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This Is A True Story...

(You'll hear these words a lot in Texas, even when the story is a tall tale. Just as the last words you'll often hear come out of a Texan's mouth are, "Hey y'all watch this!")

Update - 7.5.12 The Stall - She Eeeees-a Broken, Captain!

Well I woke up and followed the usual scale ritual. First thing upon waking, I get up, go potty, shed all my clothes, shed my glasses that weigh all of 0.01ounces, step on the scale buck-nekkidy, blow out all the air from my lungs, and pray. When the scale beeps, I step off the scale, put the glasses back on and wait in anxious silence to read the display. Then I either blow kisses to the scale or I curse it loudly and question its parentage.

Today the scale was kind. I'm in VWT!!! Virgin Weight Loss Territory. Halleluia! The crahhhhhppppppsssss-ahhhhhh-sayyyyyyy-uv-ed! (That means, "the crops are saved.") 225.2lbs I'm only about 1.2lbs away from 90lbs lost.

Diligence and patience prevailed, showing once more it isn't what you're made of that matters - it's what you eat! ;)

And I eat lots of great fats and protein and a ton of veggies with a sprinkling of a few berries and nuts/seeds. Cuz I'm special. :)

Update - 5.21.12 You're Still Dating NED (no evidence of disease).

Hip. Hip. Hooray! I'm still dating NED (No Evidence of Disease). Lemme translate that for you, I visited the Wizard of Oncology, my oncologist, yesterday, and he gave me the sixth-degree asking about symptoms and listening to me explain every possible ache and pain I've had over the last sixth months and fearfully attributed to RD (Recurrent Disease). And gave me a physical exam with lots of pushing and prodding. No swollen lymph nodes above my collar bone or just under the skin along my incision lines. So that's great news! Score!

The Wizard as he shall here-forward be known, reassured me, and applied ample patience and restraint. I expected him to say in exasperation, "For heaven's sake, Susie, knock-it-off-for-cryin'-out-loud! You don't have a recurrence. Get over your bad self. Put away the vain imaginings. Take your hypochondriacal self to the park and walk a few miles - get your mind on something positive."

But he didn't! Instead, he just firmly but gently reassured me that I was A-100%-Okey-Dokey and perfectly normal. He told me it usually takes about a year to move beyond the fear that every ache and pain is recurrence of this beast, breast cancer.

Oh, and I got an "attagirl" from him! I did the semi-impossible. I lost 45lbs from the first time I came to see him about a year ago, to 5.21.12. He said that's nothin' to sneeze out - even though I thought that was such a slow rate of loss. The Wizard explained that most women gain weight with breast cancer and that his breast cancer patients generally struggle and gain 10-20lbs during treatment alone. In fact, during aromatase inhibitor therapy alone (that's Femara for me and it's an anti-cancer/hormone-blocker that blocks the conversion of androgens produced in the adrenal glands to estrogen. This generally happens inside fat cells. You generally gain weight - maybe about 10lbs.

Instead of gaining, I actually lost 37 lbs during treatment, but since starting Femara, have only lost about 8lbs for a grand total of 45lbs.

He was thrilled at my progress and told me it would likely be a slow weight loss journey but continue making the journey, cuz it could very well determine whether or not I see a return of the beast. You see, aromatase inhibitors work better to kill cancer in skinny or normal weight people than in fluffy chix. He wants me to lose another 68 pounds and told me to shoot for 160lbs. Of course, I bet he will move that target once I hit it. He's crafty. He's not the Wizard for nothin'.

Update - 5.10.12 You Have Breast Cancer, Susie...

If you are just tuning in to Fluffy Chix Cook and reading this monotonous monologue, you might not know that a little over a year ago I heard the awful, life-altering diagnosis, "I'm afraid it is malignant."

I don't know about you, but those words had already been served to our family. My mom passed from complications due to lung cancer about 2 years previously and my sister-in-law had been fighting liver cancer for years.

Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, right? And yet, it had already hit our family twice via cancer. That meant the rest of us had an exemption, yeah? We'd paid the family dues. We'd already done the "1 in 8" thing - twice! No more cancer diagnosis for the Gibbs clan!

That's why it was hugely surreal to hear those words in connection to my personal health. I've eaten healthily for years! Sure, I was fat. Sure I didn't exercise and had felt craptastic the past few years and couldn't force myself to exercise...but still.

Sure I'd smoked heavily - but that was ages ago! Yeah, sure, I used to like knocking back more than a few brews, wine...and spirits, well - sure! Those too. I'm Irish! So...um, really? Cancer? How shocking!

Turns out cancer has little to do with lightning and "playing the odds" with cancer isn't such a smart move.

In April, 2011, I found out I had a very aggressive, hormonally driven breast cancer. I'm blessed to live in Houston and have access to the best doctors in the country, maybe even internationally. The "Wizard of Oncology", my oncologist, actually wrote the book on Diseases of the Breast. He's that good.

Neo-adjuvant (pre-surgical) chemotherapy yielded great results - shrinking my primary tumor over 50% from the original 2.6cm (over an inch) length. For a hormone positive cancer, that's a very promising response. We knew going in though, it was unlikely the chemo would completely eradicate the cancer.

Estrogen/progesterone positive breast cancer rarely gets knocked out completely with chemo treatment alone. It generally takes an anti-hormone pill called an aromatase inhibitor, in addition to surgery and radiation, to knock it into remission or NED (No Evidence of Disease).

Surgery on November 1, All Saints Day (ha, great day, huh?) - we'd been told I likely had a Stage III cancer because the surgeon felt we were dealing with at least 4 "hot" lymph nodes in addition to the primary tumor. Ok, no problem, it was a "late Stage II" or early "Stage III" cancer. Mmmmm. Not so much.

Turns out I am Stage IIIC, Estrogen/Progesterone+, HER2/Neu- with a KI-67 of 22%. I had either 12 or 14 of 33 nodes with living cancer cells at the time of surgery. One had a micro-infiltration. That means, one of the nodes had a small ganglion of cancer that had pierced through the lymph node wall. That's not so good. Anything over 10 lymph nodes is not so good.

But you know, "not so good" is not a "your dying of cancer" proclamation. And the truth is I could step off a curb and die tomorrow of something totally unrelated. So I just cannot get caught up in that. I will pull a Scarlett as any DFSW (Delicate Flower of Southern Womanhood - thank you Vicki for the DFSW designation/creation!) worth their weight knows how to do. I will worry about that tomorrow. I won't worry about that today.

Today, I'm dating NED. I'm dancing as fast as I can and eating dang near as clean as a saint. I'm exercising, losing weight (cuz my onc told me in order to have a shot at beating this, I'm gonna have to get to a normal weight and contol my inflammation and insulin), and concentrating what energy I have on things that make me happy. And energy is sure low after chemo, double mastectomy and radiation, now 5 - 10 years of anti-hormone therapy.

What comes next? Only the good Lord knows those secrets and he's been conspicuously quiet about it! So I'll keep cooking. I'll keep writing. And I'll keep breathing. Breathing's a good thing. And later this year, I will be getting "Foobs" (fake boobs). I already have the expanders but I'm thinking I still have 2-4 more surgeries to replace the "mask" with squishy foobies complete with anatomically correct nipples and everything. Well, everything except the nerve endings and sensation.

Stay tuned and hope you will join me and all the Fluffy Chix Cook!

But How Did It All Begin, Susie? Tell Us, Please?

I come from a long line of fluffy chix who cooked a blue streak. Each one was a natural born cook and each generation of chix that came after were better cooks than their mamas and grand mamas. So here I am; Texan, Irish, pushin' 50, post-menopausal and very fluffy. And I love to eat like nobody’s business – all 314 pounds at my heaviest!

All fluff aside,

I'm thrilled with my

new svelt(ish) self!

How Did I Let Myself Get To 314 Pounds?
I can hear you now. You're probably thinking I sat on the couch eating bon bons, moon pies, and endless bags of Lay's Potato Chips, drinking RC Cola and watching Oprah and Dr. Phil Medicine Woman. And it would be a good guess too, but the weight gain was boringly a result of small bad choices made repetitively, coupled with a few metabolic issues, medicines like prednisone for asthma, lack of exercise, surgical menopause, and growing old.

I work at home and spend hours with my booty glued in front of the computer screen designing "gorgeous" advertising and marketing materials wink, wink, and writing copy for people all over the U.S. Sitting in a cool, dark room, my better half, Denny, spuriously calls the Mole Hole, well let's just say I grew. Just like a mushroom. Plump. Dense. Round.  And delicious. Did I mention I'm deliciously round?

The Boys - watching NASCAR last weekend.

Denny and our "boys" (4 sock monkeys named Buddy, Tony, Kevin and Schilling, their little dog Wee-Wee, and Wee-Wee's stuffed baby, Skeeter) keep me company and keep me laughin' when I'm not cooped up in the Mole Hole designing. Denny also keeps the little men in white coats from sweepin' me away with butterfly nets. The rest of the time gets spent entertaining friends and family and playing hours of hearts together. While tremendous fun, none of those activities are particularly conducive to a leaner bottom line. One day I finally got the nerve to step on a scale and pay that blasted piper. There it was. 314 pounds. Someone call the fire brigade! *sob* *hic*

My Confession...

I'm a nutrition nerd. I really am. I read everything I can get my fluffy little wings on. I spend hours reading the latest articles and studies that come out on Pub Med and various medical journals and scroll around some serious blogs written by genius doctors and PhD's. I'm also a member of an incredibly informative food and health board named Low Carb Friends, and I will share the links to these places with you.

It's taken 12 years to arrive at this way better method of eating. I did it in baby steps - slow learner here. As I made certain dietary changes, I'd notice feeling better: less pain, more energy, maybe a pound or two of weight loss. At some point, I just decided to make it a permanent way of life instead of a diet. I felt so much better than when I ate the typical SAD (Standard American Diet - you know high carb, high fat, high product crap).

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'll ever be a saint. I love food too much. I still back slide now and again into those old sucky habits of a lifetime, but I ascribe to the 90/10 philosophy. If I do the best I can 90% of the time, I am not gonna sweat the other 10%. It's gotta be better than eating poorly 100% of the time, right?

It's Never Too Late!
So...lucky for me all those fluffy chix in my family taught me a thing or two about cooking. Keep in mind even the roosters in the family could and can cook absurdly well! But I also learned a lot from Jacques and Julia along with meal after meal of experimentation and trying out recipes on unsuspecting subjects (friends and family). 

Did I tell you I moonlighted, too? A lot. I tried for years to make a living cooking and spent a lot of time working for caterers and restaurants. Heck, I even did my own catering gigs once in a while. So I guess you could say I'm also something of a self-taught cook with an unfulfilled desire to own a restaurant. Silly SusieT.

But above all, thank God I’ve finally figured out what it takes to eat healthy and lose a few pounds – 86 pounds as of today – and I’m lookin’ to lose another hundred now that I’m on a roll. I can’t afford to get bored or lose focus. A little thing called my life depends on it (more now than ever). I need healthy food that tastes great and doesn’t make me feel like I’m on a diet! Don't you?

Who EVER Said A Diet Has To Be Dull?

Turkey meatloaf, mashed cauli
with gravy and green beans with garlic.

I'm translating my favorite calorie and carb laden comfort dishes that spelled pure food love into more nutritious, healthy, whole-food versions. These slimmed-down recipes taste so yummy, only your scale will know for sure that you're dieting - hmmm but your new streamlined profile might spill the beans.

I mean, come on! You can only white knuckle diet for so long before caving to those base desires. Don't you want to figure out how to cook meals that will help you heal some of the damage done from years of eating poorly, without having to go through diet hell? Don't you want to be able to pick a plan and stick to it for life? Well eating this way, it's entirely possible.

Hey y'all watch this!

Join Me In The Journey...

Go from fluffy to fit - one meal at a time and sometimes, one bite at a time. Let's reinterpret all the family classics and more! No deprivation. No long suffering diet blues. No cranky kitchen wench. OK, I'm lyin'. I will still be a cranky kitchen wench sometimes...that's how I roll. But I can guarantee there will be a whole lot of slap-yer-mama deliciousness that'll make your mouth forget all about how good every bite is for your bottom, er - I mean your waist - line.
So, hey y'all watch this!