Omnivore

The majority of our foods are made of corn, wheat and soy. (seeds not leaves) Broaden your horizens and add more variety into your meals. Try something new. Spread you palate.
Add new meats, leaves, fungii.

Animals

If you are going to eat animals eat animals that have eaten well themselves.
That is not what we purchase in out supermarkets. They are feed and fattened the cheapest the mega farms can feed them. Look for independent farmers in your neighborhood.

Save the water!

Well really don't save it, use it. All that water you boil your vegies in, save it to add to soups and stews. It is full of vitamins and minerals.

Color!

Eat your colors.

Tomatos, oranges, yellow peppers, kale, blue potatoes, eggplant, grapes. You have a rainbow.
How many rainbows can you make with colorful food items?

The more colorful your diet the healthier.

It is also more appetizing to have a colorful plate of food.

Now mind you it might be a little difficult to handle the green eggs(add chopped spinach not food coloring) and ham, or purple potatoes but the health benefits from eating outside the box are terrific.

Try challenging your kids or grandkids to come up with colorful meal plans.


Also just found out last night that Panera's spring and summer salad is back on the menu.

Legs?

The healthiest foods have few legs,

so eat more things with only one leg, (plants and mushrooms) many time a day

add a couple with two legs, (fowl) couple times a week

a few times a month four legs (mammals)

several times a week no legs (fish)

Joy!

Joy is an emotion which I have been working very hard to feel and show this year.

I am not an exceptionally joyful person. Now for the most part I have always been satisfied with life, but have a real hard time bursting out in laughter.
I have always had a problems with jokes, the only ones I ever get are the really cruel ones which I just won't laugh about. The ones I don't get I usually try to laugh but never quite understand the punch line. I have always been this way.

For the past year or so I have made a conscious decision to show joy more but it is becoming difficult again.


Being in the car a lot anymore it seems as if the music on the radio is all sob stories. Watching tv wether it is news, reality shows or dramas seem to always focus on the negative. I feel it gets harder and harder to remain joyful throughout the day when we are constantly bombarded with unrealistic problems.

So I think a few solutions would be:

Take 2 hours of your tv time and walk, it will improve your mood, help you get healthy, and strengthen your endurence.

Make a joyful play list for your mp3 player to listen to while you walk. The songs should have a slow, fast and faster tempo. Mix them up so you walk at different paces.

Spend an hour a day preparing health foods, meals and snacks.

Mediatate for a designated time. Start out at 5 to 10 minutes, set a timer and pray, or just loose all thoughts. Whatever works for you. You can add time as soon as become comfortable with it.

Eat mostly plants. Okay this does include grains and seeds.

Meat in America is usually overdone. By overdone I mean we eat much more meat than most all other countries. Now I love meat, poultry and seafood. My body typing says I should be eating mostly red meat.
So how do we follow eat mostly plants. It is really pretty easy. If you normally eat a 8 oz steak and 4 oz of vegetable just flip them. Eat your 4 ounces of meat and double or triple up on the veggies. Add 1/2 cup of whole grain or potato. Add a piece of fruit or some berries for dessert and you will be full for 4 to 6 hours.

Well we have finished the first part of the food rules.
The next part follows with: Mostly Plants. preferably leaves.

Now I know grains are plants, grains are grasses for the most part. They are full of carbs, a little protein and a bit of fiber. The food pyramid says we should have at least 8 servings. That amounts to about 800 calories. Really hard to do if you are trying to lose weight.

Also many of the grains in America are gentically modified.

Think twice about reducing your grains comsuption and upping your vegetable intake, green leaves.

If it is a proper noun it probably isn't food.

If it is the same name in different languages it is not food.

Big Mac, Pringles, Coke.

If you got it through you car window it is not food.

If it came from a plant eat it, if it is made in a plant don't.

Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

Big Lots

Big Lots opened yesterday and I did make a trip over to eastgate to see it. It is very clean and organized. Wonder how long that will last? I had 4 kids with me so not sure I got to see everything but they did have the cuttlebug and embossing plates for the cuttlebug. They had several cricut cartridges and lots of thickers.

I am sure once the word is out that stuff will be picked over. With us getting so many different open dates just wanted to let you know that this stuff is available.

Eat foods cooked by humans. Do not let corporations control you or your food.

Buy your snacks at the farmers market!

Get out of the "super"market.

Shop at your local farmers markets, find a nearby farm to purchase your protein from. Grow your own.

But t out of the large chain stores, find a neighborhood store that sells local food.

Eat foods that you can take a picture of while they are growing.

Read the ingredients on that chip package. How many of those ingredients can you picture in nature? You want it to be 100%.

Computer Virus

Yours truly has had a computer crash. Caused by nothing more than searchng google for a recipe and clicking on a pop up. A pop up that resembled my AVG virus protector that of course told me I had a virus that needed quarentined.

I am on the kids computer while mine is being hopefully debugged. It is slow, with a not so good keyboard. I am also working on Sabrinas scrapbook, and have none of my pages, or printer pages I need. Hopefully all the senior stuff will be there when it come home.

BE CAREFUL!

Does your food spoil? If not then it isn't food, it is one or more of those, imitation food like substances.

Now there are a few exceptons; honey has a naturally very long shelf life.

Eat only foods that eventually rot!

Stay out of the middle! of the grocery store.
Shop the peripheral of the store.

You know produce, protein, diary.

But watch it, high fructose cornsyrup is lurking everywhere. And supermarket marketers are crafty. Alot of those hotdogs and sausages are not meat, they have lots of fillers, and in the diary case or my, that good for you yogurt has more calories in sugar than some great ice cream which negates all the good for you stuff.

Avoid foods that are advertised on TV.

Don't play into the marketing hype. You know we all do it, whether it is for food, makeup or scrapbook supplies. We love a good marketing concept.
Only the big companies can afford tv ads. They spend millions of dollars to get your share of the economy. They hop on the wagon of any health report and try to confuse you into beleiving they have your best interest in mind. They don't they want you $$$$.

5 grams whole grains is not 5 grams fiber. 5 grams whole grain is really not much at all.
5 grams fiber is 1/5 what is recommened per day. Read the labels not the titles of products. Of course if it has a label you probably shouldn't be eating it.

Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.

Margerine? nope do not eat. Choose butter or olive oil. (cold pressed)

Oil or cream? (cool whip or whipped cream?)
Avoid pretend foods. Do you remember you can whip evaporated milk. Not as good as cream, but definately better than putting a tablespoon of oil, sugar and vanilla in your mouth.

Why do you like pop tarts, it can't be because it is good pastry. Fake pies. These things are not food. Do you hear me, NOT FOOD!

Avoid food products that use "lite" or low-fat or non fat in there names or packaging.


In the last fourty years, since the low fat campaign started Americans have became consistently became fatter.

The fat was replaced with on average 300 more calories per day of sugar or refined carbs.

300 calories per day for 40 years equals 216 pounds.

How many 300 plus pounds people do you see today? It is really scary to think how easily we conform to an idea, how easy it is for science to be wrong!

Oprah has a guest on today that has a lot to say about woman and weight.

I think her book is Woman, God and diet or something like that.

Watch if you get a chance.

Avoid food products that make health claims.

It must have a package to advertise a health claim, if it has a package it is most likely processed, we are trying not to eat processed foods remember.?

Make up time!

Avoid food that have some form of sugar (or sweetner) in the top three ingredients.
Avoid food products that have more than five ingredients.
Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third grader cannot pronounce.

Caught up!

HFC

Avoid products containing high fructose corn syrup!

Even if it isn't bad for you. HAHA It does sweeten products that don't need to be sweet.

If you have a sugar addiction it contributes to you eating more sweeteners.

IT IS BAD FOR YOU! and has no nutritional value.

Sugar!

Avoid foods with sugar or sugar substitute listed in first 3 ingredients.

There are at least 40 types of sweetner that can be listed in the ingredient list of manufactured foods.

Food manufacturers are crafty, they want to sell you a product with the least cost to them, and the most benifits to them. They really don't care about you, except to sell, and addict you.

New Food?

Don't eat any food products that you wouldn't keep in your pantry!

Look at the ingredient list of a manufactured food like product.

How easy would it be to make it at home? How many of the ingredients would you have in your cupboard? Can you believe a few of those ingredients are used to get you to eat more!

Another few are for freshness (the Twinkies lives forever), shelf live.

A cake takes less then 6 ingredients, flour, sugar, fat, eggs, soda, or baking powder and flavoring.
The cake mix in my cupboard lists 36 ingredients.

Why are we putting these poisons in our bodies? in our children's?

Eat Food

Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Food

Starting over with the food posts. So listen up. Hopefully I will get through them this time.

The basic principels are:

Eat Food
Mostly Plants
Not too much

Okay are you with me. Mostly plants can contain grains, but not grains with out nutional value.
More on all of that later.

So tomorrow we will explore "eat food"

Please look things up, post your point of view. Contribute.

WOF

Women of Faith was absolutely amazing. If you have never been to one look into it for later this year in Indi or Cleveland.

You won't regret it.