Sunday, February 21, 2010

I am really enjoying blogging. The best advice I had was early on, when one of my favorite wisdom enlightened ones told me to write for myself rather than the imaginary audience. That gives me the freedom to journal and write all over the place, and as a consequence provides me with a record of my thoughts and feelings.

I am starting to compose this late Sunday and I should be cleaning my personal spaces up a bit, but I spell sloth with five syllables, so I will get to it. My surgery is only on Tuesday so I have lots of time ……

So I will answer a private question(s) posed to me publicly. I will be curious to reflect on my answer after my surgery
The questions:

What do you eat these days?

What do you eat that's Good? :-)

What do you not eat?

The easy answer is that I eat absolutely everything. I have no banned foods. (I am excluding here substances banned or forbidden by the regulatory authorities). What I do is eschew certain foods. Salty, Fried, and Processed have become my Axis of Evil.

Salt – Even before I knew I was on this journey back in July, I banished the salt shaker from my hand. I went Cold Turkey from being a heavy handed salt shaker to shaking salt so infrequently that it becomes a special occasion that I remember for weeks. After a bit of a period, say two weeks, where I thought foods had become tasteless, I now taste foods in my view in a more enhanced way. Sometimes when we eat out and I have soup (especially soup for some reason) I find it very salty and cannot believe that at one time I may have added salt.

The big danger for me is the hidden salt. I mentioned a few posts ago that I had eaten a couple of breakfast burrito type things and when I checked (after consumption – note to self – check before) they had something like ¾ of my daily sodium limit. I really have to be diligent in checking labels and / or web sites.

Fried - Some foods just don’t taste good unless they are salted and I put French Fries in that category. So that makes it easier to avoid my Evil Axis # 2 and that is fried foods. I am on the road a lot and stuff that comes out of the deep fryer - fish and chips, different manifestations of potatoes, battered anything - sing the Sweet Song of the Sirens , just beckoning me to the Cardiac Cliffs of Sirenum Scopuli . If you asked me a year ago how much fried food I ate I would have answered “Next to None”. But if you asked me to truthfully tell you what I had over the last week I would have said: “Oh, I just had a small fries on Monday, and oh yeah I guess the fish sandwich was deep fried, and then on Wednesday I did stop at Tim’s and I had the Cruller, and I guess I had the home fries when my wife and I went our for breakfast and after that long walk by the Canal, and it was a long walk, I had the Beaver Tail, but it was a long walk ……

So I just avoid the deep fryer. French Fries, Battered Anything, and Tim’s Temptations . It is not really that tough.

Processed - Smoked Meat, Pastrami, Hot Dogs, Italian Sausage, Donairs, Ham. Cookies, Breakfast Cereals, Ice Cream, on and on and on. You know they are bad. Bad for you but bad for the planet. Something like Red River Cereal is of course processed to some degree. It is not just wheat, rye, and flax in a box – there is a bit more to it than that. But not too much more; compare that to the real processed stuff. Look at the product offering of Anthony Tigirs (MILLED CORN, SUGAR, MALT FLAVORING, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SALT, SODIUM ASCORBATE AND ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), NIACINAMIDE, IRON, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), VITAMIN A PALMITATE, FOLIC ACID, BHT (PRESERVATIVE), VITAMIN B12, AND VITAMIN D).

I try to think of all the work, all the effort, all the energy, all the transportation, all the chances for error, all the complication that goes into processed food. It is not good for the planet and not good for me.

What a long winded answer! To recap more succinctly:


What do I eat?

Everything?

What do I eat that is Good?

Everything – I eat nothing that is not good.


What do I not eat?

Things prohibited by the Regulatory Authorities.

Some Observations
The simpler the food the better.
The less cooked in fat the better.
The less salt the better,
You don’t need meat every day or even week.
Really good coffee is really good.
A Toasted Western Sandwich with a tomato slice on the side is better for you than a three egg Western Omlette with two pieces of buttered toast and a side of home fries. (and still fills you up)
No more than two eggs a week.
Whole Grains when you have a choice
Sweetness you control: not so bad; Sweetness someone else controls: not so good.
Once every two months really good halibut fish and chips with salt on the fries and tarter sauce for the fish is worth it

Worst Current Habit – Pilfering Salted Pistachios from dining room table

Best Current Habit - Eating salad without dressing (what I mean is I put no salad dressing on the lettuce, I do not eat salad while I am naked).

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