Pushing My Comfort Level

From the time I was 12 years old until I was 65 I had a job. Sometimes two jobs. Started with paper routes, ended teaching special ed and science in a high school on the Texas/Mexico border. In between I had social work jobs, teaching jobs, consultant jobs. I spent 9 years teaching people skills to young family practice resident doctors. Mostly, I was good at what I did. Sometimes better than others.

So here I am retired, seventy-two years old, operating with a some spare parts, a new heart valve, a below the knee prosthesis, and a pacemaker and one day I offer to join our local volunteer fire department. Even more surprising, they take me on, outfit me with turnouts and a helmet, and a radio and begin training me to assist on fire and medical calls. My mentor is a nineteen year old fireman, who is also an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician).

Seventy percent of emergency calls to our department are medical calls. My wife a retired middle school principal, is a paramedic who also works for the department. I saw no reason why I shouldn't follow that same path and now I am going to school at the local community college to learn to be an EMT. We started in January and will finish in May. My study partner is a 22 year old fireman. In the class we operate pretty much as peers. Our grades so far are in the nineties.

In spite of the decent grades I often find myself way out of my comfort zone. Most of my life I've made my living, talking. I've been a social worker and an educator. That was comfortable for me. But an EMT has to do much more than talk. An EMT spends most of his time on his knees working on someone who is on the ground or the floor. An EMT has to touch people and make on-the-spot decisions that are often a matter of life and death.

So I'm way out of my comfort zone. But it's OK. Probably good for me. Sure is exciting. Never considered myself an adrenalin junkie, but am enjoying the rush and excitement that is part of answering emergency calls.

Motivation for Getting and Staying Fit

There's a saying in amputee circles (and that's a pretty exclusive club), "Amputees do what amputees want to do." In other words, if you have to face the world without the luxury of one or more of your limbs, your only real limitation is your self. Get to know amputees and you will find them doing all sorts of things, water skiing, running marathons, mountain climbing, that you might have thought were out of the question.

That same sort of thinking also applies to us older citizens. You want to be careful as you get older that you don't let the number of years you have under your belt start to limit your activities. It's easy to begin to shut down and accelerate our own aging. The answer might be to forget about the numbers and just do what you want to do, what you feel like doing. For example racquetball might not be on the menu for most 80 year olds, but I've played with a couple of 80 year old racquetball players who were still very competitive. My mother in law, was still a very good driver in her early 90's.

Both of my parents were dead and gone before they reached their mid-fifties, but in my wife's family everyone is alive and kicking right into their nineties. I'm looking to my in-laws for inspiration and example. Probably makes sense to avoid our peers who are reveling in their ailments and hang out with friends who don't seem to know how old they are. It really is possible to push the limits of our genetic inheritance with a positive attitude.

My version of pushing the envelope at 70+ has been to join the local volunteer fire department. I don't really expect to charge into burning buildings but I am learning how to operate the pumps on the engine and am scheduled to begin EMT training next month. So far the biggest problem has been how to quickly get the bulky "turnout" pants on over my prosthesis.

The down side of this experience has been living with some anxiety about knowing what I'm supposed to be doing on calls, most of which are medical EMT calls, and worry about getting up and out when calls come in the middle of the night.

The pluses are some really interesting and exciting experiences, learning a whole new set of skills, and increased motivation to exercise and to stay in good physical shape. A big plus has been the opportunity to get EMT training. In the past I've been a pretty good student and test taker. Will I, the oldest member of the department, be able to handle the training and the testing? Oh yes, it may be difficult, but I know how to study, and have the time to do it. And I expect that the course work will help keep the synapses in this old brain of mine firing and connecting.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

Low Sodium - Almost Instant - Chili Soup

This soup is a relative of my Almost Instant, Low Sodium Potato Soup. The recipe was concocted a day or so ago when I couldn't find anything for lunch to suit my fancy. It has all of five ingredients and all you do is mix them in a pot, heat, stir, and enjoy.

You will need:

• 1 - 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes, no salt added
• 1 - 15.5 ounce can of Cuban Style Black Beans
• 2 t. of chili powder
• 1/2 of one Chipotle Pepper
• 1/2 cup red wine

Mix the ingredients in a pan, simmer for 5 or 10 minutes and enjoy.

Makes 4 servings.

You can, of course, adjust the heat with more or less chili powder, more or less chipotle pepper. Be careful with the chipotles. Lots of heat there

The Cuban Style Black Beans came from Trader Joes. You could substitute no salt black beans and add a bit of spice. (coriander, cumin, dried onion, etc) That would substantially decrease the sodium.

The counts for a one cup serving of this version of Almost Instant Chili Soup

• Calories 120
• Fat 0.5 mg
• Sodium 400 mg
• Fiber 6

Weight Watcher Points for a one cup serving 2

How Starbucks Saved My Life

These days I read what I please. If I pick up a book or a magazine and find the writing tiresome or beyond my interest at the moment, I don't hesitate to put the piece down. I read when the subject matter interests me, when the writing is smooth, when the words are true, when the read is effortless.

How Starbucks Saved My Life is a little book I read from cover to cover pretty much in one sitting. I read the book a couple of months ago and decided then to give it some press in this blog. Finally today I began to draft a note and returned to the book for a quick review. I read from the beginning and had read fifty pages before I stopped to think about what should go in this short review.

In his fifties Michael Gill loses his six-figure salary, gets divorced, and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. He is hanging out in Starbucks making calls, trying unsuccessfully to make a living as a private consultant when he is offered a job. All dressed up in a two-thousand-dollar suit he finds himself begging for a job serving lattes. Totally out of his comfort zone he gets the job and eventually becomes very successful. He boasts about being great at cleaning toilets.

This little book is a lot about Starbucks, but even more about how Michael Gill regains his self esteem in an unlikely and surprising way. That rang true for me. I'm retired from a long and reasonably successful career that covered Mental Health, Education, Business Consulting, and then high school classroom teaching. Being retired with no obvious day to day mission can erode one's sense of self. Aging brings it's catalog ailments and my faithful old body now operates with a number of body part replacements, including a prosthetic foot, a pacemaker, a new heart valve. While I'm happy to have the spare parts, it's hard not be aware that this body I live in is just a bit beyond it's prime.

So what I tuned into as I read, and reread, this little book was the way in which Michael Gill managed to rise up from what looked like a hopeless situation to a place where his self esteem and joy in life surpassed anything he'd experienced in his life as a high powered advertising executive.

Find and read this little book. You won't be disappointed.

New Food Data Widget

Just a quick post here to point you to the right where you will find a new (on this site) widget which will retrieve nutrition data on most foods. For some time I have been using this site but just now found and installed the widget.

Losing Your Job Could be a Gift

Michael Gates Gill lost his six-figure advertising exec job. He made too much money. He was told someone younger would work for less. Gill was devastated. But when he stumbled into Starbucks for a cup of coffee he found himself in the middle of a hiring fair that saved his life. He loves his new $10/hour job and is now the author of a best selling book, "How Starbucks Changed my life." For more of the story go to CNN.com

Handicapped or Inconvenienced ?

At the left is what I think most "handicapped" stickers should look like.

I've got a handicapped sticker. I got it after my heart surgery. And I did use it some after that surgery and for a while after my below the knee amputation. After that it has been stuffed away in a hard to reach compartment of my van.

Especially after the amputation I was happy to use the sticker. For a couple of weeks I was in a wheel chair and then spent some time on crutches. But I really never liked thinking of myself as "handicapped." One ought to be careful about accepting that sort of a label. I was afraid that it would slow down my recovery and make me older sooner.

Having only one foot and dealing with a prosthesis is sometimes a real pain in the lower regions. Any shoes I buy have to fit on to this non yielding plastic foot. That means lots of pretty cool dress shoes don't work. Walking more than three of four miles is sometimes pretty uncomfortable. Most pants have to go on before the prosthesis and I can't wear cowboy boots.

But, I can travel anywhere I want. I can negotiate bathrooms and showers and locker rooms. I can walk through airports and stand in line when I need to. When I first tried to swim laps I had to learn to swim in a straight line with only one swim fin. When I get the chance I can play a competitive game of racquet ball (with my peers). Basically I can do whatever I want. (I can't play the piano now, but I never could play the piano.)

So why would I call myself "Handicapped?" I'll settle for "Inconvenienced"

Cup a Coffee - The Most Important Thing I Know

Took a few minutes this morning to reshelve some books I had lying around and stumbled on to a copy of a book titled The Most Important Thing I Know. It's a collection of handwritten letters from famous people (75 of them) telling in a sentence or two what they felt was the most important thing they knew.

I'm a sucker for that sort of thing, so diverted from my clean-up campaign, I thumbed through the book and read most of the seventy-five entries. (They're short.) I was looking for the gem, the needle in the haystack which was exactly right. The one that said it all.

Maya Angelou, Poet, wrote: My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her fifty years ago and I still do.

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, wrote: True excellence requires a worthy dream, a good idea of how to realize it and the courage to risk failure to achieve it.

Eileen Ford, Founder, Ford Modeling Agency, wrote: My parents always believed that I was The Best! With thoughts like that behind you, it's impossible not to strive for excellence. No one wants to disappoint their parents.

Greg Norman, Golf Champion, wrote: The journey is the reward.

Julian Bond, Civil rights pioneer, wrote: Excellence and equity are inseparable - a good society cannot have one without the other. Any society that abandons either is imperfect.

The longer I searched the more futile the search became. My grandmother was the mother of 15 kids, a good lady, but not a great source of inspiration. I am one of nine kids. My parents liked me but I was not the BEST. I am always dreaming. Are my dreams worthy dreams? What does it matter? The most important things these 75 people knew were not the most important things to me.

So just what is the most important thing? For me, today is the most important thing. Today I have to exercise, and then pay attention to what I eat, so as not to shorten my time on the planet, my time with my sweetie, my kids, my grandkids, my friends. Today I'm going to enjoy the clean, thin mountain air and the incredibly clear blue skies. Today I am going to work on a canoe I'm building in the garage.

Cup a Coffee - Live 30.9 Years Longer

Fill up your cup, sit back, enjoy the aroma, and take a moment to have fun with some great information from . . . studies.

Statistics can be a constant source of amusement. A little newsletter titled Bottom Line/Health showed up in the mail yesterday, with an article called Drink Coffee... Eat Chocolate... & Other surprising ways to Live Longer. Michael Roizen, MD (coauthor of You, Staying Young) was interviewed and here is what I learned we need to do.

1. Sleep deep. Deep restorative sleep can add 3 years to your life.
2. Dance at least 30 minutes a day. Live 6.4 years longer.
3. Learn stuff and do puzzles. Good for 2.5 more years.
4. Get a dog and live for another 3 years.
5. More sex. Twice a week, 2 more years. Once a day, 8 more years.
6. Rest more often, (Seems to me like you'd have to) 8 more years.

Other good news is that studies have found that caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee are a main source antioxidants in the average American's diet. Caffeine in your coffee decreases the risk of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases by 30% to 40%.

Roizen also recommends eating one-half ounce of dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) twice daily. Chocolate has powerful antioxidants know as flavonoids. You can also find these flavonoid guys in your brussel sprouts. Wonder if anyone is making chocolate covered brussel sprouts?

These look like great recommendations to me. I don't have a dog (wouldn't be fair to the dog), but I am going to work on 1, 2, 3, and 6. Number 5 ? . . . that would be just TMI. So do the math. Looks like another 30.9 more years are possible (if you are up to it ;-).

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Apologies to Dr. Roizen and Bottom Line for messing with some really good recommendations. Don't you just love studies and statistics. Anyone know where I can get some chocolate covered brussel sprouts?

Cup a Coffee - The Last Lecture

Coffee this morning wasn't from Starbucks, not today. The nearest Starbucks is in Show Low, an hour and a half from here. It's been a great morning here in the White Mountains. It is starting to look like spring, at least it hasn't snowed for almost a week now. Fill up your cup, and be sure it's at least half full, not half empty and consider this.

My friend Mike, one of my one of kind friends writes to me and says,

how are you doing
we are having a heck of a blizzard, cant see across the street.
so I need more to do today, just playing at the computer and I run into something that makes me think of you. .......... go to YOU TUBE and watch the LAST LECTURE by Randy Pausch. It will take about 76 min, but I really believe it is worth every bit of it.

So last night I was responding to Mike's note. I really didn't want to watch a 76 minute You Tube thing, but I decided just to take a quick look so I might at least know what Mike was talking about. I got hooked. Randy Pausch is a Carnegie Melon professor, who at age 40 (?) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months to live. His Last Lecture is actually his last lecture and is about what he has learned in life and what he wants to pass on. He has an amazingly positive, humorous, inspiring outlook on life. I spent 4 hours on the internet, tracking down all I could find on Randy. He has a web site where you can find his Last Lecture , a time management lecture (for all of us time is a finite commodity, especially Randy), and postings that track the course of his illness and treatment.

We all know that our days are numbered. It is interesting to see how our perspective and priorities change when we realize our number is getting smaller. Yes, Mike, The Last Lecture was worth spending 76 of the 1,440 minutes I had to play with yesterday.

Skewed Views - Sticker Shock

The turn signal on my three year old van was misbehaving. Left was right, then right was left. Sometimes the signal didn't work at all. Had to get it fixed. Went to the Dodge Dealer and asked for a turn signal fix and an oil change. I knew it would be expensive, but thought I just might pay cash. I had $250 in my pocket.

They did a courtesy inspection, no charge. Came back to tell me that my water pump was leaking. Ouch. Knew I had to take care of the water pump, so I said OK put in the new pump. Then we might as well drain and flush the radiator while we are at it, right? Sure, that makes sense.

Two hours and forty minutes later the work was done.

Turn Signal Fixed

Oil & Filter Changed

Water Pump Replaced

Coolant Flushed

Total Parts $297.64
Total Labor $533.50

Two hours and forty minutes. $533.50 labor. By my calculations that's about $200 an hour.

They did have free coffee in the waiting room, but no donuts. In the morning, while I was waiting to check in, with 20 other unsuspecting victims, a perky young woman pranced up and down the line of cars taking names and giving out cardboard numbers. She was pleasant, and I guess that made the job of the actual service writer much easier. I wonder how much an hour she makes.

I've bought whole cars for less than the bill that morning. Good cars that ran a long time. When they were finished fixing and flushing, I thought maybe they'd wash the car. Nope, no car wash, no donuts. I hope the dealer's kids appreciate me sending them to college.

Why We Eat More Than We Think

By now you know that this old salt is not a big fan of diets.

Here is a bit of support for that theory, which makes sense to me so I am passing it on. It's a book called Mindless Eating, Why We Eat More Than We Think. The author, Brian Wansink, describes his research in which he discovered that we often fool ourselves into thinking that we are eating less.

The answer - smaller plates, tall thin glasses, and simple changes in our eating routines.

Check it out at Mindless Eating. At Wansink's Blog, there is an article today about the halo we float over Subway food, (you know, Subway, where Jared got skinny just by eating Subway sandwiches all day long for the rest of his life). When we order what we have been programmed to think is a virtuous, healthy sandwich, say the veggie six-incher in the picture, we tend to think some chips or a cookie and a coke might go better with that sandwich than a water and that little tiny cup of yogurt.

Loose Weight without "Dieting"

It was really easy to gain weight. Basically my secret was to eat a bowl of ice cream every evening. Put on 10 to 12 pounds in about a year.

So how does one reverse the process. Well, for me, the obvious answer was to 86 the ice cream. And for certain that was a start.

Here are are a couple more specific guidelines for trimming that waistline without really dieting. I really don't have a compulsive bone in my body, so it is hard for me to count calories, or stay with any sort of prescribed program for more than a few days, so these are guidelines that make sense to me. If you resonate with these you might like to track down the books.

• The first is from the book, What to Eat by Marion Nestle (and reviewed by Maria Duncan at Book Reviews for Real People)

  "The basic principles of good diets are so simple that I can summarize them in just ten words: eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. For additional clarification, a five-word modifier helps: go easy on junk foods."

• The second is an appetite guage from Nourishing Body and Soul, the Chopra Center Cookbook. The gauge is designed to help us listen to our body's signals of hunger and satiety and then to eat appropriately, which would mean eating at level 2 or 3, and stopping at level 7.
  

10 Stuffed
9 Uncomfortably Full
8 Rather Full
7 Satisfied
6 Almost Satisfied
5 No Hunger Awareness
4 Could Eat
3 Definitely Hungry
2 Very Hungry
1 Hunger Pains
0 Completely Empty

The key of course is awareness. The amazing truth is that we can probably keep ourselves at very trim weights when we find ways to pay attention to the signals from our bodies.

Blueberries and Sour Cream

This is a classy, easy dish. A great dessert to calm down the palate after a spicy meal. For me it's a more than acceptable substitute for the big bowl of ice cream that was, and maybe still might be, my favorite.

The Recipe

• 1 Handful of fresh blueberries
• 4 (More or Less) T no-fat sour cream

That's it. And it's not too hard, as you can see, to create a very attractive presentation. There are only about 50 mg of sodium per serving. Total calories estimated between 80 and 100. No fat.

Maybe, if you are just not too wild about sour cream, you would like a sweeter version. Replace the sour cream with a low, or no-fat aerosol, whipped topping. Lite Cool Whip might be an another alternative.

But hurry, while you can still find fresh blueberries in the market.

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Don't tell anyone, but the blueberries in the picture were actually this morning's breakfast.

Black Bean & Sweet Corn Salad - Low Sodium

How about an easy, attractive summer salad, that tastes as good as it looks.

You will need:

• 1 15 ounce can of low sodium black beans
• about one cup of frozen sweet corn
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
• 1 small can diced green chilies
• 1 T (more or less) olive oil
• a splash of red wine vinegar

Rinse and drain the black beans. Then gently mix all of the ingredients together. The dressings are optional. In this version I sprinkled the mix with a bit of olive oil, then the red wine vinegar. Sprinkle easy then taste. Need to brightened it up a bit, sprinkle a bit more vinegar.

You might just try the salad (minus the oil and vinegar) with a bit of a medium salsa for a dressing. That works well. If you search you can find salsas with little or no sodium. Mine comes from a farmer's market type store called Sprouts.

Or you might like to experiment with other low sodium, fat free dressings.

If you get six servings, the sodium for the salad (without any dressings) would be about 70 to 80 mg per serving.

Sailing Upwind

There is an old Jim Croce song that say's

You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind

That makes good sense to me and maybe gives us a hint about how to live a full life in the face of lifes little (and big) challenges. It's not a good idea to spit into the wind. You can't sail directly into the wind. Under sail you have to tack your way back and forth at an angle to the wind to reach that upwind destination. You have to work a little harder, but sailing upwind is actually the most exciting sailing, with the boat heeled over and the spray coming up over the bow.

Same way on land. If you've got a nasty problem, one that you really can't solve with a direct attack, try an end run. For example, right now I've bunged up my hip, probably by playing too much racquet ball. It really honks me off that now, when I have the time and resources to play, that I can't, or shouldn't. So what am I doing? Swimming. Not quite as much fun. Lonely compared to a foursome of old farts in a racquet ball court. But I am still doing something that helps me stay fit. That wasn't hard.

But what do you do when the doctor tells you that you have slowly progressing sort of cancer. One that will probably get worse. One that could kill you some day. But at the same time a very slow and treatable condition. Not curable but treatable. Well you can dive in and learn all you can about the condition, and try to do whatever to keep the thing in check. But there is a point where it doesn't help to think about it all day long. Time to move on. Live life. And how do you do that?

For starters you say, "How am I feeling right now? Am I in pain? Fatigued? Nauseous?" And if the answers add up to, "Hey, today, not bad at all," then that's what you focus on. What's going on today that's good and makes you smile

Finally, humor and meditation, are a couple of tacks that I know that help me stay focused on what's going on right now, and help to keep things in perspective. More on both in the future. For now check out what happened to a picture of this old salt when he played around on a web site promoting the new Simpson's movie, and Simpsonized himself.

You really can sail upwind, if you are willing to try a new tack.

Extending Our Stay on the Planet - Part 4 Muscle Mass

Am easily distracted. Have wandered away from the blog for a while. Temporary change of venue now as we are off the mountain and down in the Arizona valley where a high of 95˚F is a cool day.

Here is what I know about muscle mass. Loss of muscle mass is one of the key signs of aging. The more you sit, the more likely you are to lose muscle mass. When you lose muscle mass not only do you lose strength, but your metabolism slows and muscle mass is replaced by fat.

The good news is that studies *show that even people in their nineties can increase muscle mass in relatively short periods of time (8 to 12 weeks) with exercise routines. And those revived muscles mean faster metabolism, more strength, better mobility, and better balance.

So what do we need to do?

You don't need to be Jack LaLane, but he's a pretty good example of somebody, who's older than dirt, who still keeps himself in pretty good shape. Get up and walk for starters. Do some stretching. Start working out with weights. None of this needs to be, nor should be, extreme. Start easy and increase the activity and or the weights as you go along. The minute you get up off your butt the picture starts to brighten.

Currently I am a very happy camper. At home in the mountains we have a pretty good assortment of dumbbells, and free weights. We also have a hand-me-down home gym thing with weights and pulleys called a Hard Core Gym. But, here in Tucson, where we will be for the next several months, I immediately joined LA Fitness, where I hang out in the morning and play racquetball with other old salts, and then work out using the weight machines and treadmills. And, there is a very nice pool for lap swimming.

Am also riding one of my bikes here in Tucson, where roads are paved and relatively flat, and most automobile drivers are aware of and courteous to cyclists. This is the first that I have ridden since my leg was amputated, and I am having a great time. In my youth, (40's and 50's) I was a strong rider, sometimes covering a 100 miles a day. Now I'm starting again from scratch, five miles this morning, but that's OK.

No doubt about it, hanging on to muscle mass improves our chances of sticking around and stay in motion a bit longer.

Want more muscle? Keep moving. Make a plan that works for you.

If you have time and funds you might like a gym. A place like LA Fitness is more or less reasonable. $149 one time sign up then about $30/month. At the place I go you'll find everyone from bulging, ripped, tattooed body builders to some old salts who almost shuffle from machine to machine, and everyone in between. They have aqua fitness sessions that fill the pool with golden agers. Everyone is friendly and helpful.

Funds lean? Time short? No access to a gym or physical rehab center? Don't let these very real excuses stop you. Remember this is a life and death matter. Find a way to move and stretch on a regular basis. Get on line and look for exercises you can do at home with little or no equipment. Get out and walk. Walk in the mall. There are ways and when you are ready you will find them.

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*Protecting Muscle Mass as You Age
*The Physiology of Aging: What You Can Do to Slow or Stop the Loss of Muscle Mass

Desperation Soup - An Almost-Instant, Low Sodium Potato Soup

I'm trying to adjust my life style, and that means not eating stuff with fat or sugar. Actually I'm pushing it a bit these days. I'm really tired of this fat belly I've acquired in the last couple of years. And today it was noon and the refrigerator was bare and the pantry wasn't much better. There was an envelope of a creamy potato soup mix that was a strong lunch possibility, but it had 500 mg of sodium. Too much.

And then what to my wandering eye did appear, potato buds and non-fat dry milk. Desperation breeds creativity. I could make my own potato soup, almost instantly. Sounds a little weird but it turned out to pretty darn good.

Try it. For a one cup serving you will need.

• 1/3 C Potato Buds
• 1/3 C Non-fat dry milk
• 2 t All Purpose Chef's Shake (Spice Hunter)
• 1 t Butter Buds
• Boiling water
• Ground black pepper
  

Just mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl and add enough boiling water to get the consistency you like. Let it sit just a minute or so to cool and to rehydrate the dried spices in the Chef's Shake.

This is a no fat recipe with a total of 160 calories, 145 mg of sodium, and a bonus of 10 mg of protein per serving

You could easily substitute other no-salt seasonings that contain garlic, onion, black pepper and usually an assortment of other spices.

Want more servings? Just multiply the ingredients.

I was surprised. Hope you like it too.

Extending Our Stay on the Planet - Part 3 Unloading Extra Pounds

We want to stay on the planet for many more exciting years. We've got an intense desire to be around when those grandkids graduate from college and we're pretty good at adapting to the changes that lurk beyond every bend in the road. Does that guarantee we get to watch that kid throw his or her cap in air? We know better. No guarantees. But we are going to take reasonable steps to tip the scales in our favor.

And it's that bathroom scale, the one we climbed onto this morning, that we need to tip in our favor. Carrying too much weight, will shorten our life span. Too much weight is too much fat and too much fat means big-time health risks, that can include heart and blood pressure problems, muscular skeletal problems, breathing problems, self esteem problems and on and on.

So here's my take on getting skinny and staying there. If you want to lose weight you need to do three basic things.

1. Eat less fat
2. Eat less sugar
3. Shake your bootie
   

How you do that? Well you could go on a diet. There are lots and lots of diets. You could try a grapefruit or sauerkraut diet or you could eat lots of paper tasting rice cakes. You could live exclusively on magic protein powders that you mix with water. You could try the Atkins diet, or the South Beach diet, or sign up for Weight Watchers. Jenny Craig, for a price, will deliver breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to your doorstep. Dr. Phil who knows exactly what to do about everything, will sell you his book The Ultimate Weight Solution. I found a list of 24 diets and diet descriptions at a site called Evaluate the Latest Diets. Check it out.

Do diets work? Sure they do. Stick to the plan and you will lose weight. So what's the problem? The problem is: after the weight comes off and the diet is done, the weight comes back and the cycle repeats.

What works better? Life style changes or, diet and life style changes, works better. Say, every day before you go to bed you have a 300 calorie bowl of ice cream, but one day you say, "Hey, I'm going to stop eating that bowl of ice cream at night." And you actually do stop. That's more like a life style change than a diet. Your routine doesn't include ice cream at night anymore. The result, if you keep the same eating pattern, except for the ice cream, and continue the same activity or exercise patterns, could be a weight loss of about 30 lbs in a year.

Weight gain or loss is a matter of calories consumed balanced by calories burned. So to lose weight you can consume fewer calories (eat less) or burn more calories (more activity/exercise) or both. That works. But if you want to keep the weight off you need an approach that you can literally use for the rest of you life.

The Old Salt approach works like this.

Fat = calories. I know I can reduce the amount of fat in my diet. I used to eat a steak about once a week. A really fine, nicely marbled steak, tastes great but has lots of fat, fat that I don't need. Now I have a steak about once a month, and lately, especially when the steak is a big 6 to 8 ounce piece, my wife and I split one steak.

Sugar = calories. I'm the guy in the ice cream example. After heart surgery, I had no appetite, everything tasted bad. But I could eat ice cream, and I did. Gradually my appetite returned, and two years later I was still eating ice cream and everything else in sight. Gradually I had gained about 25 to 30 lbs. Now I've almost stopped eating ice cream. Sometime in February I stopped keeping ice cream in the fridge. Gradually and slowly I'm loosing weight.

Both the steak and the ice cream are life style changes I can maintain. Much easier (for me) than dieting and counting calories. Weight loss will be slower than dieting, but more likely to be permanent.

Walking or running or bicycling, or just working at a job that requires a high level or activity are ways to shake your bootie and keep burning those calories. Maintaining an increased activity level, over an extended period of time, will change the amount of calories burned, and, assuming you don't increase your intake, will result in a weight loss.

So life style changes work for me, but not everyone is like me. I know that different approaches work for different people. Some folks, like my friend Joel, do very well with a very systematic, diet. Joel keeps records of what he eats on a daily basis and carefully limits both calories and sodium. He also keeps track of his workouts. And he is losing weight. Joel's blog has his daily records and lots of other interesting information.

So find an approach that works for you. If you love diets, go for it, but remember that to keep the weight off, to keep on wearing those new skinny clothes, you will need to make life style changes that impact both calories consumed and calories burned.

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Coming Soon - - Muscle Mass . . . (A religious service for weight lifters???)

Zucchini and More - Colors Galore

Yes, that's a skillet, but we are not going to fry this colorful batch of low calorie, low sodium veggies. We are going to steam them. No need for any special steamers. All you need is a decent sized pan with a lid and low heat. Because the zucchini and yellow squash have a high moisture content you can actually steam them without adding any liquid. But for this batch we are going to add a half cup (more or less) (actually a healthy splash) of white wine, today a Cabernet.

The combination and amount of vegetables is up to you. To clone this batch,

You will need:

• 2 medium to small zucchinis - sliced
  
• 1 yellow squash - sliced
  
• 1/2 large sweet onion - sliced and broken into rings
  
• 1 medium sized tomato - cut into small pieces
  
• 1/4 sweet red pepper - cut into small strips
  
• l large carrot - sliced diagonally as thin as possible
  
• 2 cloves garlic - finely chopped
  
• 1/2 C white wine or apple cider

That's it. Put all of the ingredients into a large pan with a lid. Non stick is a good idea but not absolute. Lid is absolute. I start with high heat, just until the pan is hot, and then turn the heat down very low. Put the lid on and cook until veggies just barely retain a bit of their crunch. For these to turn out just right you will need to check periodically. Overall time for this batch was about 6 to 8 minutes. When they are almost perfect, take the pan off the heat. You can leave the lid on a few minutes until you are ready to serve. Very low calories. Not enough sodium to count.

A batch of steamed veggies like this is great served over brown rice or noodles. For a real treat top with a bit of the spicy peanut sauce also found in this blog.