Health Food

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Usually, I have oatmeal for breakfast.  But, since I have blackberries growing at one end of the garden and raspberries at the other, Cheerios seemed like a better blank canvas for that.  The blueberries are from the store, our blueberries over the years got smaller and smaller until they disappeared entirely.  Strange.  Anyway, I topped it off with almond milk;  finally got around to trying it, and it's pretty tasty.  I tried rice milk, I just couldn't do it.  Yuck.

So yeah, I'm trying to eat healthy.  I am NOT on a diet.  That sounds too restrictive, and besides people just seem so gleeful the first time you decide to cheat and have an ice cream cone;  "oh, is THAT on your diet?"  It's like everyone who's not on a diet is just waiting for you to fail.  Which of course you will.  But I had to do something, my cholesterol is higher than it should be and my blood pressure is borderline.  Time to fix it now, it's only going to get worse as I get older.  I cut WAY down on salt last year, all but eliminating it, and to tell you the truth I didn't miss it.  Honestly, I'm not a person who HAS to have this or can't live without that.  If it weren't for my husband, who doesn't like his diet messed with, I could go vegan tomorrow and never look back.  But I'm not going to cook two meals, it's just not going to happen.

The first thing I learned when I decided to eat healthy is, it's not possible.  Really. Get something that's low fat?  It's got more sugar.  Low carb?  Higher sodium.  What the hell!!!  The Boy, who is something of an expert in this stuff since that's his day job, agreed.  You have to pick what you want to be healthy about, he said.  So, this is going to be like work. Ok.

The first thing I'm doing is figuring out what things are an issue with my food.  Here's a list of possibilities;

• Fat, carbs, sodium, sugar.  The big 4.
• Hormones and god-knows-what in my meat.  Not to mention the horrors of the meat industry.  Watch "Food, Inc." on Netflix.
• Pesticides.  Ick.
• High fructose corn syrup.
• Trans fats, whatever those are.  I just know they're bad.
• The lining inside of cans, for heaven's sake.  Who knew? \
• Gluten.  I don't think I have a problem with gluten, ate it all my life.  But I'm hearing that if you get OFF gluten, you start to realize all the problems you never knew you were having.  Maybe I don't need to deal with that just yet.
• Processed flour and non-whole-grain products.
• Lactose.  Again, never had a problem.  But I'm hearing that sooner or later everyone becomes lactose-intolerant, it's just a matter of time.  I don't know if that's true, Sparky is in her 80s and still drinks milk with no problem.  The Boy says that those of us who can drink milk are actually the anomalies; the lactose intolerant are the normal ones.

Fortunately for me, I've decided to improve my food intake at a time when fresh veggies are in season.  The first thing I did was add more fresh veggies to our diet.  We both like vegetables, so that was easy.  Plus the Richmond Farmer's Market is right down the road.

Tomorrow I'll tell you the small changes I've made so far; and surprisingly enough, they seem to be working; I've lost 8 pounds in the last month.