I sat in the back of the room. I always sit at the back of the room. It’s kind of a strategic. As the saying goes, ”If I could be a fly on the wall.” Well, sitting in the back of the room, off in the corner, is probably as close as you’ll ever get to being the ‘fly-on-the-wall.’
It was my Tai Chi Chuan school’s annual membership meeting. Since they are nonprofit, they are required by law to have one. No one likes them. There is no enthusiasm. There was even a goal to break last year’s record to get it all done in under an hour. We missed it by a couple of minutes. Oh well, maybe next year.
About a half-hour in, past all the financial ramblings and exclamations of promotional events they did, we got to the section where all the top Echelon teaching students told about classes and education they were doing outside of the school themselves. I knew this went on in the past, but this year there were several more added to the bunch.
So I sat there and listened to all these people talk about how great Chi-Chi is for your health, I realized they were missing out on one key ingredient. I have been taking Tai Chi for the past two years and never really figured it out until now.
Tai Chi is sold to most of the public as a health benefit. It’s similar to yoga. Most of the marketing they go through competes with either yoga or other martial arts. Tai Chi is considered a martial art, but they sell it for its health benefits. They all had different styles and types of programs they sold. Everyone talked about the different ways Tai Chi could improve your health. Not one of them brought up healthy eating, which is what I believe to be the most essential part of healthy living. Even in our weekly classes, nothing is ever taught about healthy eating.
I agree Tai Chi is excellent. Since I’ve started my balance has improved, my flexibility has improved, and I feel much better than I did years ago.
But the most significant change I’ve ever made in my life has always been because of my diet, not my exercise. I think people promoting these different exercise regimes sell it as a revolutionary way to improve your life. Nothing is further from the truth. Diet will fix problems exercise never will.
So, since I’m all about rebooting my life, I should include what I’m doing with my diet. You won’t be able to enjoy life after getting out of your job if you are sick or ailing.
So let’s dig in I’ll tell you exactly what I am doing with diet.
Sugar is bad.
I’m not a big fan of sugar. I grew up with it in the seventies. The only scare we had was too much sugar rotted your teeth. But, as long as you brush twice a day, you’d be fine. Thirty years later everyone blames sugar for all the top chronic health problems from obesity to heart disease. It’s probably even considered the root cause of the degradation of modern society. All that from that sweet little crystal we’d sprinkle on nasty cereal when mom wasn’t looking.
I’m not a scientist or doctor, so I can’t argue the science on why it’s all bad. All I know is when I don’t eat sugar; I feel great. I limit my intake of sugar to about one doughnut once a month or so. The problem with sugar is it is everywhere in processed foods. Food companies have come up with even more deadly forms now.
No longer is sugar that puritan white form mom uses to bake with; it’s most sinister for showing up on the back of packaging labels as High Fructose Corn Syrup. Names are so deceiving. Food companies have come up with a deadly product and plastered a cute name on it for us to fall in love with.
‘High Fructose’ shows us we are getting the biggest bang for our buck. We are going to get the possibly highest amount of fructose possible, whatever fructose is. Ah, never mind, as long as we get the most possible. ‘Corn’, who doesn’t love corn? Just the name sends our mind tethering off into thoughts of summertime BBQs or street fairs, chewing on a cob slathered in salt and butter. ‘Syrup’, this just sends me back to the days at grandma’s house eating pancakes by the stack while old Misses Butterworth stared at me the whole time.
Squish all those words together, and they might as well spell cyanide.
Stay clear of as much sugar and sugar-infested products as you can.
Vegetables are good.
Everyone knows this already, no big shocker here. We found this out at a young age when mom stood over us and made us finish out Brussels sprouts. Never mind they had gone cold before the long drawn-out refusal to eat them came to ahead. Microwaves weren’t invented yet, so we reluctantly choked them down before scampering off to watch Happy Days or Laverne & Shirley.
Yeah, we knew they must be good for us because we knew Mom loved us and took our health very seriously, even though she stood over us like an interrogator in the movies, just replacing the jumper cables with a wooden spoon.
I also go for as many green leafy vegetables as possible. Everything I read puts them at the top of the health chain. Next down the line is everything else green. Brocolli, celery, green beans, and green peppers all make my list of frequently eaten. I love vegetables in all forms now that I’m old and I’ve figured out I’m not living forever. I think that kind of wore off somewhere in my thirties.
Now I love vegetables. Sometimes I break out into a giddy-like state, reciting in my best Dr. Suse portrayal, I love them with butter, I love them with salt, I love them for breakfast, I love them as a snack.
If your health isn’t right, try adding more vegetables to your mix. If you don’t like vegetables, just imagine your mom standing over you with a spoon.
Good carbs are fine if eaten in limited quantities.
Eating fewer carbs shouldn’t come to too much of a shock either. I’m not going to go all carb nazi on you. There are good carbs. And, there are great carbs. The main problem with our society is we just eat too many carbs.
I’m on a diet now, so I drastically reduce my carbs to more than likely, unrealistic levels. I eat carbs as a treat once a week. When I do eat my plate of rice or noodles, (oh how I do love a good plate of noodles) I try to make sure they are as whole as possible. By whole, I mean as whole grain unprocessed as possible. I’m even considering making my noodles in the future so I can control the ingredients. I try to stay away from things made with bleached or processed flour. I like an oriental-style rice noodle over flour noodles.
One of my favorite cheats in the world is a bowl of Vietnamese Pho. You are missing out if you’ve never had a good bowl of Pho. Think about Mom’s Saturday afternoon chicken soup, something she’s worked on an entire day. Pho broth is rich and complex, almost a meal in itself. Add in a delicate rice noodle prepared to be eaten at a certain time, too early and it’s tough, too late and it’s mush. Top everything off with slightly softened vegetables and a meat of your choice. Give to you on the side is a fresh sprig of Chinese basil and a plate of bean sprouts, which I quickly blanch in the steamy broth before it cools too far.
I digress though, back to the rice noodles. The rice noodles are one of my favorite carb indulgences.
The thing to remember about carbs is this. When you dish up a big plate of spaghetti for supper, probably scrape half the noodles back into the pan before adding the sauce. Most people are just eating way too many unhealthy carbs.
Flip the food pyramid upside down.
I heard about this whole flipping the pyramid thing recently, and something clicked. It makes perfect sense. I’m referring to the food pyramid most of us learned in school as a way to eat a balanced diet.
Now, I don’t know what version of the food pyramid you grew up with, but mine ended up something like this. At the top was the smallest amount, these were the fats, oils, salts, and sugars. The next highest amount suggested you eat every day is the meat and dairy group. The next largest after that is the fruits and vegetable group. And the largest group they tell you to eat is the bread and whole grains group.
My food pyramid is quite a bit different. My base group and the largest I eat is the vegetable group. The next largest up the pyramid is the healthy meat and fat group. I’ve almost totally eliminated red meat from my diet and try to eat only fish and poultry. This group also includes healthy fats. It turns out our brains thrive on healthy fat. Cutting fats out of our diets entirely is bad for brain function. The top of my pyramid is my cheat section. These are my carbs, pasta, and grains section. I still do these in small quantities. I do it mainly for the fiber.
If you sketch out the breakdown, it looks like the 1970s version of the pyramid, just flip it upside down.
If you are interested in doing more reading in this area, Google ‘keto diet’ and see what comes up.
Break down all your condiments and spices into their most natural forms.
I’ve always liked cooking. I used to be more of the big meal cook, ginormous cauldrons of chili, spaghetti, or soup are about all I knew. When the vegetable kick took hold, I started the next phase of my experimentation to include ways to make vegetables so delicious; that mom wouldn’t have to threaten me with a spoon. I love making fresh vegetable salsas which end up different every time. I have a coleslaw recipe which I consider excellent. I think the key to good coleslaw is freshness. You need to make it and eat it in a short period before it all turns to mush. Once it waters out, it’s done. I’m also a sucker for a good cucumber in cream sauce with garlic, onion, and salt and pepper.
Now I’m on to my third phase of cooking. I like to break down things commonly found in the grocery store as prepackaged condiments and sauces into healthy alternatives where I control what goes into the whole mix. I’m a card-carrying member of the mayonnaise fan club. I ate it slathered on just about everything for years. Then I decided to get healthy. I gave it up cold turkey. The craving is still there, but I found the willpower to resist. Now, I don’t think I have to anymore. Mayonnaise is only eggs and oil. Most mayonnaise you buy in the store is massively unhealthy because of the additives they stick in and the oil they make it with.
If you make it with most vegetable oils, these contain trans fats. Trans fats will stop a speeding locomotive at 70mph, imagine what they do to the blood flow in your body. If you make mayo with an organic egg and a healthy oil like pure olive oil, it gets much healthier. Have you ever wondered why mayo will keep for months if not decades in your fridge, but yet eggs have only a week or two for lifespan? I never gave it much thought until I saw what goes into pure mayonnaise.
I’m just starting to crack into this whole breakdown of the sauce and condiment thing, but I bet I can still enjoy so many more sauces and condiments yet still be healthy.
Ok, one little side note before we move on, look at the back of your mustard bottles in the store. I found many of these already broken down into their simplest forms. These are the ones I add when adding flavor to more complicated concoctions.
Avoid canned vegetables, but frozen is ok.
I’m on the fence with canned vegetables, so I avoid them. I’ve heard they use a ton of salt when processing and there is a substance they spray on the inside of the cans called BPH. I hear BPH is really bad news. It’s not as bad as a can of Coke being and to peel the rust off old car parts that have been sitting for years, but it is supposed to be pretty bad.
This is why I avoid them. I do hear good things about frozen vegetables though. I also hear good things about frozen fish. We’ll cover vegetables first.
Frozen vegetables are mostly just frozen vegetables. They don’t need any chemical additives to keep them fresh; the freezing does that. So, it is as pure as it gets. You may need to keep aware of salt content because salt makes everything taste good. Every food company wants their stuff to taste good. The next option is to buy a vacuum sealer and freeze fresh vegetables yourself. The upside to eating frozen vegetables is the time between harvest and plate is critical for nutrition: the closer you can eat something after picking, the more nutrients that are locked into the veggie. Frozen vegetables may have more nutrients than fresh because the time between fresh and frozen is less than between fresh and grocery stores.
I hear much of the same action when referring to fresh vs. frozen fish. Many of the large commercial fishing vessels have freezing and packaging operations right on the boat. They freeze the fish within minutes of coming out of the water. This flash-freezing seals in much of that goodness we are looking for by eating fish. Fresh fish has sat for days in transportation before it reaches the store and ends up on your plate. I always buy frozen nonprocessed fish as opposed to fresh.
Never underestimate the quality of frozen food. You still have to read the packaging, so they don’t sneak in anything life-threatening.
I guess my point on all this is not to fall trapped in all of those exercise regimes people sell. I’m into Tia Chi, and I love it. I’m more flexible, have more balance, and am much stronger because of it, but the largest health cure I’ve done in my life is changing the way I eat.
Till next time, be safe.
Kevin