Don’t explain, don’t complain.

slow carbs tasted best with salsa

Thanks to Monsanto, factory farms and my aging digestive system, I’m making changes to improve my health, to bring my BMI down below my age and bring some control into my life. I’ve started a new eating plan, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.

One thing I’ve learned is that everyone is very quick to tell you how to change your diet and why what you are doing is wrong: counting calories or not, eating low fat/low carb/low everything,  drinking X cups of water, diet soda is bad or diet soda is better than regular soda,  you have to exercise more than you eat, yadda yadda yadda

The most important thing for any eating plan is that you can stick with it. Making changes is not easy for anyone, especially if what you like and are used to eating is what you need to stay away from.

That brings us to complaining.  That’s my real challenge.

I’m sensitive to gluten and dairy. That really sucks after being raised on macaroni and cheese. Of course, when I was a child, there was no GMO wheat, and cows ate grass, not their former sorority members.  But now times and food processing have changed, and alas, so must I.

I’m reading a lot about nutrition and how foods work in a body, and I’m finding that food is relatively hard to come by in the land of “Got Milk?” and “Have it your way.”  Table sugar, according to one study, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-preferred-su_b_712254.html, is more addictive and irresistible than cocaine, at least to cocaine-addicted rats. Of course, the rats preferred to drink sweetened water than to get an intravenous injection…hmmm. Good science?  Ever noticed how almost every food has sugar added, even chicken broth? Modified food starch is gluten—added to lots of foods to make them stick together better, also true of casein, a milk protein.

A new book is out, the China Study, that claims that people shouldn’t be eating animal protein at all.  But a number of commentators propose that the scientist did not take enough variables into account. According to one author, http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Spotting-Bad-Science-103-The-China-Study.pdf,   gluten has all the same deleterious effects as casein. So, for the most part, I’m learning to avoid both.

So, eating less processed foods has to be better. That means more planning for me, so that I have healthy food available to eat when I’m hungry, that I don’t allow myself to get so hungry that I eat stuff off-plan, and that I don’t whine and complain about what is on the plan, and what’s not.

Re-creating myself as I approach retirement.