Let's Babble Our Way to Post #4,000,000 And Win Prizes Too!

[Anne]

Good morning everyone! 

I think this thread will be spilling over the "Post #500" point today! Well done! That's halfway through to the first prize point! Keep on babbling!

 

[ginny]

@Ginny, have you tried looking into the diabetic diet? My mom went on that for awhile after having what (she realized after many years) Lipitor-induced pre-diabetes. I couldn't believe how much food (a lot!) that diet has you eating!

I need to go on a diet. Someday. Had too much going on in my life lately and have been all about the comfort food. And not quite ready to give that up just yet.

While mom was still alive, I had lost 22 pounds over several months time (and at risk of TMI, I'm 10 years from my last period) on the paleo diet and my fasting sugar was fine.  Usually it's about 75, this time it was 101 which is borderline.  I know why it was elevated because I've been letting my sugar addiction run amok.  I've been using grief and depression as my excuse (which is a pretty good excuse really) and gained all that weight back, but it's time to switch gears.  Believe me, I understand about the need for comfort food.  I too had not been ready to give it up, but the sugar is interfering with my sleep at night and I feel miserable.  Some comfort that is!

So the paleo diet and the diabetic diet have similarities.  Although I think the ADA recommends low fat.  Been there, done that already.  Low fat makes me miserable on a diet, always hungry.  On paleo I was literally NEVER hungry, in fact I went from 3 to 2 meals a day because I didn't need a 3rd meal.  I eliminated lunch because to me lunch meant sandwich.  Wheat tears up my stomach.  

I also can't do too low carb because I have hypothyroidism.  I take T4.  Carbs, and ultimately insulin, are needed to convert T4 to the bioavailable form of T3.  I found this out when I tried Atkins many years ago.  On the 2nd day I literally could not get up off the sofa! 

 

[artiemom]

When I think of Paleo, I think of food that are not refined, as in when men were cavemen!!!  

Is the Paleo diet hard to follow? I think it is all grains, veggies, who fruits..

I quickly looked at it; although that was briefly and a while ago. I feel it is high fiber. While I need to have fiber, I cannot do too much of it or it will effect the other end of my digestion...I have a weird form of colitis. 

also TMI: hypothyroid, same blood glucose level as you...overweight. 

I have lost 8 lbs since I have been going to the gym, and trying to eat healthier. 

Now the Foods containing sugar are just too sweet for me.

 

[AbbysMom]

Actually I'm going specifically for low-carb.  My last blood work showed pre-diabetes!!    

That Martha Stewart recipe with almond butter sounds really interesting!!!  I think I'll give that one a try and sub honey for the sugar.  Thanks!  I never thought to look up Martha Stewart for gluten-free stuff.  

Here I am again with another rules reminder! No consecutive posts please.


You stay away for a day and the posts really add up on here. :nod:

 

[donutte]

While mom was still alive, I had lost 22 pounds over several months time (and at risk of TMI, I'm 10 years from my last period) on the paleo diet and my fasting sugar was fine.  Usually it's about 75, this time it was 101 which is borderline.  I know why it was elevated because I've been letting my sugar addiction run amok.  I've been using grief and depression as my excuse (which is a pretty good excuse really) and gained all that weight back, but it's time to switch gears.  Believe me, I understand about the need for comfort food.  I too had not been ready to give it up, but the sugar is interfering with my sleep at night and I feel miserable.  Some comfort that is!

So the paleo diet and the diabetic diet have similarities.  Although I think the ADA recommends low fat.  Been there, done that already.  Low fat makes me miserable on a diet, always hungry.  On paleo I was literally NEVER hungry, in fact I went from 3 to 2 meals a day because I didn't need a 3rd meal.  I eliminated lunch because to me lunch meant sandwich.  Wheat tears up my stomach.  

I also can't do too low carb because I have hypothyroidism.  I take T4.  Carbs, and ultimately insulin, are needed to convert T4 to the bioavailable form of T3.  I found this out when I tried Atkins many years ago.  On the 2nd day I literally could not get up off the sofa! 

I don't think (at least going by what memory serves) that the diabetic diet was as low-carb as I would have thought originally. Puffed rice was on the menu for goodness sake! And mom ate quite a bit of that. Fruit too. My mom went by a sheet of paper her doctor had given her as to what she could eat, wish I could find it now. But yeah, it's nothing like Atkins.

 

[ginny]

 
Can you share the recipe?  The last time I tried to make bread with almond flour it was horrid.  The recipe called for too much water, as well as tapioca flour, which is high carb; I had to keep adding flour to it just to make dough, and despite proofing the yeast the whole thing fell flat.  It also tasted bad and had the wrong texture.

My problem with refrigerating bread is that moisture condenses in the plastic bag and the bread comes out wet.  Or else you wrap it in paper and it comes out dry.  Your mileage may vary.

Margret

I'm going to leave a few pieces in the fridge and freeze the rest.  It ain't perfect, but at least it won't spoil before I eat it all.  

Gluten-Free Bread

5 Cups almond flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

6 eggs

2 TB raw honey

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

Preheat the oven to 300.  Combine dry in one bowl, wet in another, mix well then combine all.  Mix thoroughly.  Put it in a greased loaf pan and bake 45 minutes.  

I didn't have enough almond flour to do the whole recipe, so I halfed it.  I also added 1/4 cup butter to the mixture.  It tastes good but I was disappointed with how rough the top looks.  Next time I will smooth it with more butter.  Hope you like it!

 

[jcat]

We had snow flurries again this morning! So much for May Day weather next Sunday.

Snow in April enclosure 1.jpg

• jcat
• Apr 28, 2016

That's a shot of the shelter's feral enclosure at 7:15 a.m.. The two cats are extremely shy ferals that usually don't venture near the building when they know somebody is there. We've got around 30 cats in there that are shy to varying degrees.

 

[NewYork1303]

 
Sometimes the two are so close as to be almost indistinguishable from each other. Case in point, the beginning of Anne McCaffery's Pern  series. (By which I mean the books that were published first, not the ones that come first chronologically, because she went back and wrote a series of prologue books that made it more Sci-Fi.) And the apocalypse can be fun to play with, fictionally speaking.

This is one of the main reasons you'll usually find a sci-fi/fantasy section in a book store. The definition of sci-fi has been softened to an extreme at this point. It is supposed to mean things that actually have science as part of them. So real fact is supposed to hold some basis in the genre. Of course, this is not true anymore since a lot of sci-fi has made up worlds and similar things making it actually closer to fantasy.

In this whole thing, I forgot to say what I write for a living. I write the sci fi and fantasy as side projects. I work at  a company writing content for websites and blogs for business blogs.

 

[ginny]

 
When I think of Paleo, I think of food that are not refined, as in when men were cavemen!!!  

Is the Paleo diet hard to follow? I think it is all grains, veggies, who fruits..

I quickly looked at it; although that was briefly and a while ago. I feel it is high fiber. While I need to have fiber, I cannot do too much of it or it will effect the other end of my digestion...I have a weird form of colitis. 

also TMI: hypothyroid, same blood glucose level as you...overweight. 

I have lost 8 lbs since I have been going to the gym, and trying to eat healthier. 

Now the Foods containing sugar are just too sweet for me.

You are right, it's referred to as the caveman diet. That's the very strict version of Paleo as per Loren Cordain.  It's way too strict for my taste.  No grain, no dairy, no sugar (not even honey!), no caffeine, no salt, no condiments of any kind.  Only 100% grass-fed meats and non-GMO/organic vegetables and high quality fats extra virgin fats.  I don't recall if any fruits are allowed either unless it's a very minimal amount of berries and ONLY in season, not frozen.  (Berries have the least sugar of all the fruits.) 

What I follow is a looser version called The Perfect Health Diet.  (Paul and Shou Ching Jaminet).  On this version, no milk allowed, but heavy cream and hard cheeses in small amounts are ok.  No grain allowed, except a little bit of white rice which they call a "safe grain" (no brown rice, believe it or not.)  No beans allowed.  No vegetable oils allowed. No peanuts allowed.  Sugar is allowed but only the non-refined raw honey and raw maple syrup or rice syrup.  Absolutely no white sugar!  I'll send you a link.  Click on "the diet" and scroll down to the apple, which is basically their version of the food pyramid.  These are not dumb people.  They both have PhD's in science.  He is a physicist (now a software developer) and she is a biologist and a cancer researcher.  They both had health problems and as per usual, got NO answers from allopathic medicine.  So they turned to five years worth of research and experiment with optimizing their diet and eliminating toxins and foods that are not good for anybody.  They got better!  Interesting site.

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/ 

Is it easy to follow?  No!  What diet is?  But my history of dieting goes like this: I start it in the morning, start dreaming of cheating by mid-morning, then by lunch all bets are off and I cheat big time!  I never could stay on any diet for any length of time.  This diet is strict, but it is doable.   If you have health problems and don't want to get sicker, that is a good motivation to get you over the hump of all the restrictions.  Since doing this diet, I can no longer drink soft drinks at all, and like you have found sugary foods taste wayyy too sugary.  

Also, I didn't plunge into this diet headlong.  I eased into it one little toe at a time.  That made the transition so much easier.  It's a good diet.  But you won't like the taste of processed food once you start following it.  And that's a good thing.  I'm easing myself back into this diet once again and I can already tell I feel better.  It may not be for everyone but it is working for me.  

 

[tallyollyopia]

 
Exactly.  Pern is the classic example of a series with elements of both fantasy and S.F..

You want something that's hard to categorize by genre, think about Harvey, with Jimmy Stewart.  Is it about insanity?  No, it only seems like it at first.  People trying to make a gentle man be something he isn't?  Yes, that's part of it, certainly.   Fantasy?  Maybe.  Just a really great movie, with one of the all time great actors starring in it?  Yeah!  That's it!  (Yes, I do know that it began as a play, not a movie.  I don't care.  It's still a really great movie, and Jimmy Stewart was the perfect choice to star in it.)

Margret

One of my literature teachers told me to write first and then  try to categorize my work. Maybe that's what the people (there's seldom just one) who wrote the play Harvey  did. Good thing the movie wasn't advertised by the morons advertising Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or it never would have gotten off the ground.

 

[kntrygrl256]

I'm planning on making an enclosure once I get in my house. I hope to have it complete before winter but of course getting the house finished is priority.

 

[jcat]

@jcat
, that's a very nice enclosure!!

It was put up by professionals. It's about 1/4 acre and has 2 rustic cabins, an open shed for litter boxes, an electrified fence and constant access to a heated room inside the shelter. It's supposed to be 100% escape-proof, but isn't. One cat escaped twice and was hit by a car the second time.

 

[tallyollyopia]

Ra from newborn to the cat he is now.

All Five Newborn Kitties.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Feb 2, 2016

(Ra is the orange tabby furthest left.)

Ra with Fern and Gully.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

The birds escaped after this picture. 

Silly Sleeping Ra.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Silly Ra Sleeping.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Still Nursing.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Clockwise starting with the kitten in the top right: Princess, Spot, Ra, and Slipper. Of course, in the middle, is their mother, Rose.

Ra Spot Princess Asia.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Top to bottom: Ra, Spot, Princess, and Asia.

View media item 345221
And here he is now; the terror of squirrels, birds, and rabbits in our backyard.

 

[rhondalee]

Ra from newborn to the cat he is now.

All Five Newborn Kitties.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Feb 2, 2016

(Ra is the orange tabby furthest left.)

Ra with Fern and Gully.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

The birds escaped after this picture.   (The cats keep me from missing them too much.)

Silly Sleeping Ra.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Silly Ra Sleeping.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Still Nursing.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Clockwise starting with the kitten in the top right: Princess, Spot, Ra, and Slipper. Of course, in the middle, is their mother, Rose.

Ra Spot Princess Asia.jpg

• tallyollyopia
• Dec 21, 2015

Top to bottom: Ra, Spot, Princess, and Asia.

View media item 345221
And here he is now; the terror of squirrels, birds, and rabbits in our backyard.

they're so cute. They look super happy and healthy. Ra looks like my Seamus. Seamus doesn't terrorize the birds and squirrels, just the other cats. But he's so cute when he does it, that no one can stay mad at him.

 

[artiemom]

Oh my...posts seem to be at a halt for a bit..

Could it be because of good weather? It is sunny here, a breeze, but cool...in the 50's..

I have to close my windows. I had them open in the morning. I get the direct sun in my apartment until around noon time. 

I just made myself a smoothie with the strawberry whey stuff, almond milk, and a few strawberries which I froze myself. 

It was ok.. it makes me feel so 'gassy'. I guess that is the purpose, to feel 'full' from the froth and stuff...oh, well.....

gotta go give my guy some medicine now and then jump in the shower. I came back from the gym, but wanted to have something in my stomach before I start reaching for the bad stuff....

Supper will be in a few hours....a nice salad with ham. 

I guess this is kitten season. I see so many posts about kittens. Amazing. 

 

[donutte]

Taking stock of things to get rid of. Thinking about going to Jamba Juice and getting a smoothie. Need to clear my head. A drive would be nice too, and going to Highland Park is a nice ride. There's the Botanic Garden there too, and they have the corpse flower about to bloom! That's the place my boys were born and raised until they were 8 weeks old, btw.

 

[kntrygrl256]

Unfortunately they expect me to work while I'm on the job, go figure!!! Anyway I'm on break so I thought I would check in and see what was going on...Hmmmm looks like,,,, not much right now.

 

[Margret]

 
Unfortunately they expect me to work while I'm on the job, go figure!!!

Yes, awful, isn't it?  I've also noticed that libraries seem to think I should give their books back to them!  The nerve!

Margret

 

[rhondalee]

Yay! We made it to 500! We're half way to the first prize! I wonder who will get it?!

 

[kntrygrl256]

WOO HOO!!!

After work tonight I will be heading to Mobile for the weekend. It's a well deserved, long awaited vacation aka fishing trip. Hoping to catch some flounder and crabs.