A Tale of Two Topics: Diet and Water Crisis

This has been a busy week for a retired guy. On Monday an op-ed of mine that I wrote three weeks or so ago about the water crisis was published in the Charleston Gazette, and I soon was engaged in a Facebook discussion with investigative environmental reporter, Ken Ward. He pointed out a mistake I'd made regarding the fact sheet (Material Safety Data Sheet, or MSDS) on 4-MCHM and a claim I'd made which was unsupported by data. The discussion was started by Ken in response to a post I'd made complaining that my piece had been edited in a way that changed the meaning and made it sound like I was contradicting myself. I'll explain below.

But first, let me welcome any new readers to my blog who came to read about my weight loss journey, which is as much or more a story about learning to eat in a more healthy way. An article in today's Gazette by features writer, Maria Young, in the "Life & Style" section titled, Successful Losers: How three WV residents lost weight and kept it off, summarizes my journey so far. I emphasize so far, because my story does not match the title since I'm only half way to my goal of 44 pounds and I haven't proven I can keep it off. For those of you who want to learn more about my diet, I started blogging about it the day I began, November 3, 2013 and continued every Sunday for many weeks. Recently I've been posting more about the chemical spill/water crisis. I particularly recommend the following entries which you can find on this blog: 11/10, 11/24, 12/8, 12/27, 1/5/14. I think that after today I will post about diet and health on Sundays and other topics during the week for awhile. I am also in the process of looking for a larger blog forum to post some of my writing.

Here are my stats for this week's healthy eating adventure (a game I play is to see how many ways I can avoid using the D word). You'll see a weight loss of 2 pounds this week, but that actually represents a loss of 1 pound over the last two weeks, since last week I had 1 pound weight gain:

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 39 in.

Weight end of week 16:  186 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week: -2 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -23 lbs.

Okay, back to Monday's article in the Gazette. Here's a link to the original, which is now only available on my 2/3/14 blog, and here's a link to the online Gazette version of 2/17. They removed several sentences from the online version because, I incorrectly summarized a now outdated Scientific American article and the pattern of hospital visits related to the chemical spill. They also fixed an editor's mistake in removing an attribution to Erin Brockovich in the print version. I'd written that "According to Brockovich" no new laws are needed regarding chemical safety and by removing those words it made it sound like that was my position. Elsewhere in the article I'd stated that new laws were needed in addition to increased enforcement by DEP. 

Ken Ward pointed out to me an error I'd made by characterizing 4-MCHM as "dissipating" over time according to the MSDS. In fact it used the term half-life, so the time periods during which the  presence of the chemical would remain in air, water, and sediment I reported were approximately half what I should have reported. He also complained that the chemical that spilled was a mixture of crude MCHM (which is mostly, but not all made of 4-MCHM), and a much smaller amount of PPH (about 7%), but the MSDS I referred to was only for 4-MCHM. One thing most people who continue to bring up the issue of the PPH don't acknowledge is that there was no PPH detected in any of the samples collected by WV American Water even in the first hours of the spill (at least not down to 10 parts/billion testing levels they were using).

Regarding hospital visits, I said they had declined since the early days of the spill. Ward pointed out that there had been no data reported for the last three weeks (in fact I had written the op-ed 3 weeks previously, but the Gazette doesn't print my work the same day I write it as they do for Ward). However, I think its reasonable to assume that if the average number of hospital visits attributed to the water crisis went down for the two reporting periods after the spill, that they probably have continued to decline. Ward takes the proper journalistic position that he doesn't make assumptions in the absence of data. I don't feel such restrictions, though I acknowledge I should have hedged in some way such as saying it's my assumption they've continued to decline. At any rate, I don't get unlimited space in the Gazette to explain every detail--800 words is pretty much the limit, and the editor who removed the words According to Brockovich said hum was trying to cut a few words to make it fit in the space available (hum is not a typo, it's a non-gender pronoun, short for human). 

So, I'm not angry with the Gazette--I love the Gazette, and as I wrote to the editor who I communicate with, I appreciate the education I get by reading and interacting with the Gazette, its readers, and its staff. On Wednesday, on this blog, I'll be posting my latest op-ed which I sent to the Gazette a few days ago, titled "Our Water is Safe." I expect it will be pretty controversial, but I've always been willing to speak my mind, even if I hold the minority position among friends.

True Confession and Shocking Pictures!

My 2-Day Diet, week 15 (stats at end)

This is the first week in over three months since I began the 2-Day Diet I am reporting a weight gain instead of weight loss or an unchanged week from the previous week. However,  truth to tell on a couple occasions I reported my weight to be a pound less than my actual Sunday “weigh in” revealed to avoid reporting no loss or even a small gain. Yes, I’m a liar. I am going to make a wild guess that all of us are. We lie to ourselves and to other people all the time. Then we excuse ourselves. Here are my excuses for lying to us the, I don’t know, two or maybe three times I’ve done that:

1.) My weigh-in day is a Sunday—perhaps not the best choice. I tend to eat more on the weekend, go out dinner, go to parties, travel with my band or my wife, Rita.

2.) In the week previous, I’ve stepped on the scales at least one morning and seen weights below the previous week’s weigh in, so I tell myself that is my true weight and on Sunday it was just an anomaly—a little water weight or constipation that put that pound or two back on.

3.) It is the downside to how very public I’ve made my decision to pursue this diet; I’ve not only wanted to be successful in this diet for personal reasons like better health and increased self-esteem through improved body image, but I’ve felt somehow invested in the method I chose, the book, “The 2-Day Diet,” and imagined that if I were very successful, I’d be able to convince more of my friends to try it and be successful as well.

So there it is. I apologize. I intentionally deceived you. I should say, “This will never happen again.” However, I know that I can’t make that promise. I believe it’s human nature, and unlike politicians and some religious leaders who pretend they can make superhuman assertions about how perfect they are going to be, “from now on,” I am a humanist and I accept my imperfections. I may lie to us sometimes, but I mean well and I have my reasons. In the end, the proof of the success of my weight loss effort will be my weight from day to day, month to month, year to year and my general health compared to when I started this regime. Today I weigh over twenty pounds less than when I started depending on what time of day you weigh me (my body weight generally goes up three to four pounds during the course of a day from a morning weigh in).

I’ve been honest about how I’ve been eating. If you’ve been reading my blog posts or go back and read them, you'll see I have described the process I went through as I learned how to pay more attention to how I ate, how much I ate in a serving, a sitting, a snack, a meal, the kinds of foods of was eating, and the state of my hunger. I learned so much about myself in that first month or so—how I’d been deluded into believing that I was hungry all the time when in fact I’d forgotten what true hunger felt like, and the sensation of a stomach that was not completely full had become the definition of hunger for me!

For the past month or so, I have not looked at my diet book or the charts of the types of foods or number of allowable servings for each food group it recommends. I am still more or less on that diet. Two days a week, I try to make it two consecutive days, I have my “low carb days” during which I scrupulously avoid higher carb foods like bread, pasta, grains, root vegetables (except carrots), and of course anything with sugar. The rest of the week I will eat some of those foods, but only in very small amounts. I rarely eat a sandwich with two pieces of sliced bread. I’m more likely to use one piece of bread and use some lettuce instead of a top slice. Or have a salad with a piece of toast on the side. Or have just half a sandwich. When I put rice, pasta, or bulgur wheat on my plate I put on the equivalent of a golf ball and a little bit more. I try to keep to less than a cup, and usually I can, by eating more vegetables, more protein, or just by eating slowly and making sure I wait at least twenty minutes after I’ve cleaned my plate to decide if I really need to eat more. And usually I don’t.

I frequently do not snack between meals anymore, and when I do, I often am satisfied with half an apple and a small handful of walnuts or three or four slices of canned peaches and two or three tablespoons of cottage cheese or yogurt. Maybe I'll eat four Triscuits with cracker sized slices of swiss cheese, or my old standby, especially on low carb days: celery or green pepper and salsa.

People who know me and haven’t seen me for awhile comment on my weight loss. I bought two new pairs of jeans—size 34 waist. I used to wear 38’s with my belt buckled below my belly, not in the middle of it. My new jeans are a little tight, but I can wear them at the waist. I feel great. I work out harder and longer than I used to, not only because I know it will help me lose that pound this week, but because I’m feeling good and it’s feeling good to push myself harder on Stairmaster or the elliptical strider or even just walking up that steep hill as fast as I can.

So there it is. Do you forgive me? Or will you write me off because I lied once, so how can you believe anything I say? Okay. I’ll prove to you I'm not lying about losing weight. This week I’m posting a picture of me enjoying eating and drinking more than I should have been on November 2, 2013, the NIGHT BEFORE I STARTED DIETING! Compare that to the photo from today! Look better, don’t I? Would you like to experience changes like this? You can do it, and I’ll help you. I’m retired, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably my friend or a friend of a friend, so I would feel good being in your support group or serving as a mentor, at least until too many people asked me or I changed my mind for one reason or another. I’m not lying--really, I’ll do it. I bought the book for a couple folks early on and two of them have told me they lost a few pounds when they started the diet, but I’m not sure if they’re staying with it. Buy the 2 Day Diet book or embark on some other weight loss plan you think will work for you and check in with me here or on Facebook or by e-mail, and let’s see how it goes.

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 39 in.

Weight end of week 15:  188 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week: +1 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -21 lbs.

November 2, 2013 The night before
I started the 2-Day Diet!

February 17, 2014 Halfway to my goal!

This Land is Our Land

This Land is Our Land

February 9, 2014

(today’s Diet Challenge ‘report’ is at the end of this post)

Today it is one month since the water crisis in WV began. Pete Seeger died on 1/27, and in searching for some of the songs he’d written I came across a couple verses of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land he penned, one about income inequality, and one on the environment. And I also saw other verses of Woody’s much more hard hitting than the version usually sung. I had gone to a town hall meeting during which Erin Brockavich and one of her team talked about the need for this community to engage in ongoing community activism in order to start getting our governor to direct the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enforce existing laws, let alone getting the legislature to pass new ones. There were some mountain top removal activists there also making the point that in the coalfields of WV, the DEP has been letting coal companies destroy their streams and poison their water for years without taking action. So, one sleepless night, after writing a new verse to This Land is Your Land, I went down into my basement, set up my i-phone on a tripod and videoed myself talking about what’s been going on and singing This Land is Your Land. I found my voice, sad but resolute, and I am now committed to doing what I can to hold our politicians to the promise of clean water and a healthy environment, a cause I’ve only supported with lip service and a few donations until now. The video (with some editing), is fifteen minutes long and I plan to put it up on YouTube, but am trying to get permission from the holders of Woody Guthrie’s copyrights first. What follows is a transcript:

Three weeks ago on January the ninth, 2014, there was a chemical storage tank that leaked and spilled its contents, or at least ten thousand gallons of its contents, into the Elk River a mile or so north of Charleston, WV where I live. You’ve probably heard about it; it made national and even international news. Because, well, the water company, a private company, a profit making company, didn’t shut their water intakes, didn’t realize what the chemical was; they thought their systems would filter the water. So, it got into the water supply, and they figured out after a day, you know, several hours, that they had a possibly poisonous chemical in the water system in our city. So they put out a Do Not Use order to all the customers of this West Virginia American Water Company.

They cut off water to, you know, 300,000 customers in nine counties around the capital city of WV. We’re only a city in the city limits of about 50,000, so it’s a wide geographical area that they serve. And we were told not to drink the water, not to wash or use the water, except to flush our toilets or to put out fires.

After four days they started approving certain areas. They said, “Your water is safe now to use, to drink.” People are confused and angry and scared. And there’s been a lot of conflicting reports. There’s not much known about this chemical, MCHM, a chemical used in the process of cleaning coal to make it ready for market, for burning.

So this week, Pete Seeger died, and if you don’t know who he was, Google him and listen to his music – ninety-four years old, sang and was an activist for the Earth, and for labor and for every good cause in the last 70 years. And, you know, he was in the same, almost the same generation as Woody Guthrie. Woody was obviously a little older. And Pete sang Woody’s songs too, and so I’m going to honor Pete with a song he sang a lot, This Land is Your Land, this land is my land. But you know Woody wrote verses that you probably haven’t heard. I’m going to sing those verses in addition to the chorus. And Pete wrote a couple verses, and I’m going to sing those. And I wrote a verse, just yesterday, and I’m going to try to get through that.

This land is your land,

This land is my land,

From California to the New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,

This land was made for you and me.

One bright sunny morning, in the shadow of the steeple,

By the relief office I saw my people,

As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if,

This land was made for you and me.

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me,

Was a great big sign that said, "Private Property,"

But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking my freedom highway,

Nobody living can make me turn back,

This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land (sing it with me)

This land is my land (California)

From California to the New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters (Katrina),

This land was made for you and me.

So yeah, those were Woody’s verses, and you know just singing “Gulf stream waters, and thinking about Deep Water Horizon and the tragedy that was Katrina.  Deep Water Horizon, of course the oil rig that spilled, broke and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico despoiling their waters.

These next two verses were Pete’s verses, and you know, I don’t know when he wrote them, but this first one’s about inequality and that’s a bit topic right now, and it has been for a long time, but it’s just been getting worse and worse – inequality of income.

Maybe you've been working as hard as you're able,

But you've just got crumbs from the rich man's table,

And maybe you're thinking, was it truth or fable,

That this land was made for you and me.

Woodland and grassland and river shoreline,

To everything living, even little microbes,

Fin, fur, and feather, we're all here together,

This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land,

This land is my land,

From California to the New York Island,

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters,

This land was made for you and me.

Well, my verse is really about Mountain Top Removal coal mining, because as bad as we’ve had it in Charleston the last three weeks, people of southern West Virginia in the coalfields, and in Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, Virginia, parts of North Carolina, maybe into Tennessee, are living through a kind of strip mining called Mountain Top Removal. They just plain cut the tops off the mountains and push ‘em over into the valleys. And, uh, you know it covers up the streams, miles and miles and miles of streams. It kills everything, and nothing can grow there. I mean they, they, they spray something on it, makes grass grow. They, they say, “You can put.. shopping malls there.” The place is so depressed, there’s nobody putting shopping malls there. “You can put golf courses there.” It’ll never grow back. It’ll never come back.

And not only that, but it’s poisoning the water for the people down there. It’s been doing it for years and years. It’s poisoning the wells. It’s poisoning the people. The rates for cancer are through the roof! And, these people are strong, proud people. But they’re giving up the fight, and they’re doing drugs, their kids are hopeless and their education system is failing because all the money’s been leaving. And all the jobs have been leaving, because it’s all done by machine. It’s not like the underground mines, which are dangerous and have big machines that require a little more manpower. It’s a, it’s a travesty. Oh well, time to sing:

Our Mountain Mama, they’ve spoiled your water

Cut down your mountains, it’s a true slaughter

But we will rise up and stand together

This land was made for you and me.

Well, that last line, This land was made for you and me, that’s not, it didn’t work for me,  it doesn’t work for me, I mean it’s the song,  I had to change that, because, you know, this land has been here before we were here, before the Native Americans were here. You know there’s a verse of this song written by Native Americans that says, This land was our land before it was your land, you stole it from us.” I don’t know the rest of it. But this land wasn’t made for us to do whatever we want with it—to destroy it….This land is for us, to take care of and leave for our children and grandchildren and those who come after us. And we have Got. To stop this Mountain Top Removal coal mining. We have Got. To Stop. Destroying our mountains, our rivers, our streams. And, you know, whatever cause, wherever you live, write yourself a verse for this song and add this line to the end of it. This line that says, this last line instead of, “This land was made for you and me,” “Saving this land will be our legacy. Saving this land,” wherever you are or come down here and help us save this land. Help us change our government’s mind.

There’s not a War on Coal.  There’s a War on West Virginia. There’s a war on the mountains! There’s a war on the rivers! There’s a war on the People of West Virginia! I’ve been here forty years, and like the people who were born here (I wasn’t born here), I love this land. And I love living here, and there’s a whole lot of people in this town  who are talking about leaving. And that’s the ways it’s been in southern West Virginia for years and years they’ve been leaving, and….(sniff), and not coming back…they love it, or…. so sing this one with me for the people of West Virginia.

Our Mountain Mama, they’ve spoiled your water

Cut down your mountains, it’s a true slaughter

But we will rise up and stand together, saving

This land will be our legacy

Saving this land will be our legacy.

The video ends there and the final credit reads, “learn more, donate, take action” along with a link to a site that serves as a clearinghouse for all the Mountain Top Removal and environmental groups working in the southern Appalachians: www.ilovemountains.org . I hope you will click and join me in fighting this scourge.

Here's how I'm doing on the 2-Day Diet. I'm half way to my goal!

Beginning weight 11/3/13: 209 lbs.

Height 5'8" Age: 61

Goal weight: 165 lbs.

Total loss goal: 44 lbs.

Beginning waist size: 43 in.

Current waist size: 39 in.

Weight end of week 14:  187 lbs.

Gain/Loss this week: -1 lb.

Total Gain/Loss:  -22 lbs.