December 2, 2009
In the Spring and Summer I grill vegetables and in Autumn and Winter I roast vegetables. Whether roasted or grilled I fix them simple and keep them on the heat until some have turned to crispy bits.
While I’m not fond of raw or steamed cauliflower, it turns into something wonderful when roasted. The flavor mellows and takes on an almost nutty flavor with a smooth but firm texture that’s not crunchy like when it’s raw or mushy when it’s steamed. Last night I ate nearly a full head of cauliflower all by myself. It may have been a small head, approximately the size of a league-sanctioned softball (leave it to a lesbian for that comparison) but it was mine, all mine and it was deee-licious. This is how I prepared it.
Pre-heat the oven to 400 and put the rack one up from the center of the oven.
Either break or cut the cauliflower into very small florets. The other way to speed up the prep time is to use a mandoline if you have one and if you don’t have one, get one. Seriously, when you get comfortable using a mandoline, meaning you learn how to use it without slicing off your finger tips, you’ll find yourself using it more and more often. The one I have is the OXO V-Bladd Mandoline Slicer and priced at just under 40.00 it’s one of the cheaper mandolines on the market and is Cook’s Illustrated top choice.
Once you have a pile of cauliflower dump it on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Spray with a generous spritz of Pam Butter-Flavored Vegetable Spray. Toss the cauliflower on the baking sheet to mix it up and spray it again. Now spread the cauliflower out to the edges of the baking sheet so you have a flat layer instead of a pile. If the cauliflower is piled up too thick on the sheet the cauliflower underneath will essentially steam and only the top layer will get crispy and brown.
Before you put it in the oven sprinkle your preferred seasoning over the top. The top choices in our house are lemon omani (a black seed spice that tastes like lemon), smoked paprika, and garlic powder. Once your seasoning is on add a sprinkle of kosher or sea salt. Please, don’t use table salt. Not even at the table. Morton’s Table Salt is so yesterday and the crunch of sea salt adds a whole other texture to every bite.
Now just roast the cauliflower until it’s a rich dark brown. Depending on your oven it will take between 20-30 minutes. You might want to check it after the first 15 minutes and stir it up a little to allow the still white cauliflower on the bottom of the sheet to get some much needed color too.
That’s all you have to do to have a simple but beautiful vegetable side dish. A medium head of cauliflower (just under 1.5 pounds) has just 140 calories, provides a truckload of fiber and other stuff that promotes good health. And it’s yummy!
If calories aren’t a concern to you (and if that’s the case consider me rolling my eyes in your direction), then use a splash of olive oil instead of the vegetable spray and as soon as you take it out of the oven mix it with some roasted pinenuts or chopped walnuts and grate some fresh parmesan reggiano or pecorino over the top. If you just want to be decadent then go ahead and had some diced crispy bacon. You know you want to.
Posted in Anita Cooks, Low-Fat, Sides 2 Comments »
November 30, 2009
I intentionally refer to a plan of eating or a food plan rather than a diet for a couple reasons.
1) I don’t like the word diet. I failed too many of them in my life time. And diets are something you do in the short term to lose weight and then it ends. It’s not a lifestyle change which is what is needed. And the word diet has a whole bunch of negativity wrapped around it. Diets equal deprivation. I can eat that, but I can’t eat that. On a diet food is either good or bad. On a diet you either stay on your diet or you cheat.
2) I need a plan of eating or more concisely, I need a plan. I don’t do well making food choices spontaneously. Some people are able to make healthy and moderate food decisions at the drop of a hat but me, not so much. When I don’t plan what I’m going to eat then it increases the risk that a) I’ll make choices that feed my cravings but not my body or b) I’ll make choices that aren’t what I really want and so I end up unsatisfied, increasing the chance that I’ll keep nibbling until I am.
So to continue where I left off yesterday, I’ve decided that the best food plan for me to adopt is the bone-bones plan I was on during the fourth week of transition, that period when I was shifting from the full liquid fast back onto food. There will be times I deviate from the plan (planned, not spontaneously) but this will be the standard food plan I’ll keep as the base foundation for how I’ll eat from day to day.
The bare-bones long and short of it looks something like this:
- Three meals a day plus two 100 calorie snacks totalling 1200-1300 calories and comprised of:
- Lean protein (chicken, fish, turkey, beans and lugumes) with occasional red meat, nuts, and cheese options.
- Carbohydrates from root veggies, whole grains and brown rice
- Two servings of fruit and a heaping pile of vegetables
1200-1300 is by anyone’s standards a minimalist caloric intake per day but it seems to be all my body requires to sustain itself particularly when my exercise is minimal and oh, by the way, did I mention I recently developed a hernia and so a week after having all my post-surgery physical limitations removed after three months, new ones have just been put back on to prevent the hernia from enlarging? Disgruntled, party of one, your table is waiting.
So that’s how my food plan breaks down in words. Here’s how it looks in photographs.
Breakfast: A medium apple, an egg, whole wheat bread (50 calories per slice) and sugar-free jam (305 calories)
Mid-morning Snack: Two 50 calorie whole wheat tortillas with sugar-free jam and non-fat sour cream (125 calories)
Lunch: 2 ounce turkey sandwich, 1 serving cantaloupe, diet jello, a pickle and sandwich fillers, a mix of veggies and condiments that add up to less than 25 calories (276 calories)
Mid-afternoon Snack: 1 protein shake (130 calories)
Dinner: dry grilled talapia, small potato with non-fat sour cream, and roasted garlic broccoli (415 calories)
Those food photos probably don’t look nearly as enticing as the stack of Nutella Oatmeal Thins and certainly won’t earn me my credentials in the Foodie Hall of Fame but eating like this is what will sustain my health and weight and allow me on occasion to enjoy other sweet and savory choices without having a major fluctuation in my weight or in my peace of mind.
In addition to following my plan of eating, I’m also going to return to another tool that always helps every time I use it and that’s logging my food every day. Because I’m a gadget geek I prefer tracking my food (and weight) using the Lose-it app on my iPhone but a notebook or a pile of paper scraps works equally well. Every morning before breakfast I spend 15 minutes planning and entering all my food for the day and once I’ve entered it all my food decisions for the day are done.
Oh, and by the way, if any of you use the Lose-it app on your iPhone or iTouch you can now share your daily food and exercise journal through their website with selected friends so if you want to see what I’m eating or what I’m doing for exercise, register at their website and request me as your friend. Just remember that means I’ll be following you too!
Posted in Fitness Gadgets, Food Plan, Maintaining Weight 6 Comments »
November 30, 2009
When I was 325 pounds I grew fairly irked listening to people on the other side of weight loss telling me that losing their weight had been easy compared to keeping the weight off once they reached their goal.
I am of course equally irked to learn at this point in my life that they were right all along.
The past couple months have been uncharted territory for me and more than a little complicated around issues of weight loss, body image, and adopting a lifestyle that includes a sustainable activity level and satisfying plan of eating that will allow me to maintain my weight and lead me into my golden years.
Here are the stats. I set my original goal weight at the first of this year at 160-165 pounds. I weighted 217 at the time. I reached 165 when I had my first surgery to remove some of the excess skin I’d accumulated over the years. Following my second surgery about two months later my weight had reached 147 (for about an hour and 15 minutes) but then tenuously balanced off around 152.
Now, this word tenuously is important because while it’s normal for body weight to fluctuate between a 3-4 pound range, my weight can leap anywhere from 3-6 pounds overnight. I don’t even need to eat a quart of ice cream or a large pizza with extra cheese to do it. It literally just takes a little more salt or fat or rounding up my portions of my usual food plan and my weight will bounce up like a Wham-O Super Ball. I’d love to tell you that my weight bounces back down just as effortlessly but then I’d be creating a work of fiction rather than reporting on the facts. Instead it takes not only paring back down to a bare bones food plan but kicking up my normal activity level to have it drop back down again. People who don’t know me might think I’m making this up; that I’m eating more than I realize or making poor food choices that are dense in fat and calories but that’s not the case. There’s no question as my blog attests, I’m a full-blown foodie at heart. I appreciate food and I love cooking and baking. I thoroughly enjoy pouring over cookbooks and creating a beautiful meal or baking something ridiculously decadent but when I’m whipping up the baked goods and other gooey wonders, except for a bite or a taste, they all go out the door to church or to my eager neighbors or are tossed into a shipping box headed to family or friends.
A month ago I weighed in at the medical clinic (where I go every week to attend my follow-up maintenance meetings) on a Wednesday afternoon at 153 which I held for a couple days. That Saturday D and I went out for dinner at The Slanted Door, a most excellent Thai restaurant at the Ferry Building in San Francisco where I ate too much of a good thing and by good thing I mean the menu leaned heavily toward vegetables and low-fat protein sources. If memory serves me, which it seldom does, I don’t remember whether I had dessert or not but looking at their online menu nothing stands out as familiar so I’m hazarding a guess that I passed. Passing on desert is my default. But as I said, I ate more than I normally do with my indulgance in white rice and some other off my normal food chart ingredients like eggplant cooked in coconut milk and caramelized tiger prawns. The next morning I weighed in at 160 (7 pounds overnight) and have held steady at that weight through this morning. And as a side note, while others might be having their annual Thanksgiving meal over-stuffed regrets, I’m okay with how I handled the meal we had at Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino. I had a diver scallop appetizer, two ounces of turkey (hold the gravey), a half-cup of brussel sprouts, one single bite of each other item served on my plate, and for a rare happening I admittedly didn’t pass on dessert.
It comes back again to a fact I’ve resisted accepting. I’ve blogged about having a survivor’s type metabolism; an explanation given to me by a doctor with more than 30 years of experience with bariatric patients when explaining how my weight held numerous times for 2-3 weeks in a row with no weight loss while on the liquid fast causing me to lose weight at a much slower rate than most other patients. My body tends to grab onto calories with a tight fist and then refuses to let go without a rigid food plan and stepping up physical activity. Is there a hereditary factor involved? Is it a consequences of 30 years of extreme dieting and equally extreme overeating? Does it happen when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars? Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. All I can tell you is that while I’m not particularly happy about things being this way, I’ve come to learn this is what is and I can either accept and adapt accordingly or continue to ignore the evidence and go all delusional which is going to ultimately lead to some miserably tight pants.
So here I am at 160 at the low end of my original weight loss goal but at up 8-13 pounds from where I was a couple months ago at the end of the fast and surgeries. I have a whole world of body image issues that are going on in my head that are making it extremely difficult for me to decide what weight is right for me and where I can be with my body and be satisfied. That’s too big of a discussion for this long enough already post but I’ll be blogging more about it in the coming days because body image is something we don’t talk enough about when talking about obesity or weight loss. I just know that to maintain any particular weight on the scale, I’m going to have to accept how my body responds to nutritional fuel and eat accordingly. I’ve taken a couple months to find my way around with the food and now the time has come to return to a clearly defined plan of eating….and for anyone interested, if anyone is still with me, I’ll spell that in detail tomorrow.
And just so you know, I’m being totally honest and out there with all this. I tend to not soften the edges much or paint the picture in unrealistic colors. Instead it’s about keeping it real both for myself and for anyone who might find themselves struggling with similar issues or celebrating similar successes in the future.
Posted in Health and Nutrition, Liquid Fast, Reconstructive Surgery, Weight Loss, body image 6 Comments »
November 23, 2009
I originally found this recipe for Nutella Oatmeal Thins over at Baking Bites three months ago and since then have made them four or five times. They are the very one and the same cookies that led to my great internet fame, or infamy as it were, over at John Shore’s blog in September, an incident which only goes to prove you can maximize your readership comments by combining the words lesbian and christian into the title of a blog post. Throw free downloads and pics into the mix and there’s every chance you’re going to overload your internet server. But back to the cookies.
The thing I love about these cookies, aside from the fact that they’re made with Nutella, the most divine creamy delicious substance God has allowed to slip through heaven’s gates and tumble to earth, is that they’re easy to make and they never fail to get rave reviews. They have a crispy texture with just a bit of chew from the oatmeal and then mix in the flavor of the Nutella and a Paula Dean helping of butter and everyone ends up wanting the recipe. I’ve also found that they’re great little cookies for shipping since they stay fresh longer than any have ever lasted and if you pack them right, they don’t turn into cookie dust. Just put them in a tall stack, slip the stack into a plastic bag, and then stuff the plastic bag into a new quart-size metal paint can that you can decorated with Christmas stickers or permanent color markers. The paint cans will run you about two dollars a piece at the paint store or twice that at a greeting card and gift store where they’re no longer marketed as paint cans but as creative gift packaging.
This particular double batch was divided between my beloved’s office, two sets of neighbors and a stack that even now is UPS-ing its way to the front door of my brother Randy’s house…along with a jar of Nutella which serves as a rather glorious bonding agent when you have two cookies and a little time on your hands.
Posted in Anita Cooks, Desserts 8 Comments »
November 19, 2009
It’s been nearly two months since my last and FINAL surgery and this week during a scheduled follow up with my surgeon he removed all post-surgery limitations which means I can stretch, reach, lift, and bend, however I’m not letting my personal trainer know this extends to squats and lunges. I hate squats and lunges. Hate them. Sad face.
In terms of how the scar tissue is healing it’s coming along and I have to keep reminding myself that it takes more than a full year for the deep red, pink and occasional purple of the scar tissue to return to a more natural flesh color. Some of the scars will disappear completely. Others will remain but as the skin color returns they’ll become less noticeable. The only area of some concern is with the scar tissue that begins under each arm and extends along the underside of the arm to the elbow. The scar lines have widened minimally (due to excessive movement) and there continue to be stitches breaking through the surface from underneath which is more common for people who have more fragile skin as I do, a result of the skin being over-stressed and over-stretched for years combined with my…..oh let’s just get this over with….age. Anyway, each time a stitch breaks through the skin it creates a small pimple-like irritation and until it stops happening I’m not to apply the silicone or kinesio tape (that provide aid healing through compression and moisture) as the skin needs to remain exposed to the air as long as abrasions exist. I also think, as does the surgeon, that part of why the scar tissue on my arms and on the back of my legs seems slow in healing is due to the premature movement that was required in traveling around the time of my mom’s death, burial and memorial service, but looking back I obviously wouldn’t have done nothing different and any scars that remain matter little compared to the time I was able to spend with Mom and my family during those days.
Aside from some difficulty in lifting my arms completely above my head (the pull on the scar tissue under my arms is uncomfortable but not painful) and the most minor amount of pain when I sit on my sore bum, I’m enjoying, and I do mean enjoying, full mobility. Nothing like losing something to appreciate it when you get it back again. I’m back to the gym three times a week to work on strength-training and weights with my personal trainer and three times a week I’m doing cardio whether on the treadmill at the gym or on the trail outside our front door.
And on a final note, last night D and I had a conversation about tattoos that was sparked by some tattooed characters we were watching on TV.
“Honey, I really want to get another tattoo sometime.” (Yes, I have one. Left shoulder blade. A heart. A butterfly. Rays of light. The meaning more than obvious I’m sure.)
“Well, okay then, but just where among all your stitches do you intend to find room?”
“Oh. That’s right. I forgot I have limited space available. Never-mind.”
Posted in Reconstructive Surgery 1 Comment »
November 18, 2009
All it takes for a dinner of Bucatini Mock Amatriciana is a bowl of onions, crushed tomatoes, salt, peperoncino flakes, bucatini (thick spaghetti), grated pecorino, Lidia’s Italy cookbook and a little time. 
If there’s anything more beautiful than a simmering pot of homemade spaghetti sauce call me.
Note to self: When photographing hot food, stand downwind of the steam.
Much better.
Posted in Anita Cooks, CookBooks No Comments »
November 18, 2009
Inspired by last evening’s conversation with Lidia Bastianich and the two new cookbooks autographed “To Anita and D….Enjoy! Lidia” I decided to select a couple of her recipes for this evening’s dinner. I didn’t make it past page 12 in Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy before I found the first dish, Insalata Paesana or Country Salad. One of the things I love about Lidia’s cooking is that more often than not it’s simple cooking with the minimal number of fresh ingredients, and by simple I don’t mean plain, blah, or ordinary. Her dishes are often complex in flavor but she allows the ingredients to create the complexity more than a series of wanna-impress techniques. Great food always begins with great ingredients and then it’s left to the home cook or celebrity chef not to muck them up.
And that’s the case with this salad that combines briefly boiled cauliflower florets, boiled and diced red potatoes, radishes, apples, red onions, toasted walnuts, a perfect pile of cubed Asiago cheese, Italian parsley, and a quick dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar and kosher salt. The crunch of the apples, walnuts, and radishes combined with the tender potatoes, cauliflower and cheese makes for a wonderful contrast of textures and then there’s this equally amazing harmony of flavors with the salty richness of the Asiago and tart sweetness of the parsley. The salad makes for a low-fat and healthy side dish (I pared down the amount cheese, olive oil and walnuts from the amounts recommended) or for a satisfying stand-alone meal. I had it solo for lunch and will be feasting on it again with equal enthusiasm at dinner.
I haven’t included the recipe in this post because I’m still looking into copyright law when it comes to sharing published recipes on blogs but this is one of those great recipes that in knowing the basic ingredients nearly anyone who can find their kitchen can create a close and tasty facsimile.
Posted in Anita Cooks, CookBooks, Eating In, Low-Fat, Main, Recipes, Sides 2 Comments »
November 17, 2009
What. A. Great. Evening.
Tonight our Rakestraw, our local independent bookstore hosted an incredible evening that brought together chefs Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Joey Altman. While known nationally Joey is best known in the Bay area for Bay Café a food-magazine television show that explored the local culinary scene. And Lidia Bastianich. Oh. Sigh. She’s my pasta hero, tomato sauce goddess, my polenta princess and the queen mother of all bubbling, fragrant sauce pots of Maltagliati Alla Salsa Di Cipolla (homemade pasta with onion-tomato sauce). Beshert and I are massive fans of her show Lidia’s Italy. Her name might be long but in our house we just call her Noni (Grandma). “Honey, it’s Noni! Noni’s on TV!”
The event was scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. and since the venue doors were opening at 6:30 that meant D and I were standing with our noses pressed against the glass doors by 6:00 pm. Not that I was excited or anything and suffice it to say we were first through the doors and grabbed up the seats in the center of the front row.
For the first hour of the event Joey interviewed Lidia about her new book Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy: A Feast of 175 Regional Recipes that features recipes from last season, and which I now have sitting on my lap autographed only a couple hours ago. Following their delightful and engaging conversation, there were a few minutes provided for Q & A from the audience of 200 and then we all walked over from the local theatre where the event was held to the bookstore for the book signing and wine tasting. And yes, once again we managed, through a carefully plotted escape through the emergency exit doors at the front of the theater to get in front of the pack.
Not only was it an interesting and fun night but it was an inspiring one and I’ve already found the two recipes from her cookbook that will comprise tomorrow night’s dinner in our home. Dinner’s at 6:00. See you then?
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
Posted in Chefs - Shows - Books No Comments »
November 16, 2009
While there’s more than fifty posts located in the archives from January through October 2009, those posts were transferred from my previous blog, Fasting for a Change, which makes this the official Grand Opening post for The Passionate Plate, Savoring Life in Small Bites, and can we just talk for a minute about this beautiful layout! A huge thank you and prompt payment to my web designer, Nicole Rienecker; Founder, Creative Director, and Goddess Extraordinare over at Neekdesign.
My name is Anita Cadonau-Huseby. I’m a 50-something woman, and yes, a lesbian for those who are taking notes, who lives in the Bay Area of California with beloved D, who on this blog will be referred by the name Beshert, (yiddish for soul mate, destiny, divinely foreordained spouse) and two insanely loving and lovingly insane cats, Simba and Annie.
I’m a foodie, a follower of Christ, and an ordinary person who’s gone through a remarkable journey of weight loss. I enjoy writing about what matters to me and I love taking photos of beautiful things. The Passionate Plate: Savoring Life in Small Bites provides me a place to write about the things I care about and to pass along some images from this amazing world. That’s the why of The Passionate Plate and here is the how:
For an overall picture of what this blog is about in more detail, be sure to check out the “about the passionate plate” tab located on the top navigational bar. In a nutshell his blog is actually three separate blogs all wrapped up in one and each section is dedicated to a particular theme. In keeping with blog name we could say the blog is like one big meal made up of three courses. That analogy is for those of you who are more conceptual thinkers like me. Anyway, Savoring Life is about food and health, Saviouring Life focuses on faith and spirituality, and Savouring Life is where I’ll write about my life with Beshert, our shared interests and travels, and our life together in the Bay Area of California. If you want to follow one or all of this sections in RSS feed then just click on the RSS feed icon for Saviouring or Savouring located in the far right hand column or the RSS feed icon for Savoring up to the right of this blog address in your browser. If RSS isn’t your thing then just bookmark the portion of this blog that interests you and any recent posts added to any of the three sections will be listed under the RSS Feed icon in the right hand column.
Posted in Blog Bits 1 Comment »
October 18, 2009
Last week my sister called me. Mom was in the hospital and the doctors were saying that any family who wanted to see her needed to come quickly. D and I were on the next flight out that evening and the plane ride was the first time I had sat upright in a chair since my surgery. The next two days were spent primarily at the hospital at Mom’s bedside or in the waiting room. Following her passing on Tuesday morning I, along with my siblings, moved through all the process of preparing for Mom’s burial and service.
Between all the flights and the car rides and the meetings and the errands there was a whole lot of sitting and walking and none of it fared well on my incisions. There was pain and stiffness and bleeding. And through it all I was and remain so deeply thankful to the bone that I hadn’t had my surgery a week later than I did or that Mom was taken ill a week early than she was. I would have managed to get on that plane no matter what but as it turned out my healing was far enough along that with D’s help and my family’s understanding, I was able to be there for an important time in the life of my family.
I was suppose to have the remaining stitches taken out last week but instead I was in Portland with family and so I’m having them taken out tomorrow and I’m more than ready. I think the skin around the suture thread is ready too. It’s basically showing signs of being irritated by the whole thing and so am I. I’m done. I realized last week how much of our physical recovery from an injury or surgery depends upon our emotional and spiritual strength and when those are used up or focused in another direction, we’re left with limited reserves in which to draw our strength. A broken heart and broken body make for a whole lot of weariness and I really feel like the only way I got through last week was because I was held and cared for by D, by a circle of support and prayers over on Facebook, and by God. I’m so thankful.
I don’t have much more to say but to share a couple memories from this past week that relate to the journey I’ve been on. Both are about my mom.
Mom didn’t like the idea of me having surgery. Not the first time. Not the second time. She was worried something would happen to me. My mom can worry with the best of them and so we talked about it quite a bit. I wanted so much to not cause her any worry but at the same time I felt like this was something I needed to do as soon as I could and so I offered her what assurances I could about having a great surgeon, about staying at an excellent surgical care center, about doing my research, but none of it helped ease her worry. “You look wonderful already Honey.” “Are you sure you need to do this?” “Is there something less extreme you could have done?” I finally told her I felt like I needed to do this thing; that I believed all the physical pain and discomfort would be worth it in the end if it allowed me to finally let go of the emotional pain I’d experienced as an overweight child and adult. I told her the surgery was an important step for me to let go of the past and move forward. A couple days later she called me and while she was still worried and would be glad when all this was over, she understood why i was doing it.
Several days before Mom went to the hospital I received another in a series of get-well cards from her. Inside the card were two ads, clipped from some cheap catalog or magazine. One was for “Zip Away” Cellulite Cream and the other was for a pair of underpants (black and white color options) that had plastic buttocks inserts in them. Mom scrawled a note in the card that read “These would have seemed the cheaper way to go! It was so good to talk to you the other day and hear how happy you are with your new body. I love you very much, Mommy.” I will, as you can imagine, save the card and the two clippings forever and each time I look at them, I’ll smile over my mom’s sarcastic sense of humor and at her love for me.
The last story I want to share happened on Sunday night when I saw Mom for the first time after a frantic drive from the airport to the hospital. I walked into the room where she was peacefully laying with her eyes closed and holding her hand I told her I was there and I loved her. She said something about me traveling so close to my surgery (still worrying) and then she reached up her hand, took hold of my upper arm, and said, “My girl has small arms” before flashing me a weak smile.
When I was a little girl my weight was a constant tension between my mom and me. She wanted me to lose weight or at least stop gaining and so she would take me to this doctor or that weight loss program. There were lectures and there was pleading. She attempted, unsuccessfully due to my sneaky ways, of monitoring my eating. The thing is, I realize now that my size never really mattered to my mom. It was always about my happiness. She knew I was being teased by other children and she knew that as I grew into adulthood being obese would make my life more difficult. She didn’t want that for me, but never did she withhold her love or pride or acceptance of me because of my weight. Never did I feel less loved because I weighed more.
This physical transformation continues to run far deeper through me and touch more areas of my life than I could have ever imagined, and I’m so thankful Mom was able to see it with her own eyes and celebrate with me.
I will treasure that last squeeze of my arm for the rest of my life.
Posted in Reconstructive Surgery No Comments »
