128. Easy Way To Avoid Processed Food

This is the best way to avoid processed food in my opinion. Especially if you have a busy lifestyle: Make two meals for 4 in one day.

I find it’s just as easy to make two meals, as one, so do all your cooking together, and then all you have to do is heat the food up for the next four days (if there are two of you).

My friend is able to get by on two bananas every lunchtime. So she just has porridge (oatmeal) and a proper meal at home. I don’t mind bananas, but two at once is a bit much, so I have other fruit and a potato or Ryvita.

But the good thing about making two different meals together, is that you can cheat and include some of the same ingredients.

I prepared a general bowl of chopped mixed vegetables which I divide in two, then I boiled potatoes to make mashed spuds for both meals. I microwaved chicken and minced pork separately, and ended up adding sweetcorn to the white sauce made for the chicken, and adding extra red peppers for the tomato sauce made for the minced pork (masquerading as minced beef!)

So I ended up with chicken and Vegetable Pie and I called the other one Italian Pie, because it was like Bolognaise, but with mashed potato instead of pasta. And the spuds were not mixed with milk or butter, and they still had their skins – very healthy! Who says you have to stick to traditional recipes?

The whole lot didn’t take more than 45 minutes, yet it saved me loads of time for the rest of the week. Normally when I lose track of time, and look in the fridge when my tummy starts to rumble, I don’t fancy cooking, and am tempted to go out and buy something, invariably processed. That’s when I try to justify it to myself and say “Well I’m allowed one take-out once a week”, but I’ll conveniently forget that it’s the second time that week. This way, you can be lazy and still avoid processed food.

127. Back Home

I’ve been away looking after my sick parents. They usually take turns to be ill, which is handy because they can look after each other, but it was bound to happen that one day they would both be ill at the same time. But now they’re doing ok.

Glad to report that they both eat a healthy and varied diet. It meant I had to fit in and consume bread and cow’s milk occasionally. They were ill; they didn’t need me complaining about food.

I’ve put a bit of weight back on, but I don’t think it’s due to my diet, but simply lack of exercise.

126. Back To The Food

2 Fried Eggs
Truck load of Bacon
8 pork sausages
Fried Bread
3 Croissants

then for lunch
pizza,
ice cream...

I'm kidding of course.

To be honest I can't remember what I ate today because I'm writing this in a week's time on August 8th! So how come it says July 25th?
Ahaah! I have found a way to travel through time, but sadly only on blogs!

I will get back to my routine asap (I have been good, except for when I ate tuna late last night and couldn't sleep at all).

125. Don’t Punish Yourself

You should never ban foods completely if you are only intolerant to them, because elimination diets lead to cravings.

If you are allergic however, the reactions are a lot more serious and could do you harm, but then you would already know that and stay well clear.

If you’re intolerant to wheat or sugar for example, then having them once in a while is not going to have a lasting detrimental effect to your health, but you may see signs that your body is protesting. With me, I get itchy skin whenever I eat wheat.

If you have terrible will power, then one might lead to two or three, etc, and you’re on the slippery slope, but if you need to, apply common sense in these cases.

But never feel guilty for having the occasional treat. Guilt leads to low self esteem which can make you fall off the wagon completely. Emotions have a lot to do with over eating, or eating the wrong types of foods, and we need to look after our emotional health as well as our physical health.

I’m a great believer in the two being interlinked anyway, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest this too. I definitely ate the wrong things when my emotions were all over the place.

124. Food Diary

Porridge

Apple

Decaf

Pizza (yeah, but it tasted a thousand times better than if I ate it every day!)

Apple

Green Tea

Cottage cheese, flax oil, onion and chives with 2 x Ryvita

2 plain oat and rice cakes

cornflakes and soya milk

123. Owning a Dog Will Improve Your Health

I know only too well that dog walking is brilliant exercise for you and a great way to improve your metabolism, so you’ll lose weight, but Patti Lawson’s book The Dog Diet goes into much more detail of how her dog Henry helped her improve her figure.

For more details go here:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070719/FEATURES10/70719054/0/FEATURES10

122. Food Diary

Cornflakes (run out of oats)

apple

Camomile Tea (run out of Green tea)

Prawns mayo and Baked potato

Cranberry juice

Strawberries

Avacado

2 dried figs

omelette with mushrooms and mixed peppers, goats cheese

Camomile tea

121. Test Your Nutritional Knowledge

Here’s a test to see if you’re doing everything you can to improve your diet. I got most of them right, but not all of them.

Although some of the answers made me laugh out loud.

http://www.denverpost.com/fitness/ci_6376039

120. Food Diary

Porridge

apple

Half avacado

Green Tea

Flax oil cottage chees and Ryvita x 2


Green Tea
beetroot

apple

Baked Potato with chicken and green beans

Green Tea

Porridge

119. Garlic Healing Properties

I’ve found an interesting thread on various people’s experiences with using Garlic for its healing properties.

It’s at: http://www.earthclinic.com/Remedies/garlic.html

People use it to cure colds, moles, herpes, toothache, and to prevent mosquito bites, and fleas and ticks on animals!

There is also a benefit to crushing raw garlic, as opposed to simply cutting it. The anti oxidants are released only when the cloves are crushed, so it is good just to chew a clove of garlic.