I definitely need to do this. YEARS of pain is right, building.

And it worked for you? Then I am going to try it too, if you say it worked.

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I’ve been reading a fair whack about inflammation lately and how it is the foundation of lots of disease – particularly relevant to me as I have inflammation in shoulder muscles causing severe pain. Apparently 52% of each meal needs to be raw … cooked food sets up an automatic inflammatory reaction, but raw food doesn’t. So if you eat half raw it kind of fools the body into thinking the rest of the meal will be raw too and the inflammatory process doesn’t set up.

I find it tough to cook living alone – I prefer to cook for two And the dog and cat just don’t count! I’m also the queen of one pot meals … really have developed a romance with my crockpot (aka slow cooker) lately … of course it means identical meals for several nights but after a long day at work I can’t be bothered to do much more than heat something

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Yea, I eat 3 meals and 2 snacks at least….and I am the queen of the one-dish meal…and I cook ahead as well…so actually don’t cook every day. I cook my oat groats a week at a time and just microwave them warm in the mornings…saves time. Then I have developed some “milk shakes” that I make in the blender with 2 cups of skim milk and some flavorings that are filling and low calorie and help hydrate me as well. Then have a nice dinner with 4 ounces of my grass fed beef, veggies and some low salt bread or crackers. Then snacks of fruit and nuts. Sometimes I eat meat and veggies for lunch too, or tuna, but I try not to eat too much tuna because of mercury….My meat is actually only about 1% fat and I have trimmed off any visible fat, so actually am eating very low fat, and high fiber as I add flax meal to oat groats in the morning, and make some muffins sometimes with the oat groats and oat flower, with flax meal added in.

Occasionally I will make a lower calorie cake like for a special occasion, like my son’s B-day, but try to stay away from too much white flour….use whole grain corn meal I grind myself and make corn bread, keep eggs to a minimum but what I use are organic free range duck eggs. Lots of green beans, green peas, carrots, peppers, some beans and rice, and tomatoes and garlic in everything. LOL

Have some great casserole meals that are low calorie, low sodium, and even have no sodium baking powder and no sodium baking soda, and all kinds of spices that are NO sodium. Have the sodium down to 500-750 most days and do most cooking from scratch. Use crock pot a lot too, especially in the summer and am working on making different breads with whole wheat and oat flours (in a machine) and keeping sodium low on that too.

Am finding that a good diet, along with exercise is upping my moods as well, that and getting outside more in the sun light. I’ve always tended to have seasonal affect disorder (winter time depression) and sunlight makes a big difference in how I feel emotionally. My doctor who is a really young sweet, and very smart doctor who works in the clinic I worked in when I was doing rural health care (I’m a retired nurse practitioner) is amazed at how I ahve become so OCD about my health. She said she had never seen a “primary care provider who was a compliant patient before!” LOL But you know, I’ve preached good nutrition and self care all my life to others, now it is time for me to PRACTICE IT if I want to keep my health into my “golden years” and so it is do it or die!

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Yeah, your taste buds adjust to the strength and flavour of food. Before I was vegetarian, I never understood why vegetarians make faces and point at their plate and say “there was meat in that dish!!!”. But once you adapt to a diet where you don’t eat meat anymore and then after a long while end up having some bbq meat sauce on your salad, it’s like the taste buds explode. Meat flavour is very strong. That’s why at first vegetarian meals seem so bland. They are if you’re going for soy-meat, a spoon of veggies and a big spoon of carbs. The diet works well though, if you make mixed plates of litte pieces of different tastes of it: a cheese with a strong flavour, different fruits, with different varieties of salads, and some burned nuts, a good vineagre… and it becomes a feast.

I imagine it’s the same for saltless food.

The 5 meals a day ends up being creative too, and I actually end up using all the food I have in the fridge. Open the fridge and look what is in there, grab a small piece of frozen meat (not even able to see what it is) and just mix it up.

But yesterday and today it was spagetti, using the vegetables I had. Very satisfying. Couldn’t eat much of it though. Felt stuffed after a couple of bites.

Another advantage with break up (or falling in love)… natural diet. Lost 4 kgs of the 15 I gained since September.

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My chronic bronchitis is not apparent any more, I seldom cough and having had even a cold since I quit smoking…and lowered the stress levels. I’ve only been on the really good diet since October, but that is 7 months now, so my weight loss is SLOW for sure, and I’ve been at a stand still on wt loss for aobut 6 or 8 weeks now, so need to increase the exercise more and decrease the food more.

I’ve had some medication changes and that may be why I am craving carbs more….and giving in…but it is fruits and nuts mostly, but still more calories than I need to lose weight with, so got to cut it out.

The sodium was the biggie, and I CRAVED salt and ate way too much salt my entire life, now foods taste much better without the salt masking the real flavors and even my son is getting used to much much less salt in his foods as I cook the same for him as for me most of the time and he has to add salt if he wants more, he is adding much less and getting to like the food as well.

I felt deprived when I first started the low sodium diet, but now am seeing it as a challenge to recreate my favorite meals low sodium, or even essentially salt free! Now I don’t feel “deprived” but see it as being CREATIVE instead. Just a change of attitude.

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Used to be vegetarian for years. But doing 5 meals a day on a bodyweight workout program, made that too hard to make sure I’d get the needed protein. So, after a decade, I’m eating meat again.

I should put the smokes down again. I was so proud of myself over it. And actually it was pretty easy. I did smoke a puff of pot once in a while when the puffing urge became too much. And I puffed from 1 cigar spread across a month time. It was stupid. I wanted to buy myself a cigar to puff from a little on my birthday. Bt they didn’t have a good large one, so ended up buying a pack of small cigars. So, while I haven’t touched a ciggie yet, I’m smoking small cigars now. Ugh.

I need to quit them soon again, to have good lungs for the Andes in another 2 months! I quit in September because my doctor told me I was at the starting stage of chronic bronchitis.

I guess, I picked the habbit up again, because I felt everything was failing around me: fiance, the knee, the extreme budgeting….

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Well, I’m 64, be 65 later this year, and all my old injuries have arthritis an you know how that goes, but Am getting as much exercise as these old bones will tolerate, to keep up bone strength and muscle tone, which is good for someone my age, actually. I had good physical heredity so that helps of course. Just packed on the pounds “comfort eating”—-mowing grass with a push mower, 1 hour and 20 minutes yesterday and will do that much again today, pulling brush from tree trimming, and walking quite a bit….standing more and sitting less…eating my food as unprocessed as possible, oat groats, etc. and lots and lots of low calorie veggies; carrots, green beans, etc.

Relearning about cooking —doing it without salt—and reading labels to find “hidden salt” in things and eliminating those things.
Cooking pretty much from “scratch” and eating as many things that are “natural” as possible. I raise my own meat so it is grass fed rather than corn fed and therefore higher in Omegas and lower in the saturated fats than commercial meats.

Put those ciggies down GIRL!!!!! You can do it! If necessary get you some nicotine replacement and use it for a short time. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I finally quit. I still get the urges from time to time….as much now as when I first quit…but I resist them for ME and they soon pass. Should have done it decades ago. But glad that I did finally quit. My chronic cough also almost immediately quit too and lung function tests showed I actually have pretty good lung function for someone who is a) this old and b) a big time smoker, so got lucky with my genetics again.

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I had started on this 15 minute exercise program with that kind of healthy sufficient eating pattern in September when I stopped smoking, intending to keep my body toned so that it would be easier to surf again when I would get the chance. Alas, I suspect I may have overdone the high-knee exercises. As a result, by November, my knee was hurting so much I couldn’t do a thing anymore, and going from doctor to doctor for tests and screenings to find out what was wrong with it. All the while, I couldn’t risk anything. I tried once, and ended up hurting even more the next day and just dropping through my knee. I had gained of course a lot of weight, certainly when I started to comfort eat (first time in my life) because I missed him so much. And I picked up smoking again (grrrrrr) 3 weeks ago I was finally scope operated on it. Turned out a little bit of my cartilege was damaged, and was shaved off. Now doing kinesitherapy and allowed to start exercise again, cautiously. I need to get into shape again by July 5, cause that’s when I’ll be taking a group of adventure tourists to a 3 week trip into Pery, and have to do the Inca Trail and a canyon 3-day trip as well.

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I have lost over 30 pounds since last October when I started this….and need to lose another 30…I have cut down my sodium level to well below what the American Heart Association recommends for everyone (1,500 mg) and my blood pressure is great, my feet don’t swell any more and I feel much much MUCH better.

Darwin’s mom is right that muscle burns calories just “laying there” even when you sleep, so getting our muscles (and bones) healthy is important and exercise is the only way to do that.

I don’t eat a low carb diet, I eat a balanced one, with lots of fruits and veggies and very little concentrated sugars of any kind. Low fat and low cholesterol and of course low sodium, and high fiber and enough oat grain that I’m about to whinney.

I stopped smoking about two years ago, have cut down on coffee and tea and other things that contain caffine — not on purpose but just doesn’t appeal to me any more….

Sleeping better and feeling better…btw, exercise also calms the soul and helps decrease depression and anxiety.

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We don’t really need extra multi-vitamins, because if you eat healthy and varied, you will get all that you need.

An easy rule, without needing to resort to sites with calories or weighing your food:
- 2 cups of chopped veggies
- 1 cup of carbohydrates (bread, pasta, rice, …)
- meat, poultry or fish no bigger than the palm of your hand

Eat 5 times a day a meal, every 3 hours, of the above portions, and not only will you be getting all the vitamins and nutricients you need. You will not feel hungry (though eating less carbs might be tough), and because of that your body will start to think over time that it would be better to burn food faster, rather than just slower to preserve food for when you starve yourself. In other words, your metabolism will rise.

And as you get more muscle over time, that will help to raise your metabolism as well, because muscles basically are energy burners, even if you’re sleeping.

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