Now there's an attention grabber! Below is a link to an article that once again lets us know that taking vitamin supplements are NOT good for you. What you have to look for is this key phrase: "they examined only the use of synthetic vitamins." (The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which is a peer reviewed publication)

Whole food vitamins have been tested and shown to give you the benefits that you think you are getting when you are taking synthetics.

How do you know if your vitamin is a synthetic? Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Synthetics are cheap to make therefore cheap to sell. If you are buying big jugs of vitamins for very little, you are taking synthetics that are only going to be detrimental to your health. Whole food vitamins should state that they are whole food on the label. The other way to tell is look at the ingredients. They should read like a grocery list: carrots, green pepper, orange, alfalfa, acerola cherry, broccoli, etc. If you read your label and it is not "food" then you are dealing with synthetics.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/healthy_eating/article1449813.ece
editor's note: the article is no longer at this link... :(

Posted in: health, Slow Lane, vitamins on Wednesday, February 28, 2007 at at 2:13 PM 0 comments    

Posted in: Slow Lane on Monday, February 26, 2007 at at 11:46 PM 0 comments    

Tomorrow Trinity will be 25 months old and already we are getting asked on a frequent basis: "Why?" I didn't realize that question would come so soon! The lastest - Dad: "It's time for bed." Trinity: "Why?" Now what do you say to that?!?

Anyway, I snapped pictures of lunch the other day because it just looked soooo good. First Trinity's lunch - yam chips, guacamole and grape tomatoes.

Posted in: Raw_Vegan Lane, Slow Lane on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at at 9:14 PM 0 comments    

I had added some cooked food back in my diet and my weight popped up a few pounds, but has now dropped back down to 164. I have been trying the fruit only til noon principle this week. At first I wasn't so crazy about it, but now that I am getting used to it, I think I do like it. I noticed it yesterday when I got in the pool to swim that I felt like I had so much energy. (speaking of the swimming, I am up to 30 minutes this week)

David has been off and on eating raw food with me. He told me yesterday that he feels so much better when he eats raw. He had gone and got Del Taco for dinner the other night and then he felt bloated and sick and felt bad even the next morning. So yesterday I asked him to pick up some yams and steel cut oats from Sprouts and he came home with loads of raw food. We had a yummy smorgasbord of food for lunch - yam chips with guacamole, raw trail mix, sweet grape tomatoes, and raw pickles. (Bubbies kosher brand) David packed up much of the same for lunch today and headed off to work with smoothie in hand. :)

Grandma and Grandpa Case came and babysat for us last night so we could go out to celebrate Valentines. We wanted to go out the day after so it wouldn't be so crowded. We had a gift card to the Cheesecake Factory so that is where we went. We split a salad then split nachos. This goes back to a tip from my earlier post - shoot for 50/50 live vs. dead food. He suggested that if you are eating fruit only til noon, then just have a salad with lunch and dinner. Make it a good sized salad, not a skimpy one, and eat it first. Then you won't eat too much cooked food and your body will be getting more of the healthy live food.

I did this the other night with David too. A lot of time I will ask David if he wants me to make him a salad too and he'll say no. This time I didn't ask. I made us both a salad and filled his dinner plate with it. Then he had to eat his salad before he could eat the cooked part of the meal. That worked out well. I keep thinking that if we can make that practice a normal part of our dinner, then we will be teaching our girls good eating habits too.

Posted in: Raw_Vegan Lane on Friday, February 16, 2007 at at 8:38 AM 0 comments    

What is your life expectancy? This site has a quick and easy to take test that will calculate your life expectancy and tell you ways to increase that number. Check it out - knowledge is power!

Living to 100

Posted in: Raw_Vegan Lane on Monday, February 12, 2007 at at 10:05 PM 0 comments    

I am continuing to read the book Fit For Life Not Fat For Life and really like the principles he outlines. Here they are in a nutshell:

1. Eat more live food than dead food - shoot for 50/50

2. Eat only fresh fruit or non-pasteurized fruit juice until noon

3. One day a week eat only live food

These are the basics. I will elaborate more in future posts. I definitely encourage anyone interested in improving their health and quality of life to read this book.

Posted in: Raw_Vegan Lane on Sunday, February 11, 2007 at at 9:28 PM 0 comments    

February 10 - Day 13

I decided that since my food doesn't vary much, I am not going to post my daily intake unless I try something new and want to share it. But speaking of sharing something new, I have been reading one of the books I checked out from the library. It's called Fit For Life, Not Fat For Life by one of the coauthors of the popular book Fit For Life. He proposes that rather than counting calories or carbs or anything else, there is one simple principle to remember: Eat More Living Food Than Dead Food! or put another way, more raw than cooked. Hear, hear! He lost 50 pounds and constant pain by following this principle. He advocates that you shoot for 50/50 raw and cooked food intake. When he had to lose weight and regain his health, he determined to eat twice as much raw food as cooked food - two-thirds raw, one-third cooked.

I think this is a very livable eating plan that most people can work into their lifestyles. He even said that there is no rush to be at 50/50 right away. The average person eats only 10% raw food daily and even doubling it to 20% will start reaping rewards. For me, since I eat oatmeal for breakfast, a big salad for one meal, and a fruit smoothie almost every day I could easily accomodate one cooked meal in my diet and still be a raw foodist. (traditional definition is someone who eats 75% or more raw food) This makes life very livable. I can go out to dinner with my husband for Valentines day and enjoy myself without worrying about the repercussions on my health. We can attend functions at church and I don't have to go hungry because it's nothing but cooked food.

I'm still going to eat mostly raw, but I just enjoyed reading about someone who has witnessed the power of live food in the lives of hundreds of people over the years without it having to be a 100% raw diet. It seems to me that many people get on the raw bandwagon and become food nazi's, wielding guilt and shame lest a morsel of cooked food pass through their lips.

So if anyone wants to try incorporating more raw food in their diets, please let me know how it goes for you and your health.

An update on me - the bump on my neck is now completely gone. I had written about it before - it has been around for a long time - since before Angelina was born for sure - and since I went raw has completely gone away - hooray!

Posted in: Raw_Vegan Lane on Saturday, February 10, 2007 at at 6:22 PM 0 comments