Some days...

...I should have just stayed in bed.

This is just soooo wrong...on soooo many levels!

I received this email this morning:

Hello Dear

I am interested in establishing and operating a very viable business as a means of investment abroad. I do not know too well on how this is done in your country, so I will need you to help me in this regard. My preference is any good profit yielding business and I would appreciate any viable ideas you could come up with.

I will also need you to help me look for properties like homes and lands for sale as I am proposing to invest the sum of Twenty Million British Pounds Sterling (£20 Million) for this. I do not know if you can and will be of help to me. For a brief on my personality; About me, my name is Mrs Comfort Porky a Saudi National,living in London, retired Business woman. I am married with my late Husband survive with my 2 lovely kids.

Dear friend i wish to let know that contacted you to be my business partner is not by accident but by the will of God, the most reason why i contacted you to be my partner over this project is because of my dangerous sickness which am passing through i don't know whether i will survive it or not, for six years now i have been suffering for kidney problem which i have been denying me so many thing.

Now for the project, am making it on behalf of my kids, i will like us to make investment of Hospital or School, this is my own dream i don't know of you. So you are advised to give me your own opinion.

Let me assure you that this business is 100% genuine and real, all that matters is your full cooperation by once you send me your full information's as listed below.

Your Full name..........................

Your Mobile number........................ ...

Your Telephone number.....................

Your fax number.........................

Your Residence address.............

Your current age.........................

Your International passport......................

Nationality :.................................

Profession ...................................

Your photo...........................

Thanks and waiting to hear from you.

Yours Sincerely,

Mrs.Comfort Porky.

Mrs. Porky is a Saudi national? In what dream world?? And does she really think I am going to send her , on a silver platter, everything she needs in order to counterfeit my passport and steal my identity? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the email's "sent" address hails from Russia...so a Muslim widow with the surname Porky (PORKY?? Doesn't the idiot who wrote this have even a clue about the relationship between Arabs and pigs??) who is living in the UK (and has somehow amassed £20 Million) sends me...a complete stranger...an email from Russia with a 100% genuine business proposal but I have to hurry because she is dying of kidney failure? Really??

The only thing more pathetic than this completely stupid fiction is the sad fact that, somewhere in the world, someone even more moronic than the sender is going to fall for this. Probably not an American, though...80+ percent of us are too insular to even have a passport.

A new kind of weight loss idea...

I have to go on a diet. I don't want to. Not because I don't want to lose weight, not even because I object to reducing my caloric intake...I don't want to because I know what I will be expected to eat and I don't want to eat it.

Margarine is gross...it feels disgusting on the tongue, and tastes like grease. I won't be giving up butter.

"Diet" or "diabetic" ice cream is like eating frozen skim milk...almost as disgusting as margarine.

I'm not willing to fill my plate with veggies I hate...and there are a few that fit that category which dietitians and other people who invent recipes for dieters seem to hold in high esteem. No kind of yellow squash crosses these lips unless it has been made into a pie...like a pumpkin pie...which totally kills the diet. No kind of bell pepper, regardless of colour, gains entry to this body. I will spend half an hour picking them out of my chow mein or off my pizza or hunting them down in a salad and discarding them...so these recipe inventors who mistakenly think that "colourful" food somehow makes up for overwhelming, meal-dominating flavour can count me out. Spinach and other leafy greens? Only in salads, my friend...and then only spinach. Ever eaten chard? High on the disgusting list, whether raw or cooked into stringy slime.

I am also choosy about the meats I eat. No mutton, thank you, very little lamb, and fish must be avoided unless it is salmon or trout, and then in small quantities only. No organ meats...none, zero, zip, nada. If it ain't a muscle meat from a chicken, turkey, pig, or cow, feed it to someone else. No meat fat---augh! gross!!---bacon should be fried crisp or left on the pig.

You may be getting the picture here...at my advanced age I have some seriously entrenched food likes and dislikes and I'm not up for changing them...poached eggs vs those scrambled in butter? I do not think so! (Unless I put some butter on them when they hit the plate!)

So, given that I'm not very open to changing certain aspects of my diet and I do have to lose some weight, what is the solution? Portion control.

Now, by this I do not advocate the lame current concept of starvation by choosing portion sizes so small they don't qualify as a respectable snack. Two days on the currently trendy portion control diet and I would be eating the wall paper in desperation. One serving of red meat every ten days, and the serving is as big as my palm and as thick as my little finger?? Not bloody likely!! No, instead of taking arbitrary measures of foods and imposing them on people who may have been eating several times that amount (which will definitely leave them feeling deprived and hungry), my idea is to start with your own portions of the foods you normally eat and simply reduce those portions. There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the essence of it: eat whatever you normally eat, just less of it. And if you eat less food, you will lose weight. Not rapidly, perhaps, but it will come down...and it will come down without you feeling like you can never eat cheesecake again!

So here are the basics: you need just a few tools: a scale to weigh yourself on; a scale (electronic, set to weigh in grams) for weighing food; a notebook and pen, and for the arithmetic challenged, a calculator. That is it.

Start with weighing yourself: in the notebook write down the date and your weight. Leave the rest of the page blank for now, as you will record subsequent weights here. (If you are bashful about a scale, an alternative is to measure yourself where you think you are the fattest: waist, hips, thighs...and record those numbers. I don't like scales and I can tell if I am losing or gaining weight by how my jeans fit around my middle and bum.)

Now, the next time you want to eat something, go to your food scale. Put the portion you would normally eat on the scale and weigh it. Write that in your notebook; now, calculate half that amount and write that next to your normal amount. Put half of the serving back and you can eat the other half. It doesn't matter what the food is: butter for your toast (one slice instead of two), ice cream, chips...whatever it is, measure out your normal portion then put half of it back. Exception: if the food is something you ordinarily will have second helpings of, like mashed potatoes or chili or spaghetti, take your normal portion and skip the seconds. Next time you want a food, you need only look in your notebook to see what the appropriate serving for you is because you have already calculated it.

This rule applies to virtually everything you put into your mouth: sauces, dressings, oil in the pan to cook something, gravies, jams and jellies, desserts, snacks, dips...if it goes into your mouth, the 50% rule applies. Exceptions: low cal veggies: you can have all the carrots, beets, green beans, celery, tomatoes you want...but only half the sauce, condiments, butter that you usually use. Fruits, however, because they contain sugar, fall under the 50% rule, as do starchy vegetables like corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, yellow squashes.

You cannot eat more frequently than before...that just shifts the time you eat and allows you to eat the same amount of food instead of reducing it. You can have three meals and three snacks daily, but your intake must be half of your previous intake. If you find this too stringent in the beginning, then calculate 1/3 and put that back, eating 2/3 of your normal intake.

This means you can't eat out much at first because you have to weigh things for a while to start getting an idea of what a "normal" portion is for you and how much of it to leave behind. My own plan is to simply eat half of what is served at the restaurant, take the other half home and have it for lunch the next day. Same with desserts: you can have desserts but just don't eat the whole thing. Share with someone else or eat half and take the other half home for a snack the following day.

I plan to follow this eating plan for six weeks and then check my measurements. If I am not happy with my weight loss after that time, I will reduce my portions further, perhaps cut out some things. As it is, I am not a big bread, cake, or cookie eater, and I have cut candies of all kinds from my diet for now. I drink sugar-free drinks and use sweetener in my tea with 2% milk. These reduce caloric intake, but I can reduce it further without feeling deprived.

And that, I think is one of the significant causes of weight-loss failure: people find their eating taken over by strangers who have no concept of (or respect for) their food likes and dislikes and suddenly feel deprived. There is nothing like feeling deprived of something to make you want it! By allowing people to continue to eat their preferred foods (but in reduced quantities), the chances of losing weight, I think, will go up.

For those who are ready to jump in here with the "healthy eating" noise: shut up. I think trying to do too much at one time is another reason so many people fail at weight loss. The time to change what you eat is after you have learned to change how much you eat. Once your stomach has shrunk to be accustomed to smaller meals and some success greets the dieter in the mirror, healthier alternatives can be introduced. But to tell someone who is struggling to drop some poundage that she must give up not only satiety but comforting, familiar tastes as well...well, I think that is just too much for some of us! Do not expect me to give up my butter---you will be disappointed!

So, who's with me on this? Anybody wanna be a guinea pig and give a revolutionary new concept in weight loss a try? You have nothing to lose but some unwanted poundage!