Dr. D. once wrote this in his Q&A column, “Generally 70-80% total compliance works well in most people (out of 10 food choices, 7-9 being neutral or beneficial choices)” When I am at home, I am more compliant than this. I probably eat 70% beneficials and 29% neutrals. Avoids are very rare. But when I’m not at home, this rule allows me to relax and enjoy myself with friends without feeling unnecessary guilt or anxiety.

When my Honorable Husband was in Viet Nam, he had three close Christian friends. These four young men encouraged each other, prayed for each other, and pulled each other through a difficult time of their lives. One of them has passed away; the others have remained friends for 40 years. We all live in different parts of the country, but every five years or so, we get together for a reunion. This weekend, we are together in Oklahoma City.

The wife of the fellow veteran in whose home we are meeting knows I am on a “different” diet. She wrote before we came to ask what I could eat. Her husband is diabetic, so I told her that I could quite happily eat what he ate. I knew that he limited bread and potatoes as well as sweets. I figured that left meat, fruits, and vegetables. This has worked out great – actually even better than the 70% rule. I’ve had a few sauces that I wouldn’t have eaten at home. I enjoyed a small serving of fried okra. Tonight I’m looking forward to a surprise dessert.

Right now everyone has decided to go to a local mall for a walk since the weather is cold. They’ve given me four minutes to post this blog and get my coat. I’ll continue tomorrow or the next day.

I am back from a trip to visit my parents. It was so encouraging to see my Dad exercising with his walker again. He was so sick last summer that we all feared he might never get out of the wheel chair again. His mind has regained its pre-infection sharpness, and he thinks like a man 20 years younger than his 90 years. Part of the purpose of my visit was to count out their monthly medication and vitamins. I have introduced several supplements that are beneficial for Type Os (like bioflavonoids), and I’ve quietly stopped supplements that are contra-indicated (like Vitamin E).

My Dad is receptive to the Blood Type Diet, and follows it probably 75% of the time. My Mom doesn’t understand it and is pretty set in the ways that she cooks. She doesn’t want to give up her cake and cookies. I always relax my standards a little when I go to see them. It doesn’t hurt me to indulge in fried okra and onion rings once in a while, or to share a bowl of peppermint ice cream.

However when I get home, I quickly get back on my Type O Diet. At lunchtime today I found broccoli stems in the refrigerator, left from when I had steamed broccoli before my trip. I grated the stems in the food processor, and grated a carrot as well. I added ground turkey, curry powder, turmeric, flax oil, dried pineapple, and dried goji berries. It was a fast tasty crunchy lunch.

Thank you to those who have written DD such encouraging notes. She is doing well. She has gained almost a pound, and is being faithful to take one day a week off from exercise. She has cut the intensity level back for the days that she does cardio on the machines at the university gym. She has gone out to eat twice this week with friends to local restaurants, and was able to enjoy the food and the fellowship without undo stress. She met a girl on campus who went through the same issues last year. She asked, “How did you get through it?” The girl answered, “I had to get a lot closer to the Lord.” DD has been sending me Bible verses that have new meaning for her. Here’s one I thought was amazing. It’s from Psalm 109.

But you, O Sovereign Lord, deal well with me for our name's sake; out of the goodness of your love, deliver me. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust. My knees give way from fasting; my body is thin and gaunt. Help me, O Lord my God; save me in accordance with your love. Let them know that it is your hand, that you, O Lord, have done it...For he stands at the right hand of the needy one, to save his life from those who condemn him.

My Darling Daughter, who has been too thin for almost a year, has lost five pounds since she went off to school. To recap her situation (which I’ve blogged about before) she does not like her pear shaped body type. In her sophomore and junior years, she put on a few extra pounds. The summer before her senior year she decided to take them off. She got super serious about the Blood Type Diet, and by October she looked great. But a taste of success made her decide to try to get the thin legs she admired in her apple shaped friends. I think the attention to healthy food that she learned from the BTD kept her from being ensnared by a serious eating disorder. She did become compulsive about portion sizes and exercise.

Last spring and summer DD could admit that she needed to regain some of her lost weight, but she didn’t really want to. She had her thin legs, and she wanted to keep them. She would get within a pound of our agreed on target, and then lose a pound or two. She tells me that she didn’t intentionally sabotage the plan, but that she would get scared and exercise more. I had hoped that when she went off to college away from me and around girls eating normally, that she would be responsible for changing her own behavior. That did not happen.

She may be compulsive about exercise, but she is open and honest with me. We talk on the phone every day and now that she has a scale in her room, she reports her weight every morning. Two weeks ago when she hit a new low, I told her that I was worried about the damage she might be doing to her body, and I was worried that there might be some underlying physical cause for the continued weight loss. I said, “I’m making an appointment with our family doctor. If you gain a half a pound this week, I’ll cancel it. So if you can gain weight, this is the time to do it.” She put on 6/10s of a pound, then the day before she was to come home she called crying. She had lost it all.

We were two sad people at the doctor’s office. She has had friends who were diagnosed with anorexia. We both knew what could happen – high fat diets, birth control pills, antidepressants, hospitalization. Our doctor has known our family for ages and delivered DD 19 years ago. He was the right mix of firm and compassionate. He warned her what she was doing to herself. He gave her until Thanksgiving to put on 3 pounds. He wanted her to go in for counseling at school. She did not want to bring in an outside counselor, so I cautiously agreed that she could try to manage this herself and put on ½ pound a week for the next 3 weeks. If she can’t do it, then she will get counseling.

Here is where I need your help. It is hard to put weight on with the Type A diet. We went over all of the recommended portions, and while she is eating on the low end of the range, she is eating according to the diet in all areas except oils and grains. She has increased both of those areas this week. She eats a lot of vegetables, but most higher calorie vegetables seem to be avoid for Type A. She has nuts and fruit for breakfast. She eats 3 ounces of fish or turkey one meal a day and a nut butter sandwich the other meal. She drinks a protein shake every afternoon, and has a power bar made with nuts and fruit mid morning. She feels like she is eating all the time, but she is not gaining.

I would think that she is sabotaging again, except that my husband is experiencing the same thing. When his blood work showed an elevated sugar level, he got scared, then he got rebellious, then he got serious about the BTD Diabetes plan. I don’t have neutral grains in the house any more, and I limit his beneficial grains. He is a thin man to begin with, and he has lost 5 pounds. He eats three good meals a day and snacks on nuts while he watches TV at night.

Type As tell me: Do you continue to lose weight when you follow the diet? What high calorie beneficial foods do you enjoy? What can DD do to gain weight in a healthy way? What can HH eat to keep his blood sugar low, but not lose too much weight?

DD knows I am posting this blog, and she has signed up for her own Forum account so she can read your answers. I hope you can help and encourage her.

I got to try a new super beneficial food! That is exciting to me! When I first started the BTD, I enjoyed searching the isles of my grocery and health food store looking for beneficial food that I had never tried. It was quite an adventure. Experimenting with the new beneficials took away the sting of not eating old favorite avoids. But gradually, I tried all of the beneficials that were available locally. I sighed – nothing new for months on end.

In South Texas, we have a lot of Hispanic food. It was easy to find guava drinks in the ethnic food isles, but they were loaded with sugar, so I never bought them. I don’t believe that a sugar laden beneficial is really beneficial!

This week I was in the frozen food section of the grocery store buying cherries and blueberries. I saw a new product – Guayaba. Almost the entire label was in Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish, but I read it marginally well. It appeared that this was guava with no sugar added.

After my bad experience eating edamame hulls, I came home and typed the label into Babel Fish Translator. Sure enough this was guava. “Defrost and it tastes like fresh fruit,” the label said. There were several recipes for drinks. Some of them said to strain the drink after processing it in a blender.

I did a little more Internet research and found that it is ok to eat the skin and seeds of guava. The seeds are hard, so some people discard them, however, in doing so you also discard the sweetest part of the fruit, which is the central pulp around the seeds. Interestingly, the peel has the most phytonutrients.

Yesterday I diced two guavas and mixed them with a banana in my breakfast nuts. It was a delicious combination. The guava was tart, but mixed with the banana, it was perfect. The seeds are definitely hard, but no more annoying than blackberry seeds (I know blackberry is Type O avoid, but I remember what they were like from pre-BTD days.).

It is great to have another frozen beneficial fruit just in time for winter months, when fresh fruit is scarce and high priced. I hope there will be enough demand for the grocery store to continue to carry it.

This is not a commercial. I blog about how my family and I go about trying to live the BTD lifestyle. Last time I mentioned that while I wanted to support my local health food stores, I could save half or more if I ordered supplements on the internet. Randee asked how I did this, so I thought I’d share the answer with all of you. I’m not endorsing any particular brands or any particular site.

It started with a comment from one of my readers. She gave me a web address where she ordered her supplements at a discount. At the time I lived in a city and did my vitamin shopping at two health food stores, both of which had frequent sales. I didn’t even look at the website. But after we moved to the country, there were fewer choices and fewer sales. I got curious and opened the link. I was shocked at how much lower the prices were. I spent a couple of hours Googling and comparing.

Not all websites have the same brands – so if you have favorite brands, you may have to check several sites. Not all websites have the same shipping policies – some have free shipping with a minimum purchase, some have a flat shipping fee no matter how much you order, some charge shipping by weight.

I’ve bought from vitacost.com, myvitanet.com, vitaminshoppe.com, and naturamart.com. I usually open several websites and compare. Most of the time I order at Vitacost.

I have never had a problem. All of the products are fresh, so they are not offering me savings by selling bottles that are near the expiration date. It takes 7-10 days for standard shipping to arrive, so I have to plan my purchases ahead.

There are some things that never go on sale. My favorite brand of egg white protein costs the same whether I buy it at a store or order it on the internet. But the savings on Spiruteen, a soy shake mix that DD likes, is significant.

I write this blog with an element of reluctance. Buying supplements on the internet is like shopping at Wal-Mart. I like Wal-Mart savings. I’m in Wal-Mart for something 2-3 times a week. But there are times I regret all of the cute little shops that went out of business because they couldn’t compete. In the same way, I like the money I save when I order supplements on the Internet. However I also like having a local health food store where I can buy manna bread, spelt flour, and nitrite-free beef jerky. I recognize that there is a danger in pulling part of my shopping dollars out of my local community.

The next time I hear about the conflict between Wall Street and Main Street, I may throw a shoe at the TV or the computer monitor. Surely all of you are too intelligent to fall for that kind of class warfare! When banks start failing, everyone is going to be hurt, whatever street we’re on.

I grew up hearing stories of the Great Depression from my parents who vividly remembered it. (They were born in 1917 and 1918) A local bank held the mortgage on my grandparents’ ranch. For years the family struggled just to pay the interest on that mortgage so they would not lose their means of livelihood. My other grandfather was an officer in the bank in a small farm community. The officers didn’t get their money out until everyone else had been paid. Both families kept food on the table with backyard gardens. Ironically my mother learned to love cooked greens, and my father learned to hate them.

I hope that enough of our representatives in Washington will have enough backbone to put election year pontificating aside and do the right thing to stabilize the financial markets, but I’m not counting on them.

I have begun to think about what I need to do to keep healthy food on the table. I am seriously considering a garden on the back of our property. I have a lot to learn if I’m going to break ground for a spring garden. Even without a garden, increasing vegetable servings and portions is one way to make our food dollars go farther. That would be beneficial for both the Type Os and Type As in the family.

I fear that most Americans will increase their wheat and potato portions. That will fill them up, but will cause health problems, especially for Type Os.

I don’t know how long I will buy spelt bread at $4.50 a loaf. HH likes it much better than the less expensive Ezekiel Bread. I can dig the bread machine out of the closet, but I wish I hadn’t sold my bread slicer before we moved. Organic will be out of the question, and when I finished the leftover salmon for lunch today, I may have been eating my last wild caught fish – unless I’m fortunate enough to find a sale.

I have already started ordering supplements on the Internet. I really want to support my local health food stores. But their supplement prices are twice as high as the same products on line.

Perhaps you think I’m over reacting. Here are a few facts. Most employers no longer provide pensions; they provide 401K plans. Unless you plan to die young, you have to generate enough income from your 401K so that you don’t spend your principle. Falling stock markets, falling interest rates, and inflation (all of which increased at the speed of light this week) decrease your 401K income. Social Security expenditures will exceed income in 2017, with bankruptcy following unless benefits are cut. Medicare expenditures began exceeding income last year. The program will be bankrupt by 2020. Those “facts” are suddenly very personal when HH hoped to retire this year and we have two children in college.

It will help if I can find a good job quickly. I’m working at that every day. It will also help if I get away from the computer and pound out some of this stress in intense physical exercise.

A short, violent spring thunderstorm dumped 5 inches of rain on our hillside and washed out part of the path around our back yard. We postponed repairing it all summer because we couldn’t decide what would be the most attractive and most durable material.

For several days we thought Hurricane Ike was going to come straight at us, and we quickly got serious about flood and erosion control. We decided that a lot of the damage that occurred last spring could have been prevented if we had a berm in one particular area. I started hauling rocks for the 10 foot long mound. I gathered some rocks from our property. I hauled others from the discard piles at a nearby construction site.

When I do this kind of physical labor, I’m not concerned about exercising! Setting aside a time to exercise on exercise equipment wearing designer exercise apparel, is definitely an urban phenomena. My farming and ranching grandparents didn’t worry about getting enough exercise, they worried about getting enough rest.

Lifting rocks is at least as hard as lifting weights. Climbing up a hill with a bucket of dirt gets my heart rate up at least as fast as a treadmill. My back has been a little stiff when I waked in the morning, but it quickly limbers up. I believe I’m getting stronger. It’s a good, healthy feeling.

When I’ve not been hauling rocks, I’ve been sending out my resume. I told our principal a year ago that when DD graduated, that I would resign from my job teaching journalism. I have thoroughly enjoyed helping the kids publish the yearbook and school newspaper. But I’m eager to return to doing the work of a writer, photographer and graphic designer myself.

It’s been a while since I searched for a job. Some of the rules have changed. The internet has made it both harder and easier to get noticed. I’m excited about the possibilities.

My husband and I are making progress. DD read my blog and Chanur’s comment. She e-mailed recipes and helpful suggestions. The theme of her e-mail was “Take care of my Dad, I want him to be healthy.”

One night he apologized for his bad attitude. He said, “If I have to choose between good taste and good health, then good health is a slam dunk.”

If you want to know the truth, I’m sympathetic to his plight. First of all, he has no sense of smell. Maybe it is genetic, or maybe it is because he has had sinus trouble most of his life. But most food has no flavor for him. That is why he likes pepper and vinegar, even though they are avoid. He can taste them. That is why he would rather have cheddar cheese than tofu. Unless a food has a strong or distinct flavor, to him it “tastes like cardboard.”

I’m also sympathetic because I’m the one who has changed – not him. When he married me I knew nothing about nutrition and could have cared less. I was a typical American cooking lots of desserts and serving white bread at every meal…you get the picture. Just before our first anniversary, I read my first health food book, and changed our way of eating overnight. Then five years ago I found the BTD and changed everything all over again.

It’s sort of like when two secular people get married, then one of them accepts Christ as savior. While I will pray fervently along with the new Christian that his/her spouse will also receive Christ - I do sympathize (just a little) with the spouse. He (or she) was content being a heathen. He married someone like him – who liked to party, or sleep late on Sunday, or whatever. Now he is under pressure to change, to give up bad habits, to surrender his life to God, to go to Bible study instead of clubs. I know he will be better off, both now and in eternity, if he becomes a Christian, but I can see that from his perspective it’s not fair that his marriage has been upended.

When HH & I married we were both unhealthy Christians. I changed, and I’ve been dragging him along ever since. I can’t blame him when occasionally he rebels or digs in his heels.

Here is the new plan. I’m going to set things up so that he can make his own casseroles. I’m going to fix a grain or a noodle dish (which I usually won’t eat). I’m also going to fix a meat (fish or turkey) and several vegetables. He is going to mix what he wants in a bowl. I’ll have some kind of beneficial or neutral sauce to go on top. He thinks this will work. I think it will work too.

I knew that DD going away to college would mean changes, but I had not anticipated the conflicts I have had with my Honorable Husband over meals and food choices.

He likes casseroles. Before we had children and long before the Blood Type Diet, I fixed casseroles 3-4 times a week. He likes noodles and rice with sauces. He likes bread even if his meal includes another starchy food.

Children severely limited the casseroles. Very few young children like their meat and vegetables mixed together, and ours were not exceptions. HH did not complain. For 24 years he ate meat and vegetables. After I started the BTD, he saw even less of his beloved grain dishes. Still he did not complain. He just ordered pasta dishes every time we went out to eat.

But with DD gone, he is no longer out numbered. There are two of us eating, and he is voicing his opinions. He is tired of salmon and cod. He wants catfish – not a beneficial choice. He is tired of olive oil on vegetables. He wants cheese sauce. He announced tonight that he likes green beans, but he does not like snow peas.

I had not expected this to be part of our empty nest adjustments. I want him to be happy with his food. I do not want him coming to the kitchen and sighing. At the same time, I do not want to return to they days when he had an upset digestive tract 1 week out of every three or four weeks. That was common before the BTD.

Both of us have choices. He has to decide whether to eat what is healthy or to eat what he likes. I have to decide whether to push healthy food or to let him have his way hoping that he will associate the way he feels with what he is eating. Interesting days are ahead.

Pardon me if this is a bit of a solemn blog. You don’t spend nearly two weeks nursing someone you love back from the brink of disaster without a lot of introspection.

It is hard to see a once vigorous man – one who used to effortlessly toss me in the air and catch me – one who loved to climb mountains and ride horses – unable to sit up in bed or stand in a walker.

It forces me to face the reality that we live in a fallen world (Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight. Genesis 6:11) and we are all heading toward death (For the wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23).

Our culture glorifies life and youth. We fill magazines with pictures of healthy, happy youngsters. We watch movies of people living immoral lives and practicing all kinds of unhealthy habits without any consequence. It’s a lie.

We are all aging. The earth is decaying. Everything in this world is moving toward death. The Bible predicts it, and when you spend a while in a sick room, the truth slaps you in the face.

One day a friend was going pretty hard on my Dad and other elderly people who stop taking medication. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I follow a pretty weird and restrictive diet so that I don’t have to take medication every day. When the BTD worked, I didn’t talk to my doctor. I stopped the medication that was no longer needed.”

Later, as I thought back over my own words, I asked myself, “Why do I stay with the BTD?” It’s certainly not an easy diet, though it’s also not as hard as it seems for the first month. I don’t do the BTD, thinking that I will live forever. That won’t happen, and I know it. I’m not even sure I would want to live to some extreme old age. It would get pretty lonely when all my family and friends were gone.

I stay with the BTD because I want to be active, productive, and independent for as many years as God gives me. I don’t want to slowly decline to a point where I can’t move and I can’t think. I don’t want to be on prescription drugs, if there is a way I can have the same results naturally. I believe that the BTD gives me the best chance to stay healthy and energetic.

I quoted the first half of Romans 6:23. It sounds pretty bleak. It is the 2nd half of the verse that brings hope: but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. My Dad and Mom are declining because this is a fallen world. But because of their faith in Jesus Christ they have hope. They will have new resurrected bodies where there will be no more disease or sorrow. (There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Revelation 21:4). Best of all, I know I will see them again. Until then, I count out vitamins for their daily pill boxes, and I eat right for my type. We want to live for God as long as he leaves us on this earth. But as recent days have reminded me; this is just a temporary home.

We had one more BTD adventure before we returned from our trip to Kentucky. We made a side trip to Nashville, and while we were there we toured the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home.

On the way we stopped at a restaurant called O'Charley's for lunch. What I will always remember is the very generous vegetable portions. HH and DD ordered salmon. I needed a beef fix after several days of canned turkey and tuna. I ordered a hamburger patty, substituting broccoli for the fries. Between the three of us we had all the vegetables we could possibly eat. It was a delicious and very compliant meal. I found out later that O'Charley's is an Eastern chain restaurant. I would welcome them in Texas.

When you tour the Hermitage, you get headphones so you can listen to recorded messages about the many features on the grounds. They used a lot of quotes from people who had stayed at the Hermitage during Andrew Jackson's time. One visitor wrote, "There was an abundance of meat: beef, mutton, turkey, geese, several kinds of ducks and fowls. The guests loved it." Doesn't that sound like a Type O household!

The kitchen was a separate building away from the house. It was safer, because there was always a danger of fire. It also kept the heat and smell of cooking away from the house. We peaked in the smokehouse where we learned that pork was the "primary meat for the household."

That took a little of the shine off of the Type O household idea. However, I suspect that would have been a true statement for most rural households for most of this country's history. My Dad has often reminisced that on the ranch where he grew up they raised cattle to sell to folk in the cities. However his family rarely ate beef. They mostly ate the less expensive pork and chicken.

On the 4th of July we celebrate America’s birthday. It was an appropriate day to visit the Cumberland Gap and admire the bravery of the pioneers, who pushed through to the west.

In 1775 – one year before the colonists signed the Declaration of Independence – Daniel Boone led the first group of families through the Appalachians to their new homes in Kentucky. Today our family walked along the Wilderness Trail through the gap. We climbed to the top of Tri State Peak, where you can be in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia all at the same time.

Of all possible vacation activities, hiking in the mountains is my favorite. Don’t ask me whether I like the strenuous exercise from the steep inclines, the fresh air and trees, or the view from the top the best. They all combine to make a mountain hike a refreshing experience.

When we got down, we had a tailgate picnic at the car. Turkey sandwiches for HH and SS and a peanut butter sandwich for DD. I had salmon mixed with peas and carrots in a bowl. I sliced nectarines and apples for all.

We drove to the Pinnacle for another short hike to where we could look down on the Cumberland Gap. When you see the solid wall of mountains – 600 miles long – and realize there is only one place in the south where it’s possible to get through, you realize the significance of the gap to the history of the country.

SS has exams next week, and needed to have some study time. After dinner (food to go from Applebees) he practiced on the family. He tested our muscles for strength, and measured our joints for range of motion. He confirmed what I already knew, that my legs are much stronger than my arms. He noted that I can turn my head farther to the right than I can to the left. I never knew that! My husband, who had back surgery more than 20 years ago, worries that one of his legs is not as strong as the other. According to SS, the strength level is about the same in both legs.

In a small way we on the blood type diet are pioneers. We are showing people around us a revolutionary way of eating and living. Be brave when people ridicule the way you eat. Persevere when you can’t find anything beneficial to eat in a restaurant. It’s hard at first, and it seems like it’s all uphill, but you will break through.

My legs are sore! DD and I are always looking for creativity and variety in our exercise. We have found a new leg exercise. There is a hill near our home that is too steep for either of us to ride up on our bicycles. We have to get off and push. Today we rode to the bottom of the hill. That in itself is good exercise. There are several challenging hills between our house and the big one.

We walked up the hill backwards. I could feel burning in my leg muscles. Obviously I was using muscles that I missed in my regular exercise routines. We walked down the hill backwards. More muscles burned. Then we walked up the hill backwards on tiptoes - twice. We rode our bikes home and enjoyed a big glass of water!

If this does not sound like a strenuous workout to you, find a hill and try it. If you don't find yourself walking a little more slowly and carefully the next day, you are in much better shape than DD and me!

The last yearbook picture has been placed. Yesterday I happily delivered the last page designs to Fed Ex. It is the most creative yearbook I’ve ever worked on. That’s saying a lot - I’ve worked with yearbooks off and on since 1972. However, I’m very glad its finished and the pressure of the deadline is behind me.

I’ve written so many blogs in my head, and I’ve put none of them on computer. Some of them were pretty good – and most of them are completely forgotten. However I’ll do an abbreviated version of two BTD items that caught my attention while I was immersed in the yearbook.

I cannot figure out why pears are Super Beneficial for Hunters. I have always thought of pears as a “nothing fruit.” They’re sweet, but they don’t have much flavor. They have a texture like sand. It’s difficult to buy them because they are either too green or too ripe. To add to the confusion, they are black dot avoids for Gatherers. None-the-less, in my database that combines everything I know about the BTD and the GTD, I have them rated Super Beneficial for me, and I’ve tried to eat more of them.

Then one day when I was buying dried fruit for DD’s power bars, I saw dried pears. I picked them up. “Disgusting,” I thought, and put them down. I picked them up and put them back several times before they ended up in my cart. Surprise, surprise they are delicious. The flavor is concentrated in dried pears. They are chewy and much less sandy. Now my problem is not eating too many of them.

My Honorable Husband (Type A) had a set back and drank four sodas in one week. He paid for it with an upset stomach that lasted most of the next week. I was not a sympathetic wife. I laughed at him. I also e-mailed him this tid bit from the GenoType Daily, “Ever wonder why you shouldn't eat Teacher Toxins like cornstarch, sugar, and soda? It's because starches and simple sugars encourage microbial growth in your intestines, which can lessen the efficiency of your immune system.”

He loves sodas, and he doesn’t think it’s fair that club soda and seltzer water are beneficial to a Type O like me. Now that the weather is hot and dry, I’ve been indulging in more carbonated beverages. Knudsen spritzers (carbonated water and pure fruit juice) are delicious, but expensive. I like making my own soda beverages using fruit juice and plain club soda.

Because DD takes a shake made with fruit juice and egg white protein powder to work every day, we’ve been buying Dole 100% frozen juices. There are several flavors including raspberry and cranberry, which are beneficial for her.

I took some of her raspberry juice (which is neutral for me) and mixed it and a teaspoon of ginger juice in a glass of ice cold club soda. Raspberry ginger ale! It was fabulous.

Our son is home from graduate school for a week. He is taking many interesting classes as he works toward being a doctor of physical therapy. One that fascinated me was a class he nicknamed “diseases I will never treat.” It is about symptoms of diseases that physical therapists must recognize before they start treatment. If another disease is present, it is important to refer the patient to the proper specialist. It was a very difficult course, but it was practical and necessary.

At lunch today, I asked him what he and his roommate do about food. He said, “I don’t eat out much, Mom.” He fixes himself a sandwich and fruit before he leaves for class. He eats his sack lunch at the hospital.

For dinner, he fixes meat and frozen vegetables. He eats a lot of frozen chicken breasts and ground beef patties. He and his roommate don’t cook together, but his roommate also prepares most of his food in the apartment.

He said, “I don’t eat as healthy at school, as I do at home, but I do try to eat right.”

This really makes me glad. As heavy as his class load is, I couldn't have blamed him if he had been picking up fast food in desperation. But he is not. He is making a conscious decision to focus on vegetables, meat, and fruit.

I asked if any classes in nutrition were part of his program. He said that they had studied how protein, carbs, and fats were metabolized in physiology. They haven't studied diet. He agrees that it is important, particularly with people who are trying to lose weight to minimize joint pain. I hope that when he has his own practice that he can share some of what he knows about healthy eating and the Blood Type Diet.

Whew, with dual credit finals over, my Darling Daughter and I took a day off from school to register her for her college classes. She has a summer job, so this will be the last time she visits campus until she moves into the dorm in August.

We listened to CDs as we drove. She was driving and I was dozing. Through the brain fog, I heard the words, “Everything I love is killing me.” I woke up and asked her to play the song again. It was an Alan Jackson song about a man giving up his favorite things – coffee, liquor, and cigarettes – because they are causing him bodily harm.

DD and I started to laugh – it could be the BTD song. We started to sing the chorus substituting BTD/GTD avoid foods. Ice cream and catfish were two that rhymed particularly well.

Seriously, I have known several people who abandoned the BTD because they could not give up certain avoids. When I talk to Type Os, they often look at me incredulously and ask what I eat if I don’t eat wheat. I need to sing them a chorus of this song. Sure I loved wheat, but while the pain in my stomach might not have been killing me, it hurt! I know several Type As who couldn’t make themselves give up chicken fried steak. If the beef wasn’t bad enough for you, the deep-fried will certainly finish you off.

Popular, processed foods combined with foods that are avoid for your Type really are killing you. We need to find new loves. The best place to start looking is not in a Honky Tonk, but on the beneficial food lists.

Some of you have kept up with my Darling Daughter for four years through this blog. She is graduating from High School later this month. Today was the focus of all her senior year stress. She is taking three dual credit classes. That means she is taking classes through our local community college. She will get both high school and college credit. A lot of the seniors are taking college Freshman English this semester. DD is also taking Accounting and Economics. All three of her finals were scheduled for today! If that wasn’t enough she had two papers due last week before the finals – one of them a major research paper.

It would be difficult to come up with the words to describe the stress level around here. None of us have gotten anywhere near enough sleep. That is particularly bad for DD as a Type A. However, I mix a little coffee with her morning soy shake to get her going.

There is not much we can do about the number of hours in the day. However we can control our exercise and what we eat. DD hasn’t had an avoid food in more than two weeks. Almost everything she has eaten has been beneficial. I could have said the same thing until lunch yesterday, when I ate a few pinto beans that were in my taco salad.

We have been exercising together to hold each other accountable. There was one day when she finished up a paper so late that I convinced her to go to bed without exercise. Other than that we have used physical activity quite effectively to disperse stress.

By 9:00 tonight she will be through with the toughest part of her senior year. She has tests and projects in her regular high school classes, but they are nowhere near as intense as the dual credit classes. She does not have to take high school finals as long as she keeps her A averages. So, while she doesn’t exactly get to coast to the end of the year, her stress level should drop dramatically.

I, on the other hand, am facing my most stressful day of the spring next Monday. Half of the yearbook is due at the publishers. I worked long hours this weekend to consolidate all that the class has done and assign pages that have to be finished by Friday.

Bring on the beneficials and the intense exercise. I’m going to need it this week!