Get Thee Behind Me, Thin Mints!!!

As Bunny was munching her kale chips…

which, by the way, she has had only twice, because it turns out that it’s nearly impossible to find kale in the market, let alone kale that isn’t 90% stalk (stalks, you should know, are utterly useless for kale-chipping purposes)–but we digress…

As Bunny was munching her kale chips, a news story caught her eye.

The Girl Scouts have introduced a new cookie! Just in time for Bunny’s low-carb diet!

Savannah Smiles! 

How cute is that?

Maybe, she thought, they’re some awful flavor, like liver or castor oil or grapefruit or cat food, and not tempting at all. That’d be great!

No such luck. The article revealed that they’re little wedges, filled with a blast of lemony goodness.

Oh no…………….

Bunny loves lemon.

Bunny loves Girl Scout Cookies. Bunny wants Savannah Smiles. And now that the subject has come up, she is thinking about her lifelong friend Thin Mints. Ooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh….

This, of course, is a classic example of the power of suggestion. Bunny hasn’t thought about Girl Scout cookies in six months, but now, they’re number two with a bullet on her list of banned but intensely desired munchies.

As you might expect, the mean Carb-Hating Doctor’s hideously boring highly restrictive diet strictly forbids lemon, sugar, cookies and all things even remotely yummy.

What the heck, let’s look at the label, just for kicks:

There are 140 calories and 23 carbs in 5 cookies. That’s about 4 carbs per cookie.

Gosh. That’s worth thinking about.

Let’s see. Bunny gets 25 carbs every day. If she ate 5 cookies and nothing else for the rest of the day, she’d be good.

Right?

Oh, okay, we know, that’s cheating. But it’s fun to think about.

Sorry, Savannah Smiles. Not this year. You either, Thin Mints.

Bunny loves you, though.

Kale Chips???

Bunny met with Nancy Nutrition today.

To review, Nancy is the Carb-Hating Doctor’s co-conspirator in Bunny’s strictly-supervised weight-loss program.

She asked how Bunny was doing with her new low-carb diet. Bunny reported that she was bored to tears doing pretty well, but complained loudly that she was admitted to being a tad frustrated with the lack of choices.

Nancy made some suggestions.

Bunny, do you like potato chips?

Duh.

OK, good, I have a zero-carb option for you that you can make at home. It’s super easy.

OK. What is it?

Kale chips.

WHO chips??

Kale.

What color is that?

Kale is that green stuff they put along the edges of the salad bar. 

Oh. Yum.

Zero carbs, AND it’s a Superfood! It tastes like popcorn.

Bunny was skeptical, but Nancy Nutrition asked her to trust her. She handed her the recipe and asked her to promise to go home and make kale chips.

Bunny, a woman of her word, went home after a stop at the market, where she had to ask for help from the Nice Produce Man, who had to go into the back room to find kale.

So here’s how to make kale chips (since we know you’ve been waiting with bated breath):

You spray olive oil on a cookie sheet. Then you tear off pieces of kale, and arrange them on aforementioned cookie sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt, and bake at 350 for 5-10 minutes. Until brown.

Well, it never really got brown, and Bunny kind of overcooked it, and it did fill the kitchen with a definite kale-y aroma, but here they are. Kale chips.

mmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

So how are they, Bunny?

Well, they’re not terrible at all. They’re weird, but OK. Kind of papery when you spatula them off the cookie sheet, and when you pop them into your mouth, the texture IS kind of popcorny, but do they taste like popcorn? Yeah, no. They have a strong, sort of  bitter flavor, but strangely, it’s not unpleasant. They’re a far cry from those nice Lay’s Classics, and they’re actually pretty ugly, not cute like potato chips. But they’re easy to make and when they cool off they are quite crunchy. They’ll do in a pinch. I put too much salt an them, though, and I burned them a bit.

Want some?

Um…..no thanks, Bunny.

Update: Bunny didn’t lose any weight this time, but she didn’t gain any, so her total loss stands at 14 pounds.

The Gory Details

So this new low-carb diet Bunny is on restricts her to no more than 25 carbs a day. No rice, no pasta, no bread, no dairy, no fruit, no sugar, no dessert, no fun.

And no tomatoes. Yet. They’ll let Bunny have tomatoes back (on a limited basis) in a month or so, if she’s losing weight. (And she’d better be.)

Yes, they’re using tomatoes (Bunny’s favorite food) as a carrot. (What a rotten thing to do to a bunny.)

Let us explain who “they” is. (Or is it “are”?)

“They” #1 is the Carb-Hating Doctor. “They” #2, her co-conspirator companion in this weight-loss program, is Nancy Nutritionist.

Bunny goes to the doctor’s office every 10 days,  rain or shine. One time she sees Nancy. Next time, she sees the Doctor. Next, she just sees the nurse for the dreaded weigh-in. 1,2,3, lather, rinse, repeat. This cycle will continue until Bunny’s buns are shrunk. (Or is it “shrunken”? Paging Grammar Girl, please pick up the white courtesy telephone…)

The Doctor wants Bunny under her thumb. A weigh-in every 10 days gives Bunny absolutely no room to stray, and that’s exactly the way the Doctor likes it. She’s evil a smart Doctor.

So Bunny is firmly entrenched under the Carb-Hating Doctor’s thumb, eating her 25 carbs a day and dreaming of tomatoes.

Since Bunny started this program, just over a month ago, she has gone on a cruise (with Trudy! They made up!), and has dealt with Thanksgiving. Even with these extreme food challenges…

Bunny has lost 14 pounds!

<pause for thunderous applause>

And the best part? Are you ready?

Bunny had to buy smaller jeans!

Size 18! Her 20′s were falling off! What better evidence can there be that Bunny’s buns are shrinking?

Stay tuned!

We’re Back from Our BunnyNap!

Hi.

We’re back.

Did you miss us?

We took a break for a while.

We were kind of stuck. Bunny wasn’t losing weight, and when you’re writing a weight-loss blog, you eventually run out of content when nobody’s actually losing weight.

Plus–and please don’t be offended by this–we kind of felt like we were talking to the walls. We have lots of hits on our BunnyBlog every day, even while we were BunnyNapping, but very little feedback. So y’all are out there, and that’s fantastically awesome, but we sort of just kind of didn’t know whether you were coming because we were entertaining you, educating you, or if you just liked to look at the cute clipart.

So, we all needed a break.

But things have changed!

Bunny’s buns are shrinking!!!!

So here’s what happened. One day, Bunny went to her Bunnycologist, and the nurse took her blood pressure. It was high.

Uh-oh.

This scared Bunny, so she finally broke down and made an appointment with her regular doctor–you remember her, right? We call her the Carb-Hating Doctor. She’s a very good doctor, but she gives Bunny that withering look of abject disapproval, and she’s kind of scary.

Bunny had successfully avoided the Carb-Hating Doctor for some time. But now her blood pressure was worrisome, and she was just scared, so she bit the bullet and went to stand in front of the firing squad.

As she was waiting in the examination room for the Carb-Hating Doctor’s first appearance, she grabbed a flyer from the rack on the wall. It was about a weight-loss program the doctor was recommending. Bunny started to read it–not because she was really interested, but mostly because she knew the doctor would have already seen the results of her weigh-in, and Bunny hoped that if the doctor saw her reading this, maybe she wouldn’t kill her. Flyer as Shield–would it work?

It did, mostly. The Carb-Hating Doctor didn’t kill her. She did give her that withering look, though.

And Bunny was on the program before she left the office. 25 carbs a day maximum, no tomatoes or cheese for the first wave.

You may recall that tomatoes are Bunny’s favorite food. Ugh.

By the way, Bunny’s blood pressure was just fine, despite her Fear of Doctorly Disapproval and Not-Niceness. Apparently, that one elevated blood pressure reading was the Universe telling Bunny it was time to go to the doctor.

So here we go again.

Let’s get this party started!!!!

Oh, no. A Bunny Basket.

It’s Easter!

You know what that means, right?

A festival of sugar and candy, right up there with Halloween and Christmas.

How is a person supposed to lose weight when surrounded by Peeps and M&Ms and Cadbury eggs?

We learned in last year’s Easter post just how damaging those innocent-looking marshmallowy chocolatey things can be.

So there’s Bunny at work, minding her own business, and a kind and well-meaning employee proudly presents her with a beautiful Easter basket.

Oh, crap. How kind.

She had made it herself, and had clearly put a lot of effort into it. There was a stuffed bunny, a game of Carrot Baseball (ooo, fun–hit the ball with a plastic bat that looks like a carrot, lots of fun and $1 at Aahs!, thank you very much), and lots and lots of you-know-what.

Candy.

Really? Candy? Bunny doesn’t even really like candy. Well, she likes it, but she can go a long time without having any candy, and it doesn’t bother her.

But there it was. Big as life and twice as fattening.

She considered her options:

(1) Thank the giver kindly, explain that she is trying to lose weight, and ask if it would be ok if she gave the candy to others in the office. This was the best solution, but she couldn’t do it. She knew that it would hurt the poor lady’s feelings.

(2) Eat it all? Ummm…..no.

(3) Make a big deal about how cute the basket is, take a picture of it so the person will feel special. Then keep the bunny in her office, as well as a small sampling of the goodies, and take the basket and most of the goodies home. Pretend that she’s eating all the candy throughout the next month or so, at home, making a casual comment about how yummy it is here and there, but in reality, take the candy and the basket to the family’s Easter brunch as a hostess gift, and make it THEIR problem.

That’s what she did. So far, it’s working.

So she had a little more candy than she wanted to, but she did minimize the damage.

And her thoughtful employee is happy.

And Bunny’s still working on the Walk-!t Challenge (exclamation point).

Happy Easter!

Walk It Off, Exclamation Point

Let’s face it. Bunny’s having trouble losing weight. The things that used to work, don’t work so well anymore. Getting old sucks.

She’s discouraged, but she’s not giving up.

She has had a monthly pass to Weight Watchers for over a year. She’s been paying $35 a month to NOT attend meetings and pretty much NOT follow the program. The stupidity of this was not lost on her, but she was kind of ignoring it, until Buff (who is very smart and kind of cheap) pointed it out. She knew she should either (a) start going to meetings, or (b) cancel the monthly pass and just kept her access to the Weight Watchers website.

Bunny knows that her job makes it very difficult for to get to meetings. Weight Watchers is cutting the number of meetings, and with the choices becoming more and more limited, it’s less and less likely that she will be able to attend. So she went with choice (b), eTools, access to the website. Half the price of the other option.

So there she was on WeightWatchers.com, and there was a big announcement about The Walk-!t Challenge. (The “I” in Walk-It is an exclamation point. How cute is that?)

It said:

 

Join thousands of others to walk (or run) a 5K…

oh no. A 5K? No way. I think I’ll check my Twitter.

…and support The Alliance for a Healthier Generation. We’ll hel pyou train for a 5K, find an event near you or map your own walk.

Make no mistake, Bunny has no intention of walking a 5K. Isn’t that that thing where you run 42 miles, then ride a bike to Colorado, then swim shark-infested waters all the way to Hawaii?

She kept reading, curious at how Weight Watchers was going to claim that their clientele could do such a thing.

She looked at the training guide: a 6-week plan, setting forth a daily schedule for how long you should walk. It never went over an hour, and there were lots of days off.

This will help me swim with the sharks?

google google google

5k = 5 kilometers, which is approximately 3.1 miles.

oh.

Is that all?

I can do that. I used to do that at the gym, on a good day. What’s the big deal?

Well, the first part is “used to.” Bunny used to walk three miles at the gym. Not lately.

Another problem Bunny has is stamina. Not regular workday stamina, she can get through the day fine, but walking stamina. She has noticed that she gets a little winded after a short walk. This makes her feel old and fat.

Another one of Bunny’s problems lately is achy muscles. And she’s kind of creaky. She doesn’t move as well as she used to.

And lunch. She’s spending too much money on lunch at work. She and two other ladies go out for lunch almost every day. They take turns, and yesterday it cost her $65. For a turkey sandwich? $20 a day for lunch is $100 a week. Too much. Too much.

And then there was this article on Yahoo! (oooo another exclamation point!) yesterday that offered the charming statistic that people who sit most of the day are 54% more likely to die of a heart attack. Desk jockeys, get up and walk!

If Bunny did the Walk-!t Challenge at lunchtime, instead of sitting in a restaurant spending money, it might give her some help in ALL those areas!

Not to mention help her lose weight!

And feel better about her old, fat self!

She’s going to do it, exclamation point

Apple Pastry and LipsyDoodle

When last we visited Bunny, she was happily following her diet day to day.

On Day 8, she was presented with a special treat at her office–the flakiest, yummiest apple pastry ever. She had one bite, savored it, then walked away. It was fabulous.

That’s the way it’s supposed to happen–enjoy one taste, then run for the hills. More often, of course, that one taste turns into an avalanche. But this time, Bunny did the right thing, and was happy about it.

The next morning, she woke to what she was waiting for: visible evidence that her weight loss efforts are working. A small but definitely noticeable shrinkage, just below, you should excuse the expression, the boobal regions.

Yay!!!

It must have been the apple pastry, right?

Bunny is keeping on keeping on. She’s not perfect, but she’s doing pretty well. She hasn’t been able to go to the gym, partly because she’s been working like a dog, and partly because of a small bout with that flu-ey, runny, yucky tummy thing everybody seems to have. Mercifully, she didn’t get it nearly as badly as most people she knows.

It must have been the apple pastry, right?

So while we’re waiting for more palpable evidence that something on Bunny is, indeed, shrinking, let’s talk about drugs.

Specifically, medications that are advertised on TV. You know, the ones that will resolve something annoying by replacing it with something potentially life-threatening.

Your hands will be silky soft, but you will probably have a stroke or three.

Your muscles won’t be so achy, but you’ll become radioactive.

Your nails will be strong, but bubonic plague is imminent.

Yeah. Those.

Bunny has been waking up in the early morning hours to an ad for LipsyDoodle.

Or something like that.

It claims to be the miracle cure for belly fat. Just take this drug, and your fat will dissolve without any effort on your part other than writing a check.

Now, call us cynical, but it seems to us that if a medication was truly the magic bullet for belly fat, you’d hear about it somewhere other than an early-morning infomercial on a rerun of The Golden Girls.

We’ve been reading up on belly fat lately (remember our article on the always-attractive menopot?), and the cure boils down to all the usual suspects: whole grains, fruits, veggies, fewer calories, and exercise.

Sorry, LipsyDoodle. We don’t believe you. We wish we did. But we suspect that if we buy your little miracle med, something unsuspected will happen that you either don’t know about or don’t want to tell us–like our toes will fall off, or we’ll turn into a vampire, or our head will explode. Or maybe something less interesting, like it will destroy a heart valve or two. No thanks.

Maybe apple pastry would work?

How Many WHAT…?

Remember that old TV commercial that asks:

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Bunny is asking a similar question:

How many days does it take for her to see some evidence of her weight-loss efforts?

Today is DAY ONE. Bunny has been perfectly attentive to her diet, eschewing birthday cake and Girl Scout cookie, eating only smallish portions of healthy things like veggies and healthy fats and proteins and whole grains.

She had to work late, so she didn’t get to her weigh-in, but she is very anxious to see some kind of result, even a teensey one, soon. It will do wonders for her motivation.

Let’s see how long it takes.

*insert Jeopardy theme here*

DAY TWO: Bunny’s still on track. She had her favorite breakfast shake. She laughed in the face of the potato chips and chocolate cake offered at her work lunch.

DAY TWO: A small bowl of Kashi cereal, nonfat milk, a teaspoon of peanut butter for energy. Bunny is on track!

Still no weigh-in due to long days at work. (That’s what she gets for taking a vacation.)

DAY FOUR: Still no evidence. She’s looking for just a hint of a result that what she’s doing is working. Just a tad. Even just a maybe will do.

Come on, you fat modules, start to dissolve!!!

The weekend came and went. Bunny was good. A glass of wine with dinner on Saturday night, that’s it.  Monday morning, she’s thinking her pants seem a tad looser, but she’s not sure.

She wants to be sure.

DIE, YOU NASTY FAT MODULES!!!! DIE!!!!

Bob and Betty and Buff and Bunny

Hi. We’re sorry we’ve been gone so long. Your humble blogger has had a bout with that nasty flu thing. Yucky-poo.

In the meantime, Bunny and Buff went cruising with their new friends Bob and Betty. They had a great time. Betty and Bob live where it’s very cold, so a Caribbean cruise was just the thing.

They took a group photo on formal night. Bunny doesn’t understand why there’s a whale in a cocktail dress standing next to Buff.

Betty has a bit of the same weighty problem, and so does Bob. Even always-at-the-gym Buff has had a few too many chocolate chip cookies.

They all decided that (a) they’re going on another cruise later this year, and (b) they are going to lose weight before they go.

In fact, they’re going to see each other in just two months, and they’ll check on each other’s progress then.

Exactly how they’ll be checking on each other’s weight loss has yet to be determined. No one will tell anybody else how much they weigh. Everybody’s on the honor system.

Except Bunny. She won’t tell Betty, Bob or Buff her weight, but we’ll tell YOU. Just don’t tell Bunny we told you.

So here we go with another weight loss competition. We’ll send Bunny to Weight Watchers in the next day or so to find out what her current weight is, so we’ll have someplace to start and something to shoot for.

Hopefully, Bob and Betty and Buff and Bunny will do better at Project Sailaway than Trudy did.

Body by XBox?

Remember Mollie, Bunny’s workout buddy?

She had to go out of town for a while on family business. Bunny is watching her house, feeding her plants, taking care of things.

Since she won’t be around to herd Bunny to the gym, she put a new plan in motion.

Mollie has an XBox 360. She wants Bunny to use it while she’s gone. Mollie set up a profile for Bunny and showed her how to use it. Bunny has had a lot of fun setting up her avatar. An animated Bunny. Interesting.

This kind of device is completely foreign to Bunny. She is not big on video games. She only plays a couple of those stupid Zynga games on Facebook. This one has a device called a Kinect sensor. It is a mystical, magical eye that finds you, identifies you, and responds to commands you issue with a wave of your hand.

Mollie showed Bunny how to play two games. Well, games. Kind of games. Not really games. One is KinectAnimals (or maybe it’s KinectAmals? KinectAbleAnimals?). Bunny adopted a bengal tiger cub and can play with it. She pretends to throw a virtual ball, and the kitty fetches it. She can wrestle with her pet tiger on the “grass” by rolling on the floor of her living room. She scritches his head, and he purrs.

Bunny was having fun with this until she caught Mollie’s cat watching her. She stopped, turned it off, threw the real cat a real ball, snuggled him and petted him. He purred. This seemed to be a better way to spend her time.

But how do they do that? Bunny’s not really in to rolling on the floor, but speaking of that, the second thing Mollie wanted Bunny to play is called Your Shape Fitness Evolved.

Personalized fitness. Real results.

Uh-oh.

This is a trick. This is sneaky Mollie’s plot to get Bunny to play this fitnessy un-game.

There are games, and there’s working out. You can’t fool Bunny into saying one is the other. Unfortunately.

Fine, OK, whatever, Bunny conceded. What do I do?

The relatives Mollie is staying with, in one of those states that has all the snow, also has an XBox. Mollie set herself up as Bunny’s “friend.” This is nice. Bunny can look at animated Mollie and see when she was last logged on, and what games she has been playing. If Mollie and Bunny are logged on at the same time, Bunny can tell what she’s doing right at that moment.

Of course, that also means that Mollie can see what Bunny’s doing.

Sneaky sneaky.

So Bunny can’t fake it. She can’t say that she was doing the workouts with this Your Shape thing unless she actually did. Mollie would know. Even worse, Mollie can apparently set up a “party” and do the workouts WITH Bunny.

How awful is this?

So, after stalling for a couple of weeks, Bunny stumbled over to Mollie’s house early last Saturday morning, fed the cat, watered the plants, and popped the DVD in.

A nice, helpful voice came on, welcoming her to Your Shape Fitness Evolved, and telling her how wonderful it was all going to be.

It told her where to stand. It told her how to determine the parameters of her designated spot. It knew when she stepped out of the spot (I’m just reaching for my damned coffee, okay?) It asked her for her gender. It wanted to know her age (it started in the 20′s and went up two years at a time, so it took a while). Then it asked for her weight.

Bunny froze.

Is this the program where the lady tells you that you might as well give up right now because you’re such a fat slob?!

Nope, that’s that Jillian person on Wii. This lady was nice. Thank goodness.

When entering her weight, it started in the 120′s (HA!) and went up, again, two pounds at a time. She finished on Wednesday. Not really, but she WAS holding her hand in the air for a very long time while the two pounds clicked off dozens of times. In fact, she accidentally moved her hand the wrong way, and it stopped before she was at her real weight. Oopsie!

Is that ME?

Next, a screen came up with a woman doing exercises. She was on the left-hand side of the TV screen. On the right-hand side was a large grayish blob that was moving approximately the same way Bunny was moving.

The large grayish blob was Bunny, as seen by the Kinect sensor.

Oh Lord, this just keeps getting worse.

When the voice cheerfully instructed Bunny to smile while they took a photo for Bunny’s Your Shape profile, the sweats-clad, makeup-free Bunny grabbed her unbrushed hair and ran into the other room.

“Please step back into the target area.”

Open the pod bay doors, Hal…

OK, this is just creepy! Bunny lost it. She grabbed the controller, shut off the XBox and the TV without saving or exiting the program, and sat on the couch, horrified.

Your Fitness Shape Evolved should come with a warning. You think you’re alone, but you’re not alone. We’re going to take your picture and show it back to you every time you log on. And we’re going to show every move you make, in the form of a you’re-going-to-wish-it-was-not-so-accurately-shaped blob. Put on your cutest workout clothes, and don’t forget to apply lipstick. We’re watching you!

This was followed by the equally horrifying realization that since she panicked and shut the system down so abruptly, she may have to go through the whole set-up process again. If so, she’s going to tell them she’s 22 years old, 136 lbs., and when they want to take her picture, she’s going to shove Mollie’s cat’s face into the camera. He’s very photogenic.

So far, this has been rather upsetting for Bunny.

Let’s see what happens next time. After the shock wears off.

Maybe she’ll actually exercise.

Ah, technology!

Thanks, Mollie. Come back soon.