October 30

Sunday was another busy day - too busy to take food pictures.  We all took a rolling session with instructor Dan Crandall in Lotus, Ca.  Here is a picture of or son, Charley, warming up for his session:
Charley rolling his kayak
If you are interested in viewing some photos of Charley running the Chile Bar rapids on the South Fork of the American River, you could see here.
Photos of Charley's run through Troublemaker rapid / Chile Bar

I put these here in case anybody thinks that being vegan would impair a child's health or make him a wimp.  Charley has been vegan his entire life.  As you can see, he is a healthy 6'4".  He is a straight A student, a black belt in karate, a school leader and a very happy and healthy boy.  As you can see from the photos, he has plenty of courage too, and everybody remarks on what a great kid we have.  I am totally proud.

We were up a bit late since we attended a dinner party the night before.  This is a dinner group that has been meeting on a rotating basis since 1977.  Nobody else eats like us, but it has not been a problem.  Others will eat our food, and they generally have at least one dish that works for us.  On this occasion, there was no food for us, so we just sat down to dinner and had time to talk and sip a glass of wine.  I say this because I have seen many people who seem compelled to eat bad food if it is put before them as the only option.  Farley and I both had a great time without eating, and I don't think anybody else was bothered by our not eating.  You never have to eat bad food to accommodate anybody else.  If you need to say something, just say that you are on a doctor (McDougall) prescribed strict diet.

Lunch and dinner were the same today.  We had the last of the chili leftovers with greens, rice, fresh bell pepper, and sweet potato.  When you are hungry, variety is not important, and the food always tastes great.

October 29

A Perfect Day on the River

No food pictures for today - we were too busy.  We arranged to paddle with friends on the beautiful Mokulumne River.  If anybody wants to see some pictures of the day, our friend Jim took photos here.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimsnyder/sets/72157628008047404/show/  One of the great things about this lifestyle is enjoying our physical health.  Tomorrow we will be rolling in the whitewater near Lotus, Ca.

Another great thing is sharing our lifestyle with others.  Pictured above is our friend Penny, a veterinarian, horsewoman, scrapping enthusiast, and sometime paddler.  We noticed that Penny was not paddling this summer and asked her why.  She told us that she had been diagnosed with heart disease, was having too much chest pain, and was scheduled for heart surgery.  Of course, I was not going to let that go without telling her about Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. McDougall.  She was interested, and we had Penny and her husband over for lunch and watched some DVDs.

It was August 1 that Penny decided to try the diet, and she is so happy and grateful that she did.  She no longer experiences any chest pains, her surgery is cancelled, and she is back paddling, riding, and enjoying life again.  She has lost 20 pounds and has 20 pounds to go.  She is feeling so much better all around that she can't believe it, and loves the food.  She had no transitions symptoms either - lucky girl.  Just like us, her husband joined in and has lost 33 pounds already himself.  It was so much fun to see how much Penny was enjoying her reclaimed health.  She has even helped some of her staff at her office to improve their health and diet.  Way to go Penny!

As for our food, Farley got up early and made a salad to go into Bento boxes.  Cubed Japanese sweet potatoes, white beans, rice, chopped bell pepper, with a Dijon/balsamic dressing.  When we got home, we ate the leftovers with leftover chili over greens and rice.  We had a dinner party to go to also.  We ate nothing, but take a demerit or two for a few tastes of wine.

October 27

I will get to lunch later.  But you may be interested in watching Dr. McDougall on TV or over the web.  When I taped an episode for Lifestyle Magazine last year, Dr. McDougall was taping a number of episodes.  They are starting to appear now on TBN network.  Don't worry if you didn't tape it or don't get TBN.  Once the shows air, they are available over the air.

The latest episode interviewed Dr. McDougall along with Drs. Matt Lederman and Alona Pulde.  It is a great episode, and you can view it here.  http://www.lifestyle.org/article.php?id=158

"It’s really very simple to get healthy and to stay that way, according to Drs. Alona Pulde and Matthew Lederman. They’re the authors of Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole: Your Guide to Optimum Health. Dr. John McDougall joins the discussion."


Lunch
The white beans and fresh celery were nice touches to todays lunch.  Other than that, I'm sure that the concept is familiar by now.  The  base is really a huge pile of chopped greens that practically fills the bowl by itself.

October 27 Lunch

Dinner
Farley made her roast vegetable dish which made a great dinner.  She added brussel sprouts and included the cubed Japanese sweet potatoes, which made for a bit different flavor.

October 27 dinner

Comments

I'll start with my demerits - a glass of wine and some "lightly" salted pumpkin seeds which I ate while birding this morning.  My body let me know that they were in fact heavily salted, at least by my standards.  My bad on that one.

Addiction

I have been thinking quite a bit about addiction lately.  Joel Fuhrman says that just about everybody in this country is addicted to food.  He makes a remark in his speech on the Get Healthy Now DVD that people often get angry with him, and he believes it is because he is perceived as a threat to people's addiction.  I think that the main reason that some people do not get healthy after attempting this diet is because of addiction to SAD food.


Food addiction is a lot different than most other addictions, however.  If you are addicted to illegal drugs, you can go to prison for your addiction.  If you are addicted to alcohol, you will be shunned by many in society.  For a second, I'd like to compare food addiction to methamphetamine addiction.


Both meth and food addictions can kill quite effectively, and ruin many lives.  But what if almost everybody in the country was on meth.  What if it were advertised legally on radio, TV, everywhere .  What if meth stores were on many corners and it could be obtained legally, and people exchanged their favorite recipes for cooking meth.  What if the government had meth organizations to promote its use?  You can see how everybody would react to the people that were saying it needed to stop.


If you have ever tried to deal with an addicted person, you see the problem.  Virtually everybody in this country is in fact addicted to foods that are harmful to them, their families and friends, the country, and the future.  I don't know of anybody who has gotten through the tough withdrawal period in trying to change their diet that has not been glad that they did it.  But it is very unpleasant for some during the transition.  It is a very tough problem, and in fact, it is very similar to trying to convert a meth addicted population to sobriety.  It will not be done without a lot of anger and protest.  Today's post is dedicated to those people who are in the process of turning their life around by learning to eat a healthy diet.  It is dedicated to those who are enduring unpleasant symptoms from withdrawing from the life sucking addiction that we call the Standard American Diet.  Good luck to you, and spread the word.

October 26

Breakfast and lunch were simple today.  I sure this looks familiar, and you can see what is in the bowls.

A simple but tasty and satisfying lunch bowl.

Similar Dinner.

Today is my wife, Farley's birthday.  Anybody who knows us knows that I am one of the luckiest guys in the world.  Of all the good breaks I have lucked into in my life, the luckiest was meeting and marrying Farley.  She is the best person I have ever known, and I never tire of her.  Each year she gets better and I love her more.  If I had to justify my life with a single sentence, it would have to be that Farley loves me and is my best friend.  Happy Birthday, and thank you sweetheart for another great year in your life.

I am in my final week of this October Challenge, and will look forward to taking a break.  But although I may take an internet break, I will not be taking a healthy food break.  The whole point of the challenge is to build momentum.  If you and I keep improving our diet, it can only bring good things to us.  During these last four years, I have come to appreciate how much of our happiness and success is founded upon a good diet.  I have restored my health and met a number of wonderful people.  Some have helped me, and some I have helped.  I wake up happy every morning and have to attribute that in large part to the people who have helped me so much - Jeff Novick, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman - the list is a long one.

If you are at all considering giving this program a try, please do it.  There are few things in life that are all positive and no negative - but this is one of them.

October 22 - October 25

It was a busy long weekend for me.  More concerts, an all day debate which I judged, preparations for Farley's upcoming birthday.  I am tiring of posting so many repetitive pictures of the whole plant food we eat.  So I am  not going to post more repetitive pictures.  I have put some more on the web at https://picasaweb.google.com/farley368/BobSOctoberChallenge where anybody can see all the pictures for the October Challenge.

The only things of note to report over the last few days -
 - I used steamed kale a lot for my green in my bowls.  Like any green vegetable, it works great and tastes fine.
 - We celebrated some accomplishments of our amazing son with a bottle of wine.  1-2 glasses per day.
- I had to buy some new jeans -  the old ones were falling off.  Size 33, which is three inches less than my old ones.
 - My blood sugars are doing well.  Yesterday's FBS was 98.  I was running in the 170's before this challenge.  Weight continues to drop.
 - I ordered and received the Get Healthy Now (Red) DVD set from vegsource.com and have watched the first DVD in the 3 DVD set.  This included 2 lectures by Dr. Fuhrman - one dealing with various aspects of hunger, and the other various aspects of cancer.  The hunger lecture was particularly interesting because Dr. Fuhrman added some details to the already excellent presentation in his book "Eat to Live".  I would like to talk about these details.
Redefining My Concept and Experience of Hunger
Dr. Fuhrman has redefined my concept of hunger.  I was aware from Dr. McDougall and Jeff that their concept of hunger differed from my own, but I did not really understand what Dr. McDougall was talking about when he discussed the problem of the "volume eater."  Jeff mentioned in some his posts that hunger was a pleasant sensation that was felt in the mouth and throat, but because the physiology of hunger was not his specialty perhaps, I did not understand much beyond that.  I was also too complacent.  I had reversed my medical problems, restructured my diet around whole plant foods, lost a lot of weight, and been designated a Star McDougaller.  I thought I had it down pretty well.

Dr. Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" really challenged me.  He emphasized the importance of being slim - not just ok, and the importance of getting my blood sugars into the normal range rather than being happy with levels that just avoided medication.  He definitely challenged my concept of hunger.  His description of toxic hunger is exactly the only hunger sensation that I experienced since childhood.

After several weeks now, I am experiencing very little in the way of toxic hunger, and becoming much more familiar with my body's true hunger sensations.  But one section of Dr. Fuhrman's talk in the Get Healthy Now lecture really resonated with me.  He stated that when you eat, you should not eat to being "full."  You should not eat to the point that your stomach expands and you do not feel like exercising.  When eating the correct amount of food, you should still feel like you could go out and exercise.  That is not how I have done it.  Because I have been eating fewer meals, I have allowed myself to continue eating a lot of food at meals - usually having seconds.

For the last few days, I have eaten according to this idea and it is working great.  When I do this, I feel really good after meals, and by the time for my next meal comes around, I am experiencing some true hunger.  If I understand Dr. Fuhrman on this, the ideal is to never feel stuffed, and to time the amount you are eating so that you will be truly hungry when the next meal time comes around.  Because I have such a long history of not doing this, it is taking some time.  But the work and patience is really paying off as I move towards healthy eating habits for quantity as well as quality of foods.

I had previously underestimated the importance of learning to manage my hunger.  I thought, as per Dr. Lisle, that my hunger would take care of itself with a whole plant food diet.  This is probably true for most people.  It was true for Farley.  She became very trim, with a very low BMI, simply by eating the same foods that I do.  But she long felt that I ate way too much, and I agreed that I ate a high quantity of food.  I am in the process of reeducating my hunger.  This seems to be a very important concept to me, and I am sure many others.  It is definitely a step beyond where I was before, and I am excited to see where it will lead in the future.  It would be wonderful if getting slim was the answer to my high blood sugars.  Dr. Fuhrman says that some people are sensitive to even a small amount of extra fat.  Those people need to get slim to get their blood sugars back to normal.  I hope to get slim and to be one of those people.  I do believe that understanding and reeducating my hunger drive is going to be key on this journey.  Today, I eat much less than I did a  year ago, when I was about 15 pounds heavier.  I don't suffer and feel even better than before.  There doesn't seem to be any downside.

I would recommend that anybody who is eating healthy food, but has yet to reach their goals, to get some of Dr. Fuhrman's books or lectures and investigate whether they are eating in response to toxic hunger rather than true hunger.  There is a great chance that you can do a lot of good by refining your own concept and experience of hunger.

October 20

I ate only a single meal on the 19th, due to playing an evening concert.  I noticed that I felt fine, and thought I would try a single meal on the 20th.  It was leftovers over rice - nothing worth a photo or recipe, but was tasty and satisfying.  As I  write this, on the morning of the 21st, I have a new weight low of 182.6.  That is about 2 pounds lower than my previous low, and shows the folly of worrying about the scale on a daily basis.  When you focus on what you are doing, the scale will reflect the quality of diet.

I saw Dr. McDougall's video, The Fat Vegan, recently.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIY-A_UspTs
It got me thinking about why I am doing this blog, which is to promote healthy eating and help people realize their goals.

Sooner or later, everybody in this country and on the planet even is going to convert to a whole plant food diet.  I would rather that this be sooner, and that is going to require everybody who supports healthy eating get healthy themselves.  A fat and unhealthy supporter of Dr. McDougall and Jeff etc. is not an effective advocate for the program.  You can't tell friends to believe you and not their own lying eyes.

We have to start with ourselves.  It is just too easy to focus on other people's issues and fail to address our own.  That is one of the purposes of my challenge to myself here.  Although I have made a lot of progress, that it not good enough.  The better I can do, the more effective spokesman I can be for the program.  The better Farley and I look and feel, the more credibility we have.

The reason credibility is so important is because this world is so full of spin and false claims, especially where obesity and diet are concerned.  It is said in the bible that a good tree does not bear bad fruit, and that is so true.  The world needs to see that following a healthy eating plan always bears good fruit.  I have personally witnessed obese people telling me and others how I should eat.  I paid no attention, and neither did anybody else.

Knowing the right message is not enough.  We have to show that this program works.  If we are going to change the way the nation and the world eats, it has to start with us doing it properly.  The change is unlikely to come from doctors, who have little training in nutrition and less incentive to promote such a simple and effective therapy as proper nutrition.  It is unlikely to come from government, which is so heavily dependent upon special interests that depend themselves on the status quo.  It is going to have to come from people like Farley, me, and you.

Farley just returned from a convention.  Several people there wanted to know about her nutrition plan.  As I write this, she is sending links to one of these nice ladies.  Surely, one of the main reasons that people asked is because Farley looks so healthy.  It is obvious that what she is doing works.

I hope to get something from my friends Penny and Steve, with whom I kayak.  Penny was being recommend heart surgery.  She is now doing great on Dr. Esselstyn's program without the surgery, and she is very grateful that she heard about that program from me.  I doubt if she would have investigated Dr. Esselstyn without my obvious success on the program.  So charity begins at home, and so does good nutrition.  Let's do our best to have everybody who knows about healthy eating look and feel healthy themselves.  That is how the message will get out.

Taking blood samples for glucose testing

Using your ear lobe for blood sampling
Before I got better and stopped taking diabetes meds, I used to test my blood levels frequently.  As a type 2 diabetic, I always wondered why.  There was nothing to be done about the results - maybe go to the doctors and get stronger medicine, which wouldn't do anything for me health wise, but make the doctor del better.  With Dr. McDougall's and Jeff Novick's help, I lowered my blood sugar to the point where my doctor agreed that I did not need medicine.  But my blood glucose has crept up slowly over the last 4 years, and I wanted to test how a very strict application of Jeff's "plate test" (basically seeing that 95%+ of the calories on your plate is whole plant food), I am taking my fasting blood sugars again.

Modern glucose meters are amazing, and they need very small samples.  My objection to sampling is using my fingers.  I play several stringed instruments, and seem to always be doing something with my fingers.  I found it very annoying.  Some lancets are now designed to use areas such as the legs, and "suck" the blood out for the sample.  But this rarely provides as good a sample as a capillary bed.

I wanted to share here a solution that I have used, and which may benefit others.  Long ago, when I was deciding between law and medical school, a spent a one year internship as a clinical laboratory scientist which led to licensure by the American Society of Certified Pathologists.  One part of our training was in collecting samples for the tests we performed - I'm not sure if that is done much these days.

For some of the patients, it was extremely difficult to collect blood.  This was especially true for drug addicts, whose every vein seemed to be scarred beyond redemption, and very sick individuals who had much bruising from previous venipunctures.  I was frequently asked to handle some of the really difficult cases.  Although I disliked it at first, I did develop some talent, and did my research and learned from my mentors.

For some tests, we had micro assay methods, using very small amounts of blood.  We also had heparin coated and marked glass pipettes.  This was much as the modern glucose meters use today.

The lobe of the ear contains great capillary beds where smaller samples can be express with a lancet.  The ear lobe is also much less sensitive than finger tips.   It occurred to me that that would be a fine site for obtaining samples for modern glucose meters.  And it is.

At first, I collected samples from both finger and ear to make sure that they compared well.  They were virtually exact every time I tested.  I am not sure that they would be the same right after a meal, but I only tested fasting and 2 hours p.p.

The way I do it is to simply use the lanced to push firmly into the ear lobe while pressing the trigger.  If sample size is too small, you can try to express the blood droplet with your fingers.  If you are constantly qns (quantity not sufficient), you can adjust the needle deeper, try a heavier gauge, and probably the most effective is to warm the ear lobe with a hot moist wash cloth first.

The ear lobe usually heals in a day, and you have two lobes.  You can also try several different sites on the lobes.  With experience, you will figure it out.  It is a little tricky to get the test strip to the blood droplet, especially if you are older with poorer eyesight.  I use a magnifying shaving mirror and have no problem.  It might take a few tries, but if you hate using your finger tips, you might try this.