I have been reading books about what I should and should not eat for years; and for the most part, I have eaten the things that are good for me. That is beginning to be more and more difficult as they are finding more and more things that I should eat that I simply do not like and more and more things I should not eat that I dearly love. Sad, isn't it? I believe that is probably true about most of us, with the exception of those who simply eat because they should and therefore eat what they should eat and are done with it. No real joy of the food, no great feeling of exhilaration from baking something simply sinfully delicious, no letting their mouths fill with the abundance of tastes in a beautifully prepared roast of beef with the accompanying rich au jus with the vegetables gleaming in their unctuous gorgeousness.
And there I am, watching Dr. Oz teach us not to eat beef, much less with the potatoes that have roasted in the lovely beef fat that roasted out of that piece of meat. Perfectly delicious food; and it is not healthful, it is not good for us to eat. And is there anything more delicious than fresh home baked bread, straight from the oven, sliced and slathered with sweet cream butter? That should be on our do-not-eat list also. What else? If you, as did I, grew up in this part of Texas before fast food took over, good food meant my mother's chicken and dumplings, home made dumplings; or a supper of real fried chicken; black eyed peas from the back yard garden; along with sliced tomatoes that tasted like real tomatoes; mashed potatoes, mashed with cream, swimming in butter; fresh corn on the cob.
And church suppers with tables filled with those wonderful home baked desserts: tall coconut cakes, lemon meringue pies, fudgy chocolate pies, and cakes covered with seven minute frosting. Oh, yum. And not one bite of that wonderful food could make the list of things these doctors endorse in their books. Not one of those things is really good for the human body. And that is so sad. Those were wonderfully good things to eat that we now know are NOT good for us. We understand that and we have heard every reason why they aren't. Many people today never ate them and so, do not miss them. I did and I do.
But I am seventy years old and I do not intend to be a sickly old person. I do intend to be healthy; and so I must eat those things that promote good health and not eat those things that destroy good health. Over and again, I have read that I must learn a new way of eating, an eating plan for the rest of my life. I absolutely cannot eat correctly for a while and then return to those foods of my childhood. I must leave them in my memory. And so because I do intend to have a healthy seventh decade, I have devised a plan for eating that allows me to have a few of those things I love while allowing me to continue to lose weight and build a healthy body for my future.
Because I do journal every bite and it is there on the Internet for anyone to see and know what I eat, I shall continue to eat those things that are good for me to eat. To begin, I shall follow Dr. Oz's very good idea that dieters should limit 2 of their 3 daily meals to 2 or 2 choices only, seriously eating the same things over and over and over. That will be my breakfast and lunch every day. He also tells us (all of us, not just dieters) to eat small meals in order to add snacks into our daily meal plan. The idea is not to allow ourselves ever to be hungry, but to eat those things which satisfy and give enough energy to keep going and going. That makes very good sense.
Dinner, which I must begin to eat far earlier than I have since before I married 50 years ago, will be meatless one or two days a week. That is nothing new. David and I did that for years. When I can afford fish, that will be another night. Beef and chicken I will eat one or two nights a week each. You know, affording beef only four times a month means that I can eat good beef, either better cuts or better beef, beef that hasn't been injected with hormones or antibiotics. That would be very good for me. And that would be delicious as I know how to cook good beef. And since all of the research shows that four ounces of meat is all the protein that one needs at the time, it won't even be that expensive. This is OK.
Of course, as always before, I will eat vegetables and fruit. And because I love both and because one-half cup is a serving, five servings is not that difficult to have in a day. I can do that. Over and over, the doctors tell us to eat those vegetables related to cabbage as they contain all of the good things we need to prevent and to fight cancer, to furnish the necessary vitamins for good skin and good bones and all of those important things.
And those veggies? Both red and white/green cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and all of those strange cabbages there in the produce aisle. They tell us to have some every day and I don't know anyone who does that; but I do have something from that group several times a week. Of course, I prefer my cabbage and cauliflower raw and that isn't as good for our health as is the lightly cooked; but I get something from all those raw veggies. And you know, I believe that cauliflower may well be the only white food of which those doctors all approve!
And something I have known forever, but now am beginning to understand more about are the colorful foods. I have always known that we should eat colorful vegetables and fruit; but only in the recent years have we understood that those colors are brought about by the different nutrients in each, the antioxidants, the phytochemicals, the polyphenols, all of those things that we are learning influence our health. So many of those can be found only in the food that comes in a particular color and if we do not eat that food, we may well miss something which we may not understand, but we still need. And so I am trying to rotate those things I love the most and eat as many different colors a week as I can! Never before thought In would choose food by color.
And now, about those things I mentioned that I love so much that we are not supposed to eat, I have made a decision to eat as correctly as I can most of the time and from time to time to eat one of those things I love and miss. If I constantly aim to eat only those things I should, surely I will be healthy enough that my body can deal with a day of my own home baked sweet rolls or another day that includes fried chicken, real fried chicken and not boneless, skinless chicken breasts oven baked and bland. That is my intent and thus far, I have been somewhat successful. I am still slowly and continually losing weight (I did explain that one in an earlier post about food). And the numbers that come from the medical testing are good ones.
I do intend for those numbers to be better, but I shall do that while occasionally eating something not so good for me, yet so very good for me. And every bite will be recorded at
1 comment:
I am on the bandwagon also, but I do love all my desserts! Miss them. I love poulty so that is good, but love my beef every once in awhile. Potatos. Cannot give up!
Post a Comment