Category Archives: Dr. Oz show

Mardi Gras and the Oz

Happy Mardi Gras!  Thanks for all of your comments on the ‘normal‘ thing yesterday.  John doesn’t always understand where I am coming from with body image, so it’s nice to know I am not crazy! :mrgreen:

I woke up pretty early this morning and headed off to the gym to get my run in.  5.5 miles and a ton of sweat later and I was ready for breakfast!

Banana custard oats.  Topped with peach jam and almond butter.  Delish!  I’ll explain custard oats later this week.

Did a lot of work this morning.  Trying to be extra productive with all that is going on today.

Superfood lunch!

Greek yogurt, agave nectar, pumpkin, cinnamon, dried cranberries, and rice krispies (okay, not a superfood).

My folks came over and watched the Dr. Oz show today.  It was so weird knowing I was there.  And seeing my face a few times (dork alert!!).  Surreal.  I was smiling all the time.  I was just so happy to be a small part of all that!
I can’t believe they are able to hide all of those cameras and edit out the bloopers.  Merrill really was so inspiring wasn’t she? (and the others!).

And Richard Simmons – my very favorite things he said were about knowing your self worth.  They left out a big chunk of his interview, though, and the part that I had liked the most about never knowing who you would inspire each day.  Maybe it is online?

Happy Mardi Gras!

Each year John and I cook a Mardi Gras dinner.

Tonight’s dinner featured some chicken and andouille gumbo with brown rice:

Shrimp poboys (baked breaded shrimp)

Cornbread and fruit for goodness.  This was my sensibly portioned plate.

Cheers!

Then came some fun – tiny bead thrower:

Simpsons Monopoly!

Bananas Foster for dessert!  We even did a flambe and didn’t burn the house down…. phew:

I had a small portion:

I was extremely pleased at my eating today.  This was one of those times where I had the plan and followed through on it!  Yay!  I enjoyed every bite and am sitting here satisfied and not full.

What a great time.  We love to host dinner parties. 😀

Now I need to relax some.  Another busy day in store.  Have a great one!

I am normal

Happy Monday!  Waving ‘hi’ to all the new readers – there have been a ton over the past week!

It felt really good to hit the gym today.  I did a power lifting workout!

  • Chin ups:  2 sets of 2, 1 set of 1
  • Squats:  3 sets of 8 with 85# barbell

Superset:

  • Stationary lunge:  3 sets of 8 with 20# DBs
  • Lat pull down:  3 sets of 8 at 60#

Superset:

Superset:

  • Decline sit ups: 3 sets of 10 (hard!!)
  • Dumbbell pliet squat:  3 sets of 10
  • Lower back extension:  3 sets of 10 at 100#

Then I rode the stationary bike for 30 minutes.  My legs were pretty tired, so no running today.

I was pretty hungry for a filling breakfast, so I made pumpkin custard oats!

With the egg whites added, it was just like pumpkin pie with oats!  Nom, nom.

So, when I referenced the other day about how meeting all of the 100+ pound losers last week, I ended up learning something I was not expecting.  I am normal!

We all walk around with the baggage of our entire lives, and that is what colors our view of ourselves.  I cannot erase the fact that I grew up overweight or spent the majority of my adult life as an overweight person.  That is who I was and when I think of myself, that is part of the package.

It really struck me in the lobby of the hotel when we were waiting to go to the taping that you couldn’t even tell that anyone had been morbidly obese just by looking at them.  We all looked like regular anypeople.  I’m not sure what I was expecting.  Maybe because I feel like I have a neon sign above me that says I lost 100 pounds that I assume others will know that about me when they see me.  Even a perfect stranger.  How weird is that?  Even during the taping, it was so hard to look at everyone and really believe they looked like their before pictures at any time, and yet the proof was right there.  After we had gotten moved to the 2nd hotel after taping, I was in the lobby changing into boots to brave the snow.  There was a woman there who asked what we were all there for.  I explained about it, and she said I looked great and you wouldn’t know it.  That really, really made me look differently about myself.  I look normal!

Maybe now I will be able to see that for myself.

I’ll skip over lunch and the snack and present to you my hughjass salad for dinner!

Typical BBQ sauce chicken (told you I was on a kick) with feta and almonds.  I really love that combo.  You can almost see the 3 clementines I had with dinner, too, on the side.  Also note it is getting lighter near dinner time, so the lighting will be improving for pictures – yay!

I finished up work early because we were so busy today.  I ended going shopping tonight and came home empty handed.  Don’t you hate it when you have a mission for something very specific and can’t find it anywhere?  That was me.  I did, however, come home with this:

And I came home to the smell of gumbo.  John started cooking that in preparation for our Mardi Gras dinner tomorrow.  Everyone got their beads??

Question:  Do you think you see yourself as others do?

Happy Valentine’s Day an Dr. Oz promo

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I had to work today, and John and I didn’t have anything special planned except we told each other 3 things we loved about each other this morning 😳

Off to bagels for breakfast, though!  Haven’t been out for a Sunday bagel in a few weeks.

Trail mix, with some coffee (and grounds….)

Starting to feel somewhat more normal, although I am so behind in my personal stuff like emails and house cleaning.  I still have laundry hanging up that I did from the return from our cruise last Sunday!  Good thing John has been doing some cleaning or the house would be a total wreck.

Check out the promo for Tuesday’s Dr. Oz show!  If you look at this still, I am at end of the 2nd row on the left holding the 105 pound paddle (mouth open).  That’s probably all you will see of me on the show LOL!

Quick lunch break:

Tuna salad and some soy crisps. I used to eat these all the time, but tried decreasing soy in my diet. Now that I am not eating so many bars and use whey protein, I decided to have some of these chips.  I love how many you get in a serving!

Lots and lots of work today. That’s a good thing. We made chocolate lattes for our Valentine snack 😀

Dinner turned out yummier than I was thinking. Don’t you love it when that happens? I sauteed some finely cut brussel sprouts (with new chef’s knife – super sharp!) and then sauteed a bit of pork with BBQ sauce.

Can you tell I am on a BBQ kick lately? LOL Good stuff.

Tomorrow I’ll post some more thoughts on seeing all of the Dr. Oz people. I am going to sit down with a snack and some tea tonight with John and try to muster up some energy to clean a little bit. We are hosting a Mardi Gras dinner on Tuesday!

Happy Vday to all, and spend it with someone special, even if it is yourself (cause you are all special).

Dr. Oz taping

Show airing:  Tuesday February 16, 2010!!


Phew.  I don’t even know where to start!   I had a complete blast!  I could barely contain my excitement for most of the time (dork!!)

First off, there are no pictures of the actual taping, as that was not allowed, and I was a good person and followed those rules.  There is no way they would not have seen me take them, either, as I was sitting in the center on the end of the row!  My mother came with me as my guest (Yay!).  The staff had train tickets for me, so we boarded up on Tuesday afternoon:

Mom and I on the way to NYC! I love riding the train!

After we got into Penn Station, we took a cab to the Hilton hotel.  It was so cool to give them my reservation number and they said “Everything is taken care of”.  :mrgreen:

We were on the 39th floor 😯

It was a cushy room!  We went down to the lobby area and bumped into Dawn, whom we spent quite a bit of time chatting with.  She was so warm and wonderful.  So neat to put voices to faces.  Didn’t see anyone else until the next morning.  We had an early call at 7:20 am to meet in the lobby.  There were about 25 of us at this hotel.  There was much gabbing to be had in the lobby. I finally met Sarah in the lobby. She is such a wonderful lady:

I also met Diane, but very briefly.  I would have liked to have chatted with her more.  There just was not enough time to talk to people as we were moved around so much and in various lines.  However, that led to meeting so many people! Some of these people lost an incredible amount of weight.  Some over 300 pounds!  Ironically, at 105 pounds lost, I was one of the ‘smaller’ losers LOL!  That perception thing.

We spent a *lot* of time in lines:

I think we spent as much time in lines as we did actually taping.  The ‘losers’ then separated out from the other guests and got our special tickets and tshirts.

They also had a paddle for each of us with how much weight we lost!  Here are Dawn and I posing:

Why does my hair look so bleached in these pictures??  Surreal moment happened as I was walking with my paddle alone in Rockafeller center and I see Richard Simmons and his entourage come through.  He must have seen my paddle because he starts walking in my direction. I didn’t think he was coming to me, but he came right up, hugged me and kissed me 4 times on the cheek and said “Congratulations” and then walked away.  I was totally flabbergasted!  And no one was around to take my picture LOL!  He was exactly like you see him all the time on TV.  The man never changes. 🙂

The taping itself was a sensory overload.  I ended up sitting in the center section of the stage the rotates around so you are always facing were the doctor was, which was pretty cool.  It basically taped in 7 segments, where the tape would roll and the action would happen.  Then sets would be moved around and we would be given some instructions before the next live set.  Diane did a segment on stage with Dr. Oz.  She was so calm and cool about it and very professional.  And tall and slender!  (Everyone seemed tall to me, what is up with that lately?).

At the end we were all on stage with Dr. Oz.  I have to say that I was so impressed with him.  He honestly and truly seemed so genuine.  There a point where the stage crew were saying to have the audience leave so they could do promo pics and he said “No, we made these drinks for them and I want them to have them” (referring to smoothies you will see during the show.)  It was like he really noticed us and cared about us instead the cattle moving in and out.  Not that the staff was not nice, they were, but you could tell they just wanted to move us along.

Dr. Oz was also very accessible.  At the end while we were still on stage, I went up to thank him for letting me be part of the show, and he hugged me and said the show was for us.

I have to say that this show was so emotional in many ways – joy, tears, pride, enthusiasm and just so much energy!  While only a few people were featured on the show, they could have pulled any one of us up there and had an inspirational story.  It was almost overwhelming.  Please, if you are struggling or if you know someone who is, they need to watch this show.  Heck – even if you are maintaining, doing great, or just love healthy living, watch this show.  There were 2 moments for me that I loved, and that was when a woman name Merrill (??) came out and talked.  She was fabulous.  And then Richard Simmons said something about when you wake up every day, you never know who you are going to inspire that day and how.  That really struck a chord in me.

I felt so privileged and honored to be part of this.  We are all big losers, but really – we are all big winners!  What a special connection to have to all of these people.

Of course, as you know – there was a blizzard hitting the city the day of taping! I was so worried about getting home, but they actually booked us all for another night in a hotel, which was very nice of them.  However, since we were going north, our train was still going ahead, so we were able to board and go home.

I did have a NY bagel, though – you all know I wouldn’t leave there without it!  I was hangry by this time:

Nice quiet train ride home, where we had only an inch of snow (sorry mid Atlantic!)

All of this happened in 24 hours.  I kept saying to my mother that I couldn’t believe all of that had happened.

I have a lot of thoughts and realizations that I came to because of this, and I need to mull them out into a post.  I am still trying to process the whole experience.

Off to visit Dr. Oz!!

Hey everybody – exciting news:

I am going to be participating in the Dr. Oz show taping on Wednesday in NYC!  I didn’t want to write about this until I actually had the travel arrangements in my little hands, as these things can go awry.  They are putting me on a train (about 4 hours) to the city on Tuesday and am staying in a hotel about 2 blocks from the Rockafeller Center.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :mrgreen:

I am so thrilled to have been asked to be a part of this show.  There will be 100 people who have lost 100 pounds and it is going to be such a fabulous thing to have a connection with all of those people.  The Century Club people 😀

I know several bloggers who are going:  Diane and Sarah for sure.  I cannot wait to meet people in person!  I am scared and nervous, mostly that I don’t trip or pull some Lori-type embarrassing thing.  Of course, there is always that feeling like I don’t deserve to be there (even though that isn’t true).  Nothing like going on TV after coming back from a cruise….. *burp*

I am bringing the camera for sure, I hope they let us take pictures. I’ll keep you updated on what is going on.  Not sure how much we will be able to say about the episode before it airs.  I am sure they will tell us.

I tell you – I have so much on my plate right now it is crazy.  Another really exciting thing is happening, too, but I will wait a little bit on this 🙂 .