Algood Pure Strawberry Preserves, Great Value Peanut Butter, Kroger brand Saltines and, if I am reading it correctly, Jorsequaid Dairy brand orange juice. Nope, it's Jerseymaid! lol That makes much more sense!
At any rate, these are all things I bought because they were cheap but still pretty good quality, Or, I was hoping they were, at the time, and, turns out I was right. Are there better quality ones. Yeah, probably But, are there worse quality ones, that cost more? Definitely!
If I could, if I had the proper pans, time, ingredients, storage facilities, I would make my own jams and jellies, nut butters, crackers and more. That would help me to be both happier and healthier. Alas, it is not, currently, an obtainable goal.
So, what is? Well, to eat more vegetables in an enjoyable way. I just love roasted, spiced veggies, stews, spaghetti with all sorts of vegetation, and have come to love various Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern sort of spices and dishes, over time.
Now that I know this is so, because I did a little experimenting over time, I am ready to do a lot of experimenting and to incorporate more spices and ways of cooking things into my repertoire.
This will mean doing something very hard for me. I'm going to actually have to try recipes, at least some of the time. Not a good thing for me. lol
Oh, not because I am that bad at cooking, no. And, it's not that I am so arrogant that I think I am the only one that can cook right, either. It's just that, even when I read recipes, I almost never, ever even have them open to consider them when I am cooking. They give me good ideas, nothing more; and, I don't read them, often.
To learn how to make the dishes of other cultures, I should, first, try a real recipe, such as they are real, and from there I shall decide how much to keep following the recipe or no.
Also, as I have mentioned before, I want to start making more things like unleavened bread. For bread, you really do need a recipe, unlike for, say, pasta dishes. For pasta dishes, if you have the pasta and some meat and vegetables and spices, you can do them most anyway you like and bob's your uncle.
To make the noodles, you need the recipe for noodles or you will only make very bad noodles, at best. I do not wish to make very bad anything, so I shall learn how to make unleavened bread and maybe even noodles, and, I have ideas about making yogurt from coconut milk and using that yogurt to make "cheese" cake.
However, until this book is done, I shall not be making yogurt or anything that requires special equipment. I do own a yogurt maker, by the way, and maybe even still have enough jars left - kids like to run away with jars and do odd things to and with them, so it is not a guarantee but I used to have more than enough - to get the job done, and I know there are recipes, online, that I could follow. However, I want to prove, before this book ends, that someone who has nothing that your average extremely poor American is not likely to have or have access to, can lose weight, get in shape and turn their life around, through positive thought and action. So, no yogurt making for me.
I am sad. I love yogurt. Cannot eat regular yogurt, though, and while there is, allegedly, coconut yogurt out there, being sold in stores, I have no idea which store I might be able to find it in and a great suspicion that the store doesn't take food stamps, anyway.
This also means that I will not be using my Callanetics disk or my Goddess workout disk. However, I do recommend them, if you can ignore the pagan talk of the latter and have a sturdy chair for the former. Guess what, though? I do have books on belly dancing, ballet dancing, pilates, non-impact aerobics, and callenetics, as well as one of my favorite books, ever, Makka Ho.
Makka Ho is not a book you are likely to find in the library. In fact, it cost me a very pretty penny to finally get another copy. Yet, I do have it, now, and, if you do enough research, you can find places where someone has thoughtful scanned the instructions for the exercises. The libraries allow free access to the internet and most of us have a friend, co-worker, employer or library to go to, for access to the internet. Not to mention that I am going to tell you the basics of the exercises I am doing, in my book, so you will have access to them.
The difference between Makka Ho and the other two exercise programs mentioned, is that this particular, real Makka Ho book is not being published, anymore. Callanetics and The Goddess Workout are still being published, so, whether it would truly be theft or not, it would feel like theft to me, to type out the exercises from them. And, as I indicated, Makka Ho is available, for free, online whereas the other exercise programs must be purchased or obtained from the library, if you have that sort of library.
I will be dancing, by the way, if badly. If you do not have access to music, hum, sing or chant in an inspiring way, and you dance, too.
Now, Callanetics is a cross between several different dance moves and calisthenics. So, I will not tell you how to follow the Callanetics program, and I will encourage you to find it for yourself, but, I will not specifically avoid doing similar exercises, just because they are similar and I will include them within this book, to help you see how I did things.
I will also include a list of various supplements, exercise tapes, sites, etc. that I have found helpful to me, at other times, even though I will not be using them, now.
When will I do all this? I don't know. I don't have a specific plan. But, I am about to make one. Why? It is something a teacher once taught me. It is that you do need goals and a plan to reach those goals, but, you need more than that.
See, you might have a goal to lose 150 lbs and you may know that the steps are that you need to cut calories and exercise more. Or, you may think those are the steps. Yet, that really doesn't tell you much, does it? It's not very inspiring, is it? It's only positive in that it is positively daunting!
In this example, your long term goal is to lose 150 lbs of fat. Let's start there. You don't want to lose 150 lbs, regardless of what it is, do you? Don't you want to keep your bone and muscle? Would you like to lose nothing but water and make yourself sick? I thought that was the case!
So, you want to lose 150 lbs of fat. That is your long term goal. Now, you need your short term goals. What you thought were steps are actually the short term goals. Cut calories. Exercise more. See? They cannot be steps, as they give no instruction or motivation. They are just goals to attain, along the way to reaching the long term goal.
How do you cut calories? And, what is the purpose of cutting them? Do they, in fact, really need to be cut? Well, if you are snarfing down a box of Suzie Q's at a time, then, probably they do. So, how do you cut those calories down? Do you force yourself to eat nothing but salads for a week? No.
Why do you not do that? It is too drastic a change and it will never work. To cut down on the calories coming from a full box of Suzie Q's, which I realize I may be misspelling, one does not need to buy low sugar, no trans fat guaranteed, tasteless lumps of quasi- Suzie Q's, or to cut out Suzie Q's altogether or even to eat less food. One simply needs to eat less Suzie Q's!
So, your first step, oh snarfer of trans fat laden baked goods, is to figure out how to positively affect your life by changing it in such a way that you will, without feeling as if you are a horrible human being and without doing salad penance, be able to eat less Suzie Q's.
I cannot tell you how to do that, because, I do not know your exact situation, but, I can tell you some options that immediately spring to my mind.
Firstly, one can buy a box of Suzie Q's and take the time to eat them more slowly and really enjoy each one.
Secondly, one can refrain from buying a box of Suzie Q's and, instead, walk down to the nearest convenience store and purchase a smaller package of Suzie Q's, only allowing oneself to eat them once one has walked back to one's home or office. That way, whenever an overwhelming desire for Suzie Q's strikes, one will be getting exercise. It will also give one more reason to learn and exhibit self control and time to decide if that's really what one wants.
You could say a prayer, asking God to help you learn moderation.
Buying a box of Suzie Q's and leaving three out, but, putting the rest up on a high shelf or in the freezer might help some people.
Sharing your Suzie Q's with others might work for you. If you buy a whole box and would like to learn not to eat the whole box, there are probably some homeless persons, neighborhood children, nearby relatives or neighbors who might like a Suzie Q each.
For some people, it is a matter of that they are hungry or thirsty and Suzie Q's are both tasty and convenient. Well, so are apples, oranges, pears, bananas and many other foods. Purchase one of those and then eat it ,and then see if you still have a wild urge for a Suzie Q and, if so, do you still have a wild urge for the whole box. Take a drink of water and check again.
My sister was telling me, a few weeks ago, that we have to stop buying cookies and/or brownies, because we buy them and then we eat the whole package. It is true, we do. Unfortunately, we cannot just eat a few and leave it at that.
I could, if she could; but, she is not the type. As I told her, though, if we bought a package of 12 cookies and we each took two, that would not be so bad. How do we only take two, though, if leaving the cookies with her means that she will eat them all and feel bad about herself? Well, her son and his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's son, are all living in the same building and my son is living with me. That makes six people. So, if we give each person two cookies it is no longer gluttony, it is a fairly moderate treat.
For me, I find that baking cakes, cookies, pies, etc. makes the desire to eat them lessen. Oh yes, I will still have it, but, not as big, not as often. I can bake a cake, have a modest slice, and put the rest away for later.
At any rate, there are many ways to reach that potential goal of taking in less calories and the first thing you need to do is not to completely change your life, but, to take one step in the direction of changing your life.
That is what I learned from the teacher. If your goal is to have a clean, uncluttered living room, then it does you little good to make the step toward that goal "Clean the living room."
'Clean the living room' is a shorter term goal ,and so a step toward a much larger goal, of, for instance, "Stop living in a pigsty."
Except that this is, again, very negative. So, the goal would be to 'Begin and continue living in a healthy environment." perhaps. Or, perhaps "To have a home wherein I can find the things I need."
So: Ultimate goal: Organized home, short term goal: clean living room, shorter term goal: make a plan for getting the living room clean and keeping it that way and get the necessary cleaning supplies. It can go further than that, though.
The thing is, eventually, you get down to identifying the first step you need to make to get things going. And, it is not "clean the living room", it is more like "dust that corner, because I keep noticing it." It's that simple. You don't have to overwhelm yourself, you don't have to hang all your feelings of success or failure on whether you can clean a whole room, right here, right now, when you have no bloody idea where to start. And, you don't have to cut all calories, all day, every day and exercise and suffer to lose weight, either.
You have to identify what you really want, what your goal really is, what the shorter term goals are that will help you get there, what steps you need to take to reach those goals, and, finally, you need to take a step. Even if its' not the step you had written down as the first step. Find a step that you can take, and take that one.
Maybe you've determined that to stop eating a full box of Suzie Q's, you need to buy a small package and eat a salad to help fill you up. Maybe it's not working. Maybe that's not what you need to do! Maybe, you need to take a bath, or write a snarky letter, never to be sent, telling your boss, mother, daughter, best friend or etc. what you really think of them today. Maybe you need to go to the library and get a book.
What will help you to be happier and healthier, right now, that you can do, that will help you to achieve your goals? It may not seem to be related to those goals, remember.
Maybe you think you need to clean the living room, because that's where guests arrive at and see. Only, maybe, what you need is to clean the bedroom, because that's why all the stuff is sitting around the living room. Maybe, when you get to the bedroom, you will see that it doesn't really need to be cleaned, it is just that you have all your business papers sitting around it, because your home office is so disorganized. Maybe you get there and discover that what you really need is some shelves to put the business papers.
Putting up shelves in a different room does not seem to relate to cleaning the living room, but, it does, in this scenario. So, your short term goal is now "Put up shelves in home office." and the steps are to buy the materials or premade shelving or to save up money to buy the materials or premade shelving, and to install it.
Think about your life in these terms and write things down. If you realize something isn't working, rethink it, alter your plan. It's your life. You are its architect. Do what you feel needs to be done with the blueprint, to build a beautiful structure.
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