Wednesday, April 20, 2011

SNEAK PEAK Theatre Review: JERUSALEM

Don't be confused by the title--it's not a play about Zionism. 

Tony and Olivier Award-winning star Mark Rylance portrays Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in the brilliant new play Jerusalem.  In the backwoods of Flintock, England (near Stonehenge) a former daredevil motorcyclist and modern-day Pied Piper, drug-dealing, super-friend/antihero is served an eviction notice on his airstream as a new housing development is slated for construction.  With his gypsy-esque lifestyle, thousand-year lineage, and motley assortment of alcohol and drug-addled friends he lives on a nebulous boundary of insanity and utterly-clear logic while negotiating a relationship with his son, ex-wife, the city council and the world at large.  Throw in a missing girl with an abusive stepfather, mythic themes and a flawless set and you'll find yourself lost for three crispy hours in an unwavering world of brutal and radiant humanity.   Ian Rickson's direction feels natural and clean, but fully embedded with details and layers that made me want to see the show a second time and right away.  The cheeky dialogue is cunning, hilarious and wrenching.  Each moment of this play pulls at you, forcing you to question your own judgmental nature and moral compass while profound ideological battles rage.  On the surface it's a simplistic play about a misplaced man, but playwright Jez Butterworth scratches until a remarkable and haunting profundity is unearthed.  And then he scratches even deeper, forcing our blood to rise.

Mark Rylance attacks and embodies Byron with an astonishing ferociousness and sensitivity that will undoubtedly garner him further deserved awards.  Jerusalem already won the 2009 Evening Standard and London Critics' Circle Awards, the 2010 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Play, and Mark Rylance won the Olivier Award (Britain's Tony).  We saw a preview last night--the play opens tomorrow.  If the ten-minute standing ovation was any indication, this show will win a spate of more deserved Tony's on June 12th and it will undoubtedly join the canons of unparalleled and memorable Broadway theater.   Don't miss it.

http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/musicboxtheater/theater.php

Music Box Theatre
239 W 45th St, NYC 10036

Running Time:
2 hours and 55 minutes, including two 10 minute intermissions

Cast Members:
Mark Rylance, Mackenzie Crook, John Gallagher, Jr., Max Baker, Geraldine Hughes, Molly Ranson, Alan David, Aimeé-Ffion Edwards, Danny Kirrane, Charlotte Mills, Sarah Moyle, Harvey Robinson, Barry Sloane, Aiden Eyrick, Mark Page

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Punctuality

I’m sitting in the car, waiting.  A gentle Spring rain pitter-patters down the windshield, fueling the early-bursting flowers—and my rage.  Our happy orange Mazda has become a Chinese Water Torture Chamber from a 1980’s Elvira movie.  Soon my eyes will start a bout of uncontrolled spasms and before long I’ll be blathering and blubbering and seething.  Our friend is having a dinner party that starts at 6:30, and she specifically asked that we arrive early so it can start on time.  It’s 6:28 and she lives six minutes away.  We haven’t left yet, and we’re late.

When I was in drama class it was put to me like this:  “Take every minute you’re late for a rehearsal, miss a cue or show up after you’re expected and multiply it by the number of people waiting for you.”   By that calculation, if you’re only 12 seconds late for your cue in a play and there are 450 people in the audience then you’ve squandered an hour and a half.  An hour and a half from just 12 seconds!!  Now I’m sitting in the car, wondering when Jon is going to come out of the house, and I’m already calculating that we’ve lost nearly an hour by making 13 people wait for four minutes.  Yikes.

I’m being dramatic for effect.  It’s not like this dinner party was lost-productivity for a Fortune 500 company or a space shuttle launch or the opening number at the Academy Awards.  We ended up being just a few minutes late—no big deal.  We arrived at 6:36 and were actually surprised to find everyone was, in fact, waiting for us.  We were rushered (rushed and ushered) to our seats and I felt a tinge of humiliation from the raised eyebrows.  We were late.  We were guilty.  We had killed everyone’s time and we were judged. 

In 2004 we traveled through Japan.  On the last day we gave ourselves seven hours to get from a moutain-top resort in Hakone to the Narita airport, an adventure that required the use of a small toy train, a larger bullet train, a subway around Tokyo, and yet another shuttle train to the outskirts-international airport.  We arrived two hours before our flight and learned we’d missed it because there wasn’t enough time to process our luggage.  Who knew you had to go through an extensive customs procedure to leave Japan?  The next flight was the next day and in the end we were quite happy to have another chance to explore Tokyo.  Still, our error cost us hundreds of dollars as we had to find another hotel and transportation and food in the capital wasn’t cheap.   But that wasn’t about punctuality.  That was about bad timing and misinformation—and there’s a difference.

Punctuality is the art of being on time, neither early nor late.  My grandmother used to sit in an airport for up to three hours before a flight.  That’s not punctual—that’s just freaky. 
There are general rules-of-thumb regarding being on time.  If it’s a meeting or an interview, arriving ten minutes early IS being on time because arriving on time forces the engagement to begin after you’re ‘settled in’.  In high school you had to arrive in your classroom before the bell, not during the bell and not after the bell, so being punctual meant arriving 1-2 minutes before class started.  Theater always starts eight minutes after the time printed at the ticket, but arriving seven minutes after the ticket-time means you’re late because the aisles are tiny and no one wants to deal with you putting away your cell phone and coat.  That’s just gauche.

I grew up Jewish and we always joked about JST—Jewish Standard Time, which was a general excuse for everyone to be late.  Services started at 9:15 but I don’t know anyone, save a few older men, who were ever there before 9:45.  My mother and sister were known for being chronically late.  I haven’t lived with them for twenty years, so maybe they’ve improved, but I do remember that we were always the last kids picked up after school.  I’m sure there was a valid excuse.  There’s always a valid excuse.

Sometimes it’s incredibly uncomfortable to arrive on time, like, say, at a club or a hip party.  But since I rarely go to cool things like that, I can’t write about it.

Now I’m an adult and in charge of my own time.  Our bedroom clock is set twenty minutes fast so if the appointment is at one and the clock reads one then we know we’d better get moving.  The kitchen clock is 10 minutes fast (our house is so big it takes ten minutes to get from the bedroom to the kitchen, I guess).  The bathroom clock resets every time the power dips and we’re too lazy to change it so we just ignore it instead of unplugging it.  The bathroom has its own time zone.  Yes, that’s weird.

In our general mode, I’m always a little early and Jon is always a little late.  Both alternate modes are uncomfortable for both of us.  I think he’s selfish and he thinks I’m a manic people-pleaser.  We’re both right.  Our friends know we’re going to be late no matter what time they say to arrive.  The smart ones set the time early for us.  Of course, we’re smart, too, and we know who tries to manipulate our schedule to suit their selfish needs to eat at a particular moment… so nothing really works.

Late people will always be late and punctual people cannot change them.

I wish I didn’t miss the beginning of The Lion King on Broadway.  I wish I could watch trailers before movies.  I wish I could go to a dinner party without spending ten minutes waiting in the car first.  But these are bourgeois wishes and I’m not going to waste important wishes on trivialities.

As Bono said, “I cannot change the world, but I can change the world in me.”  I’m sitting in my Mazda watching the rain drip and the clock tick past 6:30 with no sign of Jon, so I decide to change my perception.  We were going to be late, but I was in the car at 6:15, so it wasn’t my fault.  I would lower those raised eyebrows with a forthright pronouncement that I did the right thing and I didn’t cause you this time-injury and I am perfect, I am perfect, I am perfect!!

Of course, no one cares if you’re perfect when you’re late.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Problems, Problems


My mother recently informed me she had to replace her refrigerator after 24 years.  They did a full kitchen remodel about two years ago but kept their old fridge. It was working fine and they were assured the space they were creating in the new kitchen would fit any newer standard refrigerator when it came time to replace the old one.  I personally thought the decision to keep that loud dinosaur was strange.  Why contaminate a new and expensive kitchen with an old almond appliance that still had magnets and postcards from my youth plastered to the façade?  Going home and seeing the old fridge was like reuniting with a childhood friend who somehow remained a child.  It gave me… chills (pun intended).  Still, I’ve learned when it comes to my parents and their decisions, Do Not Intervene.

So my Mom informed me that, as it turns out, new refrigerators do NOT fit in the space they had created for the old one.  After 24 years, refrigerator designs, like most people, have changed their shape a bit.  To get the same width they needed two more inches in height and that meant a major retooling of the upper cabinets.  Instead they chose a slightly narrower refrigerator and now their interior space is compromised.  And right before the holidays.  Oy.  They also have to deal with leveling problems and they had to wait for a part… according to my Mom it has been a small and exhausting nightmare.

So I sent her this cartoon and wrote:


 Dear Mom, 

You can substitute the word Monday with the word Life.

There are always issues, problems, trials, downturns, surprises, misfortunes, mishaps and quandaries around the corner.  ALWAYS.  The trick is to turn those corners first and confront them before they run into you on their own.  Kick them down the street before they kick you.  Or mail them to another zip code.  That's really all you can do.  Love, Mike”

Allow me to elaborate:

We had a cat problem.  On the other side of our next-door neighbor there used to be a condemned building with dozens of stray cats livin’ da life.  When the city tore down the building to prepare for new condos many of the cats relocated to other hovels in the neighborhood.  However, our dear neighbor cherished these cats, missed their wailing, and decided to feed them.  Daily.  So instead of having dozens of cats two doors down we now had dozens of cats on the other side of our fence.  They quickly dug under and started using our yard as their litter box.  It became a problem.

There are always problems.

In the case of the cats we chose to turn the corner first.  Before the cats had a chance to breed and move into our window wells and start decorating we called Animal Control and we got traps.  One by one they fell in love with the divine food we set for them and one by one the 50+ cats made their way to the local shelters where they were treated for their health issues and malnutrition.  The cats were neutered or spayed and most were adopted out.  Yes, some suffering feral cats were euthanized, but I still affirm it was a kinder fate than starving to death in a Saratoga winter. 

We also caught some possum.  We knew they would be instantly killed, as no one takes in a possum for a pet because they’re viscous, smell bad, bite, scratch and use the f-word.  So we took our problem into another zip code and released them into the wild woods 45 minutes away. 

Had my mother asked me for my opinion during her kitchen renovation I would have suggested that a 22-year old refrigerator was not only inefficient, but it would have to be replaced within a few years anyway.  I would have prodded her into a new purchase because, really, when you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars what’s another $1500 for a fridge at that point?  Also, it’s strange to show off a new kitchen with an old refrigerator.  It’s like having a wedding at The Ritz and then wheeling out leftover cake from the bridal shower.  But my mother didn’t ask, and now she’s got her small nightmare because there are always problems, and this problem turned the corner first.

Some problems cannot be foreseen.  Air conditioners fall out of apartment buildings all the time and of course we cannot avoid walking down the street.  We can, however, avoid a lot of problems by using our forward-thinking brains.  Don’t drink and drive.  Don’t drive on ice.  Don’t drive if you’re seven or ninety-seven.  Put down that second piece of cake.  Don't build a city below sea level in a hurricane-zone.   Don't build nuclear reactors on fault lines.  Smoking is like inviting future problems into your living room and asking them to get naked with you. 

Hey, we all make bad decisions.  That's part of life and that's how we learn.  Just yesterday I thought I could throw a forty-pound fireplace andiron into a six-foot high metal scrap bin without help.  The gash and bruise on my arm testify I was, in fact, somewhat incapable.  Oh well.  At least I didn't lose any money.  The point is if I took three seconds, a deep breath, and assessed my situation more accurately I would have seen that my machismo stunt was exactly the kind of idiocy that ends up on Tosh.O.  It could have landed on my head instead of my arm.  It would have seriously affected this blog.  Instead of leaving trouble bubbling in a distant wasteland, I called it over and we shook hands.  Ouch.

There are always problems, so let yourself off the hook when the random ones occur.  At the same time, do your best not to manifest new ones.  And always spring for a new refrigerator when you redo your kitchen.

MG


Saturday, April 2, 2011

C. Eating Tips

1.  Eat a small portion and then wait 20 minutes before eating more.   Last night we ate two portions of chicken and then ran into the kitchen to get two more.  That was a big mistake.  We should have waited 20 minutes and then decided if we were still hungry.  It takes 20 minutes for the hunger triggers to reset, so if you eat too fast you eat more than you need to.  If we'd waited I would have realized that I wasn't actually hungry anymore, or that maybe one more chicken instead of two would have been sufficient.

2.  Eat the biggest meal in the morning.  This is tried and true because it ties in with how our metabolisms move from sleeping to waking and our energies from morning to night.  It’s difficult for me to do because I don't particularly enjoy breakfast foods.  My trick?  Eat backwards.  I’ll have the biggest meal (protein and veggies) in the morning around 10am and eat a salad in the afternoon, around 2 or 3pm.  Dinner at 7pm is oatmeal or eggs or cereal (not a sugar cereal!) and some a piece of fruit for dessert to clean the palate.  Surprise, I’m never hungry and I’ve burned my fuel efficiently throughout the day!  Note: waffles and pancakes are never allowed, whether you eat forwards or backwards.  Sorry. 

3.  Eat less.  Yes, that’s the simple stupid truth.  Duh, how easy!  Ugh.  It’s not easy.  Last week one night I ate two full fish fillets and half a bag of broccoli AND a salad.  That was WAY too much.  While I was making the food it felt appropriate—fish isn’t very filling, after all, but I could have had the two fish fillets and half the portion of broccoli and no salad and been just as satisfied without the additional 400 calories.  Again, look at rule #1: wait 20 minutes to digest before going back for more. And remember that the protein should only be the size of your palm. One fish fillet.  Every time you eat is an opportunity to work on eating right.
 
4. The level of your hunger does not determine how much food you need.  It seems like when we're REALLY hungry we eat LOTS more to fill ourselves back up.  The body doesn't work like this, though.  Hunger is just a trigger, and the trigger goes away when the food strikes it and the chemicals are secreted.  You can't re-dunk the clown once he's in the water.  If you're REALLY hungry, eat a little first—even if it's just two crackers.  Yes, crackers.  Consuming those 70 calories should make the trigger go away long enough that you can prepare a sensible-sized meal.  Also, as my friend Wendy pointed out, when you think you’re hungry you might actually be THIRSTY.  The thirst trigger feels and acts just like the hunger trigger, except it occurs more often.  If you feel hungry, try drinking an 8oz glass of water over 2-3 minutes (don’t chug—sip).  Chances are you won’t remain hungry when the trigger abates.  Test this theory on yourself.  It’s actually quite surprising.  Keep this in mind when you grocery shop.  NEVER shop hungry.  Always drink some water before you go into the store.  Trust me.  

5.   Wine is a food.  Wine has 100-150 calories per pour, and a pour is 5oz.  Each bottle of wine has FIVE glasses in it, NOT FOUR.  When Jon and I share a bottle of wine we're consuming as much as 375 calories each.  It's like eating that carrot cake all over again.  Plus, it slows the metabolism, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do.

6.  Ice Cream is Pure Weight.  A pint of Ben & Jerry's is easy to eat in one sitting because it's so small, but its actual serving size is set for four per container and each serving is 250-300 calories.  If you want to eat Ben & Jerry's for dessert, that's fine (I suppose) (not really), but instead of sharing a pint as one dessert for two you need to learn to stretch it to at least two days, maybe even three.  Think of it as "continuing the joy."  A single delicious sundae with the whipped cream and the hot fudge will set you back 1000 calories of progress, or two full days.  Even if you discard the cherry.  If you have to have the sundae, learn to enjoy the kiddie-size.  It's cheaper and it WILL make you just as happy.  Your tongue is what you're satisfying with these foods and nothing else.  The tongue only has two 'emotions' happy or unhappy.  There is no mid-range; there is no ambivalence with the tongue.  It will be happy with ten coatings of sugary cream.  It doesn't need twenty to be any happier. 

7.  Portions are Proportions.  The bigger the portion the higher you're making the mountain you're trying to climb and the more difficult it will become to reach the summit.  If you want the ice cream, eat half and put salt on the rest.  If you want the wine, drink 1/2 a glass.  Eat on smaller plates.  Eat in smaller bowls.  Eat with smaller utensils to it takes more time to eat, hitting that hunger trigger sooner.

8.  Plan your snacks.  Snacking is the most difficult thing to avoid, but planned snacking reduces guilt and calories.  KNOW that you WILL snack, but make your choices accordingly.  Purchase berries and have them at the ready.  Atkin's bars ARE candy bars.  See the soda ingredients in my other posting, and triple them for Atkin’s bars.  It's scary, weird, crazy stuff.  It's better to eat a smaller piece of genuine dark chocolate now and then to get over a sweet craving.  Trader Joe's 73% dark chocolate bars are 40 calories for a quarter of a bar, but you can train yourself to be satisfied eating that, since it's truly about the wonderful taste of things anyway.  Andy Warhol's spit-out-the-chocolate-after-you’ve-tasted-it is a good trick, albeit a little gross...

9. Fat has double the calories of carbs or proteins.  DOUBLE.  Like burgers?  Make turkey burgers.  Like fries?  Bake them, don't fry them.  Beware low-fat substitutes, though.  They only add other creepy chemicals to make up for the fat.  Instead find real foods that don't contain the same fat content.  Like turkey or soy instead of beef.

10. Don't Freak Out About Labels.  We used to look at the carb count on everything.  Then we looked at the sugar count on everything.  Then we looked at the fat count on everything.  What's the protein count?  Fiber?  Cholesterol?  It's all important but it's also all confusing because we make ourselves see what we want to see.  We can compare two foods and pick the "better" one, but does that mean it's still good for us?  We have to train ourselves to finding our new favorite better foods, sticking to the outside margins of the market and avoiding the interior preservative-laden shelves as best we can.  In the end, look at the CALORIES and look at the INGREDIENTS.  Carbs and fats can vary depending on whatever scary chemicals are being used to get those numbers where the manufacturer thinks the consumer wants it to be.  Seek out WHOLE ingredients, not chemical substitutes, and use www.caloriecount.com to look up how much fuel you're really putting into your tank.

B. Slipping


Jon and I had a fight last month over a carrot cake purchase at a Trader Joe's.   We've had our disputes over other desserts as well.  It's horrible that we both have a sweet tooth, but that's not uncommon.  Eating sweets is a pleasure and we attempt to treat is as a luxury, which is good, but we like our luxuries, don't we...  and frequently…
Trader Joe's mini-carrot cakes have 400 calories in just 5 ounces.  That means eating just 1/2 of one, which is 5 or 6 bites, is almost 1/2 a day of exercise and careful-eating progress down the drain.  Plus, it's cumulative.  Losing a day doesn't mean you can work twice as hard the next day to catch up, it means you’ve actually LOST that day.  The clock is set back one day, the goal is set back one day, the morale is set back, the future happiness is set back.  Ask anyone who’s ever died and they’ll tell you how important just one day can be. 

But we don’t just luxuriate with the obvious things, like cakes and sweets.
Eggplant is healthy, but it’s best as Eggplant Parmesian and that has 280-400 calories per serving.  Sure, chicken is good, but just the SKIN on a 1/2 chicken has 250 calories.
Every green olive has 20 calories, so adding just five little olives to a salad adds another 100 calories.  When you’re attempting to curtail the daily calories at 1800 you have to pick and choose very carefully

You will slip.  We all slip. The Law of Attraction attitude about slipping is to accept it and thank it for providing the necessary information so we can flip the stick and retune our thoughts towards our goal.  If you get angry about slipping you'll be focused on slipping and you'll slip again.  So just accept that you slipped and move on—quickly.   Take away the focus from the pleasure of that cookie ("dinner tonight will be a really delicious and healthy salad with skinless roasted chicken breast") and don't think about the guilt either ("well I ate a cookie so today is ruined anyway and I'm a loser so I may as well eat six more").  Learn from the consequences of slipping so the next time you slip you won't slip as much.  Or at all...

What can we do?  We try to be careful.  We generally eat salads and proteins for lunch and dinner, and maybe some healthy snacks during the day, and maybe we skip breakfast.  But that's not the best way to eat, is it?  Let's move on to Eating Tips.

A. Beverages


Some of the fuels you may use are polluted.  Did you know that refineries add chemicals to gas in the winter and it makes your mileage per gallon less efficient?  They also offer different types of gas, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, each with a different purity that has a clear effect on the miles-per-gallon.  Getting better mileage means the fuel that is being used is burning cleaner.   When the fuel burns cleaner, the engine is cleaner and the car is more efficient overall.  My car gets 45 miles to gallon when I use 93-grade gas.  It gets 36 when I use 87.  This is not a coincidence.  

Here are the two most important principles I can possibly relate to you:

1. THE ONLY BEVERAGE YOUR BODY EVER WANTS IS WATER.
2. YOUR MIND IS IN CHARGE OF YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR TONGUE.

Think of what you drink as gas.  Is it 87, 89 or 93?  Water is actually 100.  With lots of water your body is zippy and fantastic.  Tea is a 93 beverage.  Tea can be important as it may provide specific nutrients that can aid in speeding the metabolism (for a short while) or theoretically cleansing specific internal organs.  Sometimes we'll put in a fuel additive to give the car that extra little oomph and clean out some gunk.  That’s a good thing to do now and then.  But tea with a sweetener (any sweetener) and milk or cream brings the 93 down to an 89, or even an 87.  It is counterproductive to drink tea with additives that can gum up the works.  A little of this and little of that never hurt anybody, true.  One footprint in the sand won't affect the beach, but a million will alter its shape forever.  The silver door in Mecca that every pilgrim touches used to be 14' thick and now it's 6'.  Every finger takes a molecule.  The same thing happens with the additives in the tea.  Every molecule that isn't H or O goes somewhere in your body, sometimes to do good things, but sometimes not-so-much.  We can't survive on water alone, we do need other materials, but those will come through our food and the WATER will wash away the impurities the body finds in those foods.  Adding impurities to your water is counter-productive.

Diet Sodas, on the fuel-meter, are worse than an 85, the lowest grade gas you can get.  If water is 100, they are a big loser zero.  Calories, Fat, Sodium, Carb, Sugar and Protein are all zero which makes them very attractive.  And they taste good, right? (sort of?).  But here's the skinny on skinny sodas: 

Carbonated water means your adding C to your H and your O.  What does your body want with more Carbon?  It’s got enough already.  In fact, your body gets rid of carbon with every breath.  
Natural Flavors are produced in labs and manufactured using replicated elements found in nature.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking Ginger Ale has real ginger which is beneficial to your digestion—it has a molecular copy of the essence of ginger and your body knows it’s not the same thing.  
Citric Acid: anything that says Acid will make your tongue say yummy! But your heart, stomach and other tissues will scream What’dja Do That For?  
Potassium Citrate is a salty acid that people take to get rid of kidney stones.  But what does it get rid of if you don't have kidney stones?  Adding salt to water is, again, counterproductive, dehydrating, and only benefits the tongue.   
Potassium Benzoate is another salty acid that they put in there to make sure your beverage doesn't grow yeast or mold.  Pure water never grows yeast or mold so it doesn't require it.  Anything that needs an additive to prevent yeast or mold from growing means the manufacturer knows it might sit on a shelf for a long, long time (or at least long enough to grow yeast and mold).  This preservative also eliminates many types of bacteria.  Our bodies harbor millions of beneficial bacteria, especially in the digestive tract.  What does killing our healthy bacteria do?  How will we process our nutrition without our microbial friends?  
Sucralose is non-caloric because the body cannot break it down. At its root, Sucralose IS table sugar, but it undergoes an intensive process of chlorination and acetylation that alter the molecular structure, then they use phosphorus oxychloride to remove the acetyl groups they imposed on the sugar. In the end the table sugar becomes sucralose, 600 times sweeter than the original sugar and now, tada!, indigestible—except not entirely.  11-27% doesn't actually get absorbed in the GI tract.  And of that remaining 11-27% that floats around your body, only 90% gets cleaned from the blood by the kidneys and expelled in your urine.  The remaining molecules stay in the body, and are stored in.... you got it... the fuel reserves, nestled sweetly in the fatty tissues.  This potentially happens even if you’re not overweight.  Incidentally, Sucralose is termed an organochloride that is immune to the effects of wastewater treatments, meaning it doesn't dissolve until it hits actual nature where it degrades slowly—possibly at the rate of some styrofoams.  This is probably not something you want residing in your fatty tissue as it could stay in there for the rest of your life.  Oh, hey, we're not done yet.   
Acesulfame Potassium is added to diet sodas too because it masks the aftertaste of the Sucralose.  Acesulfame Potassium has it's own aftertaste, however, which is counter-masked by the Sucralose in a crazy symbiotic aftertaste-masking relationship.  Lord knows we wouldn’t want to taste either of their crazy concoctions, right?  Acesulfame Potassium also stimulates insulin secretion and could be a possible carcinogen, although the jury is out (note that when the jury is out I tend to believe someone is paying the jury for their vacation, through marketing or new studies or whatever else manufacturers can use to delay the truth).   
And finally, Caramel Color which is made by taking sugar (glucose or fructose) and heating it with acids, alkalis or salts using antifoaming agents along the way until it is fully oxidized and becomes water-soluble.  In addition to adding color, it's also an emulsifier that prevents flocculation, meaning the other chemicals in the soda stick together properly and we don't see any caking of any of the elements on the sides of our plastic bottles.  Caramel Color can also be derived from corn, wheat, barley or milk and there's enough of it in the soda, even though it's the tiniest last ingredient, that people with allergies are warned against consumption.  Also, note that if Caramel Color is ensuring everything is bonded together then when the residue of your drink ultimately reaches your fatty tissues it could possibly remain tied together at a molecular level. 

Why are you drinking diet soda?  Because you’ve trained yourself into thinking that water is boring, somehow.  The fact that water doesn't have a taste is what makes it so purely delicious, in my mind.  Pure, Fresh, Clean, Delicious.  And it doesn’t require an ad campaign to get you to consume it.

Friday, April 1, 2011

The Food Lesson

I walked through the grocery store and saw an overweight woman looking at a box of cookies.  She studied the label and then put it in her basket.  I picked up a box and asked her if they were any good. She replied, “They’re okay.  They have organic sugar instead of corn syrup, so they’re healthy.”

Telling yourself you are eating right doesn't mean you are eating right.  Just looking at labels isn't the same as understanding what they mean in conjunction with everything you eat. 

Atkins, South-Beach, Low-Carb, Low-Fat, Blood Type, The Zone, Fit-For-Life...
We've been through them all and they all work—and then they fail us.
They have compelling and logical theories, but they also have caveats that make them difficult or impossible to maintain as a constant lifestyle.  In the end we all become diet-dilettantes and ultimately revert to what we like to eat—typically because we miss “our foods” so much.  So what can we do?

First, let’s go back and remember that food is fuel.  Cars and airplanes and other mechanized vehicles can't burn more fuel than they have in their tanks or they’ll stop. We are better than that… we CAN burn more fuel than we put into the tank every day.  The difference?  Motorized vehicles don’t change their sizes, but organic vehicles, like our bodies, DO change size.  It’s really magical!  We can burn more fuel than we put into our tanks and we can put more into our tanks than our bodies should hold because we have the capability to expand and contract based on our reserves.  So the goal is to figure out how to tap into those reserves and start using them in conjunction with what we put in the tank.  We want to fill the tank less and borrow from our reserves more until our size becomes tolerable and healthy.  We add weight when we put in more fuel than we use.  We become overweight when instead of going into our reserves, we overstock them.  If we were like cars and extra calories (fuel) backwashed out of our bodies from our mouths when we overfilled ourselves we’d probably never overeat.  In fact, we do have natural triggers that do tell us when we should stop fueiling—but we’ve learned to fool them and trick them into letting us do what we want.  It’s time to stop playing the games.  We feel like since we can’t see the extra calories that we’re storing they are easy to ignore… until they’re obviously not…

Sometimes the intake and output of fuel seems simply unbeatable and requires a more drastic approach then changing the calorie input/burn equation.  We now have medical techniques for cutting off the extra reserves, sucking out the reserves, or banding or stapling the fuel intakes so we can’t over-fuel.  I don’t advocate this per se, but I do understand the psychology.  Sometimes people need a fresh start.  Like warfare, sometimes you have to pull out the big guns to win the battle, or at least to gain ground.  And this is a war…

However, in this blog I’m going to focus on what can be done without cutting.  Remember that the Law of Thermodynamics states that the reserves WILL become the fuel source when the primary fuel is depleted.  Again, we’re not like cars.  Our machines, our bodies, won’t simply turn off on the highway when the fuel runs out.  The body wants to keep going for the rest of the day and it will find the fuel it needs—you’ve stored plenty over time.  We have to learn to control our fuel intake.  We'll learn to give ourselves slightly less than we need to run so our reserves get tapped.  We will never put in more than we need because our reserves are already far too full—in fact, the reserves are overflowing past our belts. 

The next few posts will go into detail about some of our fuels.