It’s the humidity!

Ahhh…one the joys of being back in the Northeast does include, among many other things, the unabashed right to complain about the weather—whatever it may be!! This week the major complaint is the soggy, warm, wet wool blanket feel of the thick, thick air. One of my water aerobics patrons put in perspective today by saying, and I quote, “It’s summer, what do you expect?”

Ain’t that the truth!

Anyhow, as for life on the BTD…things are going along as best they can I suppose. I don’t know where I thought I was going to have all kinds of time over the summer, because my schedule hasn’t let up yet—and doesn’t look to soon. Well, I’m lying, it will let up over 4th of July weekend…so at least there’s some kick-back time to look forward to at the end of the week. We will be enjoying part of our weekend on the coast in Maine, and I hope to bring sweet potatoes, turkey, and compliant veggies for the grill. I’d love to have some seafood too…but the bitter (red tide) Maine contingent may not allow it on principle.

Anyhow, summertime is the best time on the BTD if you live in a place where local fresh fruits and veggies are not available year round. All of our best foods (I speak for AB’s here) are summertime foods, and we have the most opportunity for outdoor hiking, paddling, exploring and adventuring possibilities. Is there anything more that could be balm to the soul? Maybe a winning powerball ticket…but that’s a big maybe!!

Hope that this finds you safe, happy, and compliant.

Be well…

Planning is my life. Some friends and my mom would describe my planning as scheming. Often I prefer to think of it as the daydreams of a restless heart, though I know that that’s only me trying to rationalize away my inherent need to…well…scheme, I mean…plan.

I plan for school, honestly I OVERplan for school, but it’s always better to keep the little darlings busy than to have them bored with nothing to do. I plan for my future: financial, domestic, physical, recreational. And finally I try to plan for eating. I try to plan for a day, for a week, for an outing, for the rest of my life.

The most obvious interruption to all of this food planning is the grocery store. It’s just too darn busy, noisy, expensive, corporate…blah, blah, blah… The next most obvious problem to food planning is time—time to be in the kitchen cleaning, chopping, and cooking food, or time to be in an actual seated position for a meal (rather than in a standing position over a kid serving lunch detention). But really all of this whining is just hogwash. Really.

The truth is, nobody’s perfect. For real (or, if you’re from the left side, for reals). I mean it. In fact, I embrace it!! I love not being perfect…especially when it comes to food planning. Here’s the thing about not being perfect: it’s okay to not be perfect as long as you are willing to learn from your mistakes. That’s another thing I’m pretty good at…learning from my mistakes. It’s a lucky thing too, because I make a lot of them. Often. But back to food stuff…

All this not being perfect and learning from mistakes means that the BTD becomes a habitual way of life in small increments as the years go by. For example, I measure things nearly always. Six ounces of soy milk in my two cups of coffee for the day. Half a cup of yogurt into my plastic container with another half cup of frozen fruit. A cup of boiled beans poured over a half cup of rice and a chopped up tomato for lunch. The measuring gets even better than that. Dr. D suggests cheese in two ounce servings, so if I buy a hunk of mozzarella cheese that is twelve ounces—I cut it up right away into six mostly equal hunks to be stored in a ziplock baggie. Then, when I use my famous check-off chart, I can track exactly how much cheese I’m sucking down a week. More measurements include dividing ground turkey into four ounce sections before freezing, noting how heavy the fish fillets were that I purchased and dividing out my portion into an appropriate serving size.

It would be nice to think that someday I’d get to the point of having a kitchen scale that I used to weigh and measure every bit of nourishment that went into my body. That think falls very clearly on the dayreams-of-a-restless-heart side of my planning spectrum. The pragmatic other side of the spectrum recognizes that (nobody’s perfect and time is scarce) little habits incorporated into a healthy lifestyle with lots of physicality thrown in will go much farther than cerebral scheming to be the perfect diet master.

As always, thank you for reading my blog…especially when I show up with a wandering, rambling, twisting bit of words tangled on the screen. May you smile, sigh, learn, or just shake your head and thank goodness that you’re more put together than me with all this blood type diet stuff anyway. With love from the great Northeast…keep eating healthy, keep thinking healthy, take care of your spirit, and most of all…be well…

I made the yummiest breakfast ever yesterday morning…it was delicious and it stuck with me for the whole morning without being too heavy (went on a short hike after consuming this breakfast with no upset tummy). Wanna know what it is? Read on!

1 tomato sliced (about 5 slices)

1 or 2 eggs over easy (2 if you’re going to be active after)

Herbed goat cheese

Soy mayo

Italian dressing (Good Seasons made with mostly water)

Salt

Lay slices across a small plate. Sprinkle with a bit of salt, spoon about a tablespoon or two of soy mayo and drizzle with a bit of Italian dressing. Fry up the eggs with olive oil, as you flip them for over-easy turn down the heat and place goat cheese on top. Cover until cheese is melted and yolks are cooked to your liking. Place cooked eggs on top of dressed tomatoes and enjoy!!

As for any other BTD news…I’ll be starting Phase Two of South Beach tomorrow and am so looking forward to having fruit back. Phase Two matches almost perfectly with the BTD for me. I’ll be printing out my BTD portions chart for the first time in several weeks, and will be glad to have a measure of balanced eating again. If I could offer any recommendation to anyone who wants to dabble in low carb dieting in conjunction with the BTD, it would be to be sure to get your multi-vitamins on the strictest low carb segments. My hunny plans on sticking with Phase I for another week or so, and I can be supportive of that with dinners, while I get to have fruit during the day.

Hope that this finds you all well and content. Happy living…

Now that I eat faces again, I love eating in N’Awlins more than ever. **wink* The only drawback is that oysters, crawfish, shrimp, heavy cream and corn syrup are all basically avoids for the AB blood-typer. But…I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—some avoids are just not really avoids if you’re having a great time eating them!! It all goes back to that living life in a highly beneficial way philosophy…

I won’t say that I’m not bloated, that I haven’t gained weight in the six days that I’ve been here (my jeans have gotten tight around the waist!), or that my tummy hasn’t gurgled more than a few times…but…it all tastes so good that the end result makes it all more neutral than avoid really. I’m not trying to convince you or myself, just stating the fact that all rules are exempt when in the Crescent City.

Jazz Fest was super crowded this year, and a bit commercial for my taste (sad that all things have to depend on money and who brings it in), but not an overall disappointment. Caught several shows that I couldn’t have seen anywhere else (Buddy Guy was off the hook and came into the crowd right in front of us!!), and danced like crazy to the requisite zydeco, brass band, and cajun music in weather that couldn’t have been better suited to Fest. We had not a drop of rain this year, and temperatures never exceeded the low 80’s. My friend’s wedding was wonderful and cruising on the Mississippi was very cool.

The plan is to enjoy down home good old southern cookin’ for the last two days of our trip; go home and detox for a day or two, and then start the BTD/South Beach combo diet to ward off those extra inches, make way for spring/summertime hiking and outdoor playing and to prevent heart disease/diabetes from setting in (we aren’t getting any younger you know!!).

I will be happy to share recipes from this “fusion” lifestyle/diet, results of weight loss and overall health feeling stuff…I hope that this finds you all well and content and compliant (for me…be compliant for me…)…smile…

I know that it’s bad. I know that it leads to skin cancer. I know that I’ll make people upset with this blog. But…

I went tanning today in a stand up booth (the kind that shoots UV light at you from all directions) because now that I don’t live in California anymore, I’m afraid I’ll fry in N’Awlins at fest this year. One thing that I didn’t count on from going to the tanning place was how much better I felt emotionally when I stepped out.

Now, understand that I did not look on-line to find out if this is an actual physiological effect or just a psychological placebo that I’m doing to myself…but…I’ve been so down in the dumps lately—really dark in mood—and suffering from TOTAL cabin fever, that anything that makes me feel like my bouncy self is tops in my book...placebo or not. I find myself breathing deeper. I am contented inside of my own skin. My brain is quiet from unsettling thoughts. I feel…can it be…happy.

I’m not advocating going to tanning salons if it’s something that you think may be an unhealthy personal choice. All I’m saying today, here, with this blog is that I felt better after being blasted with mega doses of UV rays over every inch of my skin. I’m just sayin’.

Until next time…be well…