Food Glorious Food!

 

mmmm….so filling

 

Do you know what is the best food for filling you up so you don’t go eating like a pig all day?  Me neither.  I doubt there is any, at least in my case.

 

I don’t have a weight problem, thanks to good genes (or is that jeans?) and a high metabolism, but I do have a problem with portions.  I eat it all! All of it! At any time.  So quite naturally, I am always on the lookout for foods that the pros recommend for keeping us feeling full longer.  As I call them ‘Filler-upper foods’.

 

Here is a list of the top ten and how they stack up.

 

Porridge – This apparently is supposed to be the top dog for filler-uppers.  Have it first thing in the mornings and you should be good until lunch.   Who are they kidding? Porridge fills me up for a good two hours and that’s it!  By lunch time, I am starving.  I should know, I have a bowl or two every morning.

 

Potatoes – Um, yeah? Do you mean potato chips?  Maybe if I munch on chips all day long I’ll be full.

 

Soup – SOUP?  Are you kidding me?  Soup tells you that your food is on its way, so warm up the digestive system.   Seriously folks?  You want me to eat a bowl of soup and stay full?  Just for the records, I don’t like soup much.

 

Pasta – Now we are talking! After a few bowls of pasta, I am usually good for a while.  I said a while,  don’t get carried away now.

 

Oranges – If you offer me an orange when I say I am hungry, I will throw it back at you.  I eat an orange AFTER my meal, not before.  It’s a snack or a dessert and not intended to fill anyone up.

 

Popcorn – Say what? I have popcorn during a movie and when the movie is over, I can hardly wait to eat  real food.  Maybe it’s from seeing all that food in the movies. I love popcorn!

 

Beans – This turns to gas in your tummy so it’s a case of  ’fill er up’.  Beans is part of my meal, as in a side dish.  It doesn’t do the trick. My father-in-law would sing, ‘Beans beans, the national fruit.  The more you eat it, the more you toot’.

 

Peanuts – Where is banana on this list?

 

Salad – Bush! If salad was a filler-upper food, do you think they would serve it before your entrée at restaurants?   Think about it.  A comedian once said,  ’Salad ain’t food.  Salad is what food eats.’

 

So my quest for the perfect filler-upper food continues…stay tuned folks!

 

 

 

Related articles

• Fill ‘Er Up! (theafterburnsg.wordpress.com)
• http://www.womenfitness.net/top10_stophungryfoods.htm

 

Food, Glorious Food!

Yes please

Let’s get to the meat of this,  pardon the pun.  I love food. Gimme! Gimme!  Burgers, Pizzas, especially pizzas, Thai, Chinese, (We are still talking about food), Caribbean, (oh I love me Island foods), whatever the food, I love it.  In fact, I am hungry now just writing about food.  It really is a good thing that I am blessed with good genes or I would be obese.  As luck or genes would have it, I think I actually lose weight the more I eat.  Sorry!

With age and a young family of three healthy boys, it became top priority that I pay more attention to my lifestyle and make necessary changes.   I want to play with my kids, not watch them play from the confines of my bed or couch.  I also realize that I do not have to be obese to be unhealthy.

So what am I doing about this?  About two years ago, I discovered the magic of hot water with lemon.  Read my blog about that here.  With this elixir, I went from 195lbs to 180lbs within a few months.  (I am 6″1′).  I also recently joined a weight loss or weight management as I prefer to call it, program.  My work sponsors it for all employees and their spouses.   It is called The Enforcer Ecoaching and is a venture put on by Cleveland Clinic.  Participants receive pedometers to track their daily steps and report to a health coach.  The minimum steps required a day for a healthy lifestyle is 10,000.   This sounds easy until you check your pedometer at the end of the day and find out you have only put in 2000 steps.  You never want to email those figures to Dr. Mike as he would admonish you for not trying.  This means running around my bed trying to add some much-needed steps to the meter.   Working a desk job is no excuse.

Dr. Michael Roizen who is famous in the field of healthy living and the co-writer of a series of books with Dr. Oz called ‘YOU’, is the Ecoach.  He is also the wellness guru at Cleveland Clinic.  Him and his team reply to all my queries and give me regular pats on the back and recommendations.  I once sent in my steps and they were around 6000.  (slow day),  Dr. Mike was not impressed.  He urged me to get them back up to acceptable levels and recommended that I not try for close parking when I go shopping.   I took that one to heart.  All participants of The Enforcer program were also given a free ‘YOU’ book, ‘You On A Diet’.   I am also required to send in my daily foods but I said nay to that.   Trust me Dr. you really don’t want to know.

For exercise, I have been doing the one hundred pushup challenge for almost a year now.  I came across it online and shared it with a few of my friends.  Great program!  I more than tripled my pushup reps in a matter of a few months.

Now when it comes to all those weight loss programs out there,  Weight Watchers for me, carries the most weight. Pardon another pun.  The thing is, with The Enforcer, I don’t have the luxury of eating whatever I want.  I am destined to life without the fun foods.  No more Burger King and Pizza hut and what kind of life would that be?  Weight Watchers on the other hand promotes a diet based on enjoying your foods BUT eating it in moderation and tracking your calories intake.    Now that’s more realistic and that I could live with.

My take? More cake

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You make me sick!

People who ‘forget’ to wash their hands after using the bathroom make me sick! Both literally and figuratively.

After encountering this unhygienic practice a few too many times, I had decided to blog about it but kept putting it off as it was not really the most interesting thing to blog about.  Relevant and serious perhaps but not compelling.  Finally, I had enough and now must dust off that draft I had made about a month ago and tell it like it is.  Drop it like it’s hot as the cool folks would say.

Being something of a germaphobe flirting with the edge of mysophobia, I am constantly on the lookout for unsanitary practices, especially in places where I eat.  I look to see if the cooks are wearing hair nets and gloves and are not cross contaminating my food.  So imagine my dismay and disgust when I see someone leaving a bathroom without washing their traces of their visit off their hands.

Face it, it could very well be the dirty, unwashed hands that you or I, especially I, shake unknowingly.  Or indirectly, I could have held a hand that shook that hand…You get where I’m going with this?  If not, then you won’t feel hurt if I ignore your offer to shake hands with you.  Nothing personal, just doing my job to keep my germaphobia intact.

There are germs lurking in those washroom! Yes, you naysayers, I know they are everywhere but so is STD but that doesn’t mean I should go dabble in it and share it with everyone.  You touch your most private parts and then walk out with proffered hands to shake with the next person? Sharing whatever germs is on your hands? (I feel dirty just writing this. Just kidding. Or maybe I’m not…)

Anyways, if you are one of those people who doesn’t see fit to wash your hands after visiting the mens/ladies room, then you make me sick, seriously you do.  And that’s not just my take.

Related articles

• 5 Steps to Effective Hand-Washing (everydayhealth.com)
• Cold and Flu Prevention (everydayhealth.com)
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• How to stay healthy (examiner.com)
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