Yes, Virginia, a Healthy Diet is Affordable and Convenient

I didn’t used to know which foods are really healthy for me (thanks to the Blood Type Diet and the GenoType Diet, by Peter D’Adamo, I do now), let alone how to cook. For most of my adult life, the ways of eating touted as being healthy were actually very bad for my individual genetic hardwiring. I don’t do well at ALL on diets that emphasize grains/carbs, demonize fat, and tell me to cut out animal protein (I wish I did do well on that latter point, but I simply don’t). And those were the “in” trends from basically the late 1960’s through the mid-90’s in this country. Not a good era for blood type O folks such as myself. Most of my Type O life was lived in a Type A era. As a result of how the nutrition “experts” (not) said I should eat, combined with my utter lack of cooking skills and propensity for carry-out food, I ended up woefully out of biochemical balance, experiencing the predictable effect of being ruled by cravings (because my blood sugar was always spiking then crashing, never steady and in balance, and my serotonin level was always low, etc.), and basically living on pasta (wheat pasta = VERY bad for a Type O person) and take-out food. I also ended up morbidly obese.

People tried to tell me “you could save so much money by cooking at home”. I forgot to mention that I was always dirt poor my whole adult life until 2008, at which time I catapulted all the way up from ‘po to low income. I know what not having much money is all about. I am the 99%, and I am at the low end of that, but I’m blessed to be much better off than many and than I myself was for most of my adult life.

When folks advised me that changing from The Carry-Out Queen to cooking at home would save me money, I thought: “Ha, shows what they know! It’s just as cheap to get take-out food as to cook and, besides, I am busy, I work full-time, who has all the oodles of time that would be required to do all that cooking and the shopping and planning that no doubt goes with it?” No, thought I, I’m better off just living on subs, Chinese food, more subs, more Chinese food, pasta, popcorn and, of course, my drug of choice since I was so out of biochemical balance and thus, like I said, totally ruled by hormonal cravings of the craviest variety: POTATO CHIPS AND DIP!

Well, my peppermint peeps, hard as it is to fathom, it turns out I was wrong. Don’t buy into the myth (which, trust me, Big Agribiz wants you to buy into!) that eating healthy is more expensive than eating junk, and/or that eating junk is more convenient and time-saving than eating healthy. People think “health food” is expensive, but it can be CHEAP if you know what you are doing. People think going the homemade route is also terribly time-consuming and a hassle, but I find it is just the opposite! It is soooooooooooooo much more relaxing and freeing, time-wise, to cook at home versus to be constantly running around town getting take-out food and NEVER having anything in the fridge or cupboards. And it turns out that cooking is EASY and convenient, not hard at all! If I can do it, anyone can, and it SAVES me time! I don’t even follow recipes, I just “wing it” and it all works out deliciously. Once you get a little experience under your belt, the time involved in “planning” (even that word turns me off at the git-go) is minimal, and mainly consists of ensuring that your kitchen is always stocked up with good stuff that you can then throw together in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Sure, some things take a long time to cook, hence the term “slow food” that many, including myself, like to apply to the homemade cooking lifestyle, but the thing is: you can just stick those things in the oven or crock pot WHEN YOU ARE HOME ANYWAY (or, in the case of the crock pot, it can be cooking away while you are at work or off doing something else, or while you sleep at night!) and let them go for a few hours. Say you are out the door before sunrise (like me) and you don’t get home until it is dark. If you stick something in the oven or crock pot when you get home, even though it may take several hours to cook and thus won’t be ready for your dinner that night, stick it in the fridge for the next day—then you have it! How beautiful is that? And meanwhile, that night, you eat something you already had prepared and can just heat up and/or throw together. It is SUCH a good, comforting feeling to feel that your kitchen is stocked to the gills with healthy, nourishing, delicious food.

You will learn what “staples” you need to keep on hand to ensure that you always have something to throw together at a moment’s notice. For example, I boil brown basmati rice with onion, carrot and spices, about once per week. It takes TWO SECONDS to chop the onion and carrot, throw it in the pot with the rice, sprinkle on my fave spices, add water and stick the rice on the stove, and it takes it about 40 to 45 minutes to cook. Then I stick the cooked rice in a Gladware container in the fridge. Total preparation and cooking time? About 45 minutes. Then I have rice at the ready for the entire week! I can throw together a stir-fry or whatever in moments, using that rice that I have already cooked. Keep fresh and frozen veggies and fruit on hand, as well as fresh and frozen meat, some nice organic eggs, perhaps a can or several of wild (never farmed!) salmon, and you’re golden!

When the weather is warm (which is most of the time here in Florida), I keep bags of organic salad in the fridge, and containers of grape tomatoes. Then I can toss a salad together in no time, adding in whatever already cooked meat I have around (like chicken, turkey, ground lamb, beef, canned wild salmon) and make a homemade salad dressing in TWO SECONDS. By the way, there is NO reason to buy store-bought salad dressing, which virtually always contains a bunch of junky ingredients and is nowhere near as delicious as homemade. You can throw olive oil (or other oils, such as dark-toasted sesame, a personal fave of mine) and organic lemon or lime juice (comes in a handy bottle) together in the aforementioned TWO SECONDS, people! I make a delicious yogurt ranch dressing by mixing organic, plain yogurt, a smidge of organic mayo, a dash or three of extra-virgin olive oil, dried oregano, garlic granules and sea salt. DA BOMB! (I don’t use lemon or lime in that one because the yogurt is already a tad tart and it doesn’t need it.) While I seem to live on salads with protein, and WATERMELON in the summer now, in the winter, I don’t eat as much salad because I want something HOT. So it is then time for simply sticking some meat and veg in the oven at 350 and there you go! And now, as of this week, I have FINALLY gotten the knack of how to make SOUP! Thanks to a dear friend basically talking me through every nuance of how to do it, I can now make soup and I use the crock pot to make it in, which is so simple, it is really ridiculous that I was intimidated about the whole mysterious soup-making process for so long!

My soup-making experience this week brings me to what inspired this blog entry in the first place, because it got me marveling yet again about how not just wonderful but CHEAP healthy eating can really be! Think about it: how expensive is it to buy whole produce such as sweet potatoes, yams, onions, celery, turnips and carrots, and protein such as a turkey, chicken thighs, etc.? You simply cook the meat, then throw the bones and some of the meat (and the FAT/drippings!) into your soup pot or crock pot, along with the veggies, some spices, water (it doesn’t get much cheaper than water, folks *lol*), and a good, pure (not laced with junky ingredients) brand of broth to start you off with a bang, such as Kitchen Basics vegetable broth, as there is no junk in that particular variety (although you could use just water, if you are sure to add enough FAT, spices, veggies, bones and put in some tomato paste or crushed tomatoes if you just use water, to add flavor and body). You then—if you use a crock pot, like I do—simply set it to low and WALK AWAY. I’ve been letting it cook overnight in the crock pot while I sleep (does anything get easier or more convenient than that?) and waking up to a steaming, beautiful crock pot full of deeply nourishing, delicious, warming, satisfying, relaxing, awesomely wonderful SOUP!

Learning to make soup and enjoying the results has reminded me again, not that I need reminding, as I’m grateful for my diet every day, just how important to me my homemade, slow-food lifestyle is. It is cheap, it is easy, it is satisfying, it is health bestowing, and even though, this week, I’ve been very stressed out about some things going on in my life, and busy and over-tired, it is my diet that has once again kept me strong, steady as she goes, in balance, healthy, energized and able to cope to the best of my abilities with everything. My diet is my foundation, my rock of Gibraltar, when things get stressful and/or otherwise challenging in my life. I’ve noticed over this busy, stressful week, that soup, in particular, seems instantly to relax me, calm me down, re-energize me and just generally help me keep strong and in balance through choppy seas. A simple thing like soup can do all that! And everything about eating well is simple, once you learn what to do. Just shop along the outer edges of the supermarket for whole produce and fresh meat, augmenting that with some bags of frozen veggies, too, and healthy grains like brown rice—or, if you don’t want any grains in your diet, stick to root veggies like sweet potatoes, yams, turnips and carrots (all very inexpensive). While it is true that meat—especially humanely-raised, “clean” meat—IS relatively expensive, another very important point I want to touch on is that, even the relatively expensive items in a healthy diet are all NUTRIENT DENSE, which means they are very satisfying and thus you do not need much of them. Therefore, they are actually very cost effective. I do best with some meat in almost every meal, yet I don’t need a ton of meat. Nuts and seeds (very expensive) are excellent, too, yet I don’t need many. When you are eating right, you are in balance, steady and satisfied, so you aren’t ruled by cravings and thus prone to go on a junk food binge. Junk food is EXPENSIVE (in more ways than one)! It is usually overpackaged, which costs money and if it is carry-out food, you are paying for the labor, etc. You also pay in so many hidden ways. Junk food is highly addictive and often devoid of any real nutrition, so the result is you are always out of balance, always hungry, and very likely to get in a vicious cycle of choosing the wrong foods to try to bring up your blood sugar and/or serotonin level, etc., quickly. You tend to overeat junk food, so how is that saving money? No, it is far better to choose whole, healthy foods that put you in a strong place of balance and health. Most of these foods are very affordable, a few are expensive but it evens out because you don’t need much of the nutrient-dense foods like meats, nuts and oils, and your diet will keep you healthy, which is priceless.

Another very important, related point, regarding choosing organic food, specifically, is this: while choosing a certified organic food is often more expensive at the front end (in the grocery store) than choosing the same food that isn’t labeled certified organic, you are paying for what isn’t in there, such as toxic junk, so you are keeping yourself healthier and out of the health care system, which saves you money in the long run. You are also, as I’ve blogged about before, VOTING with your dollars for sustainable, humane agriculture (and against the cruelty and unsustainability of factory farms and factory farming techniques) and by extension for a sustainable, green, humane economy, society and world, which is priceless, too. But even if you don't give a hoot about ending the barbarism and unsustainability of factory farming, choose organic for your own health. Yes, it's a tad more expensive but just as choosing nutrient-dense foods such as meats, oils and nuts SEEMS expensive at the front end, the big picture is that, in the long-run, for the many reasons I've detailed above, it is saving both your health and your bank account.

To sum up, riddle me this: if “cheap” junk food doesn’t satisfy you, so you eat more of it, it makes you sick, so you go to the doctor more, it makes you fat and addicts you (not necessarily in that order), so you are ruled by cravings like a drug addict and go through life unsteady, unfocused and out of balance, how is that really cheap, or really “affordable”? I don’t know about you, but I can’t “afford” to sabotage my health like that. By contrast, a healthy, unprocessed, whole foods diet contains mostly very inexpensive foods like veggies and fruit, but even the more seemingly “expensive” foods like meat, healthy oils, nuts, are actually saving you money in medical costs and because you will be satisfied and in balance and therefore you won’t be overeating, buying more and more and more junk food, and getting into a vicious cycle. The gifts of balance, energy, focus, strength and overall health are priceless, don’t let Big Agribiz convince you otherwise. Stick to whole, pure, unpackaged, preferrably organic foods from the outer edges of the grocery store as much as possible and stay aware from the shiny packages filled with addictive, non-nutritive junk that adorns most of the inner aisles, for it is not an exaggeration to say that, in many cases, those foods are specifically designed to addict you. Choose food made by nature, not food made by Big Agribiz. When you experience the profound benefits to your health (most importantly), lifestyle and wallet, you will be extremely glad you did.

Make your dollars holler for a green future.

I recently discovered a wonderful, pure, fresh carrot juice at my supermarket. To top off the fabulousness factor, it is organic. I should back up and say that I do about 99.99999% of my food shopping at an excellent local health food store (Rollin' Oats, yay!) in my city and, until recently, I only used to go to the regular supermarket for certain things, mostly non-food items, such as pine cat litter and toilet paper, to name two. However, that may be about to change.

Publix, the supermarket chain I go to, recently tore down my regular and closest store, because it was the smallest, oldest one in the city, and they are rebuilding a shiny new one on the same spot. Meanwhile, those of us who shopped at that location have been sent packing (or, more accurately, shopping) to another Publix store, which turns out to be a fantastic one with a much greater selection of organics and “near organics”, if you will. Publix has a whole line of products (everything from meats to produce to the aforementioned pine cat litter to toilet paper) called their “Greenwise” line, and even though much of it is not certified organic, which would be my ideal for all the food items, it is all at least in some way(s) striving to be sustainably and/or humanely produced and healthier for us to consume. I appreciate a lot of things about Publix as a company (no, they are not paying me to write that, nor are they or any company in any way affiliated with my little bit of cyberspace here, a.k.a., this little blog of mine--I'm gonna let it shine!), and the Greenwise line is just one of them. I thought my old Publix had a good selection of Greenwise items, but the Publix that I now am going to while my regular one is being rebuilt has a MUCH expanded, better variety of Greenwise choices and I’ve been completely dazzled and wowed the two times I’ve been shopping there thus far.  My bedazzlement mainly stems from the fact that they have a FAR greater selection of fresh meats and produce, both of which are vitally important in my diet.

I also found this fresh carrot juice at that Publix, Odwalla brand, to be exact, and it is a good example of the type of thing that thrills me to find in a grocery store versus a health food store. In fact, my wonderful local health food store does not sell fresh carrot juice in the store itself (unless I’ve somehow missed seeing it, which doesn’t seem possible, since I practically live there and am intimately familiar with every aisle. When your diet consists primarily of fresh, chi-laden, perishable food, you shop often for groceries, although, God bless the invention of the freezer, or I’d be in there every DAY). They do have a cafe in which you can order fantastic, freshly-juiced carrot juice, but it is very expensive (understandably—it takes a lot of organic carrots to make a little carrot juice, plus it is kind of labor-intensive). The Odwalla juice at my Publix, by contrast, was only $6.99, which may sound like a lot, but that is for a fairly large, 64 fluid ounce (two quart) container. That’s a lot of carrot juice, although I personally could drink the entire thing in one fell swoop, if challenged to do so. The container says it has 8 servings. I happen to love carrot juice, so for me it is realistically more like 3 or 4 servings, as I like me a long, tall drink of carrot juice. Still, even if you only get three HUGE servings out of it, that is $2.33 per serving, which to me is very reasonable, considering the nutrition factor, the refreshing factor, and the deliciousness factor (and no, Odwalla is not paying me to write this blog, either—I just call ‘em like I see ‘em) of this juice, and considering that I’m on a healthy diet, and carrot juice is like a “treat” item to me, yet good for me, I think it is a far better and more economical treat than, say, folks running out to Starbucks and spending goodness knows what on a sugary, caffeine-laden, fat-laden, liquid dessert called some sort of “coffee” but which is more like “coffee-flavored addictive dessert in a cup”. Carrot juice has tons of Vitamin A and is bursting with chi (life energy).

I’d much rather have a big cuppa fresh carrot juice for "dessert" than a slice of wheat-laden, corn-syrupy, God-knows-what-laden cake with faux whipped cream on it. I don’t even have a taste for stuff like the latter, thank God. To me, it is faux food. Even homemade cake doesn’t tempt me, and not only because I know how bad wheat is for my particular blood type (O). I’ve never been a cake person. SALTY junk food, now there’s where I hang my addiction hat. But when I’m eating right for my type (I follow the The GenoType Diet), I’m in balance and not craving anything. And items like fresh carrot juice, which I haven’t had in years until rediscovering it at this Publix this week, are what make my diet so joyful and sustainable and keep me in fine fettle.

I am so happy to vote with my hard-earned green for green. When I choose to shop greenly, I’m voting for sustainability, for organics, for purity, for humane farming practices, for whole foods, for quality, for products produced in ways and by companies that respect nature and work in harmony with it, thus preserving and protecting it and ourselves.

Buying organic and/or as close as you can get, as with the Publix Greenwise line, may seem like a small thing that you are mainly doing for your own health and that of your family. But make no mistake about it: when you CHOOSE to spend your dollars on certified organic food or on products by companies that are trying to at least come close to that, like the Greenwise line at Publix, you are doing something very powerful to change the world, no less. Here in the USA, our right to vote with ballots is precious and powerful. Yet understand, voting with our dollars is profoundly powerful, too, because this is a capitalist society. Very few things speak louder here than MONEY and how consumers CHOOSE to spend it. By “voting” with our dollars for certified organic whenever possible, we are saying we not only want pure, junk-free, whole, high-quality, nutritious foods for our own health, but we also demand food that is humanely and sustainably raised. Humane agriculture is sustainable agriculture is healthy agriculture is a big piece of the puzzle in how we support the health of ourselves and our environment

Please note that it is very important to choose “certified organic” and not greenwashed, i.e., green lite, items that just say “natural” or something equally meaningless on them. And no, that doesn’t contradict my support above for the Publix Greenwise line, even though some of their food is not certified organic and thus does have room for improvement by really becoming certified organic. I feel the Greenwise line of meats and produce (some of which IS organic mind you, but in the meat department, some isn’t) is still worth choosing over their regular offerings, as again, back to my point, that way we are voting with our dollars and letting them know that we like the green direction and please take it even further, offer more certified organic items, we will buy them.

Like I said, items are simply “greenwashed” and not truly green if they just have meaningless marketing phrases on them like “natural”, but with companies like Publix that are really trying and really producing quality, purer (not purest, but purer) meats, for example, I think that is worth supporting and is certainly better for my own health and that of my family (read: pets...feeding them is yet another blog topic...so many blog topics, so little computer access). If a Greenwise meat item is not certified organic, for example, it has features about it that are specific and meaningful to me as a green consumer, such as: “Our chickens are completely free of antibiotics and added growth hormones”, etc. That is why I say such an item is truly worth supporting and choosing and is not simply greenwashed.  In my city, we don’t have a big, national health food store chain such as Whole Foods and, like I said, the selection of meats, particularly fresh meats, at my local health food store, is very limited. Therefore, by supporting grocery stores who are moving in that direction, even if they aren’t totally organic yet, we can send a powerful message.

Besides voting with our dollars, we can provide feedback to stores and companies on what we appreciate and what we would like to see. I told the Publix “Customer Service Team Leader” how much I appreciate their Greenwise line and how greatly expanded it is at that particular store than at the smaller store that is being rebuilt. I said I try to buy organic whenever I can, and I normally shop at the health food store, but Publix has so much more variety of meat, particularly fresh meat, that I am going to start buying more of their Greenwise stuff. I said I love how many varieties of bagged salads they have. I get SPECIFIC. I finished by singing the praises of fresh carrot juice, and then I was off, but not before she called after me “I’m glad you like what we’re doing—come back again!” and I shouted back “Oh, I will!”

THEN (today), I continued my personal green consumer revolution by writing the following email to the Odwalla company regarding their carrot juice:

“Just a quick note of appreciation to tell you how much I appreciate your fresh carrot juice, which I recently purchased at the Publix Supermarket on 4th Street North and 37th Ave North in St. Petersburg, FL. It is reasonably priced for such a high-quality, nutritious, pure, fresh item and what I really love is what you DON'T put in it: all it is, is pure, fresh carrot juice! Wu HUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Thanks for producing this healthy, delicious, fabulous product!”

I should have said I appreciate very much that is it certified organic, but I am ashamed to note that I honestly didn’t even notice that until today. And I call myself an organic consumer! In my defense, I was so bedazzled by everything around me in that section of the produce area that, when I quickly read the ingredients label, I just noticed that the sole ingredient was carrot juice not that it also said “organic”. Once I saw that carrot juice was the only ingredient, that container was in my cart faster than I could sing out “OMG, fresh, pure carrot juice!”, and I was back to looking all around me in wide-eyed wonder at all the colorful, chi-laden produce. Hosanna, I’ve hit the mother lode!

My point, after much rambling, is to remind my dear and hopefully green-leaning readers that the mundane act of shopping wields a LOT of power in this society. America is all about the consumer. We actually RULE, folks, so whether one likes or despises the fact that this is a consumer-driven culture, it is a fact. So why not make your dollars count towards what you believe in? As Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” If you wish to see sustainable agriculture, humane treatment of animals and an end to factory farms and all the violence they do to animals and the environment, a healthier population, more whole, chi-laden food on your grocery store shelves, ethical companies thriving, and just generally a greener world, you have to CHOOSE that every day, in every way. And one important way is when you are filling your cart at the grocery store. Think about what you are “voting for” with every item you put in your cart. Cast your votes wisely!

Living Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Not a lot of hype, no commercialism, just being grateful for the simple gifts in life: our loved ones, the wonderful bounty of nature, and all of our blessings. It’s about finding and celebrating the sacred in the seemingly ordinary: family, friends, home, hearth and a wholesome meal harvested from the good earth. So simple, yet so sacred.

There’s a saying that I used to think was so odd and meaningless, but in recent years I’ve realized it is very deep and profound: “You’ve got to take the good with the bad.” I used to hear people say that and I’d think, “You've got to take the good with the bad?  What does that even mean?” Well, now, upon years of pondering it in my peppermint way, I know what it really means:  there is always good and bad in our lives, so don’t let the bad stuff paralyze you and keep you from appreciating and enjoying the good stuff. A younger me used to think, I can’t be happy because I have A, B, and C bad stuff going on, so I can’t enjoy D, E and F good stuff that is also in the mix. How sad. Now I finally understand that, even with the inevitable bad stuff going on in your life at any given time, ya gots to make room for the good stuff, let it in, revel in it, appreciate it, and enjoy it! You've got to carpe diem!  Don’t wait for the bad stuff to clear out, or you be waiting a lifetime. Grab hold of the good stuff and appreciate the hell out of it!

This year, like every year, sure, I have my share of difficulties and challenges, sad things and bad things, and I hasten to add that it is healthy to give them their fair share of energy and attention. However, perspective is the key.  Thanksgiving is a day for focusing on all we have to be grateful for, and grounding ourselves deeply in that gratitude. As a matter of fact, every day, I thank God for all the blessings I’m grateful for, and even for the challenges given to me, as those can be, and usually are, blessings, too—even our losses contain gifts for us to open and learn from.  I think it is important for my spiritual and emotional health, and I suspect for my physical health as well, to make every day a mini-Thanksgiving.

People who choose to focus on what they are grateful for are so much happier and healthier than those who focus on everything wrong in their lives. Mind you, I’m not saying we should ignore or sweep aside the “bad” things, or our feelings about them. In fact, I strongly believe it is imperative for our health to allow all our feelings to flow freely in and out like the ocean tides, and that feelings are to be acknowledged, accepted and respected, not judged and controlled (which is why I can’t STAND people like one infuriating Wayne Dyer or books like “The Secret”, as apparently, according to them, we are supposed to squash down all feelings and thoughts other than those involving flowers and rainbows, and if anything negative happens to us in our lives, it's our fault because we allowed “negative” feelings or thoughts in...don’t even get me started—rant-worthy blog unto itself ALERT!).  I think that all feelings are okay and are there for a reason, so don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't feel something that you feel.  It is how we choose to act on our feelings that counts. That said, on Thanksgiving and, really, every day, the healthiest approach is to stay firmly grounded in gratitude, for even in our darkest days, there is usually something to be grateful for, some light to acknowledge, fix our gaze upon and trust to lead us on, even when darkness seems to surround us. The very act of choosing to focus on the light and not the dark adds to the light. As the saying goes, “Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

This year, I’m most thankful that my 86-year-old mom is here with me in this world and that we will be together on Thanksgiving. That's the most sacred blessing of all to me.  We are invited to her cousin’s house for Thanksgiving, which is another thing I’m grateful for, as when I moved to Florida, I had no family here--zero. Now I have my mom and her cousin, so my familial cup runneth over.  It will be me, my Mom, her cousin, and one of her cousin’s daughters for Thanksgiving. I don’t have to cook the whole meal (yet another thing to be grateful for!), just “Page 26”, as we call it in my family, a DELICIOUS spinach-artichoke-cheese casserole side dish that my mom and I have every year. I’m also planning to bring cranberry relish and some sort of beverage. My mom’s cousin is making the turkey, veggies, and apparently there will be a pie (made by either the cousin or her daughter), but I’ll stay away from that on account of that I know wheat is not my friend (yet ANOTHER thing to be grateful for—my knowledge about what foods to eat to keep me healthy).  If there is any stuffing, I'll stay away from that, too.  I love stuffing, but it's a wheat-laden affair and wheat is my nemesis.  I love health more than I love stuffing.  Anyway, having spent more than a few Thanksgivings since moving to Florida with no family at all, I’m really looking forward to this foursome. Most years since my mom moved down here, it’s just been the two of us, which is lovely, but there will be something very special about getting together with extended family. I really appreciate it.

I’m also extremely grateful for my health, which I was scared about this time last year after my very first ever routine EKG during a physical resulted in me being diagnosed with left-bundle branch block (LBBB), an electrical conduction prob in my heart that results in a dyssynchronous heartbeat. After the primary care doctor used language that scared me to death and ended up NOT being the case for me (thank God, and I do!!!), such as “enlarged” and “hypertrophic” heart, and sent me to a cardiologist, who had me undergo further testing, it turns out that I’m basically healthy as a horse, other than the LBBB, as nothing else scary is present with it (no enlarged heart, no hypertrophic heart, no evidence of a heart attack, no heart disease, no nothing—thank God!), which is unusual, and is DEFINITELY something to be grateful for every day, especially on Thanksgiving. Also on the grateful-for-health front, I’ve lost about 81 lbs since I started the GenoType Diet two years ago Thanksgiving Day, so I am extremely grateful for that, as I've blogged about several times and no doubt will many more. I feel very empowered by knowing what foods to eat to keep myself in biochemical balance and at a healthy weight. Wow.  And of course, I'm so blessed to have the means and access to keep my kitchen stocked with those healthy foods.  Speaking of means...

In this horrible economy, I’ve got a job. Now, I could choose to focus on the many and varied BAD things about my job, but the bottom line is that it is, in fact, a JOB. Enough said. I’ve also got a house. Again, I could choose to focus on the fact that it is a termite-ridden pile of disintegrating sticks, but, hey, it’s MY termite-ridden pile of disintegrating sticks, dang it! And it’s on MY tiny bit of land, in a wonderful neighborhood (trust me: again, I’m choosing to AC-centuate the positive when I say that *tee heee*), in a beautiful city, in the greatest country in the world...even though said country is currently circling the drain—but you never know, maybe we’ll get it together before actually getting sucked down the drain, so THAT is what I'm choosing to focus on, on Thanksgiving.

As far as “Black Friday”, a day when many Americans choose to go thing-crazy to what I consider a ridiculous and severely pathological degree, I will instead be with a new friend of mine, whom I met at the dog park, doing something that involves no shopping, no consumerism (gasp!), and which continues the Thanksgiving theme of enjoying the simple, sacred things in life:  we will be taking four dogs (my dog, her two dogs, and a visiting dog she is dog-sitting), to a gorgeous county park called Fort De Soto Park, which has a spectacular dog park and also a dog beach. Instead of a black Friday, we will have a bright Friday, full of shimmering blue-green water, sky, nature and enjoying our “furkids”.  It doesn't get any better than that.

In short, I know we all have troubles, woes, and assorted and sundry losses, sadness and painful challenges in our lives. Yet, no matter how bad things are, surely we can all look around at our beautiful world, take a deep breath, and realize the miracle of being alive, can’t we? I’m grateful for this dazzling world/nature, my mom, my pets (who are like my children—heck, they are my children), my health, and all the gifts I've been given—including challenges and losses, for sometimes they are the greatest gifts of all, even though they sure don’t seem/feel like it when we are experiencing them. I pray that I will be a respectful human being and use all my blessings to do good in this world. I pray these things every day. On Thanksgiving Day, I try to stretch that prayer into the entire day, living my gratitude, appreciation, and intention to be respectful and do good. If I and all of us could stretch that Thanksgiving spirit out even further, into a lifetime of intentionally focusing on being and acting grateful for creation/nature and being a part of it, and being respectful and doing good, think of how we could heal our world.

Carb Monsta Whisperer in the Hizzoouuuse: an update to my last blog entry

I come to you today able to report gratefully that my food sobriety is strong, even after being challenged last week. What’s really both Murphy's Law-worthy and blog-worthy is that, just as I was trying so single-mindedly to shore up my food sobriety on Thursday and Friday after the organic Halloween candy binge of Wednesday, something happened through no choice of my own that undermined my efforts and challenged my biochemical balance/brain chemistry even more.

In retrospect, it wasn't the apocalypse, but at the time, I thought:  "Oh nooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO way, that didn't happen!  That could be the sugary straw that breaks the carb monsta's peacefulness, and here I am doing my best to reassure him by making good choices!  Tell me this didn't happen!"  Well, it did really happen, but to my surprise and great relief, even it didn't break the carb monsta's peacefulness after all.  His peaceful state is a lot stronger and more resilient now than I realized before the events of last week.  I'm not the only one who has changed, whose epigenetic reset button has been pushed by the GenoType Diet, my little carb monsta has changed, too.  I'm a lot stronger in my biochemical balance and we're both a lot calmer and more resilient, and we've developed a mutual respect and healthy, more effective ways to communicate with each other, now that we've gotten to know each other.  Even an accidental two-pronged infusion of "naturally milled organic sugar" on top of the already-blogged-about Halloween candy binge didn't work my carb monsta into a lather, bless him.  What am I on about?  Try labels that look almost identical leading me unknowingly down a sugary path!

Here's what went down:  immediately after work on Thursday (the day after the previously-blogged about candy calamity), I rushed to the health food store and enthusiastically stocked up on fabulous food choices...or so I thought.  Turns out, though, that horror of horrors, I accidentally bought “French Vanilla” yogurt instead of plain, and I ended up making my homemade yogurt-feta salad dressing with that sugar-laden nightmare for two nights running (Thursday and Friday) before I clued in. By then, to my horror, I had already consumed all that additional sugar on top of my previously blogged about episode last Wednesday!  I mean, just as I was starting to relax and believe that I was going to be okay, food sobriety-wise, I got psyched out anew, big time, when I realized what I’d done and proceeded to scrutinize the label, which launched me directly to a horrified and re-scared state without passing “Go” and most assuredly without collecting 200 dollars.  It was now THREE totally atypical infusions of sugar, over three consecutive nights, instead of just one.  And the last two infusions, when I accidentally ate that yogurt, were cane sugar, baby!

In the entire history of my existence, I have never accidentally bought French Vanilla yogurt instead of plain!!! French Vanilla?  Oh, the humanity!  I was so preoccupied, apparently, with selecting the “cream on top” versus the “smoothy and creamy”, that I accidentally wandered into The Vanilla Zone without realizing it. They should have some sort of warning alarm go off! Anyway, so here I made this chi-laden, gorgeous salad for dinner on Thursday, with a mixture of greens, some black grapes, turkey, fresh basil, and what SHOULD have been a kicked-up, fabulous edition of my dressing, complete with organic oregano, garlic, a smidge of lime, olive oil, sea salt, etc., but when I tasted it, I thought: “Something is off—hmmm, I don’t think I like these grapes, I’m going back to the red ones, these black ones are so SWEET and also ODD tasting!” Well, the grapes were wrongly accused! It was the yogurt that was SO sweet, and the “organic natural vanilla flavor” that was, of course, totally out of place in a savory salad dressing and making the entire thing taste downright WEIRD—eeeew!  I didn't realize this until ingesting it AGAIN on Thursday, as both Wednesday and Thursday I had salad for dinner, only on Thursday, I had grape tomatoes in it instead of grapes, so the French Vanilla yogurt in the dressing really stood out clearly in an unpleasant way and there was nothing else even remotely sweet in the salad that could have been the culprit.  It was then that it hit me:  FRENCH VANILLA YOGURT!

Did you know that Stonyfield Farms Organic French Vanilla Yogurt contains a whopping 30 grams of sugar per cup? 30 grams! I was horrified to contemplate that I may have had about half a cup on both Thursday and Friday in my homemade dressing, so let’s estimate that I unwittingly consumed 15 grams of “naturally milled organic sugar” on both of those days, days in which I wanted my diet to be optimal so that I could counter the effects of my organic Halloween candy binge. What are the odds?

Now, I should stop and clear something up for the record right here, in case there are folks reading this who don’t know me from the Blood Type and GenoType Diet community and thus don’t know that I’m NOT—repeat, NOT—neurotic about my diet.*  I am strict on the few things I really need to be strict on (wheat and corn-syrup, to give the two prime examples), plus I also happen to be strict about not consuming any junk ingredients, but other than that, if I eat what we call an "avoid" food for my type here or there in the name of variety and joie de vivre, YAY, so be it.  I wanted to state that because I fear that some reading my last blog and then this one might think: hold on, first she freaks out about eating some organic, corn-syrup-free, all natural, wholesome candy and now she is flipping out anew over organic yogurt? Holy cow, this chick is beyond orthorexic (a pejorative word I hate, as some try to apply it to anyone who follows any diet, even if they happen to be following a healthy, wonderful, abundant diet for very good, healthy reasons...self-appointed "experts" trying to make healthy peeps feel like they have some sort of "disease" really irk me, and anyway if one tries to eat healthy, organic food in this junk-infused food supply, one HAS to seem a little neurotic, yet it is actually the mainstream food supply that is sick, not those of us trying to choose a healthy  alternative diet to it...but I digress, see a previous blog of mine called "My Diet is a Delight, not Deprivation: On Lightening Up and Living a Little for more on that)!  So let me say that NORMALLY, had I accidentally bought a yogurt laden to the gills (not that yogurt has gills, but you get my point) with sugar and consumed some of same for two nights running, I would not be thrilled about it, but I'd think, okay, so I'm out a few bucks for that yogurt, but no big.  While I don't typically eat foods with added sugar, I also don't think the occasional bit of pure sugar, in this case, organic, naturally milled sugar, is going to hurt me.  However, in the CONTEXT of me very atypically sugaring out already last week, and thus really needing to be as optimal as possible in my diet choices for the next few days following said sugaring out, in order to counter it and reinforce my food sobriety/biochemical balance, the fact that instead I bombarded my brain chemistry with yet more SUGAR really freaked me out, I must say.  This is because, as you know if you read my previous blog, I was already scared about getting thrown out of food sobriety, which is indeed an exquisitely delicate balancing act for me.  I was just calming down and realizing that I was okay, when I realized that I'd been unwittingly dosing myself with yet more sugar for two nights running.  Fear factor!

But you know what?  The learning experience/teachable moments just keep on a'comin', as that was last Thursday and Friday, here we are the following Wednesday and, apparently, I'm STILL okay!  The last thing I want to do, as it is very unhealthy for any "addict", is to get cocky and think, WOW, I can push the envelope and get away with it.  So that is NOT the take-home message.  But I am profoundly grateful, amazed and thrilled to learn from the events of last week that I am not only strong in my food sobriety, my state of biochemical balance, I'm stronger than I even realized, AND I'm way more resilient now than I was before having almost two years of doing the GenoType Diet under my belt.  I still have and know the importance of maintaining a healthy humbleness.  At the same time, though, I have a new confidence that I think is also healthy.  I am actually glad that the events of last week happened, as this experience has shown me evidence that I don't need to live with quite so much fear of getting thrown off track.  Homey don't fly off that track as easily as she used to, number one.  Number two, if she does go careening over the edge, she can get back.  Last week showed me that.  It was the first time I got really scared about my food sobriety, my biochemical balance, in almost two years.  The fear is a good thing, it helped me clearly know my priorities and focus on executing the good choices I now know how to make.  But it's also a very good thing to realize now that maybe I don't need to walk around with quite so much fear.  A little is good, but I'm beginning to jettison the rest and, in it's place, a beautiful, welcome new confidence is taking root.

Granted, had I ingested some really potent "avoid" trigger foods for me, such as GMO corn-syrup and/or wheat instead of organic evaporated cane juice, organic tapioca syrup and organic rice syrup (in the Yummy Earth candies), and organic naturally milled sugar (in the yogurt), I very well might have been thrown all the way out of my food sobriety and into the briar patch.  So, again, I'm staying humble, as all I can really conclude from last week is that, even with three straight evenings of consuming added sugars of the wholesome variety (but they are still added sugars and thus a challenge to my even-keel status, as opposed to the more-slowly absorbed natural sugars found in whole fruits and veggies, and the whole grains I eat such as brown basmati rice and the occasional fabu quinoa dish), my food sobriety stayed strong.  We don't know what would happen if I were to rip into a bag of potato chips, down some Doritos, or order me up a big sub sandwich on a wheat sub roll.  And, if I have anything to say about it, we won't ever find out.  What is more likely to happen, though, is that we all, despite our best efforts, will at various and sundry points in time ingest some HIDDEN avoids/reactive/trigger ingredients in food when we go out to eat, or we eat in other social situations, a.k.a., when we ourselves do not prepare our food and know exactly what goes into it.  When my family is in town each summer for a few weeks, I go through this angst, but even through the last two summer visits (during my two summers on the GenoType Diet), I've come sailing through absolutely fine.

I think that, barring me being locked in a fast food restaurant for a week and forced to eat nothing but junk food, I'm going to be okay!  My food sobriety now, to paraphrase a great line from one of my very favorite TV shows of all time, Seinfeld,"is real and it's spectacular!"

* As evidenced by the fact that I'm not even technically (or any other way) supposed to have feta or yogurt on my particular type's diet...yet I do routinely make this dressing which contains feta and plain yogurt...that's how I roll!

Food Sobriety is an Exquisitely Delicate Balancing Act

I gave myself quite a scare last evening.

First, a little history: on November 27th, it will be two years that I’ve been doing stunningly well on the GenoType Diet. It is about so much more than weight loss for me, it is all about the totality of my health, yet weight loss is a very important component of that for me, as I started at 238 pounds. I’m now at about 157 pounds, which is below my original goal of 165, and I’m now trying to hit 148, and then I’ll reassess again. I may be done with the weight loss portion of my journey at that point, as I’ll then be at the tippy-top of what the “experts” (if one considers NIH the experts, as I’m going by their BMI calculator) consider a healthy weight for someone my height. That said, I’m THRILLED to be where I am, 81 pounds lighter than I was at my heaviest, and if I never lose another speck, I can handle that, as long as I don’t gain the weight back.

Gaining the weight back is my not-so-secret terror. I don’t think I will, but I’m scared I will. Intellectually, I know that I’ve come a long way and that I now have the tools I need in terms of knowledge, experience and insight, to not only keep myself on the right track, in a state of what I call “food sobriety” (feeling in balance, steady and centered, with no cravings or desire to eat things that aren't good for me) most of the time, but very importantly also to get myself back on track if I slide off the axis of balance. Emotionally, however, since I'm keenly aware of how easy it is to slip off track, out of food sobriety, and into that dreaded place of imbalance and feeling out of control with food, I have a fear that it could happen and I somehow wouldn’t be able to find my way back to that place of balance. It wouldn’t be the first time that I lost weight, only to gain it all back plus more. This time feels different in so many ways, and I’ve never lost this much weight before, but I’ll say it again: the fear of it all coming back is real and ever-present. I try to be aware of it, and counter it with telling myself it is different this time, I’m different, I’ve learned and grown. I’ve changed. And those self reminders do get through and help, as they ring true. Yet does the fear go away? Never.

I think a little realistic fear, to the tune of knowing that it (slipping off balance, out of food sobriety, and feeling out of control around food) can happen and happen fairly easily, is actually a healthy thing.  I also think, though, that I'm starting to learn something empowering, important, and equally as true:  if and when I do slip out of dietary balance, out of food sobriety, it doesn't have to be for long, and it certainly doesn't have to be permanent!  I can't stop it from ever happening, but I CAN get back in balance, back into food sobriety, fairly quickly and reliably.  This is profoundly empowering for me.  Being not only usually able to prevent slipping out of balance in the first place, but also to get back into balance if it happens, is the key to sustaining my weight loss and health for a lifetime.

Last night, for the first time in almost two full years, I did indeed have a “slip”, a sudden jolt out of balance. I knew it was happening while it was happening, I realized why it was happening, I of course didn’t want it to be happening, yet, in that moment, I had very little if any control over it happening, and that last bit is what scares me so. It was a brilliant reminder of just how delicate being in balance, biochemically, brain-chemistry-wise, truly is for me, even when I’ve been strong in a place of balance for almost two full years. In those two years, not only have I not been ruled by food cravings, which was once a sad reality of my life, I didn’t even have ANY cravings. With one mild exception about a year ago, when I felt shaky for one evening and ate a little bit too much (as with this time, it was around a holiday and I had some sugary trigger foods in the house that I don’t normally have around), I have felt absolutely steady, strong, calm, and in balance. I feel deeply nourished, satisfied, centered, energetic and just generally HEALTHY. Two straight years of balance.  This balance is amazing and was certainly not always the case for me.

I’m exactly like an alcoholic or drug addict in that my “sobriety”, in my case with food, is something I am aware of 24/7, deeply grateful for and appreciative of 24/7, and exquisitely aware 24/7 that I can’t take for granted. I have to protect it, be mindful of it, or it could be shot to hell with “just one drink”, to stick with the alcoholic metaphor. Of course, in my case, it isn’t a drink that could throw me out of food sobriety (although a corn-syrup-laden soda could do the trick, seriously), it is eating a trigger food.

As an important aside, my dad was an alcoholic and virtually his entire side of the family struggles with “the gene”. I myself don’t even drink because I’m too scared to find out for sure if I do or don’t have it. Why play with fire? I know what alcoholism does to an individual and to a family and it isn’t worth it to me to find out if I have the gene. I suspect that I do, as I’m a non-secretor, and Dr. Peter D’Adamo, who wrote the blood type diet (Eat Right for Your Type) and the GenoType Diet books that have been so important to my health, discusses the possible connection between non-secretors and alcoholism in several of his books (see the classic Eat Right for Your Type and also Live Right for Your Type, which goes into further detail on secretor status). When I took the test and learned that I'm a non-secretor, it just affirmed my decision not to drink.

Dr. Christiane Northrup, a brilliant, insightful MD who blends her classic, impressive western medicine training with alternative influences, giving her a wonderfully wise, holistic perspective, talks about how, in her medical practice, she has observed something among her patients: those patients who are children of alcoholics are ALWAYS, without exception, either alcoholics themselves, or they are carbohydrate addicts. When I heard her say that on a PBS special a few years back, I thought, yes, that is so true.  So while I may or may not have inherited the gene for alcoholism (and, by the way, it is on my mom’s side, too--on my dad’s side of the family, it has been striking in its devastating omnipresence, but I have a risk factor for it from both sides), I very strongly believe that I have a genetic sensitivity to carbohydrates, which I believe is related to alcoholism: it could be a variation on that theme, I think.

Bottom line: more than most folks in the general population, I have a very fragile biochemical balance and I’m sensitive to certain trigger foods throwing me out of wack if I ingest them. If I am already out of wack/balance and I eat a trigger food (high-glycemic carbs, basically, particularly those from certain grains or starchy, highly-refined carbs like potato chips), God help me I’m very likely to go “on a bender”. This is why, when well-meaning people at an office party or wherever ask me “Come on, you can’t just have one piece of cake? Just a small one?”, I say, basically, no, I can’t. Because even though cake isn’t my drug of choice, it’s still a drug to me, and one piece would not be one piece. It would be one TRIGGER that sets me off like the gunshot at the start of a horse race. I’d be out of the shoot and on to “harder drugs” (ones I like, such as potato chips and dip), and faster than you can say “obesity”, I’d be completely off the rails and, my great fear is, unable to find my way back.

Wait a minute, you may be thinking, why wouldn’t you be able to find your way back to the main, lighted path? It would be RIGHT THERE if you just went off the thing, you wouldn't be anywhere near far enough away not to be able to clearly see the light and walk back to it, right? Well, yes and no. Yes, if I get off the trail, I could still see where it is and see the way back to it. But no, I might not actually be able to get back to it, because the thing with addicts is: all the knowledge, experience and insight in the world, like I was saying earlier I now possess, can’t really help you much when you are in the actual strong grip of the addiction gone active. In other words: when you most need to pull out your well-equipped tool box is when you are least able to do so. Oh, you want to. You desperately want to. But you can’t. You’re not running the show at that moment, your addiction is. And getting to that point, the point at which something or some confluence of things triggers your addiction to move from the dormant state to the ACTIVE/ON state, is the precise thing that scares me. Once I’m there, it can and historically has taken me as long as years to wrest myself free enough from the strong-arm tactics of my “carb monsta” (as I often refer to my carb addiction), grab the reigns once again and somehow get back on track. By then, historically, I have gained all my weight back plus more, and the damage is done (cue Neil Young). It’s like a bunch of drunk people in a bar tore up the joint and then, in the cold light of day, in comes the bar owner (moi) and has to pay for and clean up the utter mess left in their rampaging wake.

I have such a palpable, ever-present fear that this could happen and it is based on reality, that’s the really scary part: it isn’t illogical. I wish it were. The only thing I have going for me, and it’s a biggie, is that I really have changed.

I really have now internalized all those tools I need in such a situation—namely, in a situation in which my food sobriety is threatened by the carbohydrate addiction getting switched ACTIVE/ON--so that I don’t even have to try to wrest free enough from the carb monsta, should he rise up and assume control, to grab the tool box, I just have to know what I’m doing and put one foot in front of the other. In other words, if I were a computer, I wouldn’t need to install the “Help, Monsta Out Da Cage!” software during all the chaos of said monsta rampaging around the room smashing stuff, all I’d have to do is click on the icon because the program is already installed. This is what I need to remember to help me stay calm about the now blessedly rare times my carb monsta is roused from his usual peaceful, resting state and starts rampaging around the house like he did last night. All I have to do is click the correct program icon, and I will be safely and reliably rebooted. The gratitude I feel with that realization is beyond description.

For a normal person, one without a carbohydrate addiction or whatever you want to call my hypersensitivity to certain foods that can trigger an all out cravings/binge cycle, what actually happened last night wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t the end of the world. It was one relatively minor candy binge. What’s funny is, I’m not even a candy person and I virtually never have candy in my house. Halloween would be the ONLY time I do, and mainstream Halloween candy would NOT be something I would even touch, even if I did go on an eating binge/bender (unless it was a really bad, off the reservation one, and I had nothing but mainstream candy in the house). Indeed I didn’t touch mainstream candy, as I didn’t have mainstream candy. I unfortunately had organic, corn-syrup-free, junk-free candy. I also had several other factors have an unusual convergence that resulted in me suddenly crashing and burning in regard to my ability to make good choices. In other words, I’m human and for the first time in two years, I went a hair crazy and off the rails. And it scared the dickens outta me.

Hopefully, it was a learning experience, it scared me straight, AND, if I really can get right back on track today, which so far I am and I think I can continue to do, it may even be a positive thing in that I will know that, okay, IF I get off track, indeed I CAN get right back on track now, I don’t have to spin out so far that I can’t find my “food sobriety” again for months to years. I don’t have to gain the weight back. I don’t have to lose my balance for any significant length of time. Hopefully, this experience will teach me: if I fall off the balance beam, which even Olympians do, I know where the beam is, it’s right there, for goodness sakes, and I can get right back on. Sounds so simple doesn’t it? So obvious? Yet it has taken me so long to get here. There has been nothing simple or obvious about it for me. That balance beam, once I fall off, is now my singular focus, everything else fades to black. Just get back on the beam, PT, get back on, everything else takes a back seat to that. Taking care of yourself is Priority One, you are Priority One, pay no attention to anything the carb monsta is doing or saying to try to distract you, get. back. on. that. beam. Food sobriety is Job One, period.

Here are the five factors I’ve identified that went into my carb monsta waking up after a good, long, almost-two-year rest and fielding his wild oats last night. Me knowing what those factors are is a sure indicator that indeed I really have changed, I really do have the tools on board to, one, almost always prevent this from happening in the first place, and, two, if it happens, right the ship swiftly. If you struggle with food sobriety, too, maybe one or more of these things will resonate with your experiences and help you know what to be aware of:

1. I was sleep-deprived. My bad. This is a factor I could and should have prevented from happening. I stayed up late on Tuesday, election night, to watch the returns. Late, as in after midnight. Mind you, I have to be at work by 7:30 a.m.. Enough said.

2. I had gone too long between meals. My bad again. So far, I’m two for two in factors that I have the power to neutralize, yet didn’t. So this is a teachable moment for myself in that I need to take away the message, yet again, that I’m human, I have limits, and it is of the utmost importance that I make taking care of myself a priority. I have to be mindful of the basics, and of the truth that I deserve to make taking good care of myself a priority. The simple basics of getting enough sleep, eating right, and exercising, are THE keys to balance and health for me. I have to keep them a top priority at all times. Yesterday, I didn’t arrive home to even start preparing dinner until 6:45 p.m., and I had not eaten anything since about 9:00 a.m. BAD.

3. I didn’t have good food choices ready that were either already prepared to eat or that I could prepare quickly to eat. I cannot emphasize strenuously enough how absolutely vital, how KEY, it is to my diet sobriety for me to keep good food choices at the ready. Since most of my diet is highly perishable, if I don’t get to the store approximately twice per week (which I almost always do), I tend to run out of perishable veggies and fruits. I have tons of frozen veggies and fruits, but I was so overly hungry and tired and, as my mom would phrase it, “far gone” last night, that I wanted something I could eat RIGHT NOW. So I had leftover roasted chicken, which is great, but there were no veggies with it, as I had already eaten them the night before and had planned to add more yesterday and heat the whole thing up for about 45 minutes before eating. That was before I decided instead to take my dog to the dog park directly after work, to carpe some diem in the last waning week of Daylight Savings Time. By the time I got home, there it was 6:45 p.m. and I wasn’t going to wait until 7:30 p.m. to eat, when I had gone since 9:00 a.m. without a bite. Plus...

4. I was feeling a tad under the weather. At the dog park, my throat was feeling sore and I just felt like, whoa, am I coming down with something? Or is this just the change in seasons/pressure systems/whatever? It never dawned on me until I got home that, DUH, what it mostly was (although I do think I’m fighting something off, successfully I hope), was that I was EXHAUSTED and STARVING. That’s why my head was so fuzzy and I felt so run down. Hello: I WAS run down! And I did it to myself by my CHOICES to stay up late Tuesday, to not go shopping earlier in the week, and to not defrost and/or prepare something the night before for last night. To top it all off...

5. Not only did I NOT have the right food choices at the ready, I had some bad food choices RIGHT THERE, in the form of the earlier-blogged-about organic Halloween candy. In fairness to myself, I must state for the record that I almost NEVER have candy, or anything that isn't a good choice for my diet sobriety in my house, not that candy was ever my thing, but it is certainly a trigger if I choose to indulge in it. And there it was:  organic, corn-syrup-free, fruity lollipops and hard candies and there I was with a raw, sore throat, exhausted (which results in seratonin level undoubtedly low and cortisol level undoubtedly elevated--a bad hormonal combo, blood sugar and biochemical balance-wise), fridge bare of veggies or fruit, still hungry as a roasted chicken alone just wasn’t cutting it...so FIRST I had some roasted, shelled, salted pumpkin seeds with a little dark-sesame oil, a dash of lime juice, garlic powder, sea salt and nutritional yeast added. But then I realized, omg, monsta out da cage! I went for the CANDY. And I ate way too much of it. Oh dear.

End of story, except for the good part:

The lessons of this experience are basic, important and wonderful ones.  First of all, I can’t remind myself often enough to do the basics of getting enough sleep, eating right (including the critical importance of both having good, healthy choices in the house at all times and not having trigger foods in the house at any time), and exercising, AND, furthermore, that I deserve to do those things.  I deserve to take good care of myself. Those are the lessons I relearned today, and will no doubt need to remind myself of from time to time, rebooting my priorities as necessary.  The other lesson that I’m learning anew as we speak, is that, HEY: if I do get off track, it doesn’t have to be for long!  It doesn't have to be the end of the world, food sobriety-wise!  I'm human and, while blessedly rare now, there will still be times when I get off track.  The empowering fact is, though, that I CAN reliably turn things around and I CAN do so much faster than I used to!  When the carb monsta stirs, and grabs the reigns, I usually can't stop him at that time, but I can almost always prevent it from happening and on those rare occasions when it happens, I am so grateful to be able to report to you that I've now become the carb monsta whisperer, and I can calm him back down and reclaim the reigns in record time, every time.

So how, specifically, did I calm the carb monsta back down and reclaim the reigns?  The first thing I was able to do once the carb monsta released his grip a smidge--because, obviously, in the throes of the carb monsta grabbing the reigns, I could not stop myself at the time from going for the organic candy and overeating same, as it's so true what they say about addiction being "like making love to a gorilla:  it isn't over 'til the gorilla's done"--was to GO TO BED AT 9:35 P.M. last night. I never usually go to bed that early, so this was a very good, healthy choice that I was grateful I was able to make last night. Then, this morning, I got up and took the few remaining things I did have in the fridge and did a fry-up of sweet potato, onion, and organic beef frankfurter, which I then brought to work to have from my breakfast/lunch combo (otherwise known as “brunch”, which I usually eat sometime between 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., depending). So far, we have getting some much-needed sleep and packing a homemade lunch, as tactics I used as "the carb monsta whisperer" to calm said monsta back down. Next thing I did, even though it was raining during my lunch break today, was to ask my dear co-worker, Kay, to borrow her umbrella, and to WALK ANYWAY. Damn the torpedoes, after last night, I wasn’t about to let a few raindrops stop me from getting some much needed exercise!

So far today, instead of further self-destructing after initially slipping off track, as the old PT would have done, I made better choices. I made choices that are about valuing, respecting and taking good care of myself. So I’m human, so I slipped off track once in almost two years.  That is a pretty great record for someone who is challenged by a somewhat fragile biochemical balance. I know the factors that came together and led to my fall from the balance beam, and I know the absolute priority of getting back on the beam. I also know that I don’t have to spend any time beating myself up for falling off, for not being perfect. I simply need to realize, hey, I’m human, and a pretty damn wonderful one at that. I made some less than ideal choices in this case which contributed to my slip off the balance beam. Sometimes it can happen no matter how ideal my choices are, but in this case, I made some self-destructive choices recently that led to what happened. Okay, again we come back to: I’m human. That doesn’t mean I have to beat myself up over it, which would only continue the self-destructiveness. Instead, I need to reboot. To click my little internal “Monsta out da cage!” icon and go back to square one, back to my home page, where the wallpaper should be: PT, you have to make taking care of yourself a priority, and you deserve to do so. You got off track but it’s okay. Simply reboot and reset your priorities. You’re worth it, and you know exactly what to do.

I remain humble in the knowledge that being thrown off balance, out of my food sobriety, is something that can and no doubt will happen rarely. When it does, though, I don't have to, or want to, try to man-handle the carb monsta anymore. I don't want to crack the whip and scare him back into a cage.  I don't want to be that kind of "trainer"!  Instead, I've taken the time to get to know him.  I've learned to respect him.  I've made friends with him, gained his trust, and all I have to do now when he gets upset is to comfort him, to calm him down. He's not so scary, after all, once you get to know him.  Instead of fighting him, I now try to give him what he needs.  In return, he isn't just merely locked in a cage, pent-up and seething, just looking for any opportunity to break out.  He's not in a cage at all, as he is calm and at peace, and rarely gets riled up enough to make a grab for the reigns anymore.  When he does, I have learned to try to stay calm myself, and simply coax him gently into giving me back the reigns.

Ideal Weight Versus Real Fate

I’ve been accused of being “stuck in the sixties”, but the past six months of my life give new meaning to that phrase! We must travel back in time more than six months, though, to begin this story.

Since Thanksgiving 2008, I have lost 77 pounds. I am now four pounds beneath my original goal. Personally, I feel great and profoundly grateful to be where I am. Yet the alleged “experts” and the dratted BMI calculator* say: lose more weight. My body says: “What ‘chu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?!!! I’m staying right here at 161 and, short of starving me, you can’t make me do any different. You’re not the boss of me!” Yes, my body tends to sport a little bit of a ‘tude sometimes when it says something to me, what can I tell you?

I wasn’t overweight as a child, but I’ve struggled with obesity my entire adult life, and done a lot of yo-yoing, due to following diets that were all wrong for me (if only I knew then what I know now!), which resulted in the inevitable rebound cravings and gaining all the weight back, plus more. Even though I’ve yo-yoed a lot, most of the time, I was just whichever one of the “yo”s is the fat yo. Try as I might (and did), I never managed to get and keep the weight off until now.

I started on Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo’s GenoType Diet on Thanksgiving Day 2008, and reached my goal weight, which was 73 pounds less than where I started, on April 13, 2010. Let’s just put it all out there for the world to see: when I started on The GenoType Diet, I had ballooned up to my fattest weight ever and had been there for approximately three years. I was 238 pounds. 238 pounds and only 5’4.75” tall. Not good, people. But what IS good is that I lost 73 pounds in just under 17 months (precisely 72 weeks/16.5 months, but who’s counting?). My average loss per week over the entire 72 weeks was 1.01 lbs. Folks, that is not too shabby, in fact, it is nothing short of AWESOME, if I do say so myself! For me to sustain an average loss of 1.01 lbs per week for 72 weeks straight is unprecedented in my life. I got down to my goal weight of 165 lbs! And now I’m at 161! That’s the great, continually-amazing-to-me news.

The somewhat frustrating news is that, since reaching my goal on April 13th, my body has put the brakes on any further loss, big time. We are not talking plateau, I’m very familiar with those. I had some longies during the 16.5 month weight loss period, but this is different. Since April 13th, which is just shy of six months ago, I have lost a net total of four—count ‘em, four—pounds, to bring me to 161, where I’ve been hovering. For one brilliant day I was 158 but then back up the scale popped to somewhere between 160 and 162 and that’s where it remains, seemingly no matter what I do. Four pounds in six months, after previously averaging 1.01 lbs per week for the entire 16.5 months/73 lbs I lost to get to my goal. If you listen very carefully, you can actually hear the brakes squealing.

Well, you may be wondering, why are you still trying to lose, anyway, if you already reached your goal? The reason is that I set my original goal very high because I wanted to make it something I could conceivably reach. I didn’t want to set myself up for failure. And when you are 238 pounds, 165 seems very, very far away and impossible (in fact, I set an interim goal of 199 and a date to meet it by, which I did with two weeks to spare). My ultimate goal of 165 was modestly high, yet I knew, if I could just get there, I’d be so much healthier. When I started, I thought: “When I get there, I can decide if I want to try to go further, but whatever happens after reaching 165, I’ll be at peace with it, as long as I can get and stay there. I promise myself now that I won’t get frustrated if I can’t get any lower than that, because that frustration can lead to gaining it all back (been there, done that). I’ll just be so THRILLED if I can even get there.”

Well, when miraculously I got there, I reassessed, as I always had planned to do, and was very enthused and encouraged by my results to try and go further, to try to actually get to my ideal weight. For the first time in DECADES, it seemed like a real possibility! So I set my sights on 135 lbs, which I decided is my ideal weight. Years ago, Weight Watchers (not that I put any stock in them today) said that I should weigh between 126 and 144. 135 is in the middle of that range and I feel that is my ideal...but is it realistic? I thought it was possible, when I decided to forge ahead, but in the almost six months since reaching my goal of 165, it’s been tough to even drop a net total of four pounds. The take-home message from my body seems to be: “You’re done. This is as good as it gets, be grateful that you made it here and that you are healthy at 161 lbs. Now your job is to sustain this for a lifetime.” Okay, fine, thought I, if this is it, this is it, remember what you promised yourself about being at peace once you reached 165. I decided to ask my doctor about it, since I had a check-up scheduled, but I really thought she’d be thrilled with where I am, and I would take that as the official seal of approval to declare myself done with the weight loss phase of my journey. No such luck.

I had my annual check-up last week and the doctor said, very matter of factly, lose more weight. WHAT? I looked at her as if she had just instructed me to bring her the broomstick of the wicked witch. Tell me I’m done! Nope, lose more, said she, even when I politely reminded her that last year she said my goal of 165 was “fine”. Well, now I’m 160 (according to her scale, 161 per the one I have been using all along at work) and she’s telling me I have to lose more. Mind you, I stupidly opened up this discussion by asking her. My bad. WHY did I ask her? She is all of about 110 pounds, max, soaking wet. What does she know, truly, about losing a massive amount of weight and sustaining it? That last part is the key, that’s what the work has really been about for me: learning what diet and exercise I can live with happily for the rest of my life. As I’ve blogged about before, my diet is about abundance, not deprivation. In order to lose any more weight, I very much fear that I might have to switch into deprivation gear and that never can last. A deprivation diet puts you in danger of cravings setting in, your brain chemistry getting out of balance, and you getting off kilter and gaining every speck of weight you lost back, plus more. Been there, done that. Got the extra-large T-shirt. No thank you! I’d rather remain a scant 13 pounds overweight (The BMI calculator says I have to get down to AT LEAST 148 in order to be in the “normal” range) for the rest of my life than to mess with success, throw my body out of balance, and gain 77 lbs back! I have yo-yoed all my adult life and I don’t want to yo no mo’! I can’t afford it, not in any way, shape or form. Where I am is, like I said, a miracle in my life and if I go no lower, I go no lower.

I’ve been trying! I’ve been walking an hour per day, eating my optimal diet, and a four pound loss in almost six months is the net result of all that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that I reached my long-elusive goal, and even more thrilled that I am now four pounds BELOW it and holding. That is nothing short of a miracle in my life. Yet I must admit that, much as I promised myself from Day One back on Thanksgiving 2008 that, if I reached my goal, I would NOT get frustrated if I couldn’t get further (as frustration is dangerous and can—and HAS in the past for me—lead to gaining all the weight back), I come to you today LIVE...and at least a tad frustrated.

So, here’s the plan: because of my blasted primary care doctor, the blasted BMI calculator* and my blasted memory of what Weight Watchers told me years ago I should weigh, for the next few months, I will continue to try to lose weight. My revised goal is 148, I’m letting go of 135. Like I said, the BMI says, if I reach 148, my weight is in the “normal” range, the healthy range. I’ll take healthy any day, I don’t need ideal, no matter what the dag-nabbed doctor says--not that she even gave me a number—she just said lose more weight, and that was in the context of a visit in which she was singularly dismissive of every single question I asked her about anything, so I'm really disgusted with, and disappointed in, this doctor (my kingdom for a respectful, collaborative primary care doctor!), but I digress.  The relevant point is:  I'm not sure how much weight, no pun intended, I should give to what she says about anything, but since virtually all of the "experts" seem to be in agreement that I need to lose more, I will amp up my efforts, fearful as I am of tweaking anything (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!). I know from long experience how much harder it is to get BACK to a place of biochemical balance once you get off kilter versus STAYING IN BALANCE once you are there. I am loathe to change ANYTHING about my wonderful, abundant diet that has kept me cravings-free, satisfied, healthy and in balance for 22 months—almost two years now. That said, I’ve thought long and hard and I GUESS I could cut out a LITTLE of the fat I add to things. I do kinda sorta use a LOT of olive oil and organic mayo (the latter of which is not even allowed on my diet, but ANYWAY, moving along…). And I GUESS I could make my portion sizes a LITTLE smaller. As long as I ensure that I get enough high-quality protein in each meal and that I continue to eat the variety of chi-laden, health-bestowing foods I typically eat, I should be fine. So, as of today, color my efforts amped up.

If, by February 1, 2011, I have still not gotten out of the blasted 160’s (mind you, I'm trying to reach my new goal of 148 by that date, but if I'm not at least out of the 160's and making steady progress by then, no matter how slow...), you can color me defiantly and blissfully done (with the weight loss portion of my journey—the maintaining/sustaining portion will be a lifetime thing for me). And, mark my words, I will be completely at peace about that, no matter what anyone has to say about it! Some of us are just a little bigger and that’s okay, as long as we’re healthy. Per the NIH BMI Calculator*, I am only 13 pounds above the top of the “normal” range for me anyway. 13 pounds! That is a hell of a lot better than being 90 pounds above it, which is what I was at my fattest. I had a BMI of 39.9 then. As in “your risk of death is severe.” As in “Obesity, Class II”, just a fraction of a point below “Morbid Obesity”. Morbid, as in “you’re dead”. So it is all relative! I’ll take my current, merely “overweight”, BMI of 27.0, if that’s as low as she goes!!! Besides, during the same check-up last week at which the doctor told me yes, you need to lose more weight, I also learned that my blood work numbers are fantastic. For example, my HDL cholesterol is 91, in the protective range, thank you very much. In fact, an HDL of 91 is kind of in the “unheard of” range. So get off my case, "experts"! I weigh what I weigh.

I’ve learned something on this journey: respect my body. If, despite my best efforts (and my best efforts are pretty dang good, if I do say so myself), my body continues consistently to tell me, in its gentle yet unbudging way, “We’re done, this is as low as I go, short of starvation”, then we’re done. I’m a member of a “thrifty” genotype, per the naturopathic doctor who wrote the diet I follow, and that means that my body is extraordinarily good at storing fat. It thinks it is protecting me, God love it and bless it. It thinks there is a famine around every corner. It is genetically hard-wired to think this and it is not going to change. No power of man or nature is going to change it, and certainly it doesn’t give a hoot about the BMI or some 110-pound MD saying “lose more weight”. In fact, the only reason it reluctantly gave in to my efforts and dropped the huge amount of weight it dropped is because, instead of fighting it and stressing it with deprivation diets, I worked with it and convinced it, through eating foods that are deeply nourishing to it and giving it plenty of stress-busting and muscle-strengthening exercise, that it is OKAY to release some fat—a lot of fat. My body responded beautifully to this diet and now it just may be telling me, enough is enough, this is where you have to trust me and listen to me, and I say we are done. And, if that is the case, as my mom often profoundly exclaims at various and sundry times in life: “Thank God we’re this far!”

You all are my witnesses: I’m giving it until February 1. If, by that date, I am not at LEAST out of the 160’s, then I’ll know it is the 160’s I’m meant to stay in and it will be time to RELAX and drink in the beautiful view from this vista, which I have literally hiked long and resolutely to reach. It’s gloriously good to be here. If I can go farther, fabulous. If not, right here is a beautiful place to plant my flag and build my LEED-certified, solar A-frame, permanent residence, no matter what anyone says about better sites down the trail apiece. I know a good place when I’m in one.

* Link: NIH BMI calculator

Go With Nature Instead of Under the Knife to Reach And Sustain a Healthy Weight

I had a special request for this blog topic by a wonderful woman named Kate, whom I really respect from the on-line diet community I’m a long-time member of (www.dadamo.com). I had started a discussion on that forum on the topic and she said, quote, "Dude, please write about this on your blog! Your thoughts are both accurate and hilarious." Well, I hope accurate and hilarious will translate into enlightening for at least one obese person out there who needs help--real help, not radical, violent surgeries, pills that suppress and go against nature instead of support it and harmonize with it, and harmful fad diets. I say below that I wish I could shout this from the rooftops. Well, I realize that this blog is my cyber-rooftop and I pray, in this case—actually pray, not merely hope, because I’ve been there and I know what a despairing place obese people can be in—that this blog will reach someone who needs it. There is help out there for you that is so simple and so natural. Even though I’ve now lost 76 lbs on the GenoType Diet and I’m no longer physically fat, I’m still a “fat person” in the sense that I know I could gain it back in a split second if I don’t take good care to acknowledge that this is a lifetime challenge for me and that I need to make choices daily that respect that fact and employ the knowledge, tools and experience that I am blessed to have now to stay at a healthy weight. The wonderful news is that those choices, once you know about them, are joyful, satisfying, balancing and sustainable. That said, I’m now climbing up onto my peppermint rooftop...

When it comes to the diet I follow, The GenoType Diet (GTD) by naturopathic doctor Peter J. D’Adamo, I'm in "wish I could shout it from the rooftops and make every man, woman and child on planet earth understand" mode again. I usually don't get this way anymore. I used to want to make everyone understand how great the Blood Type Diet (BTD, the first D’Adamo diet I was on) is, how much it could help them, blah blah blah. But several years into it, I realized that, as the saying goes, "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." You can't make anyone see anything or do anything that they aren't ready to see or do.

So, yes, I tell people about the BTD and GTD, even urge some to try it, but that's it. If they aren't game, I don't lose sleep over it, or I try not to. I just think to myself, “Fine: more good food/chi for me! Enjoy your NutraSweet.”

But every once in a while...

Like this week. I kept seeing teasers for a show on ABC called “Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do”, about a “radical” (you can say that again!!!) new procedure to lose weight. Folks, brace yourselves: it is BRAIN SURGERY.

Sweet agave nectar, would you just try this "radical", "unproven" diet FIRST, before you let them CUT INTO YOUR BRAIN?!!!

Oh, but many retort, the BTD and GTD were not researched in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. They’re not "scientific"! No, better to have a scientific MD in a white coat saw open my head and attach electrodes to my brain. That isn't risky, like some unproven, unresearched diet based on organic, whole foods.

I want to scream.

These poor, desperate, morbidly obese people. I know what that despair feels like. I’ve been there. I just wish I could get to each and every one of them, tell them about the BTD and GTD, and make them try it before doing anything so radical as brain surgery. The simple little BTD and GTD are as powerful--MORE!!!--than any electrodes. They will stop your cravings, they will get your system into balance and normalize your weight.

What the woman in that ABC story needs is one of the Dr. D’Adamo diets (preferably the GTD, in her case, because if I don’t miss my mark, she is a fellow member of my genotype, a.k.a., a “Gatherer”—see link below re the GenoType Diet), not brain surgery! To wit (from ABC's site, linked below, about this story):

"The Brain and Food

Bashir takes a closer look at the brain's mysterious relationship with food and its impact on America's obesity epidemic. Go inside the brain of an obese person and see how the brain responds to fattening foods like chocolate cake.

Bashir reports on a story of an obese woman who has tried everything -- from diets to bariatric surgery -- to lose weight and manage her compulsion to eat all the time. She turns to brain surgery -- the most radical weight loss procedure ever attempted."

Mind you, I'm not blaming the person who is choosing this surgery, I'm just saying I wish I could get to her--get to them all--and teach them about Dr D's diets, before they hurt themselves like this.

Like I said, I usually don't work myself up anymore over people who need the BTD/GTD yet aren't on it. I tell them about it, and then, usually, I just say to myself: horse, water, up to it to drink. But in this case, the horse doesn't even know there's a pool of water for her. I wish I could at least lead all the horses to water. Up to them if they drink or not, but what breaks my heart are the desperately thirsty ones who don't even know about water. They try all these other things and still their thirst is not quenched. When all they need is the quenching water of the B or GTD.

Sad!

What I witnessed on that show was SO MUCH WORSE THAN I EVEN IMAGINED from the teasers. So much worse.

Upshot? This poor, long-suffering fellow member of my Gatherer genotype had "tried everything" (or so she thought--she never tried the GTD, poor thing), and she proceeded to rattle off a list of the most horrifying protocols imaginable, such as fen-phen, bariatric surgery, etc. Nothing worked. So now she was ready to be wheeled in for experimental brain surgery, wherein they drilled holes "ten centimeters into her brain from both sides" (!) to implant electrodes on the THEORY that MAYBE these could impact her cravings, which she was driven by. Her drug of choice, by the way, was Pepsi.

Well, post-electrodes, she was better on the Pepsi--and here is a VERY SAD PART to moi, although it was just a passing comment she made and no one other than a BTDer or GTDer would have probably even picked up on the significance: She said to someone she was shopping with, who was worried that a liter, or whatever it was she had of something among her groceries, was the dreaded Pepsi, quote "You thought it was Pepsi, didn't you? Don't worry, it's Crystal Light." Crystal Light! In other words: post-brain-drilling and electrode implanting, this poor, sweet-natured woman has learned NOTHING about NUTRITION. She is still ingesting toxic junk that TRIGGERS CRAVINGS and that keeps you addicted and out of balance, not to mention unhealthy. She has lost no weight in a year since the surgery, but is happy that she is no longer ruled by cravings. She has them, but they aren't as powerful.

That is the SHORT VERSION, but my strong thing is: God, the GenoType Diet could have "fixed" her. Cravings GONE, weight OFF, nutritional knowledge, IN, daily exercise, TAKING PLACE, balance IN THE HIZZZOUSE, and all without drilling into her brain and implanting electrodes!

This world has gone crazy. In a sad way.

And those "doctors" who did this! OMG, they were like mad scientists, like Frankenstein! They were just having some big fun with their willing guinea pig.

When I watched her "doctors", I kept thinking: "This is like when they used to do lobotomies on people, just to see if it would "work". All for the advancement of SCIENCE, you see (read: their wallets and/or fame in their field)."

I was out of control re food cravings driving me, when I first went on the BTD in 1997. And it took many years, even AFTER that watershed change, and many "slip and falls", lots of fortitude and faith (because I knew the BTD was the right track, I just still had my struggles staying on said track at times), and then finally getting on the GTD and putting it all together--everything I'd learned--to get to where I can now honestly and gratefully report that, not only am I not ruled by cravings, I don't have cravings. Maybe I get what normal people (i.e., non-Gatherers) would consider a "craving", but that is only because they don't know what us thrifty-genotype-sporting Gatherers mean by "cravings". I mean, sure, I get hankerings for certain things. Right now, I'm on a watermelon jag like you wouldn't believe. But that is DIFFERENT. Take a memo: a hankering is not a craving. It is not driving to the supermarket in the driving rain at 9:00 p.m. to clear the shelves of potato chips and sour cream dip, when you DON'T WANT TO BE DOING THAT...yet you do it anyway, like a drug addict drawn to her drug of choice.

The woman in that story could have achieved what she wanted in a natural, healthy way, but she didn't know it, and doesn't know it, poor soul. That's what kills me, so many folks simply don't know. I wish everyone knew.

True, it is more work in some ways to make lifestyle changes than to just pop a pill or even undergo a radical surgery. I have to walk for at least half an hour per day and I try for an hour, or I fear gaining my weight back. And there are certain foods that I have to avoid like the plague which are ubiquitous in our society, so in that sense, it is challenging to avoid them (not because I miss them AT ALL, but because they are in everything) and eating out, in particular, is a challenge. But I’ve learned to go the homemade route and I love it. I work full-time and am busy, yet I find the “slow food” lifestyle to actually be quite a timesaver and far more relaxing than constantly being “on the hunt” for take-out food. There is more of a learning curve, more time, more effort, required to go the natural route, but the pay-off is priceless: once you learn which foods are your friends and keep you cravings-free, satisfied, healthy, energized and in balance, YOU KNOW. No one can ever take that powerful knowledge from you. It, along with proper exercising for your type, can get you to a healthy weight and keep you there for life, with nary a craving, and always feeling very well-nourished and vital.

I implore any obese person out there who is in despair, as someone who has been there in spades: don’t be afraid to try this “radical” diet, versus what to me is the far more radical route of pills or surgeries. You can get there with whole foods, it is all about learning which ones to choose, which ones harmonize with your genetic makeup. This relationship between your individual hardwiring and specific foods is called nutrigenomics, and it is the key to helping you.  The power to change your situation, to reach and sustain a healthy weight, comes not from fighting nature, but from working with nature. It comes not from fighting, suppressing and attacking your body and brain chemistry, but from understanding and befriending it, eliminating the foods which throw it out of wack, and giving it the foods that put it into balance.

Informational Links:

Blood Type Diet

GenoType Diet

Nightline Prime - Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do

My Diet is a Delight, not Deprivation: On Lightening Up and Living a Little

As most of my vast legion of 10 blog followers already know, yet I have not blogged about, I joyously follow a certain diet, called The GenoType Diet, by Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo. It, and it’s predecessor, The Blood Type Diet, have helped me tremendously and I’ve been meaning to blog about my diet journey, but haven’t had the requisite combination of internet access and time. I plan to do it at some point, but meanwhile I now want to talk about something specific regarding my diet, so I hope readers who are unfamiliar with the diet and/or with me and my personal diet journey will be able to understand what I’m talking about anyway. You don’t have to be on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s diets to get what I’m going to talk about; it really applies to any healthy, joyous diet that one chooses to adhere to. Here goes:

There is something that many folks, who aren’t on one of Dr. D’Adamo’s highly individualized diets, don’t get. Well-meaning people are forever gently encouraging me to have a piece of birthday cake, or “go off my diet” in some other way. I’m talking about all the poor folk in this world who have not experienced the wonder of what the Dr. D’Adamo diets (The Blood Type Diet, The GenoType Diet, or SWAMI) do for a body. They associate “diet” and “dieting” with deprivation and rigidity. In fact, there is an active discussion thread on Dr. D’Adamo’s message board (see link to his site under my “Mint-Worthy Links”) right now on “orthorexia”, and perhaps, along that sort of vein, some folks mistakenly think anyone who consistently sticks to any certain diet (such as I do) is being too rigid and thus not enjoying life. I mean, what other explanation could there be for turning down birthday cake at office party after office party? Obviously I am in serious need of living a little! But they don’t get it! I don’t want to go off my diet! And it isn’t due to rigidity, it is due to loving being strong, deeply nourished, satisfied, in balance, steady and healthy. What they don’t get is: this diet is abundance. It is going off it that is deprivation to me!

This is the reverse of most diets. Most diets are associated with giving up things you love. But on the GenoType Diet, I love all the foods I’m encouraged to eat. I naturally gravitate to them, which makes sense in light of the diet’s theory that I was designed to thrive on these foods. When you are eating as nature intended for you to eat, you are satisfied, nourished and in balance. Therefore, you don’t crave junk food “quick fixes” for your blood sugar, serotonin level, etc., as you might (and I do) when you are out of balance, deprived in some way(s) and hungry for something(s). Why on earth would I want to throw myself out of this precious place of balance that I’ve worked so hard to reach? It took me years and much trial and error to figure out how to get here, and I LOVE being here, so why would I want to jettison myself out of this long-elusive Brigadoon? I wouldn’t, I don’t! So thanks but no thanks, I honestly don’t want that piece of birthday cake, with the inflammatory wheat and the blood-sugar-spiking-then-crashing corn syrup. I don’t want the hydrogenated transfats and the artificial flavorings and colorings. It is not a “treat” for me in any way. My treat is every naturally colorful, life-filled, gorgeous, delicious, satisfying bite of healthy food that I eat in my diet every day! And no, the fact that I’m highly compliant on my diet does not mean that I, by definition, have “orthorexia."  I’m not rigidly compliant on the diet. I’m joyously compliant on the diet. The foods that are recommended for me are a joy to eat, and I also joyously and with much gusto eat some things that are not recommended for me, such as some dairy products, some organic mayo (without mayo, what is the point of life, pray tell?), etc. But the “biggies”, the avoids that I’ve learned through experience are truly dangerous to me being in balance, steady, strong and not ruled by carbohydrate cravings, those I am very, very strict about avoiding. Is this due to “orthorexia”, i.e., being overly rigid on a diet? Hell no, it is due to having worked my butt off (literally) to jettison the cravings and feel steady and in balance, and, oh, by the way, to lose 76 pounds, and to wanting to continue being good to myself, to continue empowering myself and powering myself towards better and better health. Choosing health is a healthy impulse! And it’s a joyous, delicious, satisfying impulse. Again, here’s what a lot of people don’t understand, as they associate consistent compliance on any “diet” as equaling “deprivation”: this diet, and any diet that is truly healthy for the particular individual following it, is not deprivation, it is abundance, it is joy, it is strength, it is balance, it is healthy.  If your diet makes you feel deprived, it is not the right diet for you.  The right diet will feel right, you will be satisfied and glad and every meal will be a celebration of life.

My family arrives this week from out of state, as they do every summer, for a visit which this year will be of one week’s duration. While it is a sacred, wonderful blessing to have and to see family, it is also stressful for me on several levels, one major one being that we eat out virtually every meal while they're here and I end up in all manner of wheat and corn syrup dispensaries that I never normally frequent. Even though I’m actually not strict with dietary compliance in many ways, the two things that I am extremely compliant on are wheat and corn. And, unfortunately, those are the exact two items that our society is hell bent on sneaking into every food possible, especially in restaurants, so one almost HAS to be rigid, or “orthorexic”, to use that inherently pejorative term, in order to avoid what I, for one, consider to be toxic substances for me. Yet is it some sort of diagnosable disease to choose not to poison oneself? Is it some sort of rigid obsessiveness to avoid known toxins that set in motion a chain of biochemical events in some of our bodies that are akin to what happens if an alcoholic takes that first drink? No one in this day and age would think of urging an alcoholic to “lighten up” and “just have one drink, one drink won’t kill you!” Well, no, one drink won’t kill an alcoholic and one piece of cake, or bag of chips, or whatever the “trigger” food may be won’t kill a food addict, either...but it could and often DOES set in motion a chain of biochemical events that ultimately will kill us, not to be too dramatic about it. It’s just the truth: one drink can and predictably often DOES trigger an alcoholic to drink more and throw them out of sobriety into active alcoholism. Serious stuff. Well it is the exact same thing for a “food addict”, or someone with sensitivities to certain foods, a “carb addict”, or whatever you want to call people like me. So is it “orthorexic”, namely, pathological, to make the healthy choice to avoid something that is poisonous to you, that threatens your "food sobriety"? I submit to you that, by definition, choosing health is NOT a pathology!

I’m a child of an alcoholic family, I know what alcoholism is, up close and personal. I know what addiction is. And I know what my response to certain foods is and what my patterns are, as I’ve now had many years of observing, experiencing and dismaying over my own particular patterns, and I can tell you that a “food addict” is no different from an alcoholic or drug addict, at least, many of us aren’t. Many of us are hard-wired to be biochemically sensitive to certain foods and those certain foods (like wheat and corn syrup) will throw us out of balance and into a whole world of being controlled by carb cravings. And those trigger foods are ubiquitous in our food supply, so is it “obsessive”, if after having learned through many years of hard-won experience, what works and what can threaten that for you, to strictly avoid those threatening trigger foods if you know the serious problems they will cause you, or is it a healthy thing? Answer Key: it is a very, very healthy thing, and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything different!

Why would I EVER willingly choose to threaten my “food sobriety”—the aforementioned place of balance and health—any more than an alcoholic or drug addict would choose to “lighten up” and have just one drink, or just one nostalgic fling with their drug of choice? It’s not worth it!!! The old gray mare (a.k.a., a bag of potato chips and some sour cream dip), she ain’t what she used to be. The thrill is gone! I choose health. Choosing health is the way I “lighten up”. Choosing health is the way I live a little.