Doing Better Already

2 units Humalog, Perfect lunch consisting of half a fresh tomato, baked yam, ginger, ryse, baked chicken, sunflower seeds, followed by me carrying my big office chair down the steps from my office, across the engineering room, out the door outside, down the stairs to the front of the building, and back (for exercise, and me explaining myself to no one), and 20 min. later, my sugar is 100. I have found some of the best exercise is to chop wood, especially if the axis or direction of fibers of the wood is vertical, such as a standing tree trunk. Similarly, and perhaps even better, carrying a fairly heavy object out in front of you with arms extended and walking somewhere with it, lifting it and putting it down here and there and so on. Anything that makes you really exert with your core does this. Big office chairs are good because you can face them and lift them by their arms. But I do not wish to leave the impression that my office chair has arm rests. I always remove them first thing when I get a new chair. Nor do I wish to leave the impression that the route I described was far. It was quite short and just enough to get me breathing.

Specific Goals

Back on the wagon, I have specific targets. They are never to eat in a meal more than 4 units will allow and to stay under 150 at all times. I have started going barefoot as much as possible. I spent a couple of days already, so I am over the nerve wracking pick your way and try to keep your balance phase. It is really feeling great. I spent most of my Summer months until the age of 29 going barefoot 96.5% of the time. I even went to Summer semester classes such at the University of Utah. I believe one cannot be fully healthy without going barefoot enough that it feels great to do so. I am also starting to exercise a little bit for the first time since December, after being so busy getting started in a new job. Which is also why I have been careless with my sugar control. Just a little careless - generally good control except letting it spike once a day for a short time, and often eating too much. Today was near perfect sugar-wise. My feet can really tell the difference - especially when I am barefoot. By the way, I also got a new glucometer. It only cost $15 and $11 for 50 strips. It is the Prodigy Pocket. I really like having it and look forward to less expense-inhibited testing when I need it. I will test one of every batch of strips I get against my LifeScan OneTouch Ultra, which I have had 15 years and is still extremely accurate. My first batch of Prodigy strips are consistently reading about 23 points higher than actual, according to the very reliable biological meter I have inside which is backed up by the very reliable Ultra.

What I Had for Breakfast

This was very good. All cold: Ryse, sweet corn out of the can, light red kidney (my favorite) beans out of the can, cayenne pepper sprinkled on top. I also want to say although I have believed in everything I have said here all through it, the business and changes in my life sort of had me in a fog about it, and I have for the past 1-2 years pretty much overeating every day, focusing on sugar level control with regard to how much I ate, and not focusing on avoiding overeating in and of itself. But last night and from time to time, I remember again and eat only enough and wow, the power and youthful energy in which it results! I am certain that it non-linearly produces far less free radicals when we eat just enough. This is why it has been found that people live much longer who eat less even than the normal accepted amount. I gotta get back up and be that eat-quittin' machine again! And of course, if you read back in old posts, there is a long list of maladies I had that just disappeared when I first stopped overeating. Things like dandruff, acne, joint inflammation, asthma, ..... I might as well mention also that I intend to try the following tuna spread: tuna, chopped pickles, avocado. I will let you know how well it works. I think I will throw some iceberg into the mix as well. And possibly ginger, but mainly, I think the dill pickle will work for this.

Bought a cucumber yesterday, thinking it was zucchini. When I had my pan going and realized it was a cuuk, I saved it with the diced fresh tomatoes to throw on top after cooking was done. I peeled and sliced it and did so. I never peel my cuuks but I was trying to make this kid-friendly. I used a pat of butter and 3 pats of coconut oil and fried up a good portion of sliced fresh rutabaga, then added onions, red, yellow and orange sweet peppers, boiled whole wheat egg noodles, a grated carrot, 3 stalks of celery sliced up, romaine, the cuuk and tomato, and a good bit of salt. Fried up about a lb of ground turkey and got it brown, then threw it all together. I would normally have added more to the mix but was trying to make it kid-friendly. I intended to throw grated mozzarella on top but as usual I forgot. That rutabaga is real sweet and chinese-food-teki in there; better than I expected. It tasted super even without any ginger. But today, eating it cold for lunch, I had some ginger on the side. It really was good, although I still have a little problem with the slightly obnoxious and dead-ish flavor of whole-wheat pasta. But it's only slight. The net effect was superb. The vegetables were out of this world the way they smelled cooking up, and the sweet peppers were extra wonderful-smelling before they started to cook. Often, the vegetables I COOK are a little toward the rotten end. Not this time!

Ahead of the Game

Just imagine what it would do to have apples, carrot juice, raw sunflower seeds (maybe even sprouted), brewer's yeast and maybe a little ryse as a typical breakfast in your life, in place of cold cereal & cooked milk, or some kind of bagel or bread thing and maybe coffee...... Knowing that the vitamins they throw into a box of Total are no more soluable and free-radical-free than a bottle of Centrum, just read the label on a can of nutritional brewer's yeast and imagine the difference. Or if you don't have much imagination, ask yourself, hmm, would I like to look and feel like the average 26-year-old, or the average 60-year-old, when I am 30-50 years old? You decide. And remember, in my opinion, it's a lot more about nourishing your body, providing it with the things it needs daily, than about avoiding cancer and the harmful substances. More about provision, less about abstinence.

Ruts of Unsat S'toots

Here's how it is. If you could eat just what you want for a meal, you would be perfectly satisfied after the proper amount was consumed. You would have no interest, let alone temptation, in nibbling something more. If you are like me, you often do not have available the things you really want, so you eat something as similar to it as you can find. This fills your satisfaction scale bar to some level below 100%. Let's say for illustration, you want some beets and corn and can only find a tomato. You eat the tomato, and again, for the sake of illustration, let's say that does something for you and satisfies 34% of your needs. You now must do something to fill or kill the other 66%, for which there are many imaginable options, but the most common thing done by us Americans, who have plenty of artificiality available to hand, is to eat some sort of dessert or snacky thing until we are so sick and/or tired of eating that we finally stop. In such a case, we have not satisfied our need, we have merely stunned our appetite along with incapacitating the rest of our system. This appetite stun can be of varying degrees pleasant or uncomfortable, but in any case, it shuts up our appetite, but does not satisfy it. In this process, we stun or stress other system functions so that we do not feel well. This discomfort can range from merely feeling stuffed to feeling heartburn or nausea. Or if diabetic, total electrified smashdown. In any case, it always lowers our energy level. We all get into a rut. We have our personal list of grocery store conveniences with acceptable value/harmful and value/lacking ratios. We bring them home along with the things that some of us old-fashioned folk still intend to cook, but often eat them first or instead of. My thing has always been peanuts, peanut butter and nuts. It's what I eat when I want nuts and when I want something else that isn't there. My wife thinks of deli sandwiches and tacos. Peanut butter, deli and tacos are what are prepared on an average day, in place of what we really want. On occasion, there are other things besides, such as pasta, cold cereal or bagels. Rut Substitutes can be unhealthy things like sugar puffs or ramen out of a bag, or something more real such as peanut butter or a baked potato. Either way, they only get you up the bar so far. You need more real meals. My solution is to raise the priority of meal planning and preparation. Steal time from other duties and amusements and put more imagination and work into meal planning and preparation. Learn to 'fix' more than 6 different suppers, and embellish them too. Continually add variety and skill in your cooking. And if you're going to have tacos, put on or in something that makes it a real meal. How about radishes, for one? But at least you put some thought and work in, and that's what will count. The more you try, the quick and easier it will become to consistently cook real food. Raise the (sat) bar! And just think - whatever time you sacrifice to make a real meal will come back to you ten-fold in the form of increased energy and efficiency. And all will be sat.

Found Green Chilis !

Still no green chilis in sight near Pittsburgh, but I did find a bottled concoction that contained some that really worked! Frontera All-Natural Guacamole Mix, a guacamole mix to which you just add avacado. Very very good. Only thing advertising green chilis in the Pittsburgh area that I have tried that tasted good or in which I could taste green chilis at all. That includes Chi Chi's and every other brand of bottled or canned green chilis.

The best green chili thing I ever tasted was a 7-11 frozen burrito. They were about 15 in. long and came in a green plastic wrapper and cost about $1.29. Or was it under a dollar? This was in the 70s of course. They don't sell 'em now. Not here.

Lynn Wilson's green chili burritos were also great.

I'm not advocating frozen junk food here, I'm just sayin' I have only found genuine green chili cookin' in a few certain places. None here.

By the way, how many of you have tried fresh ginger root on your hamburger or hoagie yet? I'm just sittin' hjere waitin' for America to discover ginger. Right now, they think of ginger bread when you suggest ginger. That's like thinking of a strange cult when you say 'Mormon,' or Love Canal, NY when you say 'Garden of Eden.'

Yes, I meant to include the 'j.'