Whew! This week is less than 2/5 complete and I am already worn out. Excuse me for inconsistent and long posting. I’ve been getting it in when and where I can.
Let’s rewind back to yesterday’s breakfast…
I’ve had a fierce craving for waffles lately and since Brad might divorce me if I buy one more kitchen appliance, I’ll have to settle with the frozen variety right now.
I topped two Nature’s Path Organic Flax Waffles with pure deliciousness. I mixed one heaping spoonful of TJ’s Euro fat free yogurt with one Tbsp. whipped cream cheese and one Tbsp. apple butter. I also nuked two tiny sliced apples for two minutes with nutmeg, cinnamon, and a little water. I topped the waffles with the apples and then the yogurt mixture. This was fantastic! I also had an egg white puff on the side with s+p.
I love these waffles but I really don’t understand the point of the whole flax seeds. How many times have we been told that you have to grind them into flax meal to reap any of the benefits? Why does the food industry not get this?
Work was busy busy and I ended up working through lunch, but shot a quick photo along the way.
Lunch was delicious and filling, exactly what I need when I have an upcoming run: leftover lentil soup, leftover roasted acorn squash, a piece of seeded bread with a Laughing Cow, and two bitty clementines.
Notice my utensil on the right? Brad bought this for us to use when we go camping, but I think it’s perfect for lunch. Eat your heart out spork.
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If you’re not all caught up in the healthy lifestyle blog world, then you may not know about the recent controversy stirred up by a Marie Claire article. Click here to read it. Upon reading it I went from shocked to furious, but I’ve been too busy the past few days to do anything about it. Rather than ripping it to pieces, I will just let my letter to the editor speak for itself.
Ms. Coles,
I am writing you to express my disgust for the article, The Hunger Diaries. The way in which the author researched and wrote this article was unethical, cruel, one-sided, and completely misleading. This article and the author gives your magazine, and journalism in general, a bad name. Full blame cannot rest alone on the author; editors and magazine staff are responsible as well.
I personally know two of the bloggers addressed in the article and was completely shocked that anyone would suggest that they are promoting an unhealthy culture of eating and exercising. Of course, anyone who has read their blogs would never come to the conclusion your author communicated. I do not believe that the author spent anytime “reading” their blogs; she merely searched through them to find any words or behaviors she could use to mislead your magazine readers. Personally, some of these bloggers have changed my life, my health, and my relationship with food and exercise. Even my husband wrote a letter to you to express his own disdain for the article because he has witnessed the positive influence these bloggers have had in my life. To maliciously target them and accuse them of contributing to unhealthy eating and exercising behaviors as a means to stir up scandal and make a profit is distasteful.
I will not be reading Marie Claire in the future and I will advise friends and family to do the same.
Brad’s letter to the article:
I read the article ‘The Hunger Diaries: How Health Writers Could Be Putting You at Risk’, and was completely appalled by how one sided it was. It completely misconstrues how these people live their lives. I have personally been out to dinners with Kath Younger and Caitlin Boyle, and they absolutely are not unhealthy when it comes to how they view food. In fact, the nights I have been out with them, it was for pizza and beer, cookouts with friends, and breakfast potlucks.
I can’t begin to understand how your writer managed to so totally reverse this story; however, I think it ultimately falls on you to allow such shallow and baseless claims to be printed in your magazine. If you were a true journalist and not a fear monger, you would write a retraction in your next issue and on the site.
I was completely touched that Brad would take this article to heart and write a letter to the editor on his own behalf. It may not be obvious to you if you do not read multiple blogs like mine, but other bloggers in this particular genre of media are very encouraging of each other, and I consider them a part of my life and social network. Brad and I had a very candid discussion about how this article attacks not only the six bloggers mentioned, but to the community as a whole and to the people who have been inspired from these bloggers. Brad also shared with me the changes he has saw in me since I became a healthy lifestyle blog reader and later a blog writer.
Some of the things he mentioned:
You used to be really focused on calories and now you don’t really seem to watch them.. now you focus on natural foods…and you seem not to get so caught up on little things. In other words, if you feel bad about yourself, you handle it better. You just seem to look forward rather than fret about the past.
It pains me to see such positive influences in my life “exposed” as something they most definitely are not. This whole incidence will encourage me to be even more skeptical than I already am of anything I read or hear in the media, especially from women’s magazines.