already had begun to fly off the chart, the District 158 board approved a deal that would give teachers incremental raises of more than 5 percent a year…

…OK, so let’s examine that: The district is going to cut back on books (still a pretty important part of, you know, learning stuff), technology (who needs that when our kids have PlayStation3 at home), crumbling roads (ah, we’re used to those; drive on them all the time) and cleaning the building (kids are so messy, after all), and then try to find a few extra bucks somewhere.

Haven’t heard anything from the teachers just yet.

Well, we won’t hear anything from the teachers. They’ve sucked enough blood for the next 2 years, so we won’t hear from Huntley again until 2011.

In the responding column, the District Supervisor states

Mr. Krug stated that District 158 had projected a $7.1 million deficit for 2011. In fact, a budget with such a deficit was never presented. Instead, the district has worked to reduce spending in certain areas to ensure that we do not spend down our fund balances. To that end, the first draft of the 2011 budget projected a $742,000 operating deficit, which was only a result of a necessary accounting shift needed to correctly report and allocate funds that were received through the federal ARRA program. This funding shift was approved by the Board of Education as a part of the fiscal 2010 budget, approved in September 2009.

Starting on page 359, the scenario suggests a $7+ million deficit. He claims D158 isn’t deficit spending, yet the scenario budget suggests a dip into the reserve fund in excess of $7,000,000. Perhaps he needs to check his math, or his honesty, before posting things that don’t take into account his school board’s own documents.

Why is this important? This is the way McCo is heading. D200 is cutting PreK services further, D50 is building a school they know won’t be adequate within a decade and property taxes are rising to support the bloated educational costs despite plummeting property values.

But…the children! our teacher’s unions will scream. I have kids. I like my kids. Stop obsessing about the kids and start thinking about economics. George Carlin (RIP) said it best.

And I also know that all you boring single dads and working moms, who think
you're such     ing heros, aren't gonna like this, but somebody's gotta tell
you for your own good: your children are overrated and overvalued, and
you've turned them into little cult objects. You have a child fetish, and
it's not healthy. And don't give me all that weak     , "Well, I love my
children."      you! Everybody loves their children; it doesn't make you
special. John Wayne Gacy loved his children. Yes, he did. That's not
what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this constant, mindless
yammering in the media, this neurotic fixation that suggests that somehow
everything--everything--has to revolve around the lives of children. It's
completely out of balance.

Kickin’ It Old School

I was an old school gal today. The disposable diapers were no where to be seen, so Eli sported cloth diapers for much of the morning. My hairbrush was gone, so I had to use a baby comb. My moisturizer was MIA, so it was just a slather of Aquaphor. Couldn’t find the wipes, so Eli’s soiled little butt went into the sink. (This is a charming way to start the morning, by the way.)

Then, we didn’t have laundry detergent. Of course, this just adds to the mysterious disappearance of the diapers, hair brush, moisturizer and wipes. Is there some evil, hobo gnome wandering through the house, taking every useful hygiene item he can find?

The laundry detergent could at least be cured. I didn’t particularly feel like trekking to the store, at 8AM, in the cold, with the cranky, naked baby and the hungry/tired/obnoxious preschoolers. So, we did it old school and made our own detergent.

It worked surprisingly well. I may make a habit of doing it, since soap and baking soda are undeniably cheaper than bottled detergents. Or I may just do it until I decide to shell out the cash for “real” detergent. Either way, it was kind of fun in that Little House on the Prairie kind of way.

Husband off the bandwagon, I’m back on

Darling husband gave up on the 28 day challenge. I can’t blame him. For a guy who usually eats an excess of 3,000 calories per day, a restriction to “real food” was a real challenge.

I, however, am back on the bandwagon after a two day Sabbatical. Fortunately for me, those two days (hibachi with fried rice one night, chicken tikka masala with naan and basmati rice the next) did no damage. Back on the low-carb diet and the weight is continuing to come off at the pleasant rate of .5 to 1 pound every two days. As I zone in on the “last 20″ I expect my rush to slow to a creeping crawl of a pound or less per week.

So, what’s the diet?

• Nothing processed (sugar-free bacon and cheese excluded)
• Nothing high in omega-6s (read: grains and seeds)

I’ve been eating a lot (a lot) of vegetables and meat. My slightly hippy-chick side has a problem with the meat part, but the cow and impending pig alleviate some of my crisis of conscience. So does a recent TIME article on the ecological benefits of locally raised, pastured beef.

The “bad” part of the diet is that it’s ludicrisly high in fat. On some days, I guesstimate nearly 60% of my energy comes in the form of fat from dairy, meat/fish/foul and nuts such as macadamias. Since science has already established that fat isn’t going to kill you, I’m not too worried about it.

I’ve been largely avoiding fruit. It sends my blood-sugar in a strange tailspin that exacerbates my hypoglycemia. Ditto on alcohol, although the occasional glass of dark red wine pairs well with 99% dark chocolate.

Some have suggested this is a “Paleo” diet, which is, quite honestly, a large load of bull-shit. This is a “don’t eat crap carrying a corporate logo” diet. Over the past two weeks, I’ve put back packages of [frozen] vegetables simply because they carried a ConAgra or Monsanto associated insignia.

Our grocery bill (the second largest concern) hasn’t been significantly impacted by this. Veggies in my neck of the woods are surprisingly – if people from other parts of the country are to be believed – cheap. I managed to buy an obscene amount of food for under $45. I <3 Joseph’s Marketplace, by the way.

Fat’s not gonna kill you

Since the 1970s, Americans have been blasted with the “fat is lethal” mantra from doctors, nutrition experts, bureaucrats, Congressmen and the nosy old blue-haired lady at the grocery store. Finally, this nonsense might be coming to an end.

I won’t go into the long legacy of the fat=death kerfuffle (Gary Taubes does it well in the first section of his book Good Calories, Bad Calories). Needless to say, it’s messy and confusing and not scientific at all.

Recently, the Annals of Nutrition published the findings of an analysis of several relevant studies on the association between coronary heart disease (CHD) and fat intake. You can read the full report here, but here are a few highlights.

Intake of total fat was not significantly associated with CHD mortality [page 3 of 29]

Intake of TFA [trans fat] was strongly associated with CHD mortality [page 9 of 29]

Intake of SFA was not significantly associated with CHD mortality [page 9 of 29]

Intake of MUFA [monounsaturated fats] was not significantly associated with CHD mortality [page 9 of 29]

A 5% incremental increase in PUFA [polyunsaturated fats] intake was associated with a significantly lower risk of CHD events, but not with CHD mortality [page 9 of 29]

the lowfat diets did not affect CHD events [page 16 of 29]

Transfat is going to kill you. Polyunsaturated fats are going to save your heart. Later, in the discussion section

There is probably no direct relation between total fat intake and risk of CHD. The strongest evidence in support of this judgement comes from the Women’s Health Initiative that showed that CHD risk was not reduced after 8 years of a low-fat diet. The observational evidence, summarised in the meta-analysis, showed no association between total fat intake and CHD risk, although there was heterogeneity between the study results…

Clinical trials of fat-modified diets, in particular lowfat or high P/S diets, and coronary disease are rarely single factor interventions. Substitution of 1 type of fat for another or reducing total fat intake, invariably results in a range of food substitutions such that intake of other macro- and micronutrients is altered.

There’s a whole lot more in there that I could quote. It’s an amazing review that discusses one of the most life-altering mysteries of the 20th century. Dietary fat has been blamed for the ills of our time-from obesity to diabetes to depression-yet no study, to date, has provided a solid, causal relationship.The majority of studies supporting the dietary fat/ heart disease link, as this analysis states, involve confounding factors.

What these studies do succeed at, though, is the induction of the healthy patient syndrome. Just as the flu shot prevents 50% of deaths from all causes, study participants are so immersed in a culture of recording food that they naturally gravitate toward healthier eating. A reduction in fat may coincide with a reduction in refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, chemical additives, salt or any number of other potentially hazardous items. The suggestion to reduce fat intake may cause participants to seek out healthier alternatives, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. In essence, researches may be incidentally encouraging a “whole foods” diet, and the reduction heart disease recorded could, potentially, be attributed to a lower consumption of processed foods.

One of the major confounding factors involved in judging (accurately) the effects of “total dietary fat” on our health is the location of most of that fat. We’re more likely to take in the deadly fat/sugar combination through cookies, cakes and candies than take in large quantities of saturated fats from red meat. Perhaps it’s time we looked away from the fat, just for a moment, and turned our attention to our highly-refined, highly-processed food culture.

How to Add eHow Widget to WordPress

I was surfing through my Analytics page and discovered some wayward searcher stumbled upon my blog in hopes of finding out how to add the eHow widget to WordPress. What they found was my eHow Widget for WordPress plugin. Mea culpa. This post exists just in case another poor soul happens upon my blog while looking for the same information.

First, grab your eHow Widget code here. You need to be logged in for the link to work. Copy everything in the Widget Embed Code box.

Next, open up your WordPress admin panel and move on over to the Widgets menu*. Drag-and-drop the Text option from the Available Widgets pane to the desired sidebar**. A nice, big text box will pop up.

Fill in the title, if you want to, or skip it.

Paste the code from the eHow website into the open, unnamed text area. Click Save.

Open up your blog to see how it looks. It might be too big for the area. That’s OK! Go back to the Widgets menu. Open up that Text widget. Look at the code in there. The eHow Widget follows this pattern

• opening tag
• src=”url”
• width=”xxx”
• height=”xxx”

Adjust the width down to the size of your sidebar, in pixels. Unless you know how wide your sidebar is, you’ll need to do this a few times for trial-and-error. Also, adjust the height (again, in pixels) so all the information displays. Just keep double=quotation marks (“”) around the numbers and you’ll be good to go.

* The Widget menu address is usually http://www.yourblogaddress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php

** You need to be using a widget-ready theme. If you aren’t, you can’t use widgets. Most themes are widget-ready.

The Cow

The [half a] cow we ordered many moons (OK, weeks) ago is now here. I picked it up from Jone’s Packaging Company yesterday. The blessed moo came in nicely cut pieces, wrapped in butcher’s paper and arranged in seven flat cardboard boxes. Three additional bags of “trimmings,” each about 10 to 15 pounds, sat in two square boxes. I awed the man at the packaging company with my super-female strength by helping him heft the 40-pound boxes. A few minutes of Tetris and we were off.

Half of a cow, roughly 270 pounds of usable meat, fit neatly in the trunk of my minivan.

Mom and I divied up the meat. Her living room floor was blanketed in a sheet of white bundles as we “one for me”d our way into organization. Then we set off to grind up the trimmings.

Sane Most people have the butcher grind up the meat for them. I’m a little squeamish of meat-germs, though, and the company wouldn’t package the meat the way I wanted. Besides, the whole purpose of buying the cow was to be more involved in my food chain. I wouldn’t couldn’t butcher it, so I figured the least I could do was some of the processing.

In the first bag-o-trimmings, we discovered a treasure trove of dark red cuts that needed some cleaning. Most of the hard fat was trimmed off and those pieces were set aside for stew, jerky, grilling or whatever other thing we could think of. The remaining pieces were promptly put through the KitchenAid meat grinder.

The second bag had fewer nice cuts, but provided plenty of tallow (for Shannon to make suet balls and to feed Neighbor Lady’s chickens) and lots of nice looking ground beef. Mom made some meat balls with it, then smothered them in canned spaghetti sauce (btw, Mom, thanks, I wanted to eat those).

The third bag sat until today, because I didn’t have the energy to get through it. It was slow going this afternoon, but it’s mostly done.

I had a total emotional break down over the cow last night. Darling Husband and I made stir fry with some of the stew meat (note: stew meat is tough, this was a bad call on my part). All I could think about was how happy the cow was when I last saw it. And I was eating it. Poor cow.

Maybe I should be a vegetarian.

Why now?

When Elijah was born way way back in June of 2009, I was determined to exclusively breastfeed him. Exclusively breastfed can be shorted to EBF, for those of you who aren’t in-the-know. All was going well, with mostly boobie milk and the odd bottle if he was particularly ravenous, until his 1 month check up. My 8lb 15oz at-birth son had ballooned up to…8lbs 9oz. If that’s not enough to set off a pediatrician’s radar, I don’t know what is.

So, she suggested we wait for 2 weeks and come back in to do a check-up. My instructions were to offer a bottle after each nursing session. This is, of course, the death knell for breastfeeding, but my son was losing weight. As a dutiful mother, I followed the instructions and EBF was over.

Two weeks later, he was checked again. He’d gained a whopping 1 ounce. Maybe, the pediatrician suggested, he just needed more formula. Adding a little bit had resulted in a gain, so maybe some more? We briefly discussed the possibility that he was metabolically a carbon copy of Darling Husband who can only be described as “rail thin.” She said it was possible; however, she was still concerned with the slow gain.

We came back for a 3 month check-up. At this point, breastfeeding existed for comfort only. Once when he woke up, in the middle of the night when he had trouble sleeping and during the day if he became particularly fussy. He’d broken the magical 9 pound barrier, an astounding ounce above his birthweight.

Things progressed in much this way throughout his infancy. At 6 months, he tipped the scales at 13 pounds – a full 4 pounds less than he should be. He doesn’t register on the charts for weight, although his height is between the 50th and 60th percentiles.

I’ve missed breastfeeding throughout all of this. I went through three weeks of my own personal 7th Circle of Hell to get him on the boob. Crying (mostly from me) from intense pain and frustration; several tubes of lanolin; worries over latch-on and positioning. My other three never got the hang of it but he did. I was in mommy-nirvana when the pain went away and only the sheer bliss of sustaining my baby remained.

Now, he’s seven months old. My eldest daughter has braces, something I learned, to my shock, can be largely avoided by breastfeeding. Formula has as much sugar-in similar form!-as a can of coke. My previously slim and trim infant is putting on the much expected “bottle bloat” many formula fed babies experience.

I learned, through Shari’a law, that Muslim women are asked to, if possible, nurse their child for a full two years. Many primitive cultures nurse until the first replacement of a “milk tooth” with a full-fledged meat-gnawing front tooth, around the age of 6 (I’m not sure I’ll go this far). Breastfeeding protects against a whole host of problems, from asthma to obesity to Type II diabetes, all of which are a problem in my family to one degree or another.

Oh, and my boobs are with me where ever I go and don’t need special preparation. They don’t cost me a dime, while formula costs bouku bucks-$10 a week when Wal-Mart has the $5 cans and $30 when they don’t.

The challenge is to switch from mainly formula to mainly breast milk in 28 days. Here are the requirements of the challenge

• Get rid of the nookie(s)
• Go nowhere without him (exceptions for bars and bar-like places like GameWorks)
• Wear him more often
• Take my More Milk Plus tablets religiously
• Pick him up as soon as he cries and nurse him when he doesn’t stop immediately
• Offer the breast at least once every hour
• Nurse him until he pulls away, and offer the breast after 2 ounces of formula
• Use my Medela-made torture device (colloquially known as a “breast pump”) once every 30 minutes during his naps