The Fat Girl's Guide to Living

Better to burn out than fade away, by JamieBates

No cooking photos uploaded to the FGG Girls group this week, but lots of other good stuff – and I laughed out loud when I saw this one, we love it!

Each week we select one photo from our Flick group as the official FGG Photo of the Week. At the end of the month, we pick one of those as that month’s prize winner. Only one more Sunday left to get your photo in the running for November! So if you haven’t already, get uploading! ‘Cause we wanna see how you’re living.

We’re moving quickly into the season of many celebrations, and if you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for amazing appetizers that look impressive yet are easy to make. These fig and goat cheese apps really fit the bill. They’re salty and sweet, crunchy yet creamy–the perfect combination of flavors and textures. They’re also perfectly gorgeous!

It’s just past fig season, but if you look around you’ll find them in some form or another. I found mine (dried Calimyrna figs) at Trader Joe’s. You can make the tapenade a few days in advance so all you’ll need to do is assemble them the day you need them, which is exactly what I’ll be doing next week in preparation for Thanksgiving!

Figs are a great source of fiber (5 grams in a quarter cup) even if they are pretty sugary. Goat cheese tends to be lower in fat and calories than many cow’s milk products, and its stronger flavor allows a little to go a long way, which is perfect when you’re entertaining.

Whether you’re looking for an impressive opener or something flavorful to enjoy with a glass of wine after a long day — give these a try. You won’t be sorry. Enjoy!

Fig and Pecan Tapenade with Goat Cheese
(adapted from Bon Appétit)
1 cup chopped dried figs
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup pitted chopped Kalamata olives
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans, plus whole pecans for topping
Salt and ground fresh pepper
2 5-oz. logs soft, fresh goat cheese
Assorted crackers

Combine figs and water in medium saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until all the liquid is gone and the figs are soft, around 7 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add the olives, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and pecans. Mix well and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Crumble goat cheese onto crackers, top with tapenade, and place a whole pecan on top.

Looking for more great recipes? Visit my blog at
http://culinography.wordpress.com

I stretch most mornings to boost energy and stay flexible

As a freshman in high school about, oh…123456…24 years ago, I had an unfortunate stint as a cheerleader. At the time there wasn’t much available for girls at my school who wanted to do something athletic, so a friend and I dragged our nerdy, unpopular selves down to try out for varsity cheerleading – and were psyched (and surprised) to make the cut. Once in it just wasn’t me, so I left after the first season, but it was worth it for one great takeaway: the value of stretching.

Without it, that mid-air Russian split-gone-wrong in the fall of ’86 would have probably done damage to more than just my ego, and I doubt I would still be capable today, at a size 20/22, of contorting myself to show off the feet-behind-the-ears trick.

That frightening and ridiculous visual? You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, stretching has a reputation among many non-athletes as the boring thing you do before you run or work out. A prelude to pain and agony. A dull precaution. Useless to anyone who isn’t about to voluntarily launch into an intense period of self-afflicted exercise.

Not so. Stretching, if done correctly and regularly, boosts energy, increases flexibility, builds strength and balance, and ignites feelings of wellness and happiness – especially for women who don’t otherwise get much if any exercise. In fact! It can get pretty addicting in its ease, convenience and power, and you may soon find that you and stretching are arm-in-arm BFFs.

We asked a few experts to lend their experience and advice on stretching for overweight women, and got a mountain of notes and great answers. We’ve distilled those into fine points and suggestions you can start using right now.

Craig Galloway, certified personal trainer
http://www.catzsports.com

Stretching activates the muscle and connective tissues, as well as the lymphatic system in your body that acts as a pump to keep fluids moving. When you stretch, you’re waking up parts of your body that may not get woken up otherwise. When you don’t, that pump and other parts of your system shut down, trapping fluids and resulting in symptoms like swollen fingers and ankles, and making you stiff and sore after long periods of sitting or lying down.

Stretching is an easy way to help move those fluids along and get your muscles awake and ready to work for you.

Craig’s tips:

1. Stand in a doorway with two hands holding on to the door jam and walk your body through the door. That stretch opens your chest right up, and done regularly can improve posture and circulation – which have been shown to affect everything from aging to disease.

2. Plan your stretches until it becomes habit. Set an alarm every hour and a half or so to get up from your desk and do some basic stretching. It doesn’t take much to get a big benefit.

3. Remember to keep hydrated; your muscle tissues are more receptive to stretching when hydrated and less likely to pull or be injured. Water is best – stay away from sports drinks, especially if you’re trying to lose weight.

Debra Mazda, exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer
http://www.debramazda.com

For women who aren’t used to doing a lot of moving, stretching is a great way to begin elongating those muscles, which tend to shorten up when you’re not using them. Muscles get lazy just like we do. Just a little bit of stretching gets blood flowing, and for women used to being sedentary, that can have a big impact. It also helps prevent injury both in becoming more active and in every day life, like when you’re reaching up into a cabinet or down to pick something up. Psychologically, it gives you the benefit of knowing you’re doing something really good for yourself.

Debra’s tips:

1. My favorite stretch is lying in bed each morning, pulling my knees to my chest, and rolling from side to side. It keeps the spine flexible and the blood flowing.

2. Anyone with a heart condition or high blood pressure should never drop their head below their heart. For these women, stretching should be done from a standing position, doing arm circles or stretching their arms up over their heads, or while lying in bed. If you’ve never done much stretching, I recommend being supervised in the beginning by a trainer. Bouncing while stretching is a big no-no, any stretch should be held for at least 10 seconds. Never stretch hot muscles in a cold room.

3. A stability ball, used properly, is great for overweight women who want to start to stretch and build flexibility, confidence and strength. Just the act of sitting on it, with a straight back and legs wide apart, works your core abdominal muscles because they’re keeping you balanced, even if you don’t feel it.

Joy Di Palma, exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer
http://www.trainerjoy.com

One of the greatest benefits of stretching is that you’re able to increase your range of motion, which means your limbs and joints can move further before an injury occurs. Overweight women [often] lack flexibility and a lack of flexibility is now seen to be a major cause of general health problems and sports injury for overweight women…linked to everything from stress, back pain, and even osteoarthritis.

Joy’s tips:

1. Lie down on the floor with your buttocks against a wall and your legs straight up the wall. Slowly flex your toes towards your knees, hold for two seconds and repeat five times. This will loosen up your lower back and stretch your hamstrings and hips giving instant relief for tired backs.

2. Never hold a painful stretch. You should back off just to where it’s not painful and hold for the duration of the stretch (a good 15-30 seconds).

3. Bosu balls, used properly, are great tools for reaching a thorough stretch. Foam rollers are also excellent to use to “roll out” your leg muscles, hamstrings and gluts. Use mats to stretch on create a softer surface for the back muscles, to increase comfort and safety.

Gina Ianniello, exercise physiologist
http://www.kingleyhealth.com

The benefits of overall stretching is that it keeps your joints functioning as they should be.  Chronically tight muscles can lead to limited range of motion around a joint, which can cause pain and injury. Excess weight puts stress on joints and causes muscles to tighten (especially calf and hamstring), so stretching is especially beneficial for women who are overweight.

Gina’s tips:

1. For a standing hamstring stretch, stand facing a short bench or chair – place one heel on the bench, toes pointing up.  Keep the leg straight and lean forward at the hips, make sure your back foot is facing forward and your hips are squared, shoulders are pulled back and your back is straight (no hunching or rounding of the back).  You will feel the stretch behind your leg in your hamstring. Hold for 20-30 seconds and repeat on alternating legs.

2. Stretching straps or ropes can be used for stretches lying on your back on a mat, and can be helpful for women who lack the balance of stretching their hamstrings in a standing position if they find it hard to balance on one foot.  Lie on your back and place the rope/strap around the bottom of your foot. Keeping the other knee bent, hold the strap with your hands and actively assist raising your leg in the air until you feel the stretch behind the leg.

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Do you stretch? if so, what are some of the benefits you’ve found in stretching? Let us know!

Dara Chadwick’s book, “You’d Be So Pretty If…”

This week’s guest post comes from Dara Chadwick, a journalist who writes about health, wellness and psychology. We asked her to write about her journey to self acceptance after landing a sweet gig with a national women’s fitness magazine.

When it comes to family television viewing, there aren’t always a whole lot of great choices, but one show my family’s been enjoying together is ABC’s “The Middle,” a half-hour sitcom that features a “middle-aged, middle-class” mom in middle America. My kids think it’s a riot and I’ve found myself giggling at the over-the-top adventures of the show’s characters — especially the mom, who’s just trying to hold her head above water on most days.

I’ve had lots of days like that. And they really used to bother me. But happiness, I’ve discovered, is in those “middle” places.

See, I’m a former member of the “I have to be perfect” club: brilliant career, model children, blissfully happy marriage and spotless house. Oh, and a fabulous body, too.

Are you done laughing yet?

I can tell you that I have achieved all that “perfection” exactly zero times in my life. But that didn’t stop me from trying — or from beating myself up about it. The focus of most of my efforts was usually my body; after all, eating and exercise were totally under my control, right?

There was a time in my life when my quest to improve myself was serious business. I’d restrict calories, I’d exercise for hours and otherwise find ways to punish myself for not being “perfect.” My body may have been smaller, but I was never quite satisfied with where I was. In my mind, there was always room for improvement.

Secretly, though, I longed for a day when I wouldn’t have to care anymore.

While meeting the demands of two young kids, a husband, a job and a house, that day arrived. I didn’t care anymore. With no time to exercise, no energy to make a healthy meal for myself amid diapers and baby food and bottles, and no shortage of guilt at the idea of putting myself first, I let go of my chase of perfection.

And I do mean I let go. But that didn’t make me happy, either.

It wasn’t the extra flesh I was carrying or the bigger jeans I was wearing. It was knowing that I just wasn’t taking care of myself. Not exercising and not caring at all about what I ate didn’t deliver the freedom I once thought it would.

My life was out of balance. I’d gone from one extreme to the other.

In 2007, I signed on to write the Weight-Loss Diary column for Shape magazine. I worked with a life coach, a trainer and a dietitian to meet my goal of getting myself back to the weight I was on my wedding day. Each month, I was photographed and had to write about my “successes and failures.”

By the end of the year, I made my goal weight. But a funny thing happened along the way.

I’d started out with near obsession: I never, ever thought I wouldn’t be able to lose the weight. But as my kids — who were then 11 and nine — watched me hit the gym for a couple of hours each day, drink protein shakes and carefully monitor every calorie I consumed, I realized that I’d see-sawed back to the other extreme. And that wasn’t good.

That wasn’t the mom I wanted to be.

But here’s what was good: By the project’s end, I’d reconnected with my body. I remembered how good regular exercise made me feel. I realized how much better I felt when I ate healthy foods. I had a great dietitian who taught me all about moderation and helped me learn to bring balance to my food choices — knowledge I still use every day, two years later.

When my year with Shape was over, I made a conscious decision: No more extremes. These days, I eat what I feel like eating, when I feel like eating it. I don’t belong to a gym anymore; instead, I mix up my routine with walking, running, dance classes, yoga, biking — whatever I feel like doing. But I do something. It’s not about getting smaller, or changing a single thing: It’s about me, living my life in the healthiest body I can have — and showing my kids that you don’t have to be “perfect” to be happy.

After all this time, I feel like I’ve finally found my “middle” place — that balance between healthy self-care and accepting the body I have. I’m not striving for elusive perfection, but I’m not neglecting my body’s health either. Landing squarely in the middle, I’ve reached that body image milestone I’ve longed for my whole life: Contentment.

Dara writes about raising body-confident kids and making peace with our own body image demons at You’d Be So Pretty If (one of our “We Read” picks), and you can purchase her book here.

Cecily’s ink still looks awesome. Indeed.

I’m thinking about getting a tattoo, but I’m concerned about it looking terrible if I keep losing (or end up gaining) more weight. What happens to tattoos when skin and shape changes?”

We spoke with tattoo artist Jon Kelly, owner of Olde Tyme Tattoo in Fullerton, California to get his advice.

“Prevention of any sort would be to pick the proper location on your body,” he says. “Stretch marks will ruin your tattoo, so if you find yourself prone to them, try to pick an area on your body that has minimal chance of acquiring stretch marks.” Tatts distorted by stretch marks may have to be reworked, covered up, or even removed.

“Not all women are prone to stretch marks, so there’s no generalized answer that fits every individual situation,” adds Kelly. “Let’s say you gain 80 pounds and you end up with no stretch marks. The tattoo you have may end up off center depending on where it was originally placed.” The bottom line: know your body, choose your artist as carefully as you select the location for your tatt, and accept that if you gain or lose weight, your ink might need more work later on.

We also asked fearless blogger Cecily Kellogg (pictured above), who writes at Uppercase Woman, for her voice of experience on this topic. Here’s what she had to say:

“Skin expands. Whether you are talking about pregnancy or your more standard filling out, skin stretches. If you have ink on that skin, the ink will stretch too.

With general weight fluctuations, most tattoos will look just fine. You should have no permanent misshaping of the ink, even with very fine detailed work. If you have a portrait, it is possible that the portrait will look a bit less like the original model, but tattoo portraits rarely look much like the original model anyway (unless you have an exceptional artist, who will resist putting a portrait on any place likely to do much expanding; shoulders, upper arms, upper back, and calves are least likely to expand).

I’ve gained a fair amount of weight over the years I’ve collected my ink, and while my arms have gotten larger, my ink still looks absolutely awesome. The tattoos on my back (they extend from my upper shoulders to my middle back) also still maintain their awesomeness.

Additionally, I’ve known pregnant women with belly tattoos that have stretched out to crazy, misshapen levels, but when the pregnancy is over, the tattoo looks okay. Sometimes there is a bit of sag in part of it, but by a year after the baby is born the ink looks pretty close to the original design.

The main key to preserving the quality of your ink is the same whether weight gain is an issue or not: choose the tattoos carefully, use a high quality artist, and consider the placement of the tattoo before getting it. If you plan well, and choose well, your ink will look just as good ten years down the line as it does a week after you get it (it never looks good while it’s healing), regardless of your size.”

Have a question for us? Post it in comments or send us an email and we’ll tackle it in an upcoming Ask FGG feature.

Two of my faves: Pure Vanilla Extract and Saigon Cassia Cinnamon

We’ve all read countless weight loss/healthy eating articles touting the value of adding fresh spices to enhance the flavor of lighter fare, particularly when switching from processed foods. Well, we believe in what works, and this is one oft-parroted idea we heartily endorse.

Whatever your reason for being a foodie – adopting new habits for health-related reasons, preparing freeze-and-reheat lunches to bring to work, or forming a Fat Girl’s Guide Supper Club (speaking of great ideas), quality spices and seasonings are a must. My favorite source is The Spice House. I’m lucky to be within driving distance of all of their stores, but the humble (and great-smelling) Evanston, Illinois shop just north of the city is my favorite.

Non-Chicago-area foodies are in luck, because you can shop online, sample their impressive, free recipe collection, and purchase unique gift boxes that will enhance your gift-giving super powers. My two favorite finds are their pure vanilla extract (love it in oatmeal) and ground cinnamon (delish on hot cocoa–the best cinnamon I’ve ever tasted). Shopping for spices, rubs, marinade mixes, and extracts is the perfect way to be indulgent without over-indulging – and that’s something we can definitely get behind.

Editors’ Note: Though we accept paid advertisements at FGG, any products we endorse on the site were researched and/or purchased ourselves. We do not accept free products for testing, endorsement, or reviews.

Image by Happywalks

Michelle has tempted us with mini muffins and cupcakes in the past, and this week’s photo reveals how sweet it is to downsize our favorite treats (in this case, red velvet cupcakes). I love Regina’s joyful smile here, and her adorable kitchen!

Our FGG Girls Flickr group is growing every week, with amazing images of women sharing their lives, personalities, and curves.

You don’t have to be a professional or even advanced amateur photographer to join – just take photos of yourself truly living. That’s it. Show us your favorite hobbies, new fall sweater, or that cute haircut and color (ahem, Tee!). We started this group as an outlet for us fat girls to see ourselves in a kinder light and appreciate just how fun, adorable and sexy we can be. And even if you’re not feeling particularly fun, adorable, or sexy, give it a shot anyway – you may surprise yourself.

Each week we select one photo from our group as the FGG Photo of the Week. At month’s end, we pick one photo from those weekly entries to win a prize. This month’s theme is COOKING, which should be easy enough to capture in the next two weeks.

So if you haven’t already, join the fun! We look forward to seeing how you’re living.