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.