Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Your Body is not a Psychopath

Really it isn't! It isn't trying to trick you! A body is a machine that works properly unless you mess up its functioning by drugging it out.

I am sure you have heard that if you don't eat enough calories, your body will hold onto the weight because it thinks you are starving to death. To date, I have never understood that belief, if there is truly any scientific evidence of this, or if this is just an effort by worried people to keep one from becoming anorexic. Note the word "anorexic"? If your body was trying to keep you from losing weight, no one would be anorexic. What the body appears to do is need less and less calories as one gets thinner and less active, so eating like a bird can keep you alive.

I have now lost ten pounds on my diet in the first fourteen days. My body hasn't kept me from losing weight, but you can see if you want to lose weight this quickly, you can't each much. Now, for the last ten pounds I need to lose, it may go more slowly, not because my body is refusing to give up the weight, but because I need even less calories at 142 and below to maintain weight than I did at 152 to maintain weight. When I get to 132, I will never be able to eat as much as I did when I was twenty pounds heavier if I want to stay at 132. You don't get to eat as much as you do when you are heavier, so you have to accept a lot smaller dinner plates.

So, check out my diet for the last two weeks and see how it worked (you will see the days I didn't get to the store to shop or was racing around and ate bits of not so healthy stuff, but, luckily, I didn't eat much else and didn't get discouraged and go crazy the next day).

ONDAY Oct 4 - 152 pounds

Bought foods and didn’t eat until I went shopping at Whole Foods late in the afternoon. I bought a salad and made a banana-blueberry ice cream (4 bananas) in the evening. Two frozen bananas in the “ice cream” and some fresh blueberries. So low calorie but what a great fulfilling dessert!

No exercise. Back injury.

TUESDAY Oct 5 – 150 pounds

Papaya/banana/kale green smoothie. Not that good. Spiced it up. Three glasses. One papaya, one banana.

Banana/strawberry ice cream – 2 frozen bananas and fresh strawberries. Always yummy! Great with blueberries, too.

2 bowls of Haeste’s savory stews made with tomatoes, celery, cucumber, squash spinach, and a T of honey. I made the curry/cilantro version. On the second bowl, I added a sliced up banana and it thickened the stew and turned it into a version of Puerto Rican Mafongo! Great find!

No exercise. Back injury.

WEDNESDAY Oct 6 – 148 pounds

One glass leftover papaya/banana/kale green smoothie.

3 dishes of “oatmeal”. Two with one mashed banana and chopped strawberries and one with one mashed banana and a sliced thinly apple. All sprinkled with cinnamon. The one with strawberries made a nice breakfast that did remind me of oatmeal with the crappy mucky part. Apple version tastes like apple cobbler or apple pie!

Five large stuffed “burritos” made with nori. Stuffed with carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, spinach, red pepper, add cilantro. Added Matouk’s hot sauce and pickled ginger. Turned out like big sushi rolls. Loved it! Very filling and made a nice, big meal that had pretty much no calories!

No exercise. Back injury.

THURSDAY Oct 7 – 147 pounds

Two glasses of canteloupe/parlsey green smoothie. Delicious and refreshing!

One salad of spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, handful of washed dulse and mango/tomato/lemon nonfat dressing. A little bland but filling. Need to find a way to make it a little more thrilling. But, almost zero calories! Added a t of honey and a t or more of Dijon mustard. Makes it a bit more interesting. I used it as a dip but still not exciting enough for that. Could be used as a dressing but I still think it needs more something. I like the mango and tomato base, though. I now have added garlic and cider vinegar and it is a bit better and then, curry, better still. I will try it on a cabbage dish.

I/2 cup lime pudding. I was aiming for key lime flavor. Didn’t quite work out! 1 cup has 1 banana, ½ pear, and ¾ of a lime, including skin. The skin didn’t work out here. I used it in a different recipe and it added zing. Here it adds too much zing and the pieces and little pieces were still intact. So, I ended up with what had the consistency and taste of applesause with lime and little annoying bits.

Had my “oatmeal” with one banana/strawberries but this time I sprinkled it with carob powder. I have never been that found of carob powder and it didn’t this dish didn’t taste anywhere as good as the one sprinkled with cinnamon.

5 more of my stuffed “burritos” with pickled ginger.

FRIDAY Oct 8 – 146.5 pounds

Bowl of “oatmeal” with 2 bananas, 1 apple and cinnamon.

I glass of cantaloupe/parsley green smoothie left over from yesterday.

No exercise. Back injury.

SAT OCT 9 – 146.5 pounds

Bowl of gazpacho soup and glass of white wine at restaurant

Piece of chocolate at hair salon

Salad at restaurant with dried cranberries

I bite of pizza crust

SUN OCT 10 – 146.5 pounds

1 Thai papaya salad with peanuts and one glass white wine

6 pizza bites with mustard

MON OCT 11- 146 pounds

2 salads with mango/tomato/balsamic vinegar dressing – Frederic Patanaude. This is a great dressing!

3 glasses of smoothie – watermelon, cucumber, tomato, banana, and dill. Very tasty and refreshing!

TUES OCT 12 - 147 pounds

Grr. So it is a starvation day since I went up. Had carrots and salsa and the previous days watermelon drink with kale added. Liked it much better the way I made it yesterday.

WED OCT 13 – 146 pounds

I salad with half a cup of mango/tomato/balsamic dressing

Pile of cabbage with the other half of the dressing.

One cup of Pakistani rice

Jogged on twenty minute lap around the lake and then one more lap walking with six sprints

THURS OCT 14 - 145 pounds

Banana “oatmeal” with pear and cinnamon. One banana and one pear.

Watermelon green smoothie – ½ baby watermelon, 1 banana, 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber and dill

½ cup Pakistani rice

FRI OCT 15 – 144.5

One salad with nonfat Caesar dressing

½ cup Pakistani Rice (last of the batch from Mohammad’s mom; I am so sad. She is a great cook!)

4 carrots and salsa

One glass watermelon, banana, tomato, and dill smoothie

Jogged twenty minutes around lake. Walked second lap with six sprints.

Sat Oct 16 –145

1 bean burrito

½ cup Pakistani beans (oh, yummy, more from Mohammed's mom!)

1/3 ww chapatti

No exercise

SUN OCT 17 – 145 lbs

1 papaya thai salad

I veg tartare

2 glasses white wine

½ cup Pakistani beans

¼ chapatti

No exercise

MON OCT 18 – 144 lbs

1 dark chocolate bar

½ cup Pakistani beans

¼ chapatti

No exercise

TUES OCT 19 – 142.5 lbs

1 banana

1 salad with no fat dressing

Banana/apple “oatmeal” with cinnamon

Miso soup with cabbage, spinach, and agar agar strips to thicken it (don’t do this again; it turns into gunk)

No exercise.

WED OCT 17 – 142 lbs

4 pieces of curried seitan

2 spoonfuls of eggplant salad

1 big piece of spiced tofu

(got these from the salad bar; finally went shopping at Fresh Fields so I can make my green smoothies again)

Big round disk of kelp

1 apple

1 mango

No exercise.

THURSDAY OCT 21 – 142 pounds

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Is the Chandra Levy Case really Solved?

Today the jury selection for the trial of Ingmar Guandique begins. He is the defendant who, after the Washington Post ran a series of articles skewering the Metropolitan Police Department for not solving the murder of Chandra Levy, suddenly received increased scrutiny and then was charged with the crime. He had attacked two other women in Rock Creek Park around the time Levy was killed and while he was certainly interviewed at the time about the intern, that avenue of investigation was not pursued.

But, after the articles, the case was solved. Not by DNA or any witness but because a cellmate said Guandique confessed to him. No matter that the con might be lying; after all, he was sexually assaulted by Guandique. I think the defense is going to tear that testimony to shreds.

I really have no clue what the prosecution really has that would convince a jury that Guandique is guilty. No question he is a sex predator and a violent man and maybe even a braggart as he did talk about Levy and have her picture in prison with him. But there is still no physical evidence tying him to the crime and, in truth, no good circumstantial evidence either.For that matter, there is more circumstantial evidence on ex-Congressman Gary Condit, Levy's married lover, than Guandique.

There are a couple of puzzling things about the crime that don't support Guandique as the killer. One is the isolated location Levy was found in. It was a rather odd place for her to be running and an odd place for a nonrunner, a predator, to be lurking away as it was far from any entrance to the park and was a twisty narrow little path. However, that spot was a very convenient place for a body to be dumped as there was a nice place to pull a car off the road just above the ravine where she was discovered . It was a road that was very close to Condit's condo. Secondly, Levy was supposed to have been hogtied, according to the jailhouse snitch. In all my years as a profiler, I can't remember a single case where an anger retaliatory serial killer (the quick and violent kind Guandique would be) bothered to tie up a jogger; it is easier to simply to bludgeon her or strangle her and be done with it. Besides, it is a waste of time to tie someone up if one does not need to move her to another location (say, from a condo to a car) or want to commit lengthy sadistic acts. And hogtying a woman also interfere with rape unless it is anal rape.

I have no problem with Guandique being the right guy and convicting him for Chandra Levy's death. I don't even feel a bit sorry for him to be accused of the crime. But, if it is not Ingmar Guandque, I don't want the jury convicting him and letting the real killer walk free.

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: Profiling your Weight Loss Speed

DAY 12 of my diet - `144.5 pounds - total loss so far - 7.5 pounds

Willpower and metabolism, two issues about weight loss we get half right and half wrong. One of my male Facebook friends commented that us ladies lack willpower, that the reason we are fat is that we make poor choices, not that we have addiction issues or hormone problems. I agree with him halfway. He is very correct that we get fat because we put more food in our mouths that we do not need to eat to maintain a healthy weight. It would help women to accept this fact because that way we can get to the bottom of why we keep doing that.

Simply put, if eating a one egg and a piece of toast and drinking a glass of orange juice for breakfast, having a salad for lunch with lowfat dressing, a couple pieces of fruit for a snack, and one plate of spaghetti and a piece of bread keep our weight at the same place as the day before, this is what we need to maintain our bodies. If we add four pieces of bacon with our breakfast, a piece of danish we found on a table at work, add a half a sandwich to our lunch, eat five pieces of that tasty bread (and change it to garlic bread or lather it with butter), we are going to find ourselves to have gained weight.

The part of the equation men often find hard to understand is that THEY can actually eat that second amount of food and not gain weight because they have to maintain a body that is almost twice as large as ours and has big calorie chomping muscles helping them along. They get to have twice the fun as us and not have to worry nearly as much as we do at the table. The men that are overweight tend to have problems with excessive amount of fast food, great cooks for wives, and a healthy beer habit that adds inches to their guts.

As for metabolism, we move more when we are young (at least we used to which is why we see kids getting fat). We tend to stop exercising when we get older and we get desk jobs or stay home and watch too much television on the couch. Women who stay home end up preparing food all day and living in the kitchen and we drive to the store to buy our food.

Food addiction is another one of those silly labels we give to the fact we use food for a myriad of emotional and social reasons. Food makes us happy, food is instant gratification, food amuses us when we are bored, and food is a habit. We get used to eating and eating and eating and can't figure out what to do when we are not eating and we miss our little calorie laden friends.

We DO make the choice to eat too much, but willpower is difficult when everything is conspiring against you in your society. Food and the reminders of it are everywhere. I spent some time in West Africa once and there simply wasn't that much food around, you had to walk four miles to the market, share what you cooked with everyone, and there were no snacks in sight. I lost ten pounds in three weeks without trying. It was the easiest diet in the world!

How fast will you lose? If you are a guy, much faster than a woman on the same number of calories. If you are very active, much faster than you are inactive. If you are heavier, faster than if you are lighter. How do you know you have cut back enough? You see results.

Now, on Day 12 of my diet, I still have to wrench my wheel away from the 7-11 entrance and try not to reach into my friend's popcorn at the movies (well, I ate a few of those pretzel bites she had...bad girl, bad girl). It is hard work, ladies, and I feel all of your pain!

Criminal Profiling Topic of the Day: It's a Crime how hard it is for Women to lose Weight

It's not fat genes that are putting us in fat jeans: it just sucks being a woman. Women have no problem maintaining their weight when they live in areas where food is somewhat scarce and they have to work in the fields or at aerobic jobs from sun-up to sundown. This is probably why in so many economically struggling societies, it is a tradition to allow the men to eat first. Maybe the males are just being bullies and the females are not considered worthy of an equal place at the table, but maybe these men who work equally as hard as the women (or have the even more physically demanding jobs) simply need the extra calories to survive.

Women don't have to worry about gaining fat under these circumstances but, if that isn't the lifestyle most of us lead, the bad news is, we don't need all that many calories to maintain a healthy weight and low body fat. While not having to slave away twelve hours a day under tough conditions is a blessing, we now have to pay the price with the extra fat layers on our bodies that we really don't need. In today's world, unless you exercise a lot, the Standard American Diet includes far more calories than most of us need.

So when we go to lose weight, we cannot understand why those pounds hang around. We think we are being pretty careful with what we eat, following a diet of only 1200 or 1500 calories a day, but the weight stays on. When we fail, we begin to believe that we are genetically doomed; we have fat genes that won't let us lose weight.

Sorry, ladies. If this were true, you would see some fat women in the photos of the Auschwitz survivors. But, the reality is, they didn't eat many calories and they got very skinny.

I am going to prove how little we women need to eat. I embarked on my new diet on October 4, 2010. On November 16, I am sailing to the Caribbean on the Queen Mary II. I have nothing to wear. Well, that is not true. I have things to wear but I can't get into any of them, including my bathing suit. So, from last week, I had six weeks to lose 17-22 pounds, not an easy task in so short a time. But, I set out and I am eight pounds down so far. Now it will get harder because the first ten are always easier to lose than the last ten when you are trying to get rid of the last twenty pounds. I started at 152 and I want to be between 130-135 (depending on any muscle gained if I actually lift weights) when I board the ship.

I will take you along on my diet and you will be able to see for yourself just how little one must eat to lose weight when you are a female. Next time your boyfriend or husband mocks you for struggling to get the pounds off while he is losing like crazy, still eating potatoes and drinking beer, shove my diet diary in his face and ask him how long he would stay on a diet like this! Also, seeing how my diet plan works will help you decide if you need to modify your own for success.

By the way, NO DRUGS are involved in my weight loss program. A lot of times you will read how a celebrity has lost weight really quickly and she will claim she did it while eating a healthy, slightly reduced calorie diet. Bullocks. A good number of them are taking diet drugs like phenteramine to get that weight off. The stuff works fast because you race around like a energizer bunny (it is speed, folks) and you don't eat. It is also very unhealthy. The celebs don't want to admit using drugs, so they lie and we wonder why we don't have the kind of quick success they have on the "same diet." I am telling your the truth here; no drugs are along for the ride on my diet.


My diet so far: read it and weep.

MONDAY Oct 4 - 152 pounds

Bought foods and didn’t eat until I went shopping at Whole Foods late in the afternoon. I bought a salad and made a banana-blueberry ice cream (4 bananas) in the evening. Two frozen bananas in the “ice cream” and some fresh blueberries. So low calorie but what a great fulfilling dessert!

No exercise. Back injury.

TUESDAY Oct 5 – 150 pounds

Papaya/banana/kale green smoothie. Not that good. Spiced it up. Three glasses. One papaya, one banana.

Banana/strawberry ice cream – 2 frozen bananas and fresh strawberries. Always yummy! Great with blueberries, too.

2 bowls of stews made with tomatoes, celery, cucumber, squash spinach, and a T of honey. I made the curry/cilantro version. On the second bowl, I added a sliced up banana and it thickened the stew and turned it into a version of Puerto Rican Mafongo! Great find!

No exercise. Back injury.

WEDNESDAY Oct 6 – 148 pounds

One glass leftover papaya/banana/kale green smoothie.

3 dishes of “oatmeal”. Two with one mashed banana and chopped strawberries and one with one mashed banana and a sliced thinly apple. All sprinkled with cinnamon. The one with strawberries made a nice breakfast that did remind me of oatmeal with the crappy mucky part. Apple version tastes like apple cobbler or apple pie!

Five large stuffed “burritos” made with nori. Stuffed with carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, spinach, red pepper, add cilantro. Added Matouk’s hot sauce and pickled ginger. Turned out like big sushi rolls. Loved it! Very filling and made a nice, big meal that had pretty much no calories!

No exercise. Back injury.

THURSDAY Oct 7 – 147 pounds

Two glasses of canteloupe/parlsey green smoothie. Delicious and refreshing!

One salad of spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, handful of washed dulse and mango/tomato/lemon nonfat dressing. A little bland but filling. Need to find a way to make it a little more thrilling. But, almost zero calories! Added a t of honey and a t or more of Dijon mustard. Makes it a bit more interesting. I used it as a dip but still not exciting enough for that. Could be used as a dressing but I still think it needs more something. I like the mango and tomato base, though. I now have added garlic and cider vinegar and it is a bit better and then, curry, better still. I will try it on a cabbage dish.

I/2 cup lime pudding. I was aiming for key lime flavor. Didn’t quite work out! 1 cup has 1 banana, ½ pear, and ¾ of a lime, including skin. The skin didn’t work out here. I used it in a different recipe and it added zing. Here it adds too much zing and the pieces and little pieces were still intact. So, I ended up with what had the consistency and taste of applesause with lime and little annoying bits.

Had my “oatmeal” with one banana/strawberries but this time I sprinkled it with carob powder. I have never been that found of carob powder and it didn’t this dish didn’t taste anywhere as good as the one sprinkled with cinnamon.

5 more of my stuffed “burritos” with pickled ginger.

No exercise. Back injury.

FRIDAY Oct 8 – 146.5 pounds

Bowl of “oatmeal” with 2 bananas, 1 apple and cinnamon.

I glass of cantaloupe/parsley green smoothie left over from yesterday.

No exercise. Back injury.

SAT OCT 9 – 146.5 pounds

Bowl of gazpacho soup and glass of white wine at restaurant

Piece of chocolate at hair salon

Salad at restaurant with dried cranberries; nonfat dressing

I bite of pizza crust

No exercise. Back injury.

SUN OCT 10 – 146.5 pounds

1 Thai papaya salad with peanuts and one glass white wine

6 pizza bites with mustard

No exercise. Back injury.

MON OCT 11- 146 pounds

2 salads with mango/tomato/balsamic vinegar dressing – Frederic Patanaude. This is a great dressing!

3 glasses of smoothie – watermelon, cucumber, tomato, banana, and dill. Very tasty and refreshing!

No exercise. Back injury.

TUES OCT 12 - 147 pounds

Grr. So it is a starvation day since I went up. Had carrots and salsa and the previous days watermelon drink with kale added. Liked it much better the way I made it yesterday.

No exercise. Back injury.

WED OCT 13 – 146 pounds

I salad with half a cup of mango/tomato/balsamic dressing

Pile of cabbage with the other half of the dressing.

One cup of Pakistani rice

Jogged on twenty minute lap around the lake and then one more lap walking with six sprints

THURS OCT 14 - 145 pounds

Banana “oatmeal” with pear and cinnamon. One banana and one pear.

3 Watermelon green smoothies – ½ baby watermelon, 1 banana, 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber and dill

1 cup Pakistani rice

No exercise. Too tired and it rained all day.