Some cantaloupe, strawberries, a banana, a few blackberries and a bit of honey = delish!
Isn't that just a gloriously yummy sight??
SO good! <3
Nothing better in summer than a medley of nature's bounty dancing together in your bowl! lol
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Still holding ...
Well mamaged to get in for a weigh in - and though I am sad a little to say that I have not lost anything I am gleeful to say that I have not GAINED anything so I am HAPPY!
So it looks like I've plateaued for now at 436.3 pounds. But better than gaining at the very least.
So it looks like I've plateaued for now at 436.3 pounds. But better than gaining at the very least.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Retraining the body and mind
Eating paleo has really opened my mind to a lot of surprising things about myself.
One of them has been how deeply rooted marketing ploys are in regard to manipulating me to make choices that really when you look at them objectively, don't make a ton of sense.
We are trained by our parents, our society, and maybe most subversively of all, by marketing, much more than I think any of us are consciously aware of until we step outside of our neat little boxes and really take a cold hard look at the bottom line facts of what we are doing when we make certain choices.
One of the things that really brought this to my attention was water. I HATED water. LOATHED it. it was NEVER an option as a beverage as far as I was concerned. Water, ew. There were a lot of actors that went into the disliking water thing (major one being that tap water in my area is DISGUSTING to drink, and battled and filtered water really didn't come out until late 90's (I think) as a mainstream thing, so I really never had easy access to water that wasn't revolting to smell or taste or have visual appeal ( we have extremely hard water here with high mineral content, ice is WHITE, water from the tap will have white minerals swirling at the bottom, etc), during my younger formative adult ages.
In other words, it was easy to just not consider water as a beverage option, before the advent of bottled or filtered water (softened water doesn't count, in high mineral, hard water it results in an oily taste and doesn't really get all the smell).
So I actually had to teach myself to like water. Which was REALLY REALLY hard for me, but I've been actively working on retraining my body to want and like water for the last 4-5 years. It took me like 2 years of constant work to make drinking water a natural choice for me. It might not seem like a big deal to anyone, but, I started working fast food at 14, so I had UNLIMITED FREE soda from like 1984-2000. Soda and coffee and milk and sometimes juice were pretty much the ONLY beverages I ever drank during those times, and most of the time it was soda. I'm not counting the booze - because though I was drinking obscene amounts of booze ( I used to drink a lot during my party years, in other words), I never in my head actually saw it as a daily beverage for quenching thirst or hydration (thank goodness LOL).
From 2000-2005ish - my work offered sodas for 20 cents. So though it wasn't free - it was cheap and it promoted my soda drinking habit. Easy and free or cheap soda access in an area where tap water is revolting pretty much means you are going to always choose the soda.
About 2005 I realized the scam behind sodas and the sneaky way it had of reprogramming the mind and body to use it as a source of hydration, even though it's very chemical make-up creates the very thirst that you are drinking the stuff to quench.
Basically, the body gets thirsty, and we are convinced by a billion different things to decide a soda sounds good to alleviate the thirst. So we drink it, but the thing about soda is, it is designed, created, and by it's very nature will only serve to CREATE a thirst. Soda won't ever actually make you less thirsty, but will actually only make you MORE thirsty. Thus making you want more "something", ie soda, to stop the thirst. Lovely little vicious circle for the consumer, no?
Marketing has been working very hard since we were kids (I was born in 1970, so our generation was one fo the first to have been babysat by the tv and to be exposed by merciless marketers to get us to get our parents to spend their dollars on products that we didn't actually need. Something that would have NEVER worked for the generations that survived the depression to raise their kids, but OUR generation ... well, we were ripe fodder for the picking, and pick they did.
For example, marketing has been working very hard to drill into our American collective subconscious that sodas are refreshing and thirst-quenching. Why? Because it's their product. Because if they can convince us to buy the product, they get our money to earn their living. They aren't doing this for OUR benefit, that is a fallacy, they do this to promote THEIR interest and to gain a profit for their company by selling a product.
And the number one way that you sell a product, is to create the concept that there is a NEED for it. that the consumer will be benefited by purchasing the item. That it will improve their lives, increase the fun, make them sexier, give them energy, etc etc, all these intangible qualities to sell the tangible product.
The hard bottom line reality is we get thirsty because it is the body's self defense against dehydration. Period.
The indisputable facts are these: we are 80% water. When we evaporate it (sweating), lose it (via spit, blood, bodily fluids, urine), or use it (digestion, blood viscosity, keeping parts moist that need to be moist, like the brain, lungs, mucous membranes, etc. etc.), our body's ONLY way to send the message to our brains that we have used up the "free water" in our bodies to keep us running (ie alive, lol) is to create a feeling of "thirst". This is done so that the brain will then act accordingly to resolve the issue, i.e., supply water to increase the ":free water" in our system which in turn, will rehydrate us, and at that point, our body will then turn off the thirst signal as there is no longer any need for more water.
At the bottom core, THAT is what thirst really is on a biological and fundamental level, thirst is really just the body's "water level measuring device." When we are thirsty it simply means we need to "put more water in." Soda is basically fake water, as in there is water in it yes, but there is ALLL this other crap in there to disguise that it is water, and that stuff makes us want to drink more because it is not .....wait for it .... water!
So the body never really turn off the thirst signal, because though you are putting in a bunch of liquid, it not actually water. It has salt and sugar or worse, corn syrup, tons of calories and all sorts of things that will actually change how your body processes the water in the soda, thus in effect largely negating it's ability to effectively rehydrate the body, and therefore turn off that thirst signal.
Once I wrapped my brain around that - I got so disgusted about the volumes of that crap that I was consuming that I set about to retrain my body to accept and to learn to listen and hear what and when it was asking for what it REALLY wanted again. Not soda, but water. It took about 2 years for that to take root. 2 years of wanting soda and making myself drink water instead before I finally started rewiring my brain and body. I haven't actually tasted a soda since like last november. And to be honest - I now no longer even have an urge to, I just naturally prefer water now.
I think so much of what is wrong with the American diet these days is a culmination of many different influences, politics, economics, and misinformation.
but if we use our brains, and break it all down to the REAL basic building blocks that grant us continued existence as living beings ... it actually is fairly simple and quite elegant. It's sport of sad really that we have so many generations upon generations of hype that in effect hides what we truly require in order to bee as healthy as possible with the least amount of fuss and bother.
One of them has been how deeply rooted marketing ploys are in regard to manipulating me to make choices that really when you look at them objectively, don't make a ton of sense.
We are trained by our parents, our society, and maybe most subversively of all, by marketing, much more than I think any of us are consciously aware of until we step outside of our neat little boxes and really take a cold hard look at the bottom line facts of what we are doing when we make certain choices.
One of the things that really brought this to my attention was water. I HATED water. LOATHED it. it was NEVER an option as a beverage as far as I was concerned. Water, ew. There were a lot of actors that went into the disliking water thing (major one being that tap water in my area is DISGUSTING to drink, and battled and filtered water really didn't come out until late 90's (I think) as a mainstream thing, so I really never had easy access to water that wasn't revolting to smell or taste or have visual appeal ( we have extremely hard water here with high mineral content, ice is WHITE, water from the tap will have white minerals swirling at the bottom, etc), during my younger formative adult ages.
In other words, it was easy to just not consider water as a beverage option, before the advent of bottled or filtered water (softened water doesn't count, in high mineral, hard water it results in an oily taste and doesn't really get all the smell).
So I actually had to teach myself to like water. Which was REALLY REALLY hard for me, but I've been actively working on retraining my body to want and like water for the last 4-5 years. It took me like 2 years of constant work to make drinking water a natural choice for me. It might not seem like a big deal to anyone, but, I started working fast food at 14, so I had UNLIMITED FREE soda from like 1984-2000. Soda and coffee and milk and sometimes juice were pretty much the ONLY beverages I ever drank during those times, and most of the time it was soda. I'm not counting the booze - because though I was drinking obscene amounts of booze ( I used to drink a lot during my party years, in other words), I never in my head actually saw it as a daily beverage for quenching thirst or hydration (thank goodness LOL).
From 2000-2005ish - my work offered sodas for 20 cents. So though it wasn't free - it was cheap and it promoted my soda drinking habit. Easy and free or cheap soda access in an area where tap water is revolting pretty much means you are going to always choose the soda.
About 2005 I realized the scam behind sodas and the sneaky way it had of reprogramming the mind and body to use it as a source of hydration, even though it's very chemical make-up creates the very thirst that you are drinking the stuff to quench.
Basically, the body gets thirsty, and we are convinced by a billion different things to decide a soda sounds good to alleviate the thirst. So we drink it, but the thing about soda is, it is designed, created, and by it's very nature will only serve to CREATE a thirst. Soda won't ever actually make you less thirsty, but will actually only make you MORE thirsty. Thus making you want more "something", ie soda, to stop the thirst. Lovely little vicious circle for the consumer, no?
Marketing has been working very hard since we were kids (I was born in 1970, so our generation was one fo the first to have been babysat by the tv and to be exposed by merciless marketers to get us to get our parents to spend their dollars on products that we didn't actually need. Something that would have NEVER worked for the generations that survived the depression to raise their kids, but OUR generation ... well, we were ripe fodder for the picking, and pick they did.
For example, marketing has been working very hard to drill into our American collective subconscious that sodas are refreshing and thirst-quenching. Why? Because it's their product. Because if they can convince us to buy the product, they get our money to earn their living. They aren't doing this for OUR benefit, that is a fallacy, they do this to promote THEIR interest and to gain a profit for their company by selling a product.
And the number one way that you sell a product, is to create the concept that there is a NEED for it. that the consumer will be benefited by purchasing the item. That it will improve their lives, increase the fun, make them sexier, give them energy, etc etc, all these intangible qualities to sell the tangible product.
The hard bottom line reality is we get thirsty because it is the body's self defense against dehydration. Period.
The indisputable facts are these: we are 80% water. When we evaporate it (sweating), lose it (via spit, blood, bodily fluids, urine), or use it (digestion, blood viscosity, keeping parts moist that need to be moist, like the brain, lungs, mucous membranes, etc. etc.), our body's ONLY way to send the message to our brains that we have used up the "free water" in our bodies to keep us running (ie alive, lol) is to create a feeling of "thirst". This is done so that the brain will then act accordingly to resolve the issue, i.e., supply water to increase the ":free water" in our system which in turn, will rehydrate us, and at that point, our body will then turn off the thirst signal as there is no longer any need for more water.
At the bottom core, THAT is what thirst really is on a biological and fundamental level, thirst is really just the body's "water level measuring device." When we are thirsty it simply means we need to "put more water in." Soda is basically fake water, as in there is water in it yes, but there is ALLL this other crap in there to disguise that it is water, and that stuff makes us want to drink more because it is not .....wait for it .... water!
So the body never really turn off the thirst signal, because though you are putting in a bunch of liquid, it not actually water. It has salt and sugar or worse, corn syrup, tons of calories and all sorts of things that will actually change how your body processes the water in the soda, thus in effect largely negating it's ability to effectively rehydrate the body, and therefore turn off that thirst signal.
Once I wrapped my brain around that - I got so disgusted about the volumes of that crap that I was consuming that I set about to retrain my body to accept and to learn to listen and hear what and when it was asking for what it REALLY wanted again. Not soda, but water. It took about 2 years for that to take root. 2 years of wanting soda and making myself drink water instead before I finally started rewiring my brain and body. I haven't actually tasted a soda since like last november. And to be honest - I now no longer even have an urge to, I just naturally prefer water now.
I think so much of what is wrong with the American diet these days is a culmination of many different influences, politics, economics, and misinformation.
but if we use our brains, and break it all down to the REAL basic building blocks that grant us continued existence as living beings ... it actually is fairly simple and quite elegant. It's sport of sad really that we have so many generations upon generations of hype that in effect hides what we truly require in order to bee as healthy as possible with the least amount of fuss and bother.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Still No Paleo Cookies :cry:
Okay so like I ordered a dozen Paleo Cookies from Dick Stevens back in May and they have STILL not arrived, despite numerous phone calls and emails.
They KEEP throwing me the most lame reason WHY the cookies were delayed (translation: never sent), because there was a shortage of grass fed beef due to such a HIGH demand for their jerky.
::blink:: Seriously? This is what they have told me four times now, that the reason why my order of cookies has not been sent is because they ran out of grass-fed beef to make their jerky with due to so many people ordering.
And I keep asking them to explain HOW in the WORLD a shortage of BEEF would affect an order of COOKIES from being shipped, and surprise, surprise ... all I get is complete silence.
Normally I would demand a refund by this point, but I think instead, I will demand that they honor the order - I've been told several times now that I will received a 20% increase on the prior order, so that means to me that is a 40% increase, which I had expressed clearly to them via emails and phone calls that was expecting them to honor.
I'm a firm believer about accurate reviews and allowing an establishment many chances to either correct a mistake or to show that is juts how they do business and therefore should be avoided.
I ordered the cookies on May 25, 2010. It is now July 5, 2010. I've been promised by the Vice President himself via the phone and in emails that he himself will personally ship out my order the next day and supply me with a tracking number so that I can confirm that an order was actually ever sent.
To date - no shipping confirmation or tracking number or order of cookies have arrived. And so thus begins the chronicling of how this company decides to handle this situation so that if anyone else is going through this as well, well, they are not alone.
Sometimes, it's just the principle of the thing. It is my hope that they will resolve this, as I've been extremely understanding and patient - well and truly above and beyond the call of duty as a consumer and paying customer.
Soooo is anyone else out there getting the same song and dance from this company? Has ANYONE actually received anything that they have paid for?? I'd sure love to know!
They KEEP throwing me the most lame reason WHY the cookies were delayed (translation: never sent), because there was a shortage of grass fed beef due to such a HIGH demand for their jerky.
::blink:: Seriously? This is what they have told me four times now, that the reason why my order of cookies has not been sent is because they ran out of grass-fed beef to make their jerky with due to so many people ordering.
And I keep asking them to explain HOW in the WORLD a shortage of BEEF would affect an order of COOKIES from being shipped, and surprise, surprise ... all I get is complete silence.
Normally I would demand a refund by this point, but I think instead, I will demand that they honor the order - I've been told several times now that I will received a 20% increase on the prior order, so that means to me that is a 40% increase, which I had expressed clearly to them via emails and phone calls that was expecting them to honor.
I'm a firm believer about accurate reviews and allowing an establishment many chances to either correct a mistake or to show that is juts how they do business and therefore should be avoided.
I ordered the cookies on May 25, 2010. It is now July 5, 2010. I've been promised by the Vice President himself via the phone and in emails that he himself will personally ship out my order the next day and supply me with a tracking number so that I can confirm that an order was actually ever sent.
To date - no shipping confirmation or tracking number or order of cookies have arrived. And so thus begins the chronicling of how this company decides to handle this situation so that if anyone else is going through this as well, well, they are not alone.
Sometimes, it's just the principle of the thing. It is my hope that they will resolve this, as I've been extremely understanding and patient - well and truly above and beyond the call of duty as a consumer and paying customer.
Soooo is anyone else out there getting the same song and dance from this company? Has ANYONE actually received anything that they have paid for?? I'd sure love to know!
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