Kitteh Yoga!

This kitteh has purrfected the art of relaxation.  How about you?  You can join us for a relaxing day at the upcoming NAAFA-LA Pamper Party in honor of International No Diet Day on May 6.  If you’re in the Southern California Area, send me an email at jeanette@thefatchick.com and I’ll give you details to visit us in person.  If you’re not in CA do not despair!  You can still join us for a relaxing stretch, fashion tips, makeup demonstrations, progressive relaxation meditation, super fun art projects and more via our live stream which will be hosted at http://www.thefatchick.com.  Whatever you do my little chicklettes, don’t miss an opportunity to take a little time to take care of you!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Sometimes ya gotta throw the bums out!

Call me old-fashioned, but like Ms. Franklin said, “A little R-E-S-P-E-C-T” is what is needed here.  I find that relationships can manage to recover from many problems.  Anger is bound to happen from time to time.  Miscommunication is par for the course.  Sometimes feelings will be hurt.  Part of the price of being in a relationship is understanding that you will feel hurt and angry and misunderstood from time to time.  But lack of respect is a non-starter for me.  I’m willing to accept (though not always gracefully) friends and lovers who disagree with me.  I’m willing to accept friends and lovers who have somewhat different values than me.  But I aim to respect those folks as human beings and I aim to have them respect me as a human being too.

It is very difficult to respect yourself as a person if you are surrounded with people who don’t respect you.  So as you get a stronger sense of yourself and start to feel better about yourself, you may find that some of your relationships feel a little differently than they did before.  You may start seeing some of the ways people mistreat you not as something you deserve for being less than perfect and not as simple character flaws to be accepted and worked around.  You might start seeing some of this mistreatment for what it is: harmful.  You may feel compelled to stand up for yourself and say something.  You might find yourself letting people know that it is not okay for people to treat you that way.  And this self-defense can feel EMPOWERING.

But sometimes a friend or a lover just can’t bring themselves to change the way they treat you or even admit there’s anything wrong with it.  And sometimes that means you simply have to let that friend or lover go.  When it comes to spring cleaning, this sort of decision can be tough going.  It can be a lot easier to let a sweater that you never wear go than to discard a hurtful or harmful relationship.  But like cleaning your closet or your drawer of things that aren’t working for you any more, cleaning your life of toxic relationships can help you make room in your life for the RIGHT relationships to come in.  You can’t find the right partner if you are currently with a partner that exhausts and belittles and depletes you.  And it’s pretty hard to find time to spend with awesome friends when you are busy with folks who make you feel ashamed and unworthy.

So I’ve left the hardest, but most powerful spring cleaning for last.  If you find people that are disrespecting you, let them know that it isn’t okay any more.  And if they don’t believe you or don’t want to change, you may need to consider gently letting them go.  Because, my little chicklettes, you deserve better than that.

Love,

The Fat Chick

The Fat Chick (Jeanette DePatie) with Ben Vereen in the S.T.A.N.D. booth at the ADA convention.

Here I am at the American Diabetes Association S.T.A.N.D. booth with actor, dancer, singer and entertainer Ben Vereen.  I agreed to take a STAND against diabetes by teaching people about fitness.  (I’ll sing and dance too, if you think it will help.)

oxoxo

TFC

I have so many friends that have closets positively stuffed with “aspiration clothes”.  You know the ones that fit you once in a distant past?  Or the ones that never ever fit you but just might some day.  And I’m here to tell you, as part of your spring cleaning, you gotta get rid of that stuff.  I mean what is the point?  Why should you have to dig through piles of clothes that DON’T fit to get to stuff that does?  Why should you have to step over a visual index of your body dissatisfaction before you can even get dressed in the morning?  Just get RID of it.  If you can’t bring yourself to throw these clothes away, at least box them up and put them somewhere else.  Then, after you haven’t worn them for six months, then get rid of them.  Dole them out to friends.  Donate them to the Big Fat Flea Market.  Drop them off at Goodwill.  Because it’s time focus less energy on the body you think you might have some day and dedicate closet space to beautiful, gorgeous and colorful clothing to the body you have now.

Love,

The Fat Chick

As many of you know, I’ve suggested that you start small with your exercise routine.  You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.  Take a look at Ginger’s exercise video for instance.  She seems to have the “start small” thing COMPLETELY figured out.  This is part of a new series I’ll be offering here on Fat Chick Sings called “Exercise Animals”.  Stay tuned for lots of exercise tips gathered from many of the amazing species that walk, fly, slither and swim on this green earth!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Fund raising paired with a nice bottle from Leucadia Red.

I was talking with the amazing and awesome Marilyn Wann the other night and we got to talking about some major box sorting she had coming up.  I said, well you need a nice full bodied cabernet and some jazz to go with that.  She agreed and said, “That sounds like a blog post!”  “Yay,” I said.  So here are some of my special recommendations:

Pre-mother-in-law’s visit: wild house cleaning spree: Merlot and Zydeco music

During mother-in-law’s visit: White Cotes du Rhone and anything by Edith Piaf

Post mother-in-law’s visit: Champagne and French Pop music

Going over the first red lined version of your book manuscript: Zinfandel and Tanya Tucker

Preparing your taxes: Pinot Grigio and Billy Ray Cyrus

After finishing your taxes: MD 20/20 and any Grand Opera Tragedy by Richard Wagner

Mammogram: White Zinfandel and Brittany Spears

Your “artistic” friends come over to redecorate: Mimosas and anything by Cher

Preparing for your first-ever yard sale: Red zinfandel and Dropkick Murphys

During your first-ever yard sale: Pinot Grigio and Eminem

Celebrating the end of your only (and last) yard sale: Fume blanc and Bollywood music

So my little chicklettes, what are YOUR favorite wine and music pairings for life’s little dramas?  Write me a little note in the comments and pass the corkscrew, willya?

Love,

The Fat Chick

It may arguably be a stretch of the term vacuum cleaner, but some have suggested that world’s largest vacuum cleaner title goes to the Queen of the Netherlands.  You wouldn’t use this thing to clean your house, mind you.  It’s a dredger which is used to suck stuff up off the ocean floor.  And boy does this thing ever suck!

The dredge head is nearly 20 feet wide and and can dredge between 180 and 520 ft. deep.  (You know for that carpet with the really deep pile.)  And talk about housekeeping staff, this floating vacuum cleaner has a regular crew of 46 people!  Here’s some more stats:

Type: Hopper Dredger

Length: 756 ft. 11 in.

Width: 105 ft.

Capacity: 1,253,671 cu ft

Weight: 32,423 tons

Conclusion: The world’s largest (floating) vacuum cleaner weighs more than me. By the way, stay tuned for more in our “spring cleaning” series here on Fat Chick Sings.

In the second installment of our “spring cleaning” series we’re going to talk about eliminating some of the more common fitness fallacies.  In an industry that’s been around since the first cavemen ran after the first wooly mammoths there is a surprising amount of misinformation out there.  So let’s clear the air a little and help you improve the quality and efficiency of your workouts.

Myth One:  If I do 100 bicep curls every day, I’ll have thinner arms.

Reality:  Spot reducing does not work.  You can’t make any individual part of your body smaller by repeatedly working that part.  You can add strength and tone your muscles.  You can make an individual muscle bigger with training but even 1,000 leg lifts will not reduce the diameter of your thigh.

Myth Two: If I do strength training, I’ll get big, bulky muscles.

Reality: Only if you want them and have enough testosterone to build them.  The average strength-training program won’t lead to bulky muscles.  And most women don’t have enough testosterone in their systems to build a lot of muscle mass. Body builders do extraordinarily targeted and intense workouts specifically designed to increase muscle size and definition.

Myth Three: Everybody will lose weight if they just exercise.

Reality: Not necessarily.  Some people lose weight when they start to work out and some do not.  Every BODY is different.  But regardless of whether or not you lose weight, fitness is a great thing for your health.  You’ll feel better.  You’ll sleep better.  And you’ll have a better quality of life. 

Myth Four: You need to work out for at least 30 minutes at a time in order to see a health benefit.

Reality:  It doesn’t really matter how long your exercise sessions are.  Three ten-minute exercise sessions are just as good as one thirty-minute sessions.  This means that all of those little steps you take throughout the day totally count towards your exercise total.  So park a little further away.  Take the stairs.  All those little bits add up to better fitness.

Myth Five:  No pain, no gain.

Reality: Exercise doesn’t have to hurt to be effective.  While a little Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is fairly common, even with moderate exercise, it doesn’t have to hurt to work.  Your most likely to be successful if you start at a level that is comfortable for you and ramp at a very slow rate (not more than 10% per week).  The most important thing is that your fitness is consistent and steady.  We want you to exercise for life.  So keep exercise fun and relatively pain free so you stick to it!

There are lots more common myths surrounding the world of exercise, but these are a few to get you started!  Don’t forget, you can get your personal fitness questions answered at www.askafitfatty.com which is part of our new fit fatties forum.  WHATEVER you do, my little chicklettes–remember to have fun!

Love,

The Fat Chick

I had tons of fun putting this together.  Wishing a fun and happy Easter to all my chicklettes!

Love,

The Fat Chick