Ok. Fine. Maybe I’m not exactly a video “star”, however I do have a number of videos out there. My video about why you don’t drink after eating continues to get hits from around the world… and I still plan on doing cooking videos here and there. But…. I’ve not a new venture that is going to be taking up some of my copious amounts of free time. I’ve got an actual, over the air-waves, radio show gig.

I am one of four hosts for a Saturday morning “talk radio” show on health and wellness called The Wake Up Call.

The idea behind the show is… well, since I wrote most of it, I’ll just quote the stufff from the show web site:

…to be a place where you will find the education, encouragement, and information you need to change your mind and change your health.

Our mission is to be a resource of practical knowledge in the pursuit of integrated health & wellness by providing relevant information to help you, our listeners, make informed decisions.

We aim to do this by bringing you open, informative and entertaining discussions on a variety of topics covering all aspects or health and wellness, helping to bring balance to your mind, body and spirit.

This is not going to be a “weight loss surgery” show, or even a “diet and weight loss” show. Yes, given my experience, my current ventures in to being a nutritional coach, I will be touching on these topics. But personally, I’m also going to cover general fitness as well as other health based topics. And given that I have three other great co-hosts bring their experience and ideas to the table I think you’ll find a huge diversity of great topics.

The show starts this coming Saturday. If you’re in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, you can listen live by turning in to AM950 on your radio, but you can also catch the live stream online from anywhere. And of course if you can’t catch us live, there will be podcasts. If you are listening, you can call in to the show with questions, comments, etc… or we’re going to try making use of our Facebook page too. We’ll have a Facebook discussion about the show each week that people can leave comments or questions that we will check out and maybe touch on during the show. Eventually we hope to be able to check in on comments made to us during the show via our Twitter account as well.

So yea, this is the next big thing in this journey I’m currently on, much in part due to my decision to take control of my life by having gastric bypass surgery. We’ve been working on making it happen for a number of months now… I’m glad it’s finally coming to fruition. Now comes for the scary… er.. I mean fun part!

Remember my recent posting about Dr. David Katz’s article on how doctors need to learn how to deal with their obese patients better? Well here’s a doctor that maybe could use a little face time with Dr. Katz.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Dr. Binkley of Salt Lake City recently posted the following to her twitter account:

A 5’2″ woman weighing 254 pounds today told me she eats ‘hardly anything’. I guess that might be true if ‘anything’ means the whole cow.

Yea.

And later asked about it, she played it as trying to get a point across with the use of some humor.

I went and checked out her Twitter stream… she has been very unapologetic, and she has just as many supporters as she does detractors in this. Some are even yelling about free speech – which I agree she can say what she wants, but that doesn’t preclude her from taking responsibility for the resulting storm that hits from it. Which to her credit, I suppose she’s not ducking this or anything.

If you know me at all, I’m not about being all “politically correct” or any of that nonsense… and I love a good bit of humor… and I’m sure not immune from making the occasional comment that either didn’t come across the way I first envisioned or intended. So I’m more than willing to cut the doctor some slack.

But just like there’s a difference between having the occasional treat and over-indulging… there’s a difference between getting your point across with a bit of humor and just being insensitive.

Here’s a couple other recent Tweets by her, and my replies back to her…

healthewoman Do No Harm does not mean Look the Other Way when people are hurting themselves.

mcnee @healthewoman There is a difference between being honest with a patient and broadcasting it over the internet…

mcnee @healthewoman laughing at yourself is harder when so many are already ridiculing you.

She hasn’t been online since I sent those, so I haven’t seen any sort of response yet. We’ll see if I even get one. I was tempted not to link to her Twitter account. It is sure to be easy enough to find for those interested, but on the other hand… shunning these topics, ignoring them and those who feel this way won’t change anything any more so than attacking them.

Instead, there is an opportunity here to further educate, to further inform. Yea, there will be the usual “brick walls”, but hopefully if we continue to chip away, eventually they will fall.

There’s been a lot of media talk surrounding “fat people” lately. It sort of falls under the adage of any publicity is good publicity in that it is getting the topic of discrimination and prejudices against the obese out there in the public eye.

The two most recent and very public examples are the recent “What Would You Do?” episode and  the Marie Claire blogger incident over the TV show Mike and Molly… both of which of touched on already. And as I was writing those posts and as I read others out there being very vocal about the treatment of the obese, something was gnawing at the back of my mind. Something that just didn’t seem to sit right with me. something I can sum up in two words.

Biggest Loser.

I don’t know exactly how long Biggest Loser has been on the air… five or six years at least I think… but this show seems to have a cult like following among the WLS community and I’m not sure I get it. I know it has spawned some similar shows too, though I couldn’t give you any names without hitting Google first. What I do know, when there’s a new season or episode coming up, I hear a lot about it via Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve watched it maybe half-dozen times over the years, and I can see how watching these folks shed all that weight can be inspirational. Especially for those of us that have “been there”.

But I can’t help but wonder if there is some sort of disconnect between how these folks are treated on shows like this versus the attitudes by people that spawned all the recent rounds of discussion.

I know the people on those shows volunteer. They put themselves in those positions. But are shows like this really interested in trying to help or are they preying on the hopes, dreams, and desperations of folks? Diva Taunia recently broke the silence about her experience regarding a reality show that she was a finalist in the review process for. I have no reason to think she exaggerated what she went through, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the selection process might be for some of the weight loss related shows out there.

I don’t have any answers here.

I admit I don’t watch the shows enough, largely in part because of the bad taste they left in my mouth from the beginning. I don’t know anything about the long term success of the folks from such shows.

Maybe it’s like the other old adage about having to be able to laugh at yourself.

Do we, as obese (or formerly so…) people have to be willing to subject ourselves to some humiliation in order to get the motivation we need? Where is that line?

Is having a celebrity yell at someone on a national TV program about how they need to exercise and how what they’ve been eating is poisoning them really any better than a stranger trying to reason with someone over their choice of groceries while walking the aisles of the local mega-mart?

Is it as simple as “they agreed to it”?

I don’t know.

But maybe it’s another part of the discussion that needs to be had.

I found this article in the Washington Post, Super-size equipment helps D.C. area EMTs move the obese, thanks to a twitter post from Zombar, another post-op dude.

Basically it talks about the increasing need to upgrade and super-size ambulances and other medical equipment to handle the growing trend of a growing girth in the American populace, and as he put it, Thoughts of EMTs dragging me out of the house on a tarp is one of the myriad reasons I chose to have WLS.

This came up in a recent comment – someone asking if I had a YouTube channel… and, well, I do. You’ve noticed a few videos I’ve up up here (I hope). I had a personal page, but decided to do one specifically for formerfatdudes.com – which coincidentally enough you can find at http://youtube.com/formerfatdudes

Right now it’s just me – but I hope to entice some others to both write for the site here and add videos… so we’ll see. I’ve also contributed, and hope to do so again in the future to another channel started by Melting Mama – The WLS Reality -  that’s where the refried beans recipe is posted (linked to my channel via the favorites).

So go check them both out, and if yer a dude looking forward to, or looking back at your own WLS and would like to do a video for FFD, let me know!

Since I’ve been promoting quinoa on Twitter and such so much lately, people have been asking me for recipes using it… here’s a good one… turkey meatballs that have quinoa and veges in them, making them pretty much a complete meal all on their own.

This is tweeked from a recipe I got from someone in one of my support groups. And by the way, I fully admit they tasted a heck of a lot better than this picture looks. Trust me.

1 pound ground turkey (or beef if you really want)
3/4 cup cooked quinoa
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/4 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup grated zucchini (I actually used chayote squash)
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
1 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 egg

Preheat your oven to 500F, line a large baking sheet with foil then great with cooking spray; set aside. You could also use a broiler pan or some sort of rack that lets the meatballs cook while letting any fat drip away.

In a large bowl, mix together meat, quinoa, onions, carrots, zucchini/chayote, tomato sauce, garlic, worcestershire, seasonings and egg until well combined. If you have them (and you really should!), wear a pair of latex gloves. Keeps your hands from getting all goopy. And yes, that is a technical term. And no, it’s not really about keeping your hands clean, it’s really about keeping the food safe, even if you’ve washed your hands you should use protection!

Shape in to 12 meatballs and transfer to prepared baking sheet. Roast until cooked through and golden brown, about 20 minutes, turn over once about 15 minutes in so they brown evenly. These will be about raquet ball sized. You could do smaller ones and cut the cooking time down by about 5 minutes.

Oh yea, make sure your meat is cold before mixing this up or the meat gets hard to deal with. If it does get too bad, toss it in the fridge for 10-20 minutes before trying to portion out the meatballs.

Serving is 3 meatballs, you’ll get about 20g of protein, 10g carbs.

I had mine with a bit of doctored up tomato sauce. You can open a small can (8oz) of tomato sauce, use a couple tablespoons in the meatballs and then mix the rest with about a couple teaspoons each of dried parsley, oregano and garlic powder, and maybe a teaspoon of the dried thyme. Add in maybe a teaspoon of Splenda to cut some of the bitterness. Mix this up in a glass dish like a 1-cup measuring cup and microwave for about a minute to make a pretty decent sauce. I use this sauce when making my own pizzas too by the way.