Fitness centers and health clubs are packed with new faces whenever a new year begins. Classes and parking lots are full.

Soon after January, that is no longer the case. Most of the people who have resolved to work out, lose weight or improve their health have gone back to their old habits. Some have the discipline and drive to stick to it, but unfortunately most give up.

Shape magazine estimates that 80% of people who resolve to exercise starting on New Years Day, give up by February.

Other gym members may appreciate that youve subsidized their membership, but that wasnt your intention. What can you do to motivate yourself to achieve your fitness and wellness goals?

Adjust your schedule. Recognize that working out regularly requires a commitment of time. You need to make workouts and movement part of your schedule.

If you have a demanding job, young children or other commitments that require your time, you will need to get creative in order to commit to a schedule.

Try scheduling however much time you can for working out. Given todays sedentary lifestyle, its ideal to work out every day, but working out three days a week can produce results, too.

You can also find ways to get more movement into your day that can provide enough variation for your body to still feel great. For example, dont take the first parking spot at the gym or the grocery store, and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, even if you do work out every day, you will be making small changes that will have a positive impact.

Finally, if these changes become more than you can handle, dont feel bad about easing back a bit. Listen to your body.

Be consistent. Sometimes youll have other commitments or you may feel like you need a break. Try not to skip a workout until youve consistently been exercising regularly for a few months. After all, it takes time to form a habit.

Its better to ease into a workout schedule you know you can maintain than to overdo it and burn out. New habits can be formed, but if you overdo it, you may decide its not worth the effort and talk yourself out of continuing.

Set realistic goals. Its important to set goals for yourself, but make certain your goals are achievable.

If, for example, losing weight is your goal, dont expect to work out once a week and lose 100 pounds. If you want to succeed, you need your commitment to be aligned with your goals.

Try setting a small goal today and, once youve achieved it, set a bigger goal for yourself tomorrow. It should be a challenge to achieve your goals, but not so much of a challenge that you give up.

Recognize that fitness requires a lifestyle change. Its not enough to work out just when you feel like it. You need to make working out feel almost as essential as eating and sleeping. If you exercise with specific goals in mind and establish a routine, you may be surprised by what you are able to achieve.

Once you achieve your goals, dont fall into the trap of thinking you succeeded, so now you can slack off. Your efforts will be wasted if you go back to your previous lifestyle. You will be vulnerable until exercising and movement become a habit. Wellness and fitness require a lifelong commitment. True change happens over time.

Take one step at a time. While changing your diet and starting to work out are sometimes concurrent resolutions, keep in mind that youll be asking a lot of yourself if you want to change both at once.

Consider working out today, then take a couple of months to become accustomed to working out. As you make progress, consider gradually changing what you eat.

Consider classes. If you work out alone, its difficult to stay motivated. Being in classes with people who have similar goals can help, as you can motivate each other. If your fitness friend is meeting a goal, youre going to want to meet your goal as well.

Do it now, not on New Years Day. Rather than making a New Years resolution youre likely to break, start exercising on a day when youre ready to commit.

Be prepared for obstacles. Success almost always comes with setbacks. Be prepared for them.

You may, for example, be making steady progress toward achieving your goals before suddenly reaching a plateau where your progress seems to stop. You may even regress a bit.

If that happens, try changing up your workout routine. Its best to vary your workout, because your muscles will become accustomed to doing the same exercises repeatedly. Adding more movement in your life will also help overcome repetitiveness.

You may also be slowed down by an injury at some point. Injuries can typically be avoided by using proper form and by not trying to push through your routine and risking further injury. It could benefit you to have a personal trainer who is knowledgeable enough to show you the proper way to exercise. If you are injured, in spite of taking precautions, this will stop you from continuing so be mindful and listen to your body.

Depending on the type and extent of the injury, you may be able to continue exercising with modifications. If you need to give yourself time to heal, try changing things up a bit, but keep moving under supervision until you are prepared to get back into your exercise routine. Dont rush sometimes you need to take a step back to take two steps forward.

Commit. No matter what shape youre in, no matter how old you are, its likely that you can develop an exercise routine that will help you achieve your goals. All you need to do is be committed to moving differently and working out regularly.

Youll be amazed at what you can do if you challenge yourself and make a long-term commitment to wellness.

Rita Matraia is the owner of The Core Connection, a boutique fitness studio in Northborough. She is a Certified Stott Pilates Instructor, a Certified Restorative Exercise Specialist, a Certified Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist, and a Healthy Foot Practitioner through the Nutritious Movement Center. She can be reached at rita@thecoreconnection.com.

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Resolve to work out and move better - Enterprise News

Sticking to a diet is no easy task. Be it losing weight, or getting fitter, toning and sculpting your body means you have to ditch certain foods and follow a restrictive, wholesome diet, only allowing yourself the luxury of a cheat meal (or a cheat day) between your strict regime. However, for some, the idea of cheating on a diet can be problematic, considering that there is a big possibility of overdoing or reversing all the goals you have worked towards.Hence, for a lot of fitness enthusiasts, what works better than the concept of a cheat meal is the idea of refeeding the body. Some experts and nutritionists also say that refeeding also helps accelerate fat loss and help you get the body you desire in a faster and more efficient manner. Confused? We tell you what it is and what you have to do about itWhat is refeeding?Refeeding is not a new concept for those who train or workout religiously. What makes it a more sustainable choice than cheating on a diet is the nutrient it focusses on- carbs, exclusively.While cheat days or cheat meals can allow you to gorge on and treat yourself any food item you deem fit, refeeding helps the body get accustomed to one macronutrient which is either eliminated or reduced in diet plans.Refeeding works by refuelling the leptin levels in the body, by making you eat more carbs on your 'off' day. Leptin is one hormone which plays an important role in your diet. It helps sustain metabolism, promote weight loss, control fat gain. What it also does is control your appetite by signalling the brain that you are feeling full or satiated. Now leptin is mainly released through the fat cells in the body and through carb-rich foods. While diets usually force you to lower your carb intake, what they can also do is drastically reduce the leptin levels in the body. This, in turn, can have stark consequences. When you eat less of carbs, the number of leptin drops, which triggers an increase in appetite, may increase food cravings, make you hungry and consequently, make you more viable to put on weight, working against your fitness goals.While there is no backing or evidence that refeeding helps in weight loss, what it vitally does is control the base factors which impact weight management. Plus, since it also focusses on including a healthier nutrient when you are taking a break from your diet, experts consider it to be a better strategy than adopting cheat days. Some bodybuilders and trainers go to an extent of refeeding for an entire day in their diet so as to make up for any decline in the metabolic rates and use the diet to their advantage. Studies also say that refeeding also keeps essential sodium levels in check.How to refeed the right wayThe biggest cause of concern with any cheat day is that dieters tend to go overboard since there is no limit as to what you can or cannot eat. Refeeding takes care of this problem by allowing you to prioritise on the intake of high-quality carbs, minimize the fat so as you do not risk increasing the calorie intake. When refeeding, ensure that you are eating rich-nutrient carb-rich foods, which pack in protein too. Good examples can be nuts and seeds, blueberries, eggs, some kind of meat, rice, quinoa and some starchy vegetables like potatoes.

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What is refeeding and how is it better than cheat days? - Times of India

In February 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed the first American Heart Month, a guy from West Philly named John ODonnel was just a few weeks shy of turning 19. He was dating Susan Fite, a girl from his graduating class at Northeast High School, and two and a half years later, they became my parents.

Just two kids themselves, John and Susan were growing up as they raised me and my younger brothers. By the tender age of 26, they had three of us half-pints, all under 5.

Our young family had 10 years together in a big old fixer upper on a well-kept street where everyone knew your name. Nixon was in the White House, and John brought home the so-called bacon as a salesman for the family-owned tool & die machine shop.

There were dinners out at pizzerias and red sauce joints with other families and summers down the shore with morning bike rides on the boardwalk and after-dinner jaunts to Bettys Ice Cream Parlor for hot fudge sundaes. Together, in their velour V-necks, John and Susan navigated the world on our behalf, in a decade of disco balls, womens liberation, Watergate, Stove Top stuffing and the Fonz.

Then just like that, poof. The unimaginable happened. In the early hours of Oct. 16, 1982, John died of a sudden heart attack. He was 37.

Six weeks later, Johns mother (our grandmother) Helen was gone too, also snuffed out by heart disease, at the much-too-soon age of 56. It was, simply put, too much to bear. But it was also a clarion call for my mom to investigate: It couldnt be a coincidence that her mother-in-law and husband died of the same disease. Genetics were a likely thread, she thought, and if so, what did that mean for her kids?

A battery of blood tests at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia ensued, revealing that we all had some work to do in the dietary lipids department. But I was singled out as the unlucky heir of genes that pose an elevated risk for heart disease, a legacy that I carry to this day.

In other words, his death is the story of my life. Thats not to say I think of my family heart history as a death sentence, but it certainly has informed the way I cook, eat and think about food.

In the early 1980s, nutritional advice was prescriptive, with little room for dietary moderation or healthy fats. My brothers and I were put on a so-called low-fat diet that replaced butter with margarine, whole milk with skim and bologna sandwiches with deli turkey. Vegetables were not creatively prepared or part of the zeitgeist as they are now. Remember when the options were boiled, canned or covered with cheese sauce?

Throughout my 20s and 30s, I suppressed the idea that I could be the next one in my family to have a heart attack, even after embarking on a culinary career. I ate without my health in mind and avoided regular blood lipid screenings.

Ignorance, I learned, is far from bliss. It would take a few scares to wake me out of denial and take on my cardiovascular heritage once and for all. The first time was nothing more than a bad case of heart palpitations while riding the famously long escalator at the Metro station in Rosslyn, Virginia, but it did prompt an EKG and a stern warning from my doctor about my lipid levels.

The next time, however, was a game changer. I was just a few weeks from turning 50, and I was in my car, maybe a mile from home in Seattle. I had a sharp sensation in my upper left arm that quickly traveled across my chest and onto my upper right arm. I drove myself home (please dont repeat after me) and called 911. I think Im having a heart attack, I told the operator.

I spent the evening in the cardiac ER at a Seattle hospital, getting a full suite of tests as if I were in fact having a myocardial infarction. The urgency of the nurses freaked me out, but as I laid in the bed, waiting for results and the next steps, I realized, my God, this is as serious as a heart attack. I thought about my dad and how he didnt have this level of care and a chance to treat his clogged arteries. Several hours later, I got the all-clear and went home. But from that summer day in 2016, I was done with excuses.

For the next three years, my doctor and I worked together to aggressively change my lipid profile with a combination of diet, exercise and a cocktail of vitamins and natural supplements (niacin, vitamin D3, red rice yeast, to name a few) instead of pharmaceutical statins. Every three months, my blood went through very detailed testing through Boston Heart Diagnostics designed for people with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. And every three months, my lipid profile got less worrisome. Last summer, before moving to Lancaster, my total blood cholesterol was 193 (down from 261 in December 2018), the lowest its ever been.

But I know now that the work is never done. Im one of those people who has to work harder than most to keep her lipids under control for life.

American Heart Month will come and go, but its never too late to get your blood cholesterol tested. Even if youre in the elevated risk club like me, heart disease is pretty preventable. Take it from me; your life may depend on it.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in this country. In 2017, that translates to 1 in every 5 women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Its the No. 1 killer for black and white women, a tie with cancer among Native American women, and No. 2 killer for Asian and Hispanic women.

Signs of heart attack vary greatly for women. They can include nausea, lightheadedness, jaw, neck or shoulder discomfort, unusual fatigue, sweating and shortness of breath.

For more information on American Heart Month, visit heart.org.

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HEART-HEALTHY RECIPE

On March 1, my dad would have been 75. Since hes been gone, Ive wished for one more night at the dinner table with him. Id prepare him something I know he never got to taste in his short life: a piece of wild salmon, a staple of my weekly diet for its heart-healthy Omega 3 fatty acids.

PAN-SEARED AND ROASTED SALMON FILLETS

This is just one way to rub up your salmon. Feel free to play with other spice combinations and see what appeals.

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

With a paper towel, pat the salmon dry on both sides and transfer to a plate.

Stir together the salt, smoked paprika, coriander, brown sugar and the ground coffee (if using) in a small bowl. Pat on top and the sides of the fillets. With a silicone brush, gently dab sesame oil on top.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place a shallow, oven-proof skillet (Im a fan of cast iron) over high heat and swirl in a small amount (about 1/2 teaspoon) of the neutral oil, tilting the pan until the surface is coated.

Once the skillet is good and hot (but not smoking), add the salmon, skin side down, and cook about 3 minutes over medium-high heat, allowing the skin to crisp up. Transfer the skillet to the oven to finish cooking, checking after 3 minutes for doneness. (Plan B, no oven: After the first 3 minutes on the stovetop, cover the fish, lower the heat to medium-low and cook until done.)

Let rest for five minutes per inch of thickness before serving.

How can you tell when the salmon is cooked, anyway? As it cooks, salmon becomes opaque. Ideally, were looking for mostly opaque, with just a hint of translucence. Does it resist a little bit and easily flake? These are good indicators of doneness. Use a rule or tape measure to gauge the fillet thickness, then estimate about 7 minutes of cooking per inch of thickness (and make sure youve measured the thickest part). You may also see white curd-like stuff coagulating on top; thats a protein called albumin. Its totally harmless, but if theres a lot on top, it may be a sign of overcooked fish.

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Heart Heritage: How a father's heart attack affected this writer's approach to food - LancasterOnline

GENEVA Last summer, Geneva resident Jeff Martin, 52, finished his regular exercise routine and was getting ready for work when something didnt feel right. He woke up his son, who fortunately was home from college, and thats the last thing he remembers. Martin collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. Under the guidance of a 911 operator, Martins son performed life-saving CPR.

Martin was rushed to Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, where cardiologists discovered a blockage in a major artery. To reduce damage to the brain, Martins body temperature was lowered using therapeutic hypothermia until an angioplasty and stent placement could fully restore blood flow to his heart. A week later, he was cautiously back on his feet in cardiac rehabilitation and determined to make a full recovery.

The heart attack was a shock for Martin, who has no family history of heart disease and is otherwise very healthy. Several years ago, Martin and his wife, Julie, made a conscious effort to eat healthier and work out. However, a meeting with a dietitian following his heart attack opened his eyes to some additional dietary changes he needed to make.

There are so many diet fads out there, its hard to know what to eat, Jeff Martin said. Just one session with the dietitian was overwhelming, and I knew I needed more information.

Jeff and Julie Martin enrolled in a new Heart Healthy Cooking program at the Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital Community Kitchen. The six-week course is led by Dr. Nauman Mushtaq, an interventional cardiologist with the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, and Audra Wilson, a registered dietitian with the Metabolic Health and Surgical Weight Loss Center at Delnor Hospital.

Each session includes education, hands-on cooking demonstrations and tastings for a truly interactive experience.

Diet has a profound impact on health, Mushtaq said. Lifestyle changes, including healthy eating and exercise, are vital to preventing cardiovascular disease and sustaining a healthy heart after a medical intervention.

The course covers nutrition basics such as label reading and portion sizes, as well as incorporating healthy fats, cooking with less sodium, healthy substitutions and cooking meals that fit into the Mediterranean diet, as well as the DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) diet.

The Mediterranean diet especially focuses on the enjoyment of food. The goal of our program is to show our participants how to enjoy and prepare foods that are heart-healthy as well as delicious, Wilson said. For example, it can take taste buds several weeks to adjust to lower sodium, so we focus quite a bit on adding fresh herbs and spices to make healthy dishes more flavorful without adding salt.

For Jeff and Julie Martin, the hands-on component and the camaraderie with other class members made every class fun, while also helping them develop new healthy habits.

By preparing the meals ourselves, its easier to understand how to adjust our everyday cooking to stay focused on heart health, Julie Martin said. And the food is really good.

Jeff Martin plans to reclaim his spot operating the barbecue, but now fish and vegetables will replace the red meat. And for dessert, grilled stone fruit with whipped ricotta.

The Delnor Community Kitchen offers over 130 cooking classes per year for adults, children and children with disabilities. These hands-on classes are led by registered dietitians. For information or to register for an upcoming course, call 630-933-4234.

To learn more about Northwestern Medicine, visit news.nm.org/about-northwestern-medicine.html and westheartcare.nm.org.

Sharing this column for American Heart Month in February is Kim Waterman, media relations manager for marketing, communications and media relations with Northwestern Medicine.

Salmon Skillet Supper

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, minced (about 1 teaspoon) 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, quarters (about 1 1/2 cups) 1 (12-ounce) jar roasted red peppers, drained and chopped 1 tablespoon water 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt 1 pound salmon fillets, skin removed, cut into 8 pieces 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1/2 medium lemon)

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and smoked paprika and cook for 1 minute, stirring often. Add the tomatoes, roasted peppers, water, black pepper, and salt. Turn up the heat to medium-high, bring to a simmer, and cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally and smashing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon toward the end of the cooking time.

Add the salmon to the skillet, and spoon some of the sauce over the top. Cover and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the salmon is cooked through (145 degrees F using a meat thermometer) and just starts to flake.

Remove the skillet from heat and drizzle lemon juice over the top of the fish. Stir the sauce, then break up the salmon into chunks with a fork. You can serve it straight from the skillet.

Calories: 289 | Total Fat: 13g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 68mg | Sodium: 393mg | Carbohydrates: 10g | Dietary Fiber: 2g | Protein: 31g

Easy Pasta Fagioli Soup

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 cup chopped onion (about 1/4 onion) 3 garlic cloves, minced (about 1 1/2 teaspoons) 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper 4 cups low-sodium or no-salt-added vegetable broth 2 (15.5-ounce) cans cannellini, great northern or light kidney beans, undrained 1 (28-ounce) can low-sodium or no-salt-added crushed tomatoes 2 tablespoons tomato paste 8 ounces uncooked short pasta, such as ditalini, tubetti or elbows 6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (about 1 1/2 ounces)

In a large stockpot over medium heat, heat the oil. Add the onion and cook for 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the garlic, rosemary and crushed red pepper. Cook for 1 minute, stirring frequently. Add the broth, canned beans with their liquid, tomatoes and tomato paste. Simmer for 5 minutes.

To thicken the soup, carefully transfer 2 cups to a blender. Pure, then stir it back into the pot.

Bring the soup to a boil over high heat. Mix in the pasta and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook the pasta for the amount of time recommended on the box, stirring every few minutes to prevent the pasta from sticking to the pot. Taste the pasta to make sure it is cooked through. (It could take a few more minutes than the recommended cooking time, as it is cooking with other ingredients.)

Ladle the soup into bowls, top each with 1 tablespoon of grated cheese and serve.

Calories: 382 | Total Fat: 8g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Cholesterol: 5mg | Sodium: 620mg | Carbohydrates: 56g | Dietary Fiber: 9g | Protein: 15g

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Delnor hospital in Geneva to offer 'Heart Healthy Cooking' instruction - Kane County Chronicle

If you are already overweight, the idea that you can eat everything in moderation is a fallacy at best, and a pervasive marketing tactic, at worst, served to you by the food industry.

Most overweight people are carbohydrate intolerant. This means that their bodies are unable to process sugar (carbs) safely and effectively. You would not advise a person with a gluten allergy to eat bread in moderation. Neither would you advise a person with lactose intolerance to consume dairy in moderation. It is, therefore, illogical to advise an overweight, carb-sensitive individual to eat carbs in moderation.

A peanut allergy can kill quickly, but a carb allergy can still kill, albeit slowly, via the diseases we have now come to recognise as metabolic diseases, such as diabetes. The trajectory of diabesity can be traced back to the introduction of national dietary guidelines in the western world. These guidelines eventually trickled down to and were absorbed by middle and low-income countries.

The demonisation of animal-based fat, saturated fat, in particular, led to the explosion of dietary carbohydrates, specifically refined grain and sugar. Natural fat was substituted for industrially manufactured fats and oils. Our food environment changed drastically, and so did our waistlines.

I was surprised to discover that there was no robust scientific evidence behind the launch and dissemination of the dietary guidelines. They are not fit for purpose, particularly for diabetics.

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Eating in moderation a fallacy - The Star, Kenya

An odd contradiction has snuck into public view. Many people feel free to criticize anyone in the public eye (or out) who is seemingly above a certain BMI (even though thats a poor stand-in for health) just look at anything from President Trump publicly fat-shaming one of his own supporters at a rally to Jillian Michaels concern trolling Lizzos health because of her weight. But at the same time, we are all making goo-goo eyes at pictures of obese animals.

Cats, dogs, hamsters, raccoons, penguins and even a small owl so fat that she couldnt fly have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media sites. So what makes us love looking at fat animals but so hostile to bigger humans? And is there a connection between the two?

Psychotherapists have long recognized that one of the reasons that humans derive such comfort from pets is that we attribute to them many of the loving, gentle and kind emotions we long for but dont always receive from other humans. We call dogs our best friends, we see puppies and kittens seen as innocent and loving and we assure ourselves that the love of an animal is both pure and unselfish.

Even when we put an animal on a diet, we feel sympathy for them. Poor thing, one friend said about her dog, who was under a veterinarians order to lose weight. She looks at me with such sad eyes, I feel like Im being cruel when I dont feed her more. She doesnt understand. We identify with a kind of sweet innocence in our pets even when theyre trying to manipulate us into giving them more food.

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When I asked Cynthia Medalie, a fellow psychotherapist and dog-lover in New York City, about the phenomenon, she said, We tend to project our best selves onto our animals. We see in them the love and goodness that we dont always allow ourselves to put out into the world.

And, she added, since we see that in them, we can be our best selves with them in return: We can give them the love and tenderness that we sometimes cant give to other people.

Meanwhile, fatness has been given many external meanings in our culture. Great Barrington, Massachusetts psychotherapist Claire Rosenberg reminded me that, in common vernacular, a fat cat is a wealthy, powerful person with everything going for them a holdover from a time when only the wealthy could afford to be obese, whereas, in the modern age, our food system and tertiary economy increasingly mean that only the well-to-do can truly afford to be thin. So maybe we imagine these overly chubby animals as representing wealth, contentment and self-satisfaction qualities we might long for and, even somewhere deep inside, secretly believe that we, too, feel.

But in our culture, we also have many negative feelings about the causes of peoples weight and obesity, which we project onto fat animals owners. Even on sites intended to allow people to coo at chubby cats, some viewers have expressed outrage at the owners who they believe overfeed their darlings even though the causes of a pets obesity might be as complex as a humans.

And, of course, there are sites specifically dedicated to the effort to help pet owners with weight reduction-plans for their pets, since, as numerous concerned pet owners and vets tell us, fat animals may not be healthy animals.

So theres a conflict between what one writer calls two competing truths: on the one hand, we think fat cats are adorable and, on the other, we worry that their excess weight might be harming them and we look for someone to blame for being insufficiently disciplined in a fat animal's care, just as we tend to make moral judgments about overweight people.

Jean Petrucelli, the director of the Eating Disorders, Compulsions & Addictions Service of The William Alanson White Institute in New York City, told me that we do attribute (sometimes without thinking about it) a dark side to obese animals. She said that people gawk at things they feel horrified about and often cant look away our society has new rules for what is considered scandalous and what is normative and the ante keeps getting upped. We dont just think fat animals are cute even if they are but part of the attraction to stories about them is that we are scandalized by the humans who allowed them to get that way.

It seems like, in the end, our attraction to stories about fat pets is just another facet of our outrage and public shaming of the people who we consider to be fat, based on our projections about fatness. As fatness has increasingly been attainable by the middle class and then the poor, we have increasingly attached negative qualities to first fatness and then to the people who are fat, eventually criticizing them for being something we either ignore or dont like (or wouldnt like) in ourselves.

And, increasingly, we fat-shame out of so-called concern for another persons health, as fitness guru Michaels did with Lizzo and as people do with fat animals, in part because we feel like were safely discussing our negative feelings about someone elses body rather than projecting bad feelings about ourselves.

But whether youre in love with pictures of fat animals or repelled by them, whether you think its good to celebrate all of our bodies or think its only okay to like thin ones, remember the old maxim that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Its not what you see that causes your feelings; its what the images represent to you.

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Why do we love fat cats and dogs but discriminate against fat people? - NBC News

Although I cant complain weve had a rough winter, it is nearing the point in February when Im ready for the cheerful pop of daffodils.

The days are gradually getting longer and the zany cats at my house are ready for frolicking once again in the great outdoors. They roam from door to door inside the house hoping that one of them is the door to summer.

I met a lady named Connie at the grocery store and she requested another column about the cats. Since they are a gold mine for funny column material, Im obliging Connies request especially since we both know and like Shirley Scott.

Weve all been accomplishing a few things that are best tolerated in the dreary days of winter: tedious tax preparation, overdue cleaning and stewing in our own juices.

Sadie has gained a little bit of weight after spending the past year neurotically fretting and fussing over the addition of Camouflage and Mulligan into the main portion of the house. I call them the nemesisters because they all hate each other so much, yet they must co-exist in order to stay warm and fed under my roof. Like my Dad always used to say when we kids were giving him back-talk, Its my way or the highway!

Mulligan, previously a skinny kitten full of worms, has officially grown into her huge, haunting eyes of starved youth. They are now lively and devilish, peering through the spindles from a lofty hallway that overlooks the main living area of the house. The refrigerator door rarely opens without Mulligans eyes opening right along with it, sizing up her chances of snagging a piece of 3-day-old chicken that Sadie has been given for weight gain.

Camouflage generally doesnt stake out the kitchen or eat anything but dry cat food. However, one night I inadvertently found her weak spot when she insisted on inspecting and raiding a bag that previously held an Arbys sandwich. Apparently Arbys is Camos addiction. Upon careful consideration, Im not sure how I feel about this, to be honest.

But Camo is the good girl. She likes to watch me do odd jobs around the house in the hopes of getting her head scratched and her nose rubbed while Im fixing the toilet flapper, folding laundry or working on the computer. Ive deputized her as the Special Feline Assisting Editor for the Urbana Daily Citizen.

From my bay window overlooking the picturesque rural neighborhood, I see the children celebrating snow days while pulling their sleds together down the road and toward each others houses. Some of the luckier kids have exhilarating hills in their back yards. In the summer, other kids on the road host outdoor parties where their parents project movies onto large screens in the yards. One parent told me she thinks the road is like Disneyworld because of how the kids can have fun together safely in the shady shelter of a little forest.

Oh summer, where are you? I have three nemesisters and two of them need to go outside in your warm sunrays. Camo wants to sleep on the back deck all afternoon. Mulligan wants to hide in the woodpile and watch the neighbors ducks and chickens. Sadie wants Camo and Mulligan to go back outside and stay there all day so she can sleep in peace once again on the sofa. Sadie is so rattled by Mulligan stealing all of her food that she nearly caught her own tail on fire standing for too long in front of the wood stove.

Until then, I must work up the courage to make an appointment to take Mulligan to the veterinarian. Im sure to receive a lecture about her double chin and her terrible attitude when she is grasped by the scruff for vaccinations. My guess is a hawk or a falcon tried to snag her when she was tiny, but she fought her way free and lived to harbor an entrenched phobia about anything that causes flapping motions, whooshing sounds or grasping moves on her neck. Ceiling fans terrify her. She terrifies the veterinarian. I see a one-day prescription for kitty nerve pills in her near future, then maybe a diet.

Mostly she needs to get outside and play again, just like the rest of us.

Reach Brenda Burns via email: bburns@aimmediamidwest.com.

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The 'nemesisters' of winter need summer - Urbana Daily Citizen