Menu Planning:  Living Life Beautifully

As we embark on this fun journey together (which will resume on Monday after I finish getting through all the emails that state, “I didn’t know you had a blog and now I need to get caught up on the reading!;) learning how to plan our menus, I feel the need to empty my soul as to why this needs to be so important to you. 

Do you have any fears?  I mean real “wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night” fears that almost take your breath away because they seem so real?  I do.  More than most of you will ever know.  Some of my fears are irrational just like most people’s fears.  But there is one that I have that is real…and big…and furry (ok, not furry, but I loved how that sounded). 

If you think it is the fear of dying you are wrong.  I do not fear death so much and as I age I am almost embracing it (I make myself sound so old yet I still feel like I am oh so young).  Somehow for me there is an unspoken serenity in a timely death.  No, I do not fear that.  What I fear is living with disease.  Not dying from disease—living with it. 

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Jodi, I already eat clean”.  Yes, I know.  If you are reading my blog, you care what you look like.  However, that’s why I am talking to you about living with disease.  Not dying from it.  I do not want to be 65 with beltway skin, shards of teeth, straw for hair with enough fire in my engine to make it from A to B, but otherwise so depleted that I literally hurt all over to get there.  I am not interested in being 70 but looking like I am 90.  Don’t you feel so bad when you meet that person?  Or how about being 75 with every known condition out there that requires oodles of medication to keep you going?  Not my desire.

That’s us, though.  That’s the path we are headed on.  We exercise daily so we are keeping our vessels healthy.  We do not eat processed food so our arteries are clean.  And we flush ourselves daily with loads of water to keep our cells teeming with life.  But we also secretly stuff ourselves with so many chemicals and artificial sweeteners that if we listen closely at night we can actually hear our livers sobbing quietly looking for relief from the toxins.  We work hard, play hard and pretty much live hard, too.  Don’t forget, we are type A.  And lastly, we eat the same nutrients day in and day out so that when we go to replenish what we rob of our body everyday in our killer workouts, we fall short.  Thereby creating what I call now, “the slow, painful life”—not death.

See we’re going to live.  And we’ll be somewhat vibrant.  Maybe vibrant is too pain free of a word.  We’ll be operational.  But for who we are used to being, we will not be happy.  More than even the processed food loving general public folks who do not value their health, we need to be diligent about food periodization.  That’s a $100,000 word for “not eating the same thing all the time”.  We need to cherish the gift of performance that we have been so blessed to possess. We take for granted things like weight loss, functioning joints, working organs (hysterectomy anybody?) and regeneration. 

Take it from someone with first hand knowledge, regeneration ends.  And when it does, will you be on the good side of that stick or on the bad side?  Don’t get caught out there on the bad side of the regeneration stick!  Hormonal hell, emotional distress and physical therapy will all be staring you in the face.  And they are not that good looking to be that close to you!

I bring all this up because I don’t want this series to be a fly by night thing for you.  You know, you throw a few amens out there and agree with all that is being said to you only to find yourself 2 weeks later eating the same thing you were eating 2 weeks before.  I don’t want that.  I want you to read this, get this, try this, live this.  For that to happen, we need to take it slow and develop some habits.  Food is habitual.  If you think you are going to just wake up and start balancing menus left and right—good luck to you.  Actually, if you find that you can I have a few food diaries for you to help me with when we’re done with this series.  Email me. J

So although the info will be coming faster than it has so far, it will not be coming so fast that we are on the next letter before you have fully taken advantage of the first.  Please try to incorporate as much as you can in between posts so that it is instilled in you in real time.  You learn by doing, not by reading.  Give me feedback as to how it is going and share any tips and tricks that you learn in the comments so that others may learn with you. 

The response from this series so far has been tremendous and it has just started.  I am so excited for the rest and from the looks of my Facebook page, you are too!.  Let’s put this to good use and truly set ourselves up for living beautifully…cool?:o)    

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