Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On…

I spent the weekend in Toronto (I live in Calgary, but grew up in TO).

Without my children or husband!

I got together with Jen and Agathe (the three of us are the core urbanmoms.ca team) and we worked all day Saturday, coming up with some great ideas…but that’s a story for another time.

What I want to talk about is Saturday night.

About filet mignon, merlot, the-best-I’ve-ever-tasted-garlic-mashed-potatoes and The Drowsy Chaperone. About intelligent conversation, sexy girl talk, great entertainment, laughs at someone else’s expense and after-theatre drinks.

Do you know what it was like for me, a native Torontonian and live theatre-buff (amateur buff, but a buff nonetheless) to be transported to culturally-bereft Calgary (ye-es, Calgary, I KNOW you have a performing arts centre, a museum and a philharmonic — a philharmonic that you almost lost because nobody bought tickets, remember? — but it’s not the SAME as living in one of the world’s troika of theatre meccas –
LONDON-NEWYORK-TORONTO – and within spitting distance of major world-class theatre festivals like Stratford and Shaw).
Well, it was hard. Damn hard. The year I moved here (1998) everyone at work was sooooo thuper-excited because CATS (yes, CATS, rum-tum-tugger) was coming to the Jubilee Auditorium (yes, they DO actually call it an auditorium). CATS?  CATS??? I saw that in Toronto in 1986 and it had already been running in London for over 4 years.

But BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. You don’t come here to listen to me get all sarcastic and superior, talking about The Theatah and quoting Shakespeare, do you?

No way. You come here because I write about my ongoing (and never-ending, it seems) battle to lose weight and keep it off. And it makes you feel better, either because:

A. You’re already wonderfully (and effortlessly) skinny, toned and younger looking than you are, so you feel better about yourself because you don’t HAVE to worry about your body shape, composition, size and increasing susceptibility to gravity, as I do. Good on you…(*cough*bitch*cough*)

B. You’re right there with me, working at weight loss, occasionally being human and giving in to temptation and laziness but mostly living an increasingly healthly and active lifestyle.

C. You’re wondering if that smack was you hitting rock bottom and if so, HOW did someone else manage to claw their way back out? And will the story be inspirational enough to motivate you to do the same?

Whatever; be you A, B, C or something I haven’t thought of, you’re welcome here and I hope you enjoy my very eclectic ramblings.

But to carry on with the theme…YES, I do enjoy good live theatre. I also happen to enjoy TV. Good, bad and otherwise. AND, what’s more, I’ve found a lot of my own inspiration for weight loss from watching TV. I’ve also found it incredibly comforting to watch other people’s real life weight loss struggles on TV. Now, there could be a few reasons for this. When I was cruising along at 2lbs per week, perhaps I felt superior to these mere mortals who overindulged in wine with their girlfriends on a Saturday night (hello, pot? This is my friend, kettle). But it also worked the other way. When I was feeling like a failure for eating 50g of baked Tostitos instead of only 40g, I could commiserate with the other folks on TV, or look to them as role models of saintly food abstinence and athletic vigour. I really, REALLY love watching reality weight loss shows.

But not just any old reality weight loss shows. To be honest, I wasn’t able to stick it out with The Biggest Loser or Big Medicine. I dunno…maybe too big, too Hollywood. Honestly, my fave shows are the modest, unprepossessing Canadian home-grown weight loss reality shows. Give me another Canadian losing weight, and I’m hooked for the hour (or 10…I once watched a whole season of Taking It Off in marathon!). My two all-time favourite shows are X-Weighted (I have a friend who’s currently being filmed for this show…more on her adventure in a future post) and Taking It Off.

But there are a whole bunch more great Canadian weight loss shows out there, and I’m making it my mission this month to watch as many of them as I can…to wade through them all and separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. I’ll be tuning in to Discovery Health Channel Canada to catch all of the following shows:

X-Weighted
Eataholics
Change the Day You Die
The Truth About Food
Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses
Taking It Off
Get Fresh With Sara Snow
The Dan Ho Show

Check back every Friday for my review of the week, and check the Discovery Health TV schedule for more info and deets on when the shows will air so you can set your PVR.