America's Holiday Hell

  America obsesses about holidays and, more importantly, sugar. A never-ending cycle of holidays and celebrations derails the best efforts at a healthy lifestyle. Why do we have so many celebrations? I am not sure about that; however, let me explain exactly how ridiculous the situation is.

Here is the annual drill:

  
  January starts off each calendar year with a bang and an obnoxious volume of consumed alcohol. Click here to view an article about SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and its relationship to alcohol abuse on New Years Day.

  
  February gets the sugar flowing with Valentine's Day. Giving extra chocolates and candies can keep your loved ones nice and plump. Right out of the gate we overload on sugar and over-eat just for good measure. Valentine's Day also sets the overall tone of the holidays by setting the "candy standard". The "candy standard" is the unspoken rule that, whenever possible, every holiday must provide a memorable candy to be consumed.

  
  March offers another holiday for over-drinking. This holiday reduces the pain and suffering of Valentine's Day. Even though it may not be in the budget, drinking green beer cleanses the soul and reminds us that somehow we are Irish. Note that every other month provides a drinking repose from candy consumption.

  April offers chocolate, sugar, and diverse poisons like Peeps, and Cadbury Eggs which have a peculiar goo inside them (the second ingredient is HFCS) for a super-sugared Easter festival. Ham seems to be the preferred meat for the sit down dinner in The Deep South, but more about that later. Bunnies and eggs symbolize reproduction and rebirth. Click here to learn about egg-rolling and half a dozen other egg related traditions.

  
  May is a triple-treat month with Cinco de Mayo (booze), Mother's Day (overeating), and Memorial Day (hot dogs, and beer). This is the month when all diets, living-well goals, and associated data vanish from memory.

  June is my personal favorite because of Father's Day. Grilled steaks and beer make it a savory-celebratory month. Technically, if the only foods consumed are steaks and lo-carb beer, this month is salvageable.

  July offers more crap to eat like hot dogs (the red-nasty-processed type) and hamburgers (preferably frozen, high-fat, low-meat, high-preservative type) with all of the trimmings. The luckier diners are feasting on BBQ ribs, Cole Slaw, and baked beans while celebrating independence from England. A personal favorite is red/white/and blue cake made with fresh Strawberries and Blueberries.

  
  August is the sacred month without drink or candy. This will be a short-lived victory as will soon be seen.

  September offers the same holiday swill for Labor Day as July offers for Independence Day. Hot dogs, beer, and general sloth are the marching orders for Labor Day.

  October thirty-first is allegedly the Devil's Day. Candy falls from the sky into the bags of unsuspecting youngsters. Let them eat! After all, the children look so gaunt these days.

  November is an over-eaters paradise. The amount of gluttonous celebrating on Thanksgiving Day is alarming.

  In December most have given up on any diet plans. "I will wait until after the holidays." is the American weight losers mantra. By the way, Ham is on the menu again on Christmas Day. I will now digress about ham. Americans eating ham as an Easter dinner does not make sense. After all, Jesus was a Jew. Eighty-Six any further eating of ham on Easter and Christmas. Speaking of hams, check this out:

That is Famous Fat Dave...
  Lamb may be a more appropriate Easter and Christmas holiday dish than ham.

 Thank goodness for August for being the holiday-free month! Wait, I forgot to mention birthdays. The American household had 2.6 members in 2009. Round that up to 3.  That is three birthdays plus three more for cousins, aunts, uncles, and such, equaling six more personal "holidays". Do not forget to remember "bank holidays" (Federal Holidays)! Add MLK Jr.Day, Washington's birthday, Columbus Day, and Veteran's Day to the list. Then of course one must observe any state holidays. The great state of Georgia contributes to the ever expanding list by giving us Robert E. Lee's birthday, and Confederate Memorial Day. Totaling them up there is a total of twenty five holidays each year. That is 2.1 holidays per month. Wait, add in personal vacations!

  Just call it 2.5 holidays per month, or 30 holidays per year. That pretty much makes up for August not having any holidays.

  America is in Holiday Hell. We need a holiday from holidays.

Thanks for reading,

gf

DiChicko's Peri-Peri Cafe ~ Augusta, Georgia

  Jill, Alex, Katelyn, and I arrived at DiChickO's Peri-Peri Cafe with cautious anticipation, having never dined there before. Upon entering, we found ourselves in a health store stocked with every conceivable health pill and potion known to man. As we made our way through the small jungle of plants and herbs that were for sale in the entry way, I secretly picked out a Rosemary sprig that I intended to bring home.  To the left there were three rows of grocery items. Items such as  whole-grain breads, nuts, flax, and crazy uber-healthy-looking seed and herbs (that look like marijuana and such), packed into nifty plastic boxes with clicky-click lids. You know the type lids I speak of, so do not mouth "clicky-click" silently.

  We meandered to the back of the store and stood by the "CLOSED" sign and read the store hours with our heads slightly cocked to the left. The sign said: "Saturday 11:00-3:00". We looked at our watches. (Actually, we looked at cell phones.) Then we looked at each other, cocked our heads, and blinked several times, the way George Bush Jr. used to do at press conferences. We finally stepped up to the young lady at the register and asked if they were still serving lunch. She graciously apologized for the sign faux pas and gave us a menu to explore.

   DiChickO's has an easy to read menu with sandwiches, soups, salads, "flaps", quesadillas, and smoothies. On the back side of the menu, there is a chart that has nutritional information. This nutritional page was the first gold star that I awarded DiChicO's. I am not "in the know" of this cafe's affairs, but after speaking to some regular patrons, I found out that they are in the process of moving the kitchen (most likely due to Master's week ending). This may explain the overall clumsiness of the cafe's appearance and execution of order taking.
We found a comfortable table with slightly wiggly chairs after placing our orders and gathering our drinks.

  Settling down, we chatted about DiChickO's signature Peri-Peri sauces which were prominently on display. The Extra Hot is premier. This is a terrific sauce. It has heat with tons of flavor. If you go to DiChickO's and do not see anything on the menu that you might like, just buy the sauce and leave. I ended up slathering it all over the Mahi Mahi Panini sandwich that I ordered. It made this epic sandwich "Peri-Peri-epic" (golf applause). The flavors offered are Garlic, Lemon Pepper, Mild, Medium, Hot, and Extra Hot. Just get the Extra Hot and be done with it. You can order these sauces on line by going to www.dichickos.com.

  The food delivery was quick enough, although we were distracted by the tea remaking process. Hold times on sweetened tea should be a discussion at the next manager's meeting. "We made it fresh this morning" was a team member's try at an apology. That let me know that The Boy had swallowed four-and-a-half-hour-old-room-temperature sweet tea (give or take thirty minutes). Yuck-O. The guacamole dip served with blue corn chips also helped us through the tea dilemma. Freshly made with avocados, diced tomatoes, and red onions, it was a rock star appetizer. The new batch of tea delivered with our lunch made everything right as rain. The Mahi-Mahi Melt was spectacular. It is marked on the menu (with an umbrella tag) as having fewer than 400 calories. I figure that I lowered that to 300 calories by dipping it in the Extra Hot Peri-Peri sauce as aforementioned.

  We thoroughly enjoyed our lunches while we chatted about the uniqueness of the cafe. This is a fairly random dining environment. The cafe is squashed into the back of New Life Natural Foods. Cushy couches are strategically placed in the cafe for reading books and enjoying beverages the way that the cast of "Friends" used to do. There where books labeled "Not for sale, but you may read them" on specially marked bookshelves. The right of the market is a bookstore nook which also sported its own cushy couch. The left of the market was organic produce, breads, and the "clicky click" boxes. This is where Alex spotted "Bible Bread". I am not real sure about this bread yet. I will have to investigate and report the findings. Overall, DiChickO's is a perfect spot to pick up a healthy lunch. Go to www.newlifeaugusta.com to check out the market's information.

On a scale of one to five hot sauce flavors, DiChickO's Peri-Peri Cafe, I give thee four hot sauce flavors!

Thanks for reading,

gf

Lifestyle Change 86 Poison ~ Year One

  Have you ever wondered how to un-fat yourself? The scientists at According to gf have been busy working on the system for your healthy future.

  "Fit at fifty" was a common dream of mine; therefore, in earnest I started to investigate how to accomplish that goal. I tried counting calories for the previous two years, and the result was a total loss of ten pounds and hunger for two years. However, I did learn several things during those years. First of all, when I ate more fiber I was less hungry. Secondly, the more sugar I ate, the less I could actually eat on my allotted one thousand calorie a day goal. High fiber, low sugar was the ticket. This translated into high vegetable, low processed foods and breads. However, this type of "diet" was unsustainable. As soon as the counting stopped, weight came back. One thousand calories a day for my 6 '2" 275+ pound frame was not an easy task. I needed fuel to function. I needed a sustainable long-term lifestyle change, not just a diet.

  A visit with the family resulted in a discussion about how to combat and/or control diabetes. Juvenile diabetes is debilitating and life changing. Researching lead to the conclusion that carbohydrate control was the key to success. The carbohydrate management research lead to the Atkins Diet. The Atkins diet that I had known seemed to have changed since I had last heard of it. I was not overly excited about the plan, as I had heard that the founder dropped dead of a heart attack. Upon further investigation, I discovered that he actually died of a severe head trauma after slipping on some ice. Click here to read a USA Today article written by his widow.

  The information that my wife and I found in the program lead to our researching glucose or sugar control. This is right up the alley where we needed to go to find out about controlling diabetes.

 " Eating the right foods can improve your body’s metabolism, particularly how it handles fat. When you eat fewer carb foods—relying mostly on vegetables rich in fiber—your body switches to burning fat (including your own body fat) instead of carbs as its primary fuel source."

  This is the golden information. Sugar is the poison. Food high in carbohydrates (which are converted easily to glucose in your body) is the enemy. Upon researching sugar, several other enemies of the body came to light. The next evil poison to come to light from this research was High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). Inexpensive, and two to three times more sweet than sugar, this poison is in everything processed these days. Cheap non-food is what I call it. It is processed in your body similarly to alcohol and or other poisons. It robs your body of the ability to feel satisfied from eating. Listen to this video to hear more about HFCS. While researching HFCS and the body's trouble processing/digesting that substance, another poison reared its ugly head. Hydrogenated oil is the reason that more than half of America has a fat belly. It is processed oil that was designed not to separate, and to be "shelf stable". It is "shelf stable" in our bodies as well!

  Having armed myself with this information, I set some new lifestyle change goals. Having my lovely wife jump right in and research, cook, and read a thousand labels and articles helped us get healthy this past year. "Net Carbs" is a catch phrase used by Atkins that started to make more sense as we moved down this path. Not digesting poison in any form is our lifestyle change. In our "eat-on-the-run" society, this can be a challenge.

  From the 275 pounds that I weighed last year, I have lost close to fifty pounds in one year. I am not ever allowed to speak of my wife's weight, but she has had to change her entire wardrobe. Not bad for a lifestyle change. We just changed the way we ate with out trying exceptionally hard at all. We have done so without any pills, gadgets, or anything sold on the TV. We did not purchase an expensive gym membership or even workout very much, other than walking on occasion.

Preparing your mind is a vital part of a lifestyle change. If you do not diligently prepare your mind for success in this endeavor, you will most likely fail. A lifestyle change is needed. The loss of weight and a slimmer, more toned body are the mere results of the changes that you make in your everyday routine. I think that people focus too much on the results and not enough on the lifestyle change. This issue causes a short-sighted focus on the lifestyle change. Dieters get discouraged because they do not see immediate and fantastic results. Then they quit trying. Focus on a life style change, and there should be no disappointment. Set goals for yourself. A goal for me was not to eat sugar for a day, then a week, and then a month. Another was not to purchase or eat anything made with hydrogenated oil. Once I did those, I moved to High Fructose Corn Syrup elimination from my diet. A goal of walking two to three times a week was reasonable. Be realistic. Losing the weight slowly and the right way will be the result of a lifestyle change and not a quickie diet. If you were to lose two pounds a month, that would be twenty four pounds a year. I think three to four pounds a month would be a fantastic result. That is thirty six to forty eight pounds in a year. A better goal may be to follow this BMI chart provided by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

Make a plan for success. Our plan is simple:

• Stop eating poison (hydrogenated oils, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and sugar/high carb low fiber food). I simply started off with not eating sugar. I copied my son's girlfriend Katelyn's idea of not eating sugar for a week. I did not realize how challenging that was going to be, or how much it would change my life. Poisons also include diet soda and fruit juice. Yes, fruit juice.
• Always eat breakfast (I also eliminated milk from my diet as it hurts my stomach. I believe I am lactose intolerant). Dairy is not your friend. By the way, 99.4% of all "breakfast food" is poison. Please be careful. I recommend two eggs.
• Eat until full. Eat often. Prepare healthy snacks (apple, veggies) for when you get hungry between meals. Full equals fiber. Fiber is the antidote for sugar in the body. 
• Treat yourself. Drink a glass of wine on occasion (Jesus made wine, it's OK.). Drink a beer on occasion, as long as it is a light beer like Michelob Ultra. Eat a treat on occasion. When I first started eliminating sugar from my diet, the treat eating was particularly important. Make sure that you have plenty of Atkins Bars or similar health bars on hand when you have a treat attack. Make sure that they are low in Net Carbs. I don't need those treat bars anymore, since I have beaten my sugar addiction. 
• Eat organic as often as possible. Another reason that we steered away from the Atkins bars for treats was their long ingredient list. That teamed up with long words on an ingredient list is not a good thing. An ingredient list for an apple bar should read apples, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, organic flax seed. 
• Purchase the tools. Tools for losing weight? I am not talking about some junk you buy on that info channel on TV. The tools of losing weight are: 
• A scale that you will put your chunky butt on every day when you wake up. 
• Food. Real food. No processed food. Food that is God-made, not man-made. Food free of hydrogenated oil, High Fructose Corn Syrup, and sugar. Yes, 86 sugar. Purchase food with fiber; white flour is junk.
• Shoes. Walking shoes and appropriate work out wear. Don't go crazy on this one. You are not on TV.
• Get a Posse. Help and encouragement are essential when making a lifestyle change. If you have a partner eating the same way that you do, it makes life easier. You will have less desire to eat junk if there is none of that junk to eat. Shopping with your partner and making wise purchases will keep you from "slipping". Talking about how you ate during the day will help you through the ups and downs.

Year one, check.

gf

Are You an American Muggle?

 Everyone wants to be special, different, unique, and/or have super-fantastic powers like a comic book hero or Harry Potter. However, I am here to set things straight once again. You most likely are a Muggle; and you have Muggle blood running though your veins. Click here to see the American Red Cross web site on blood types:  The diagram is really cool, and it is interactive, so seriously, click the link already. Type O blood donors are NOT Muggle Blood. More Hispanics are O than any other race according to the American Red Cross. So straight away they are not Muggles.

  We Americans want to be special in a bad way. We do not want to be Muggles because we want to believe that we are important...somehow. So, we try to be special. We put spinner rims on our cars so that we can appear to be special.

And though it does make us special, it makes us special in the wrong kind of way.  We get the newest gadgets and phones as soon as we can. Our family recently got a new gadget to play games. But playing an old game on a new system? That is special.  When people go out to eat they have found a very clever way to make themselves special. The modification of food orders:
    "Yes, I would like the Santa Fe Tilapia with all the toppings on the side please." Special.
    "I want the fried chicken tenders grilled please." Special.
    "I would like the wings no sauce, no season, and with ranch instead of buffalo sauce." Special.
I will defend this type of behavior quickly, because I practice it often. Not to be special, but rather not wanting to die from poison. Muggles eat poison. Click here to read about poison:
Nevertheless, modifying food orders makes us feel special.

  Muggles do not really care what they shove in their mouths, for the most part. They have no palate. Any fast food is the most delicious thing that they have ever experienced. Grease is the saffron in their life. They muddle about not caring what is going into their bodies. Most everyone who eats McDonald's is a Muggle. It has been this way for many years. The clever and all powerful Great Wizards of the North wielded their collective powers, and made cheap and addictive foods for the Muggle born. With skilled alchemy they took corn and made it into an elixir that would control many generations. They called their new element HFCS. Be careful, or you too could be controlled by their wizardry. Click here to read about High Fructose Corn Syrup:

  That is enough about poison and chemicals for the moment. I think we should all focus on what really makes us feel special as individuals. With Valentine's Day approaching those who are single may be feeling fairly un-special. Having a partner in your life helps the situation, for the most part. Your partner's encouragement and love usually helps in the "feel special" department. If you are in a relationship that is more like a train derailment, or are not in a relationship, you are going to have to look inward for that encouragement. I propose that you make a list of ten things that make you feel special and less like a Muggle. I will give you my ten to start the ball rolling.
1. I have good hair. (My hair dresser says so, and she is a professional.)
2. I like my wittiness.
3. I am quite handy, and I can fix things, or break them so that I have to buy new things.
4. I can almost play a banjo. (Almost... for 30 years.)
5. I enjoy being taller than most people.
6. I am glad to be wearing the same size pants as I did when I was in High School.
7. I am a proud father. All my children are geniuses.
8. I am an excellent gardener until something does not grow.
9. Tanning is no problem, as I have good tan genes.
10. I speed read almost everything.
OK, now it is your turn. Seriously, you should give this a go. Write them as a comment on this blog for the world to celebrate them with you.

blogamole.tr3s.com

  Valentine's Day is a day that we celebrate so we will feel special. Personally, I do not think that we should wait for one specific day to let others know how we feel about them. Go ahead and tell them today. It will not kill you. It is a fun day; I do get that. However, I always have to work on this day. That forces me to give that chocolate covered attention to my wife on another day. I am OK with that. It actually takes the pressure off of me on Valentine's Day. You could knock out Valentine's Day on Super Bowl Sunday. I think that we have too many holidays as it is.

  When you do purchase your Valentine a card and a box of chocolates please read the label. Do not feed your sweetheart corn poison from the Great Wizards of the North. However, that would be an excellent way to poison them if love is not in the air.

Thanks for reading,
gf

Big City Bread Cafe, Athens GA

  I got on the road about 6:30 to make the breakfast date with my daughter Ashley at 9:00 sharp. She was not pleased about the early start, but rising early is good for her I think. I plodded though the Atlanta traffic driving west on I-20 into the brake lit early dawn. It actually was a pleasant drive with very few issues. To those not from Atlanta that last sentence is a rarity. I turned left at Conyers and passed about twenty country stores, some offering "homemade biscuits", and soon passed through Monroe, and then onto Hwy 78, and then Atlanta Hwy.

   My heater, which was recently fixed by the experts at Firestone, was not working at maximum efficiency; this will require taking it back to have them fix it again. New should work better than that. This coolness would linger with me though out most of the day unfortunately. Finding a warm place to hang out was an issue all morning. The Big City Bread Cafe was not our first choice for dining as Weaver D's Delicious Fine Foods Automatic For The People was unfortunately closed. Yeah, I don't know what the hell is up with that name either, but we will just have to find out that information later. My feet were now at the lowest temperature all morning; I needed coffee ASAP.

  Ashley had an excellent Plan B. I was amazed that a Plan B could be as good as a Plan A, but euphoria soon dimmed as her lack of specific directions about the locations of these restaurants enveloped the breakfast event. Thank goodness for Google Latitude. Love you Ashley, mean it. She redeemed herself from Plan A by directing me (generally) to the Big City Bread Cafe. Parking was almost an issue but we squeezed in behind another SUV, and I pretended not to see the faded stripped lines that seemed to call out "No Parking Here". That was going to be my defense for a obvious parking violation, and I was going to stick with it.

  This was an odd red bricked square building with multiple doors and a cool ramp thing toward the back of the building. I felt as though there were secret doors leading into a mysterious inner realm of food production. When we were leaving, a nice smiling lady disappeared into one of these doors that was covered with hand cut out arrows, that was draped with burlap, and looked real artsy. She smiled at us with a "I know something you don't know" smile as she scuttled into the back of the building. We walked onto the patio that had Rosemary bushes surrounding odd birch looking trees that had Christmas lights on them. Nice patio furniture was placed throughout the patio. As we passed by yet another door which had "use other door" sign on it we saw the chalk boards.

  Chalk boards are an important sign of goodness. I think that if there are chalk boards being used in a restaurant or cafe everything is right as rain. I really did not read the chalk board, but that is besides the point. Chalk boards mean fresh food, usually. Sometimes it means food that is about to go out of date, but it mostly means that whoever is in charge is involved with the food and menu on a daily basis. It also means that someone is really good at writing on a chalk board, which is an art.

We entered, and I smelled the coffee. I was instantly happier. Somewhat distracted by the blue and white Christmas tree ornaments hanging from the ceiling, I smiled as I looked over this cafe. This was not somewhere where I had been before, and it did not remind me of anywhere I had been before. What a great feeling of originality, well, more or less. There was a red espresso machine which was nice as I don't really think I have seen such a bright red espresso machine before. The young lady that was running the counter was not annoyed by my overall annoying personality. She was very nice answering and smiling to all my questions. There was a helper running food who reminded me of a kind elf. Not the Santa type but rather the Lord of the Rings type. She was also smiling and obviously enjoying her job.

Being located in Athens GA there were the poster things posted everywhere under the counter. This is a standard operating procedure here. If you eat in Athens or in any college town and to not see these poster things, leave immediately. We were greeted by two nasty calorie filled display cases. I was going into a sugar high already. Cakes, cookies, and chocolate covered mice, and coconut polar bear cup cakes. We grabbed up a menu and started looking for breakfast. We both ordered french toast which was going to be allegedly dredged in a batter and grilled. Then we went about drooling over the goodies in the display cases. I bought a mouse and took him to our table which was marked with a tall skinny chrome marker with a number 7 attached to the top.

We settled into a booth and started enjoying our hot beverages. I glanced at the thermostat; it was set at a disappointing 65 degrees. Still trying to get warm I sipped my coffee and took great pleasure in the black painted heat and air ducts (not so much heat, mostly air), and the black burlap squares dotting the ceiling to reduce the noise echo in this old building. Simple light fixtures and simple tables made this dining room actually pleasurable. I ate my mouse.

Soon our breakfast arrived delivered by the Elvin Princess. We were both shocked at the French Toast as it did not seem as dredged as the description. I was pleased that it looked so simple. It came with two ounces of Maple syrup which was portioned out into a souffle cup. Decorated with one lone strawberry this was a perfect breakfast. The bread was cut on a long bias, and stacked on top of each other, with a slight dusting of powdered sugar. Not too sweet, not over sugared. That in and of it self was amazing to me. There are a lot  places that muck up French Toast. These folks have it figured out. Even though it was a bit pricey ($7), I did not care one iota.

Well, I was nosy and snapped a few pictures of my neighbors breakfast when it was delivered. They were quite pleased that I took a picture of their eggs and biscuits. It looked delicious as well. I did think about asking for a bite, but I restrained myself. On the way out I had to purchase another mouse, a mini cheese cake, and a coconut Polar Bear for my wife. The mouse was the best.






You should check out this place when in Athens.  gf

Poison the Sequel

This is a good video on Poison. If you have a minute or sixty, sit back and listen to Mr. Professor man talk about what the heck is wrong with America and how we eat.

What we have here is a classic conspiracy by the leadership of our nation. This makes the Watergate and Monica Lewinsky scandals look like a joke.

Sit back and enjoy the ride. Let me know what you think.

gf

Bacon or Sausage?

I have been reevaluating what I eat of late, and questions like "Bacon or Sausage?" randomly pop into my head. Inspired by a favorite youngster; I decided to follow her into the land of eating no sugar. This decision of course had to include three other substances. High fructose corn syrup, chemical sweeteners, and hydrogenated oils were part of the purge as well; because, as I had studied briefly, they were all poison.

These decisions made changes to my diet that I did not clearly envision at the time of the decision making. Sugar in America is king. I did not realize that everything had sugar in it. Bread was out of the question; doughnuts were a memory; cake was a bad dream. Then I continued with the label reading and found that, in America, if sugar is not in food it has been replaced with high fructose corn syrup. Most likely, if it is processed food, and it has neither sugar nor high fructose corn syrup in it, it has other nasty chemicals and hydrogenated oils.

This food enlightenment was actually easy to execute. I could eat meat and vegetables mainly. Fruit is good, but one must be careful. Not eating the average American bowel clogging foods, and eating too much fruit, will send you into a state of "over fruiting", which requires more time than necessarily desired on the pot. Initially the craving for bread and sweets was easily deterred through eating fat. Bacon and butter were my friends. I know that this sounds bad, but I figured that they were not on my poison list. Pork and fats are on another list. I realize they are not foods that should stay in my diet but I used them to curb my sugar/sweet dependence.

It has been over four weeks of no poison eating. I took a survey from employees, who all have an opinion, about eating pork (and usually everything else). Somehow, the conversation morphed into carbohydrates instead of pig consumption. Once I got past the whole "Carb" deal we were able to get some good feedback. Here is the unofficial accordingtogf survey.

1. Pigs do not sweat. That is why they are salty and taste so good.
   
2. Bacon is empty food, it is just fat.
   
3. Sausage usually had sugars added to it.
   
4. The Old Testament in the Bible forbade the eating of pork.
   
5. Pigs are dirty and eat anything.
   
6. Pork raises blood pressure etc and is bad for the heart.
   
7. Every Doctor recommends that you stop eating pork if you have health issues.
   

I figure seven is enough. It is also a good Biblical number.

Eating like this is fairly boring. I have decided that it is neither bacon nor sausage moving forward. Red meat is next on the chopping block, but I am not sure if one can live on fish and chicken alone. Broccoli has been the annoying choice of vegetable too many times. What is the obsession with broccoli? It must be cheap to grow; we Americans like to eat cheap food and food that is void of nutrition. I often walk through the grocery store and look into a shopper's basket; then I compare the basket to the shopper's shape. Here is a quick accordingtogf breakdown:

1. 80% Coke products, chips, and processed boxed foods 18% Processed Meat 2% Dairy = Morbidly Obese
   
2. 50% Coke products, chips, and processes boxed foods 25% Processed Meat 23% Chicken/Meat 2%Dairy =Obese
   
3. 40% Coke products, chips, and processes boxed foods 25% Processed Meat 23% Chicken/Meat 2%Dairy 10%Vegatables =Overweight
   
4. 30% Coke products, chips, and processes boxed foods 25% Processed Meat 38% Chicken/Meat 2%Dairy 5%Vegatables= Husky
   
5. 10% Coke products, chips, and processes boxed foods 5% Processed Meat 35% Chicken/Meat 5%Dairy 45%Vegatables= Normal
   
6. 25% Chicken/Meat 5%Dairy 70%Vegatables= fit
   
7. 5% Chicken/Meat 1%Dairy 90%Vegatables 3%Bottled Water 1% Toilet Paper = Weird/Thin
   

Eliminating the junk we eat starts with the junk that we buy!

Eating in this day in age for the more or less wealthy has become an activity instead of a necessity. Back when we had hair on our palms, we ate out of necessity. There was no luxury eating then, save when an elephant was snared. Even then, we could not keep that red meat too long before it rotted, or some Saber Tooth Tiger took it from us. Red meat was definitely a luxury and a rare meal. Chickens we could probably catch and breed. I have discussed this with my wife, but I don't think the neighbors would like chickens in the back yard. I am also unsure of my ability to raise chickens. There are many chicken questions that need to be answered before I attempt to be a chicken herder.

Fishing was the best option for dinner most likely. Being clever with a bow and arrow definitely helped in the dinner menu. Any berries, nuts, fruits found when scavenging about would have been eaten. Boxes of pre-made macaroni and cheese, and Lay's potato chips, however, were hard to come by. Eating has become an obsession for modern man. When the big asteroid hits, this will all change. I just hope we remember how to make beer and Bourbon. Bourbon has no Carbohydrates fyi.

I am going to continue not eating poison, and now I will not eat pork (so much). I have lost one belt loop and seventeen pounds in about a month. I have been exercising fairly regular except for this morning, as I decided to finish this blog. I feel fine and I do not crave sugar or bread anymore. I ate a strawberry yesterday and almost got a sugar high. I suppose I will update this story occasionally, but I do not think that the accordingtogf board of directors would approve of turning this into a weight loss blog.

gf