Here's To Your Health and to Your Self-esteem

The Food Lover

There was a guy that loved to eat. What could be better than eating really tasty foods? When he was at a restaurant, he was there for the food not the ambience.

He believed good tasting food didn't come from a package and so he would take the time and effort to make recipes from scratch. He had a subscription to America's Test Kitchen. He followed food blogs, and he liked seeing tasty-looking food dishes on Pinterest. In a pinch though, if it was late or he was tired, he wasn't opposed to eating prepackaged food. 

Over the years he slowly put on pounds. When he was out and saw another guy with a big tummy he would ask his wife, "Am I as big as that guy?" She tried to be kind. Finally he had to admit he was overweight, really overweight. He was not very physically active, it was too hard to pack all that weight around. Getting up and down took real effort.

You Shouldn't Have to Starve

He really believed you shouldn't have to feel like you're starving all the time to lose weight and keep it off. He knew any diet that required counting calories or keeping track of food consumption would not work over time. With those diets the dieter usually has a weight loss goal. If the goal is reached—and frequently it isn't—the dieter stops worrying about keeping track and goes back to old eating habits. The end result is always the same; the weight comes back. He didn't want that to happen.

A lifestyle change was what he was looking for. He reduced the amount of highly processed snack foods he ate, and he tried to cut back on his use of sugar. He managed to lose twenty-five pounds and felt good about that, but he had a long way to go and he had stalled. He wasn't really losing more weight.

Then he came across the book Eat to Live, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Dr. Fuhrman recommends natural foods and for the most part eaten in their natural state: leafy greens, vegetables, beans, mushrooms, and fruit. He recommends a strict six-week program to get your body off all unhealthy foods and to break addictions.  This was more radical than what the food lover was looking for, but he was sick of being fat. This book gave hope. He figured he could do the six-week program and then decide if he wanted to stay with it.

No Starving, Great Eating

The results were immediate and significant. At the end of the six weeks he had lost another twenty-five pounds. Best of all he felt great and he wasn't starving! As his taste buds recovered from years of being subjected to unhealthy foods and too much salt and sugar, food was tasting better all the time.

Hello out there. I know I'm getting visitors to my website, but I don't know if anyone is really reading it or if they just land, see what it is and fly. If you got this far, I figure you're reading it.  I'd love to hear from you. The story I just told is about myself and it's true.

Building Confidence

The point is, I'm losing a lot of weight and my self-esteem is improving. I've learned that self-esteem comes from accomplishing things for yourself. It comes from learning to be self-sufficient. So I'm also growing a garden, not just any garden, a square foot garden. I have five times the number of vegetables in my garden this year than usual, using less than a third of the space. Vegetables that will provide much of what I eat throughout the summer and into the fall.

I'm excited, but it doesn't stop there. I'm taking back my life. I feel more independent. I have cut out TV; I did that several years ago and what an improvement. I spend more time studying and I'm learning wonderful things. The more independent I become the more I want to do things for myself. I especially don't want to rely on the government to take care of me or solve the problems in our society. Independent thinkers, millions of them, are where the solutions to our problems lie, not with bureaucrats or power hungry politicians.

I'm looking for like minded people. As I learn and grow, as I become more independent, I look more closely at those who seek to govern and the direction they are taking our society.  I believe this is true of all independent thinkers. But as individuals we have no chance of taking back control of our society. As millions of independent thinkers we will have the power to change the direction of our society, regardless of what country we live in, and whether we all believe exactly the same way.

The Garden

We harvested the first vegetable from our garden: radishes. The radishes are for my wife; I'm not a big fan, but we all had to try one. It was a fun event.