Ah.... Home Again!!!

One day short of two weeks since I last wrote and now all of those stressful things are behind me, leaving me, however, with a respiratory infection (fever, chills, cough, aches everywhere) that kept me in bed for two whole days. Today I'm feeling better, although I'm still coughing my lungs inside out. (Hate that!)

The next stressful thing is two weekends from now, the Artists Studio Tour (which I posted about here, on my other blog). There will be snacks and treats for our guests and there will be times when there are no customers, when I'm bored and discouraged at the temporary lack of sales. Bored and discouraged... couldn't be two more aggressive triggers for binging and overeating.

However, I'm encouraged by the past two weeks, especially teaching a two-day class where the students brought the most delicious-looking treats, set out for all to share: M&Ms, candy shop chocolates and other special candies, home-made lemon bars and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Eeeeee-yike! That was a disaster waiting to happen. But I was good, sticking to my abstinence program and touching nary a crumb. True, I was neither bored nor discouraged while teaching this lively, talented group of women... so maybe I have nothing to crow about here.

By the way, thanks to readers who supported me with these stressful, back-to-back events, and who gave me great ideas and recipes for preparation of vegetarian meals. Our guest was very pleased and so was I!

Changes

My husband and I have been viewing several of The Great Courses recently and are now about 1/3 of the way into Lifelong Health: Achieving Optimum Well-Being at Any Age, by Professor Anthony Goodman. By the way, should anybody be interested in any of these courses, don't buy them from the website! Write or call to ask for a catalog and wait until they go on sale for 60 or 70% off.

Anyway, Prof Goodman has some excellent tips about health and change. Three that he repeats are:

1. One Degree ~ change your course in one degree increments. Over a long period of time, even a one degree change will land you in a different place. I like this at lot. Nothing radical. For example, neither me nor my husband likes fish. So for our 13 years together, I have never cooked it for us. We recognize the need for fish oils in our diet, so we take supplements. The good Prof, doesn't recommend supplements, suggesting we get our vitamins, etc. from whole foods. Ugh... cooking fish. However, we don't need to do it every night. Just one night a week and a couple tuna salads for lunches will give us a 10 degree change. And that is significant over time!


2. Goldilocks ~ choose the "bed" that fits you. Despite his recommendations about healthy lifestyle and foods, he suggests we always steer toward what fits us, our likes, dislikes, comfort zone. I like this too. He makes strong suggestions, but at the same time seems to understand and value that we know ourselves best.


3. Whole Foods ~ Yep, I always knew it. But now with the Prof's persuasive language backed by scientific studies he sites, I see the whole value of whole foods. Again, just by making a shift a couple of nights a week, we can lean that way more with our diet.

So with our new vegetable garden and wisdom gleaned from Prof Goodman, I'm pretty sure my husband and I are headed toward a course change for the better with our eating!