Corny Cows, Real Food, Five Socks, No Ducks & Chocolate

Okay, it has been 6 weeks into my "way of eating project". I feel great, am looking a little better, but am bored out of my skull. Have been doing some research and have decided to tweak my original plan in the following ways so as to allow a little fun and enjoyment back in my life. Before I hurt something. My desires were to give up things that were harmful to myself or to others, to eat more simply. To step lightly upon this earth we have been entrusted with & take less from it, but not to achieve some unattainable perfection and end up abandoning the whole thing. So time to re-evaluate. Have been reading REAL FOOD by Nina Planck and many other books & learning or relearning about omega 3's and 6's & refined oils and how the American diet is way imbalanced because of corn and corn products. Boring but important. (Once my friend Mary, who grew up in Suburbia said to Me ,who grew up in a Cow Pasture, "Cows don't EAT corn". To which I replied,"They don't?!?" To which she kindly & patiently replies, "NO. They eat GRASS!" Oh yeah! She was RIGHT!) American cows and livestock are all fed corn which messes up the omega 6 balance of EVERYTHING we eat big time ANYWAY...Have also been reading labels again and learning a lot from that. I have reached the conclusion that pure sugar is not so much the problem as corn syrup! The stuff is in EVERYTHING...sugar is in hardly anything anymore! (In the late sixties they discovered corn syrup was cheaper and began putting it in EVERYTHING including our baby formula, & now the health implications are becoming obvious, thanks guys) Rather than succumbing to cravings & buying a bunch of crap and junk food on a whim, I have thought it through and have tried to pinpoint exactly what it is I miss the most and makes me sad to have missing in my life. What I came up with was Pizza Night, (not having pizza when the kids do) and good ice cream & chocolate & an occasional iced coffee. So I looked into it & here is what I came up with. My main goal was to level out my blood sugar and insulin and stabilze my body chemistry. After 6 weeks I have done that. So here is what I am going to experiment with. Pizza... our local family owned Pizza Parlor makes its dough by hand, fresh, no chemicals, no junk. So I am going to allow that for special times out with my kids, a slice of handmade pizza. Cool. Panera also offers very good quality ingredients which will be nice to go to with friends. Have also found several very healthy products made from quality ingredients which also contain some unbleached flour and beet cane sugar. The Kashi brand products are mostly whole grain & they now make a frozen pizza. Groovy. Ice cream...okay, check this out. Go to the ice cream aisle and start picking up cartons and read the ingredients. Sweet jesus in the morning. Most of the ingredients are names I can't even pronounce so I KNOW that can't be good and you will also notice one thing MISSING from the list. Good plain old fashioned SUGAR. Not there. It's all corn syrup...BAD,BAD,BAD stuff for you. Just because it says "All Natural", it means nothing, ignore that, "natural flavors" were made in a chemical lab in New Jersey & aren't natural by any stretch of the imagination. (have you ever caught a whiff of New Jersey?) In a 40 ft. aisle of ice cream, I found ONE made with just cream, eggs, vanilla and sugar. A pint of plain vanilla Haagen Daaz. Mine. I am going to allow that. Then Chocolate. Sounds VERY dangerous, doesn't it? Well, yeah, it REALLY does if you include Hershey's & Cadbury & Reese's and Easter candy and cakes and cookies. But that's not what I mean. First of all, I do not want to support the commercial chocolate industry, involving corporation evils and child labor and even slavery. (no joking, if you are interested, look it up, don't want to ruin your Valentine week) So they can't have my money anymore. But thanks to smaller ethical organic companies and family businesses there are options, just like with the coffee. (good news about that too!) Endangered Species Chocolate and Green & Black's and many other companies offer organically grown & fair trade chocolate made with actual beet or cane sugar, not corn syrup. They sell an 88% cocoa dark chocolate which has very little sugar and all the health benefits that cocoa bring. And the best part is, the store I normally shop at doesn't sell it, so I won't have easy access and being as I am very lazy, it won't be a problem. But nice to know it's there. :) I also learned some VERY exciting news after my 'swearing off the evil coffee cartel' (as Lucy calls it) that Daily Grind's coffee IS organic and Fair Trade!! Hallelujah! BUY YOUR COFFEE FROM DAILY GRIND. Tell the Barista to bring his mother a cup now and then, Dark Side of Life, tons of cream, lots of ice. I also discovered I can buy tiny little bags of organic coffee at my grocery store for $1.50 and it makes about 4 cups. So, I am also adding back in an occasional good cup of coffee as a treat and am VERY happy about it! I won't be having it daily, so I am very pleased with that new discovery. So that's where I am right now. Am going to experiment. Am going to see if I can have a little sugar and white flour (balanced of course with tons of vegies or whole grains) on occasion, but never corn syrup, processed junk food, white bread, fast food, industrial oils or soda. This is still a completely new and different and vastly improved life for me. Not even for sure as of yet if I am going to have any of it, but that is what I learned. If I do give any of it a try and feel like it intensifies any unhealthy cravings or seems dangerous to what I want to accomplish, I will immediately go back to none. But I am looking forward to seeing if I can enjoy a slice of healthy pizza with my kids or have a small bowl of ice cream with them. I am not changing my no- shopping vow, as my current condition of having only 5 socks of which only two match will show. Dollar General has been out of plain white socks since the beginning of the year and haven't had any luck at Goodwill. Accepting sock donations. :) Otherwise, I am still very happy with my plan & will let you know how it goes. Sometimes our friends know us better than we know ourselves which was the case today. I had already been thinking these things through and deciding what was important to me and what I wanted to customize & do differently. After a very long emotional passionate email to my friend Jewls telling her 'how much I hate my life and I want a different life, what is the meaning of life and I want to be a Princess and how I want-to-have-all-my-ducks-in-a-row-except-that-I-can't
even FIND-my-smuckin'-ducks', she offered me the following wisdom. "You don't need a new life. God, you need chocolate". As usual, I think she may be right.