It’s about fat.

I thought this deserved its own post.

Today I went to the family planning clinic, which is run by awesome women. I am taking the mini-pill, which is progestogen-only. The doctors there informed me that women who weigh over 70kg (155lbs) should actually be taking two pills a day to ensure effectiveness. It’s in the new Australian medical guideline on contraception and reproductive health, so if your doc isn’t up to date, tell them to get hold of a copy.

And they managed to do it in a way that was completely non-judgemental and cool, as in “Hey, did you know this?” rather than “You are OBEEEEESE so you have to take two pills HAR HAR” attitude so many of us fat women have experienced. Family planning doctors are the best. There were two attending my appointment, as one was training to be full-time at the clinic. The trainee doc was pregnant and very sweet, and the other one was a Hell-Yes-I’m-A-Feminist. Awesome.

Anyway, if you’re fat and taking hormonal contraception you might want to discuss it with your doctor. I don’t think you can take double doses of the combined estrogen/progestogen pill because of the side effects of estrogen. If you’re OK with taking medication on a schedule the mini-pill might work better for you. The progestogen-only implants like Implanon are supposed to be OK for fat women, but you might need to get it replaced a little earlier than usual. And apparently you’re not supposed to use Nuva-Ring if you are over 90kg/200lbs. Hopefully you can find yourself some great doctors at a friendly clinic like I did!

I’ll spare you my list of excuses for not updating this blog more often. Suffice to say I’ve had a lot on my plate. (Well, I would, wouldn’t I, what with being such a fatty and all. )

I’ve been on thyroid medication for some months now. Since I was apparently untreated for so long it’s going to take a while to feel the full effects, but for now I am feeling a bit less fatigued. Walking isn’t a tiring chore anymore, but I’m not ready to do an aerobics class or anything yet. I seem to have lost an interesting amount of weight, probably nearly all water weight, seeing as how edema is a big component of hypothyroid-related weight gain. The large lump in my throat is gone.

And interestingly, I don’t need to take as much asthma medication. It’s getting briskly cold where I am, something that last year would have had me taking four clicks per day of the highest dose 500/50 Seretide (Advair Diskus in the US, I believe) plus plenty of Ventolin (albuterol). This year, I take two clicks per day of the medium dose 250/50 Seretide and haven’t needed Ventolin at all. Last year, I had an allergist tell me that my asthma was probably mostly caused by my weight. …Right. I suspect that the hypothyroid and adrenal-fatigue state I was in was causing some kind of reactionary inflammatory process.

The mild insulin resistance I showed up with has also disappeared. Seems that too was a thyroid/adrenal related reaction from my body, not Impending Fatty Diabeeetus. I think all my hormones are finally falling back into normal alignment, some not as quickly as others, but it’s happening.

And so a big fat to all those doctors who told me all my problems were caused by my fat and didn’t bother to investigate further.

I finally have a diagnosis after finding a doctor who diagnoses the old-fashioned way, that is, according to symptoms and guided by lab results, as opposed to TSH lab test only. My TSH was rising anyway but it probably would have been about another 18 months until it went over the outdated range (which ends at 5.0), so the doctor I saw sees no reason why I should have to continue on being tired, depressed, hurty, etc, until then. I also have some mild adrenal issues, so she’s given me a small dose of replacement hormones to take for a month before starting thyroid replacement. I’m taking “natural” thyroid, though it’s about as “natural” as codeine given the amount of processing it undergoes, and I get it from a local compounding pharmacy which has an excellent reputation.

My doctor says I should be feeling quite a bit less fatigue within about two months, but an improvement on every symptom could take some time given how long this stuff has been going on – and it depends on the individual too. I am excited about being able to do stuff, and actually enjoy it instead of wondering how tired it’s going to make me. Eventually! And no love lost for all the doctors who didn’t bother to do anything except blame my fat.

Nooooooooooooo! Magda Szubanski, the great Australian comedian and actor, best known internationally for her roles as Mrs Hoggett in the Babe movies and as Sharon Strzelecki in Kath and Kim, is now shilling for Jenny Craig.

She’s long been a role model for fat women; someone brimming with confidence, success, self-esteem, and no evidence that she thought herself ugly or unworthy because of her size. I recall an Australian Women’s Weekly article from a few years back where she tells of her disdain for diets and how they don’t work. And she’s consistently rated as one of Australia’s best-known and best-loved stars for nearly a decade, so it’s not just fat chicks who love her.

Apparently, Magda has now crossed the arbitrary line of too fat.

Features of the campaign include:

Press releases resulting in newspaper and magazine articles where Szubanski claims she is “eating herself into an early grave” and realised she was “killing herself with fat”.
(Unless you are eating chicken that’s been left out on the bench in summer or lacing your peas with arsenic, I don’t think so.)

An ad talking about all the crazy diets she’s been on, and how Jenny Craig is different
(O RLY?)

Another ad where she talks about how she hates having to wear ugly fat lady clothes (FFS Magda, we know you have enough money to afford some Igigi, Anna Scholz, and Svoboda) and she is going on the Jenny Craig diet because she really wants to be “a fox”.
Yeah, it’s all about health!

Also there’s the “exclusive” tell-all confessionals on the tabloid TV show A Current Affair. You know, share in Magda’s special journey.

There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jenny Craig produces long-term weight loss. NONE. A thorough search of peer-reviewed scientific journals showed nothing that would cast Jenny Craig in a positive light and better than any other diet. There are a couple of reports that go up to one year, but that’s it. One of those reported that people who stayed in the “Platinum Program” for one year lost approximately 15% of their initial body weight (which is apparently enough to earn the researchers’ recommendation…WTF). But no one’s ever followed up beyond that year; you can bet your right arse cheek that Jenny Craig would be crowing about it from the rooftops if there was a smidgen of evidence that their program worked long-term, but they prey on all those repeat customers.

What’s the Platinum Program cost? $459 (Australian dollars). A MONTH. Yes, that’s right. FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY NINE DOLLARS A MONTH.

And the food is, frankly, awful. Highly-processed tasteless rubbish. I’m not opposed to processed foods per se, however I expect food to actually taste good, which Jenny Craig meals do not. Why punish yourself like this, Magda? What happened? And, cynically, how much money did they offer you?

(Note: This isn’t meant to be a personal attack on Szubanski. Just a frustrated “Why??” against the whole diet industry and its practices. And the performative nature of weight loss. Szubanski is free to do as she wishes, of course, but it’s always so disappointing when someone you thought was an ally turns around like that.)

On my quest for information about pernicious anemia, hypothyroidism, and various other conditions, I’ve come across more than a few pages full of How Eating This Way Will Cure Your Autoimmune Condition/Cancer/Dandruff/Whatever. One mentioned Julie Stafford, an Australian woman who claims to have kept her husband’s cancer in remission for more than 25 years because of a Pritikin-esque diet. Now, who knows if the remission might have continued regardless of diet. But she’s made a career out of publishing recipe books and health guides and appearing in the media.

Way back inna 80s, my mother, on one of her diet kicks, bought two of the Stafford books, A Taste of Life and More Taste of Life. They were full of recipes that were very low fat and cholesterol, no added cane sugar, and no salt. She was big on using apple juice concentrate instead of Evil White Sugar and egg whites only. Being the kind of kid that read everything, I read these books. Frankly, most of the recipes sounded pretty damn unappetising, even now with my more mature palate. Australian food in the 80s, whether regular or “health” food, was still pretty unexciting. A few stir-fries and some of the more tame pasta dishes were about as wild as it got, really. Maybe a curry made with Keen’s Curry Powder. (Ew.) These days, I do eat more than a few dishes that naturally fall within Stafford’s rules, only things I had never even dreamed of as a child: blindingly hot daal, intriguingly spicy Thai dishes, tabouli…oh how I love spices. Possibly a reaction against my bland childhood food: My mother was a good cook, but the spiciest we got was a bit of rosemary and a clove of garlic on a lamb roast. Anyway:

Reading through the section on recipes for children, I stumbled upon the most horrifying suggestion ever.

Instead of giving your child a birthday cake, you should decorate a cardboard box or upturned plastic  container like a cake.

There are so many things wrong with that I’m not even sure where to begin. I mean, COME ON. I am pretty sure there are health nut parents out there that feed their children steamed kale and brown rice throughout the year but still go with an actual birthday cake, even if it’s a wholemeal vegan banana cake. I am pretty sure there are parents that have diabetic kids who are allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts and grains who manage to find a real cake. I just can’t imagine the kind of parent that brings out a decorated box instead of an actual food item at Junior’s birthday party, because if you dare eat a slice of real cake with real icing once a year you might get cancer or fat or some other horror. Or that one forbidden taste might send you on a spiralling binge into a trough of fat and sugar.

It was all the more puzzling to me because the books included recipes for cakes (made almost entirely of dried fruit, applesauce, and a tiny smattering of wholemeal flour, but cakes nonetheless). Why the fake cake? That’s not a taste of life, it’s a taste of orthorexia.

In the course of investigations for possible thyroid problems, I found out I had B12 levels near the lowest end of the lab range. Since I have discovered the best thing to do with one’s lab results is to not simply accept that anything in range is “normal” but to do some research, that’s what I did. (Generally if your lab results are in normal range and you feel well, then that’s fine. Except for kidney results – you can feel pretty good right up until near failure. Look after your kidneys!)

I discovered that there are several forms of B12, and if you have a low B12 level, you should also get the following tested:

• Holotranscobalamin (HTC) (active B12 what gets into your cells)
• Methylmalonic Acid (MMA) (raised if B12 is too low for you)
• Homocysteine (ditto)
• Full blood count (to check for megaloblastic cells)

I convinced my doctor to order those tests, even though she was pretty sure that my low B12 was simply due to being vegetarian. For whatever reason, the MMA isn’t covered by Medicare here so I skipped it and its $245 charge. However, my homocysteine came back raised and my HTC came back rather low, and with a note from the pathologist on the results that I should be tested for intrinsic factor antibodies and parietal cell antibodies. Which my doctor also ordered, and the results came back positive for parietal cell antibodies. This means I can absorb less than 1% of all the B12 I consume, and I need B12 injections for the rest of my life. Many sources (including my doctor) reckon that you only need one shot every three months, but there are lots of other legit medical sources that say anything from once a week or whenever you feel a bit run down. It took some arguing but my doctor agreed to give me one shot a week, as I have neurological symptoms.

Ah, symptoms. There’s a lot of crossover with hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue, celiac disease, and mental illnesses. Brain fog, breathlessness (it’s a bit more like needing to sigh a lot than being puffed) and fatigue are the big ones, along with depression, tingling in feet and hands, muscle weakness, and as it gets more advanced left untreated, even dementia and multiple-sclerosis-like symptoms. I am still fairly sure there’s something thyroid or pituitary related going on with me as I have many distinct symptoms. It’s not unusual for people with one autoimmune condition to have others, either.

Pernicious (“deadly”) anemia, despite the name, is not really a blood disease. It’s a nutritional deficiency, but before vitamins were understood that’s how it was named as signs and symptoms were similar to other anemias. Dr Addison was the first to formally describe it, in the mid-1800s, and until about 1920 it was fatal (1-3 years life expectancy), when it was discovered that ingesting large amounts of liver relieved symptoms. The three doctors involved in that won the Nobel Prize for their efforts. It wasn’t until 1948 that B12 (cobalamin) itself was discovered, and ways to produce it from bacteria were developed.

The liver worked because B12 is stored in the liver. It holds about 2-3 years’ supply in humans, so it can take a while before a deficiency occurs.

Pernicious anemia is more common in the elderly, and there are some medical researchers who are convinced that it’s undiagnosed or undertreated pernicous anemia that is a significant cause of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. B12 is a water-soluble, non-toxic substance (people with cyanide poisoning receive a 5,000 times larger-than-normal dose of B12 over an hour with no ill effects) and aggressive therapy seems to be the way to go with most with a deficiency. Like with the struggle to get proper diagnosis and treatment for hypothyroid, CFS, etc, many doctors are not terribly well educated on the topic and it’s sadly common for people with PA to suffer symptoms yet not be allowed a B12 shot outside of schedule. It’s mind-boggling, really. The way my own doctor reacted was almost like I was asking for heroin!

I’m on the waiting list to have an upper GI endoscopy, too, as people with PA have higher risk of atrophic gastritis, polyps, and stomach cancers. This will also include biopsies for evidence of celiac disease. (I won’t go into detail about my gastroenterologist appointment, save to say that they install lap bands and aren’t terribly fat-friendly.) The waiting list is up to six months, as despite the alleged enormous number of fatties, there’s only ONE endoscopy trolley rated for patients over 100kg available, in a population area of 450,000. If all those fat people are supposed to be so sick, then why isn’t the equipment a priority? I wonder how many fat people get sicker and sicker waiting for equipment to free up. As fillyjonk asks, tell me again about how it’s fat that’ll kill you?

Thankfully it’s not long until my appointment with a doctor known to be much more knowledgeable and sympathetic regarding issues like this. I’m hopeful I can get a good treatment and recovery plan.

For more information on pernicious anemia, the best resource on the internet is the Pernicious Anemia Society, a UK-based non-profit. It’s free to join and post on the forums, where there’s lots of helpful adivce and support to be had.

You may or may not know by now that Google Images now has over a million photographs from the LIFE magazine archives available for viewing. I love photograph archives and was all over that looking for some never-before-seen Margaret Bourke-White, and then I thought to look up ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ and the like.

Well, I came across what looks like a proto-NAAFA meeting, with a roomful of fat people rockin’ their awesome 1951 outfits. Search Google Images with <“fat people” source:LIFE> and wow. I’m fairly sure it’s not a fat camp promotional seminar, there are no skinny people in white coats up the front at the speakers’ table and none of the fat people looks terribly ashamed, but I don’t know for sure. I wonder what it was?

Check out this woman’s amazing hairdo! And dress!

I want to go out swing dancing and drinking cocktails with these women!

Who says there were approximately three fat people (Alfred Hitchcock and two Coney Island performers, obviously) before the “obeeeeesity crisis”?  Obviously there were enough in one city for interested parties to fill a ballroom for some kind of meeting.

And once again proving that weight loss is never particularly new or fresh reporting, there are also pictures of joyful successful dieters and appropriately-remorseful-looking chubby people at fat camps.

If you search for <obese source:LIFE> you get two pictures of singers at the Bower Follies, both of whom look kickass. A search for <obesity source:LIFE> gets you a lot of before-and-after pics on an “Obesity Sotry”, a few others of fat people going about their business, and some fat camp pics. Like this 1938 gorgeous babe, Jewel Mauclaire:

If  you click on the Related Images with that one, you get pictures of other women at the camp exercising in high heels, and “low calorie vegetable plates”.

Then there’s this awful one tagged “weight loss”. A woman is in hospital on a weight loss program, presumably a liquid diet where she gets to suck a disgusting-looking concotion out of a jug in her bedside fridge. But we don’t do that these days! All our modern weight loss diets are sensible lifestyle changes! Yeah, right. [OK, I was going to link there to one of those "medically-supervised very low calorie diets" which is all meal replacement shakes all the time, but decided against it. They don't need any more clicks and you don't need to see any more vile shakes.]

There’s thousands of other topics to look up the archives, and it’s a great internet timewaster research tool.

Wow, it’s been a while. A lot’s been going on, but at the same time nothing much, you know what I mean? I’ve been getting more and more tired and distracted and having some distressing memory problems, amongst other things.

After Rachel at The F Word posted a brilliant series of posts on hypothyroidism (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6), I finally got it together to compile a list of the symptoms I’ve been having (and blaming on various different things), and whaddya know, a match for hypothyroid. Except I can’t tell for 100% sure yet because the pathology lab is being an ass about actually testing my FT3 and FT4 levels despite my doctor telling them to do so, at my behest. Their reasoning? “As the TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) is normal, we see no benefit in testing the other stuff.” Frustrating. This lab uses an outdated range of 0.3-5.0, and in other countries the top end of the range is being lowered to 3.0 and even 1.5 for some. Even a rather conservative endocrinologist in this town, who has some of his lecture notes published on his website, states that a TSH of 2.0 or above is hypothyroid if symptoms are present. Which they are, and my TSH was 2.0 last time we checked. And thyroid antibodies are present, if a little under the lab range. And I came back alarmingly positive for thyroid inflammation. A bunch of other glandular stuff I got checked also came back with markers pointing to a thyroid and/or pituitary problem.

But my GP, while excellent in many respects, is not terribly cluey about thyroid problems and seems extremely dubious that I have anything wrong going on because my TSH is “normal”, despite all the other signs and symptoms. Reading around the web, this seems to be quite the problem amongst doctors – the sole reliance upon TSH as a diagnostic for thyroid problems – and is causing a lot of people to go undiagnosed or undertreated and have a resultant poor quality of life.

I encourage you to go read Rachel’s posts on hypothyroidism and do some further research, if you think you may have a thyroid problem. The symptoms are a pretty close match with all the things doctors love to blame on being fat, and especially on being a fat woman: being fat (duh); fatigue; depression and anxiety; wonky periods (if female); joint pain; foot pain (including plantar fascitis); disordered sleep/apnoea; abnormal blood sugar; high cholesterol, and many more. It can even be mis-diagnosed as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, diabetes, kidney failure, PCOS, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic mental illness [*], etc. Left untreated, hypothyroidism can cause some of those serious conditions, as well as heart problems. And the main culprit is lack of understanding about the TSH lab range and what it can and can’t signal. I’ve come across a case study from a psychiatrist who has on several occasions tested people in psychiatric wards with severe depression and several suicide attempts, running a full thyroid panel and finding that while the TSH was in range the FT3 and FT4 levels of these patients were severely deficient. They were well enough to go home after getting thyroid replacement therapy. OK, I don’t mean to scare anyone, really, just illustrate that this is something a lot of doctors seems to know jack shit about.

Diabetes is the popular kid with medical professionals these days, and I often wonder how many fat people have been misdiagnosed and are subsequently receiving only band-aid treatment for their real problem. According to the statistics, hypothyroidism is actually far more prevalent than diabetes and far more underdiagnosed. And I wonder just how much undiagnosed and undertreated thyroid conditions contribute to the correlation between “obesity” and poor health. (Or any other number of conditions that fat people don’t get treated for because some doctors are too busy telling them to lose weight and everything will be fine.)

There is a lot of information on hypothyroidism on the web, and it can be difficult to sort out. And honestly, I reckon the F Word posts are some of the best balanced and researched. Here are some other sites I’ve looked at and my comments:

• Thyroid.about.com – there’s some useful information here if you can ignore the weight loss crap that’s prominent on the front page.
• Stop the Thyroid Madness – it’s very pro-Armour/natural thyroid, but it does have some interesting information on conditions associated with hypothyroidism, such as adrenal fatigue, and explains more about why TSH alone is a poor diagnostic.
• Thyroid-Disease.co.uk – a lot of info specifically for UK people, and some “alternative” stuff I’d personally ignore, but there are a few papers with comprehensive bibliographies and references from peer-reviewed and respected publications, which might help convince some doctors
• Thyroid Patient Advocacy UK – See previous.
• Thyroid Australia – You have to become a member to see a lot of content, but you can get some good info.

Regarding Armour/natural thyroid, the most sensible information I’ve seen has come from pharmacists (as is often the case): Some people do well on the synthetic T4 alone, others need a T3/T4 combo, and others still do best with natural thyroid, and in all cases it’s what relieves your symptoms that should guide your treatment. And make sure the pharmacist educates you on how to store your medication properly.

—-

[*] And people with some of these conditions also often have a hard time convincing doctors there’s something wrong, too.

Non-Australians may or may not be familiar with the satire made by the ex-D Generation team of Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, etc – they’re probably best-known overseas for the films The Castle and The Dish.

In their latest TV offering, The Hollowmen, they skewer the policymakers at federal government level, those (unelected) people who work closely with the Prime Minister and Cabinet developing national policy. Their first episode, Fat Chance, picks apart the creation of obesity policy: how it’s not really about health, but pandering to populist ideas and lobby groups. It’s fairly neutral, wryly pointing out conflict between the fast food industry lobby groups and the health food groups and so on, and depicts the policy wrangling that goes on in a fairly accurate but dramatised way. (Trust me, I’ve seen it in action up close more than once.)

One character even gets a word in about how the UK’s anti-childhood-obesity policies are duds, and there’s a good deal of pointing out the hypocrisy and absurdity involved on all sides. I suspect that the Won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children people will be most outraged by their depiction in this episode. The fast food industry comes across not as inherently evil, but simply protecting their interests (to me, at least, but I may be tempered by my belief that deep-fried chicken and the like isn’t “bad” because it supposedly Makes Kids Fat, but more that intensive farming and fast-food labour hire practices, etc, are often questionable). But the really important point in this episode is that the anti-obesity lobby is also depicted not as really caring about anyone’s health, but about protecting their interests and getting their own ideologies put into public policy.

The Hollowmen gets it remarkably right with regards to how Australia federal politics works, however unlikely that anyone at the top would ever admit it. It’s not as comedic as Yes, Minister, or as dramatic as The West Wing, but very wry and dry in keeping with the production team’s previous endeavours.

You can watch this first episode of The Hollowmen on the ABC website. (Probably – I’m not sure if the ABC manages content based on your location like the BBC. If you’re in Australia you definitely can, otherwise look out for the episode on YouTube.)

I was always a bit squicked out by tofu. Back in high school, our home ec teacher tried to get us to make tofu by coagulating soy milk. And let me tell you, the soy milk available back in the early 90s in small-town Australia was pretty dire, so it was bad from the start. Nobody wanted to try the gluggy mess, and nobody had any idea how to cook with it anyway.

I avoided tofu for a long time. Even when it was in laksa and smelled pretty damn good. And even when I was vegetarian for a few years a while back, I still never ate it. But now, my palate and attitude to food has matured somewhat and I decided I might as well give it a try. Except, how to not make it slimy? All hail the internet, for it threw me a page with some fine instructions on how to cook tofu. All you have to do is drain and slice and press, then dry fry, then marinate and add to your dish. The texture ends up quite like cooked meat patties.

So, last night I cooked with tofu for the first time and the result was, if I do say so myself, rather good. Here’s what I made! Note: Always use the best, freshest ingredients you can afford. Nom.

Chili ginger tofu noodles stir fry

• 250g/1/2lb block of firm tofu
• 3/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tsp mirin (rice wine vinegar) – use lemon juice if you can’t find any
• 2 tsp finely chopped or minced ginger
• 2 small hot red chilis, finely chopped (this is reasonably hot, use more or less as you prefer)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tsp high-heat veg oil – peanut, sunflower, canola, etc. Not olive.
• 4-5 cups assorted chopped vegetables – a mix of texture and colour is nice, for example: broccoli, carrot, baby corn, red capsicum (bell peppers). I used what looked nicest at the supermarket: green beans, broccoli, carrot and snow peas. Other suggestions: red cabbage, onion, bok choy, Chinese broccoli (kai lan), cauliflower, Chinese or Japanese mushroom, etc.
• 200g/(7oz?) pack of Hokkien or rice noodles

1. Prepare the tofu as instructed.
2. While it’s cooling, mix up the tamari, water, mirin, ginger, chilli and garlic in a medium bowl.
3. Place the tofu in the marinade and let it soak for 30 or more minutes.
4. Chop the veges while you wait! The best way involves thin slices that don’t need long in the wok. Carrot can be julienned or sliced on the diagonal, separate broccoli into small florets, snow peas and baby corn can be left whole.
5. Prepare the noodles according to the packet. Usually this is just covering them with boiling water and leaving for a minute then draining.
6. Heat up a large wok, electric or whatever is fine, as long as it can get really hot! Or a very large high-sided skillet can substitute.
7. Add the oil and brush it around the sides of the wok, letting it get really hot too.
8. Add in the hardest vegetables first – carrots and broccoli, followed by the softer ones like mushrooms and capsicum/peppers. When you stir-fry, you should keep the ingredients moving around the wok – traditionally with large cooking chopsticks but I find kitchen tongs work just as well. You can pick stuff up and toss it around. If you’re talented/a risk taker, you can flip stuff by yanking the wok around as chefs do.
9. The vegetables probably only need two minutes, tops, then add in the noodles and toss them about too. After about 30 seconds, add in the tofu and all the marinade sauce.
10. Keep tossing everything around until it’s well-coated with the sauce and the tofu is heated through. The actual cooking should be over in a total of about four minutes.
11. Serve in bowls, and eat well!

Serves 4 regular or 3 hearty meals. This reheats in the microwave reasonably well, but don’t freeze it.