How are we to eat healthy if it causes adverse side effects?

My husband and I were making great strides on changing our diets to include 51% fruits and vegetables.  We were cutting back on meat and avoiding sugar products. Vitamins and fresh vegetable juice were incorporated into our daily nutrition to encourage our cells to process the food properly.   Our goal to be healthier was our attempt to ward off heart disease, diabetes or premature old age.  We had hoped that with our better choices in food the extra inches surrounding our bodies would begin to wither away, however neither of us lost more than two pounds and no noticeable inches.

Unfortunately the fresh vegetables and vegetable juice was not healthy for my husband.  He ended up in the emergency room with two 8mm kidney stones in his left kidney that were trying to move into his bladder.  A 4mm stone can pass on it's own albeit with a lot of pain, but anything over that needs to be broken up and removed. Beans, beats, carrots, celery, collards, eggplant, escarole, kale, leeks, okra, parsley, peppers, potatoes, rutabaga, spinach, squash, sweet potatoes, Swiss chard, and zucchini are very high in oxalate which cause the stone to form.  And that is just the beginning, soy, nuts, berries, various forms of wheat and chocolate are also on the taboo list.  There is no oxalate in meat.

We have now switched back to the low carb diet eating mostly meat; my husband has lost 15 pounds and I have lost five. We are still drinking lots of water to keep everything flowing nicely.

Our commitment to change began after watching the documentaries "Supersize Me", "Food Matters" and "Food Inc", although these three videos cover similar but different topics they all encourage less meat/fat and more organic veggies.  We also watched the movie "Fat Head" that takes the opposite approach from the other three.  The narrator's goal is to lose weight by eating fast food and to prove that meat and fat are good for you.  Of course there are scientist and nutritionist to corroborate his points, the most crucial one is that we are damaging our brain which is made up primarily of fat by eliminating fat and meat from our diet.

Which is right, do we need more meat in our diets to be healthy or virtually none?

Eat healthy, drink lots of water, stay healthy

Retreat, Retreat ... regroup.

Who would have known that when I was in the 7th grade I would already know what the biggest thorn in my adult side was going to be.  I have been waging war on dust for six years now.  Before that I would pass the cloth and get the collection which was good  for a week or so; then I moved to a house with a paved road and granite back yard. 

In the 7th grade, I had to pick a poem, memorize it and regurgitate it to the teacher.  I chose a poem with few lines and even fewer individual words.

Dust

by Sydney King Russell

Agatha Morley

All her life

Grumbled at dust

Like a good housewife.

Dust on the table,

Dust on the chair,

Dust on the mantle

She couldn't bear.

She forgave faults

In man and child

But a dusty shelf

Would set her wild.

She bore with sin

Without protest,

But dust thoughts preyed

Upon her rest

Agatha Morley

Is sleeping sound

Six feet under

The moldy ground.

Six feet under

The earth she lies

With dust at her feet

And dust in her eyes.

.

I grew up on acreage complete with animals that slept and rolled in the dirt. I was surrounded by the neighbor's acreage, some which was landscaped and others that weren't.  We used a dirt alley to get to the barn.  I don't ever remember having the amount of dust that I have now; then again I was a child and as you might know, children don't really focus on grime. 

As an adult, I lived on a plot of dirt, accessed by a road of powdered earth .  There was some dust, which my kids easily took care of once a week, but I wasn't satisfied, I wanted less.  We put up a hedge along the road, watered down the road daily, landscaped the front yard with gravel and the backyard with grass, but there was still dust.  I wanted to move somewhere with paved streets and limited particles. I was through with dust.

Six years ago my husband and I moved to a start up community.  The builders were raising prices weekly and holding lotteries for the few lots they were selling.  Open dirt lots were being transformed into rows of houses with paved streets and landscaping.  A great place to move to; within a year all the empty lots would be filled and the flying dust would be someone else's problem.  Or so I thought.  The economy failed, fields are still empty, backyards have not been landscaped and I now have three dogs that have pushed aside the back yard rock in their effort to bark at any noise they hear.

I made it my goal to erradicate this vermin that had infiltrated my house, nose and lungs, causing an influx of health problems due to allergies.  I armed myself with a Dyson vacuum, guaranteed to remove everything including dog hair, a feather duster, swifter, dust cloths, air filter and more.   Everyday, I would focus on one room to remove the dust on every surface and between all crevices.  Every day I would vacuum each room and do a cursary passover on the rooms I had just finished.  If I was going to win this engagement I was going to need to stay on top of it.

By the second week I was getting discouraged, not only had the dust come back,  it brought it's friends and they were clever finding hidden spots to rest and multiply. One swipe of the duster only moved the enemy to another location. Determined, I doubled my efforts, within two month I was winning.  Then the weather changed and the wind brought someone else's "problem" to me.

I conceded the major battle but continued the surprise squirmishes to keep up appearances until yesterday; from out of nowhere I was attacked by a layer of dust.  Looking toward the enemy's location, it appeared the site was overpopulated and the excess layers were being encouraged to colonize another area.

I've got the plan in place, the tools to use and the time to advance...

Eat healthy, remove the dust, stay healthy.

Move over Lady Godiva

I am obsessed with my hair. Every morning I let it down and swish it across my back.  I love that warm silky feel as it glides across my skin.  I have always wanted long beautiful shimmering thick hair that could blow in the wind and stay in perfect style.

Three years ago I decided to let it grow. We started 4 wheeling with the windows open which caused my hair to whip my face and neck until the Jeep stopped.   I was going to cut it shorter but my husband, while stroking my hair, seductively told me he perferred it long which meant I needed to be able to tie it back.

Historically, my hair will barely grow below my shoulders and is very fine.  It takes 3 twist of a toddlers tieback to hold my hair in a ponytail.  My fascination began in the second year, I realized my hair was longer than it had ever been.  It didn't hurt that a stylist told me for the first time in my life that my hair was so healthy. Yes!  I decided to let it grow one more year and in February I would donate it to Locks of Love.

My husband and I had already started replacing soda's and altered sugar drinks with water and fruit juices, one part of the diet to lose weight and get healthy.  I noticed that my hair while normally slow growing seemed to be getting longer faster than ever before.  I started thinking of my head as a Chia Pet; water-fertilizer-growth.  I would have preferred the Barbie doll that had the key to make the hair longer or shorter as needed though.

Now my long straight hair, that doesn't hold a style no matter how many cans of hairspray are used, almost touches my bra strap depending on which bra I wear or how far back I tilt my head.  I love it; that was until my head was unexpectedly yanked to the side.  I was shaving my pits, when I lowered my arm, my beautiful long hair was caught between the arm and body pulling my head to the side.  At first I didn't know what happened, I started circling the shower with my head cocked to one side looking for the cause, since there was no one inside the shower with me and I couldn't lift my head I figured I had a terrible infliction.  It is amazing how many scary thoughts can go through a mind in only a few seconds.  To make matters worse, I haven't figured out how to, short of cutting my hair, prevent this from happening again, and it has.

I started drinking less water and more soda's and noticed a stark difference in my tresses.  I began losing more strands, the luster was gone, my hair was limp and any growth had dwindled. What an eye opener to get back on task.

The Locks of Love event has come and gone and I still have my long hair. I will wait until next year when it has regained it's health to donate.

Eat healthy, drink good water, stay healthy

Bottoms Up!

A past co-worker dropped 40+ pounds in 6 months without exercising. I was worried that she would be emaciated if she lost more than 10 pounds because she looked slim and heathy to me. This just goes to show you that we don't always see what is there.  I didn't see her very often so the tranistion was evident when we met next, although she was slimmer she was also glowing with health.  Her skin was smooth and pink and her hair shimmered.  Her secret - Before you even get out of bed, drink a large glass of water.  This starts the organs moving and doing the job they were intended to do.

"Water is your body's principal chemical component and makes up about 60 percent of your body weight. Every system in your body depends on water. Water flushes toxins out of vital organs, carries nutrients to your cells and provides a moist environment for ear, nose and throat tissues." (from a Mayo Clinic article).

While I don't have a glass before getting out of bed as I am usually in too big of a hurry to eliminate the water I had before bed, I do drink 32 ounces of water before I eat breakfast.  By 9 AM I have finished my second 32 oz glass of water and 15th sprint to the bathroom.  Hmmm, I could count those trips to the bathroom as exercise.  How many calories are burned running to the bathroom, sitting down then standing up?

Besides trying to have 51% of my food intake as fruits and vegetables, I am drinking water with every meal and in between to carry the good nutrients to each cell. Nice plump cells filled with good nutrients equal a healthy me. 

Today, I have almost gotten back my "eat right to get healthy" momentum.  Along with a glass of water, my husband and I had an egg sandwich and an orange for breakfast.  Lunch was chicken chili, made with shredded chicken, three kinds of beans, diced tomatoes, and bell peppers. An apricot, and celery sticks completed the meal.  I am trying a new recipe for dinner tonight, Swiss Chard and Garbanzo Beans.  My best friend provided the Swiss Chard from her abundant garden, the recipe and a raving review of the meal.  I am looking foward to dinner tonight.

Eat healthy, stay healthy

But it was calling my name and I couldn't be rude.

I fell off the eating healthy band wagon this weekend and I am paying for it now.  Luckily I was close to the ground when I fell so the impact was not too hard, but I still hurt.

Sitting on the patio, with our neighbors at a new restaurant, my husband and I shared a Prime Rib dinner complete with baked potato, salad and wonderful rolls.  Oh if only I had stopped there, but we were having such a nice time enjoying the spring weather and solving the world’s problems that my defenses were down when the waitress suggest dessert.  I knew I was in trouble when she handed us the dessert menu with photographs. Sugar, my drug of choice calls to me, tells me it is okay for just one bite, what harm can sugar be, so I ordered a Brownie Delight.  Ohh I love ice cream and a chocolate brownie just adds to the flavor, so my husband and I split a large serving of total bliss.  Within minutes of eating this scrumptious delight I could feel the sugar rush and the internal shaking and wondered why the heck I wasted my health on that.

I would like to say that once again I learned my lesson and not wanting to "hurt" vowed to stay off sugar, but that didn't happen.  Sunday, at a birthday party, I did it again.  I started out with a small sandwich, two helpings of a fresh green salad from my best friend’s garden, one helping of potato salad and a few chips.  I had already seen the brightly colored cake and it was calling me.  I ignored it thinking I could leave before the cake was cut so I wouldn't have to act on the decision that I had already made.  Out came the ice cream, which I love, and two types of cake.  I had to try both didn't I?

That evening, we had a meeting at another local eatery; I ordered chicken strips, curly fries and coke.  That's right not even a diet coke.  I ordered this even though I was already hurting from the earlier bad choice that day. The coke just exacerbated the problem, my hands started to swell up but I continued to drink it.  Of course I justified it by drinking water as well.

The setback I created by answering the call of addiction not only caused me to gain back a few pounds, have internal shakes and hurt, it has made me want more.  I walked by the ice cream display twice at the store yesterday, telling myself I can handle a carton of ice cream.  "Who cares if I am over weight, my husband and friends love me, the pain was caused by something else."  And like the biblical Eve, I enticed my husband to eat from the “fruit” causing him to stumble as well.

I need to leave the land of denial and stay focused on the reasons why I have chosen to eat a better diet.

Eat healthy, stay healthy.

Prayer Garden

To eat healthy "the books and experts" suggest giving up sugar products and incorporating a high amount of organic fruits and vegetables into your diet.  In fact "they" say that 51% of your diet should be fruits and vegetables preferably eaten raw.  They also suggest drinking fresh juiced vegetable three times a day. Yeah right, these experts must be making tons of money off their books to be able to afford 51% of their food intake and juice in vegetables and fruit; one non-organic bell pepper is $1.20 on a good day.  I can spend $100 a week on salad material, and I don't think that would give me 51% of my food intake.  If I were to juice it I would have to spend triple that amount.

The way to resolve this is to start a garden and grow our own food.  I have started gardens in the past, I love to work the soil, transplant the starts, sow the seeds and rejoice when I am rewarded with growth.  After that I am done with it.  Number 1, I don't like vegetables (I was just growing them because I figured if they were there I would eat them). Number 2, I didn't know the difference between a weed and the plant, so invariably I would eventually end up with a bunch of spurge. Enough of the excuses, the real reason is because by the time the garden was ready to produce, if I had somehow left the correct sprout in, I was bored and had moved on to some other project.

But we are committed to eating healthy and becoming Sustainibilly's so we started our garden.  Due to my dogs and the space available in my back yard we purchased 11 tree boxes made from recycled wood to start our garden in. My husband and I only know the first thing about gardening but that is about all. Three weeks ago we planted some bell pepper starts in one box and sprinkled carrot seeds in it. The other box we planted tomato plants and sprinkled some other seeds in there.  The next week we purchased more boxes and went to town planting according to the seed packets.  Then we started praying in the garden that the seeds would sprout and the transplants would acclimate and stay alive.

One week later our prayers were answered, we had 3 little stems poking up in the pepper box, and one corn shoot popping out of the soil.  Every day we see the miracle of new growth, which I swear is from answered prayers.

Now I just need to stay focused until we get to eat the fruit of our labor.

Eat healthy, stay healthy.

Making wind and relationships

It is a good thing my husband and I are going through this together.  With the introduction of more fiber in our diets, our bowels are moving more rapidly and with that comes air and repeated trips to the bathroom.  At first I got away with passing silent ones, but when the dogs started leaving the room I knew I had a problem.  My sweet husband even started coughing and laughing, and it wasn't because of me.

As a married couple, we were comfortable sharing some intimacies with each other that we wouldn't want to share with the rest of the world.  But after a few days of trumpeting butts and lingering, nauseating smells from my husband, me and the dogs, my husband began an earnest search for a cure to eliminate the problem. The answer was to begin taking Acidophilus to add the good bacteria in to the digestive process.

There must have been one mighty war going on in our stomachs between the good and bad bacteria from the rumblings we felt.  By the increased flatulence it appeared the bad bacteria was winning and my husband and I were doomed to live as singles if we were going to continue eating healthy foods.  Sugar farts did not compare to what was blowing in the wind.  This eating healthy was not conducive to a good marital relationship.

Fortunately, everything worked out, the Acidophilus conquered the bad bacteria and we were able to leave the house without embarrassment.  That was until we added in the vitamins, but that is a different story.

Eat healthy, stay healthy.

Welcome

Three years ago, my husband and I decided to get healthy and lose weight.  We purchased the most recent get healthy, lose weight book on the market, made a grocery list, went shopping and spent lots of money to buy all kinds of food we had never heard of let alone knew how to cook.  That lasted for two weeks and we reverted back to our old eating habits, ignoring the original reasons we wanted to change our lifestyle, binging on sugar products and gaining more weight.

A few months later we would start again only to repeat the same cycle, spend, let food spoil, and gain weight.  What is that saying "Stupidity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results”?

Family pictures at Christmas opened my eyes to how heavy I had become.  The few times I did a full assessment of myself in the mirror I would tell myself that "I don't look that bad." and that "the scale must be broken".  But the pictures taken at Christmas portrayed me as a wall with a nose and lips, and that was only my face; I couldn’t deny any longer that I didn’t have my 19 year old body anymore.  I won't describe what I thought the rest of my once slim figure had blossomed into.

In addition, my husband and I watched Food Matters and Food, Inc. which put the resolve in us once again to eat healthier, even if we didn't lose weight.  We had already started attending some Permaculture classes and planning how to implement their philosophies into our daily living when we would be able to move onto a larger plot of land. But the movies encouraged us to begin now.

December 31st we finished up all the sugar products in the house and set a plan in motion to succeed in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  Instead of buying books I checked books out from the library on healthy eating and nutritional supplements and once again headed to the grocery to buy vitamins, fruits and vegetables and grains.  Starting January 1st, 2011 we have been trying to eat 51% of our food in fruits and vegetables, either raw or cooked. We have made that part the focus of the meal and any meat eaten that day as the complimentary part.

Two weeks ago I purchased a juicer at a garage sale for $5. (what a find) and we have begun a regiment of vegetable/fruit juice each morning.  This is still a work in progress.  Next will be making our own bread using the pulp from the juiced vegetables/fruit and healthy grains.

Last week we started a vegetable garden in some tree boxes made from recycled wood and are praying that something grows.  We have also planted apple, plum, peach and apricot trees; although these will take about two years to produce fruit we are still on task.  Our next step is to plant some grape vines and nut trees.  I am going to need a bigger yard.

We have also re-evaluated the amount of money we were spending on paper towel napkins, plastic baggies, and other disposable products and switched to cloth napkins and re-usable containers.

Our goal is to become "Sustainabillies", growing our own food, re-using or recycling, living in an energy efficient home and so on.