My Health Journey

Cleaning my closet, I decided to discard the first pairs of jeans I bought after I started losing weight five years ago. They were a trim size 38, way slimmer than the unspeakable size 40 I was wearing. I loved them. But now I cannot bear to wear them anymore. They feel heavy, baggy, and without a belt, can slip down my hips zipped and buttoned. Meanwhile, even the size 34s that I had gotten more recently feel big. Moreover, I managed to get into size 33 jeans I had saved from 1995 !  So now, the size 38s are out of commission. (I only kept wearing them so long for sentimental reasons that no longer apply) So how did I do it? How did I lose some 50 lb., and over five sizes, and get to feel 25 years younger, in five and half years? Discarding my first "weight loss" jeans from 5 years and more than 5 sizes ago. There is no magic potion. The way I did it was through small changes in my lifestyle, introduced gradually, one at a time, until each change was embraced and beca...

Carrot, celery, bell pepper, and tomato sauce, with beets, served on ancient grain penne. Recently, I cooked a Chinese stir fry with carrots, celery, mushrooms, and grilled tofu. I loved the flavor combination and wanted to do it again, but was tired of rice and stir fries, so decided to make it into a pasta sauce. I had bell peppers instead of mushrooms, which probably works better with the tomatoes I also wanted to add.   I grilled the tofu separately, as before. For the sauce, I used the wok to stir fry the garlic, onion, and beets, then added the carrots, celery, and peppers in that order, a few minutes apart. I added the tomatoes last, enough to steam. The flavor worked well, with the celery blending well into the tomato sauce, and the tofu not changing the flavor much.

The land adjacent to my CSA farm, up for redevelopment as a residential area. I paid the down payment for my Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership for 2019.  I If you are wondering what a CSA is, I discuss it here .  Basically, over the last three years, I found it to be a great deal, getting organic, in-season, food weekly fresh from the farm.  It was a good factor in improving my health and keeping my shape.  The reasons to join a CSA are many, but I highlight the sign I saw this summer on a land adjacent to my CSA farm.  What used to be a cornfield for feeding a dairy farm is now up for a residential project.  More congestion, pollution, and runoff. Ugh! My CSA membership, and that of the many of my neighbors who chose to join is what's keeping that piece of land for use as an organic farm, a welcome swathe of green in a suburban jungle.

The key to coming up with dishes like these is to not be afraid to experiment and substitute.  Use whatever ingredients available, as long as the flavors go together.  It takes trial and error, but if you cook often, you'll get the hang of it. Eggplant and enoki mushroom with carrots and bulb onion. Puffy tofu with Shanghai cabbage and bean sprouts, over rice. Puffy tofu and eggplant over soba noodles. Preparation for Xian noodles and cabbage One of my favs: Xi'an noodles and cabbage in hot oil. A recipe from the ancient capital of China.  Preparation for a silken tofu salad.  Since I'm allergic to soybean and sesame (the main traditional garnish), I add a lot of vegetables to reduce the amount of allergens I'm eating. Silken tofu salad, with soy sauce and sesame oil, plus whatever veggies you want to add.

I registered for a 10-kilometer race in April.  It's good to have a goal to keep me motivated and on track. I ran a 10-miler last year and several half-marathon's earlier. A 10k is not a hard distance, but I haven't been running long runs since the summer. This race is in one direction, and is all downhill, so I should be able to get my fastest pace. My best 10k I finished in 57 min, which is better than my target of 1 hour. If I want to get down to 50 min, that's a target pace of almost 8 min/mile, which is a stretch to maintain, even downhill, but I can try. Moreover, all my previous races were before I knew about my allergies. My race breakfast was typically a nut-laden energy bar, and often I would carry almonds for the road. That, as I found out since, really impacted my sinuses and my breathing. Will be interesting to see how my performance improves after removing that contaminant, and also after the months of reshaping my glutes and stretching my hip flexors....