random update

 Since the last real (personal)entry, we’ve gone down to visit Dad & Neva. It was a nice visit. We had not gone down there since they moved so it was cool to see their new home & a bit of the area. They have a nice house, newer than the one they had here & it seems to fit them. Dad took us to an area winery that he & Neva enjoy going to. We had lunch there in a beautiful setting. The food & wine were both good too. I look forward to going back in warmer weather when they have the courtyard open & fountains running. That part looked so peaceful. The roads around there tho are insane to a newcomer. We were so lost trying to go somewhere on our own. In all, it was a nice visit.

I keep thinking about the gym. I think I’m about ready to just go. I hope they have some sort of help to get you going & set up on a routine of sorts, or something. It would suck if we had to pay extra for that. Guess I got spoiled with the last place. We’ll see where it goes. I’ve thought a bit more on who to ask to come with me since the daughter is working nights & doesn’t really have the time to go with me. It may take more thought than I first thought. LOL

My life is pretty boring these days. I keep the house clean, food cooked, laundry done, etc. Other than that, I’m not doing much. I am working on getting coupons organized to better share with people. Exciting huh? I watch my soaps, look for work, surf the internet. I need some more human interaction. But I don’t wanna be around depressing people. I certainly don’t need that.

Now that I’ve gotten a handle on our changing food & the coupons, & the group, I need to get our taxes done. More exciting stuff. Not. I guess the biggest reason I’m not looking forward to it is the fact I did not keep the most organized records for the bit of business I had. So I have to gather all that before I get started. The basic stuff is easy, that one form is the booger. Then I also have to see about the daughter. Since she lives with us, is a full time student & all that, we may be able to claim her one last time.

I got to talk to my boyfriend down in FL night before last. It was so nice. We chatted for about an hour. He had just gotten out of the hospital, again. 2 weeks this time. They found a spot & he wasn’t taking any chances so he told them to take it out. Now, there is nothing left in him that even remotely looks like it could develop into another spot. Cancer sucks ass. He sounded more like himself while we talked. When we visited in November, it felt like that might have been our last time ever seeing each other. I know we all cried afterward. I love that guy so much, it would tear my heart apart to lose him to such an ugly disease. I have kept him in my good thoughts for years now. I hope that someone has heard me.

Fructose

I've been reading about High Fructose Corn Syrup & other sugars/refined sugars/sweeteners lately. Anyone who knows me, knows this. I've had a tab open in my browser for sometime now about Fructose. The title reads ... "Is Fructose Dangerous?"

After reading this page a few times, I think this will be on my list of sugar type things to remove from my home. It wont be as easy as removing the HFCS tho, it seems. Ideally, removing sugars in general is the best way to go. But I'm not ready to just let go of all sugars. I will continue to eat real sugar. But if I can remove some or all of the other forms of it, that would be way cool.

Here is the page .... Fructose

Here is a bit from the page ....

***If you consider fructose a safe, natural sugar, think again. You've been had by one of the biggest nutritional bait-and-switch ploys in years.

Fructose & high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have been aggressively promoted as natural sugars. After all, we've been taught since childhood that fructose is fruit sugar.

The truth is that fructose & HFCS, as large-scale commercial sweeteners, didn't exist 20 years ago. Now, they're almost as common as sucrose-plain old white sugar. HFCS is routinely added to processed foods & beverages including Coca-Cola, Snapple, & many health food products.

"Fructose is not from fruit. It's a commercial, refined sugar," asserted Robin Rogosin, a buyer and research coordinator at Mrs. Gooch's Natural Foods Market in Beverly Hills, Calif.***

That is how the article begins. I encourage you all to take a few minutes to read the page. It's good info to have stored in your brain.

Update time

Thought I would do a little update on a few of the changes I have made. Right now I am working on just a few ingredients at a time. The ones that are being omitted from my & my family’s diets are artificial sweeteners, MSG & High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). As we read labels if there are other questionable ingredients in the label they tend to not get purchased either. It is taking more time to shop but it has been an eye opening experience to what is in our food. So what have I changed?

Ketchup. I’ve looked at store brands & name brands. They all contain HFCS. My options? Buy organic or make my own. For the time being I have bought one bottle of organic until I see just how expensive making my own will be. My dad’s wife (Neva) has a recipe so I know they are pretty easy to come by.

Mayo. Well, the switch was actually to mayo, from Miracle Whip. That was simple & saves me money since I can get mayo cheaper a lot of the time. I’ll admit the true test will be when I make my potato salad this summer. Or any pasta type salad I was using MW in. But on a sandwich or toast with cheese, it’s no big deal.

Soda. Oh the stuff that’s on some of the labels. . . I was buying whatever was on sale for the hubby to take to work each day. I was buying generic ginger ale for me. I have switched to Natural Brew Outrageous Ginger Ale. More expensive but the taste alone is enough to keep me buying it. I started when it was on sale & fell in love with it. IT worked because I continue to buy it at regular price now. For hubby & daughter, they have discovered making their own soda with seltzer water & DaVinci flavors. The flavors are not totally natural, but contain less crap than regular soda … & no HFCS. Cost? Probably about the same as name brand soda.

OJ. I was buying the half gallons from the refrigerated section. Until I read the label. Now I buy the frozen concentrate. The taste is better & the cost is less at regular prices. If the ½ gallons go on sale, they are cheaper. But I wont buy them.

Granola Bars. All I had to do was switch brands. With all the coupons I get, it doesn’t cost me much more at all. I stock up when they go on sale & it’s all good. The Kashi TLC bars & the Quaker Simple Harvest All Natural are what we buy right now.

Salad Dressings. Wow, this was amazing. I couldn’t believe how many brands & flavors have HFCS. But you can’t go by brand alone. You have to look at the flavors. Not a tough switch to make, just a bit more reading of labels. There are plenty out there that don’t have as much added stuff.

Spaghetti Sauces. The cheaper brands I was buying all have HFCS. Prego & Ragu don’t. Several of the better brands don’t either. So switching here is just a matter of watching for different brands to go on sale & saving coupons for them. I was buying Hunts & Del Monte in the cans which didn’t have coupons much anyways. The house brand can sauces are also off the list.

Cookies. Well, good bye cheap cookies. For the most part. My switch? I just make them from scratch at home or read some of the cookie dough labels & packaged cookie labels. Not a big deal except for the money. But it’s a price hubby & I are willing to pay. So far, we’ve just eaten a lot less cookies.

So there is a sampling of some of the items I’ve changed. I will continue to go thru everything we eat by reading labels. Once we have omitted these things, we’ll look into what all the other ingredients really are & work on omitting more.

Now I need to say something that might sound odd. I’m beginning to feel different. Is it in my head? I guess it could be. But I choose to believe. One of the side effects of the HFCS is that when it is consumed, the body does not know when it is full, & therefore when to stop eating. Well, it’s been out of probably 98% of my diet for over a month now. I don’t seem to be eating as much. I’m full at dinner without going back for seconds. And no, I’m not having bigger portions. I still snack, but they are good snacks now. I drink better juices, herbs, natural soda & water. Are my baby steps beginning to show? I’d like to think so. It makes me happy to have omitted some artificial things from my diet. I’m happy eating better food. I think I like these changes.

Catching up again

The weekend has come & gone. It’s already Tuesday. Hubby & I were talking about going down to see Dad this weekend. So I called the Club Pet place today. They’re full for this weekend. So I made tentative arrangements for next weekend. We could just leave her here with the daughter, but hubby figured it would be good for her to have more play time with other doggies. So, we’ll see what he says when he gets home.

So I bought the Smooth Away that’s advertised on TV. Got it at our Bed Bath & Beyond store tho, with a coupon. So I saved shipping & an extra 1.50. I tried the smaller pad today on my facial hair that’s on my chin & neck. It only kinda works. Takes a lot more effort than advertised. Your hair has to be less than a quarter inch long. You have to go in a circular motion 3 times in each direction, repeating until hair is gone. You have to pull your skin taut which for me was really hard & awkward on my face & neck. I’ll give it a few more tries tho so we’ll see how it ends up working in the long run.

I also grabbed a box of the ShamWow towels. Again, with a coupon from the same store. The bigger ones worked well as a dish rack mat last night. The smaller one hubby tried using to dry dishes. Didn’t work as fast as the regular dish towel he said. We’ll put them thru their paces tho & see how they do.

I keep meaning to write about something. Commercials for cleaning products. Specifically disposable cleaning products. Those stupid commercials make it seem like the cleaning products we use don’t work worth a darn. Like those swiffer commercials. The way they compare the mop to a swiffer wetjet. Who the hell cleans that way? Or dusting … who in their right mind takes one of those feather dusters & flips the dust everywhere when they dust? OMG people. They make us look so incompetent. And who lets their floors get as dirty as the commercials make it seem? Or their bathrooms? I guess the more I see those commercials the more irritated I get. There is no need to depend on all those disposable products. The ones we use are fine. Even the ShamWow commercial talks like we use paper towels like nothing. The average family spends 30 a month on paper towels. What? OMG …. That’s insane!!! I know we aren’t average in our usage, but we use maybe one roll in 2 months or more. We use rags & old towels all the time. For all sorts of things. Toss them in the wash with whites & they’re ready to be used again. How hard is that? Ok, end of rant for now.

I have so much on my mind. I should go do something productive now.

Breathe

As you watch this beautiful short video, breathe in & out along with it. Very peaceful.

Very Bliss

It's Deep & Just how I'm feeling right now ...

You know how you want to do something but it’s hard to get going? You know you should get started … but you are too lazy to take that first step? No matter how much you realize it’s the right thing to do & you will be such a better, happier & healthier person because of it? That’s me right now. I’m working on eliminating some things from my food pantry. I’m trying to slowly work towards eating better. So why am I having such a hard time taking the step to go exercise? I don’t know. I don’t like the person I see in the mirror, especially naked. I don’t like the extra weight I’m carrying. I’m not happy with myself.

I can talk about so many other things but when it comes to taking care of my weight, I fail. I can sit here all day long & talk about a million things. Never my weight or my lack of motivation to change. I’ve struggled with this all my adult life. When I got pregnant at 17 with my first child, I gained quite a bit of weight. The doctors never told me that I shouldn’t literally eat for 2. Or that I should stay active. Or that I should do certain exercises after childbirth. 4 years later, with my second child, I again gained weight. This was not good since I never totally lost the weight from the first child. I still was not given the info about how to take care of myself or how to get weight back off afterward. Sad. And I was only 22 by this point.

I’ve gone to gyms several times in the last 25 years. Most of the time it seemed like a chore. Or something I was supposed to do. Not something I really wanted to do. The last gym I went to was in Florida. My oldest daughter bought me a one year membership. I was at a point in my life where I was ready to go, alone even. I wanted to change. Once I got into the habit of going, it became addicting. I loved it. I loved how I felt. I was losing weight, toning up & feeling better. Then a hurricane came & shut down the town for weeks. By the time the gym was reopened, I had lost my drive. It was just gone. Perhaps it was the life changing experience of the hurricane. Who knows. Whatever the reason, my drive was just gone.

Last year I thought I was ready to try again in a gym. But I felt like I needed a buddy. Not sure why. I talked about how cool it would be to go to a gym again. I even got kind of excited. My daughter began to get excited too. She wanted something to help her tone up & lose a few pounds too. So, being the wonderful daughter she is, she bought a one year membership for both of us to a local gym near our home. This was to be my holiday gift from her.

Then, she got the job working as a night stocker. Her life changed. She is now getting most of the exercise she wants from work. She’s already lost weight. She sleeps when I’m awake. I sleep when she’s awake. How are we going to be able to go to the gym together? Well, we’re not. We talked & she said the only time might even think about going now would be on a day off. And that’s a maybe. I previously wrote about me asking 2 friends to go with me. It turns out that the first friend I asked is not going to work. I think we are at different points in our lives. Her priorities are way different than mine. There is another friend I can ask. I'm not sure she would go either tho. I know she would welcome the free membership. But I don’t know that we could coordinate our schedules to go together. She is a SAHM but is active in our fellowship & other things. So, she actually has a life, where I don’t. Well, I do, But not as busy a one as her. I could, but that’s a lazy factor again.

I cannot tell you how hard this has been to type out. Or how hard it is to keep the tears at bay. I feel like an emotional wreck. Watching a show on TV this afternoon really got me thinking. It was the way they presented a few things. The guest person was Valerie Bertinelli. She has lost 40 pounds & kept it off for almost a year now. So anyways, to show us what 40 pounds of fat looks like, they had a pile of it out there. OMG. That was sobering to see. Then they had her just stand & jump up & down. They handed her 2 20 pound dumbbells & told her to now jump again. This is the difference 40 pounds makes. It was neat to see. I think watching the show got me thinking & is what has prompted this long minded entry.

My back has been hurting for the past 3 or so days. I don’t know if it’s directly related to my weight or not. Could be how I’m sleeping, or sitting or whatever. It’s my lower back, around the sciatic nerve area. Maybe this is what I need to get off my ass. I’ve taken the baby steps with my food, so why not take them with my overall health too? I know I won’t succeed if I try to “diet & exercise”. I have to change my life.

It’s kinda funny. I know that if I can just get started, I’ll be fine. I know I’ll feel better. I’ll have more energy. I’ll want to eat even better. I’ll feel better about who I see in the mirror. I now I’ll sleep better too. And sex is better when you feel sexy.

I don’t know when exactly I’ll be ready to take the plunge into the gym. I feel like it will be soon. I don’t expect answers from this. I just felt the need to get my feelings out.

A new month already

So here it is February already. It amazes me how as the days are happening, they go by so slow sometimes but when we look back, the time has flown. And when this month has passed, I will be another year older. Wow. My baby will be 22. I’ll be 44. Amazing.

I’m really enjoying doing this research stuff on Vinegar & Baking Soda. I’m amazed at how much this stuff can do. Hubby & I have tried several things & been pleasantly surprised when they work!! I just love the fact I don’t have to look at the myriad of cleaning products anymore. No more clipping coupons for them. Watching to see what is on sale where to save a little money. No more “trying a new thing” to see if it will work better for whatever purpose. I really love having this newfound freedom. To think that I can replace so many products with 2 things. 2 things that are all natural. No longer will I be contributing a chemical mess down my drains that water treatment plants will have to filter out. It fels good to know I am doing my part towards a better world.

Another step has been to eliminate a few ingredients from the food we eat. This has been challenging to say the least. Some things have been easy to change or eliminate. Other things are a bit harder. The main ingredients being focused on right now are artificial sweeteners & high fructose corn syrup. I've written more about it in my blog Naturally Me if you wanna read more. (2-12-12 update ... just use the Naturally Me tag to find all entries that used to be in the separate blog.)

It amazes me how many of our food items contain the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It’s in almost everything!! I changed the mayo I use because it had HFCS. Kraft Miracle Whip was MY mayo. Well, not anymore. I’ll try a few others before deciding on one. Right now we’re using regular Kraft Mayo. I may even learn to make my own.

I’ve given up my Yoplait Whips. & I quit buying the cheap yogurt for hubby. I’m changing the spaghetti sauce I buy. When I go shopping now or even when I fix the food I have at home, I’m reading labels. It’s a bit time consuming but very eye opening.