Kindness Matters

Original photo by Kaye Bailey Copyright 2011

Lemon Chicken Soup: Comforting & Delicious

I found this recipe in Prevention magazine and was intrigued by the addition of two eggs at the end of cooking. This method is similar to egg drop soup but I had never considered adding an egg to a more hearty soup. The result was a fresh and light chicken soup with a creamy texture thanks to the addition of eggs. Each 2-cup standard serving has 49g protein so a WLS portion of 1-cup has about 25g

Black Beans and Rice

(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients:

• 1½ tbsp vegetable oil or olive oil
  
  


• ½ onion, chopped
  
  


• 2-3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
  
  


• 2 cups cooked rice, cooled to room temperature
  
  


• 1 (15oz.) can black beans, or about 2 cups of home-cooked black beans
  
  


• 1 cup broccoli florettes, chopped
  
  


• 1 cup tomato, chopped
  
  


• ½ cup mozzarella cheese, grated
  
  


• 2 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
  
  

Preparation:

• Sauté onions and garlic in oil for 3 minutes.
  
  


• Add rice, broccoli and beans. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until broccoli turns bright green.
  
  


• Stir in tomato and cilantro.
  
  


• Sprinkle cheese over mixture and let melt.
  
  

Make 4 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(¼ of recipe (273 g)): 341 Calories, 17 g Protein, 45 g carbohydrates, 10 g Dietary Fiber, 11 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 16 mg cholesterol, 550 mg sodium

Barbecued Salmon

(makes 4-6 servings)

Ingredients:

• 1½ pounds salmon
  
  


• 2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil
  
  


• ½ tsp dried dill or basil (fresh herbs may be used)
  
  


• 1 garlic clove, minced
  
  


• 1 tbsp lemon juice
  
  


• pepper to taste
  
  


• Salt to taste (Nutrition Facts are calculated without added salt)
  
  

Preparation:

• Prepare grill.
  
  


• Combine oil, herbs, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a small-sized bowl.
  
  


• Brush salmon with herbed mixture.
  
  


• Cook salmon for 6 to 8 minutes per side, or until done. (the fish flakes easily with a fork.)
  
  

Make 6 Servings:

Weight loss recipes Amount Per Serving(1/6 of recipe (121 g)): 232 Calories, 24 g Protein, 0 g carbohydrates, 0 g Dietary Fiber, 14 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 70 mg cholesterol, 53 mg sodium

Into every life a little rain must fall

The Rainy Day

Written at the old home in Portland, Maine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

I've written several posts this past week, each one sadder and more depressing than the previous one. I didn't publish any of them. I couldn't bring myself to share my sadness with the world.

This morning I had written an entire post about the misery of my life. I had started it with the poem above. My work, marriage, dieting...everything seem broken beyond repair.

Then the strangest thing happened. After working from home during the morning, on a project that I've been struggling with for the last week, I decided to drive into the office. Someone that I use to work with that's on another team emailed me, asking if I was still having a problem on my project. I told him yes, I was struggling. He said he'd be in the office today and if I wanted, he'd come by my desk and seek if he could help. I quickly showered, dressed, and headed off to the office.

When I left my house at noon, the sky was dark and dreary, it was raining and the wind was blowing. I felt like the weather perfectly matched my mood.

As I drove the twelve miles to my office, the skies opened open, and there, in all it's glory was the sun. I hadn't seen the sun for at least a week, maybe longer. I really can't remember the last time it wasn't raining. For the last ten minutes of my commute, the sun was shining, I felt my mood lift. Suddenly things didn't seem so hopeless and impossible.

I'd actually made a lot of headway on my project this morning, before I received the email from my friend. I still had a few things I was still having trouble figuring out, and I knew he'd know the answers, and fortunately for me, he did.

The thing I'm working on wasn't really my project until last Wednesday. Someone else was working on it for the last several months. Without going into much detail, I was asked to take it over and get it finished quickly. One of my coworkers often teases me that when I get in a situation like this one,  I always pull a rabbit out of my hat and get the job done. This time I was really feeling like I couldn't pull it off. I've always thought that one day there was going to be something I couldn't figure out. I'm happy to say this wasn't it. I'll be finished in a couple days.

As quickly as my work situation improved, everything else seemed to fall into place. My husband is being super sweet, feeling bad for me because I'd worked last weekend, and several evenings the past week.

Today, for the first time in several days I ate perfectly on plan. I haven't been eating terrible, no Easter candy, no Cadbury eggs, but as usual, my portions are too large, and I was eating to much fruit (can we say bananas). It all adds up, a calorie is a calorie, and I know I can't eat unlimited amounts of fruit.

It's funny how everything that seemed so bad now suddenly seems good. In every life a little rain must fall, but like Longfellow said, the sun is still there behind the clouds. And into ever life a little sun must shine.

Fat-ten-u

I recently bought the book Food in the United States, 1820s-1890. I came across an ad for an interesting product that was sold in the late 1800s called Fat-ten-u. Check your calendars, it's not April fools day anymore; this is for real. Fat-ten-u was a dietary supplement guaranteed to "make the thin plump and rosy with honest fleshiness of form." I found several more ads for it online, and they feature drawings of despondent, lean women and drawings of happy overweight women accompanied by enthusiastic testimonials such as this:

"FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor and developed me finely. My two sisters also use FAT-TEN-U and because of our newly found vigor we have taken up Grecian dancing and have roles in all local productions."

I'm dying to know what was in this stuff, but I can't find the ingredients anywhere.

I find this rather extraordinary, for two reasons:

• Social norms have clearly changed since the late 1800s. Today, leanness is typically considered more attractive than plumpness.
• Women had to make an effort to become overweight in the late 1800s. In 2011, roughly two-thirds of US women are considered overweight or obese, despite the fact that most of them would rather be lean.

A rhetorical question: did everyone count calories in the 1800s, or did their diet and lifestyle naturally promote leanness? The existence of Fat-ten-u is consistent with the idea that our bodies naturally "defended" a lean body composition more effectively in the late 1800s, when our diets were less industrialized. This is supported by the only reliable data on obesity prevalence in the 1890s I'm aware of: body height and weight measurements from over 35,000 Union civil war veterans aged 40-69 years old (1). In that group of Caucasian men, obesity was about 10% of what it is today in the same age group. Whether or not you believe that this sample was representative of the population at large, I can't imagine any demographic in the modern US with an obesity prevalence of 3 percent (certainly not 60 year old war veterans).

Here are two more ads for Fat-ten-u and "Corpula foods" for your viewing pleasure:

The energy balance and nutrient uptake for weight loss

If you feel being in your weight is important so you should use a little of your time in to learn few things about nutrition. In this article we present a few basics.

The energy balance

A fundamental law that explains that a thin person or broiler (without taking into account the effects of fluid retention or loss) is the energy balance and looks like this:

If a person absorbs more calories than you use then you gain weight.

If a person absorbs less calories than you use then you lose weight.

But this seemingly simple law has many nuances that should let you know. And really understand the mechanisms by which gain or lose weight. Today, nutritionists know it's very important that induce metabolic effect of food.

Difference between calories consumed and absorbed

Calories come from three types of macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins and lipids.

First I want to highlight the fact that they are the same caloric intake than the calories absorbed. We can only say that a macronutrient has been absorbed as it crosses the intestinal wall and into the blood.

There are major differences between intake and calorie absorption in the case of some diseases that can cause diarrhea or vomiting or parasitic diseases such as tapeworms. There are also people that thins at the expense of their health by using laxatives, or artificially causing vomiting (bulimia).

Some extremely thin people have a hard time gaining weight due to an irritable colon which prevents the absorption of much of the food you eat. There are also experts in nutrition and Michel Montignac who argue that some forms of carbohydrates, due to its structure are hardly digested by healthy people and therefore only part of them enters the bloodstream as glucose.