Less Hustle More Coffee

Well, I’ve talked with George to enlist his help with trying to lose weight, lower cholesterol, and eat more nutritiously. All is a go, but he is not onboard with eating less beef and pork. At least he sent me a picture of Kevin Bacon crying from the internet when I mentioned that part. However, he did agree we had problems with portion control.

I suggested we eat like other cultures, particularly in ways of having courses. While not wanting to make anything complicated, I suggested we always have a small cup of soup, a small salad, and then our dinner plate and NOT with exploding portions, and NOT with seconds. And we can have a very small glass of Port or Sherry or Brandy for after dinner if we didn’t have seconds.

The soup would be made using any veggies from the day before or the week’s fresh veggies found in the fridge – and if none – whatever is in the pantry. It’s to be a broth based soup – not the creamy Campbell’s kind.

Well, no sooner than it’s mentioned, it happened. We discussed it on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday evening, it happened. We had a small cup of soup, a small salad, and dinner – which was WOW – a Parmesan Chicken dish. It was a recipe I looked up as we needed to use up some Ricotta cheese. George and I both said that was the BEST Italian dish we had EVER had! I will have to come back and share the link to this recipe. It was also VERY simple. And it will now become a family favorite. We did not have any sides with it. And we did not eat seconds. But we had a tiny cute “after dinner glass” of Cognac as we finished Bloodline’s last show. And we have leftovers for lunch.

I’ve encouraged George to add greens to the soup as long as it is not Kale. Kale hurts my stomach and I cannot digest it very well, as it is a strongly bonded plant. I am not sure why I can usually digest carrots but not kale. It is also a suspect food for the diverticulitis set up. My list of suspect foods are: pizza, steak, kale, regular processed pasta, popcorn, nuts, seeds, processed fatty meats like kielbasa and sausage. Not all of these things may be “THE” instigator, but these are usually things I’ve had when things start to go south. Or should I say in this case, DON’T go South! lol In most cases of my diverticulitis those things have been consumed prior to it happening. Kale having been involved twice and I hardly EVER eat it, so that makes it highly suspect. The pizza or enriched pasta being the culprit b/c of the bread or pasta really slow things down, cause a lot of bloating, and steak takes a while to digest and the fatty meats provide an atmosphere in your gut that can cause things to go haywire. These things I’ve figured out on my own as I’ve been trying to see what happens when I eat. As far as the popcorn, nuts and seeds – I really think they just get involved when things are not flowing well, as they say – then they stick into a colon wall and things start to get inflamed from there and they end up complicating and making things go from bad to worse. But the more fruits, veggies and less of those things the better time I have with digestion. I can and do eat beef and pork and even pasta, but try to eat a pasta that is made of whole grain, or rice blends, or even veggie blends. And of course my probiotic is helping.

But all this is NOT it! There are some other changes.

HEALTHY EATING REGIMEN TO COUNTER THE WESTERN DIET

1. Quit chewing gum. I really feel this habit with it’s artificial sweetener is keeping me from losing by inhibiting my metabolism from doing it’s job and tricking my brain/stomach/body functions as artificial sweeteners do, and blocking my bodies ability to handle the glucose that comes in and the processing of foods/nutrients that my body needs to absorb. So this is a major experiment and not an easy thing to do. I’m switching to plain Altoids. It has sugar but like 1 gram. And one is all I will do. There are some other options to gum chewing as well and I will look into that. I chew gum all day so this is going to be hard. I can hear people that I know doing a series of “yay’s” in the background as it irritates some that I chew gum. Some have hinted more loudly than others, but ultimately one’s life is their own and they do what they want, but yes, I can hear your yay’s out there in the background.
2. Eating as much Whole Food and Nutrition as I can. This one is obvious. I won’t be perfect but it’s better to do meat and veggies than processed.
3. Inserting my Greens or Fruits as a Breakfast Item at times. They are indeed very filling. These are drink packet mixes filled with nutrition that I get from the system I do. I just add them to water. They taste good too. I had greens for breakfast yesterday and they were great and I did not have a hard time waiting for lunch as it was filling.
4. Limiting the snack items and only Natural foods. I have allowed myself in the last week, to eat nuts as long as things are going along ok. This gives me a natural whole food item to consume. But there is an extension to this. I will first try to stomp out any hunger with water or other drink, preferably non-caloric but some of my system’s drinks have natural sweeteners that add a few calories and I’m ok with that. So I will try to avoid snacking. But have found that a few almonds or walnuts will do the trick along with water or coffee or a drink, and I chew the nuts up really good. I am eliminating crackers as a snack item because I can’t control it and it’s processed anyway.
5. Eating in courses for dinner. Since we are working the soup and salad system before dinner works well. It’s easy to whip up a homemade soup to last most of the work week and a salad is easy, and we use up what’s in the fridge – in one or the other.
6. Big Huge Containers of Water with Infused Fruits (or mixes from my system if I want).
7. Continuing my cleanse day 24 hour period once per week – of lower calories with the deep berry drink that helps fight cancer and cleans your liver, and lots of water and broth. I get chocolate on this day to keep the blood sugar up but it’s tea infused chocolate. I’ve decided I’m happy with the 24 hour thing and not the 36 hour one I had been doing which on some days was too much for me.
8. Continue taking supplements that support heart and digestive systems along with a Multivitamin.
9. Have fun finding recipes and varieties of foods to savor.

So these are really weight loss initiatives but I’ve been able to get the sugar levels down in the past couple of years and I really need to work on the cholesterol levels. I’m not doing the statins. I’m not doing Metformin. I’m only one point into the prediabitic zone at a 5.6 A1c. If I were 5.5 A1c he wouldn’t ask me to be on meds. I’ve refused both. I’ll do the Blood Pressure meds and maybe one day I can get off those but not sure about that until we can get diet and numbers in control. So I guess we will begin eating like other cultures. The main thing is to mostly get away from a Western Diet and eat Whole and Clean as much as we can.

It’s a Continual Improvement Initiative. But I think these things above will help me a whole lot. I won’t be perfect, but we have changed a lot already and I’m sure it’s kept the numbers from going any higher. Let’s see what we can do in an effort to improve Jan 2021’s numbers.

And I need to get going. I could type all day here. But off to work I go.