3 days - 3Lbs.

Good morning! It is Monday and I am excited about the week to come. I have been reading "The 4 Hour Body" and started putting in to practice what I have read. Beginning Thursday last week my attempts have been to follow the plan.

This is the fifth morning, it is 1:25 a.m. and I know I am up for the day, so I am going to go make myself some eggs and broccoli, red pepper and onions for breakfast. I will be eating it before 2 a.m. Yep, it is tasty, but not pretty, so I did not take a picture. Tim Ferriss suggests in his book, that keeping a photo log of everything ingested will help a person stay focused. The colors on my plate this morning are beautiful, but messy -- sort of like my life.
 
Sunday morning at 2 a.m. I was eating steak and eggs and sliced tomatoes. At 11 a.m. my wonderful grandson made me three scrambled eggs and at 4:30pm I had half a roasted chicken. That was the total of my food yesterday. I woke up today asking myself "Where are the vegetables?"

Before sitting down to eat the scrambled eggs Drew made me yesterday I borrowed my daughter's scale and the weight was three pounds lower than where I began on Thursday morning. Nothing about my trial of this plan has gone according to the way it is outlined so I may have to extend the trial another week. I still have not gotten my blood work done (but I have screwed up the eating "30 grams of protein in the first 30 minutes" part of two of my five days.)

This blog, for the next couple of weeks, will probably read more like my diary. It is ok you can read it, just don't expect too much from me. My "truths" might have nothing to do with yours, but then again how will you know unless you read it?

I do not know why I woke up this morning thinking about Abraham's children and family relations and how hate and mistrust are taught. Is it wrong for a parent to teach her child to be cautious when dealing with the children of parents that she has known to be "sketchy"? Perhaps, when raising our children, we can only teach them the principles of life as we see them on any given day.  We certainly can not teach something we do not know or practice. I can not teach anyone to be slim today; my life experiences and choices have produced me -- the 300lb. woman writing this blog. But I can say that we/I do not have to keep making the same choices every day.

Until Later ~ Rita

Day Two -- Woohoo!

May 19th was a stellar diet day (and my dad's birthday.) I had a delayed start, that part was not great, but things got better. Yesterday I had my first meal of 4 eggs and a large piece of turkey sausage at 10:30 am.  I also had 7 whole almonds. I did not schedule well and my next and final meal was at 5:15 Saur kraut and sausage.

Why do I say it was stellar? Between starting late and not eating the prescribed foods (sausage is not one of them) and probably not drinking enough water, I was feeling not so great and when I bent over at the store to reach the tuna from the bottom shelf I saw stars for a moment. I learned a valuable lesson early on -- stick to the program. This morning I have already had my breakfast and been encouraged by the fact that even though I am eating a great deal of protein, my system is moving steadily.

I have read MANY health and diet plan books in my time, and along the way,( I believe it was in the Diamond's book "Fit for Life")  the idea of food sitting in the gut and rotting was introduced to my mind. The Diamonds were proponents of proper food combinations -- not mixing carbs and meats in the same meal. I do not remember all the science, but it was something about enzymes required to digest meat and the ones to digest carbs not working the best together. The point is so far the digestive system seems to be working fine.

I am excited to weigh and measure for the first week of results and I only now starting my third day. I keep the Sabbath and do not want my eat anything "free day" to be Saturday. I would prefer to have it on Wednesdays when I am in Jacksonville and can enjoy some of my favorite restaurants.



3 John 2
 Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.

Until Later ~Rita

Day One in Retrospect - beginning day two

Yesterday was way too easy for me, for Marissa not so much. My day began with 4 yard eggs over medium and lots of water. Later around 2 pm I had some steak and 2 twelve ounce boxes of frozen spinach. Then really late, around 10 pm, I ate a salad of romaine, tomato and a can of black beans.

Marissa ate 4 eggs for breakfast and complained. At her break at work she "messed up" and ate a dip that had Parmesan cheese in it and because she messed up then ate some candy too. She will try again today.

My day today is a bit messed up because I am fasting until after my blood work is completed - probably not until 10 am. I should be eating my protein right now instead of writing this blog.

This program has so much more protein than has been my normal eating habit and it is weird, but at least this first day was VERY satisfying.  Two years ago I was vegetarian for almost a year. I felt pretty good then, but lost my hair and it felt as if my whole day was centered on food. When I stopped eating that way ( I stopped during a battle with depression, a very deep depression) I just ate whatever was available at home or through KFC or Taco Bell or Hardees and let's not forget Dunkin Donuts. Back in January, I broke my toe and put my back "out" at the same time and did as little walking, bending, standing as possible for a couple of weeks. The weight came on extremely quick. I do not know what I weighed from day to day, but I have proof that from January 8th to May 18th I gained 17 lbs. I knew it was going to be bad before I ever got on the scale because my clothes are uncomfortable.

I have always been a "big girl" even in youth at 138lbs. Over 5'10" and big boned, I have NEVER had the slender ankles and shapely legs that my mother had in her youth. Butt, that was my best asset -- yes, puns intended. When the muscle is not used and becomes insulated in fat and the fat gives in to gravity it is no longer appealing. Let's face it I am no longer a girl. I am 54 years old and many times feel half again that age. I needed an intervention and Steven talking to me about the 4 Hour Body may just be what I needed.

Here, in short, is the premise:  for the next six days 
1) no white (or ever could be white) anything like sugar, flour, rice, potatoes or derivatives of those items like pasta, bread, potato chips, rice cakes etc.
2) Drink NO CALORIES except the allowed 2 glasses of red wine in the evening before bed. Drink extra water to keep things flushing through the body. I have not read anything in his book yet about this, but I try not to drink while eating or for at least an hour after because I want the enzymes to do their digestion job properly. As I said, it is a lot of protein.
3) Eat 30 grams of protein within an hour of waking for the day
4) Eat the same few foods over and over for six says
5) Seventh day eat what ever I want, no restrictions apply, no calorie counting ever.

Since I personally have water fasted for over three weeks, I know I can restrict myself for 6 days at a time. We will see how it changes things for me. You can join me if you like.

Until Later ~ Rita  

By Request

My son, Steven, is a reader of improvement books and blogs from his favorite folks that give him ideas on ways to save time and effort. One of his favorite gurus is Tim Ferris. My son has encouraged me to try the plans for weight reduction/body improvement that Tim espouses in his book "The 4 Hour Body". My 23 year old daughter Marissa and I will TRY this for two weeks beginning today, May 18, 2017.

The beginning is this, we measure the same 4 areas of our body with a measuring tape and add the numbers together, and we get a beginning weight. I am also going to get blood work done today to have numbers to compare for my cholesterol and triglycerides and an A1c test. We are also taking pictures of our before selves both in clothes, which we post here and in our underwear which is to be a real view form of encouragement not to cheat ourselves out of a better body. Follow us if you like and we will tell you the good, bad and ugly.

I am posting this now, but will update with pictures and measurement totals later today. The first food change we are making is eating 30 grams of protein within the first hour of being awake. So I am off to make Marissa some eggs.
Until later - Rita

Ok, so my measurements added up to 208 1/4 inches Marissa does not want to bothered by that. I am going to get my BMI done at the gym at college this morning in Madison. I have to drink over a liter of water and then pee to get accurate reading from the machine. I will also get my weight done there. Here are our beginning photos.

Weak Week

At the beginning of each week, I do two things. The first thing I do is look back on the previous week to see what I could have improved and then I try to plan the week ahead and utilize anything and everything I learned from previous encounters.

Because, Wednesdays, I travel to Jacksonville, Florida from Live Oak, where I live, I tend to focus on that trip far too much. I enjoy my visits with old friends and like making new ones too. I get excited about sharing the great stuff from Wainwright Dairy and Creamery and the opportunities for shopping and dining experiences that are not available out here in the country. However, I need to make the most of my whole week. Thursdays are usually a wash, because the pain in my back and legs from not having enough rest time takes a day to "get over."

Today, as I was rehearsing the week of April 23-29 I realized that I did not make one dime of profit. I enjoyed myself immensely, and there is a lot to be said for that, but that will not replace my vehicle when the miles have taken their toll. The true value of what I do is in getting to visit with my friends while I take nutrient dense products to those that value their health above most other things.

I do not have costly hobbies, so I am happy to "break even" on my fun day. When school starts up again next week for summer, (I am taking two classes) my days will seem more rushed. It is my plan to add to this first day of the week the planning and cooking or chopping of meals for the week. So in future blogs you may find more pictures and recipes.

Today I am making banana bread and a pumpkin swirl cheesecake and also some crunchy peanut butter cookies with just a bit of chocolate. When I make home baked products, I always make sure to use pure cane sugar, if the label does not claim 100% pure cane sugar, you are probably getting sugar from sugar beets. Unfortunately all the sugar beets in the general market place are GMO. http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/jun08/sugar_beet_industry_converts_to_gmo.php I do not always get organic sugar, but I try not to compound the damage these "unhealthy" treats and desserts wreak on our bodies.

Wonderful Wednesday!

Spring is the time I LOVE being outside in the mornings and evenings. I am drawn to the crisp air and bird songs. Mornings I have my coffee with Wainwright Dairy cream and try to plan my day and consider whether I am preparing an afternoon or evening meal. This is not usually something I have to do on Wednesdays. Most times I will enjoy something from the Savory Market (https://m.facebook.com/thesavorymarketfernandina) and enjoy an early dinner with some Jacksonville friends. Today we will be in Riverside at Hawkers for happy hour.

As it gets hotter and I get busier, my interest in cooking disappears. Preparing and eating food becomes very simple in the summer. Raw vegetables, salads, eggs, cheeses, and some fresh caught fish are my staples. I am working on some interesting salad dressings made with our dairy products and will give some recipes after I have them perfected.

It is time for me to head to the dairy and pick up some goodies for my friends in Jacksonville so it is really short today.

I am planning to do cheese tastings this year, so if you would like to host one, let's get it on the calendar.

Until Later ~ Rita

Life, LOVE & happiness 4-11-2017

Good morning! that phrase is one of the many things I miss about my late husband. I share a home with my 23 year old daughter and unless she has to work in the morning, it is rare for me to be greeted before noon and "Good afternoon!" is not ever her greeting. That is life ...

I love my children -- I miss my children. The eighteen or so years that I had the responsibility to provide a home, meals, clothing and guidance for my children is now in the past and I love the adults that my children have become. I have opportunities to watch and listen to my older two be parents to their children. Grandchildren are wonderful. I am amazed to see the patience that my children exhibit in their interactions with my grandchildren. I am sure that I was not the example for this parenting. Which brings me to believe, that I was the example of what they did NOT want to be as parents.

Are young people ever satisfied with the lives they are living? I vividly remember wanting more -- more freedom, more money, more friends, more fun. Perhaps it is because I am the oldest child in my family, perhaps it is a character trait (read flaw?), but I was not ever satisfied with easy. I could have had easy, but rejected it time after time. My happiest days were ones in which I accomplished something that was hard to do.

At this (hopefully) middle time of my life, I still want more. The hard things now are relative. It is hard to watch my parents grow older and not be able to do many things for themselves. It is hard to endure the physical pain I am in every day. It is hard to admit as a parent, as a person, that I do not have and have never had all of the answers. It is hard to self examine and view the results. Sometimes it is hard to write and share my feelings.

I do write for so many reasons: 1) It is cathartic. 2) My son is searching in to his family tree, if his grandchildren or great-grandchildren do the same, I want there to be something to find. I want to give them a sense of who the person is/was that is giving/gave them some DNA. 3) If anything I write can be helpful to someone else, I want to share and be helpful. 4) Writing is helping me be more aware of changes I need to make. 5) Writing is hard.

Until Later ~ Rita

Feeding People

4:30 am on April 10th, 2017 and my thoughts are on the food I will be furnishing for a gathering  tonight, the breakfast meal I need to produce in a few minutes and the tiramisu that my daughter wants me to make for her workplace. Since preparing my first sit down dinner in 1975, I have thought about feeding people. A couple years later, I would have my first job working in a restaurant and begin learning about prep work, seasonings and the fickle palate of the American public.

The first meal I remember making was breakfast. I was learning to read quite well, so following a recipe was easy enough. Mom taught me that that a capital "T" meant a tablespoon and the lowercase was for a teaspoon. It was not until I actually made my first waffles that I was introduced to measuring spoons. Instead of the spoons we used to set the table for meals, there were these thin metal ones that rested inside each other and were connected on a ring. Those measuring spoons are in the drawer in which I keep my baking paraphernalia to this day.

When I was a young person, my dad worked and mom took care of the house and my younger siblings while I was dazzling my first grade teacher with my brilliance. I walked about a mile, through our San Souci neighborhood, in Jacksonville, Florida to Greenfield Elementary School swinging my lunchbox and singing the songs I had memorized from listening to the albums or 45s that my mom played while she washed dishes or mopped the kitchen floor. Of course a child's mind makes the words fit what she "knows". So, "Guantanamera", a song from Cuba, became "One Ton of 'Matoes" in my little girl mind. The crossing guard changed my tune to "Summer Time" and the words made sense and some other kids sang along here and there. The living was easy for children unaware of the lives being lost in Vietnam, having no real understanding of the meanings behind most of the popular songs of the late '60s.

That same walk home in the afternoon sun made me hungry. My mom would have home made whole wheat bread just coming out of the oven as I walked through the front door. After changing in to play clothes, my snack was a thick cut piece of that warm bread, lathered with butter (made in a quart sized Ball jar from the cream atop our raw milk) and honey, followed by a big glass of cold milk. I did not realize how good I had it; I wanted a sandwich (like the other kids) made from Wonder bread and Skippy peanut butter and wanted to have a glass of Ovaltine with it. My mom was not going to spend her food money on that stuff, so I had to ask for it when I was out with my Grandmother Norma. She would buy my requested brands and give the cute guy that put them in the trunk of her car a quarter.

My grandmother did her share of cooking to feed the people. The people, were hungry men that worked at the shipyard and came to her tavern at lunch time to eat her chili or ham sandwiches and have a draft beer. When we went to visit her at work, I was always allowed to have a huge dill pickle and I got to have a bottle of coke with a pack of salted peanuts in it and sometimes a piece of chocolate candy that had a cherry in the middle and some sweet syrup  surrounding it. I heard different music on the big jukebox in the corner than what was played at home. I remember twisting my body to music by a guy named Chubby and throwing my arms up and down to do the jerk or holding my nose and bobbing around to act like I was swimming. Life was great fun.

Now, nearly fifty years later, I am the grandmother making home made banana bread for one set of grandchildren and biscuits and white gravy for the other set. The young ones dance, uninhibited, to music that has a great beat, but they have no understanding of the lyrics. I have fed thousands of people in my life, but none of the praise matters nearly as much as hearing my grandkids say "it is good! DD can I have more?"  Yes, love, you may have as much as you like until it is gone.

Until later ~ Rita

First Day of the Week

It's Sunday morning at 5:45, I have had my breakfast of home made chocolate chip cookies and am sipping my morning coffee from Papua, New Guinea. I have a friend that lives there and gardens for his living. As I drink this enhanced bean water (cream and sugar), I contemplate the vast differences between the life Apollos lives across the globe and the one I am living in Suwannee county, FL.

After realizing that I can not possibly know what another person's life feels like, I focus on my life -- what it is and what it is not.

I live in the comfort of a nation in which I can boldly state my belief that human beings are created in the similitude of God. Some of my friends might think me foolish for that belief, but we can agree to disagree without one of us having to be jailed. This is not so in some nations. I have another friend, (a messianic Jew) that visits his wife's family in Cuba each year. While there he preaches the words of Yeshua, but could be arrested for doing so. Although it is not my intent to preach, I could, if I wanted, and not have to fear arrest because I am a Christian or because I am a woman. That is the privilege I have because I am a citizen of the USA. I am grateful that I was born to parents that were born and raised in this country.

I have several friends that are naturalized citizens, they went through the processes necessary to make this land their permanent home. None of them take for granted the great freedoms we have and as far as I can see, they all work and appreciate the living conditions here. One friend related the amazement she felt from her first visit to a grocery store here in the US. She had never seen many of the packaged foods and was flabbergasted by the options in the produce section and how meats were portioned, wrapped, and refrigerated. Unless one has traveled to other parts of the world, it is hard to understand how much we have here. It is difficult to get young people to understand that we are not better people just because we have easier lives. Many in the US seem to confuse birthright privileges with entitlement. We, who were born here, should be happy that we have a free enterprise system. That we can, with few restrictions, conduct business to make money for ourselves and our families.

My coffee is cold and I must take my daughter to her workplace. I will jump down from my soapbox and get to the tasks I have planned for this day. I encourage you readers to consider your life and be grateful.

Until later ~ Rita

It Has Been A While

March 18, 2017 will go down in my personal history as a good day. I was able to enjoy the morning. I read some scriptures that helped me to solidify my faith. I saw some friends and spoke on the phone with some others. The texts and emails made me smile. I had a healthy dinner and am settling in to the evening with a cup of coffee and some banana trifle.

I have been at home alone, this week, while my daughter was in Canada; it was my first real taste of empty nest. It was fine. I got through it. I found that I can handle my own company and when I need more, friends and other family are there for me. All I have to do is ask. I think, in my darkest times, I probably turned down invitations from every friend I had and now it is my turn to ask.

Table at Sunrise Coffee Shop

Here is the skinny on me: I am a fun-loving person, with a back that is not fun, I am unemployed, but I work as hard as I can to make a couple of bucks by selling cheese and milk from the dairy of my extended family. I am a widow and a grandmother, a foodie and a music lover. The only drama I enjoy anymore is a TV show called "This Is Us". I have a creative side that wants to sew and paint and re-purpose old furniture. That same creativity is utilized more often in the kitchen creating new combinations of food.

My latest creation is a quite tasty pimento cheese made from Wainwright Dairy and Creamery chipotle cheese. When you make your way to Sunrise Coffee Shop in Madison, FL you could try some if Moruna is feeling gracious (which is always.) She has the only place that serves my exact recipe. I am also ASKING that you buy a block or wedge of cheese while you are there.

Until next time ~Rita