Call this MISO PEAR GRAVY. It’s new, exciting, familiar with a hint of exotic. Trust it. Put the gravy on the bottom, over the top, to the side or in a dipping container.
In my fist animal-free restaurant that’s the only gravy I need for all purposes which require a gravy. That doesn’t mean it can’t be altered to express different views with different dishes. This however remains the true base: MISO PEAR. Remember it!
Boost the nutritional effect of the banana. Steve and I are eating more bananas these days. Since his heart surgery he’s been buying them and eating them as well as setting an example for me to indulge. One of my favorite ways to eat them is with Poupon Dijon mustard as a dipping sauce.
When you feel like cheese and crackers but have no cheese. Or when you want no-cheese to be the theme. Baked beans on a cracker topped with prepared horseradish and/or a spot of mustard satisfies as much or guess what, even more than the traditional you know what!!
When you happen upon a free box of MAC AND CHEESE don’t throw the whole thing away, save the mac and throw away the cheese packet. In public housing and senior residences, outsiders come in and throw food about in spots, like they’re feeding pigeons, come and get it. Normally I decline, but why not use the pasta and throw away the cheese, since I don’t eat animal products. This is a dish I made for Lilly Belle and Me.The flavors are reminiscent of chicken and dumplings – only animal-free using macaroni in place of dumplings!
Black forbidden rice known for it’s toughness combined with cut string beans, Seasoned Cuban Style Black Beans, Campbell’s condensed tomato soup, Poupon mustard and seasonings.
What started out as a quick bean recipe turned into a slow stove-top roast. Perfect! Serve on a buffet or as the main dish or in a sandwich or soft taco, or in a soup bowl topped with animal-free blue cheese dressing or a dab of mustard! They’re cheap and fat-free (without the dressing).
Fresh produce (that I buy) has a faint mold smell and taste, even though it looks perfectly clean. I want to know what they’re treating the produce with and/or what they’re cleaning the mold with.
Use this luxury condiment in place of the traditional mayonnaise for coleslaw, potato salad, macaroni salad, or as a condiment on burgers, subs and other sandwiches. French fries and deep-fried or oven-roasted veggies too! The maple syrup isn’t used for flavoring purposes, but for it’s syrupy consistency! So Nice!!
Sauteed green pepper, onion, cabbage in extra virgin olive oil with coriander, curry and cumin. The sauce part contains tomatoes, pinto beans and apricots. Boiled tofu in turmeric and roasted peppers are the meaty part. Makes enough for a small gathering, A guaranteed ice-breaker for any event!
A nine inch single layer SPONGY PEAR CAKE. Cut into thin wedges and served with PEAR CREAM WHIP. Made from a base of canned pears with yeast and baking soda for a different but enjoyable chew. Flour, sugar, thickeners, ginger, turmeric, coriander. Chia seeds and pecan meal. Maple/vanilla flavor.
Lilly likes these beans right out of the can. But today we made a meal with them using green beans and tofu. Added a little seasoning and vegan yeast with Balsamic vinegar and she was good to go!
You like to feed your dog canned dog food? Well sometimes we do too. It’s what’s in the can and isn’t that’s different. Animal-free is what’s in Lilly’s can. Animal is what’s in the dog food can. We say we love our dogs, but we don’t treat them as worthy of a healthy diet.
Turmeric, vegan yeast and Balsamic vinegar for dogs? Why not? Lilly sometimes turns a nose up, when she knows I have something else in the fridge, like IMPOSSIBLE MEATBALLS, GARDEIN Chick’n Nuggets or Beyond Sausage. She needs to eat her veggies too. This time we did fat-free. She has cashews for a snack tonight!
Okay, there’s 80 calories per crisp served alone without cracker or bread. Since they’re rich it’s a filling snack to serve at a party. Not many guests would take two unless they think there’s nothing else to come. I made Violife Mozzarella and cheddar, separately. They’re both great. Impressive is more like it. Now I experimented with a cast iron skillet, a non-stick skillet and an aluminum one. Cast iron and non-stick performed well; the aluminum did not. So use cast iron or non-stick. Your family and guests will rave!!
Even if you have two, it’s still only 160 calories for a delicious to talk about treat!They’re more chewy than crispy, which allows you to taste the cheese. Better that way!
Similar to a minneola orange, the pith is thick, not bitter, and spongy textured. The fruit is sweet and luscious. Except for the nubs at both ends, it’s totally edible and enjoyable. Think of all the antioxidants, minerals and vitamins that benefit your entire body with this one total fruit.
Serve as an alternate platter for family, friends and guests, so they have a choice of a raw appetizer. Otherwise set it on the counter for family to nibble on each time they pass the kitchen.
Some diet advisors suggest that people fill up on low or essentially no calorie, high fiber foods to help lose weight.
If you stuff yourself with an all-you-can-eat nearly raw broccoli, the fiber is good for sweeping the intestines, but you may still be hungry in an hour or less.
Eat the same, weigh the same, leads to old fat accumulation that never gets recycled. The body only burns what it takes in and needs, then stores the rest. If you’re always eating the same, those fat stores don’t get replenished with fresh fat.
Your fat contains the toxins and all the junk that you consume in one way or the other, that doesn’t get processed, assimilated or eliminated through waste channels.
I personally think it’s better to deplete those fat cells now and then in order to eliminate the debris in the cells that has no purpose except to muck up the works and keep the cells from functioning optimally.
A Japanese cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016 for his research on how cells recycle and renew their content, a process called autophagy. (two Greek words: “auto” or self and “phagy” to eat.) After about 17 hours of fasting, these cells start eating the cells that are the ‘debris’ of the body. They clean the house so to speak: dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, washing, waxing, deodorizing. Squeaky clean!!! They especially like ‘brown’ fat cells. The real bad boys, the visceral fat.
For a few years now I thought I’d be happy at 147 pounds, given that I weighed 167 pounds. You know the feeling and the words – ‘all I need to do is lose twenty pounds? But you never get there. And it weighs heavy on you.
Most diners wouldn’t expect soup made from canned products to taste this good. Maybe it’s the combination of walnut and flax oil with the skin and pith of a minneola orange and the San Marzano tomatoes, the herbs and spices and high quality veggies and beans that make it soar, but for sure I would serve this soup to the most discriminating palates with full confidence in their enjoyment!
Less water, longer cooking time creates a chewier rice. Cooked with spices, herbs, Italian cut green beans and sun-dried tomatoes. Tossed with a tomato and vinegar based Barbecue Sauce! Served as individual molds, topped with white and black sesame seed, drizzled with sesame oil and topped with fresh basil. An unexpected delight to be sure!Reduced fat!
Ponce De Leon. The fountain of youth. Why have I been searching for it, since my teenage days? I wanted to discover the fountain of youth. The real fountain of youth. I can see where someone might think sunshine and warm weather are more conducive to longer life than bitter winters.
The Foods You Choose May Be Genetically Determined
My father-in-law had heart disease. He died at sixty-three of heart related issues. He once said to me, ‘I quit drinking and smoking and gained fifty pounds. He also ate a half a pound of bacon every day. He did not eat fast food – was not a burger guy. He liked bagels, pastries, chicken and dumplings, sausage and bacon. Lots of meats; was not big on cheeses. He was a general practice doctor of medicine.
Someone said it was genetic, his heart disease. I do not know how anyone would know that, since his father and brother died early in life in the Cleveland Clinic fire, while the other son (my father-in-law) was in medical school. Even so, he did not appear to present with problems until he gained all that weight.
Subsequently, two of my brothers-in-law died of heart related issues, one at home in a sudden heart event, who was being treated for heart-related issues and the other bled out while still in recovery from a successful heart valve replacement (his second).
My mother-in-law was not thin my any means, she probably ate meat with every meal, but also lots of fruits and vegetables. She drank alcohol and smoked. She had heart-related issues, for which she was treated, yet lived to be ninety-seven.
How does one know if a condition is genetic? In my father’s-in-law day, the medical field did not have the diagnostic tools and range of treatments that doctors have today.
Given all that exists now at the disposal of medical personnel, how does one under treatment have a sudden heart event and how does one bleed out at the groin after a successful valve replacement surgery while still in the recovery room? In 2011 and 2018, at 70 and 74 years old, and otherwise healthy?
Regardless, it does appear that there is a familial link, since my husband Steve who started out with atrial fibrillation and hypertension ended up with a full blown heart and kidney failure when he contracted coronaCOVID virus, for which he is now in long term treatment.
Steve eats a lot. Steve’s Dad ate a lot. His two brothers who died, not so much in the amount department, but the German influence on fat, meat and sweets cannot be denied. We both often remarked, that given the amount Steve eats, he should be a lot bigger than he is. Since COVID however, the battle with the weight has exacerbated, for both of us, but primarily Steve, since he is the one with the heart issues.
We all exercised, especially Steve and I, walking miles everyday, outside, or inside working, we both had extraordinarily strong legs, which should have helped in the heart high-risk category for Steve. Maybe it did, maybe had it not been for all those many years of long distance walking, he also would have died by now at seventy-five.
Not that long ago in an article on fat people, the issue of why fat seems to run in families came up. Many who studied it at the time theorized that there had to be a genetic component. ‘Come on, I saw the obese daughter in my office and wondered how this happened, until I saw the obese mother in the waiting room. Later I saw pictures of an obese father and obese siblings./
Other researchers theorized that maybe it was not genetic, but learned behavior (nature vs nurture again pops up). The mother and father eat a lot, so the kids eat a lot, the mother and father become obese, so do the kids.
So it was the food choices that were learned, maybe from culture, maybe from one or more grandparents, maybe even more from modern day availability of fast food and snacks wherever one goes. No more three meals a day, like in the old days. Even when back in those days, people trying to lose weight, focused on what they ate between meals. Back then I often heard people claim all they had to do was quit the snacks between meals and they would be okay.
That of course was before fast food joints became all the rage, turning meals into snacks, and snacks into meals, so one was not snacking between meals, they were ‘mealing’ between meals. Snack became the new word for meal. When someone says, let’s stop for a snack, they do not mean chips and dip or cookies and milk or a candy bar.
Ever notice the size of appetizers on any menu, whether in high-middle-low end eating establishments? Appetizers are now the size of a meal and the same price if you leave off the sides. Appetizers are supposed to whet your appetite for the main meal, not be the meal before the meal.
Sellers mess it all up trying to game your stomach and brain to eat more and buy more.
In pre-fast food days a sandwich, a burger, a hot dog were considered a meal, not a between meal snack. In post-fast food days people are ‘mealing’ whenever they eat throughout the day.
Still, how is it that in many other families one parent is fat and one parent skinny? Do copycat behaviors not occur between spouses, like they do from parent to child? Or peer to peer? What controlling factors operate in the family where all members are fat, compared to the family where half of them are fat and the other half skinny? Or one parent fat, one parent skinny and all kids skinny? Does gender play a role? ‘She is just like her father, or just like her mother – in mannerism usually is what they mean. Is eating stylized by genetics? Is eating a mannerism?
Another researcher suggested that genetics may have nothing to do with it. Mothers and fathers determine what type of food and the amount the children will eat, end of story. Fat parents, fat kids.
What about skinny parents, fat kids? Then somebody else is raising those kids haha.
Are genetics more powerful than culture? Does culture over time through repetition become expressed through genetics?
My take is this:
It is simpler than nature or nurture. Genetic or learned. Or both.
Each individual is genetically programmed to select certain foods over other foods depending on the composition of those foods.
Start with poisonous vs non-poisonous:
Group all the non-poisonous food together. Not all people will like the look, taste, smell, chew, feel on the mouth (tongue, gums, teeth, lips, cheeks, palate, throat), after taste etc. of all non-poisonous foods.
Next go to the basic food categories from which we may be predisposed to eat or not eat:
fats, proteins, carbohydrates (complex and simple).
Next go to animal vs animal-free:
Animal: flesh/tissue, blood, organ, bone, milk, glands/eggs aka any part of the animal
Animal-free: vegetable, grain, fruit, nut/legume
√ From which food categories do you most often select to eat for any given meal or snack?
√ What are the likes and dislikes of your immediate family. If adopted, how are your food choices similar or different from your non-biological parents and siblings?
If I eat a lot of oranges does that mean my body is deficient in what those oranges have to offer in terms of nutrients? Does my body need energy, a simple sugar high, a vitamin C and folate infusion, flavonoids, potassium, calcium, or does my body need a feel good refreshing experience that oranges or orange juice provide?
People claiming to have a sweet tooth may be genetically programmed to select those foods when hungry.
People with long cultural histories of eating fatty meats, may select those over carbohydrates given the choice. Still others want the whole party at once. Fats only? Protein only? Carbohydrates only? All three in varying amounts?
As a child I recall that after eating animal meat, I wanted something sweet and vice versa. Or something sweet after something savory. Something savory after something sweet. Or something fatty after something sweet or along with it. Was that my system trying to balance nature for me? Do we have a balancing mechanism that includes animal meat? Or was it protein and fat I craved, and the animal was the only option (in those days) to satisfy it? I was a kid. What did I know about food, except what I liked, and that my mother and father ate it, served it and expected us to eat it, so it must be okay.
In my view it was not so much what Mom and Dad ate, as it was what I chose to eat out of what they had to offer. Families usually do give choices, no matter how poor. Looking back it seems that the working poor fed their children better than the middle class. More food was made from scratch, more attention given to health. But that could be argued.
There were four kids in my family and we all grew up with different likes and dislikes, that were not necessarily the likes and dislikes of Mom and Dad. We were given an assortment of many foods over the years, we individually selected the ones we liked best to continue eating when we became adults.
Tastes also change. You hear the expression, ‘an acquired taste’ for a particular food. My mother for example liked Limburger cheese, one of the smelliest cheeses on the planet; even now in post-middle age I could not get that cheese past my nose into my mouth.
I did not like anything that smelled like an animal. Now that I cook animal-free for a world who loves the taste of animal, I find myself replicating those flavors and textures to satisfy the prominent flesh and blood addiction around the globe in all cultures.
Does that mean because so many people eat the flesh and blood, that they then crave it, and perhaps they crave it because they are genetically programmed to seek it out?
Maybe during prehistoric times. Maybe in times of survival. We do not know for sure; none of us were there. Does that mean because we did not drop the habit when it was no longer needed, that our DNA cannot change for future?
Can we change our own DNA through abstinence? Individually? As a group?
I believe that change already happened and I am proof of that change. One person in one family.
Did it happen randomly?
My mother never served just meat. If we wanted seconds on meat, we had to have seconds on vegetables. She ate more plant than animal. My father never went back for seconds of anything.
Nobody in my family nor Steves including all the kids, and their kids eats an animal-free diet, except me. Not even close.
I believe the seeds of change were present in my ancestors and came together in me. I believe that there are multitudes of people like me who struggle with the morality of eating an animal diet in this modern world, as well as the deleterious effects an animal diet has on one’s health and on the health of those they love.
Others struggle with eating animal-free throughout the withdrawal process and beyond. When I struggled during the early days it was most always peer and family pressured, sometimes the more subtle the stronger the pull to deviate from what I knew instinctively and intuitively to be the right way to live. Dining out was the most difficult. Even now, there are not that many animal-free choices on an animal-based menu.
So yes, our choices do have a lot to do with what is available. My solution was to develop my own animal-free recipes, then share them with the world. This was before the internet and social media and free web hosting companies became part of our social culture.
Over time eating animal-free became second nature. My only nature really.
I used to care more about what was for dessert than what was for supper. Maybe because the animal was not as obvious in the desserts as it was on the sandwich, or for breakfast or the main meal.
My favorite meat was ham, because it didn’t smell like animal. No fish for me, smell again, even when fresh. Eventually I liked shrimp, mussels, lobster and crab (rarely). The butter and lemon it was dipped in yes. I am big on sauces. No eggs, same there, the sulphur that others like I do not. No bacon, only due to the texture, crispy is not a chew I prefer. Too salty. I was not big on salt either. My mother was. She always had a salt shaker at the table. One of my brothers does the same. I never salted my corn-on-the-cob. The salt ate away at the inside of my lips. I used to wonder if that happened to everybody else who ate salted corn-on-the-cob.
My mother did not force us to eat what we did not like. Her only requirement was that we taste it. If not liked, fine.
Genetics in my view helps to shape our food choices along with what is offered, through culture and availability.
The amount we eat may be structurally determined. Steve eats a huge amount. How could one person fit that much into a stomach? My sister used to do the same. My mother remarked once, at the amount she piles on the plate and eats it all. She wasn’t fat though.
People have different size internal organs. Once after a surgery to have ovarian cysts removed, that my mother also had when she was about my same age, the surgeon remarked to my mother that I had a bladder the size of a small child – no wonder I pee so often.
Maybe the people who eat the most at one time simply have larger stomachs than those who do not or cannot due to a smaller size stomach. People often reference the stretching of the stomach, but not the initial size of it.
Eventually, I trained myself away from the sweets. Since being infected with coronaCOVID, I slipped back to old ways, as if the virus was smart enough to undo progress I made long ago. That would require brain manipulation and possibly DNA. Nothing on the news has brought those discussions to my attention.
Understanding why something happens does not have to be complicated or contain hidden answers that people come to explain away as mysterious, rather than keep looking for what often is right in front of them.
When searching for an answer stop trying to make it fit into a huge maze-like network that no one understands.
Interjecting another unknown variable will not produce solid answers.
Look for the simple answer first, then branch out. By simple I do not mean silly or non-sensical. Brainstorming is good as long as it is not accepted as fact the first go around.
Make your day good, if you cannot, then detach and glide through it,
I grew up on Miracle Whip. My mother was one of the first ones to convert from mayonnaise to Miracle Whip then kept on with it. Mayonnaise was okay when eating out, but it didn’t have that fresh zing to it. Lately I’ve become discouraged by the calorie and fat counts in plant-based vegan mayonnaise – I like a lot of mayo when I do use it, that’s the reason. If I only used a teaspoon at a time it wouldn’t matter, but then who can taste and feel such a small amount?
Even though I developed several animal-free recipes over the years I decided to make the ultimate, the shining star of all MAYOS. And just so nobody can take me to court over the use of the name mayo, I named it after the county of Mayo in western Ireland. Hey, I’m a big part Irish; I think can do that.
If I can’t, then I’ll have to negotiate and anyone who knows me – only the governments of the world read me – I don’t get circulated much – knows I don’t negotiate. I’m not sports oriented and negotiations are too much like sport. They’ll be okay with it. Did you know they have an International airport? Quiet, private vacation spots, not a lot of people sounds just right for me!
County Mayo is on the west coast of Ireland. Its scenery ranges from verdant to desertlike, with rocky cliffs at the Atlantic coast. Clew Bay is dotted with small, steep-sided islands, including Clare Island. At the eastern end of the bay, Westport town is known for its Georgian architecture and Westport House, a mansion with dungeons. Nearby is Croagh Patrick, a mountain linked to St. Patrick. ― Google
The FLUFF part is aptly named after Marshmallow Fluff, when as a child the only time I would eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was if it had Marshmallow Fluff on it and no peanut butter or jelly.
This is better than any of the mayos I made previously, though each of those were great in their own right, plus it’s better than any store bought plant or vegan mayo including Miracle Whip and Hellman’s.
IT’S JUST UP THERE – IN THE CLOUDS – NOBODY CAN REACH IT – it’s that good – all facets. Perfect texture; when you mix it in a salad, the salad doesn’t turn all oily. And it came to me in a dream (Just kidding, I was wide awake when I dreamed this up – I’m not giving some ghost refusing to identify itself credit for this one. There’s something about walking into the kitchen, that makes my brain automatically go into development mode.)
Don’t forget the fenugreek, and use powdered okay? Don’t crush your own, it will insert hard bits that we don’t want.
It’s all about the FLUFF. At first use, one might think that the fluff was going to dissipate, but not so. It holds up. It can be briefly microwaved and used as a warm sauce. Microwave it too much and it thickens too much.
Spread it on a sandwich in place of traditional animal or plant mayos. Use it in potato, pasta and tofu salads. Dips, yes! Top a hot dog or burger – with or without the bun.
One Tablespoon ANIMAL-FREE FLUFF MAYO contains 8 calories and .30gm fat. Hellman’s Vegan Spread contains 7o calories and 8 gm fat per Tablespoon in comparison. Two Tablespoons is only 16 calories compared to 140 calories of Hellman’s.
It spreads great, sets on top of the bread instead of soaking into it. A plus, so you know it’s there!
Now, the only plant milk I tried with this FLUFF MAYO was EDENSOY UNSWEETENED SOYMILK. I’ll be trying others. It can be bought online @amazon or store.edenfoods.com.
I’ve always been interested in my body – not only image, but how it worked.
I wasn’t born, or blessed some may say, with the body I wanted.
You don’t have to be athletic or well-balanced or have a high tolerance for extreme exercise to want to do what’s best, given what you have to work with, that contributes to better health and feeling of well-being.
I never could have skate-boarded or water-skied or snow skied. Even bowling wasn’t easy – that hand-eye coordination and mixed dominance in the brain tricked me up every time. Me knitting is like watching an impaired person, crocheting was certainly not my game. Mother tried to teach me, but no way Jose.
When young I could run, but then those tachycardia issues developed and the breathiness. I loved the water, but no one expected to see me on anybody’s swim team, though I had beautiful form some would say. I was forced to join a neighborhood softball team and it was an embarrassment. My mother fought for something for the girls and I had to at least show up and try.
I tried golf and couldn’t hit the ball; who cares where it goes as long as I could hit it. Not going to happen. The others thought I was pretending not to be able to hit it. I wasn’t. I gave it a hundred percent of wishing and hoping.
I need some food, just writing about all those fun for most everybody else athletic exercise activities in which I could not participate and have fun made me hungry. One has to get on the board at least. That wasn’t going to happen.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once said that he visualizes everything the night before that he wants to do the next day in the gym. It works he said.
Hey, I could dance, but not for long. And I have to go with my own movements, since because of that mixed dominance thing I get my right and left mixed up, so nothing flows as it should. No dance contests for me.
People who can do all these physical activities and do them reasonably well, don’t know how lucky they are.
No one would believe that I was buying MUSCLE & FITNESS magazine since the late seventies. No one would believe that I read Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book while walking around a bookstore in Massachusetts. Read the whole book, that’s how small it was and the print was large, but that’s how interested I was in muscles. To this day, anytime his name is in the news, I pay attention. I recall the one thing he admitted to in the book was treating girls, everybody called women, girls back then, like sex toys or something like that. He also talked about vomiting after extreme exercise.
I have dystonia, a neurological condition that effects certain skeletal muscles by irregularly contracting them, pulling parts of the body affected into abnormal positions – controlled by the basil ganglia of the brain. The same region that causes Parkinson’s disease. Some say it’s the opposite of Parkinson’s.
That condition emerged after an accident on an amusement slide where I went airborne and came down hard on my spine, then up again, then down again till I swirled at the bottom, struggling to get up with a small child in my arms. I remember at trial, the defense claimed I should have put my arms out to protect myself, thereby not taking necessary steps to prevent injury. Of course I lost, not being a born-in-Oregon person.
I was an active kid. No one would say I was challenged as a child or even as a young adult; I just wasn’t athletic. Tall, skinny, lanky isn’t a handicap. I was quick – at everything, and precise.
I remember trying to back up on my ice skates and just couldn’t figure it out. Kids would show me how they do it, mothers of my friends showed me, but didn’t tell me the process. Maybe it’s one of those things that you either innately know how to do or you don’t. No amount of teaching or showing will change that. No one’s going to be able to teach me how to hit a golf ball.
I wasn’t good at factory work either. I tried it though, with every intention of doing well. Nanny Kay can do it, so can I. Not so.
I’ll tell you though, all the failures were not for lack of trying. I tried everything, put my all into it.
I’m chuckling out loud now watching myself as I write on a fat-free chef site about exercise. What could I possibly know that everybody else wouldn’t simply laugh at or that they already know?
Nothing. Everybody knows more about exercise than I do. Even though it has always been a part of my life, front and center for huge sweeps of my life, I couldn’t follow and stick to any exercise program that I ever read about or watched on a video that anybody else promoted. I guess that makes me a DIY person.
My specialty is staying active. I can’t sit for long. It’s in my DNA that ‘not being able to sit still long’ thing. Even sitting in the short term, something on me is moving.
I have a treadmill in my room. I have a rowing machine. Well, half a rowing machine. I injured myself low to the floor, thinking I was Cory Everson of body building fame. I got creative with it, just because I was feeling so good, but the next day and for six months later every time I looked at that rower I cursed it in my mind.
I almost threw it away, the whole of it, when I decided to break it up and remove the long seat bar and the seat. What’s left is the head. Now that I can work with and hopefully not injure myself. I either stand to use it or sit on the desk chair or the side of the bed to use it. Haven’t been injured since the last time. Good for me.
I have two cords, red and green different resistances, in the closet hanging over the clothes rack which is a perfect place, since the rack is super-secure. I don’t do long distance; I get up close. Working in a small space on my total trunk. I don’t spread anything out. Lanky, which I am, is not well-suited for that.
I’ve got three poles of varying height, which could get me into trouble if I don’t treat them just right. They’re my spotters. That super tall one I’m not sure about.
I have two 5 pound dumb bells and two 10 pound dumb bells.
I already know how to do yoga, been doing it all my life. I’m not very good at holding positions for very long though. It’s that need to move thing I have. I learned over the years that simply stretching without being so mechanical is most beneficial for me.
Breathing is important and I can hold my breath too long and end up dead. So all that training before sleep for all those years might help if I was ever water-boarded, but all it did was expand my lungs, the relaxing part when in extreme positions is not really my thing, although I do it well.
I was hypnotized once or a few times to quit smoking (different people, different times) back in the early eighties. With this one guy, I went back – satisfaction guaranteed – and said it didn’t work. He said yes it did, you were hypnotized, you had all the requirements, galvanic skin response, pulse, respiration. I said, well that may be true and I’m not doubting that I got into a state, but it didn’t do as you promised, make me not smoke. You were hypnotized, he said. I said, perhaps I could have been, had you not gotten up and tip-toed to lock the door. Yeah, yeah, he said he did that so nobody would come in. I’m thinking I was the only one there, who’s going to come in? He didn’t even have a receptionist. So I did get into what some might call a hypnotic state, like I said, I do it every night before sleep, but I was very alert in my state-ready position to pounce if I had to. First thing, when I got back to the car was light up.
Sorry for digressing so much, must be the Fenugreek I’ve been wrestling. Too little, too much? I’ll figure it out.
Been taking 1/4 teaspoon of Creatine powder in my coffee each morning along with 1/4 t. Fenugreek powder. It’s too early to tell anything about it. Something I learned was it takes a while for effects of supplements to effect the body in any significant way. It takes time. Sure I can lose 6 pounds in 6 days, but I can’t do that every six days. It doesn’t work that way. I like results. Everybody does, sooner rather than later, caught on as a phrase because everybody identified with it.
I figure I’m working up to something, like a dance I do before painting, cooking or writing.
We finally decided to go the caffeine-free route, doing now and then half caffeine/half espresso, probably on week-ends. Neither of us, especially me, likes regimentation, but I’m beginning to lean that way. One night a week animal-free burger night. Sundays are for brunch. One day a week pasta and red sauce. We both need more routine in our lives, especially now with age and COVID out to get us. Everyday, some sort of regimented exercise. I can’t go to bed without it. If I do, then I have to exercise in bed – leg lifts 100 in every direction usually quiets the nerves in my body, which remnants of the coronavirus seem intent on sparking to keep me awake.
At almost 73 years old I still take no prescribed medication. I must be doing something right I often tell myself. That knowledge, however, doesn’t make me slack off of me.
I want to be in that place…where I can’t slouch even if I want to. No it’s not a straight jacket. It’s a muscular jacket.
Way back in the early eighties again I read a piece in one of the muscle magazines about a then 50 year old woman, who told her body building story. Now decades later what I recall of it and did recall from time to time throughout the years is her saying she couldn’t slouch if she wanted to.
I’m on board with that. That’s my goal as far as body building goes. Don’t laugh, I know, I know, Lanky Sharon Lee doing the body kick to sit like a stick. No kicking, remember no injuries.
I’ll get there, sooner rather than later. I’m all set up for it.
If it’s food, if it can be eaten, it has fat in it. Fat of some kind in some proportion, no matter how small, it’s there.
So, fat-free in the area of food doesn’t exist.
Even carrots contain fat. Plain ol’ carrots. Just try to peel a 50 gallon drum of them and see the fat accumulating on your hands.
There’s fat in fruit, not much, but it’s still there.
Essentially fat-free is what I’m going for. Then almost fat-free, when I need perhaps a tablespoon per 4 servings to emulsify the ingredients (to make stuff blend together).
I’m going back and forth between fat-free and not fat-free. Or fat-free and fatty. That’s my life and my choice.
It may make more sense to stay at a more even pace by doing low fat all the time. That doesn’t fit me. I want to indulge sometimes without going crazy.
I’m not ever going to sit down and eat a pound of butter or drink a cup of olive oil. But I do want some nut butter sometimes. And I do want some rich sauces and the occasional rich dessert.
So I prefer to be strict and then not strict. We’ll see if I can continue that up and down, varying amounts of fat and still lose the weight I need and want to lose – yoyo style.
The YOYO diet, besides being animal-free is pretty much my style of eating.
Using that foundation I’ll experiment with different methods until I get comfortable with my process and discover more of what works for me, not simply what I like.
Ever wash your own clothes, either at home in a machine or at the laundromat? What happens when you overload the machine? Your clothes don’t get as clean, because they’re packed in too tightly not allowing for the freedom of movement required for the water and detergent to reach every fiber.
Many fat people are malnourished, believe it or not. They stuff their guts so full that the enzymes needed to digest the food, cannot possibly work as efficiently as when a smaller portion is put in the stomach, allowing not only for better digestion, but greater utilization of the vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
When you over-pack your stomach you produce the same effect as when you pack too many clothes into your washing machine.
Ever see a tracker trailer going uphill with a full load compared to a lighter load? A truck with a full load will crawl up the hill, stressing the engine, and then speed down it by the sheer weight of it. A lighter load climbs and descends the hill with greater ease, proving that the more weight you carry around, the more difficult it’s going to be to move and the greater stress it puts on all your body parts.
The straw that broke the camels back. People overloading a camel with bundles and boxes of goods for sale; it’s based on the same principle. Overload anything and it won’t operate efficiently. There’s a law of nature somewhere in there that humans seem to resist. One more chicken leg, or piece of pie or milkshake or box of canned goods won’t harm. But it does.
A belated Happy New Year to you all. Weighed in at a whopping 197 this AM when I finally found the courage to step on the scale I’ve been avoiding for three months. See what happens when you’re not vigilant? It just creeps up on you. So, what happened????!!! I spent two months making a ghetto apartment habitable after being evicted after being turned down by better housing because of the eviction. Seems my attorney worked for somebody else. Two days after we thought we won, an eviction notice showed up on our door and our big time lawyer quit, with a big gotcha.
FAT-FREE CHEF™ 