Living on HuffingtonPost.com

Elissa Wall: Warren Jeffs' FLDS Church and What I Left Behind

2008-05-17T13:21:48Z

Ever since the raid on the YFZ Temple in Eldorado, Texas in early April, America has been taking a long look at the polygamous lifestyle of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). At this point you've probably heard about the strange bed in the top of temple. You've heard about the DNA tests, the anonymous phone call, and the difficult decision to take the kids away from their mothers. Everyone, and I mean everyone, I talk to seems to have an opinion on this issue--whether it's how terrible Texas is for removing the kids or how terrible the parents are for allowing the kids to be there in the first place.

It's hard to understand what it means to be in the FLDS unless you've lived there. It's even harder to understand how little freedom there is for women to choose for themselves. For eighteen years of my life I was an FLDS member. I wore long pioneer style dresses, styled my hair in the FLDS up-do fashion, and I believed that Warren Jeffs was the prophet--the embodiment of God on earth. When I was fourteen years old, I, like many young FLDS girls, was forced by Jeffs to marry a man whom I did not want to wed. My husband to be was not a fifty-year-old man, he was my nineteen year old first cousin.

When I learned about my coming marriage, I did everything I could to stop it--even going to the top men in the church and begging them to give me just a few more years before marriage so that I could grow up. My pleading was met with rejection. They told me the marriage was God's will; if I didn't go through with it, I would be banished from my house and most likely from the FLDS. Worst of all though, I would lose my family.

A fourteen year old girl faced with that "choice" doesn't really have one. After a week of pleading my case, I whispered "okay" when they asked me if I took this man to be my husband. What followed were the three most difficult years of my life, years spent stuck in this marriage that I did not want.

Eventually I fled my marriage and the FLDS to start a new life with another former FLDS member, a man who helped give me the strength to leave. The day that the YFZ raid took place, I was leading my new life, far away from the FLDS. That day, I received a call from a member of the Texas law enforcement involved in the raid. His question was a simple one: could I go down there and help them? The magnitude of what was going on was just beginning to become clear and they needed help learning about the people inside FLDS. A few short hours later I was on a plane to Eldorado.

All at once, I was put back into the world that I'd left behind. During my time in Texas, I saw incredible displays of generosity and unfortunate amounts of pain. I saw FLDS women, holding their heads up high, defiant as officials loaded them onto buses. I saw the FLDS men, cowering behind the scenes, afraid to so much as walk their wives and children to the waiting cars. I saw how the Texas authorities did everything they could to understand the people and their beliefs. But most of all, I saw two sides that were put in an incredibly hard situation. It was my job to try a build a bridge between those two sides, to provide everyone working on this investigation with knowledge of the culture and the mindset these men and women and children were in.

After returning from Eldorado, I had a chance to revisit my past again, when I traveled to Alta Academy, where I had gone to school from first to sixth grade. Though it's slated for demolition today, Alta Academy was once the center of FLDS life in Salt Lake City. The building is now abandoned, but here is the exclusive footage from my trip back there, to the building where Warren Jeffs taught me what it meant to be a good and obedient FLDS girl. As you go on this tour with me, if you'd like more information please click here.

Whoopi Goldberg, Candice Bergen And Others On Their Favorite Possession

2008-05-17T12:59:36Z

Candice Bergen :
By a long shot, the "birthday shoes" my daughter made me for my birthday when she was 9 or 10. They are made of construction paper, painted blue, decorated with lace ribbon and lined with multiple Q-Tips to massage my feet. They are framed and hang in my kitchen next to the later "wedding shoes" she made me when I remarried.

Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent: Hot Hollywood Moms

2008-05-17T12:59:22Z

We want to take a quick moment to address the MILF reference in our title last week. Our column is of course edited and that title was not the one we came up with. It may have driven traffic, but it also caused quite an uproar, and we want you to know that our goal was to give all the moms out there lighthearted advice on mother's day about how to treat themselves and their bodies well, not to make them feel like they have to eat or look a certain way in order to be a "MILF." We want all moms to feel sexy and desirable, not for them to think that in order to be hot they must strive to look like they just walked off the set of Desperate Housewives. The point of this column, our books, and everything that we write is to make women laugh while boosting their confidence, because the truth is that most women - no matter what they look like or what size they are - share the same insecurities when it comes to food and body image.

So this week we'd like to focus on some beautiful celebrity mothers who have discussed their own struggles to accept their changing bodies before, during, and after pregnancy. This issue has been coming up in interviews a lot lately, and while we think it's sad that such gorgeous women should ever feel insecure about their lovely pregnant bodies, we do think it's good for all of us "regular women" to see that even the most perfect looking specimens on the planet feel the same self-doubt as the rest of us mere mortals. Hopefully, this will help all women realize that even if they try every fad diet on the planet and end up looking like their favorite celebrity, they will most likely still feel the same lack of confidence until they manage to find it from within.

For example, in this week's People magazine, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon looks gorgeous in a bathing suit only seven months after giving birth to twins, and admits that after having the babies she signed up for a 1,200 calorie a day low-carb diet delivery service, which helped her drop thirty pounds in five months. While it's good for women to see that the weight didn't magically fall off of Garcelle, we hope they don't adhere to this extremely low calorie formula - especially if they are breastfeeding! Perhaps this is what Salma Hayek was referring to when she told Oprah that the idea that breastfeeding helps you lose weight is a myth, unless you are simultaneously starving yourself.

Speaking of starving yourself, a few weeks ago Jessica Alba told People that her pre-pregnancy diet consisted of breakfast, no lunch, and a salad for dinner. As scary as that is, Jessica went on to say that when she first found out that she was pregnant, she was nervous about having to eat more food. We can understand that watching your body change can be daunting, and we applaud Jessica for being so honest about her issues with food, but we hope that her insecurities aren't continuing to cloud what is really important - the hungry baby growing inside of her. And we hope that women who read interviews like this don't try to emulate celebrities by adopting this type of unhealthy Hollywood diet, and instead decide to embrace their own bodies for what they are. Clearly, Jessica Alba's body is unrealistic even for Jessica Alba, so it is ridiculous for anyone else to try to live up to this ideal.

While so many moms are clearly struggling with their pregnant and post-baby bods, we want to give props to hot mom Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who expresses an extremely healthy attitude about her body in this month's Fitness. She explains that since giving birth to her son six months ago, she's finally gotten over some of her insecurities. She says, "Before, I always tied a shirt around my waist when I [ran]. It was ridiculous. Here I am, trying to wean my daughter from her blankie, and [I'm covering] my rear like my own security blanket." Elisabeth also conveys a newly found balanced approach to exercise. She says, "I'm finally learning to enjoy exercise because of how it makes me feel, not because I'm afraid of how I'll feel if I miss it." We hope all of you moms out there will take a note from Ms. Hasselbeck - stop hiding behind your own security blankets (whatever they may be), start embracing your bodies, and find things in your life that you enjoy for the way they make you feel.

Kimberly Brooks: The Painting Whisperer vs The Anxiety of Abstraction: Annie Lapin

2008-05-17T12:54:56Z

Take for a moment the spectrum of Realism and the raucous jazz of Abstraction in painting and slide somewhere in the middle. Over to the left is realism flexing its technical prowess, and it is impressive-- posing in the sun like a young Arnold Schwarzennegger. But once the painter leaves it, when reality is tweaked or cracked open and abstraction seeps in, the mind wanders inside the crevasses and when done right, it sets the viewer free, free to interpret or imagine something greater than even what the painter had in store. The longer I paint, the more I leave realism and revere painters who ride that certain edge in between. Arnold looks so silly in that bathing suit anyway.

I have long cultivated the thought of artist as Painting Whisperer; that the better artist possesses some secret frequency to channel the right moves. When one can tune in better, the paintings will just fly out like songs or messages from a distant galaxy. Or like a novelist whose characters develop minds of their owns and "write the rest of the story" themselves. This is also a common fantasy among the critics and viewers not in the trenches. Perhaps Irving Stone helped start it in The Agony and the Ecstasy when he depicted the young Michelangelo coaxing the figures out of the marble slabs, setting them free. But it's not so simple. How many film students studying Godard revel in some bizarre effect, only to find later that something spilled on the camera lens? It was an accident, dammit! But a great one, like discovering penicillin from the mold on cheese.

Annie Lapin, "Cast Halving", 2008, Oil on panel, 96 x 69 inches, Courtsey of Angles Gallery.

Annie Lapin is one such artist whose work lies somewhere in that amazing middle. Her recent paintings deftly disorient and bend the pitch of reality just enough to make you fall inside them. When I look at Annie's work, I had projected that she must talk to her canvas, how else must these scenes come into being? I'm fascinated by what gets planned and tossed and when. But in talking with her, I learn, she is no painting whisperer-- she is not the passive recipient of some canvas telling her what to do. No! She is Charlie Sheen starring in her own version of The Apocolypse, where every possibility is fraught with consequences, and each stroke, like Chaos' butterfly wing, causing rainstorms elsewhere on the canvas. So the real conversation, then-- the whispering-- occurs less between artist and canvas and more between the viewer and the final work, which is exactly what great art should do. Her show, "Gruppology" opens tonight at the Angles Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.

KB: How do you start a painting, Annie? I see remnants of photographic imagery and reality but am not convinced that you're looking at anything when you make it.

AL: On all of my larger works, I work from my head. It is a process of reacting to the image... layering, and allowing it to develop is if it were a photo in emulsion. I also do a lot of watercolor exercises, which tend to be diptychs on little pieces of paper. For these I often paint from photos of current events or other things that seem prevalent in the media. By doing this I get to recharge both my mind and my hand with the tropes of realism, quotations of photographic lighting and reformulations of the images that we all think we know so well. Then those things come out naturally when I compose my larger works on canvas, and I am more able to subvert them because I am not looking directly at a photograph.

Annie Lapin, "Couple of Narcissists", 2008, Oil on synthetic canvas, 51 x 30 inches, Courtesy of Angles Gallery.

When you're working on the bigger canvases, do ever get the feeling that the paintings talk to you while you're making them and tell you want they want done to them? Like a novelists who invents characters that start having minds of their own? When does that happen? All during or never?

AL: I wish my paintings would talk to me, but sadly, radio silence. It's a process of trial and error as I search for that unique solution which will allow it to resonate in the way I am after.

KB: No kidding. I have full-blown arguments, wrestling matches and make-out sessions. I've been aspiring to be a "Painting Whisperer" trying to listen to the next move as much as I want my mind to control it.

AL: I wish it were that way, but it is definitely not a "painting whisperer" process. I have way way way too much anxiety to be a "painting whisperer." I always feel the painting could go a million ways, I choose one, and typically, after the initial high, I feel miserable about it. And even after it's "done" I could see a million ways to destroy it or subvert it, which I often feel compelled to do if the image is too resolved. Once the painting is "done" I am always sure there was another way I could have taken a painting... but I comfort myself by looking at it and just superimposing those ways on the canvas in my mind.

Rather, let's just say I am an "illusion junkie," rearranging and recombining shapes and forms like a heroin addict searching for veins that haven't been used in order to give myself the best fix I can manage of a satisfactory imagery. And that satisfactory image tends to arise from notions I have about the way the mind works and tries to settle questions about what it's seeing. I relate more to neurological and cognitive experimentation than I do to a personal dialog with the work. The goal of my experimentation is not something I can readily put into words beyond saying that I strive to encounter the process of cognition through playing with the construction of meaning. That is where I get my high.

Annie Lapin, "The Players", 2007, Casein and egg tempera on panel, 56 x 43 7/8 inches, Courtesy of Angles Gallery.

KB: That's clearly some very good stuff. What is the source of inspiration for your show, "Gruppology", opening tonight?

AL: I often think about an emotional experience I had when I was sixteen in response to the novel The Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham. It documents the life of a painter in his journey away from his entrenchment in bourgeois society to arrive finally and metaphorically on a remote island, completing his rift with "civilization." There he ultimately contracts leprosy and spends the final two years of his life in a single room, alone except for occasional visits from his wife. He goes blind, but over those two years he fills the room from ceiling to floor with paintings. Reading Maugham's description of that room basically launched me into a visceral and intellectual panic attack that lasted for about a month! Suddenly I found myself grappling with a sudden mistrust in my perception of the world. I saw this painter who created, lived in, and finally died in this painted room, as any human being, living in the world of sensation. I'm not sure how this happened but suddenly I felt like the world I lived in was also just a painted room! At 16 I'd never even heard of deconstruction or phenomenology, which allow us to intellectualize such concepts, so this was a highly emotional - and very strange - experience for me. I think the current work speaks to some of that same anxiety I had back then -- that the vision of the world we think to be so stable is as thin, frail, and constructed as a painting and visa versa. On the flip side, there is an optimism if not a euphoria about painting: that it can reflect the whole world and more.

KB: Does the euphoria come from reflecting the world or discovering or being able to depict things you never imagined? I say this because your paintings have a surreal/imaginary quality to them.

AL: I am less interested in the depiction of "things," real or imagined, than I am in the way certain images play with our minds at various points in history and culture. In my most optimistic moments, I sometimes believe that painting has the capacity to provoke a confrontation with the process of cognition, on both an individual and a societal level. The imaginary or surreal quality of my work probably is a natural bi-product of my experiments toward that elusive end.

Annie Lapin, "Land Gods", 2007, Mixed media on panel, 14 x 11 inches, Courtsey of Angles Gallery.

KB: What was your inspiration behind "Land Gods"?

AL: I have a reverence for the constructs of visual illusionism, because I feel that they are constituents of a much larger mechanism, which connects each of us to what we perceive in the world. When I made Land Gods, I was thinking very specifically of the work as an icon to perception and cognition. It gains power and an air of the sacred through its layers of illusion. It is small, about 14" x 11". And yet it contains a deep landscape. Additionally there are overlapping images in this painting. The deep space of the landscape also stacks vertically on top of itself to create another image, composed of large faces, that is on a plane that basically parallels the surface of the painting. This component of the painting, the face painted without depth, alludes to Byzantine iconographic space, which was reserved for holy imagery. I call the work Land Gods, because I think that this painting also reflects the multiple ways that people look at the land, as something alternately animated, sublime, or simply as real estate. All these ideas about the landscape haunt our minds any time we conceive of or look at the terrain around us. They are like ghosts... or gods.

KB: Is there a work of art that inspires you?

AL: Here is an image of a painting I had on my bedroom wall as a child. I spent years staring at this image as I lay in bed, never imagining that there was an artist behind it, or that it was meant to depict something specific. I didn't think of it as a work of art with an intention. Instead, it was a constantly changing thing as I projected various interpretations onto it. I think most of the time I imagined the two large forms at the end of the road were two hulking monsters, lumbering along together, sometimes with good intent, sometimes bad. Other times I focused on the abstract forms and the symmetry of the image. Though it generated many stories in my head, this thing had no clear meaning to me. I suppose it scared me sometimes, but mostly it was just fascinating. I often feel as if I am trying to recreate my experience with that little landscape painting as I encounter forms on the canvass, and sometimes in the world around me.

Before receiving her MFA from UCLA in 2007, Annie received her BA from Yale University and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She will have a solo exhibition at Grand Arts in Kansas City, Missouri, in June, 2008. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at Angles Gallery, Roberts and Tilton, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, and the L.A. Weekly Annual Biennial. Gruppology is Lapin's first solo exhibition at the Angles Gallery, running from 17 May - 21 June 2008. Angles Gallery: 2230 Main Street, Santa Monica CA 90405

Artist Annie Lapin

First Person Artist is a weekly column by artist Kimberly Brooks in which she provides commentary on the creative process and showcases artists' work from around the world. Come back every Saturday for more Kimberly Brooks. You can view more interviews and essays at www.firstpersonartist.com.

Dr. Tian Dayton: A Message Of Hope In Recovery

2008-05-17T12:26:06Z

For this week's blog I am sharing my acceptance speech for an award I received from The Freedom Institute, this past Monday evening in New York City. It is both personal and professional, and could it could easily be titled "The ACOA Dilemma: On Being and Adult Child of Addiction or Dysfunction."

This evening is about the family, so I will speak as an adult child of an alcoholic as well as a professional, if I may.

Like so many of us here, I am committed to this field because of my own personal experience with addiction. I entered recovery in order to solve my own issues, and I have stayed to help others solve theirs. I'm here because I watched the father I adored drift slowly into a bottle of scotch and other behaviors that took him away from us, away from our selves and away from each other. I work in this field because I need to, in order to restore my own sense of self, trust and faith in a beautiful world.

Tonight's theme is hope. One of the most meaningful statements on hope for me has always been the words of Vaclav Havel, who helped to carry the Czech Republic to freedom and was also a prolific author and playwright.

Havel wrote "Either we have hope within us or we don't. It is a dimension of the soul, and it is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or the willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things".

Recovery, I think, reflects this kind of hope. We enter it because it makes sense, because it's better than the alternative. We embrace it because we have hope and that hope gives us, as Havel says, strength to live and try new things.

Recovery is a journey of personal and often spiritual awakening that deepens us because it forces us to look at both sides of life, the good and the bad and somehow hold both.

The Father I adored, who loved me, who was playful, generous and magical, had a monster living inside, who was as frightening to me as the other side of him was beautiful. He was both a god and a monster in my young world.

And eventually, the monster in my father broke loose and danced with the monster in all of us. We each, at one time or another, shared his private hell until all of us lost our grip on normal. Our sense of the healthy and reliable container that once held our family was invaded and degraded by this disease.

But still, this was my family, my dad, my monster and I had to do something to make emotional and psychological sense of living with a parent who made me feel both safe and terrified, who I loved and hated all at once. Any child is faced with integrating parts of their parents that they both love and hate, but for the child in the alcoholic home, this becomes a uniquely challenging experience and requires complex, penetrating, thoughtful and sometimes rather zany solutions.

Those of us who have lived with addiction, all too often tend to live in emotional extremes, without what Bill W., the founder of AA, referred to as emotional sobriety and balance. This has long been intuitively referred to in the rooms as "black and white thinking". We go from zero to ten with no speed bumps in between, from imploding to exploding. We have trouble living in 4, 5 and 6.

Neuroscience tells us that emotions are experienced in our bodies. We get back aches, stomach aches, heart aches. We have a gut reaction. The body, in fact, doesn't really know the difference between physical danger, like an oncoming car, or emotional danger, like a drunk and raging parent. It will react to either by pumping out enough stress chemicals, like adrenaline, to give us the spurt of energy we need to flee for safety or stand and fight.

But what happens when the family itself becomes the proverbial saber toothed tiger? Children cannot flee, where would they go? They cannot fight, they'd lose. So they shut down, they freeze, they flee on the inside. But without somehow processing what's going on for them, that numbed and frozen pain can live within the self system, an emotional accident waiting to happen, in what we now call a post traumatic stress reaction. That's what being an ACOA is all about. Years after the stressor is removed, we live as if it's still there. As if some emotional threat, lurks just around the corner.

This is the dilemma of the ACOA, when unresolved childhood pain surfaces in adulthood and gets projected into current relationships. When its origins are fuzzy and unconscious. When we make it about everything it isn't, because we don't understand what it is. This is why I love psychodrama, because it treats the body, mind and spirit. It allows the self that has gone into hiding to wake up and enter the present moment, to say the words that have been left unsaid, and feel the feelings that have been left unfelt; so that we can become spontaneous, whole and alive once again.

Recovery begins with a restoration of hope but soon evolves into a new design for living. One that expands the dimensions of our souls.

My father never found recovery. That is probably why I have spent my life as I have. When dad sought treatment, there was no such thing as family healing, in those days everyone thought that if the addict sobered up, the family would somehow just get better by itself.

Since those days, the recovery movement has come of age. We have learned from other fields and we're increasingly recognized and respected by the broader arena of mental health for the unique set of values that we bring to healing the human spirit.

Today there is hope as never before. Today, here this evening, we recognize that there is no dignity in hiding the truth, and no freedom in keeping secrets. We learn, in recovery, to stand up and take responsibility for the disease that lives in us and to take the necessary steps to treat it, so that our unresolved pain doesn't get passed down to another generation. And in doing this, we restore our hope, faith and dignity. Mona Mansell's mission was about bringing the light of recovery into families that looked good but felt bad...families that suffered silently behind closed doors. I am proud to be part of honoring and expanding her mission and celebrating how far we have all come together. Thank you for giving me this award.

Caroline Presno: Election Mania

2008-05-16T22:45:18Z

Voters are on an emotional rollercoaster with their candidates -- from the euphoria of incremental delegate gains one week to the dysphoria of gaffes and momentum shifts the next. Millions of voters are headed for a mood crash -- and we're not even out of primary season!

After an important election, one that really grips the country, I see an interesting trend in my clients during their therapy sessions -- if there were actual diagnoses for this trend, we might use terms like "election mania" or "post-election disorder."

Of course, this diagnosis only applies to those who have emotionally invested in their candidate and are wrapped up in the electoral process. One of the criteria for "election mania" is an insatiable appetite for political punditry to the extent that it affects social and occupational functioning i.e. you pick a fight with your spouse because he agrees with Pat Buchanan or you stay up way past your bedtime on a primary night to hear every word Tim Russert has to say.

The day after, I can always expect clients who backed the winning candidate to show me their victory like proud kids show parents their report card. However, for those on the losing team, I can expect to see an exacerbation of their current mental health diagnosis.

Depression and anxiety are the most prevalent. At its core, depression is about hopelessness and helplessness and anxiety is dread of an unknown future. After voters pour their trust and expectations into a candidate and that candidate doesn't make it, hope for the future can seem lost to them . . . and they worry.

Female supporters of Hillary Clinton are particularly vulnerable at this time with her campaign winding down. Not only did they view her as opening new policy doors, they saw her as rising up to smash the ceiling for women. From a mental health perspective, it's a good thing that it's a wind down rather than being an abrupt shock.

So what is the mood stabilizer for election mania? Here are a few suggestions:

--Developing insight into the condition is key. Recognize the impact the race is having on you emotionally. If you have a hard time with this try keeping an election diary so you have a place for your thoughts and feelings.

--Don't drop out of the political process if your candidate doesn't win. One of the best cures for hopelessness and helplessness is to get out there and keep doing.

--Maintain some objectivity. It's okay to pour your heart into this election -- it shows your passion. However, you also need to create a bit a distance so that you don't see things though a distorted lense.

--Distract yourself. Yes, that means watch a movie one night rather than Hardball with Chris Matthews.

--Focus on some of the positive gains your candidate has made i.e. changing the national dialogue, bringing important issues to the forefront.

--Recognize that history and the political process are often cyclical -- your turn will come around.

--Don't fall into the logical fallacy of catastrophe -- If x doesn't happen, then y is the end of it all. It's not the end . . . it's the beginning of a bumpy ride. Fasten up!

Long Island Radio Station Announces Sex And The City Look-A-Like Contest

2008-05-16T22:36:21Z

The final countdown to Sex And The City: The Movie has begun. And with it, so has the mania.

In the inbox today was a press release detailing Long Island radio station BLI's "Sex and The City Look-A-Like Contest." The scoop:

Do you or someone you know look like one of the ladies from Sex & the City? Do you get mistaken on the street for Carrie? Have you always wanted to expose your inner Samantha? Well, here's your chance! We're looking for Sex & the City Look-A-Likes! If you think you're a dead ringer for one of our fave ladies from SATC, just send us a picture and you and a friend could be headed to an advanced screening of the Sex & the City Movie May 28th in NYC courtesy of Vitamin Water!

AND not only will you be going to see the HOTTEST Movie of the summer before anyone else, you'll also get a $100 gift card from Bloomingdale's, A pair of shoes courtesy of the Hampton Shoe Vixen AND a makeup makeover from M.A.C. including a complimentary M.A.C. "lash" look pre-premiere!

Something tells us that the entries photos are going to be fantastic.

[You can enter the contest by submitting a photo to jilinthemorning@yahoo.com, but remember, as usual: you must be 21 or older to win.]

Not sure which character you look like? Not even sure who the characters are? Well, you can at least find out which character you are, by taking the "Which Sex and the City Character Are You?" quiz.

Excited to see the movie? Wondering what all the fuss is about? Tell us below!

Irene Rubaum-Keller: How Do You Know When To Stop Eating?

2008-05-16T21:24:27Z

I asked my son, when he was about 6, how he knew when to stop eating. He said, "My tummy tells me, because, I can't actually see in there." I have raised him on as much healthy food as he will eat and let him have some sweets as well. I have allowed him to dictate when he is done with his meals and how much dessert he will have. He is eleven now and normal-weighted and in touch with his sense of hunger and satiety.

I grew up during a time when adults told you to eat all your food if you wanted dessert. All your food was often what was put on your plate by an adult. Not only were we being taught to disregard our body's full meters, but also that the reward for overeating was more high calorie yummy food. Not the best message to grow up with.

Our tummies may have been telling us to stop but our parents were telling us it was good to keep going. If you override your natural full meter often enough, it tends to go into a coma. It can take years of normal eating to revive it too. Not only does the full meter go to sleep, but you can get used to that overstuffed, almost drugged, feeling you get from overeating. It is amazing what the human body can get used to and then begin to crave.

If you have ever smoked cigarettes you understand this concept. That first inhalation should have been enough to stop all of us from taking the second. It hurt, it made us cough, we felt light-headed, even nauseas. It was truly disgusting. How that disgusting first drag could turn into a two pack a day habit is amazing to me.

When it comes to food and health, we know that we should only eat when we are hungry, and not too hungry. Eat only until we are 80% full, not too full. Make sure our diets consist mainly of fresh fruits, vegetables, lean protein and whole grains. Get some exercise. The end.

If we could all do that, obesity would be a non-issue. We would all be at a healthy weight. We wouldn't all be skinny, as we do vary in our body types, but we certainly wouldn't be morbidly obese either. The problem for many of us is that we don't know when we are full until we are stuffed and/or we keep eating even though we know we are full. Couple that with the high fat, high calorie foods that many of us have become accustomed to eating and it's no wonder we have the obesity problem we have today.

So if you acknowledge that your full meter is broken, how do you know when to stop eating?

The answer to this question is that you don't. You need something outside yourself to help you with that, and that is where keeping food records and counting calories comes in. I know, you don't want to hear that, but it is the truth. Maybe one day there will be a pill, or magic, but until then, this is the best we've got. When you weigh 300 lbs., and have gotten used to eating 3,000 calories a day, you will be hungry on 2,500 calories a day. Even though 2,500 calories is a binge day for most women, you will be hungry on that because of what you are used to. It is best to lower your calories slowly so as not to experience too big of a backlash.

Keeping food records and counting calories will also keep you awake to what you are putting in your mouth and how much. Many of us are asleep at the wheel when it comes to what and how much we are eating. If you want to change your weight, you have to pay attention.

So, once your full meter is broken, can it ever be repaired?

The good news is that yes it can, but it might take a very, very long time I was heavy for years and lost a significant amount of weight 18 years ago, and have kept it off since. After 16 years of maintaining my weight loss, I noticed that my full meter had been restored. I now know when I am 80% full and am happy to stop eating then because that means I get to eat more soon. If I do overeat now and get too full, I hate it. I can't stand the feeling and can't wait until it passes. This motivates me not to do it again. It's almost like if you don't smoke for years and years and then take a drag, it feels like the first drag all over again. (I don't recommend trying that by the way.)

If you want to lose weight, repair your full meter, or just get more in touch with your hunger and satiety, try writing down what you are eating for a week. You will be amazed at what you learn about yourself. During the weight loss phase, I recommend keeping food records the entire time you are losing and then for enough time following the weight loss to be able to maintain it without the records. It works!

That's it for now. Good luck and let me know how you're doing.

If you would like to participate in the research for Irene's new book about weight loss, go to http://www.eatingdisordertherapist.com/.

Who Is "The World's Worst Poet"?

2008-05-16T21:21:53Z

A collection of poems by a Scottish bard dubbed the "world's worst poet" was to go under the hammer Friday, expected to sell for thousands of pounds.

William McGonagall was mocked by literary critics and had food thrown at him during public readings, before dying penniless in an unmarked grave in Edinburgh in 1902.

But his very notoriety means his work has become surprisingly popular, and the collection of 35 poems on sale was estimated to make up to 6,500 pounds.

Claudia Ricci: The Power of Words

2008-05-16T21:13:43Z

OK, try this. Try closing your eyes and saying these words:

"emerald green ocean waves, splashing on the sand, white and frothy glittering in the sun."

Nice mind picture, huh?

There is immense power in words. Whether we hear them as spoken or written messages, words create new states of mind.

What kinds of things do we say to friends and family? What statements or casual comments are empowering, encouraging, supportive, postive and life-giving? What outbursts come from another space, a place of jealousy or envy or anger or resentment?

If you haven't seen the movie, "What The Bleep Do We Know?" rent it. It's quirky, and quite extraordinary in the way it opens up a whole new view of that thing we call reality. Each time I watch it, I marvel at the statements made by the physicists and other scientists who are interviewed about quantum mechanics and the puzzling nature of sub-atomic particles. All of these scientists, echoing Einstein, end up saying in one way or another that nothing is fixed until the mind turns its observing consciousness on the matter. In other words, the mind has enormous power; in effect, we create reality by how we think about it. And how we speak of it. What we say "matters," literally. What we say -- I love you, I hate you, you are beautiful, you are stupid -- ends up in someone else's mind, and creates a real emotion. A situation, if you will.

One of the more fascinating features of the Bleep movie is the work of Masaru Emoto, a Japanese researcher who has spent years studying the effects of spoken words on frozen water crystals. The work is not without its critics and controversy. But even if you "read" Emoto's work as a metaphor, and gaze at his lovely frozen water crystals as no more than simply illustrations of an idea, rather than an expression of so-called "scientific reality," they are something to see.

His contention is that if spoken words or human thoughts are directed at water before it freezes, then the crystals that result will display characteristic patterns. These patterns will be ugly if the words/thoughts are negative, and beautiful if the words/thoughts are positive and life-affirming. He claims to have experimented using prayer, and written words attached to water-filled containers. He has published many volumes under the name, Messages From Water. Each volume displays the crystals and the emotions/thoughts that produced them.

Crazy?

Maybe. But maybe not.

According to Wikipedia, "Commentators have criticized Emoto for insufficient experimental controls,^[4] and for not sharing enough details of his approach with the scientific community. ^[5] In addition, Emoto has been criticized for designing his experiments in ways that leave them open to human error influencing his findings. ^[6]

In the day-to-day work of his group, the creativity of the photographers rather than the rigor of the experiment is an explicit policy of Emoto.^[7] Emoto freely acknowledges that he is not a scientist,^[8] and that photographers are instructed to select the most pleasing photographs.^[9]"

In 2006, Emoto published a paper together with Dean Radin and others in the peer-reviewed Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, in which they claim to have proven in a double blind test that approximately 2000 people in Tokyo could increase the aesthetic appeal of water stored in a room in California, compared to water in another room, solely through their positive intentions."^[10]

So. Maybe you are a skeptic about the water crystal business.

But I bet if you think about it, you would agree how incredibly powerful words are. Think back to a teacher or some other authority figure who praised you. Or one who made you feel dumb and inadequate.

I recall a neighbor of my early childhood in rural Connecticut. The woman's name was Mrs. Harrigan. Playing at her house one day, I snatched a doll away from my sister in her presence. Mrs. Harrigan turned to me and told me that I was "nasty."

I was shocked. I have remembered that statement for half a century. I wasn't even sure what "nasty" meant, but I knew, from the dark fury in her eyes, that it wasn't nice.

Later that day, I told my big brother Rick, who was two years my senior, what she had said. Protectively, he told me what he would do. That afternoon, we lay on the lawn side by side, our faces trained on Mrs. Harrigan's backyard. At the top of his lungs, brother Rick called out these words, over and over again:

"Mrs. Harrigan's nasty! Mrs. Harrigan's nasty!" The words sailed out, and carried some of the sting back in her direction. (I honestly don't remember whether we got in trouble. I've screened all that part out.)

What we say to each other, and just as importantly, what we say to ourselves, day after day, creates a kind of story. A narrative of who we are. If somebody says we are fat, that usually gets wedged into our brain, with pictures.

So today, be nice to yourself. Think something beautiful about who you are and what you are capable of doing. And find something terrific and encouraging to say to somebody else. Make it very particular to that person. Make it something you know that person will appreciate.

Make that person's day

glitter, like emerald green ocean water,

the waves splashing on the sand

white and frothy, in the sun.

Robert Weissman: Pharmaceutical Payola -- Drug Marketing to Doctors

2008-05-16T20:50:18Z

Last week, a Congressional committee properly raked Big Pharma over the coals for misleading advertising of pharmaceuticals.

A hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee focused on advertising campaigns for three drugs, including the remarkable case of Robert Jarvik. Jarvik is featured in endlessly re-run ads for Pfizer's blockbuster cholesterol drug Lipitor. Known as the inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, he is not a cardiologist, not a licensed medical doctor and not authorized to prescribe pharmaceuticals. He's shown in the ads engaged in vigorous rowing activity, but in fact he doesn't row. Pfizer pulled the ads in February after controversy started brewing.

Among industrialized countries, only the United States and New Zealand permit drug companies to market directly to consumers. It's a bad idea, it drives bad medicine, and it should be banned.

But although it has the highest profile, direct-to-consumer advertising is a small part of Pharma's marketing machine.

Researchers Marc-AndrÃ© Gagnon and Joel Lexchin conclude in a recent issue of the journal PLOS Medicine that direct-to-consumer ads make up less than a tenth of industry marketing expenditures ($4 billion of $57.5 billion in 2004). And Gagnon and Lexchin's estimate of $57.5 billion on marketing excludes many industry expenditures that are really driven by marketing, including clinical trials conducted for marketing purposes.

The bulk of the industry marketing effort -- more than 70 percent by Gagnon and Lexchin's calculation -- is directed at doctors.

Why?

Because it works.

The companies spend huge amounts paying firms that carefully track what doctors prescribe, and then they use the information to tailor messages to doctors, distribute samples and develop continuing medical education programs.

Gagnon and Lexchin report that Pharma spends more than $20 billion a year on "detailers" -- the pharma reps that knock on doctor doors, ply the staff with free coffee and lunches, distribute samples ($16 billion worth), and prod docs to prescribe their drugs.

This is complemented by a host of tactics that in other circumstances might be called bribes.

"Virtually all physicians in America take cash or gifts from the drug companies," says Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs, and a former New York Times reporter. "A recent survey said 94 percent of physicians took something of value from the drug companies. Some doctors take hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from these companies, and there's no law that says they can't."

Petersen says she "had no idea this was so extensive until one day I was writing a story about Celebrex and Vioxx -- this was before Vioxx was taken off the market. The story was about the marketing battle between these two pain drugs. I called one of the large societies of rheumatologists and asked for an expert on arthritis. I specifically said I needed an expert who was not being paid as a consultant to one of the manufacturers of these drugs. A staff person said, 'We have lots of people you can talk to, but all of these doctors are consultants to one or both of the drug companies.'"

Drug companies hire doctors to give lectures, and they hire other doctors as "consultants" to go to fancy dinners and listen to the lectures. "There are more than 500,000 of these dinners or events in America every year," Petersen says.

The drug companies weave these diverse strategems into an elaborate tapestry -- not infrequently to push drugs for inappropriate purposes. One eye-opening case that Petersen details in Our Daily Meds concerns Neurontin, a mediocre drug for epilepsy that Warner-Lambert illegally peddled as an unapproved treatment for bipolar disorder, migraines, attention deficit disorder in children and other conditions. The drug does not work for most of these conditions. Many persons were injured by taking excessive doses of Neurontin, and many others wasted money and emotional energy on hopeless Neurontin treatment strategies. Warner-Lambert ultimately paid $430 million to settle criminal and civil charges related to Neurontin marketing, but Petersen says that, even so, the illegal marketing scheme was clearly profitable for Warner-Lambert (and Pfizer, which acquired Warner-Lambert in 2000).

Petersen's account of the Neurontin nightmare draws heavily on a whistleblower, David Franklin. She summarizes the central theme of the story Franklin revealed: "The company got doctors to prescribe the drug for all these experimental uses by paying them. They paid physicians to give speeches to other physicians at restaurants or hotels or resorts. The doctors not only enjoyed a nice meal or a weekend vacation, they often also received a $500 check for attending. The physicians giving lectures at these parties were often trained by the drug company's ad firm to describe how Neurontin could work for conditions like bipolar. ... The company tracked the doctors' prescriptions before and after these dinners or weekend retreats. The executives saw how well it worked."

Which raises an interesting question: How is that the industry can so effectively manipulate highly trained doctors?

Answers Adriane Fugh-Berman, a doctor and Georgetown University professor who runs PharmedOut, a project that focuses on how pharmaceutical companies influence prescribing decisions and encourages physicians to educate themselves from non-industry sources: "Physicians are trained in medicine, not psychological manipulation. Every bit of flattery, friendship and information offered by reps is aimed at selling drugs."

There is no simple solution to these problems, though ending patent-based marketing monopolies would transform pharmaceutical marketing practices and likely eliminate most abuses.

In the meantime, a ban on Pharma gifts to doctors would be a modest step forward. In the United States, notes Petersen, "radio disc jockeys can't take cash from music companies. But when it comes to something like medicines -- which mean life or death for people -- doctors can take as much money as they want from the drug companies. We need a law to stop that."

Note: I serve as managing director for Commercial Alert, which advocates for elimination of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.

Verena von Pfetten: How To Rank Your Wife: Rediscovering The Oh-So-Scientific Marital Rating Scale

2008-05-16T19:53:10Z

In my daily perusing of the internet, I tend to come across some pretty funny things. Usually things inspire me to post a quick line or a link, but every now and then, I come across a gem that acts as the Tilda Swinton to my Viktor and Rolf, a story so great, so viral, so utterly desperate to be shared that I can't help but devote approximately 500 words and 25 whole minutes to parsing its every detail.

The other day, my friends, I found (via Tumblr), the "Marital Rating Scale-Wife's Chart." It is, according to last week's Monitor on Psychology, "a test developed in the late 1930s by George W. Crane, MD, PhD, (1901-95) of Northwestern University...designed to give couples feedback on their marriages." The test ranks wives in a variety of areas, from her love of children (5 points) to how crooked or straight the seams in her "hose" run. (But, for shame, what if said wife pulls a Julia Roberts and, well, isn't "wearin' any panty hose"? What then?!)

And before you write this off as "humorous and obviously dated," there is, according to Crane, some scientific data to back it up, with just a teensy bit of bias sprinkled on top:

His method was to interview 600 husbands on their wives' positive and negative qualities. Then he listed the 50 demerits and merits that arose most frequently. Crane, did admit to using a personal bias in weighting the items that he thought were most important in marriage.

All this in mind, and my curiosity thoroughly piqued, I had no choice but to take this test. The only problem? All that's posted is the first page. I quickly refreshed my Grade 9 algebra and figured that if there were actually a total of 50 merits and demerits, and I had 12, that meant I had 24% of the test. So -- to calculate my score, I divided all the "Raw Scores" by 24% to determine what my rating would be. Cheers to the Scientific Method! (And thanks, Mr. Hemming. I'll never forget you, or how to solve for X.)

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. The Demerits:

I'm slow in coming to bed (I've got Gossip Girl to watch!), I don't like children, and I have never sewn a button or darned a sock. I don't really cook so my aprons aren't soiled, but I do wear red nail polish (and am doing so as we speak!). I'm often late, but I don't wear any hose in which to have the aforementioned crooked seams, nor do I use curlers or face creams - let alone to bed. My feet are eternally frozen, but I take turns between warming them on my boyfriend and my dog, and neither of us have a car (it's Manhattan) from which I can backseat drive. I flirt incessantly with other men, but I'm never suspicious or jealous.

Total Demerits: 18.5

Next we have...(drumroll, please!)...The Merits:

I never actually have parties at which to be a hostess, but I'll happily offer even the homeless man down the street a beer. I'm a stickler about eating on time -- but that only means when I'm hungry. I rarely cook. I'm pretty much a genius, so I'd rate my conversation skills an A, but the farthest I got at piano was chopsticks. I don't eat, make, or dress for breakfast, and I pay a Nicaraguan woman named Norma $100 to make sure my apartment appears spotless. I have no children, and when I do, I'll probably hire someone to put them to bed, but I don't believe in going to bed angry -- why waste a perfectly good opportunity for make-up sex? As for asking my boyfriend's opinion - if he's gonna pay, he can have a say. Otherwise: zip it! I have a fantastic sense of humor (can't you tell?!), though my spirituality is undoubtedly questionable. And when it comes to letting the man o' the house sleep in - of course I do! Then again, I'm rarely up before noon.

Total Merits: 9.5

Well, how do I add up? The instructions say to subtract the Demerit score from the Merit score, so...carry the one...and...it looks like I've got an astounding -9 points! That places me somewhere in the bottom of "Very Poor (Failures)". Whee!

Also, now that I think about it, I'm not even married! I'm brazenly living in sin! Slutting it up like a modern day Whore of Babylon.

But then again, I earn my own keep and give fantastic massages. I can make a mean bolognese if I have to, and am utterly content should my "hubby" choose to have a beer (or ten) out with the boys. I'm a regular sight for sore eyes, I know how to make a man laugh, and here's to hopin' that I've never made a man cry. I'm a supportive, independent, and fiercely positive person. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm smart as hell!

And if that makes me wrong, then I don't want to be right. After all, we've got one in three American mommies ordering dessert off the dinner menu. I'd say we've got some bigger fish to fry than some measly nylon stockings. (But while we're on the topic, Dr. Crane, how many demerits is adultery? Because I'm a regular monogamous Virgin Mary!)

So, my friends, now it's your turn. How did you score? What do you think of the test? Do you think that some scientist out there is working on a modern-day version? How high do you think a Brazillian wax (and ass) would (or should) rate? Let's discuss this below.

Sara Davidson: Moving Mom

2008-05-16T19:13:45Z

"Does age bring awakening?" I ask myself as I stand in the drugstore checkout line, clutching a box of Depends. My sister, Terry, and I are about to move our 93-year-old mom out of the condo where she's lived for decades to a home for people with memory impairment.

Mom has always been a dynamo: strong-willed, opinionated and exacting. She told us that she wanted to stay in her home until the end, and we respected that. The problem was: her home is in L.A. I live in Colorado and Terry lives in Hawaii, so we've had to manage her care from afar. We hired two loving women from El Salvador to stay with her, but they'd call us in alarm. "Your mother isn't eating. She says she's too tired to go to the park. What should we do?"

We flew to L.A. to assess the situation, and I was shocked that mom, who's always been tireless, was nodding out all day. While eating lunch, getting her nails done or in the middle of a conversation, she'd drop her head to her knees and go to sleep. She was becoming incontinent. When we took her out to eat and brought her home, she asked, "Whose house is this?" So... maybe she wouldn't notice if we moved her?

The startling thing was, mom wasn't troubled by her inability to remember anything outside the moment. If you sat with her, she could go over her tax return, line by line, but a minute later she wouldn't remember seeing it. Terry heard about a new drug being tested with Alzheimer's patients that was reputed to restore their memories. We asked mom if she wanted to participate in the study, but she declined. Why? I asked. "If you could take a pill that would let you remember everything, would you want to do that?"

She shook her head no. "I'm fine the way I am. What do you want me to remember?"

Well, your grand-daughter just got married, you were in the wedding, you walked down the aisle and danced. Wouldn't you like to remember those happy occasions? She thought a moment. "There are a lot of unpleasant things too." She knocked on wood - the table. "I'm fine the way I am."

Terry started looking for a place in Hawaii where mom could have more intensive care, with activities to stimulate her and a doctor on call. She found a newly built center, Hi'olani, and the pictures she emailed me were so lush and lovely, I wanted to move there myself. She was told there was a 2-year waiting list, but a few days later, they called and said a room had opened up if we would take it right away. We did.

Then Terry was wracked with buyer's remorse. Had she made the right decision? I felt remorse of a different sort: I'd held a lifelong grudge against mom for always judging me and finding me wanting. Now I focused on what she'd given me: a love of story telling, curiosity, and courage. At a moment when she was alert, I thanked her and apologized for not appreciating those gifts. There was another feeling that both Terry and I had. Dread. This could be us, couldn't it, in the blink of an eye? It seemed an awful finale.

A week before moving mom, Terry and I went to a 5-day silent meditation retreat with Adyashanti. Adya, born Steven Gray, says on his website that he "dares all seekers of peace and freedom" to take seriously the possibility of awakening in this life. His theme at the retreat was letting go of control. Like Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual teachers, Adya urges people to be fully present in the moment, to accept what is, and wake up to one's true nature -- the aliveness inside. This aliveness or presence, consciousness, spirit - it goes by many names - never changes, which is why we don't feel old inside.

At the end of the retreat, steeped in awareness, we felt ready for what mom's transition might bring. On the morning of the flight, I helped her put on Depends for the first time, and she did not resist. Mercifully, the new and improved version looks like white ruffled panties with elastic legs. OK, the thing is paper, but it does not look like a diaper.

When the plane landed, Terry's husband and daughter drove them straight to Hi'olani, and walked mom into her room. It was yellow, her favorite color, and had been decorated in advance with familiar items and pictures from her condo. When I called two days later and asked mom, How do you like Hawaii? She said, "I'm not in Hawaii."

Wow. We'd been bracing for her to protest and shame us for moving her, but she's happy where she is. She never asked, When am I going home? She's cheerful and more alert now, although the staff members dress her abominably. Today, my sister reports, mom's wearing all pink clothes except for her socks, which are turquoise.

She's attained what we just spent 5 days in silence cultivating: acceptance, letting go, just being here now. Maybe losing your memory is not as bad as it looks? Maybe there IS a way to go gentle?

I welcome your comments. Please reply to website-feedback@saradavidson.com

Taking care of our parents is a transition I address in Leap! -- now out in paperback. I would so appreciate your HELP in spreading the word. Tell friends it's ten bucks now and if you buy it, you get the free Leap! workbook. For more information, please visit www.SaraDavidson.com

Could LSD Cure Panic Attacks?

2008-05-16T18:58:25Z

At a handful of sites across the country, after a four-decade hiatus, psychedelic research is undergoing a quiet renaissance, thanks to scientists like Charles Grob who are revisiting the powerful mind-altering drugs of the 1960s in hopes of making them part of our therapeutic arsenal. Hallucinogens such as psilocybin, MDMA (better known as Ecstasy), and the most controversial of them all, LSD, are being tested as treatments for maladies that modern medicine has done little to assuage, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, drug dependency, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cluster headaches, and the emotional suffering of people with a terminal illness.

While Grob's study is not complete--he has tested 11 out of a projected 12 volunteers--patients seemed to have positive experiences. "No one had a bad trip, and most derived some benefit," he says. "It lowered their anxiety, improved their mood and disposition, and imbued them with a greater acceptance of their situation and capacity to live in the moment and appreciate each day."

5 Cutest Animal Videos Of The Week: Watch Sneezing Pandas, Cats On A Treadmill And More!

2008-05-16T18:12:34Z

Time to cap off the work week with some cute animal videos!

When you're doing a roundup of cute animal clips, you really can't go wrong with footage of three white lion cubs. Stick with these little guys until the end to hear their sweet gremlin noises.

What do you get when you combine an energetic Doberman, a huge backyard pool, and a water slide? One really cute video.

Staged or not, the cats in this next video are adorable. Perfect cuddle buddies.

This panda has such a strong sneeze attack that you almost start to feel sad. But no, it's a sneezing panda. It's still cute.

Finally this week, cats on a treadmill!

Cats On A Treadmill