Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Yay! My doctor is happy.

Went for my annual check up today with my endocrinologist.  I have Hypothyroidism for those interested.  Anyway, I haven't seen her for a year.  This year she wanted to do a complete panel.  You know cholesterol, glucose, etc.  Not only am I down about 20 lbs from last year, but all of my tests came back well in the normal range.  Her comment was "everything is perfect".  Now as for the weight loss, I will be totally honest and say that any dieting I have done went on hold in April.  With gardening and canning I haven't had a lot of free time to go to the Y, but I have gotten my exercise in the form of garden work.  Not daily, but I am moving daily.  As for any "diet", I am doing my best to eat real foods.  No more sugar free, fat free stuff.  No more highly processed foods.  Now exceptions to that due to finances, are sugar, and white flour; BUT  now that I have my grain mill that will change.  I use raw honey in my whole wheat bread and my granola, but am seriously thinking of finding more uses for it.  Honey, raw honey, not only tastes good, but has antibacterial properties, helps with allergies (if you buy local raw honey), and has many minerals and nutrients not found in sugar or even pasteurized honey. Anywhere I can use this to replace sugar will be an asset and quite honestly, with the price of sugar being what it is, I don't think the price difference will be that great.
As for the flour, I have many pounds of flour to use up before I will be totally switched to fresh ground flour. In the meantime I am still going to buy the wheat berries and begin grinding them to mix half and half with the existing flour I have on hand.  As my flour supply runs low it will be replaced with the wheat berries.  Wheat berries store forever(so to speak) as long as they haven't been ground.  Once ground, wheat flour loses a lot of the minerals and nutrients within days.  Within 72 hours most of it is gone. So that is my plan for flour.
Isn't it amazing how a report of progress can be such an incentive to proceed, especially when you feel like you are actually on the right track health wise.  Things I currently buy for example are butter (gasp!), olive oil, sugar/honey, red meat(shock!), whole milk( I do thin it with water. Shhhh, don't tell the boys they don't know).  Things I currently make and serve are breads, pizza, cookies, etc.  Some of these things fly in the face of current trends of low or fat free and sugar free or no carb.   Now if you have a gluten allergy or celiac disease, this would not be good for you, but as a general rule, barring that, there is no reason to not have a food created by God. Now that being said....remember...everything in moderation.  I am not eating bowls of cookies, butter, breads etc.  I am only trying to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty.  I am not an expert in this nor do I wish to be one.  I am only speaking from what I have learned, what I believe, and what I feel is best for myself and my family.  To each his own.  Everyone has to do the best they can for themselves and their family.  These are the things I am going to try.  We'll see where that goes.  As for organic...not sure I am sold on that one and couldn't afford it if I was.  For now the best I can do is to take as much processing out of our lives and see how we do.  Okay, there is my opinion for the day.  Hope everyone has a great day.

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