You guys, I totally canceled my “colon hydro-therapy” appointment. I just can’t go through with it. I really want to be open-minded, but I can’t do this. I’m too scared.

Plus, I realized, I’d never be able to say no to anal sex again. It would just be a lifetime of hearing “Oh, right, but you’ll let some random chick stick a hose up there. Real cool, Sash.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Jon & Kate Plus Eight phenomenon. The interest in this family is overwhelming, and comes almost entirely through the search engines. My typical Evil Beet readers aren’t commenting on the J&K threads too much, but the J&K fans have really ended up using Evil Beet as a makeshift discussion board. (See here for an example.) They’re a species of commenters in and of themselves.

Here’s the thing: they are HORRIBLE to Kate, and sometimes to Jon, and sometimes even to the kids! Here’s this woman raising eight young children, doing everything in her power to give them every advantage available in this world, and, yeah, I don’t always agree with her choices, but these kids are always fed — healthy food, not junk — and clothed and supervised and they know they are unconditionally loved. It’s a home where education and varied life experiences are actively valued. Say what you want about Kate Gosselin — and, like I said, I disagree with a lot of her choices — but she is 100% dedicated to getting her children all the resources and support they need in this world.

But the way these commenters talk about her you’d think she was raising eight babies in a crack den (well, a really, really clean crack den). I mean, they tear her to shreds. The things they say about Kate (and her daughter Mady!) are often worse than what my regular commenters have to say about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (but definitely not worse than what America’s 12-year-olds have to say about Miley Cyrus — that’s some dirty shit, yo). They also use phrases like “h-e-double-hockey-sticks” and “female dog” rather than use “curse” words. It just baffles me. What exactly are we teaching as morals these days anyway? Like, feel free to crucify and judge a fellow mother who is raising and loving healthy, happy children — none of whom she chose to abort, despite the fact that birthing six babies put her own health at risk — but whatever you do, don’t say “bitch.” Because that’s not the Christian way.

It’s like we’re just picking the easy things to consider “morals.” Because, you know, really facing your own petty jealousies and pridefulness and insecurities is hard work. But not saying “bitch” or “hell”? Comparatively easy. So what we’re gonna do is focus on that sort of thing, and that’ll be enough to make us morally superior to everybody else. See how easy that was?

What this means for me:

Hours and hours of wandering around parking garages trying to figure out where the fuck I parked my car, before realizing I am looking for the wrong car.

Okay, after reading all your comments about my epic weight loss FAIL, I am planning to do the following things:

1) Consume more calories
2) Cut back on my exercise for a week or so, although I will continue to get in some long runs because it is very important to me to be able to finish this half-marathon in January
3) Drink (hemp) protein shakes once daily
4) Attempt to cut back on sodium, although I’m not even really sure how to do that
5) Contact a nutritionist … sigh.

How counter-intuitive do (1) and (2) sound??? But I really feel like maybe you guys are right, that my body is secretly in starvation mode, and I’m pushing it too hard.

I also made an appointment with my doctor to do a quick blood work-up, just to rule out hypothyroid or something like that. Plus after being on a strict vegan diet for a month, it’s probably a good idea just to make sure everything’s still functioning normally.

So Evil Beet was having some problems today, and, after a long chat with my host, we seem to have isolated the problem: a huge surge of traffic on the Jon & Kate Plus Eight threads. Specifically coming from the search term “days a week jon and kate filmed?” on — of all things — search.live.com. Like, thousands and thousands of searches on that term, from that search engine, from all over the country. And, to make matters worse, J&K fans are SERIOUS commenters, so the rush of them combined with all their commenting crashed the comments table.

What a strange world we live in.

Okay, so after I was so excited about the 1.5 pounds weight loss, I weighed myself again today and it’s right back on. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. So I’ve resigned myself to doing — gasp! — a food diary. I just started tonight, and it’s interesting to see how it all plays out.

This is just for one day, but it’s pretty typical of what I eat in any given day.

Calories: 1715
Total fat: 40.75g
Saturated fat: 3.6g
Trans fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0g
Sodium: 3300 mg
Carbs: 270g
Fiber: 38g
Sugars: 80g
Protein: 75g

So, basically, I eat this ridiculously low-fat but high-carb diet. And I know carbs are supposed to be the devil, but there are SO MANY of them in fruits and veggies and whole grains, which are what we’re supposed to be eating, right??? I mean, NONE of these carbs are coming from chips or soda or ice cream or candy bars. They’re all from really natural, healthy sources. I don’t understand! MIXED MESSAGE OVERLOAD.

I should also add that, today, I ran three miles and played six games of pretty intense four-man volleyball, which is also pretty standard physical activity for me these days. Ha! How my exercise life has changed!

But it’s just really discouraging right now because I’m working soooo hard, and my weight hasn’t changed at all for going on four weeks now. It’s hard to eat much less because I exercise so much, and I am NOT someone who believes that a diet should involve being hungry. If I feel hungry, I eat. And when I don’t feel hungry, I don’t eat. There should be a way to make this work.

Thoughts?

After THREE AND A HALF WEEKS and being at the SAME WEIGHT despite constant exercise and healthy eating, I have FINALLY lost 1.5 pounds.

Hopefully it’s not gonna take another three weeks to lose more. I’m hoping it just took my body a little while to adjust to the new routine.

This is the vegan recipe I made last night (and again tonight!) and both times it was AMAZING. Tonight I was in a hurry, so instead of grilling the veggies in the marinade, I just skipped all that, put the veggies in the tortilla raw, and added parsley, fresh cilantro and a pinch of salt to it. So the whole thing was basically completely non-fat and delicious!

3 Tblspoon balsamic vinegar (left this out, not big on vinegar)
3 Tblspoon olive oil
2 Tblspoon chopped parsley
1 Tblspoon garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper (I left this out because I hate it)
4 medium portobello mushrooms
2 red onions, sliced
2 red or orange peppers, destemmed, deseeded and cut into quarters lengthwise
2 green peppers, destemmed, deseeded and cut into quarters lengthwise
2 jalapeno peppers, destemmed, deseeded and cut in half lengthwise (left this out too)
4 8-inch flour tortillas
Fresh cilantro (this wasn’t in the original recipe but I added it because I LOVE cilantro)

Whisk the vinegar, olive oil, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add all of the vegetables and toss well to coat the veggies with the marinade. Set the veggies aside and let them marinate for 15 minutes (I only let mine marinate for 5 mins and it was still fine). Place the veggies on a hot grill and grill for 3-5 minutes per side. Take the veggies off the grill and cut them into strips.

Then you just make the fajitas out of whatever veggies you like! For me, I added tons of fresh cilantro and extra salt to mine, but that’s probably not for everyone.

And if you don’t want to be completely vegan about it, this would of course be awesome with sour cream and/or cheese, but to be honest I found it to be totally satisfying without any of that, and it’s WAY less fattening, too. You could definitely also do a guacamole.