Belly Fat Busting

This picture shows the Pillsbury Dough Girl effect much better than the one hidden behind bathing suit materiel. This ring of flotation is enough to get myself another cancer lottery ticket or two as fat can promote cancer cell growth, especially when this fat is comprised solely of high sugar and animal  fat intake.

What kinds of health problems are linked to overweight and obesity?

Excess weight may increase the risk for many health problems, including

• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• heart disease and strokes
• certain types of cancer
• sleep apnea
• osteoarthritis
• fatty liver disease
• kidney disease
• pregnancy problems, such as high blood sugar during pregnancy, high blood pressure, and increased risk for cesarean delivery (C-section) Borrowed From: http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/health_risks.htm

Like an actress who gains weight for a role, I let myself put on this weight to show you HOW it can come off almost as painlessly as it went on. Okay,that was the secondary idea after having been a good girl for so long, I decided to let loose and then turn the lemons into lemonade.

After week one, the scales are down a solid three pounds. I am at 147 and have been for 3 days. That was after seven solid days of one hour of exercise per day. Jogging for 40 minutes on Sunday and Saturday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday Aqua Aerobics with a 10 minute swim after,Tuesday and Thursday weight training with a 20 minute jog after and Sunday three hours of hard skiing. The seventh day was my "treat day" where two hot chocolates spiked with a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream snuck into the "plan" and were down my gullet before I knew what happened. 

The normal diet was alcohol-free but laden with "Saudi Champagnes (ice-filled glass with no-sodium soda water poured almost to the rim. A quarter cup or less of white grape juice (or any unsweetened real juice) floated on top! Very thirst quenching. Lots of herbal tea and glasses of water. Stevia the sweetener if any was called for and almond milk the dairy.

Breakfast for me is always oatmeal (1/4 cup with water cooked in the microwave with 1/4 cup frozen blueberries), a dozen grapes, a sprinkle of sunflower, pumpkin and Nutracleanse seeds (contains ground flax and Psyllium for clean colon and waste management), a half cup of plain, fat free probiotic yogurt and a half cup of chilled almond milk (plain, original). Lunch was usually left-overs from a sugar- free dinner: fats only from coconut oil used as conservatively as possible.Moose burgers on brown rice buns, grilled cheese made from coconut oil as a spread, low fat cheese and brown rice bread. Dinner: usually fish or free-range skinless chicken, carbs either absent or brown rice, quinoa or brown rice pasta with LOTS of vegetables. Dessert chocolate macaroons from my book beneath plain yogurt, seeds (see above) and fresh fruit. 

I LOST three pounds. On someone with more weight to lose, I predict a loss of five pounds after a week like mine.

One thing I HAVE noticed besides a slight, if any change in anything but the scale number is my "furnace" is burning hotter, meaning I am needing more "fuel" to keep up with my body. This makes me hungrier, so I added a snack at ten a.m (an apple with 1 TBSP plain pnut butter as a dip) and another at 3 p.m. (a brown rice cracker with low fat cheese and a few grapes). This keeps me full between meals so I am less likely to gorge.

Okay, THAT was my perception of how the week went, food wise. In reality I DID the exercise mentioned, BUT I allowed myself a third drink: a glass of wine on Friday, a handful of chocolate chips (BIG scoop) on Sunday. a Chai Latte(high sugar content even when made with skim milk) on Saturday, a second helping of dinner after an already stacked plate and two low-cal desserts on Tuesday and Wednesday.

So I am LUCKY that scale is down at all. If I really want the scale to go down faster, I can't possibly exercise any more AND keep up working, so it means the calorie intake is going to have to suffer. I think, actually I KNOW I can do much better next week, reminding myself this is all only until I reach my goal at 143. Four HARD , stubborn pounds to go.Those last ones are always the hardest.

Pass the air, please.I'd like another helping!

Cancer Prevention Blunt Video Attempt

Dribbles From DebiLyn: Lose Seven Pounds In A Month?

Dribbles From DebiLyn: Lose Seven Pounds In A Month?: Alright. This may not look like a lot of excess weight on this body. But to the trained eye and worse, to my favourite, no, make that ALL ...

Lose Seven Pounds In A Month?

Alright. This may not look like a lot of excess weight on this body. But to the trained eye and worse, to my favourite, no, make that ALL my pants, I got "pillowy" over the last two months of Ho-Ho-Holi-Daze. That excess seven pounds is comprised of the worst things a post cancer patient could have eaten.

To my defense, I have spent since August 2010 worrying about myself and what I was doing to encourage cancer growth through what I was putting into my body. 

Over the next year, I would cut out the toxins: buying cleaners and beauty products with only natural ingredients. I changed my diet to include double the fruit and vegetables and replaced the bread,white flour, pasta and rice with brown rice products. I drink herbal and decaf green tea and drink lemon water.

I have cut the drinking down to absolute minimal with less than two drinks a week being the norm. The weight simply came off on its own with a little help from daily exercise.

I have been such a nauseatingly GOOD girl. What cancer could possibly run away with my life?

I am also on pills for five years that help prevent an occurrence. Now what are my chances of getting cancer at this very moment? I am thinking in the negatives.

SO... I gave myself a Christmas present. I let myself go absolutely sugar-insane over the holidays, starting in mid November. I ate licorice (two bags full in one sitting). I ate all the home baked almond roca, made another batch, then proceeded to eat it all once on table trays. There was cheese fondue with cheese buns, coconut balls and chocolate truffles. Date squares, apple crisp, turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, Ollie Balls, ice cream, egg nog and whipped cream.And you know that was only the half of it. How about three blueberry teas in one night (and a following hang-over that wanted gooey fries and a donut for lunch)

For once in my life it was a no holds barred pig-out. Potato chips, chezzies, pistachio and macadamia nuts covered in chocolate and straight up. BBQ sauce, sweet and sour sauce, butter sauce. I ate BUTTER! I haven't touched that stuff in years. And BACON. although I had to cross myself first just in case it took me down on the spot. Surprisingly, I survived and lived to eat the other five strips in the pan.

The result was a yet another person looking back at me from the mirror. Someone I remembered from years past. Someone that had worked very hard for three years to get down to the 143 I was most happy at.

The funny thing is I am happy. Happy I did that for myself, knowing full well I would stop it on January 1, as I did. That I would rise to this occasion as I always have with simply another goal to obtain. Getting back to feeling comfortable no matter what I wear.

And now it's reckoning time. The muzzle has been slipped over my mouth. The sugared treats and any lingering shred of Christmas treat  indecency has been donated, eaten, tossed or re-gifted.

Monday saw me at Aqua Fitness with the Seniors crew before a forty minute leisurely jog. Tuesday was a 6 a:m session at the gym followed by another slow jog for 20 minutes. Wednesday was Aqua aerobics followed by 15 minutes of extra laps. 

Getting the picture? 

Breakfast is ALWAYS oatmeal with plain, no-fat yogurt, berries and grapes, almond milk and seeds. A snack at ten is an apple, lunch is no fat, low cal and hearty vegi and brown rice wise. Three o'clock snack is usually a spoonful of pnut butter on a rye cracker. Dinner is either brown rice pasta, rice or flour with more vegi's- sometimes four or five. Chicken, fish or moose. And the best part of the day- dessert with more plain yogurt, seeds and berries. Or my chocolate macaroon recipe from my book Running From Cancer with the above poured over top to make a sundae.

And you have read my plan for taking this ring around my waist off the sooner the better.I'm betting one month, but thinking probably two. Those last five are the hardest to lose.Here goes nothing.

Keep posted weekly for the next Monday photo and weigh-in.

Need any help with YOUR waist line? Contact me. I have a son who has made it his business to get you into the best shape of your life. Guaranteed! Or, you can do what I'm doing and just DO it.

A New Years Time Crunch

Every New Year's Day I have a ritual I perform. No, I don't slaughter an animal or drop to my knees in prayer. But you're close if you're thinking that way. My ritual is symbolic in that it makes this addled ADD brain sit and contemplate what I accomplished, messed up or got distracted with my goals in the past year. Then I try to figure out some REALISTIC ways of bettering my program. Maybe I could have applied myself more with getting my anti-cancer message out to the world as intended, maybe I could have listened to my husband's council more often because when he says left, I go right. Not intentionally, but it's the way I'm wired.I should be more structured like he is, more rigid with my time.


I think for people like me, it's about routine and how I schedule my days. It needs to start with an alarm clock because on these dark mornings, I want to stay in bed until 9. A waste of 2 good hours to get before the computer screen and accomplish something.

I need to organize my time at my desk better because the social media aspect of the writing life seems to take over. That means consolidating the Twitter, FaceBook (3 pages!!)e-mail and Pinterest somehow. One message needs to go out to all the followers.I'll have to search for a program that can do that.

I need to make a schedule up and try to stick to it. Like 7-8:30 social media. 9-11 in town for swimming and errands.Lunch. 1-5 writing. Prep dinner. Hot tub with husband.7-10 editing. Or something like that. You can already see how life gets in the way. Hot tubs and town. Of course, none of that will work when we're at the ski cabin. It will go more like 8-9 prep for skiing (breakfast, washing, dressing, listening to weather reports and ski hill chatter about conditions we'll be facing) 9:30-4 ripping up the fresh powder or touring the mountain on special skis that enable us to walk uphill with furry "skins" on them before skiing back down again in the powder still untouched in the out-of-bounds areas. Light snacks from 4-5 before dinner 6-7 and then usually it's entertainment time to mosey to another cabin for laughs or to the lodge for ??? You can see there is a great need for me to set aside more time when I'm on the mountain! Some fun will have to go. The tobogganing? The Thrilling Thursdays with the free appies and prizes? The surprise drop-in guests?

This will be harder than I thought. It's funny that writer's can apply to be secluded for weeks or a month at a time in rustic settings (like log cabins on a  mountain) People pay big money so that they can get away from life buzzing continually around them and get to the task of typing out something the world will want to read. It takes concentration to flip into the story you are creating and an interruption flips you back to reality. You are momentarily puzzled at where you are at before you answer a question about where someone's cell phone is (in MY purse of course) or where his keys are (yes, check MY purse) or a yap with someone on the phone. Flipping back into the story takes less than a minute, but then you have to find where you are and get that stream flowing again. You have to remember what it is you are setting up because every word must work to moving a story forward. A well published author told me this year "You have to be prepared to defend every word," and I have already found that to be true.

So I have plenty of peaceful seclusion, but I still have the ability to let life (like searching for a brie cheese seafood pasta sauce recipe for 2 hours) sidetrack me.

So, I am going to try and let less distractions get in my way this year. Now that my two books are on shelves, it's up to me to see that the buzz around them increases and  keep the momentum going forward while editing my second Mystery to come out in 2014 and writing the book on ADD. What time slot should I pencil that in?

I'm thinking I should simply not go to sleep. That would give me 8 hours of quiet time to produce pages of gibberish I would have to fix in the morning. Sigh.

No, I'm thinking 2014 will be a year of compromise. Same amount of life, yet more writing. With two more children engaged this year, a hip operation for my father back east sending us across Canada, more cancer relays, fundraising for a portable MRI (more on that in a future blog) for the north (including Smithers!) and exercise, my time for writing is going to have to be "whenever possible."

So if you see me hunched over my lap top while in the lounge on the ski hill, or writing notes on a napkin at your home, popping out of the pool to say "aha! That's what that character should do!" please don't label me. It's a New Year's Resolution in action.

The problem is it sounds suspiciously like the exact game-plan I followed in 2013?

But hey, I published not one but two books, got them out to BC through two cross province book tours, two CBC radio interviews, CFTK TV, PG TV the Georgia Strait, countless newspapers and audiences I presented to on top of a trip to Kaui, hiking trips, a wedding in Revelstoke and sixty days of skiing, so maybe the old plan wasn't as bad as I thought?

 I'm thinking a few less days of skiing will be enough change to let me get my balance straightened out.

And now, by looking at the clock, I see I'm off to start the year on the right foot. Time to get dressed and continue my day!
Writing starts in exactly 34 minutes!

Wishing you the ability to find a little more time to challenge yourself in 2014. Happy New Year everyone!

See-Through Scanner

It was a first for me. Setting off an American scanner alert because something foreign was in my breast. And where was the handy card the surgeon's office gave me to show I had a surgical implant in there? At home on my dresser of course.

The line-up behind us was the usual, everyone pressing from behind as you hopped around on one foot trying to take off your other shoe while ripping off your belt, pulling your laptop out of your back pack, the bag of gels and creams from your carry-on , hand the security guy your boarding pass, not making jokes or smiling because that might mean I was "nervous." Okay, I was always nervous at border crossings or security checks. You can thank our mother for that one. In the days before computers,after being stopped at the Maine/New Brunswick border EVERY September  before school started go for a weekend power shop. We always blew the allowable duty free budget with another appliance Mom would have to have.Never-mind we were wearing three pairs of new pants and shirts. We'd get busted for a toaster oven or a vacuum. The humiliation of being caught again was worst when Mom had to confess to our Dad that all the advantage of going to the States for back-to-school savings was wasted on a fine. Again.

To this day, I shake and tremble at every border crossing or when I pass through security of any kind. My palms sweat, fear trickles down beneath my armpits, rolls down my back. My eyes whirl around in my head, I accidentally look for exit signs and count how many guards are standing where. Why is that? Am I thinking I could make a run for it somewhere? I act as guilty as I still feel and once through, I run away from the area as fast as I can, still clutching my belt and shoes to put on around the corner. I fell for the "you've been chosen for an extra security check" only once. Grabbed because I had paused to put my shoes on. Never again.

But this was different. I walked into the new full scanner X-Ray machine with my hands touching my head. As I came out I was held up and words were exchanged between the male guard and a female guard who was standing further down. The woman looked up at the screen, saw where the bright red mark on the picture of a female frame's right breast was, looked into my eyes and saw my grin. What? I love my re-conned boob!

And she waved me through.
What a relief. It would have been one  more border story for Barry to tell and one more reason to fear the security people at the airport!

Homeward bound. Hopefully we arrive tonight at 7:30 pm. What a long day as we started yesterday night, after being up since 7 am. But it's always worth it. Every little bit of inconvenience and physical and mental exhaustion.I love nothing better besides getting on a plane and arriving some place else! Especially someplace warm when it's freezing at home.

FAQs on Houston Mirroring Halston

Thanks to everyone in the Bulkley Valley and beyond for the indelible support of the two books I released between May and September of this year. My final 2013 library reading, held last night in Houston, had a record 18 attendees. Wow.

All this media promotion and travelling across BC  has been exhausting both mentally and physically so I am being treated to a holiday for 3 weeks to unstress from the road trips we've raced through and to settle myself back into the writer's chair and get the second mystery "Double Dip" through it's final stages before printing. It's also my birthday while we're away, so this is my most incredible, thoughtful gift from my husband. (No, sales of the books weren't THAT good although we exceeded 1000 of the RFC before the summer ended!)

As a treat, I thought I'd take a minute and share some FAQs about the book Not Just One:

Q: What made you think of writing this book?
A: I have no idea. This is book #3 in my life. The first two books are still in drawers for one day when I have nothing left to work on. As if that will ever happen! Not with two more already-written mysteries and the start of book #5 Running From ADD expected in 2016.

Q: How long does it take you to write a book?
A: One year, from first horrible draft where you put your silly idea down on paper and then keep revising it and revising it until it begins to take shape. Add a time-line, fill in the blank spots, more fleshing out of the characters and then editing again and again and you have exactly 365 days. To promote it takes a life-time it's starting to look like!

Q: Why did you decide to self-publish?
A: I did a lot of research on book writing while waiting to hear back from publishers. The replies from the queries were ALWAYS super positive, hand-written notes that encouraged me to keep sending it around (RFC). It possibly didn't fit their current need, wasn't for them or they had their quotas for the year etc. Self-publishing gives me the control over the cover, the price,the release date and the percentage for selling it. Instead of making $2 a book thru a publisher, I can make a lot more to help pay for the up-front cost if I sell them out of my trunk. Selling through bookstores earns me more than through a conglomerate like Chapters, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's an expensive venture, but sales from my first book enabled the printing of my second. I'm hoping the sales from Not Just One will do the same for the third book.

Q: The Not Just One book looks scary with that snake on it. Is it?
A: Not really and if there is a tense scene, it's over fast because the pace rarely slows down through the entire book. Nothing gross or gory other than the fact Billy had a brief sexual encounter with a minor and pays for it throughout the story.

Q: "Okay," I'm asked, "the town you live in is Houston and the town in your book sounds quite similar, so why change it to Halston?"
A: My latest book, a mystery called Not Just One, is fictional. Yes there are resemblances or token service personal that will always be heroes in my books, but it stops there. Halston may greatly resemble Houston, but I changed the name to keep liberal licensing. So if I want to plop down a giant shoe store in the middle of Halston, I could. And don't tempt me...

Q: I'm sure I know one of the characters whose name is changed. Is it your ex-husband?
A: Heaven's, NO! That would be liable for a law-suit I would imagine and risking my own neck, upsetting my family, his family and countless others, never-mind the man himself. What I did do was roll a few quirks from people I know and ground them down and spit them out as a character named Billy who looks nothing like my ex when envisioned in my head. Although Billy sometimes grab's the readers pity, he's generally not a nice guy. My ex is well liked by many people.

Q: Who is Mini?
A: Mini, like everyone else, is fiction although I did meet someone very much like what I see in my head when I write, after the book came out. Uncanny, right?

Q: Who is your favourite character?
A: They change from book to book. I think Warren stole the show in Not Just One but everyone feels it is Mini that wins for most popular side-kick. In the next book, Double Dip, that all changes as the characters develop a bit more.

Q: When will you be doing another reading?
A: Not until late spring or summer if I can help it. I need time to write again and can't spend as much time as we did this year on travelling for cancer relays and promotions. Of course, if I was paid to do inspirational talks or readings as many successful authors are, I'd be packing.

Q: Anything else to add?
A: Yes, I think Not Just One is a book everyone in Houston will enjoy, if only to laugh at the similarities of the two towns. It's funny, fast-paced and as many, many people have said, "It's just like talking to you, Deb." My reply is at least you can close the book and put it away for a spell, not so easy to do when I'm in the same room as you! I am what I am! Thanks everyone for your support. Life IS amazing. May it be so for you as well.