Books I've Recently Read (That Have Had An Impact On Me)

I thought it might be useful for some of you to see a list of books that I thought were interesting and enlightening. I feel it is my responsibility to my clients to stay informed about nutrition, health and fitness.

"Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" Barbara Kingsolver
Ms. Kingsolver writes books that are very enjoyable to read. This book is not a novel. It is about the year the whole family moved from Nevada (I think) to Virginia (I think) and tried to live almost completely on what they grew. After reading about peanut butter killing more than one nursing home inmate and sickening scores of people around the country the idea sounds better than ever.

"Younger Next Year" Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge, M.D.
This very readable book gives you the science behind the reason you want to exercise. Did you know that the inflammation you feel when you have sore muscles from a workout is a necessary signal for your bones and muscles to make more bone and muscle cells? Having plenty of bone and muscle cells is in your best interest. The book is loaded with little gems like that. I'm willing to trade a little soreness for health and vitality.

"Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain" John J. Ratey
Exercise is the best treatment for depression. The effects of exercise "kick in" faster then drugs and a year later, the exercisers are better off than the people given drugs for their depression. I've had a nurse tell me a half hour walk is equal to a Prozac. Any neurotransmitter secreted by your brain is secreted better after a bout of cardiovascular exercise. Exercise is good for ADD/ADHD, Parkinson's Disease. Studying for a test? Exercise will make your brain perform better!

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" Michael Pollan
More information on food and how much of it in this country is grown and manufactured. Very, very good information. It is enough to get you to eat organically raised meat or become a vegetarian.

"The End of Overeating. Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite"
David A. Kessler, MD
I am half-way through this book and for me it is a page-turner. I see people all day long that are struggling with their weight. I tell them all to stay away from food that comes in crinkly packages and learn how to cook at home. This book points out that the people who sell us prepared food - Kraft, Nabisco, Chilis, Outback Steakhouse, Starbucks - pay people who lie awake at night thinking of new ways to get you to buy more of their junk that masquerades as food. They do not have your best interest at heart, they don't care about your health. Their goals are to make a product that is addictively tasty with a terrific profit margin. There isn't a lot of money in selling potatoes, but there is a ton of profit in selling French fries or potato chips. Guess what? A lot of the stuff you are eating isn't even food. It is chemicals masquerading as food. They have chemicals that taste like bacon, blue cheese, cinnamon. They are cheaper to use than the real thing.

The last thing I'm going to mention is not a book, it is a documentary available on video that is very watchable. It is called, "King Corn" by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis. Recently graduated from college, Ian and Curt decide to go to Iowa and follow an acre of corn that they plant. Our misguided farm subsidy policies seem to have caused a glut of genetically modified corn on the market. The outfits mentioned above are only too happy to take all that corn in the form of cheap meat and high fructose corn syrup and turn it into fast food. You will learn a lot about food by watching this video. One fact that Ian and Curt point out is that this generation growing up now is likely to be the first generation in the U.S. that is expected to have a shorter life span than their parents. That is a sobering thought. We live in a country where medical care is at the most advanced it has ever been and our kids are going to die at a younger age than their parents.

An aside: Years ago, there was a disease called Adult Onset Diabetes, so called to differentiate it from Juvenile Diabetes. Juvenile Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that strikes young people. There are a bunch of theories, but no one knows for sure why it strikes the kids that it strikes. Adult onset diabetes is another story. After years and years of abusing your body with lots and lots of sugary foods, you either wear out your pancreas or your develop an insensitivity to the insulin that your pancreas is churning out. Anyway, the name of that disease had to be changed from Adult Onset Diabetes (because you really only saw it in people over 50) to Type II Diabetes because more and more children are developing this disease. Guess what? You can completely control Type II Diabetes with diet and exercise. No one wants to. It is so much easier to take a drug to artificially lower your blood sugar and get to keep eating the crap that got you into this medical mess in the first place. Researchers estimate that one out of three children living today will develop Type II Diabetes.

Reading Well While Living On Less

So many books, so little time, so little money. I live in the smallest house in Bergen County, New Jersey. That is probably not true, but my house has one bedroom, one closet, one bathroom. We love it and are very comfortable Especially when we get the gas bills in the winter or the electricity bills in the summer, but I digress.....

Living in a small house makes you prioritize possessions. I love to read. I hate to throw a book away. That's a recipe for disaster when you have a small house. Every once in a while I read about someone who was stuck in their house for 3 days before the mailman realized no one was picking up the mail. When the police or firemen break into the house they find some poor older person stuck under a pile of news papers or books that had fallen on them, and the house if filled to the ceilings with piles of books, magazines and newspapers. But again, I digress....

At Christmas time I give lots of books for presents, but the rest of the year I get all my reading material from my local library. My tax dollars go to the library, why not use the resource? My library is part of a cooperative library system that includes more than one county. I can order books online and if the book is in the system, it will be delivered to my local library. My library emails me (they would telephone me if that is how I asked to be notified) when a book is in. They email me a few days before books are due. They have movies, books on tape, music. All the music on my iPod originated from the library. I need to get savvier because you can download books right to an MP3 player. I have not done that yet, but I will. The libraries also have classes in computers, clearing clutter, helping your kids become better students. All sorts of things that are free. Best of all, when I am done with the book or the disc I take is back and keep the clutter down. I love my library! The people who work in libraries are usually special. They really want to help you find what you are looking for. Nasty, money-hungry types got jobs on Wall Street figuring out how to package credit default sweeps, derivatives, and how to wreck an economy. People who like to help people got jobs in libraries. I can't even imagine how much money I have saved over the years by patronizing my library. Thousands of dollars. This summer when gas was almost $4.00 a gallon, I decided that if I could get to the library on my way to work or on my way home when I drive past it, I could drive. Otherwise I would walk. It is a perfect 30 minute walk one way. I take a backpack and put the books I'm returning into it and saunter over. My grocery store is a 10 minute walk one way. I can take my car for a big shopping, but for little things I just walk. I generally walk year 'round. I think in Norway, they say there is no bad weather just bad clothing. True. When the weather is truly awful I won't walk. If it is raining very hard, or icy, or actively snowing I won't walk. That sort of weather is the exception, not the norm.

Eating well while living on less

I just scanned the New York Times most emailed list of articles. Lawyers are losing their jobs and big prestigious law firms are folding. You may not like lawyers and some have a bad reputation, but last year I was involved in a nasty landlord/security deposit/ small claims court event. A couple of kind-hearted attorneys helped me and I see that the working of the legal system takes knowledge, time, work and preparation. These skills need compensation. Thank you Randy and Gregg for your help.

But I digress. The news is worse every day. People are in all sorts of financial trouble. My first thoughts are always about food. If I can eat well I can feel well. As a personal trainer I have stopped asking people if they eat well because everyone thinks they do eat well. My definition of eating well is different. For me, eating well means eating fresh wholesome food that has not been processed in a factory. I try to avoid cans and boxes of food. I am not perfect and sometimes as a treat for my husband I will make a box of macaroni and cheese (try the Pasta Roni Shells and White Cheddar) . Last night's dinner was a pot of turkey chili. My husband declared it the best ever. Probably because he hasn't had chili since last spring. It is too hot to cook chili in the summer. I do not buy canned beans. Sometime I cook beans in my pressure cooker. I could not live without my pressure cooker. A pressure cooker can cook beans from a bag to table ready in 20 minutes! Yesterday, I just cooked the beans on the stove because the pressure cooker needs a new gasket. These must have been really fresh beans because they cooked up in no time. I washed and picked through them. Put them in a pot with water, brought them to a boil and boiled for a minute or so. I put the lid on the pot and set the timer on the stove for an hour. When the hour was up I added two bay leaves, a good pinch of Kosher salt and couple of sliced garlic cloves. I simmered this until the beans were soft. If filled the house with a delicious fragrance. I don't think it took an hour. In a separate pot I sauteed an onion in coconut oil (that will be another post), added more garlic, added a pound of ground turkey (don't use the white meat turkey it is too dry), put in an envelope of chili mix, chopped up some tomatoes (the last of the tomatoes from the garden) use canned diced tomatoes if you would like. When the meat was cooked through I added the beans and the cooking water. Beans are a miracle food. They have loads of fiber. We don't eat enough fiber. The nutrition label on a bag of beans doesn't even start to tell you the goodness in them. They are low fat, high fiber, loaded with minerals and fill you up without filling you out. And they are incredibly cheap! I buy my beans at ethnic stores. They are fresher and cheaper than at mainstream grocery store chains. The red kidney beans I used in yesterday's chili were $1.09 for 2 pounds. A quarter of a cup of raw beans has 70 calories and 14 grams of fiber. People have told me they can't eat beans because they are too gassy. Buy some Beano. When you regularly eat beans, your stomach will adapt and make more of the enzymes necessary to digest them properly. The chili I made yesterday yields dinner for the two of us for two nights, plus a lunch for one of us. Thank goodness my husband will eat leftovers. I estimate the pot cost .54 for beans, .50 for the chili spice from WalMart, and $2.63 for the ground turkey. Not everyone is going to have tomatoes from the garden so I am going to add .79 for canned tomatoes. That comes to $4.46 for 4 meals or $2.23 for dinner for two. My husband even had a second bowl. The best part is that this chili is better than the greasy stuff you are going to get at a restaurant. I serve the chili with some diced onion and a light grating of cheese. Sometimes I garnish the chili with a spoon of sour cream. If there is a bit left I make burritos with it. Those are a big hit too. Whole wheat tortillas, chili, chopped tomato, chopped onion, diced avocado, a bit of sour cream and a bit of grated cheese. Dice up some cilantro for real authentic Mexican taste. I try to avoid throwing food out and can usually find something tasty to make with leftovers. Leftover mashed potatoes always get put into the freezer. They are just the thing to thicken a soup with. When I braise meat in my pressure cooker I always save the liquid. I put it in a container in the fridge, when the fat is solid, I toss it and freeze the incredibly flavorful liquid. That gets put into soups and stews. This way I don't need to use bullion cubes (ugh - just salt and chemicals) or take the trouble to make stock.

My Organic Garden

I started gardening this summer. Gas prices were high and were going higher every week which caused food prices to shoot up too. Cucumbers were priced at 3 for $1.99 for most of the summer. I remember when you could buy cucumbers 4 for $1.00 at the height of the summer. I am so happy I started my garden. I don't think I broke even this summer but next summer I won't have the expense of buying soil and fencing the garden to try to thwart the hungry woodchuck that raids the lettuce and beans. I have saved many seeds so I won't even have the expense of buying seeds. I read a fantastic book by Mel Bartholomew, "The Square Foot Garden", Mel tells you just how to save seeds. The seed companies want you to buy their seeds fresh every year and they tell you seeds don't last from season to season. Mel says, put the seeds in a jar or into ziploc bags with a label and keep them in the refrigerator. Do not let them be exposed to heat or light because that is their signal to start germinating. Keep them dark and cold. You can keep many seeds for years.

I can't say I was able to feed my husband and I from the garden exclusively this summer, but I sure made a dent. I did not have to buy much salad. The beans the woodchuck didn't get were delicious. I had a bumper crop of tomatoes. I'm still eating the last of the tomatoes I picked before the first hard frost. We had plenty of cucumbers that were sweeter than the ones in the grocery store. I still have carrots, beets, chard, mesclun, leeks, kale, lolla rosa lettuce and mustard greens growing in the garden as of November 11th.

Next spring I will get an early start and plan to have peas, spinach, lettuces and other greens before I put the summer veggies in. It is a bit of work to garden, but it is so satisfying that it doesn't seem like work at all.

I started composting kitchen scraps. Anyone who has not made compost will have a hard time understanding how I can get so excited about the process. Trust me, you start with a pile of coffee grounds, cucumber peels, onion peels etcetera. I keep a bowl next to my sink that I put anything that started out green into. No meat or oil. In a few weeks, you have a legion of earthworms and other critters breaking this all down to make wonderful material for your plants! Imagine, I am keeping things out of our landfills and making my garden a better place. It is just amazing. Another neat thing about composting is that if I can believe the books I've read, I don't every have to use fertilizer to get my plants to grow. The compost supplies the nutrients for the plants. Save money, save the planet. Win, win! Most importantly, home grown vegetables are way ahead of store bought in taste and freshness.

Being Happy Living on Less

I have been baking my own bread since last Christmas when a couple of wonderful clients gave me a bread machine as a present. I have not bought bread since I have started baking my own. My clients bought me the bread machine because I was complaining about how difficult it was to find bread that did not have high fructose corn syrup in it and was made with pure whole wheat. Do you know lots of bread is made with cellulose? Look at your ingredients. Do you know what cellulose is? I do. Cellulose is a fancy word for wood. Wood is termite food, wood is building material, wood is good for a fireplace. Wood has no place in food. Bread has cellulose in it to boost the fiber content. Whole wheat flour has enough fiber in it for me thank you, hold the cellulose! When I started baking bread, I was happy to have control over the ingredients in the bread. My bread contains: whole wheat flour, organic safflower oil, molasses, milk, salt, yeast and wheat gluten. How many ingredients does your bread have? A lot, I bet. If there are any you can't pronounce you are probably eating chemicals and preservatives. I preserve my bread by cutting it in half. One half goes in the fridge, the other half goes into the freezer. Every other week or so I bake a loaf. A 5lb bag of flour costs around $3.50 and I can get 4 loaves of bread from a bag. I am really saving money by baking my own bread. A new bread machine is an investment but one that is worthwhile I think. You could probably find used bread machines at thrift shops and garage sales. I am trying to eat most of my meals at home. I cook a little extra at dinner so that I have enough food to take to work with me for lunch.