Eat Like Our Forefathers

If any readers can recall, in one of my previous writings, I talked about buying two books at a crazy low price. One of them is the weight-loss book I was trying to disprove, and failed – I lost weight. The other is about juggling our oh-so-busy daily schedule. I got this one at a fantastic US$ 4.00 (I’m guessing the usual price is about US$ 19.90 – woweee!). Apparently, it was only this last copy which they had trouble selling, lucky me. The rest sold like hotcakes.

In one section of this fantastic book, the author wrote about – you may have guessed it – food. Specifically, food as a stress-reducer. Yes, we all use food to keep ourselves content at one time or another. Oprah Winfrey (hands up, those who don’t know her), together with Bob Greene, an exercise psychologist and fitness trainer, calls it ‘Emotional Eating’ in one of her shows. I am not above and beyond this phenomenon. MANY times, I still do get the urge. One tactic I use is, delay, which I talked about in one of my writings. Incidentally, this tactic is more mentioned in quit smoking tips. Sometimes, in the quest for health, we just need to be creative and try to apply things from across the board. If you find that you are not creative enough, well, this is what blogs such as this one is for – to share information and creativity and apply it to healthy living.

Anyway, I love the simple yet marvelous tips in one half-page section. She titled it ‘Glorious Food’. The author, like us at FoodIsRemedy, believes in the holistic and you will see it in her tips. I particularly liked the tip that says ‘Boycott fast food’. Boycott – nice word to use. I still do eat fast food, though, but only if I’m dead hungry or it has become very inconvenient to interrupt what I am doing to look for ‘slow’ food. Again, you need to be honest when doing this and not mask your ulterior motives with seemingly ‘legitimate’ reasons. If you are serious enough, you would compensate for it by eating more appropriately after that. By the way, if you eat only when you are dead hungry, it’s a sign that you need to tweak your schedule next time. I also acknowledge that sometimes, other people (your job?) who do not give a da*m about health, mess it up for you.

I think I will lose the ‘spirit’ of her writing if I simply reported what she said in her book. I had the honor of getting permission from her just a few days back to reproduce it (Thanks, Jane!). So here is the small but important section in its entirety. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, accomplished journalist and writer, Jane Alexander:

Glorious Food

• Slow food is real food – healthy food. In the time it takes you to heat up a microwave ready meal you could have made a great salad, some warming soup, an omelette or real pasta sauce
• Buy organic food from local producers or subscribe to a weekly organic box.
• Boycott fast food. It’s packed with potentially dangerous chemicals, makes you fat and encourages you to gorge your food, rather than savoring it.
• Eat at a table. Say some form of Grace. [I thoroughly agree with this. It re-focuses eating as receiving with thanks. Not gorging with gluttony.] Concentrate on your food. Don’t distract yourself with books or TV. Chew thoroughly – it will improve your digestion and prevent you piling on pounds.
• Eat together as a family.

I can’t say that I buy into all the tips 100% but generally, it does make good health sense if we can practice the most part of it. In short, eat as our wise forefathers did.