Why I haven't been posting very often

My posts have been few and far between these days. Last week I only posted once. That usually means something bad in the blog world. If that's what you're thinking, you're right.

I'm kind of in a funk lately. Not exactly depressed, but not my usual happy self. I'm finding it harder and harder to even fake happiness, and usually I'm pretty good at faking happy. In fact, I'm so good at it I can usually talk myself out of a bad mood just by pretending to be happy. Lately though, it's just not that easy.

I wonder if maybe this is depression and what if I feel like this forever. Is that what people feel like when they're clinically depressed and seek out psychiatric help and antidepressants? Okay, maybe I'm not that sad, I'm just kind of sad. I'm not happy where I am at this point of my life, on many levels, but I'm not quite ready for nut house.

I'm reading all your blogs, but I'm not commenting. No particular reason, just that I always feel rushed and exhausted. Plus, honestly, I say the same old thing over and over. It's never really inspiring or helpful. Just the same old thing. I wish I had some worthy bits of wisdom to share, but I'm struggling myself so I don't feel anything I have to say is worthwhile. If I had the answers, I'd fix myself.

My personal weight loss journey has come to a standstill. I'm not gaining weight, but I'm up 20 pounds from my lowest weight in the last two years (175.6 this morning). I'm not losing weight. More importantly, I'm not really trying anymore. I've become lazy, bored, and just tired of it all.

I still exercise, but lately my heart really hasn't been into it. I'm finding it difficult to make myself get out of bed in the mornings and get to the gym. Instead of working out six or seven times a week, I've cut back to four times a week.

I haven't been tracking my food either. I usually start out with good intentions, but about halfway through my day, I usually just give up.

My eating isn't terrible, I'm not eating junk food unless you call the Dreyers 70 calories Pomegranate frozen juice bars junk food (and they are sort of). Other than that one thing, my food is completely healthy and wholesome, but my servings are too large.

So what am I going to do about this situation? I honestly don't know. I'd kick my own butt if I could, but I just don't have the energy nor the desire anymore. I don't know what's wrong with me, but I need to get out of this mood I've been in. I miss the old me.

There were a few things that made me smile this week:

1. I tried to call Riverroad Animal Hospital on my Blackberry using my Bluetooth. I said, "Call Riverroad". The phone said, "Call rrrr-rrrr?". I thought, well, sort of sounds like Riverroad. I said "yes". Phone said "Calling rrrr-rrrr". It called Linda Mathys (my niece). Really, Linda Mathys sounds like "Riverroad"?

2. I constantly forget to lock my cell phone when I throw it in my purse. As a result, it's always yelling at me "Say a command!". Yesterday I said, "Just shut up and turn off!". The phone said "Voice prompts off". Blessed silence. Then I had a moment of my panic because I didn't know how to turn voice prompts back on.."turn on" worked.

3. I was sitting at my desk at work today (and yes, today is Sunday!), stepping through the same chunk of code for five freaking hours and not being able to figure out why my web service call kept failing, I literally said out loud to myself (alone in the office): "I wish I was smarter!".  Then it occurred to me to to take the web service error I was getting and search for it in Google. The first search result that came back said to check the CurrentState of the object. That was the problem! Okay, so I'm not smart, but Google is smart (thank you Larry Page and Sergey Brin!).

4. I was listening to a new Ke$ha song on my iPod. I wanted to know the name of the song so I pressed the middle button, the iPod said "My First Kiss featuring Kah-dollar-sign-ha 303". It's obviously Ke$ha
30H!3. No wonder iPod is confused!

5. Thursday was my twenty-second wedding anniversary. After work my husband met me at a restaurant for dinner. When I pulled into the parking lot he was standing there holding a dozen peach roses and the sweetest card he's ever given me. I haven't exactly been a joy to live with lately so I was surprised. It made me smile.

I guess life isn't all black and horrible. As my mom would say, this too shall pass. :)

The Weight Loss Power of Peppermint Tea

Lose Weight by drinking Peppermint Tea

While British women are known for their strange fad diets, like the "eat only curried beets" plan, the latest U.K. trend which is Drinking peppermint tea, may actually work.

Drinking six cups of the brew daily helped dieters shed 30 pounds in six months.

The reason: A peppermint-leaf compound called menthofuran signals fullness in the brain's satiety center, which helps people eat less.

Late Night Junk Food Snacking

Check out this fun video. Anita Renfroe parodies Carrie Underwood's video for those who want to reconsider the next trip to the fridge.

Get Rid of Love Handles by Eating Broccoli

Have a Mushy Middle? Add Broccoli florets to your Salad to rid your love handles

Add four or five broccoli florets if you're having a salad to raise the body's levels of the enzyme glutathione S-transferase (GST) by up to 42% and lose that stubborn belly fat.

GST quadruples the rate at which the liver flushes the body of fat-trapping toxins and burns fat for fuel, tapping into the fat stores located nearest to it (the belly) first!

Love making a salad? Here's a startling advice: 
Did you know that fatty dressings can be good for you?
Walk right past the fat-free dressings in favor of regular varieties. When paired with fat-free dressing, practically none of the beneficial antioxidants in salad, such as beta-carotene and vitamin E, is absorbed by the body, reveals research from Iowa State University in Ames.

In combination with healthy fats like those in avocados and olives, 1 Tbs. to 2 Tbs. of full-fat dressing enhances antioxidant absorption from veggies by 92 percent.

Apples: Boost weight loss success by as much as 33%

Boost weight loss success by as much as 33% just by eating Apples.

Noshing on an unpeeled apple can eliminate cravings and increase the amount of weight you lose on any diet by 33%.

A recent study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that enjoying an apple before a meal curbs appetite for up to 4 hours, and Brazilian researchers discovered that the habit can boost weight loss success by as much as 33%.

Having an apple before lunch prevents the blood sugar dips that trigger cravings for sweets or carbohydrates later in the day.

The reason for this amazing weight loss boost: Apples are one of the richest sources of pectin, a soluble fiber that turns into a sticky gel-like substance in the gut and adheres to simple sugar, stalling their absorption into the bloodstream, according to Cambridge University Researchers.

Homemade Coriander

We discovered coriander a couple of years ago and we honestly use it as much as salt.  It adds a citrus flair to your foods and we add it to everything.  Fabulous on beef, chicken, vegetables, salsa, sauces...you get the idea.

Recently, we had cilantro growing in our garden.  We enjoy growing the herb for our Mexican dishes, but we have a hard time going it.  It quickly goes to seed.

Outside recently, one of us thought that coriander was from cilantro seed.  If you are familiar with these two flavors, you know they are entirely different.  I giggled to myself when I tasted one of the cilantro seeds and proved that they really are coriander.

It was fun to separate these little pods from the dried cilantro plant.  A little touch from the food processor, and we will have the freshest coriander we've ever had.

Photo Credit

Tropical Plant Fats: Coconut Oil, Part I

Traditional Uses for Coconut

Coconut palms are used for a variety of purposes throughout the tropics. Here are a few quotes from the book Polynesia in Early Historic Times:

Most palms begin to produce nuts about five years after germination and continue to yield them for forty to sixty years at a continuous (i.e., nonseasonal) rate, producing about fifty nuts a year. The immature nut contains a tangy liquid that in time transforms into a layer of hard, white flesh on the inner surface of the shell and, somewhat later, a spongy mass of embryo in the nut's cavity. The liquid of the immature nut was often drunk, and the spongy embryo of the mature nut often eaten, raw or cooked, but most nuts used for food were harvested after the meat had been deposited and before the embryo had begun to form...

After the nut had been split, the most common method of extracting its hardened flesh was by scraping it out of the shell with a saw-toothed tool of wood, shell, or stone, usually lashed to a three-footed stand. The shredded meat was then eaten either raw or mixed with some starchy food and then cooked, or had its oily cream extracted, by some form of squeezing, for cooking with other foods or for cosmetic or medical uses...

Those Polynesians fortunate enough to have coconut palms utilized their components not only for drink and food-- in some places the most important, indeed life-supporting food-- but also for building-frames, thatch, screens, caulking material, containers, matting, cordage, weapons, armor, cosmetics, medicine, etc.

Mainstream Ire

Coconut fat is roughly 90 percent saturated, making it one of the most highly saturated fats on the planet. For this reason, it has been the subject of grave pronouncements by health authorities over the course of the last half century, resulting in its near elimination from the industrial food system. If the hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease and other health problems is correct, eating coconut oil regularly should tuck us in for a very long nap.

Coconut Eaters

As the Polynesians spread throughout the Eastern Pacific islands, they encountered shallow coral atolls that were not able to sustain their traditional starchy staples, taro, yams and breadfruit. Due to its extreme tolerance for poor, salty soils, the coconut palm was nearly the only food crop that would grow on these islands*. Therefore, their inhabitants lived almost exclusively on coconut and seafood for hundreds of years.

One group of islands that falls into this category is Tokelau, which fortunately for us was the subject of a major epidemiological study that spanned the years 1968 to 1982: the Tokelau Island Migrant Study (1). By this time, Tokelauans had managed to grow some starchy foods such as taro and breadfruit (introduced in the 20th century by Europeans), as well as obtaining some white flour and sugar, but their calories still came predominantly from coconut.

Over the time period in question, Tokelauans obtained roughly half their calories from coconut, placing them among the most extreme consumers of saturated fat in the world. Not only was their blood cholesterol lower than the average Westerner, but their hypertension rate was low, and physicians found no trace of previous heart attacks by ECG (age-adjusted rates: 0.0% in Tokelau vs 3.5% in Tecumseh USA). Migrating to New Zealand and cutting saturated fat intake in half was associated with a rise in ECG signs of heart attack (1.0% age-adjusted) (2, 3).

Diabetes was low in men and average in women by modern Western standards, but increased significantly upon migration to New Zealand and reduction of coconut intake (4). Non-migrant Tokelauans gained body fat at a slower rate than migrants, despite higher physical activity in the latter (5). Together, this evidence seriously challenges the idea that coconut is unhealthy.

The Kitavans also eat an amount of coconut fat that would make Dr. Ancel Keys blush. Dr. Staffan Lindeberg found that they got 21% of their 2,200 calories per day from fat, nearly all of which came from coconut. They were getting 17% of their calories from saturated fat; 55% more than the average American. Dr. Lindeberg's detailed series of studies found no trace of coronary heart disease or stroke, nor any obesity, diabetes or senile dementia even in the very old (6, 7).

Of course, the Tokelauans, Kitavans and other traditional cultures were not eating coconut in the form of refined, hydrogenated coconut oil cake icing. That distinction will be important when I discuss what the biomedical literature has to say in the next post.


* Most also had pandanus palms, which are also tolerant of poor soils and whose fruit provided a small amount of starch and sugar.