Resolutions to Stay on Track!

February 29 –Happy Leap Year Day!

A good opportunity to check in on those New Year’s Resolutions.

My theme for the year is:  “Welcome every morning with a smile. Look on the new day as another special gift from your Creator, another golden opportunity to complete what you were unable to finish yesterday. Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.”

I like that!  I’ve been succeeding at waking up with a smile or at least not a groan as I shut the alarm clock…I’ve also been successful at keeping up with my blogs,   (this one and my blog on media), exercising, eating well, taking my vitamins, nurturing friendships, visiting family and writing at least 1 letter each week.

I still need to work on living in the present moment.  I’m pretty good about not dwelling on the past, but I can still use some work on not worrying about the future!  Also I see that I set a resolution to run the Seacoast Race Series again this year.  Funny just this morning I said to myself, “no, I don’t think I’ll run the series this year, there is too much pressure”–good thing I made a resolution.  Now I will do it!!  The first race is in May so it’s also good thing I started running again (this morning as a matter of fact.  I was running when I contemplated not racing this summer!)

Lastly, I find that breaking one or two of the resolutions into Monthly action items helps he achieve them so here are March’s  goals:

• Run at least twice a week
• Visit my friends and family in Virginia
• Cut out Cow’s Milk from diet

The Good and Bad of Healthy Eating

Things happens when you do some research into the foods you eat.  Some good things:

• You learn about the foods you eat
• You alter your diet
• You lose excess weight
• You get healthier

Some bad things:

• You give up foods that most people still enjoy — milk, ice cream, sugary desserts, processed foods, etc.
• You need to learn to enjoy new foods and new cooking techniques  (this could be good or bad)
• You want to share your knowledge and as a result
• You drive everyone around you crazy!

In a recent post I talked about the serious health problems associated with drinking cow’s milk as a result, I have been eliminating milk from my diet.  Switching to soy milk in my cereal has been relatively easy.  But what about ice cream, yogurt and half and half for my coffee?  That is proving to be a bit more difficult. (I know I should probably give up coffee too, but there is positive research about coffee and health).

As for driving everyone around me crazy, perhaps I probably shouldn’t refer to the little packets of Equal and Splenda as “poison” when a friend asks me to pass them across the table.  And I’m pretty sure that if I post one more article about the dangers of sugar (like this one) I will lose a few friends!  So, if you want to read a good article, by all means click on the link, and if you don’t, I won’t push it on you!!

Spill Out the Milk!

My daughter is vegan. Her motivation for adopting a vegan diet was to eat a healthy diet. She is a firm believer that we should eat healthy foods that our bodies were designed to digest and avoiding those that we weren’t. One case in point…Did you know that humans are the only mammals who drink milk after we are weaned? And not only that, we drink the milk of other mammals.

Today she sent me a very interesting article on dairy consumption from One Green Planet

According to the article, we have been led to believe (by the dairy industry) that dairy products (cow’s milk) is vital for our health, but research has proven that:

• 75% of the people on the planet don’t consume any dairy products because they are lactose intolerant and they are doing just fine.
• The Japanese consume much lower levels of dairy than we do, yet they maintain a higher life expectancy and better health than the United States.
• Calcium can be found in non-dairy foods such as spinach, kale, broccoli, tofu, soybeans, almonds and molasses, and these foods provide more calcium per calorie than milk.
• As for cow’s milk’s role in building strong bones, that the countries with the highest dairy consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis
• Dairy consumption has been linked to cancer, diabetes, autism and schizophrenia, and many autoimmune disorders including Multiple Sclerosis.
• The fat and hormones in dairy have been strongly linked with a variety of hormone-related illnesses in humans, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, and acne.

• Most of the milk in the US is produced on large factory farms, where cows are kept in unhealthy conditions, and fed hormones and antibiotics, we need to pasteurize the milk so we don’t get sick, but this process destroys many of the nutrients
• And lastly dairy cows suffer immensely in dairy farms/factories, and they also account for huge amounts of CO2 emissions, land degradation, water consumption, and water contamination

The interesting thing is that as people are becoming aware of what they are consuming, they are consuming less dairy in favor of soy, coconut, almond and rice milks.

And, ready for this….the dairy industry, not wanting to lose it’s place in the American diet is responding with a marketing campaign attacking plant based milks.